Vera Philosophia: Studies in Late Antique, Early Medieval, and Renaissance Christian Thought

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Vera Philosophia

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NUTRI X

STUDIES IN LATE ANTIQUE MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE THOUGHT STUDI SUL PENSIERO TARDOANTICO MEDIEVALE E UMANISTICO

Directed by Giulio d’Onofrio

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Ubi in eam deduxi oculos intuitumque defixi respicio nutricem meam cuius ab adulescentia laribus obversatus fueram Philosophiam BOETHIUS Consolatio Philosophiae, I, 3

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© 2008 Brepols Publishers n.v.,Turnhout, Belgium

The publication of this volume has been assisted by a grant from MIUR (Italy) within the «Progetto di Ricerca di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale» (PRIN/COFIN) 2003 Paradigms of Scientific-Philosophical Knowledge and Religious Thought in the Middle Ages, Research Unit of the Università degli Studi di Salerno.

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 prior permission of the publisher.

The logo of the Nutrix series is taken from Ms. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 302 (Ramsey Psalter), f. 2v. Photographic credit: The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

D/2008/0095/60 ISBN 978-2-503-52546-4 Printed in the E.U. on acid-free paper

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Giulio d’Onofrio

Vera Philosophia Studies in Late Antique, Early Medieval, and Renaissance Christian Thought

English Text by John Gavin, S.J.

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Christ Child among the Doctors in the Temple (Lc 2, 41-52) Ms. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 302 (Ramsey Psalter), f. 2v. Photographic credit: The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

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to Daniela

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 ‘CONVERTED’ THOUGHT

1. The hidden truth 2. Probabilism and dialectic 3. The dissensiones philosophorum and the crisis of classical knowledge 4. The parricide of Cicero 5. The philosophical via of the Neoplatonists 6. Augustine and the Academics 7. Christian probabilism 8. The ‘conversion’ of philosophy 9. Christian Neoplatonism 10. Verissima philosophia CHAPTER 2 THE GARMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

The last of the ancient philosophers, the first of the new Scientia, sapientia, philosophia The dialogue with reason and the task of logic Philosophy and reality The error of the ‘old philosophers’ Neoplatonic gnoseology and the ‘overturning’ of the relationships between subject and object 7. The simple unity of true knowledge 8. Beginning and end of sapientia: theological knowledge CHAPTER 3 THE THEOLOGICAL MISSION OF THE SAGE

1. The founders of Paris 2. The defense of Christian truth in the Carolingian schola Christi

11 11 20 31 36 42 44 55 59 63 69 77 77 83 90 96 104 116 124 131 143 143 150

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3. The rules of theological method in the Carolingian age: lectio, traditio, ratio 4. Theology and dialectic 5. The ‘noetical’ sources of truth 6. The nature of the division 7. Intellectus and essentia 8. From division to universal reunification: the reditus to the truth 9. Beyond the vera philosophia CHAPTER 4 THE DIVINE LOGIC

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Words and argumentations The preoccupations of the teacher Per fidem ad intellectum: the system of the truth Ratio fidei: the affirmative way of the Monologion Cogitari nequit: the negative way of the Proslogion Who is the insipiens? The topical nature of the argumentum The new argumentative rationality CHAPTER 5 THE RENAISSANCE OF VERA PHILOSOPHIA

1. The fleeing prey of knowledge 2. The ‘conjectures’ of the soul 3. The polypartite soul in late ancient, medieval, and Renaissance Platonism 4. The new ‘overturning’ of the relationship between subject and object of knowledge 5. The ‘filiations’ of the truth 6. The humanistic ‘reform’ of theology 7. The peace of the faith 8. The return of philosophical probabilism and the truths of tolerance

154 162 168 176 186 194 197 209 209 217 227 231 237 248 252 260 265 265 270 279 301 308 318 330 336

POSTFATIO

357

BIBLIOGRAPHY

361

INDEX OF NAMES

387

BIBLICAL INDEX

405

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Obsecro te, non sit honestior philosophia gentium quam nostra christiana quae una est vera philosophia, quandoquidem studium vel amore sapientiae significatur hoc nomine AUGUSTINUS Contra Julianum, IV, 14, 72

Conficitur inde veram esse philosophiam veram religionem conversimque veram religionem esse veram philosophiam IOHANNES SCOTUS ERIUGENA De praedestinatione, 1, 1

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1. The hidden truth In the opening of the fifth book of the Tusculan Disputations, Cicero discloses to the reader that he has returned to his youthful vocation in philosophical studies after the bitter events of his mature years. He then intones a famous and moving celebration of philosophy: vitae dux, mistress of moral discipline, who alone teaches how to practice and revive the virtues, and how to extirpate the vices! She has created the cities and the other forms of human association; she has joined them together with sacred and indissoluble bonds; she has endowed them with the means of communication and education of the citizens; and she has established the laws, the ethical norms, and the regulation of customs for them. Without her light the wearisome road of existence could not be traversed. A single day lived in following her precepts is preferable to a sinful immortality. A man worthy of this name is only able to entrust himself, without reserve, to her aid1. 1 Cfr. MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, Tusculanae disputationes, V, 2, 5, ed. C.F.W. Müller, Scripta, IV/1, Leipzig 1889, p. 426,21-32: «O vitae philosophia dux, o virtutis indagatrix expultrixque vitiorum! quid non modo nos, sed omnino vita hominum sine te esse potuisset? tu urbis peperisti, tu dissipatos homines in societatem vitae convocasti, tu eos inter se primo domiciliis, deinde coniugiis, tum litterarum et vocum communione iunxisti, tu inventrix legum, tu magistra morum et disciplinae fuisti; ad te confugimus, a te opem petimus, tibi nos, ut antea magna ex parte, sic nunc penitus totosque tradimus. Est autem unus dies bene et ex praeceptis tuis actus peccanti inmortalitati anteponendus». In the subsequent notes of this chapter, the works of Cicero are cited without mentioning the

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This inspired hymn of praise is valuable not only as the epigraph that gives significance to Cicero’s entire philosophical production, but also as an explicit witness to the contents of the philosophia vitae dux and to the role which the Arpinian gives to philosophical studies in the formation of man. Moreover, a similar idea inspires the words with which, at the beginning of the second book of the De divinatione, Cicero drafted the list of his writings dedicated to introducing education in the optimae artes (i. e., philosophical knowledge) to the Roman world.The list includes the recommendation, in the Hortensius, of the irreplaceable educative value of the practice of philosophy2; the invitation, in the De finibus, to recognize its fundamentum as the capacity to distinguish between good and evil3; and the concretization, in the Tusculanae, of his personal contribution to philosophy, with the codification of the conditions and the indispensable norms for achieving happiness: the scorning of death, the sustaining of pain, the control of the passions, and the exercise of virtue4. What strikes one in these two pages is the explicitly ethicalpractical and consolatory formulation of philosophy, oriented toname of the author. In the whole volume, the italics in the citations are my own. Unless indicated otherwise, the modern translations of Latin and Greek texts are also my own. 2 Cfr. De divinatione, II, 1, 1, ed. Müller, IV/2, Leipzig 1890, p. 196,1-8: «Quaerenti mihi multumque et diu cogitanti, quanam re possem prodesse quam plurimis, ne quando intermitterem consulere rei publicae, nulla maior occurrebat, quam si optimarum artium vias traderem meis civibus; quod conpluribus iam libris me arbitror consecutum. Nam et cohortati sumus, ut maxime potuimus, ad philosophiae studium eo libro, qui est inscriptus Hortensius». On the Hortensius as an apology and encomium for philosophy, cfr. also Lucullus (Academica priora), II, 2, 6, ed. Müller, IV/1, pp. 23,37-24,5; and De finibus bonorum et malorum, I, 1, 2, ed. Müller, IV/1, p. 93,15-22. 3 Cfr. De divinatione, II, 1, 2, p. 196,11-15: «Cumque fundamentum esset philosophiae positum in finibus bonorum et malorum, perpurgatus est is locus a nobis quinque libris, ut, quid a quoque, et quid contra quemque philosophum diceretur, intellegi posset». 4 Cfr. ibidem, pp. 196,15-197,3: «Totidem subsecuti libri Tusculanarum disputationum res ad beate vivendum maxime necessarias aperuerunt. Primus enim est de contemnenda morte, secundus de tolerando dolore, de aegritudine lenienda tertius, quartus de reliquis animi perturbationibus, quintus eum locum conplexus est, qui totam philosophiam maxime inlustrat; docet enim ad beate vivendum virtutem se ipsa esse contentam». Cfr. also, Tusculanae disputationes, II, 4, 11, p. 331,7-9: «Nam efficit hoc philosophia: medetur animis, inanes sollicitudines detrahit, cupiditatibus liberat, pellit timores»; and, on human happiness as the result of philosophy, ibid.,V, 1, 1-4, pp. 425,1-426,14.

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ward the consolidation of precious results within the existential sphere, e. g., the tranquillity of life and the removal of fear from death5. Cicero composes his formulation with the intentional absence of references to the construction of theoretical knowledge, to its epistemological foundation, and to any sort of question regarding the reality, origin, or destination of existence. Such a precise orientation is certainly a consequence of the peculiarly pragmatic tendency of the Roman mentality, which was hardly sympathetic to the speculative abstractions of classical Greek and Hellenistic philosophy.Yet, Cicero does not express this ethicalpractical orientation only through a deepening or a selective choice of themes of major interest. For instance, in the De divinatione, he declares his desire to realize a treatment of ‘all’ the philosophical disciplines, so as not to leave any speculative locus unknown to the Latins6. Furthermore, the devaluation and the setting aside of the research on the origin of the cosmos and on nature seem to be in open contradiction with the classical definition of ‘wisdom’ as scientia divinarum humanarumque rerum to which Cicero subscribed. He, in fact, interpreted ‘wisdom’ as, among other things,‘knowledge of the causes’ that determine the manner of existence of individual realities7. Nevertheless, even 5 Cfr. Tusculanae disputationes,V, 2, 5, p. 426,32-34: «Cuius igitur potius opibus utamur quam tuis, quae et vitae tranquillitatem largita nobis es et terrorem mortis sustulisti?». 6 Cfr. De divinatione, II, 2, 4, p. 197,26-29: «Ad reliqua alacri tendebamus animo sic parati, ut, nisi quae causa gravior obstitisset, nullum philosophiae locum esse pateremur, qui non Latinis litteris inlustratus pateret». 7 Cfr. Tusculanae disputationes, IV, 26, 57, p. 413,8-12: «De cuius [i. e. sapientis] excellentia multa quidem dici quamvis fuse lateque possunt, sed brevissime illo modo, sapientiam esse rerum humanarum scientiam cognitionemque, quae cuius rei causa sit»; ibid.,V, 3, 7, p. 427,11-14: «[Sapientia] divinarum humanarumque rerum, tum initiorum causarumque cuiusque rei cognitione hoc pulcherrimum nomen apud antiquos adsequebatur». Cfr. also De oratore, I, 49, 212, ed. G. Friedrich, Opera rhetorica, in Müller, I/2, Leipzig 1891, pp. 50,35-51,3: «Philosophi denique ipsius, qui de sua vi ac sapientia unus omnia paene profitetur, est tamen quaedam descriptio, ut is, qui studeat omnium rerum divinarum atque humanarum vim, naturam causasque nosse et omnem bene vivendi rationem tenere et persequi, nomine hoc appelletur».And: Varro (Academica posteriora), I, 3, 9, ed. Müller, IV/1, p. 6,31-33; De finibus bonorum et malorum, II, 12, 37, p. 137,16-21; De officiis, I, 43, 153, and II, 2, 5, ed. Müller, IV/3, p. 52,31-34 and p. 58,8-11. For a synthetic collection of examples of the transmission of such a definition from Hellenistic literature to Roman authors and proto-Christians, see my essay, La scala ricamata. La philosophiae divisio di Severino Boezio tra essere e conoscere, in La Divisione del-

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the affirmation of a science per causas is subject in his writings to a marked restriction in the practical sense. It is true that nothing more desirable exists for man than sapientia, which is capable of bringing him near to divine perfection.Yet, man must realistically content himself with philosophia (i. e., studium sapientiae), not as a possession, but as a simple desire for knowledge, already useful in itself for giving peace to the mind and for orienting it toward the good and toward happiness. The province of philosophers must for this reason be led back to the genus discendi that allows for the realization of the disciplina virtutis; and the knowledge of the theoretical order must be reduced to carrying out a merely propaedeutic function within the authentic concerns of the sage: the concerns of the ethical-practical order8. This is confirmed in the presentation of the four Platonic virtues that opens the De officiis. Cicero identifies sapientia with the first of the virtues, prudentia, which «in perspicientia veri sollertiaque versatur». Cicero shows its specific task to be the indagatio atque inventio veri and its object to be veritas9. It is important, therefore, to assure respect for the two fundamental rules for avoiding error: never to concede assent to things still unknown as if they were already known; and never to dedicate oneself to knowing things too obscure or difficult, the comprehension of which, precisely because they are obscure, is not indispensable for honestum, the true end of human life. However, one is also naturally drawn to dedicate his theoretical search exclusively to that which is honestum et cognitione dignum, i. e., to what is instrumental to the study and the regulation of actio, and to the valuation of the res gerendae. Pure knowledge, intended as the disinterested activity of the mind, is always possible and licit in the moments of la Filosofia e le sue Ragioni. Lettura di testi medievali (VI-XIII secolo), Atti del VII Convegno della Società Italiana per lo Studio del Pensiero Medievale (S.I.S.P.M) (Assisi, 14-15 novembre 1997), a c. di G. d’Onofrio, Cava dei Tirreni 2001 (Schola Salernitana. Studi e Testi, 5), [pp. 11-63], pp. 59-60 and the corresponding notes; and my volume: Fons scientiae. La dialettica nell’Occidente tardo-antico, Napoli 1986, pp. 61-62 and 67-69. 8 Cfr. De officiis, I, 43, 153, pp. 52,36-53,1: «Etenim cognitio contemplatioque naturae manca quodam modo atque inchoata sit, si nulla actio rerum consequatur». Cfr. also ibid., II, 2, 6-7, pp. 58,13-59,6; De finibus bonorum et malorum, II, 12, 37-38, pp. 137,16-138,2. 9 Cfr. De officiis, I, 5, 15-16, pp. 7,8-28.

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rest from social or political work.Yet, it is important not to allow the problems of pure theoretical activity, which are not dedicated to the increase of virtue and the search for happiness, to seize and to distract the mind from the practical fruition of the positive results of the investigation10. The decisive practical orientation of the whole of philosophy for Cicero is parallel to his option in favour of probabilistic Skepticism, which is discussed in the two succeeding editions of the Academica, or Academici libri. In the list of the De divinatione, Cicero presents this work as dedicated to showing which «genre of philosophy» must be considered the best: it must be absolutely immune from any unjustified presumption of knowing or defining that which escapes the human capacity. In fact, Probabilism is the only fitting form of speculation among those elaborated in antiquity that corresponds to and is adequate for the effective conditions in which knowledge is realized11. The words by which Cicero justifies Probabilism at the beginning of the second book of the Academica priora are significant. The unique goal of his research is to find the truth that each person is able to recognize, and must recognize, without objections or reservations («qui verum invenire ulla contentione volumus»). However, two points arise before this implacable desire for the truth: the acknowledgement of the difficulties that have accompanied the search for verum in all philosophers of the past, even the greatest and most competent, and the recognition of how much human uncertainties depend not upon the greater or lesser capacities of the subject, but upon a profound obscurity that is connatural to things. These considerations must not, however, transform themselves, because of distrust or weariness, into a renunciation of the search. Cicero believes himself to have proven the value of the quest for the truth in his philosophical dialogues («nostrae disputationes»): since he has found his inspiration in the method of comparing differing opinions («in utramque partem dicendo et audiendo»), it is not only possible, but also proper, to push oneself with successive verifications toward the recognition 10

Cfr. ibid., 6, 18-19, p. 8,4-32. Cfr. De divinatione, II, 1, 1, p. 196,8-10: «Et, quod genus philosophandi minime adrogans maximeque et constans et elegans arbitraremur, quattuor Academicis libris ostendimus». 11

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of, if not the truth itself, at least something that approaches it as much as possible («aliquid quod aut verum sit, aut id quam proxime accedat»). This must be done, however, with the strict caution that one never obstinately and aggressively smuggle the achieved cognitive positions into ones’ thought as if they were true. A programmatic weakening of the theoretical claims of human knowledge springs forth, therefore, from the radical renunciation, in the name of an absolute liberty of judgment («iudicandi potestas»), of the principle of verifiability, which was valued in classical epistemology as the foundation of every solid and explicit ontological position. No affirmation for the Academics is really thoroughly verifiable, i. e., to the point of a confirmation methodologically founded by the appearance.Therefore, the final nature of the res, in itself ‘true’, remains unknowable for human intelligence.Thus, whoever among men chooses to subscribe to the teaching of a master as true, attaches himself, as to a rock in the middle of a tempest, to doctrinal formulations that he has not been able to judge beforehand as correct, in as much as the relative object remains in itself unknown («de rebus incognitis iudicant»). In comparison to the followers of all the other schools, the Probabilist assumes, as a starting point, a more flexible and productive position, which, according to Cicero, must be shared by whoever wants to call himself a philosopher.This position is superior in so far as it allows one to acquire many notions that, although not entirely verifiable, are valuable nonetheless as points of reference for practical orientation («quae sequi facile, adfirmare vix possumus»)12. 12 Cfr. Lucullus, II, 3, 7-8, pp. 24,25-25,14: «Quamquam nostra quidem causa facilis est, qui verum invenire sine ulla contentione volumus idque summa cura studioque conquirimus. Etsi enim omnis cognitio multis est obstructa difficultatibus, eaque est et in ipsis rebus obscuritas et in iudiciis nostris infirmitas, ut non sine causa antiquissimi et doctissimi invenire se posse, quod cuperent, diffisi sint, tamen nec illi defecerunt neque nos studium exquirendi defatigati relinquemus; neque nostrae disputationes quidquam aliud agunt, nisi ut in utramque partem dicendo et audiendo eliciant et tamquam exprimant aliquid, quod aut verum sit aut ad id quam proxime accedat; nec inter nos et eos qui se scire arbitrantur, quidquam interest, nisi quod illi non dubitant, quin ea vera sint, quae defendunt, nos probabilia multa habemus, quae sequi facile, adfirmare vix possumus; hoc autem liberiores et solutiores sumus, quod integra nobis est iudicandi potestas, nec, ut omnia, quae praescripta et quasi imperata sint, defendamus, necessitate ulla cogimur. Nam ce-

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Two conceptual moments seem, in this text, to present themselves as an explication of the two distinct finalities pursued by philosophy: verum invenire, the general purpose of the heuristic activity, and de rebus iudicare, the actualization of such a task in the particular and in the specific. In other Ciceronian texts, these same articulations of thought are described as the two artes that assure the veracity of discourse. In the Topica, the ars iudicandi corresponds to the discipline that has the name dialektikhv, and the ars inveniendi corresponds to the discipline called topikhv. Cicero maintains that, while Aristotle was a master in both, the Stoics neglected the topical investigation – the first investigation in respect to dignity and nature – and applied themselves to the dialectical side alone13. In the De finibus, the consequences of such a disparity are clarified.The Stoics, keeping to the formal aspect of reasoning, have constructed discourses that are coherent and impeccable, but which, at the same time, are also abstract and valid only on the normative level of their logical dissertations (or «commentarioli»).They are like the poets who do not care for the correspondence between that which they say and that of which they speak. The Peripatetics, however, have also investigated the loci (or tovpoi), i. e., the schematizations that assure the coherence between discourse and reality14. teri primum ante tenentur adstricti, quam, quid esset optimum, iudicare potuerunt; deinde infirmissimo tempore aetatis aut obsecuti amico cuipiam aut una alicuius, quem primum audierunt, oratione capti de rebus incognitis iudicant et, ad quamcumque sunt disciplinam quasi tempestate delati, ad eam tamquam ad saxum adhaerescunt». 13 Cfr. Topica, 2, 6, ed. Friedrich cit. (above, note 7), I/2, Leipzig 1891, p. 426,20-27: «Cum omnis ratio diligens disserendi duas habeat partis, unam inveniendi alteram iudicandi, utriusque princeps, ut mihi quidem videtur, Aristoteles fuit. Stoici autem in altera elaboraverunt; iudicandi enim vias diligenter persecuti sunt ea scientia quam dialektikhvn appellant, inveniendi artem, quae topikhv dicitur, quae et ad usum potior erat et ordine naturae certe prior, totam reliquerunt». Cfr. D’ONOFRIO, Fons scientiae. La dialettica cit. (above, note 7), pp. 94-96. 14 Cfr. De finibus bonorum et malorum, IV, 4, 10, p. 205,10-34: «Cumque duae sint artes, quibus perfecte ratio et oratio compleatur, una inveniendi, altera disserendi, hanc posteriorem et Stoici et Peripatetici, priorem autem illi egregie tradiderunt, hi omnino ne attigerunt quidem. Nam e quibus locis quasi thesauris argumenta depromerentur, vestri [scil. Stoici] ne suspicati quidem sunt, superiores autem artificio et via tradiderunt. Quae quidem ars efficit, ne necesse sit isdem de rebus semper quasi dictata decantare neque a commentarioli suis discedere. (…) Aliud est enim poetarum more verba fundere, aliud ea, quae dicas, ratione et arte distinguere». Cfr. again Topica, 2, 7, p. 426,30-33: «Ut igitur earum rerum, quae

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While the dialectical norms govern the formal aspect of argumentation, the loci are, for Cicero, the more generic and formal rules of intelligence. They are the mental categories that assure the validity of the mental passage from that which is already known to that which is not yet known, whenever this passage is comprehended within the sphere of the capacity of a locus to signify. For example, when one deduces from the general representation of human nature as having the connotation of «mortality» that even the ‘Greeks’, if they are ‘men’, are necessarily ‘mortal’, the determined and applied tópos is that of the comprehension of the species in the genre. It would not be correct, however, to argue that the ‘Greeks’, if they are ‘men’, are necessarily also ‘winged’, because the ‘being winged’ does not come into the notion that the intelligence has acquired as corresponding to the res called ‘man’.The ars inveniendi, or topica, by determining the loci, assures, for this reason, the possibility of grounding science upon certain notiones, while the ars iudicandi, or dialectic in the strict sense, directs only the formal coordination of its strategies for argumentation.This confirms that the philosophers are not capable of recte iudicare the res in themselves, but only the notiones that the intelligence draws from sensible data as representations of the res. Such notiones are, in fact, always imperfect and deceptive, because they are not verifiable.The ultimate nature of the represented res remains in itself estranged from the mental spheres established by the topica. Reason is capable of assuring the formal coherence of the proper routes of investigation, but this is not the ground for which one must recognize in it the capacity to argue in an unequivocal way about the manner of existence of each object. Reason must consider the notio as a ‘phenomenical’ and merely orienting manifestation of the object, without accepting it as something verifiable or objective. Cicero determined that the defect in the methodology of the Stoics consists in their having presumed that the inventio veri ought to be considered a prerogative of empirical knowledge, which follows from the pure recognition of the connotative evidence of the known object. For this reason, they have practiced absconditae sunt, demonstrato et notato loco facilis inventio est, sic, cum pervestigare argumentum aliquod volumus, locos nosse debemus».

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only dialectic, applying its rules to the notions drawn from experience, and they have ignored the principles of the topica, having considered them useless.The Academics, however, working in the wake of the Aristotelians, recognized that the only inventio veri possible for man is that of the loci, which allow access to an entirely interior and formal knowledge – the only knowledge that has the right to demand an act of fides from the subject in what would otherwise remain dubium15. They proposed a framing of the empirical data within these credible mental and organizational schemata that allow one to appreciate not the truth, but rather the verisimilitude, which is useful for orienting the intelligence among the phenomenological appearances without committing gross errors. In this way, they were at least able to ensure a certain plausibility in the formal regulation of practical duties (kathvconta, or officia) on the basis of moral directives. These directives were verisimilar and, therefore, acceptable to all, both common men and sages16. Cicero expounds upon this probabilistic doctrine in the two versions of the Academici libri. He presents it as the teaching of the so-called (according to the terminology cited by Sextus Empiricus17) ‘second’ and ‘third (or new) Academy’. These Academies were founded, respectively, by Arcesilaus of Pitane, who in the first half of the third century b. C. introduced the suspension of judgement into the Platonic school, and by Carneades, who in the second century consolidated anti-dogmatism by founding it 15 Cfr. Topica, 2, 8, p. 426,35-37: «Itaque licet definire locum esse argumenti sedem, argumentum autem rationem, quae rei dubiae faciat fidem». Cfr. also ibid., 7, 31, p. 431,29-31, where Cicero clarifies the correspondence of this idea of the formal truth inserted into the soul with the definition of notio which he draws from Stoic logic: «Notionem appello, quod Graeci tum e[nnoian tum provleyin. Ea est insita et animo percepta cuiusque cognitio, enodationis indigens». And again on the notio, cfr. Tusculanae disputationes, I, 24, 57, pp. 300,30-301,2; De finibus bonorum et malorum, I, 9, 31, p. 104,9-11; ibid., III, 6, 21, p. 179,8-9. 16 Cfr. De finibus bonorum et malorum, III, 17, 58, p. 192,30-31: «Est autem officium, quod ita factum est ut eius facti probabilis ratio reddi possit». Regarding the innateness of the formal principles of virtue (which, in the ethic of the duties are made explicit in concrete and particular norms, just as in dialectic the formal contents of the mental loci, which the topic singles out, are developped), cfr. also ibid., V, 21, 59-60, pp. 261,13-262,3; and Tusculanae disputationes, III, 1, 2, p. 356,2-11. 17 Cfr. SEXTUS EMPIRICUS, Pyrrhoneion hypotyposeon libri tres, I, 220, ed. H. Mutschmann, Opera, I, Leipzig 1912, p. 56,7-11.

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upon the principle of probability.Yet, in Cicero the doctrine is presented in a form resulting from the successive developments of the Academy during the Roman domination. In particular, it is based upon the revision in a moderate key of the Probabilism worked out by the eclectic Philo of Larissa (founder, always according to Sextus Empiricus, of the ‘fourth Academy’): Philo was convinced that the object of knowledge, even if never directly grasped by man, remains potentially and objectively true; this object of knowledge, in turn, supports, with its intangible truth, the truth of the principles and rules of dialectic.This doctrine of the pre-existence of a formal truth, originally «impressum in animo atque mente»18, brings the cognitive positivism of Philo decisively near to the Ciceronian doctrine of the topical inventio, or the schematic predisposition of the mind for the knowledge of the truth.The Academica of Cicero, however, do not allow for a simple recovery of the skeptical doctrines of Carneades, but they intend to offer a clarification of the more recent discussions carried out internally in the Platonic school.They have the intention, in particular, of defending the ‘skeptical realism’ of Philo from the criticism of his disciple, Antiochus of Ascalon, who, in order to accentuate the eclecticism of his ‘fifth Academy’, had opted for a decisive anti-skeptical recovery of the originally Stoic identification of the evidence of the res and verifiability of the notiones19.

2. Probabilism and dialectic Only the first part of the first of the four books of the Varro (or Academica posteriora) has been preserved, which, even if chrono-

18

Lucullus, II, 11, 34, p. 37,15-19 (cit. in full in note 32). On Philo and Antiochus cfr. the bibliography proposed in G. D’ONOFRIO, La dialettica in Agostino e il metodo della teologia nell’alto medioevo, in Congresso internazionale su S. Agostino nel XVI centenario della conversione (Roma, Ist. Patr. Augustinianum, 15-20 settembre 1986), Atti, 3 voll., Roma 1987, I (Studia ephemeridis «Augustinianum», 24), [pp. 251-282], p. 257, note 19; more recent: B. BERNARD, La nouvelle Académie selon le point de vue de Philon de Larisse, in Scepticisme et exégèse: hommage à Camille Pernot, Fontenay 1993 (Les Cahiers de Fontenay, hors-collection), pp. 85-163; L. FLADERER, Antiochos von Askalon: Hellenist und Humanist, Horn 1996; for the dependence of Ciceronian epistemology upon the teachings of both thinkers, cfr. F. CUPAIOLO, Cicerone e il problema della conoscenza, in «Paideia», 45 (1990), pp. 51-92. 19

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logically posterior, precedes, from a logical point of view, that which remains of the Lucullus (or Academica priora), i. e., the second and final book: in this text, a lively defence of Stoic epistemology is entrusted to the character of Varro.Yet, it is actually Antiochus of Ascalon who speaks through Varro and fights against Probabilism in order to rehabilitate the possibility of founding science upon verifiable certainties guaranteed by their very evidence. The character of Cicero replies to the argumentation of Varro in order to recover and validate the doctrine of Philo, which, however, is hidden behind a continuous utilization of the anti-dogmatic (i. e., anti-Stoic) arguments already worked out by Carneades. Varro takes his starting point directly from an idea of Philo (also shared by Antiochus): the consistent teaching of the Academic philosophers that there exist res occultae et ab ipsa natura involutae that escape the cognitive capacity of man. The Academics were united in this teaching, from the time of their founder Socrates, within both the Platonic and Aristotelian streams of thought; they in fact did not differ among themselves except in marginal formal and terminological elements.This belief, however, never came to the point of attenuating their desire to achieve a methodologically regulated knowledge that would describe the manifestation of reality and its more or less necessary concatenations, i. e., the ordo rerum20. The systematic accomplishment of such a philosophy (Platonic-Peripatetic, but characterized, in the reconciling perspective of Antiochus, by evident Stoic contamination) is documented by the coherence of the three disciplinary spheres in which the investigations of the Socratic ethical, theoretical, and logical ratio are articulated21.The teachings of the bene

20 Cfr. Varro (Academica posteriora), I, 4, 15-18, ed. C. F. W. MÜLLER, Scripta, IV/1, Leipzig 1889, pp. 8,21-9,30. Cfr. also the same evaluation of the substantial concord between Platonism and Aristotelianism in Lucullus, II, 5, 15, p. 28,26-27. 21 Cfr. Varro, I, 5, 19, p. 10,2-7. Also according to DIOGENES LAERTIUS, Vitae philosophorum, III, 56, ed. M. Marcovich, Stuttgart - Leipzig 1999, p. 226,10-17, Plato would have assured the systematization of philosophical knowledge by arranging it into a tripartite disciplinary organization.The first systematization of the triad would go back, according to a note by SEXTUS EMPIRICUS, Adversus mathematicos,VII [= Adversus dogmaticos, I (Adversus logicos)], 16, ed. Mutschmann cit. (above, note 17), II, Leipzig 1914, pp. 5,25-6,2, to the second head of the Academy, Xenocrates.

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vivendi pars22, and the teachings of the doctrina de natura23, are regulated to the same degree by the fundamental principle of the third discipline: dialectic (in the wide sense) quae est in ratione et in disserendo. According to dialectic, the recognition of the truth («iudicium veritatis»), directed by the senses, depends upon the capacity of the mind to grasp the object of science by abstracting common aspects from sensible representations.This object of science is always «simplex et unius modi et tale quale sit»24. The uniform background of the «forma prima a Platone tradita» of philosophy was, however, subordinated over the centuries to a series of alterations («disputationes») which drove its followers to formulate diverse and contradictory opinions25. Varro attributes to the Stoics the merit of having located the infectious germ of such subjectivism in the failure to adopt a logical-epistemological method, i. e., a criterion suitable for objectively distinguishing the true from the false. Zeno, in particular, suggested that such a criterion was recognizable in the ‘catalectic representation’ (in Ciceronian Latin, «comprehensio»), which signifies the acquisition, through an interior and voluntary assent («assensio»), of those sole manifestations of consciousness («phantasiae» or «visa») that spring forth from the senses with such force and efficacy that it is impossible for them to be attenuated or contested. A similar representation of the res, which is so evident and incontrovertible that it is not possible to confute it, becomes the producer of true scientia («quasi normam scientiae», as opposed to opinio).Yet, this scientia demands a free act of believing («credendum») in that which proposes itself to the intelligence as something exempt from any sort of contamination with the false or

22

Cfr. Varro, I, 5, 19 - 6, 23, pp. 10,8-11,30. Cfr. ibid., 6, 24 - 7, 29, pp. 11,31-13,33. 24 Cfr. ibid., 8, 30-32, pp. 13,34-14,25. Such a true object of knowledge is, for the Platonists, the idea, the term which in Latin, according to Cicero, would be species; cfr. also Tusculanae disputationes, I, 24, 58, p. 301,3-6. 25 Cfr. Varro, 8, 33, p. 14,25-30. From many pages of Cicero emerges the idea that such a multiplication of «plura genera dissentientium philosophorum» is the main symptom of the congenital weakness of classical philosophy, which, in the very moment in which it claims to have found objective knowledge, it discloses its inability to formulate doctrines acceptable by all philosophers: cfr. Tusculanae disputationes,V, 4, 11, pp. 428,32-429,2; and De natura deorum, I, 1, 1-2 and 2, 5, ed. Müller, IV/2, pp. 4,1-5,6 and 5,37-6,4. 23

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the unknown.This involves (always according to the Stoic doctrine in the rereading of Antiochus) the introduction of a prerational fides in regard to experience.Therefore, despite the Socratic-Platonic renunciation of the possibility of grasping the real in its entirety, the philosopher can seize, with a firm and decisive assensio, a great number of indubitable notions that correspond to things («notiones rerum»)26. The Ciceronian critiques of this criterion of evidence (or verisimilitude, in Latin, «perspicuitas» or «evidentia», which corresponds to ejnavrgeia) were entrusted, in the subsequent pages of the Academica posteriora, to a rehabilitation of Philo’s position against the Stoic-friendly deviations embedded in the teaching of Antiochus. Only the beginning of this exposition has been preserved27. Yet, we can read an older version of it in the second book of the Lucullus, the title of which also comes from the name of the character who acts as the spokesman for Antiochus. In an even more explicit manner in respect to Varro in the Posteriora, Lucullus demands that the principle of evidence be founded on a clear hermeneutical circle.The assertion of the truth is given by its simple ‘appearing as such’ to the intelligence that is investigating it.Thus, it is not even worth the trouble to define such evidence and there is no need to convince the interlocutor endowed with good sense of the fact that there is «aliquid, quod comprehendi et percipi potest»28. One denying such self-certification of evident knowledge would fall into the impossibility of distinguishing that which is known from that which is unknown, and, therefore, that which is true from that which is false. The ‘Achilles’ heel’ of the Academics lies precisely in the fact that they are constrained to maintain that absolutely nothing is knowable («percipi nihil posse»)29. The philosophical search, however, would not have any sense if it were not dedicated to the inventio of true knowledge. Furthermore, nothing can be called inventum 26

Cfr. Varro, 11, 40-42, pp. 13,33-17,37. Cfr. ibid., 12, 44-46, pp. 18,10-19,12. Before the interruption, the teachings of Arcesilaus are described in these pages. Arcesilaus first condemned the Stoic claim of founding assent on sensible evidence, since it was an illicit anticipation of its verifiability. 28 Cfr. Lucullus, II, 6, 17, p. 29,19-36. 29 Cfr. ibid., 6, 18 - 8, 23, pp. 30,2-33,2. 27

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if it is not in and of itself evident and certain, or if it is not rendered such by rational demonstration30. This fact is so evident that, in recalling an argument of the Stoic Antipater (an argument already reprised by Antiochus and the Roman Hortensius), Lucullus can observe that even the Academics must at least admit that their «regula totius philosophiae», i. e., nihil posse percipi, is a form of true knowledge in as far as it is evident, i. e., it is a dogma (dovgma, or «decretum»)31. Lucullus himself anticipates the response of the Academics to such an argument by recalling that they, constrained by the same Truth to recognize its existence («convicio veritatis coacti»), admit the presence in the mind of something evident («perspicuum»), which is not able, however, to be grasped ‘such as it is’ («perceptum») and to be communicated32.They require that the criterion of verisimilitude be founded on this basis, attributing to the mind an innate predisposition to perceive an object’s capacity for drawing near to an interior truth that will never be comprehended as it really is. Yet, if ‘perceive’ means to concede assent to a particular cognitive connotation (the «nota»), and to recognize it as a sign of the truth («insigne veri»), how is it possible to appreciate the ‘verisimilitude’ of something that will always be different from the truth in itself 33? By maintaining the legitimacy of a progressive approach to truth that can never be defined or rigorously quantified, the Academics fall into the entanglement of the argument from ‘sorites’ (the argument according to which it is not possible to determine the passage of a few particles of grain into a ‘pile’ or ‘heap’ of grain – in Greek, swrov~).Through lack of 30 Cfr. ibid., 8, 26, p. 33,28-32: «Quaestio autem est adpetitio cognitionis quaestionisque finis inventio. At nemo invenit falsa, nec ea, quae incerta permanent, inventa esse possunt, sed, cum ea, quae quasi involuta fuerunt, aperta sunt, tum inventa dicuntur». 31 Cfr. ibid., 9, 28-29, pp. 34,18-35,11; cfr. ibid., 34, 109, pp. 68,36-69,17.This evidence is gathered in Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, III/21, ed. J. von Arnim, 4 voll. (1903-1924), III, Leipzig 1903, p. 247. 32 Cfr. Lucullus, II, 11, 34, p. 37,15-19: «Simili in errore versantur, cum convicio veritatis coacti perspicua a perceptis volunt distinguere et conantur ostendere esse aliquid perspicui, verum illud quidem, impressum in animo atque mente, neque tamen id percipi ac comprendi posse». This distinction of perceptum and perspicuum probably goes back to Philo and depends on his idea of the innatism of the formal schemata of truth. 33 Cfr. ibid., 11, 35-36, pp. 37,26-38,16.

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evidence, they will never be capable of distinguishing the verisimilar from the false34. It is now clear why, when it is his turn to react to Lucullus’ critiques, the character of Cicero felt obligated to transfer the question from the sphere of sensible evidence to that of rational evidence.At this level, the Stoic claim appears vain and debatable when it requires that something be considered true only because it is perceived as marked by lively indications of correspondence to the thing signified.Yet, the same thing does not immediately hold true for the capacity of the intellect to recognize as evident, and therefore as true, the formal schemata that give rise to the correctness of dialectical deduction. If it is true that A is A, it will always be true that A is different from not-A, apart from the same verifiability of the real existence of A, or of not-A. Thus, after having recalled the Academics’ attentive investigation of the deceptiveness of the senses35 and the consequent demonstration that in sensible knowledge no sign (or «nota») allows one to distinguish with certainty the true from the false36, Cicero lingers particularly on the question «quid est, quod ratione percipi possit?»37. This question asks whether it is true, as the Stoics claim, that the human mind is capable of working out a discipline of thought (logic, or dialectica) that can distinguish the true from the false and can formulate judgments upon the veracity of the existence «in rebus» by grounding itself upon its simple ‘evidence’. It is not difficult for Cicero to show that even if dialectic is, in effect, ars iudicandi and is capable of expressing a judgment of distinction between true and false, its competency is such that it does not apply itself to the res ‘such as they are’, i. e., to the real objects that are ontologically definable from the other sciences. It is certainly not the task of the dialectician to establish whether or not the object of geometry, music, or literature is real, much less to evaluate whether the object of philosophy itself exists or is knowable. Students and scholars only ask the dialectician to assure the logical conditions for growing in knowledge of 34

Cfr. ibid., 16, 49, p. 43,8-14. Cfr. ibid., 25, 79 - 26, 82, pp. 55,18-57,5. 36 Cfr. ibid., 26, 83 - 27, 88, pp. 57,5-59,4. 37 Ibid., 28, 91, p. 60,29. 35

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their disciplines, i. e., the formal coherence of the conjunctions and distinctions of concepts, the correction of ambiguities, and the explication of that which is consequent and that which is contradictory in respect to an affirmation. For example, the consequentiality of a proposition of the type,‘if it is day, there is light’ is assured by the laws of dialectic; but what ‘day’ is, what ‘light’ is, whether they exist or whether they are the fruit of an illusion, how great is the sun, or what is the greatest good – all of these questions are certainly not within the competency of the dialectician to explain. Dialectic expresses affirmative judgments not upon the truth, but upon the truth of its own assertions and rules. It judges itself, not the things in themselves, i. e., the ceterae res that, with their complexity and their infinite number, resist and disappoint the cognitive aspirations of philosophy38. But there is more. Not only is dialectic not capable of reaching the truth of the real, but it may itself become the witness that unmasks the lack of cohesion between the formal processes of thought and the manner of existence of the res ‘in themselves’. This in fact happens when, having established the elements of the discourse – the distinctions and the concatenations among them –,the dialectician moves on to studying the formulation of deceptive arguments, the exact goal of which is to highlight the distance of logic from reality. This is evident above all in the case of the ‘sorites’, «lubricus sane et periculosus locus», in which, according to Lucullus-Antiochus, the Academic doctrine of doubt would risk becoming involved. If it is impossible for logic to explain when and how several particles of grain joined with others become a ‘heap’, it is exactly because such a distinction is purely logical. It resides in the subject who evaluates it, not in the reality of things, where particles of grain are in themselves neither few, nor many, nor single, nor collective, nor definable, nor indefinable, but 38 Cfr. ibidem, pp. 60,29-61,9: «Dialecticam inventam esse dicitis veri et falsi quasi disceptatricem et iudicem. Cuius veri et falsi? et in qua re? In geometriane quid sit verum aut falsum dialecticus iudicabit, an in litteris, an in musicis? At ea non novit. In philosophia igitur? Sol quantus sit, quid ad illum? Quod sit summum bonum, quid habet ut queat iudicare? Quid igitur iudicabit? Quae coniunctio, quae diiunctio vera sit, quid ambigue dictum sit, quid sequatur quamque rem, quid repugnet, si haec et horum similia iudicat, de se ipsa iudicat. Plus autem pollicebatur. Nam haec quidem iudicare ad ceteras res, quae sunt in philosophia multae atque magnae, non est satis».

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they are only the precise quantity that they are. As knowledge of the formal distinctions, dialectic is not capable of carrying out an effective recognition of the limits («fines») that nature has imposed on things, but it is capable only of fixing the conceptual clarifications that allow the subject to react to the imperceptible objectivity of the real by formulating affirmations that are not true, but probable (it is verisimilar, not true, that this is a ‘heap’, or, again, that this is not a ‘heap’).The same goes for all the possible logical clarifications.Where is, in fact, the real distinction between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’, between who is famous and who is unknown, between ‘little’ and ‘much’, ‘small’ and ‘big’, etc.? How can one define this gradual adding or taking away from the interior representation of the object? In all these cases «we never have anything certain as a response». Dialectic, practiced assiduously by the Stoics in order to emphasize the correspondence between the interior logos and the natural order, seems to have transformed itself – precisely because it is the carrier of a coherent, necessary, but never fully verifiable truth – into their most tenacious enemy39. Like a second Penelope («quasi Penelope telam retexens»), the Stoic dialectic continues to unravel with its own hands the cloth that it has just finished weaving, to the point of emptying out the efficacy of the very principle on which it establishes its claim of reflecting real things with objectivity – namely, the apophantic, i. e., assertive proposition (in Greek, ajxivwma, in Ciceronian Latin, «effatum»).The assertive proposition, consisting of at least a subject and a predicate, is always considered an expression of something true or false, and, therefore, the foundation of all scientific knowledge. Further proof for the non-coherence between logical necessity and ontology comes from the Academic who invokes the so-called argument of the ‘liar’ in order to show how 39 Cfr. ibid., 28-29, 92, p. 61,9-22: «Sed quoniam tantum in ea arte ponitis, videte, ne contra vos tota nata sit; quae primo progressu festive tradit elementa loquendi et ambiguorum intellegentiam concludendique rationem, tum paucis additis venit ad soritas, lubricum sane et periculosum locum, quod tu modo dicebas esse vitiosum interrogandi genus. Quid ergo? istius vitii num nostra culpa est? Rerum natura nullam nobis dedit cognitionem finium, ut ulla in re statuere possimus, quatenus; nec hoc in acervo tritici solum, unde nomen est, sed nulla omnino in re minutatim interrogati, dives pauper, clarus obscurus sit, multa pauca, magna parva, longa brevia, lata angusta, quanto aut addito aut dempto, certum respondeamus, non habemus».

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the truth of assertive propositions is quite distinct from that of the natural object: if you affirm that you are lying, and your affirmation is true, are you lying or are you telling the truth40? With such a genre of rationes, it will never be possible to formulate a verifiable judgment suitable for «adprobare» or «inprobare» their correspondence with reality. Even if the rationes are included in complex syllogistic concatenations, because they are in fact purely logical, they cannot denote any ontological necessity41. It is not correct, however, to eliminate them as deceptive or inexplicable, since they are, rather, conveyers of data «non comprehensa» or «non percepta».This is to say that, like all the formulae of dialectic, but in a clearer manner than the others, they are regulative of the interior truth, without being immediately significative of a reality in act42. In the same way, even the logical disjunctions related to future contingents are indicative only of the interior coherence of scientifically regulated thought. For example, only the fact that ‘tomorrow Hermarcus either will live or not live’ is an incontestable truth, while it is not necessary that tomorrow he in fact may ‘live’ or ‘not live’, because in the nature of things there is no such necessity («nulla est in natura rerum talis necessitas»). Unlike Epicurus, who denies the utility and the correctness of dialectic, Cicero, who learned dialectic and practiced it in his youth under the very guidance of Antiochus, is an enthusiastic supporter of it.Yet, he is convinced that its task is to bring about the emergence of the formal necessity that guides the intelligence in its internal paths, and not, as the Stoics want, the emergence of a required objective necessity of science43. This approach finds its theoretical justification to be the Academic substitution of the Stoic criterion of evidence for that of probability, the only correct form for appreciating the visa introduced

40 Cfr. ibid., 29, 95, p. 62,17-24: «Quid, quod eadem illa ars quasi Penelope telam retexens tollit ad extremum superiora? Utrum ea vestra an nostra culpa est? Nempe fundamentum dialecticae est, quidquid enuntietur (id autem appellant ajxivwma, quod est quasi ecfatum) aut verum esse aut falsum. Quid igitur? haec vera an falsa sunt:‘si te mentiri dicis idque verum dicis, mentiris an verum dicis?’». 41 Cfr. ibid., 30, 95-96, p. 62,26-63,16. 42 Cfr. ibid., 29, 95, p. 62,25-26: «Haec scilicet inexplicabilia esse dicitis. Quod est odiosius quam illa, quae nos non comprehensa et non percepta dicimus». 43 Cfr. ibid., 30, 97-98, pp. 63,16-64,9.

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into the soul by the senses44. As even his adversaries understood, this philosophical instrument itself is not ‘assertive’, but ‘probable’45, and is, nevertheless, capable of endowing humanity with an adequate capacity for practical judgment46. It is easy to demonstrate, in a rapid historical-philosophical review, how the dissensiones among schools and currents of thought sprang forth from the requirement of imposing realistic assertions expressed in indubitable form47. This is evident in each of the three scientific spheres, the systematic coherence of which, according to the opinion of Antiochus expressed in the Varro, would have been able to support the objectivity of their teachings: natural philosophy (cosmology and anthropology)48, moral philosophy49, and, obviously, dialectic50. The allusion to the non-verifiability of the propositions related to future contingents connects the anti-Stoic polemic of the Academica to the polemic of another Ciceronian text, the De fato, which concentrates in a similar way upon the opportunity to sever the ontological truth from the laws of logic. In this work Cicero intends to contest the correctness of the ignava ratio of the Stoics (the «lazy reasoning» which would invite man, if the necessity of fate were true, not to do anything to struggle against its course). He shows that such reasoning depends upon the unjust presupposition that the declarative propositions related to future events must be in themselves necessarily already true or false even before the corresponding events are fulfilled51. It is once again the indemonstrable Stoic prejudice concerning the coherence between the logical order and the real order that inspires the undeserved admission of a necessary causal concatenation in every event – past, present, and future52.Yet, just as in their dialectical

44

Cfr. ibid., 31, 98 - 33, 106, pp. 64,10-67,37. Cfr. ibid., 33, 107 and 34, 110, pp. 67,37-68,20 and 69,18-29; cfr. above, note 31 and corresponding text. 46 Cfr. ibid., 33 108 - 34, 109, p. 68,20-36. 47 Cfr. ibid., 35, 112 - 36, 115, pp. 70,4-71,25. 48 Cfr. ibid., 36, 116 - 41, 127, pp. 71,27-77,15. 49 Cfr. ibid., 41, 128 - 46, 141, pp. 77,15-83,20. 50 Cfr. ibid., 46, 142 - 47, 146, pp. 83,21-85,14. 51 Cfr. De fato, 11, 26 - 12, 29, ed. Müller, IV/2, p. 261,27-262,32. 52 Cfr. ibid., 10, 20-22, and 13, 29-30, pp. 259,28-260,25, and 262,32-263,19. 45

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formulation the future contingents are not yet, such as they are, true or false, so also in nature there exist res, the reality of which, though probable, have not yet been verified in time. Cicero refutes, along with Carneades, Chrysippus’ attempt to make the truth of logic compatible with the freedom from fate by means of complex distinctions between first and second causes, and simple and complex events. He unswervingly points an accusing finger at the presumption of making the objective necessity of things depend upon the determination of the corresponding interior notion53. Our previous reading of the Academica has demonstrated that no dialectically correct affirmation, however stringent and true, is able to impose necessary conclusions upon the factual truth. The truth of discourse belongs to the logical sphere alone and is the object of intellection, while the necessity of existence (articulated in the succession of time – past, present, and future), belongs to the order of natural causality: an order which logic is not, and never will be, capable of reflecting in a rigorous or exhaustive way54. In short, even under this aspect, the speculative nucleus of Ciceronian thought is confirmed.The distinction of the levels between logic and ontology does not inevitably involve a negation of objective truth – neither of the res, nor of the enunciations that express them.Yet, it demands an admission of absolute incomprehensibility of the truth on the part of man55. However, as a programmatic page of the De natura deorum explains, the search for the truth, even if inexhaustible, must be pursued methodically and completely.The multiple philosophical disciplines must all be studied on the basis of a graded epistemological-pedagogical preparation in order to reach, step by step, the best possible formulation that lies within the capacity of man for comprehending the universal connection among multiple realities. Philosophy, for Cicero, is a wisdom of an inquisitive nature, as well as of an encyclopaedic-systematic structure. Its object is a fulfilled totality that the true sage will be obliged to pursue without ceasing and without conditions; but philosophy also must never expect to define 53

Cfr. ibid., 14, 31-33, pp. 263,20-264,14; and, on the distinction of first and second causes, 18, 41 - 19, 43, pp. 266,35-268,8. 54 Cfr. ibid., 15, 33, p. 264,14-21. 55 Cfr. ibid., 16, 37-38, pp. 265,18-266,5.

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this totality in an exhaustive form56. The formulation of the methodological principle that, following the example of Cicero, orients in a determinative manner the entire devolution of the Greek wisdom into the Roman culture, springs forth in the Academica precisely from such a confluence of Academic doubt and cultural syncretism. All of the teachings of the philosophers and all the philosophical disciplines lead to the objective truth, even if no philosopher possesses it and no discipline is able to teach it in its integrity57.

3. The dissensiones philosophorum and the crisis of classical knowledge In freeing philosophical reflection from the presumption of realism, Cicero claims, for the Academic sage, a radical advantage in respect to all the other schools. The Academic is able to linger, with curiosity and a will that is free for investigation, before the greatest natural questions without ever being constrained to assent recklessly to that which remains uncertain. He is able to assure contextually a prudential and consolatory guide for man in relation to more delicate existential themes.Yet the fundamental presupposition of these advantages remains a negative one: «latent ista omnia»58, nothing real is truly knowable. For this reason the Ciceronian conception of the truth, in sensibly influencing the Roman culture of the following centuries, did not flow into a univocal consolidation of the pragmatic formulation given to knowledge, which Cicero himself desired. Instead, it wound up determining the diffusion of a negative prejudice against both philosophy and its disciples: philosophy was presented as artificial, devoid of content, and condemned to wander among subtleties and contradictions, and its disciples

56 Cfr. De natura deorum, I, 4, 9, p. 7,16-21: «Omnes autem [philosophiae] partes atque omnia membra tum facillime noscuntur, cum totae quaestiones scribendo explicantur; est enim admirabilis quaedam continuatio seriesque rerum, ut alia ex alia nexa et omnes inter se aptae conligataeque videantur». 57 Cfr. ibid., 5, 11, p. 8,8-12: «Nam si singulas disciplinas percipere magnum est, quanto maius omnis? Quod facere iis necesse est, quibus propositum est veri reperiendi causa et contra omnes philosophos et pro omnibus dicere». 58 Lucullus, II, 39, 122, p. 74,27.

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would be depicted as nit-picking Sophists and hypocritical vendors of smoke. In the years of Imperial Rome, the Ciceronian conception of philosophy spread widely, but often degenerating into a subtle devaluation of any sort of desire for speculative research, stigmatized as unfruitful and ineffective. The words with which Trimalchio boasted, in the epitaph which he composed for his own tomb, of never having «listened to a philosopher» give significant testimony to the influence of this perception59. The same influence appears again much later, and with a much different symptomatic value, in the reprimands directed by Fronto toward the young Marcus Aurelius for having preferred philosophy to rhetoric: in the teacher’s opinion the young emperor sought only to substitute an easy and hardly disciplined study for the rigid norms of the art of speaking60. Around the second century after Christ, classical philosophy reached the extreme point of a long crisis that had been determined by the awareness of such a lack of an experimental foundation for knowledge of the truth. Some pagan writers of the age of the Antonines found the proof of such a failure within the exercise of a destructive self-awareness on the part of the philosophers themselves. One finds examples in the corrosive irony of the cynical refusal of the inauthentic, as expressed in the Dialogues of Lucian of Samosata, or in the radical redirection of every intellectual force into the sole search for a normative ethic adequate for the life of the single man, as advanced by authors such as Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius. The inadequacy of philosophical knowledge, when confronted with the hope for the totality from which it was born, could not be overcome, in effect, by the empty claim of regaining the world through concentration upon a limited part – that part which one

59 Cfr. PETRONIUS ARBITER, Satyricon, 71, ed. K. Müller, Stuttgart - Leipzig 1995, p. 69,2-7: «C. Pompeius Trimalchio Maecenatianus hic requiescit. (…) Pius, fortis, fidelis, ex parvo crevit; sestertium reliquit trecenties, nec umquam philosophum audivit». 60 Cfr. CORNELIUS FRONTO, Ad Marcum Antoninum imperatorem de eloquentia liber, 4, 5, ed. M. P. J. Van den Hout, Epistolae, Leipzig 1988, p. 149,1-5: «Ibi tu mihi videre mora temporali et laboris taedio defessus eloquentiae studium reliquisse, ad philosophiam devertisse, ubi nullum prohoemium cum cura excolendum, nulla narratio breviter et dilucide et callide collocanda, nullae quaestiones partiendae, nulla argumenta quaerenda, nihil exaggerandum aut ambigendum».

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could know or interpret.The delusion that sprang forth from this inadequacy threatened to carry cultivated minds toward superstition and toward the consolations of pagan mysteries. In practice, this meant a substantial renunciation of scientific research, as appears, for example, in some pages of Apuleius and Aulus Gellius. The philosophy of the imperial ages grounded itself upon a rationality that was proclaiming its own inadequacy for offering definitive explanations concerning the meaning of reality and life. It seemed to renounce consciously the task of directing human existence toward happiness, and the social community toward scientific and moral progress. The Ciceronian influence nourished a fragmented and extravagant individualism, which was hardly reconciling itself with the unifying project upon which the civil consciousness of the Roman society at its peak had matured. None of the results achieved by classical philosophical research appeared adequate as an incontrovertible principle of the truth, on the foundations of which one might construct systems of knowledge destined to perpetuate themselves or to consolidate themselves in time.The absence of a unifying cognitive support spread an intellectual illness that was extremely grave for an empire that had founded its own institutional survival upon unification and the elimination of ideological divisions. A troubling symptom of this malaise was the more or less conscious search on the part of individual intellectuals for ideal absolutes that would serve as alternatives to those which the philosophical investigation had not been capable of assuring.Thus, for example, the Greek rhetorician Aelius Aristides (second century a. D.) radicalized the exaltation, common among other literati of the time (it is enough to think of Plutarch), of the Roman civilization as the carrier of pax and concordia among politically and culturally diverse peoples and traditions. He pushed himself to the point of formulating a surprising identification between the City itself and the principle of truth that had been sought, but not found, by the philosophers: all that was, all that is, and all that will be flows together in Rome, and all that one finds in Rome is true; that which is not in Rome is nothing, and will never be anything61. It is, however, clear that paradoxes of this kind cannot 61

Cfr. AELIUS ARISTIDES, Romae enkomion, ed. G. Dindorf, Opera, 3 voll.,

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remedy, except in an artificial and unstable manner, the scarcity of universal truth and justice from which they arise. The sense of belonging to a universal political-cultural organism does not succeed, in an adequate way, in overcoming the need for the objectivity to which the philosophers – concentrated upon subjectivepragmatic meditations on human existence – were no longer responding. It was rather the religious-mystical and magical options that allowed man to strive for a reassuring contact with the divine and the eternal. Religious mysticism and magic presented themselves as capable of responding to man’s desire for a stable relationship with the unknown. Even the first Christian intellectuals quite intentionally backed away from the failure of classical philosophy. The first apologists insistently proposed the Ciceronian theme of the dissensio philosophorum as an argument in defence of the faith.The faith was, for man, the bearer of cognitive certainties and normative solidity, as compared to the instability and fragility of philosophical doctrines62. Departing precisely from the observation of the crisis of ancient wisdom, the Christian preachers invited the intellectuals of the late Roman world to recognize that the full knowledge of the cosmos and its secrets is admissible only to a divine entity, who is endowed with limitless power and science and exists beyond any other magical or supernatural influence. Everything obeys this divine governance, and all providence comes from it. Consequently, the same full knowledge is reserved to those men alone who entrust themselves to the revelation of such divine truth. Relatively early on there emerged among cultured converts the exigency of systematizing in rationally regulated forms the result of this cognitive approach to an absolute truth, which appeared as something freely revealed by the divinity.They intended to found upon this truth clear and coherent responses to the queries concerning the secrets of life and the cosmos. Thus, Leipzig 1829, I, 14, p. 327 (cfr. Eng. trans. by Ch. A. Behr, 2 voll., Leiden 1981, II, pp. 75-76). 62 For example, in the Greek speaking regions, the Irrisio philosophorum of the (so called) HERMIAS (saec. III ca.), PG 6, 1169-1180, in Doxographi graeci, ed. H. Diels, Berlin 1879, pp. 651-656; then, later, THEODORETUS CYRENSIS (sive CYROPOLITANUS) (397-466 ca.), Graecarum affectionum curatio, I, PG 83, 804B-806B, ed.R.P.Canivet,2 voll.,Paris 1958 (20012) (SC,57.1-2),t.I,pp.117,3-119,3.

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Christian reflection upon Revelation began by expanding some basic speculative points found in the New Testament (the Johannine theology of the Logos and the discourse of Paul to the Areopagus in Athens) and by building upon the rational structures and the order of creation found in the wisdom literature and the prophetic books.This reflection assumed the form of a new, satisfying proposal of a systematic comprehension of the truth, useful for either correcting the anthropological domestication of dogma held by the heretics, or for combating and reversing the accusations of ignorance and superstition on the part of the pagan philosophers. A recovery of the ontological realism that had escaped the investigative capacities of man sprang forth precisely from faith in the words of a God who was the principle of all rationality and veracity. The foundation of a correspondence between res and logical truth could now be guaranteed by the efficacy of that divine principle who discloses himself in Revelation as not only a voluntary, omnipotent, and immutable creator of being, but also as a mediator between the profundity of his perfect knowledge and the deficiencies of human science. Thus, Socrates, the teacher of all philosophers, who was described by Lucian of Samosata as a poor, frightened old man lacking sound mental faculties and doomed to be carried through Hades by Cerberus, returns, within the writings of Justin Martyr († 165 ca., in the age of the Antonines), to be an authentic model of philosophical virtue and an anticipator of Christ63. In addition, Justin could see the clear difference between the position of the best philosophers, who had known in some way how to approach the truth by exercising a part of the lovgo~ that was within them, and the position of the Christians, who, by taking ownership of the Revelation of Christ, were now adhering in full to the truth of the Lovgo~ in itself.This Logos made them capable of circumventing all opinionated partialities and contradictions64. 63

Cfr. JUSTINUS MARTYR, Apologia prima pro Christianis (ad Antoninum Pium), 5, 3-4, PG 6, 336B, ed. G. Rauschen, Apologiae duae, Bonn 1911 (Florilegium Patristicum, 2), p. 16; LUCIANUS SAMOSATENSIS, Dialogi mortuorum, 21 («Menippus and Cerberus»), ed. K. Iacobitz, Opera, I, Leipzig 1888, p. 175. 64 Cfr. JUSTINUS MARTYR, Apologia secunda pro Christianis (ad Senatum Romanum), 10, 1-3, PG 6, 460BC, ed. Rauschen, p. 128: «However, it is evident that our doctrine is superior to every human doctrine, since for us rationality in its totality (to; logiko;n to; o[lon) manifests itself in Christ, in the body, intellect and

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It is also interesting to observe how Irenaeus of Lyons interprets the Pauline idea (Eph 1, 10) of the comprehensive recapitulation of all created reality (i. e., of all truth) in Christ as an invitation to substitute the fullness of the Christian truth for the incomplete pagan philosophy65. It is an exhortation that seemed to counter openly the paradoxical universalism of the pan-Roman rhetoric (as in Aelius Aristides) with the theme of the logical-ontological pre-comprehension of all truth in the incarnate Word, who «omnia recapitulans, recapitulatus est»66. However, those who, like the heretics, do not welcome from faith the indissoluble unity of truth and reality that subsists in God, become prey, like the ancient philosophers, to the incurable and vain dissensiones.

4. The parricide of Cicero The Latin rhetorician Lactantius contributed in a significant way to the opening of a new Christian way to philosophical truth in the dramatic years that preceded the end of the persecutions and the Constantinian legitimization of the Christian religion. He consciously grounded the legitimacy of a recovery of the ancient desire for a realistic foundation for the truth upon the fulfillment of the speculative maturity of the new, converted, cultural world, and upon a corresponding abandonment of the authoritative, but now cumbersome, philosophical model of Cicero. Lactantius displayed admiration and respect for the sages of antiquity through an extension of the conciliatory tendency that had already emerged in other recent witnesses of apologetic thought67. Yet, though at heart a good Christian disciple of Cicero, he reflected with dismay upon the partiality of the philososoul. In effect, all that which is good, which the philosophers have always discovered and formulated, is owed to the exercise of a part of the Logos who is in them, through research and reflection. But, given that they didn’t know the fullness of the Logos, who is Christ, they often sustained theories which were contradicting one another in turn». 65 Cfr. IRENAEUS LUGDUNENSIS, Contra haereses,V, 20, 2, PG 7, 1178BC, ed.A. Rousseau, Paris 1969 (SC, 153), pp. 256,27-260,60. 66 Cfr. ibid., 21, 1, 1179A, p. 260,1. 67 Cfr., in the cultural sphere of Lactantius, the positions of ARNOBIUS MAIOR AFER, Adversus nationes, II, 6-10, PL 5, 818A-825B, ed. A. Reifferscheid, Wien 1875 (CSEL, 4), pp. 51,11-55,10.

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phers’ cognitive progress and found the cause of their failure in the human incapacity for grasping a truth that identifies itself with the unknowable nature of that God who has given existence to all things68. It was impossible for philosophers to form an adequate cognitive representation of this truth (that is, according to Ciceronian terminology, a notitia or notio veritatis). At the same time, it was unworthy of God’s goodness to abandon man, who was sincerely eager to know the truth, to ignorance. God himself wanted, then, to give to his creation this notio veritatis by opening its eyes and orienting it toward the good and immortality69.The Christians who receive such a gift are invited to show its irreplaceable usefulness to all: to the sages, who scorn it for its humble literary form, and to the ignorant, who fear it for its moral rigor. Lactantius sought to carry out a systematic reworking («institutio») of such a truth70 in order that Christian Revelation might be offered to the ignorant as the bearer of true religio, and to the wise as true sapientia71. Instead of the dissensiones of the ancient philosophers, which were a sign of unreliability even from a moral point of view, one will be able to follow, through the gracious concession of the unique and true Teacher, the harmony that assures the natural food of the soul for those acquainted with the Christian sacramentum, i. e., a pure knowledge of the truth, without distinctions in sex, age, or earthly condition72. 68 Cfr. FIRMIANUS LACTANTIUS, Divinae institutiones, I, 1, 1-5, PL 6, 111A113A, ed. S. Brandt, Opera omnia, I, Praha - Wien - Leipzig 1890 (CSEL, 19), pp. 1,5-2,15; esp. 5, 113A, p. 2,11-12: «Quia veritas, id est arcanum summi Dei, qui fecit omnia, ingenio ac propriis sensibus non potest conprehendi». 69 Cfr. ibid., 1, 6, 113AB, p. 2,15-21: «Quod quia fieri non potuit ut homini per se ipsum ratio divina notesceret, non est passus hominem Deus lumen sapientiae requirentem diutius errare ac sine ullo laboris effectu vagari per tenebras inextricabiles: aperuit oculos eius aliquando et notionem veritatis munus suum fecit, ut et humanam sapientiam nullam esse monstraret et erranti ac vago viam consequendae inmortalitatis ostenderet». On the notio cfr. above, note 15. 70 Cfr. ibid., 1, 10, 115A, p. 3,18-19: «De religione itaque nobis rebusque divinis instituitur disputatio». 71 Cfr. ibid., 1, 7, 113B-114A, pp. 2,21-3,2: «Verum, quoniam pauci utuntur hoc caelesti beneficio ac munere, quod obvoluta in obscuro veritas latet eaque vel contemptui doctis est, quia idonei adsertoribus eget, vel odio indoctis ob insitam sibi austeritatem (…), succurrendum esse his erroribus credidi, ut et docti ad veram sapientiam dirigantur et indocti ad veram religionem». 72 Cfr. ibid., 1, 17-20, 117B-118A, pp. 4,11-5,6: «Omissis ergo terrenae huiusce philosophiae auctoribus nihil certi adferentibus, adgrediamur viam rec-

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According to Lactantius, the error committed by ancient philosophers when they, not having access to the true religion, concluded that no religion is true73, is no different from the error committed by Cicero and the other Academics when, not having succeeded in identifying true philosophy, they came to accept the irrevocable impossibility of doing philosophy. Troubled by the uncertainties that sprang forth from the teachings of the other philosophers, they had thus introduced a nova non philosophandi philosophia, which is, in truth, only a ‘non-philosophy’: «ita se ipsa philosophia consumit et conficit»74. The Academic loses the right to be called a philosopher because one who does not possess a truth himself cannot be called a sage and cannot accuse others – even justly – of not having scientia. In this way, the Academic’s polemic against the philosophers concludes in suicide, and with the same arms with which he defeats all the others, he defeats himself 75. Even his claim that he can show humanity a way of moral rectitude without having first taught what it means to be human, conflicts with the rule that had animated philosophical research from its beginnings: to found every norm

tam. Quos equidem, si putarem satis idoneos ad bene vivendum duces esse, et ipse sequerer et alios ut sequerentur hortarer. Sed cum inter se magna concertatione dissideant secumque ipsi plerumque discordent, apparet eorum iter nequaquam esse directum, siquidem sibi quisque ut est libitum proprias vias inpresserunt confusionemque magnam quaerentibus veritatem reliquerunt. Nobis autem, qui sacramentum verae religionis accepimus cum sit veritas revelata divinitus, cum doctorem sapientiae ducemque virtutis Deum sequamur, universos sine ullo discrimine vel sexus vel aetatis ad caeleste pabulum convocamus: nullus enim suavior animo cibus est quam cognitio veritatis». 73 Cfr. ibid., II, 3, 12-25, 266A-268A, pp. 105,20-107,21; esp. 13, p. 105,33106,1: «Itaque sic habuerunt tamquam nulla [religio] esset omino, quia veram non poterant invenire, et eo modo inciderunt in errorem multo maiorem quam illi qui falsam tenebant». 74 Cfr. ibid., III, 4, 8-11, 357C-358B, p. 185,4-16: «Cum igitur omnia incerta sint, aut omnibus credendum est, aut nemini. (…) Si ergo singulae sectae multarum sectarum iudicio stultitiae convincuntur, omnes igitur vanae atque inanes reperiuntur: ita se ipsa philosophia consumit et conficit. Quod cum intellegeret Arcesilas Achademiae conditor, reprehensiones inter se omnium collegit confessionemque ignorantiae clarorum philosophorum armavitque se adversus omnes: ita constituit novam non philosophandi philosophiam». 75 Cfr. ibid., 5, 5-8, 359BC, pp. 186,24-187,9: «Ita, cum philosophos expugnaverit ac docuerit nihil eos scire, ipse quoque nomen philosophi perdidit, quia doctrina eius est nihil sciri. (…) Quid ergo promovit Arcesilas nisi quod confectis omnibus philosophis se ipsum eodem mucrone transfixit?».

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– theoretical or moral – upon a sincere and adequate cognitio sui76. While he deceives himself in thinking that he is giving new life to a senescent philosophy, in reality he carries to term the euthanasia of a moribund tradition77. Lactantius assumed the task not only of restoring the possibility of doing philosophy78, but also of entrusting to it the new feasibility of a truth known through faith and protected by solid probative arguments79. He reveals – following the pattern of Varro in the Ciceronian Academica – the errors of the ancient sages and their Christian emendation by means of a close examination and overview of the opinions held in the three disciplinary fields of ancient wisdom (physics, ethics, and dialectic)80. He turns, therefore, to his former master in order to give voice to a severe warning: although being a «vir sapientissimus»81 and «summus philosophus» among the Latins82, Cicero dared to attribute to philosophy – even while singing her praises! – the sole merit of knowing how, at best, to sketch indications for men regarding the «disciplina virtutis»83. Nevertheless, Cicero was one of the few among the pagans to have foreseen a much different way, when he proclaimed with Plato that philosophy is «donum» or «inventum deorum»84. He justly condemned those who scorn it, accus76

Cfr. ibid., I, 1, 25, 119A, p. 6,4-8: «Haec enim pravitatis est causa ignoratio sui: quam si quis cognita veritate discusserit, sciet quo referenda et quemadmodum sibi vita degenda sit. Cuius scientiae summam breviter circumscribo, ut neque religio ulla sine sapientia suscipienda sit nec ulla sine religione probanda sapientia». 77 Cfr. ibid., III, 6, 8-10, 361A, p. 188,16-24. 78 Cfr. ibid., 1, 8, 350A, p. 178,19-21: «Ad hoc me opus coarguendi philosophiam susceptae materiae ordo ipse deduxit». 79 Cfr. ibid., 1, 12, 350B-351A, p. 179,8-11: «Nos autem cum ad res singulas testimonia divinae vocis habeamus, profecto monstrabimus quanto certioribus argumentis possint vera defendi, cum etiam falsa sic defendantur, ut vera soleant videri». 80 Cfr. ibid., 6, 15 - 13, 7, 361C-384B, pp. 189,12 - 213,13. Cfr. above, note 21 and corresponding text. 81 Cfr. ibid., I, 20, 22, 223B, p. 75, 17. 82Ibid., III, 14, 7, 388A, p. 217,3; cfr. also ibid., I, 15, 16, 196A, p. 58,3-4. On the value of testimonia humana in Lactantius, cfr.V. BUCHHEIT, Cicero inspiratus – Vergilius propheta? Zur Wertung paganer Auctoren bei Laktanz, in «Hermes», 118 (1990), pp. 357-372. 83 Cfr. FIRMIANUS LACTANTIUS, ibid., III, 13, 10-16, 385A-386B, pp. 213,21216,3. Cfr. also above, notes 1 and 8. 84 Ibid., 14, 7, 388A, p. 217, 5-6. Cfr. Tusculanae disputationes, I, 26, 64, p. 303,2-

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ing them of perpetrating an inexcusable parricide against the «vitae parens»85. Yet, such a reproach, which certainly couldn’t be made against the followers of Christ, must rather be turned back against Cicero himself.Although intuiting it, he denied the truth of that God who had both created man, and also had given to him, among innumerable benefits, the gift of wisdom.The penalty which Cicero had called upon the parricides falls upon his own head: may he be sewn into a sack and thrown alive into the waters of a river86! The gravity of the crime committed legitimizes Christian intellectuals’ criticism of the common master. Furthermore, it seems to push them to commit, without knowing it, the act of parricide that Plato had already perpetrated against Parmenides. They free themselves, through a legitimate act of rebellion, from the paralysing authority of a master who, even while exhorting others to know («noscere») the precepts («praecepta») of philosophy and abhorring the «ignoratio veri» as the beginning of all human misery, proclaims that the true philosopher «nihil scit»87. 4: «Philosophia vero, omnium mater artium, quid est aliud nisi, ut Plato, donum, ut ego, inventum deorum?».The reference is to PLATO, Timaeus, 47b, the passage which closes Cicero’s translation of the text (Timaeus, 14, 52, ed. Müller, IV/3, Leipzig 1890, p. 230,1-5: «Quibus ex rebus philosophiam adepti sumus, quo bono nullum optabilius, nullum praestantius neque datum est mortalium generi deorum concessu atque munere neque dabitur»), and which was also cited in Varro, I, 2, 7, p. 6,8-9: «Nec ullum arbitror, ut apud Platonem est, maius aut melius a dis datum munus homini». 85 FIRMIANUS LACTANTIUS, ibid., 14, 8, 388A, p. 217,7-10. Cfr. Tusculanae disputationes, V, 2, 6, pp. 426,34-427,3: «Ac philosophia quidem tantum abest ut proinde, ac de hominum est vita merita, laudetur, ut a plerisque neglecta a multis etiam vituperetur.Vituperare quisquam vitae parentem, et hoc parricidio se inquinare audet et tam impie ingratus esse, ut eam accuset, quam vereri deberet, etiamsi minus percipere potuisset?». 86 Cfr. FIRMIANUS LACTANTIUS, ibid., 14, 9-10, 388A-389A, p. 217,10-16: «Nos ergo, Marce Tulli, parricidae sumus et insuendi te iudice in culleum, qui philosophiam negamus parentem esse vitae, an tu, qui adversus Deum tam impie ingratus es (…), qui mundum fecit hominemque generavit, qui sapientiam quoque ipsam inter ceteras caelestia sua beneficia largitus est?». For the penalty of parricide, Lactantius alludes to Cicero’s words in Pro Sexto Roscio Amerino, 25, 70, ed. Müller, II/1, Leipzig 1891, p. 54,5-11: «Maiores nostri (…) supplicium in parricidas singulare excogitaverunt (…): insui voluerunt in culleum vivos atque ita in flumen deici». 87 Cfr. FIRMIANUS LACTANTIUS, ibid., 14, 15-21, 389B-390B, pp. 218,16220,9. On the symbolic parricide commited against Parmenides, cfr. PLATO, Sophista, 241d.

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Such a liberating act is now authorized by the discovery, rendered possible by faith, that only a definitive and total possession of the truth of the res divinae allows sapientia, on the basis of its very definition, to be complete and true. The rationality of the ancient philosophers was not able to guide their currents of thought to correct results, and could not reach coherent conclusions with the premises by which it was moving («ratio illis non quadrabat»).Their reasoning was founded upon a limited and imperfect comprehension of being88. In the third book of the Tusculanae, Cicero recalls a sentence of Aristotle regarding this matter. The imperfection of ancient philosophy, according to Aristotle, does not impede one from hoping that human knowledge is destined to reach perfection one day89. Lactantius, however, insists implacably: How can Cicero share such a hope, while at the same time rendering philosophy vain? The key to the problem lies elsewhere: like every search, even the search for the truth must be conducted along the way which is appropriate to it, i. e., that which effectively leads to the object. Otherwise, the entire investigation fails: «numquam potest investigari quod non per viam suam quaeritur»90. It is now clear to Lactantius what this recta or propria via of philosophical research is. The ancient philosophers claimed to be sages, but they did not actually have the way.Those more recent philosophers, who had no shame in confessing themselves to be unwise, could not find the path.Wisdom is not where they had sought it by pushing themselves beyond the limits allowed to human intelligence.The true way, in fact, lies exactly where they believed to be found nothing except foolishness! God, in order to preserve man from the contamination of the ar88 Cfr. FIRMIANUS LACTANTIUS, ibid., 28, 18-19, 439B, pp. 266,19-267,1: «Sed ne illi quidem qui scientiam sibi adsumpserunt, id ipsum, quod scire se putabant, constanter defendere potuerunt. Qui, quoniam ratio illis non quadrabat per ignorantiam rerum divinarum, tam varii, tam incerti fuerunt sibique saepe contraria disserentes, ut quid sentirent, quid vellent, statuere ac diudicare non posses». 89 Cfr. Tusculanae Disputationes, III, 28, 69, p. 383,20-25: «Itaque Aristoteles veteres philosophos accusans, qui existimavissent philosophiam suis ingeniis esse perfectam, ait eos aut stultissimos aut gloriosissimos fuisse; sed se videre, quod paucis annis magna accessio facta esset, brevi tempore philosophiam plane absolutam fore».This passage, reported by Lactantius, ibid., 28, 20, 440A, p. 267,4-9, is received as fr. 53 as a lost passage of ARISTOTELES, in Fragmenta, ed. V. Rose, Leipzig 1886, and as fr. 8 in Fragmenta selecta, ed.W. D. Ross, Oxford 1955, p. 37. 90 Cfr. FIRMIANUS LACTANTIUS, ibid., 28, 21-22, 440AB, p. 267, 9-15.

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rogance of reason, had hidden in the human renunciation of cognitive presumption the treasures of wisdom and of truth91.

5. The philosophical via of the Neoplatonists It is only Christ, according to the Scriptures, who opened the truth to all those who simply believed in him.Yet, this truth appears only in the form of a non-rational access to a truth that offers itself in so far as it is self-revelatory. Human philosophy, once having been converted to this truth under the tutelage of Lactantius and other Christian apologists of the first centuries, can insert itself into this new cognitive via only by assuming, without reservations, a purely passive attitude toward being ‘informed’: this ‘formation’ comes from recognizing the credibility of notions rendered convincing by the sole authority of the source – external to the subject – from which it comes. Such a cognitive condition would be rather similar to that of the Stoics (and, with them, of Antiochus of Ascalon), when they called philosophers to have faith in the authority of the senses. For this reason, it is understandable how even this new proposal for the acquisition of the truth, in order to escape the accusation of not founding itself upon any criteria of verifiability, must graft itself onto a systematic reading (complete and organic) of reality, so as to give internal coherence, in all its particular aspects, to the Christian conception of being, of its causes and of its finalities. The new philosopher born from such a constructive convergence of intellectualism and fideism adheres to the unfathomable truth of revealed mysteries as a foundation for his every affirmation.Yet, he is also called to guarantee the internal stability of his objective, rational, and systematic realism, which replaces Stoicism’s proposal in antiquity and, unlike Stoicism, is exempt from any sort of mingling between truth and falsity. Already among the first Christian intellectuals (for instance, in Justin), one finds the widespread idea that such a capacity for ‘self-foundation’ or ‘self-verification’ could be assured for Christian doctrine by embedding it within the concept of the divine 91 Cfr. ibid., IV, 2, 1-3, 451A-452A, p. 277,3-14. On the recta or propria via of knowledge cfr. also the passage cited above, note 72.

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Logos. This Logos is the architect and designer who realizes the cosmic order and allows for a perfect triangulation among divine intelligence, the created order, and its logical-scientific reconstruction on the part of man.Yet, a particularly efficacious model for the rational concretization of such a speculative schema was introduced much later, in the post-Constantinian epoch, when powerful suggestions emerging from the fundamental teachings of pagan Neoplatonic thought took hold of some of the most learned theologians of the new faith. From the third century on, Neoplatonism formulated a program, entrusted particularly to philosophers, for the restoration of the comprehensibility of a cosmos ordered according to the laws of a divine and universal rationality.This program emerged as a response to the new situation created by the Christian colonization of classical philosophy, which seemed, however, to stabilize in an irreversible way the open and inconclusive consideration of rational research. According to Plotinus, one can indicate to men the correct way for achieving a perception of the absolute in all of its primordial fullness by exhorting them to rise up from true knowledge to true knowledge, from the particular to the general, to the point of overcoming the limits of any sort of partial representation of being. At this peak they may participate in an immediate intuition of the first truth from which all other truths are derived. In responding to the Gnostic-Christian renunciation of the comprehensibility of the divine foundations of the kósmos, Plotinus counters with a return to the classical conception of knowledge as an instrument for restoring man’s place within the system of the derivation of the real from the efficacy of the divine intellect. Philosophy can empower human intelligence for its ascent to the perceptibility of pure being; in turn, it can find the meaning of every thing by going over the guiding lines that connect all the secondary realities to this ‘pure being’. In this way, human intelligence can recover the role that is its competence within the overall order of the truth in which it takes part92.The perceptibility of the absolute – the essential introduction for the full articulation 92 Cfr. esp. PLOTINUS, Enneades, II, 9, edd. P. Henry - H.-R. Schwyzer, 3 voll., Paris - Bruxelles 1951-1973 (Museum Lessianum. Series Philosophica, 33-35), t. I, pp. 223 ff.

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of the graduated scansion of multiple things – must be assured, according to Neoplatonism, by an elevation of the mind to the highest levels of noetic intuition.There the mind can rediscover the immediate perceptibility of the primordial sources from which spring forth both the reality and truth of every being. Then, through an analytic overview, it can descend through the complicated explicative network of logical-conceptual threads that disentangle themselves from the most elevated formal principles of thought, in exact symmetry with the descent of multiplicity from the One.The Neoplatonists establish, precisely in this symmetry, the rebirth of philosophical realism, which is achieved by the intuition of the original chain that connects, in the perfection of the ordo idearum, the complexity of the ordo rerum to the complexity of the ordo verborum. The dominating philosophical ambition of Augustine of Hippo found its inspiration in the Neoplatonic program for a logical-interpretive reconstruction of knowledge founded upon the primordial cognitive possession of original characters of the truth.Yet, on the one hand, he rejects any sort of desire to seize such a foundation of truth with a natural cognitive act, however pure or intuitive. On the other hand, he establishes it upon an unconditional acceptance of revealed dogma, taking into account the appropriate distance from the system of the most recent pagan philosophers and welcoming the requests of the first Christian thinkers. On this basis, he invites human reason to effect an operative overturning of the conditions of veridical knowledge, which, from Lactantius on, allowed for an effective overcoming of the Academic criticism against philosophical learning.

6. Augustine and the Academics According to Plato, in the Republic, the true philosopher is the one who knows the «whole», or the one who loves and searches for the truth not in partial or provisional forms, but in its totality93. Beginning with his first writings, Augustine follows Cicero and the Christian apologists of the first centuries by denouncing the fact that this philosophical desire remained a dead letter up to 93

Cfr. PLATO, Respublica,VI, 475b.

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that time on account of the continuous interweaving of ideological controversies and dissensions among the schools of antiquity. Having encountered and studied the history of philosophy in the texts of Cicero, Augustine believes that it represents nothing more than a «litigiosum tribunal», in which pride and the search for personal glory lead to contradictions among diverse doctrines, none of which succeeds in imposing itself as definitive94. Yet, Augustine is not a contemporary of Cicero, despite his best efforts to present himself as such. In harmony with the atmosphere of the religious and existential inquietude of the late imperial world in which he lives, he searches for interior peace more as a solution for human existence itself, than as the result of a speculative game or a philosophical performance95. In his early philosophical works, on the one hand, Ciceronian Skepticism finds peace within a serene eclecticism, satisfied by the conservation of that which is able to be found of value in the speculation of the great masters, and resigned in principle to a form of progress in the knowledge of the truth and the good that is only partial. On the other hand, the young Augustine proposes anew, but in a radical manner, Plato’s demand for totality, recognizing in it the convergence of philosophical and religious desires. The truth must be gathered within its totality, because only in this way will the rational peace of the sage be able to respond to the ques94

Cfr. AURELIUS AUGUSTINUS, Contra Academicos, III, 9, 18, PL 32, 943, ed.W. M. Green,Turnhout 1970 (CCSL, 29), p. 45,1; cfr. ibid., 7, 15 - 8, 17, 941-943, pp. 43-45, with the citation of a lost passage of the Varro (Academica posteriora) of CICERO (fr. 20, ed. Müller), pp. 88-91. Every philosopher claims to be a teacher of the truth (cfr. Contra Academicos, III, 1, 1, 933, p. 34,10-11), but his truth is such only in so far as it opposes the ideas and the doctrines of the other sages.Therefore, none of the ancient philosophers was a sage in the full sense. Since – if it is true that for classical philosophy the concept of science defines a form of rational, immutable, and deductive knowledge of the foundation and principles of being (cfr. PLATO, Respublica,V, 466b; ARISTOTELES, Ethica Nicomachea,VI, 3, 1139b; SVF, I, fr. 68; PLOTINUS, Enneades,V, 4, 2, edd. Henry - Schwyzer, t. II, pp. 335338, and ibid., 5, 5, pp. 346-347) –, if only one among the ancient sages had known how to offer a true philosophical system, none of the others would have been able to contest the merit of the one who had delineated a complete manifestation of the truth. Cfr. also AURELIUS AUGUSTINUS, De civitate Dei, XVIII, 41, PL 41, 600-602, edd. B. Dombart - A. Kalb, Turnhout 1955 (CCSL, 47-48), II, pp. 635-638. In the subsequent notes of this chapter, the works of Augustine are cited without mentioning the name of the author. 95 Cfr. Contra Academicos, II, 2, 5, 921, p. 20, 45-49; De beata vita, 1, 1, PL 32, 959, ed.W. M. Green,Turnhout 1970 (CCSL, 29), p. 65.

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tions regarding the problem of human existence and the contradictory coexistence of good and evil in the universe96. Thus, Augustine begins to question the sages of the past, searching for at least one teaching that might emerge over the rest in some definitive way. From the beginning he defines the scope within which all his successive conversions are fulfilled: the vera philosophia as a search only for the truth in itself, without other intermediate finalities that obscure the final end. The researcher must entrust himself to philosophy, without hesitation, as a necessary and preliminary condition: «because you will never see the truth in itself, if first you will not enter entirely into philosophy»97. Philosophy, therefore, is the object of the ‘first conversion’ of Augustine, and it is a common denominator for all of his successive ideological evolutions, despite their reciprocal contrasts. His progress towards baptism was interrupted by numerous intermediate and provisory stages – from Manicheism to Skepticism, from the study of the liberal arts to Neoplatonism.Yet, this progress assumes a movement that is not unlike the contradictory course followed by the philosophers of antiquity in their search for a single truth that had not yet appeared98. This general idea also applies to the first doctrine to which Augustine adhered after his conversion to philosophy, Manicheism. In his later assessment, he would often define the Manichean ideology as a superstitio, refusing to consider the dualism of his first confreres as a correct philosophical approach to the truth.Yet, it is easy to read in his allusions to the motives that led him to become an adept of this sect the traces of the desire for finding in its teachings a worthy ‘rational’ solution for his personal religious problems.The Manichean doctrine of the coexistence of two perfect and universal causes of good and evil allows 96 Cfr. Confessiones, III, 4, 7-8, PL 32, 685-686, ed. L. Verheijen, Turnhout 1981 (CCSL, 27), pp. 29-30. 97 Contra Academicos, II, 3, 8, 923, p. 22,40-41: «Nam ipsum verum non videbis, nisi in philosophiam totus intraveris». 98 Cfr. Soliloquia, I, 13, 23, PL 32, 881, ed.W. Hörmann,Wien 1986 (CSEL, 89), p. 35,3, where – in a sentence concerning which he will express regret in Retractationes (I, 4, 3, PL 32, 590, ed. A. Mutzenbecher,Turnhout 1984 [CCSL, 57], pp. 14,31-15,36) – Augustine affirms, in reference to the intellectual journey that he had completed, that «not just one road» leads to Wisdom («non ad eam [i. e. sapientiam] una via pervenitur»).

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for a sufficient mechanistic explanation (i. e., one based upon the recognition of a sufficient cause for every determined effect) of the presence of evil, suffering, and death in the universe99. Early on, however, Augustine realized that the Manichean demand for rationalizing, in an arrogant and radical manner, the mysteries of the Christian faith springs forth from an unjustified intellectual presumption that concludes in a simple fabula. In fact, the same deductive rationality, which recognizes in the dualistic presupposition the adequate conditions for justifying the complexity of reality, does not content itself in leaving, without explanation, the very admission itself of the existence of two principles. Reason also demands that the two principles provide evidence for a sufficient motivation for their subsistence as universal and opposing causes for good and evil. In this way, Augustine understands that reason, in order to be truly ‘scientific’, must be absolute. Otherwise, without the demonstration of a point of adequate departure, the entire system of logical deductions, though formally correct, collapses100. 99 Cfr. De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum, I, 2, 3, PL 32, 1311, ed. J. B. Bauer,Wien 1992 (CSEL, 90), pp. 5,10-6,13: «Cum his nobis res est, qui omnia contra ordinem et sentiunt et loquuntur et gerunt, nihilque aliud maxime dicunt nisi rationem prius esse reddendam». Cfr. also De utilitate credendi, 1, 2, PL 42, 66, ed. J. Zycha, Praha - Wien - Leipzig 1891 (CSEL, 25), p. 4,619: «Est igitur mihi propositum, ut probem tibi, si possum, quod Manichaei sacrilege ac temere invehantur in eos qui, catholicae fidei auctoritatem sequentes, antequam illud verum, quod pura mente conspicitur, intueri queant, credendo praemuniuntur et illuminaturo praeparantur Deo. Nosti enim, Honorate, non aliam ob causam nos in tales homines incidisse, nisi quod se dicebant, terribili auctoritate separata, mera et simplici ratione eos qui se audire vellent introducturos ad Deum, et errore omni liberaturos. Quid enim me aliud cogebat, annos fere novem, spreta religione quae mihi puerulo a parentibus insita erat, homines illos sequi ac diligenter audire, nisi quod nos superstitione terreri et fidem nobis ante rationem imperari dicerent, se autem nullum premere ad fidem, nisi prius discussa et enodata veritate?». 100 Cfr. De utilitate credendi, 9, 21, 79, p. 26,1-13: «Ridiculum, inquis, istud est, cum omnes hanc se profiteantur tenere ac docere. Profitentur hoc omnes haeretici, negare non possum, sed ita ut eis, quos inlectant, rationem se de obscurissimis rebus polliceantur reddituros, eoque catholicam maxime criminantur, quod illis qui ad eam veniunt praecipitur ut credant, se autem non iugum credendi inponere, sed docendi fontem aperire gloriantur. Quid, inquis, dici potuit, quod ad eorum laudem maxime pertineret? Non ita est. Hoc enim faciunt nullo robore praediti, sed ut aliquam concilient multitudinem nomine rationis: qua promissa naturaliter anima gaudet humana, nec vires suas valetudinemque considerans, sanorum escas adpetendo, quae male committuntur nisi valentibus, irruit in venena fallentium».

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With this lack of a rationally certain starting point, only the Ciceronian position – the suspension of judgment on the very possibility of reaching the truth – now seems to offer itself as the adequate stance for the philosophical researcher.Yet, as Augustine writes in the Confessions, his ‘third conversion’ to the academic suspension of judgment is only temporary and instrumental101. In fact, he does not accept the ‘doubt’ – which permits him to overcome Manicheism – as a methodological basis for philosophy. His skeptical attitude is rather that of one who, without excluding a truth that might be encountered and recognized as such, does not want to allow himself to be convinced by anything that presents itself to the mind as not yet certain. Since the only thing that appears certain to him at this stage is that Manicheism offers too many uncertainties, he decides to abandon it. He does not abandon, however, – if only for a prudence that could also be a form of intellectual laziness – the catechumenate in the Catholic church, because, as he says again in the Confessions, this solution had been ‘recommended by his parents’ («a parentibus commendata»)102. In the very moment in which he declares himself a sympathizer of the Academy, he also senses the need to remain formally anchored in absolute basic certainties. For the moment these certainties are entirely outside of his search, but they are founded upon a particularly credible authority. This is a further indication of Augustine’s primary insurmountable demand that his entire empty interior be definitively filled by a whole which is no longer vulnerable to doubt. The progress of his search comes now to depend especially upon the struggle against radical Skepticism, and upon an overcoming of the speculative or ethical immobility that follows from it. The polemic that Augustine conducts against his Cicero in the Contra Academicos is a later, but extremely lucid, witness to his merely instrumental adhesion to the probabilist idea. He does not fight the Academics in order to defend a determined doctrine that opposes the others, as the Stoics or the other philosophical adversaries of Carneades had done. Rather, he strives to prepare himself 101 Cfr. Confessiones,V, 10, 19, 715, ed. L.Verheijen, p. 68. Cfr. also ibid., 14, 25, p. 72,37: «…donec aliquid certi eluceret». 102 Cfr. ibid.,V, 14, 25, 718, p. 72,36-37; and ibid.,VI, 4, 5, 721-722, pp. 76-77.

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to adhere, precisely in obedience to the fundamental teaching of the Ciceronian Hortensius,to philosophy in so far as it is philosophy, i. e., to the truth in itself, if one is able to find it.This allows him to distance himself from both errors in which the searcher for the truth might find himself: the contempt for knowledge – the error of Carneades and Cicero – and the presumption of the truth – the error of all the other philosophical schools of antiquity103.The Contra Academicos, in effect, is a ‘dialogue’ – a personalized elaboration in three books of the philosophical discussions that occurred during the catechumen retreat in Cassiacum.Augustine intentionally directs it toward the evasion and overturning of the conclusions of the Academica, but he conducts it, in harmony with the Ciceronian model, with respect toward the rule of in utramque partem disserere104.The preliminary formulation of the question, which finds agreement with all the participants, illustrates this rule: given that «verum nos scire oportet» and that it is necessary to be sages in order to aspire to happiness («beatitudo»),is the end of wisdom,as the Probabilists want, the inquisitio veritatis (the search as such), or the inventio veritatis,which would have to emerge from the conclusions of the search? Two young disciples of Augustine,Trygetius and Licentius, defend these two opposing positions in the first book. One maintains that the possession of truth is necessary for happiness, the other that it is sufficient to search for it105. Licentius grounds his thesis upon the authority of Cicero: «hoc ipsum est beatum hominis, perfecte quaerere veritatem», since with such a heuristic activity one reaches a limit beyond which it is not possible to venture106. In the reply of Trygetius one sees the ethical-existential motivations which animate the believers in Christ (or those who are inclined to become such), since «semper quaerere, numquam invenire» means simply to wander, and the possibility

103 Cfr. Contra Academicos, II, 3, 8, 923, ed. Green, p. 22,32-35: «Restant duo vitia et impedimenta inveniendae veritatis, a quibus tibi non multum timeo; timeo tamen, ne te contemnas atque inventurum esse desperes, aut certe, ne invenisse te credas». 104 On the relationship between the two texts, cfr. C. THIAUCOURT, Les Académiques de Cicéron et le Contra Academicos de saint Augustin, Paris 1903. 105 Cfr. Contra Academicos, I, 2, 6, 909, p. 6. 106 Cfr. ibid., 3, 7-9, 909-911, pp. 6-9.

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of certainty in a quest for the good and for beatitude could not be accomplished with the impossibility of knowing definitively107. Blending Academicism and Platonism, Licentius replies that the «diligens inquisitio» of the truth, through the separation of the mind from the bodily wrappings and the liberation from the passions, bears the sage to the assimilation of the self into the immutability of the divine condition108. It is now necessary to investigate if and how much the knowledge of the ‘verisimilar’ is able to assure a similar approach to the cognitive condition of the divine, the producer of sapientia109. In the second book, Augustine moves on to discuss personally the quaestio de Academicis110 with his friend and contemporary Alipius, whom he invited to support, with greater authority than Licentius, the reasons for Probabilism. With philological attention, Augustine resumes the argumentation formulated in the Academica against the Stoic identification of ‘true’ and ‘evident’, based upon the assertion that no notion is able to present itself to the human mind with the prerogatives that the mind demands111. An initial reconstruction – proposed by Alipius – of the various phases of the history of the Academy depends directly upon Cicero. These phases were determined by the evolution of the resistance to the Stoic criterion of the ‘evident’: from the defence of the original Platonic doctrine already formulated upon a moderate suspension of assent, to the radical negation, in Arcesilaus, of the possibility of knowing anything evident, and concluding in the realistic-objective recovery of Antiochus, by this time rendered vain by the stringent Ciceronian confutation112. It is, however, necessary to recall the formal objections of Antiochus which still invalidate, on the opposite front, the logical sustainability of the probabilist criterion of the ‘verisimilar’. How can one and the same proposal be ‘true’ and at the same time ‘probable’, and therefore uncertain? How is the ‘verisimilar’ able to be known without knowledge of the truth to which it should be 107

Cfr. ibid., 4, 10, 911, p. 9. Cfr. ibid., 4, 11, 912, pp. 9-10; 5, 14, 913, pp. 11-12; 8, 23, 917, p. 16. 109 Cfr. ibid., 6, 16 - 7, 19, 914-915, pp. 12-14. 110 Ibid., II, 4, 10, 924, pp. 23-24. 111 Cfr. ibid., 5, 11, 924-925, p. 24. 112 Cfr. ibid., 5, 13 - 6, 15, 925-926, pp. 25-26. 108

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compared113? Is the follower of the ‘verisimilar’ able to entrust himself to an external authority or to a common opinion, both carriers of non-verifiable information114? One now perceives the real reasons which move Augustine in his confrontation with the speculative sterility of the Academics. He goes beyond any sort of vague theoretical fulfillment, bringing other elements into play along with this discussion: the foundation of ethics, and, therefore, life itself; and the peace of the soul, and the possibility of the soul’s return to the celestial regions of the truth, where, subordinated to the capacity of seizing it with a cognitive act, every possibility of beatitude resides115.Thus, the ineffectual weapons of Antiochus are still of some use against Skepticism.This does not entail the opposing of one philosophical thesis against another; nor does it mean opposing one criterion of truth against another or against the renunciation of even composing one. Augustine’s plan is to ask himself, at the cost of renouncing happiness, if it is possible to adhere to the truth in itself. Therefore, in the actual state of life, he knows that he does not yet know the truth, but it is still necessary for him to free himself from the Academic criticism and from the intellectual laziness that arises from this position. He does this in order that he might understand if and how much it is licit for him to hope in achieving the truth116. The distance between Augustine and Cicero now becomes clear. They hold in common the ignoratio veri, and, in contrast with it, the desire for verum invenire.Yet, for

113

Cfr. ibid., 7, 16, 926-927, pp. 26-27. Cfr. ibid., 7, 19 - 8, 20, 928-929, pp. 28-29. 115 Cfr. ibid., 9, 22, 929-930, p. 30,16-21: «Quare auferantur de manibus nostris fabellae pueriles. De vita nostra, de moribus, de animo res agitur, qui se superaturum inimicitias omnium fallaciarum et veritate conprehensa quasi in regionem suae originis rediens triumphaturum de libidinibus atque ita temperantia velut coniuge accepta regnaturum esse praesumit securior rediturus in caelum». Cfr. again, in harmony with these words, ibid., III, 1, 1, 933, p. 34,8-10: «Negotium nostrum non leve aut superfluum, sed necessarium ac summum esse arbitror, magnopere quaerere veritatem». 116 Cfr. ibid., II, 9, 23, 930, p. 30,30-36: «Tune ergo nescis nihil me certum adhuc habere quod sentiam, sed ab eo quaerendo Academicorum argumentis atque disputationibus impediri? Nescio quo enim modo fecerunt in animo quandam probabilitatem – ut ab eorum verbo nondum recedam – quod homo verum invenire non possit; unde piger et prorsus segnis effectus eram nec quaerere audebam, quod acutissimis ac doctissimis viris invenire non licuit». 114

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Augustine, the desire for verum invenire acts only as a point of departure, nourished by the probable hope of being able to reach the truth117. In order to avoid getting bogged down in a useless «quaestio de verbis»118, it is now necessary to learn how to understand better the academic criterion of probability. Cicero teaches that the ‘probable’ or ‘verisimilar’ is that which allows for the orienting of the self in action without relying upon cognitive assent: «quod nos ad agendum sine assensione potest invitare»119. It means that the academic sage believes himself capable of acting even if he does not consider the final nature of his action to be true or knowable: ‘to know’ («scire») the final nature of his action exceeds the capacity of man120. Departing from this specification at the beginning of the third book – the most demanding and decisive book for the battle in defence of the truth –, Augustine launches a relentless attack in order to force Alipius to admit that one cannot define a sage as one who does not have scientia, i. e., one who does not have an effective knowledge and a genuine possession of the truth. Augustine presses his friend with a series of questions regarding the significance of and the distinction between concepts such as sapiens and philosophus, and with arguments rigorously regulated by the laws of dialectic. Appearing more relentless and insistent than Carneades himself, he forces his friend to recognize that ‘a sage’ is one who has scientia («scit») of something, simply because ‘he knows that he knows’, i. e., because he knows that he has wisdom («scit sapientiam»); and that 117 Cfr. ibid., p. 30,36-47: «Nisi ergo prius tam mihi persuasero verum posse inveniri, quam sibi illi non posse persuaserunt, non audebo quaerere nec habeo aliquid quod defendam. Itaque istam interrogationem remove, si placet, et potius discutiamus inter nos, quam sagaciter possumus, utrumnam possit verum inveniri. Et pro parte mea videor mihi habere iam multa quibus contra rationem Academicorum niti molior: inter quos et me modo interim nihil distat nisi quod illis probabile visum est non posse inveniri veritatem, mihi autem inveniri posse probabile est. Nam ignoratio veri aut mihi, si illi fingebant, peculiaris est, aut certe utrisque communis». On the Ciceronian hope for verum invenire, cfr. above, note 12. 118 Cfr. ibid., 10, 24, 930, pp. 30,3-31,5: «ne (..). in verbi controversiam decidamus»; ibid., 11, 25, p. 31,13-14: «nam (…) vetuit te, res cum constaret, de verbis movere quaestionem». 119 Ibid., 11, 26, 931, p. 32,22-23. 120 Cfr. ibidem, p. 32,23-25: «Sine adsensione autem dico, ut id quod agimus non opinemur verum esse aut non id scire arbitremur, agamus tamen».

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it is not possible to have scientia of the false or the debatable, but only of the truth121. Alypius tries to take refuge in the distinction between logic and ontology, which, as it has already been shown, directed implicitly the Ciceronian search for the probable in the Academica and, above-all, in the De fato. He proposes to secure for the sage the right to doubt whether an affirmation is effectively true or effectively false, despite the recognition that it is in itself true or false, as in the case of the sorites or of future contingents122.Yet, Augustine asks him to be consistent: even if he is not capable of evaluating whether a thesis is true or false, already the act of admitting – that is «scire» – that it is in itself necessarily true or false signifies that he has actual scientia of ‘something’, and therefore of ‘something true’. In order to avoid admitting that the ‘sage’ must have at least the capacity for recognizing the formal truths of logic (the Ciceronian dialektikhv, in the strict sense, or the ars iudicandi), the Academics are now obliged to retreat behind a more rigid suspension of assent. Even if they were obliged to recognize momentarily in the ‘wise-man’ the scientia of ‘something’ – if only that of a formal truth –, they will still defend themselves by insinuating that perhaps today this can be true, but it might not be true in the future, since they themselves or some other person might formulate other objections tomorrow which would be sharper and more probable than today’s.The Academics will proclaim that no one would be capable of catching them, because they are similar to the mythological god Proteus, guardian of the truth unknown to mortals, of whom it is said that just when one believes oneself to have grasped him, he flees by transforming himself: no hero will ever be able to capture him, unless he obtains – like Menelaus did, according to Homer’s telling – the help of another god123. A cry escapes from Alypius: «And that we also might have a god for our help and that he might show us the truth which we so longingly seek!»124.This plea is received by Augustine as a pre121

Cfr. ibid., III, 3, 5 - 4, 10, 936-939, pp. 36-41. Cfr. above, pp. 23-24 and 26-27. 123 Cfr. ibid., 5, 11, 939-940, p. 41. Cfr. HOMERUS, Odyssea, IV, vv. 383 seqq. 124 Cfr. Contra Academicos, ibid., 940, p. 41,20-21: «Quod [scil. numen] si assit, et illam nobis veritatem, quae tantum curae est, demonstrare dignetur!». 122

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cious indication, which is both auspicious and prophetic, of the only possible way to move forward from that moment on. It is certain, in fact, that neither Augustine, nor the Academics, are sages, and they are not yet obliged to give their assent to anything; yet, it is also certain that there exists something to which they owe their assent – and this ‘something’ is the veritas. They will no longer be able to maintain that if the truth should be rendered manifest, i. e., truly evident, one will be obliged to deny assent to it.Yet, they will object, one cannot foresee the possibility that someone might render it manifest («sed quis eam demonstrabit?»)125.The cry of Alypius, however, has at this point sealed, in an unequivocal way, the unassailable ‘overturning’ of the speculative level upon which the debate takes place. At this point, it would seem licit to allow the Academics the right to suspend their assent to every purely dialectical argument – as much of the kind ‘the Greeks have wings’, as of the kind ‘the Greeks are mortal’ –, because their semantic content does not emerge from a source recognized as evident or as evidently authoritative. Under this aspect neither the sense of the individual, nor the consensus gentium, nor the teaching of the more qualified teachers of antiquity are able to impose themselves as bearers of the truth. For this reason, the Academics stigmatize any sort of attempt on the part of philosophers that aims at striving toward a determined appreciation of the true sources from which science must spring forth.Yet,Alypius himself, with whom Augustine laboriously seeks an agreement, has involuntarily indicated the only source from which one might expect a sure and complete manifestation of the truth: the authority of a god. Augustine wishes that such a solution, which appears to be up to now the most serious and ‘probable’, might soon produce, precisely with divine help, even the most ‘true’ solution126.The metamorphoses 125 Cfr. ibid., 5, 12, 940, pp. 41,36-42,42: «Approbare autem nos debere aliquid puto, id est veritatem. De quo eos consulo, utrum negent, id est utrum eis placeat veritati assentiendum non esse. Numquam hoc dicent. (…) Sed ‘quis eam demonstrabit?’, inquiunt». 126 Cfr. ibid., 6, 13, 940, p. 42,1-6: «Quis autem verum possit ostendere, abs te, Alypi, dictum est, a quo ne dissentiam magnopere mihi laborandum est. Etenim numen aliquod aisti solum posse ostendere homini, quid sit verum, cum breviter tum etiam pie. Nihil itaque in hoc sermone nostro libentius audivi, nihil gravius, nihil probabilius, et, si id numen, ut confido, assit, nihil verius».

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of Proteus are an image of the metamorphoses of veritas, which is always mutable and ungraspable for the man who seeks it in the deceptive corporeal representations and in the imperfect propositions formulated by logic in order to reflect it. It is known, however, by the gods127. Only from a god can one hope for the aid that teaches men how to capture it, since they recognize that truth exists and that it is in the possession of the divinity.

7. Christian probabilism The real position that Augustine assumes with his ‘third conversion’ is also a form of probabilism, but much different from that of the Academics and, at the base, also more coherent than theirs. While the Academics settle also upon the impossibility of finding the truth, Augustine suspends assent even on this point, and does not deny himself the possibility, whenever it may come to pass, of encountering the truth and recognizing it. His is a ‘moderate’ probabilism, which admits not only – in agreement with Carneades – that every form of knowledge is probable, but also – in disagreement with Carneades – that the very possibility of finding the truth is also probable. As Augustine himself clearly confirms, since he is convinced that he neither possesses the truth, nor possesses a philosophical thesis to defend, he prefers to assume the Socratic attitude of one who does not want to support any truth, but only to learn. We know that Stoics, seeking a criterion for true knowledge, turned to evidence (or verisimilitude) as the appearance of a truth that does not participate in the false; and that Academics reacted to this choice by concluding that certain knowledge of the truth is always impossible, because there exists no sign («nota») which allows one to distinguish two very similar representations, one of which is evidently true and the other false. Only probability allows one to construct scientific knowledge128. Yet, Augustine, 127

Cfr. ibid., 940-941, p. 42,6-13: «Nam et Proteus ille (…) in imaginem veritatis inducitur; veritatis, inquam, Proteus in carminibus ostentat sustinetque personam, quam obtinere nemo potest, si falsis imaginibus deceptus comprehensionis nodos vel laxaverit vel dimiserit». 128 Cfr. above, pp. 25-26 and notes 35-37. Cfr. also Contra Academicos, III, 9, 18-21, 943-945, pp. 45-47.

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along with Plato, knows that science based upon probability is not true science.The criterion of probability alone is inadequate for the search for the truth because the truth is not found by only avoiding an erroneous path, but also by following the right path: «I hold that one is in error not only when he follows a false path, but also when he does not follow the way of truth»129. In effect, probability as such is never able to offer forms of knowledge which are valid for a scientific demonstration, i. e., regulated by the laws of logic. Only terms received as unequivocal and to which a particular and determined significance applies can enter into logical discourse130.Augustine now proposes to return to the rule of Stoic evidence131 in order to demonstrate the possibility of recognizing, even in a single notion of our mind, a partial truth of the type required by the Stoics (i. e., a notion uncontaminated by the false). In fact, if it is possible to find even a partial truth, the Academics themselves will be constrained to admit that there exists an absolute truth in itself, which justifies not only itself, but also the presence in us of that partial truth, and of all the other probable forms of knowledge. He sets out upon the search for notions which are necessarily true and irrefutable.Yet, it does not exclude the possibility that purely formal notions are also able to fall under this category (such as the kind, already extorted from the Academics, according to which «it is true that the wise man has knowledge or does not have knowledge of wisdom»). If, therefore, the empty formalism of dialectic in the Academica and in the De fato of Cicero was the indication of the condition of the non-verifiability of human knowledge, Augustine proposes to invert the terms of the question. For him, to admit even the possibility of achieving true notiones, even if only formal in nature, is an indication which necessarily reveals the indubitable existence of the veritas. Already in such an admission he is able to celebrate the restoration of true friendship between himself and Alypius, which is – according to a formula drawn from Cicero, their common master – «rerum 129 Ibid., III, 15, 34, 951, p. 54,22-23: «Non solum enim puto eum errare qui falsam viam sequitur, sed etiam eum qui veram non sequitur». 130 Cfr. ibid., III, 15, 33-34, 951-952, pp. 54-55. 131 Cfr. ibid., III, 9, 21, 944, p. 46,50-51: «Id visum ait posse comprehendi, quod sic appareret, ut falsum apparere non posset».

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humanarum et divinarum cum benevolentia et caritate consensio»132. Augustine, in the form of a monologue133 and in the name of all the interlocutors who are now in agreement, initiates an investigation of the conditions which allow man to recognize the existence of the Truth. He takes up, once again, in the inverse sense, the Ciceronian critique of the criterion of evidence in the three disciplinary fields in which philosophy is articulated. It is no longer licit to deny that from each field there emerges at least the evidence of something which, in perfect harmony with the Stoic definition, is ‘true’ as such by not being able to be confused with the false134. Also, no one will be able to deny that this definition itself is necessarily either true, or false: and that already, in this fact, we have scientia of something evident («non igitur nihil scimus»). In physics, even if there is disagreement, for example, over whether there is a single world or multiple worlds, no one will be able to contest the fact that either the world is unique, or it is not unique; and that if it is unique it is either finite, or it is infinite. One could continue by noting the evidence of the numbers which govern and regulate the order of the universe, which are undeniable even if the entirety of humanity were sleeping135. Similar affirmations exist in the moral sphere: the highest Good either exists, or does not exist; it is spiritual, corporeal, or both; that there are no further alternatives is a certainty, an object of science136. In logic, from the rules of which the truth of all these disjunctions emerges, there are numerous true rules which have no semblance with falsity137. Certainly, by putting himself under the protection of doubt, the Academic is convinced that he is committing no error.Yet, one does not err by 132 Ibid., 6, 13, 941, p. 42,22-23.The Ciceronian formula is in Laelius (De amicitia), 6, 20, ed. Müller, IV/3, Leipzig 1890, p. 169,21-24: «Est enim amicitia nihil aliud nisi omnium divinarum humanarumque rerum cum benivolentia et caritate consensio: qua quidem haud scio an excepta sapientia nihil maius homini sit a dis inmortalibus datum». 133 Cfr. Contra Academicos, III, 7, 14, 941, p. 43,13: «in orationem perpetuam». 134 Cfr. ibid., 9, 18-21, 943-945, pp. 45-47. 135 Cfr. ibid., 10, 23 - 11, 26, 945-948, pp. 48-50. 136 Cfr. ibid., 12, 27-28, 948-949, pp. 50-51. 137 Cfr. ibid., 13, 29, 949, pp. 51-52.

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only following a false way, but also by not taking any path in order to reach the truth138. This simple observation also unmasks the inanity of the attempt to orient philosophy upon the ethical-practical level alone. Moral error is born from the cognitive error. No conduct inspired by probability could be ethical, since it would be even capable of justifying innumerable crimes on the basis of a change of opinion, an uncertainty, or a form of assent not fully granted139. The Stoic criterion of truth is, therefore, trustworthy, and will have to be rehabilitated against every skeptical suspension of assent: the truth exists and, as such, is evident and perceptible140. Now one cannot even dispute the fact that, if, in its integrity, the truth continues to escape the human mind, it is because truth is superior to the mind, that is, it possesses a divine origin. Only a self-revelation of the truth will allow man to acquire those foundations of knowledge by which, through a deductive and rigorously apodictic approach, he will be able to move on to formulating further true notions, no longer defective and dissentientes, concerning the single res. Every motive for refusing assent has been stripped away, and there now remains only the fulfillment of the act of absolute faith in its divinity.This is the equivalent of a complete conversion of philosophy, not only in the religious sense, but also in the logical and epistemological sense.This conversion produces an inversion of the role between subject and object in the proposition which expresses the condition of the sage: «man searches for the truth to know it» must become «the truth comes in search of man in order to make itself known»141.This is possible because – as the mature works of Augustine explicitly declared – not only does God know («scit») the truth, but he himself is («est») the truth of each thing which exists. In God the relationship between knower and known is reversed in respect to

138

Cfr. ibid., 15, 34, 951-952, pp. 54-55. Cfr. ibid., 16, 35-36, 952-954, pp. 55-57. 140 Cfr. ibid., 9, 21, 944-945, pp. 46,65-47,81. 141 On the conversion of Augustine as a change of a cognitive paradigm and his relationship with Platonism, cfr. also G. REALE, Agostino e il «Contra Academicos», in L’opera letteraria di Agostino tra Cassiciacum e Milano (Agostino nelle terre di Ambrogio, 1-4 ottobre 1986), Palermo - Varese 1987 (Augustiniana,Testi e Studi, 2), pp. 13-30. 139

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that which holds sway in created intellects. Created intellects know the res to the degree and in the manner in which they exist, while the res exist because God knows them, thinking of them in the eternity of his Word.The res are such as God knows them and wants them to be142.

8. The ‘conversion’ of philosophy The necessity of working out a complete and definitive conversion of the investigative stance which was particular to classical philosophy is the most difficult problem which Augustine, as a thinker, would have to resolve. In wanting to embrace Christian belief, he is drawn by the same motivations that inspired him from the beginning of his quest not to embrace faith blindly, as one accepts a fable or as one experiences rhetorical persuasion. He does not seek a logical foundation for the faith, which is not possible, but he must at least find a reason for conversion. It would be unjustifiable to introduce the faith into logic, that is, to be able to consider faith, which is not in itself demonstrable, as the possible foundation for certain, demonstrable, and comprehensible knowledge. No sage from antiquity was able to receive the faith within the ambit of philosophy. Plato defined ‘science’ as a form of knowledge which cannot be anything but true, and ‘faith’ as every form of knowledge which can be true or false143. In order to receive the faith as a principle of science,Augustine must convince himself that the forms of knowledge which it offers are absolutely irrefutable and more laden with certainty than those resulting from the knowledge of numbers or from the simpler

142

Cfr., for example, De trinitate, XV, 13, 22, PL 42, 1076, ed.W. J. Mountain, 2 voll.,Turnhout 1968 (CCSL, 50-50A), II, p. 495,27-42: «Universas autem creaturas suas et spiritales et corporales non quia sunt ideo novit, sed ideo sunt quia novit. Non enim nescivit quae fuerat creaturus. Quia ergo scivit creavit, non quia creavit scivit. Nec aliter ea scivit creata quam creanda; non enim eius sapientiae aliquid accessit ex eis, sed illis exsistentibus sicut oportebat et quando oportebat illa mansit ut erat. (…) Quae autem scientia Dei est, ipsa et sapientia, et quae sapientia, ipsa essentia sive substantia, quia in illius naturae simplicitate mirabili non est aliud sapere, aliud esse, sed quod est sapere hoc est et esse». Cfr. also: Confessiones, XI, 8, 10, 813, ed. L.Verheijen, p. 199; De Genesi ad litteram, IV, 24, 41, PL 34, 313, ed. J. Zycha, Praha - Wien - Leipzig 1894 (CSEL, 28/1), pp. 123,19-124,5; etc. 143 Cfr. PLATO, Gorgias, 454cd.

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elementary laws of human reason144. His approaching conversion must be respectful of the formal rules which, according to the science of the ancients, allow for it. In logic, the conversion is the rule which allows one to draw from one judgment (a union of subject and predicate) a new and different judgment by taking the predicate from the first and making it the subject of the second, and vice-versa145.The entirety of philosophy, in so far as it is the search for the truth, should also convert. Thus, even the proposition expressing Augustine’s attitude up to this point in his investigation – «man seeks the truth in order to know it» –, requires the overturning of its subject and predicate: «the truth comes in search of man in order to make itself known». In the mind of Augustine, this means the possibility of working out a conversion between intelligere and credere, whereby the intelligere, which is the subject, becomes the predicate, and the credere, which is the predicate, becomes the subject. Normally, in fact, in the course of human life, we seek to understand the objects of knowledge in order to be able to continue believing, once the act of knowing is finished, in their subsistence. For example: we understand with the intellect the rotary movement of the earth in order to confirm our faith in the rising of the sun tomorrow morning, even though now it is dark.Augustine proposes a complete inversion of this relationship.The result is that the truth of the formula «credo ut intelligam» depends precisely upon the logical conversion of the other true proposition, «intelligo ut credam» – which is true because the scope of rational comprehension always entrusts to the memory the meanings which are believed to correspond to reality.This is possible only because, in the end, both propositions are rendered true by their reciprocal convertibility. The understanding and the believing are two different, while at the same time also necessary, modes which allow for knowledge of an absolute truth146. 144

Cfr. De ordine, II, 19, 50-51, PL 32, 1018-1019, ed.W. M. Green,Turnhout 1970 (CCSL, 29), pp. 134-135. 145 On logical conversion cfr. APULEIUS MADAURENSIS, Periermeneias, 6, ed. P. Thomas, Leipzig 1908, pp. 181,19-182,25; MARTIANUS CAPELLA, De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae, IV, 397-403, ed. J.Willis, Leipzig 1983, pp. 134,8-138,6; ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS BOETHIUS, De syllogismis categoricis, 1, PL 64, 805AD. Cfr. D’ONOFRIO, Fons scientiae. La dialettica cit. (above, note 7), pp. 215-217. 146 Cfr. Sermones, 43, 6, 7 - 7, 9, PL 38, 258.

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This idea is brought to fulfillment on the basis of a mental procedure which Augustine describes in De magistro, when he demonstrates to his son Adeodatus the fundamental rules of the human language. Since words, which exteriorize thought, are able to have a meaning, it follows necessarily that the knowledge of meaning in the mind precedes the verbal expression: «all which is expressed by us with meaningful words subsists previously in our thought»147.Yet, often we can even give a meaning to the words without having previously known the corresponding things.This happens every time that someone, whose testimony we trust, communicates to us the meaning of words which we do not yet know.To believe in a trustworthy authority allows one to have knowledge that is more extensive than that which comes from autonomous rational investigation. For this reason, the prophet has justly said: «If you do not believe you will not understand (nisi credideritis, non intelligetis)» (Is 7, 9, according to LXX). Believing allows the soul to acquire a truth more extensive than that truth communicated by rational understanding: «in everything of which I have intellectual understanding, I also have faith; but of everything in which I have faith I do not necessarily have understanding».The faith, therefore, offers a truth which, if it is true, is logically more extensive than science: «on the other hand, of everything which I understand, I also have science; but I do not always have science regarding that in which I have faith»148. One who accepts faith in Christ – i. e., a knowledge which was revealed by an authority who is the most trustworthy possible – and believes, is now in the condition of one who welcomes into the mind a truth which is, without a doubt, the most extensive possible.This is necessarily the absolute truth which Augus147

Cfr. De magistro, 11, 37, PL 32, 1215, ed. K.-D. Daur, Turnhout 1970 (CCSL, 29), p. 195,25-26: «Respondebo cuncta quae in verbis significata sunt, in nostra notitia iam fuisse». More in general, cfr. ibid., 36-38, 1215-1216, pp. 194,196,55. 148 Cfr. ibid., 11, 37, 1216, p. 195,35-39: «Ait enim Propheta:‘Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis’. (…) Quod ergo intelligo, id etiam credo: at non omne quod credo, etiam intelligo. Omne autem quod intelligo, scio: non omne quod credo, scio». Cfr. also Soliloquia, I, 3, 8, 873, ed. Hörmann, p. 13,22-23: «Omne autem quod scimus, recte fortasse etiam credere dicimur; at non omne quod credimus, etiam scire».

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tine seeks149.This is to say, as he affirms explicitly in the De beata vita, that for the Christian there is no difference between the criterion that allows one to reach the truth, and the truth itself. Both truth and criterion come together in Christ, the «summus modus» and true «magister» of every wisdom150. He is the principle of a double process for the truth, derived from him as principle and returning to him as end: «Because the truth exists, it is necessary that an archetype and ideal parameter of the truth (summus modus) exists, from which the entirety of the truth is derived and to which, through conversion, it perfectly returns»151. Truly it is no longer simply (human) thought which seeks the (divine) Truth, but now it is also the (divine) Truth which seeks (human) thought. In fact, it is the Truth itself which incarnates, dies on the cross and communicates to men in this way a true and definitive philosophy152.The Truth is found, therefore, by turning 149 Cfr. De magistro, 12, 38, 1216, pp. 195,44-196,50: «De universis autem, quae intelligimus, non loquentem, qui personat foris, sed intus ipsi menti praesidentem consulimus veritatem, verbis fortasse ut consulamus admoniti. Ille autem qui consulitur, docet, qui ‘in interiore homine habitare’ dictus est Christus (Eph 3, 16-17), id est incommutabilis ‘Dei Virtus’ atque sempiterna ‘Sapientia’ (1Cor 1, 24), quam quidem omnis rationalis anima consulit». 150 Cfr. De beata vita, 4, 34-35, 975-976, ed. Green, p. 84,249-275: «Quae est autem dicenda sapientia, nisi quae Dei Sapientia est? Accepimus autem etiam auctoritate divina Dei Filium nihil esse aliud quam Dei Sapientiam, et est Dei Filius profecto Deus. (…) Sed quid putatis esse sapientiam nisi veritatem? Etiam hoc enim dictum est: ‘Ego sum veritas’ (Jo 14, 6). (…) Quis est Dei Filius? Dictum est: veritas. Quis est qui non habet patrem? quis alius quam summus modus? (…) Huius est verum omnem quod loquimur, etiam quando adhuc vel minus sanis vel repente apertis oculis audacter converti et totum intueri trepidamus, nihilque aliud etiam hoc apparet esse quam Deum nulla degeneratione impediente perfectum». 151 Ibid., 4, 34, 975, p. 84,255-257: «Veritas autem ut sit, fit per aliquem summum modum a quo procedit et in quem se perfecta convertit». 152 Once the unlimited extension of the term, which in the logical proposition signifies the truth, has been accepted, its convertiblity from the object to the subject of the search for the truth is properly realized. Philosophical reason is received as an instrument for carrying out rational knowledge of a relative type. Yet, for this very reason, it is a valid instrument only if it succeeds in integrating itself with the faith, which produces a non-rational form of knowledge, but knowledge of an object which is absolute in itself. Thus, the creation of a hermeneutical circle between faith and reason does not produce a tautology (two formally different affirmations of a unique truth), but it specifies the collaboration at the human level between two cognitive procedures which are inversions of one another.These procedures fully define, through their complementarity, a truth that otherwhise would not have been grasped in an absolute way, neither

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to where Christ reveals himself, i. e., in the Sacred Scriptures.The Scriptures are the very place in which the unconverted sage had the most difficulty in finding it. In them one may actually acquire a complete philosophical knowledge of the truth153. The Augustinian theological option is something much more than a simple invitation to satisfy through faith the human anxiety for knowing. Having penetrated the profundity of the analysis of the conditions which allow for the realization of scientia, Augustine carries philosophical reason to the recognition, with its own force, that veritas, if it exists, cannot be anything else but divine. Only a manifestation a maiori of this truth will allow human intelligence to accede to its contents, received not only for its ‘verisimilitude’, but also for its irrefutable evidence. The overturning of the academic ‘non-realism’ is manifest.

9. Christian Neoplatonism In proposing this alternative to the vacuity of the Academics,Augustine was inspired, as it has been said, by Neoplatonic thought. That the arts are full of truth, even if we do not know in what measure they concretely correspond to the world of sensible experience, is an idea of Platonic origin.The Platonists indeed affirm that there is in all the true forms of human knowledge, and above all in the objectivity and universality of scientific knowledge, a reference to a super-sensible world. Even if we cannot

by reason, nor by faith. Reason alone is insufficient because it is incapable of reaching the truth in its entirety; faith alone is insufficient because it is incapable of understanding the truth.The target that has been reached is at the same time a philosophical comprehension of the faith, and a fideistic justification of philosophy. Cfr. De magistro, 14, 46, 1220, ed. Daur, p. 202,19-20: «Ne plus [verbis] quam oportet tribueremus, admonui te; ut iam non crederemus tantum, sed etiam intelligere inciperemus». Cfr. also Contra Academicos, III, 20, 43, 957, ed. Green, pp. 60-61; De ordine, II, 5, 16, 1002, ed. Green, pp. 115-116, and ibid., 9, 26, 1007, pp. 121-122; Epistolae, 120, ad Consentium, 1, 3-6, PL 33, 453-455, ed. A. Goldbacher, I, Praha - Wien - Leipzig 1895 (CSEL, 34/2), pp. 706-710. 153 Cfr. Sermones, 51, 5, 6, PL 38, 336-337: the error of Augustine’s youth was that he wanted to penetrate the truth of the Scriptures with reason, or «acumen discutiendi», more than with the «pietas quaerendi»; even in this case, however, a correct logical conversion among the elements of this philosophical proposition opens the way for the truth and reveals what is effectively a form of comprehension.

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know it in its totality, the superior truth of this ideal world is progressively manifested and defined in the mind by a continual increase of fragmentary, but truthful, experiences. Only at the end of this process will a final effort enable the human soul to arrive at a complete contemplation of it. The result of the ‘fourth conversion’ of Augustine to Platonism was, on the other hand, already grafted onto the very radicalism of the initial demand for truth, which could be satisfied only by the overcoming of every form of multiplicity, contradiction, and appearance154. Since knowledge of the truth is a movement from the less perfect to the more perfect, i. e., an ascent from the sensible and corporeal to the intelligible, it is particularly the dynamic of Platonic eros which concretizes itself in the project of assuring, through the study of the seven arts, the ascent of the soul from the sensible to the super-sensible. It is a plan already conceived and delineated by ancient civilization, both Greek and Roman, and put into effect in other both precedent and contemporary systems of the liberal arts, e. g.,Varro or Martianus Capella.Yet, the young Augustine wishes to rethink the project in the light of a renewed metaphysical spiritualism155. The searcher for the truth did not yet have at his disposal a base of evident knowledge upon which to stabilize the overturning of the hermeneutic standpoint of the philosophers.Yet, now Varronism, as the formal encyclopaedism of the liberal arts, and Neoplatonism, as their metaphysical foundation, offer to Augustine a new platform of certainties. It is now in the pure spirit of

154

Cfr. Contra Academicos, III, 9, 18, 943, p. 45. Beginning with his earliest philosophical writing, the lost De pulchro et apto, despite the still materialistic mood of its investigation, Augustine directs his normative proposals for the search for the beautiful toward a spiritualist orientation which converts it into a search for the truth, order, harmony, and perfection of the entirety of being: cfr. Confessiones, IV, 15, 24, 703, ed. L.Verheijen, pp. 5253.This new metaphysical aspiration renders itself tangible and concrete in the project of making possible, precisely through the study of the seven arts, the entire ascent of the human mind from the sensible to the supersensible: cfr. Retractationes, I, 6, 591, ed. Mutzenbecher, p. 17; Contra Academicos, II, 1, 1, 919, ed. Green, p. 18; De ordine, II, 11, 30 - 16, 44, 1009-1015, ed. Green, pp. 124-131. Cfr. U. PIZZANI, L’enciclopedia agostiniana e i suoi problemi, in Congresso Internazionale cit. (above, note 19), I, pp. 331-361 (esp. pp. 332-347, on the confluence of the Varronian and Porphyrian traditions of the liberal arts in the education of the young Augustine). 155

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Platonic philosophy that the true philosopher must recognize that the truth in itself is divine, and that only if a god renders it manifest can men become capable of seizing it156.Yet, Christian preaching precisely maintains this remarkable position: the God whom Plato was expecting appeared in history, and made his truth – i. e., himself – manifest to men.Working once again upon a reverse image of the Ciceronian model found in the Academica,Augustine sets out to found theoretically the reasons for the conversion of Neoplatonism itself to Christianity. He reviews from the beginning the history of philosophical doctrines of the Academic school, from Plato to Carneades, but he proposes, this time, in respect to the rapid sketch drawn by Alypius in the second book, his own personal and suggestive interpretation. The doctrine of Plato was, even according to Augustine, a perfect philosophy, unanimously recognized as such by the entirety of ancient Greek culture.Yet, the greatest danger for this philosophy was its very perfection. By indicating an absolutely intelligible model of the truth, deprived of any mutability and contamination with corporeal accidents, Platonism condemned men, immersed in the sensible world, to an always necessarily unfulfilled relationship with the truth. The Stoics were among the first not to bear the weight of such a situation. These, however, were weak and vulgar men, incapable of considering philosophy as an ideal ‘project’ worth pursuing in the imperfection of this life, and, at the same time, they were motivated by the ambition to propose as definitive the fragments of truth which they succeeded in capturing through their own strength.Thus, as a result of their attacks, the disciples of Plato chose to hide the more elevated teachings of the master behind an apparent adherence to Skepticism. They reserved these higher teachings for a very restricted esoteric hearing which would preserve them intact for later generations. The Platonists preferred, at least publicly, to teach others how to forget the philosophical truth, in order that the weak not fall into a materialistic error. The academic thesis was born in this manner – a position which the true Platonists did not need. Carneades would radicalize such a prudential the156 Cfr. PLATO, Phaedo, 85cd. Cfr. REALE, Agostino e il «Contra Academicos» cit. (above, note 141), pp. 26-27.

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sis with the invention of the criterion of probability, guaranteeing, against the objections of Chrysippus, a form of instrumental support for research that gently enlightens men in regard to morals.This criterion allowed also for the on-going obfuscation of the true Platonic doctrine under the dusty blanket of unworthy and useless dialectical subtleties157.The epistemological foundation of the possible overturning of the Ciceronian critique of philosophy now appears to the Christian Augustine as something hiding behind the Neoplatonic presupposition of the entirety of the truth in the divine mind, which Revelation calls sapientia. Compared with such perfect knowledge, which is at the same time both the understanding and creation of being, human scientia, emerging from the slow progress accomplished by reason within the scientific-philosophical investigation (i. e., dianoetic), is bound to remain uncertain and perfectible158.Yet, thanks to the direct enjoyment of Revelation, science may find a confirmation, or even the unique guarantee of the correctness of its progress, in the constant confrontation between its partial acquisitions of the truth and the absolute plenitude of divine Wisdom159. Augustine has thus vindicated, as a particularity of Christian philosophers, the fulfillment of the Neoplatonic desire to grasp with the intellect the purity of the Principle.They accept the preliminary adherence to direct communication with the absolute truth, and they acquire a relationship with the fullness of the divine sapientia. Humanity, departing from this wisdom, will now carry its desire to the always imperfect, but always true and progressively perfectible, realization of an adequate scientia of the real. The definitive cutting of the umbilical cord which was binding Latin Christian culture to the philosophical authority of Cicero, «Tullius noster», was therefore achieved by Augustine with a few, incisive steps. In the work of Cicero, pagan reason, already mortally wounded, believed that, by perpetuating such a false conflict between the error of the Stoics and the hypocrisy of the 157

Cfr. Contra Academicos, III, 17, 37 - 18, 40, 954-956, pp. 57-59. Cfr. De ordine, II, 18, 47 - 19, 51, 1017-1019, ed. Green, pp. 132-135. 159 Cfr. De trinitate, XV, 13, 22, 1076, ed. Mountain, II, p. 495,42-45 (cfr. above, note 142): «Nostra vero scientia in rebus plurimis propterea et amissibilis est et receptibilis, quia non hoc est nobis esse quod scire vel sapere; quoniam esse possumus, etiam si nesciamus, neque sapiamus ea quae aliunde didicimus». 158

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Platonists, it could proudly rise again, when in reality it was breathing its last. Indeed, nothing seems more conceited and paradoxical than a sage who affirms and defends, with fecund language and a very elegant style, something in which he does not believe at all and in which he doesn’t recognize himself 160.Yet, the liberating and apparently inevitable parricide hoped for by Lactantius is exorcized by Augustine with the nod toward the possibility of a posthumous rehabilitation of Cicero. It is not reasonable to believe that the Master of the Latin West truly shared that which he was teaching and writing in public. He was certainly among the few elect to whom the true Platonic philosophy was secretly shown (his most worthy master had been Philo, who had led the Academy back to believing in the recondite existence of the truth). Cicero had been constrained, however, to assume exteriorly a skeptical attitude in order to blow away, with the vain wind of the followers of Carneades, that «straw-Platonist» Antiochus of Ascalon, who had profaned the sanctuary of true philosophy by strewing it with the ashes of the Stoics. He then strove to eliminate that which remained of this final, truly grave betrayal, because he could not tolerate the contamination and the distruction of that truth, which he had loved – though secretly – with all his being161. Some years later, once the polemic had died down and the clouds of error had dissolved, the true wisdom was able to return and shine openly through the work of Plotinus.Within the Neoplatonic system, human reason explicated and clarified the conditions which allow for the courageous return to the search for the truth. Plotinus indicated, in effect, the realizability, although momentary and unrepeatable, of that direct, intuitive, and totalizing contemplation of the truth, which the entire history of ancient thought had sought in vain. By leading created intelligence to the course which is naturally its path – that of dianoetic rationality and dialectic –, Plotinus made it possible for the rebirth of scientific knowledge and the formulation of particular and articulated 160 Cfr. Contra Academicos, III, 18, 41, 956, p. 59,19-22: «Deinde in nostrum Tullium conflictio ista duravit iam plane saucia et ultimo spiritu latinas litteras inflatura. Nam nihil mihi videtur inflatius quam tam multa copiosissime atque ornatissime dicere non ita sentientem». 161 Cfr. ibid., p. 59,22-40.

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knowledge which allows humanity to describe, understand, and govern the nature of finite and multiple things.Yet, Plotinus understood that our intellect is not capable of giving an exhaustive definition of the truth itself or of proposing a descriptive demonstration of it.Thus, he has not led philosophers up to the affirmation of the One, knowing well that every absolute affirmation demanded by man is inevitably partial, and generates divisive definitions and opposing parties.Yet, he invited them to intuit, through the via negativa, the primordial idea of the One’s existence. First, he swept the mind clean of every source of cognitive imperfection and error, of all particular truths, and of all the deductive articulations concerning assertive speculation, which are always partial and, therefore, always contestable. Then, without hesitation, he exposed the mind to the absolute certainty of the One: a certainty which, though in itself intangible and ineffable, was nonetheless perceptible162. While Augustine reinforces this Neoplatonic rebirth of philosophical thought, he comes to the constructive admission of its limits and imperfections. Neoplatonism now appears to Augustine to be only the introduction to a further, not only possible, but also unpostponable reform of human knowledge. The Neoplatonists had only pointed toward the philosophy of the superior world, that of the One and the True. Though they demonstrated that this philosophy was true, they could not seize it or explain it to human beings (since it is impossible for a created mind). Augustine recognizes, however, that this is the same philosophy which, in an exhaustive and harmonic manifestation in all its parts, i. e., truly systematic, is documented for believers in Christ by the Revelation contained in the sacred books («sacra nostra»).These texts justly invite men to abandon and detest the philosophy of this world in order to open themselves up to a much truer and more intelligible knowledge. Created reason, blinded by the darkness of its corporeality, would never have been capable of penetrating into the truth itself, if God had not allowed the auctoritas of his divine Intellect – not the authority of 162 Cfr. ibid., pp. 59,40-60,46. Cfr. PLOTINUS, Enneades,V, 3, 11-17, edd. Henry - Schwyzer cit. (above, note 92), t. II, pp. 317-331; and further cfr. ibid., II, 9, 1, t. I, pp. 223-225; III, 8, 6, t. I, pp. 401-403;V, 9, 2-3, t. II, pp. 412-414;VI, 9, 34, t. III, pp. 310-313.

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a human kind of wisdom, but of Wisdom itself, of the Word that has created and regulated the universe – to descend and make himself comprehensible to men. The Word assumed their flesh and united them with the veritas, which is beyond all particular forms of knowledge and dissonances, i. e., beyond all the disputes of mortal intellects163.

10. Verissima philosophia ‘Converted philosophy’ – Christian philosophy or the «certissima scientia»164 – is also the point of arrival for all the previous philosophies embraced by Augustine. It is the fulfillment of each one of them. Now Augustine understands that all his preceding conversions – rationalism sought among the Manichees, the probabilism of the Academics, Platonic spiritualism –, despite their reciprocal contradictoriness, all possessed some element of the truth. It is now clear that this is so because all philosophies become completely and definitively true only if they are able to convert to Christianity. Just as for Ciceronian eclecticism all the doctrines were able to bring some contribution to the knowledge of the truth, so also is it clear that in the final, definitive conversion of Augustine there is a syncretistic convergence of various cultural components. None of these components was chosen in particular; yet, one of them (i. e., Neoplatonism) was the favourite. Still, they all contributed to the formation of the new idea which leads to baptism as a unique and conclusive solution for the search for the truth. Once the inadequacy of its monistic intuition has been perfected by Christian creationism, Neoplatonism becomes the first

163

Cfr. Contra Academicos, III, 19, 42, 956-957, ed. Green, p. 60,10-18: «Non enim est ista [scil. disciplina] huius mundi philosophia, quam sacra nostra meritissime detestantur, sed alterius intelligibilis, cui animas multiformibus erroris tenebris caecatas, et altissimis a corpore sordibus oblitas numquam ista ratio subtilissima revocaret, nisi summus Deus populari quadam clementia divini intellectus auctoritatem usque ad ipsum corpus humanum declinaret atque summitteret, cuius non solum praeceptis, sed etiam factis excitatae animae redire in semet ipsas et resipiscere patriam etiam sine disputationum concertatione potuissent». On the scriptural scorn for the worldly philosophy, cfr. Col 2, 8. 164 De civitate Dei, XIX, 18, 646, edd. Dombart - Kalb, II, p. 685,7.

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among these philosophical doctrines to receive from the conversion a definitive correction and ideological consecration165. The liberal arts, above all, find their perfect realization in converted thought166. When philosophical thought adheres to Christianity, a science emerges which excels and comprises all the other sciences, while also providing them with a complete and comprehensive certainty167. For this reason, the Augustinian dialogues of Cassiciacum are all compiled by closely following, as a model, the rules of the arts. In particular, Augustine highlights the rules of dialectic, i. e., the logic of the philosophers, or the doctrine conferring to human words the capacity of saying the truth within the various levels of linguistic expression, being endowed with signifying force (concepts, propositions, demonstrative reasoning).This science offers to all the other disciplines the fundamental formal norms for expressing the truth, and in this way it develops an important epistemological function as the true «disciplina disciplinarum», because it is on the basis of its norms that all the other arts are able to become sciences168.Yet, the final conversion to Christianity on the part of the liberal arts consists 165 Cfr. Epistolae, 118, ad Dioscorum, 5, 33, 448, ed. Goldbacher, pp. 696-697. But already in the De ordine, for the pagan sage as well as for the Christian, the conversion occurs when the soul adheres completely to God («anima Deo cohaerens»), as to the unique source of the universe: cfr. De ordine, II, 2, 6, 996, ed. Green, pp. 109-110; 4, 11, 999, p. 113; cfr. also ibid., I, 8, 23, p. 100, and in Retractationes, I, 3, 2, 588-589, ed. Mutzenbecher, pp. 12-13, the recorrence of the Platonic idea of philosophy as the conversion from the obscurity of the sensible world to a superior spiritual reality. 166 Cfr. De ordine, II, 16, 44 - 18, 47, 1015-1017, ed. Green, pp. 131-133. 167 Cfr. Soliloquia, I, 8, 15, 877, ed. Hörmann, pp. 23-24. 168 Cfr. De ordine, II, 13, 38, ed. Green, p. 128,1-11: «Illa igitur ratio perfecta dispositaque grammatica admonita est quaerere atque attendere hanc ipsam vim, qua peperit artem; nam eam definiendo distribuendo colligendo non solum digesserat atque ordinaverat verum ab omni etiam falsitatis irreptione defenderat. Quando ergo transiret ad alia fabricanda, nisi ipsa sua prius quasi quaedam machinamenta et instrumenta distingueret notaret digereret proderetque ipsam disciplinam disciplinarum, quam dialecticam vocant? Haec docet docere, haec docet discere; in hac se ipsa ratio demonstrat atque aperit, quae sit, quid velit, quid valeat. Scit scire, sola scientes facere non solum vult, sed etiam potest» Cfr. also Contra Academicos, III, 17, 37, 954, ed. Green, p. 57,15-20, where dialectic is said to have been joined by Plato to the other parts of philosophy, «quasi formatrix» and «iudex» of them, so that «aut ipsa est aut sine qua omnino sapientia esse non potest». Cfr. J. PÉPIN, Saint Augustin et la dialectique,Villanova 1976 (The Saint Augustin Lecture Series, 1972), esp. pp. 191-210; and D’ONOFRIO, Fons scientiae. La dialettica cit. (above, note 7), pp. 37-55.

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in leading the human mind toward the acceptance that even God expressed himself in words and symbols and rendered himself intelligible in Sacred Scripture. It is therefore necessary to understand and study the signs which allow such an expression within the Scriptures, without limiting the mystery to which they allude169.The Divine Word is thus the true «law of all the arts (lex omnium artium)», the superior and eternal normative principle in which all the human sciences find the truth. For the philosopher, this search for the truth through the arts, in both nature and Sacred Scripture, means, once again, a conversion170: to turn one’s glance from the particular results, i. e., from the ‘works’ of the arts, and to convert it to the principle itself, or the absolute law of these arts and of their veracity – God171. All of this now means that a Christian recovery of rationalism is also possible within the sphere of a conversion of philosophy to the faith: the rationality which was deceptively promised by the Manichees now becomes a possibility in the form of a new and essential condition for the knowledge of the truth. Furthermore, the Christian philosopher, according to Augustine, is the only true rationalist among all the philosophers, because true «ratiocinatio» is possible only where there is divine illumination172.The Soliloquia describe the concrete application of this recovery of ‘rationality’.The work is presented as a dialogue between the author and Reason. Yet, Augustine begins by asking himself who and what this «reason» is, which indicates to him the way to achieve the truth: the only response possible is that it is the Truth in itself, eternal Reason – Christ. Reason communicates itself without defining itself and without teaching him how he might be able to define it173. Once all Academic doubt has been defeat169 Cfr. De doctrina christiana, II, 29, 45 - 31, 48, PL 34, 56-58, ed. J. Martin, Turnhout 1962 (CCSL, 32), pp. 63-66. 170 Cfr. De vera religione, 30, 56 - 31, 57, PL 34, 146-147, ed. K.-D. Daur,Turnhout 1962 (CCSL, 32), pp. 223-224. 171 Cfr. ibid., 52, 101, 167, p. 252,6-8: «Et ab operibus artium conversi ad legem artium, eam speciem mente contuebimur, cuius comparatione foeda sunt quae ipsius benignitate sunt pulchra». 172 Cfr. ibid., p. 253,22-25: there is no «commemoratio veritatis» where there is no «ratiocinatio», but there is no «ratiocinatio» where (as in eternal damnation) there is no illumination of the human mind by God,unique principle of the truth. 173 Cfr. Soliloquia, 1, 1, 1, 869, ed. Hörmann, p. 3,4-5: «Sive ego ipse, sive alius

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ed, the existence of the truth in God and its presence in the interior of the soul allow human reason, which seeks to conform itself to God with its own contorted discursive procedures, to investigate and analyze this truth found and manifested by the faith. Dianoetic reason, being mediated and dialectical, can now initiate its search after having admitted the impossibility of direct knowledge of the entirety of truth. It departs, however, from the faith and proceeds along the complex deductive paths in a logically correct way.This approach recovers its similarity with divine Reason and, therefore, with the Truth in itself: «If, however, you will not succeed in restraining this enormous desire which arises from being convinced of your capacity to reach the truth with your own reasoning, you will have to endure a great number of long, circuitous routes. For not any sort of ‘reason’ will bear you to that truth, except that which is alone called ‘reason’, that is, vera ratio.This reason is not only true, but also certain and free from every similarity with falsity – assuming, however, that man can somehow find it! Once one has acquired this reason, however, no false or verisimilar arguments will be able to lead him away from it»174. After having conducted the critique against the Skeptics in the Contra Academicos and the critique against false rationalism of the Manichees in the De Moribus,Augustine continues his reconsideration of his own personal conversions in the De vera religione, by means of a critique of classical philosophy as such, seeking its recovery in the name of the new Christian philosophy. Once again, he denounces the multiplication of philosophies among quis, extrinsecus sive intrinsecus, nescio: nam hoc ipsum est quod magnopere scire molior». On the divine Word as supreme Reason of the universe, principle of every true knowledge even on the part of man, cfr. also De Genesi ad litteram, IV, 32, 49, 316-317, ed. Zycha, pp. 129,25-130,10; and Retractationes, I, 3, 2, 589, ed. Mutzenbecher, pp. 12,24-13,29: «Nec Plato quidem in hoc erravit, quia (…) mundum ille intellegibilem nuncupavit ipsam rationem sempiternam atque incommutabilem, qua fecit Deus mundum». 174 De quantitate animae, 7, 12, PL 32, 1042, ed. W. Hörmann, Wien 1986 (CSEL, 89), p. 145,9-16: «Si autem cupiditatem istam refrenare non potes, qua tibi persuasisti ratione pervenire ad veritatem, multi et longi circuitus tibi tolerandi sunt, ut non ratio te adducat, nisi ea quae sola ratio dicenda est, id est vera ratio: et non solum vera, sed ita certa et ab omni similitudine falsitatis aliena – si tamen ullo modo haec ab homine inveniri potest – ut nullae disputationes falsae aut verisimiles ab ea te possint traducere».

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the ancient philosophers in their various sects, while also striving to confirm and consolidate the unity of the Christian school and, therefore, to assure the absolute and reciprocal identity of philosophy and religion175. Philosophy and Christianity have the search for the truth in common, as seen in the agreement which St. Paul partially achieves in Athens in his discussion with the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers. Indeed, the pagan philosophers said something true, but not the ‘Truth’ in itself, which is more extensive than the human capacity investigating it176. Conversion, however, freely offers even to philosophers this complete Truth with which their truth may be compared. Furthermore, this truth makes possible an overcoming of the dissensiones philosophorum and the achievement of the Ciceronian consensio – the agreement of the searchers for the truth. Even the two greatest philosophers, Plato and Aristotle, always at odds in their approaches, now appear, in the light of a Christianity which corrects the imperfections of both, perfectly in agreement in their teaching.The concordia of all the ‘true’ philosophers – an agreement already called for and pursued by Plotinus in the accomplishment of a sole «verissima disciplina» in which all mankind might participate – realizes itself in a common concordia of all souls with Christ.This concordia in Christ can emerge to the degree in which the rational investigation of the truth is capable of rediscovering and making its own, in its progressive and unceasing maturation, the absolute reasonableness of Revelation177. 175 Cfr. De vera religione, 5, 8, 126, ed. Daur, p. 193,12-16: «Sic enim creditur et docetur, quod est humanae salutis caput, non aliam esse philosophiam, id est, sapientiae studium, et aliam religionem, cum hi, quorum doctrinam non approbamus, nec sacramenta nobiscum communicant». 176 Cfr. Sermones, 68, 2, 3, PL 38, 439; 141, 1, 1 - 2, 2, 776-777; 177, 2, 954; 241, 1, 1, 1133-1134; 365, 2, PL 39, 1644; Quaestiones in Eptateuchum, IV (Quaest. Numerorum), 42, PL 34, 738, edd. J. Fraipont - D. De Bruyne,Turnhout 1958 (CCSL, 33), p. 262,1045-1058; Enarrationes in Psalmos,VIII, 6, PL 36, 111, edd. E. Dekkers - J. Fraipont, Turnhout 1956 (CCSL, 38-39-40), I, pp. 51-52; Contra Gaudentium, II, 10, 11, PL 43, 748, ed. M. Petschenig,Wien 1910 (CSEL, 53), p. 268,10-19. 177 Cfr. Contra Academicos, III, 19, 42, 956-957, ed. Green, p. 60,4-10: «Quod autem ad eruditionem doctrinamque attinet et mores quibus consulitur animae, quia non defuerunt acutissimi et sollertissimi viri, qui docerent disputationibus suis Aristotelem ac Platonem ita sibi concinere, ut imperitis minusque attentis dissentire videantur, multis quidem saeculis multisque contentionibus, sed tamen eliquata est, ut opinor, una verissimae philosophiae disciplina».

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This true and appropriate Christian recovery of philosophical realism provides human reasoning with the capacity for reconstructing with the rules of the arts the order of the res by retracing the eternal laws which the immutable divine Will established in creation. This leads to a possible unification of the dialectical level with the ontological level of the truth. Even under such a perspective, the vera philosophia is truly for the Christian intellectual a search for and a studium of the truth. He knows that he does not yet have wisdom, but he does not despair. Moreover, he trusts that he is able to reach wisdom, thanks to the understanding of Revelation, already in this life. With this conviction, Augustine traced in an indelible way the operative profile of the program of research which would become, with a universal agreement upon its fundamentals, the program of Christian intellectuals over the course of at least ten centuries of the history of Western thought. It became the program for all the philosophers who would accept its invitation to ground themselves upon the new harmony, assured by the faith, between logical necessity and ontological reality, in order to use, exercise, and put into operation philosophical reason. The new vision intended to understand the truth which manifested itself «non credendo solum, sed etiam intellegendo»178. This becomes the final step towards the results accomplished by the conversion, offering a renewed possibility of doing philosophy beyond contradictions and polemics. There even emerges the capacity of the human intellect for elaborating a form of theological knowledge: converted philosophy, as such, is already theology. Only the Christian thinker can correctly delineate the rules of theological preaching.Yet, if the knowledge of the truth was rendered possible by the adhesion of the soul to the absolute Truth in itself, it is not licit to demand a scientific knowledge of it according to the human criteria of measuring the particular forms of truth in the world. «There is in the soul no other science of God except the science of how it is impossible to make God an 178 Cfr. ibid. 20, 43, 957, p. 61,18-24: «Mihi ergo certum est nusquam prorsus a Christi auctoritate discedere;non enim reperio valentiorem.Quod autem subtilissima ratione persequendum est – ita enim iam sum affectus, ut quid sit verum non credendo solum sed etiam intelligendo apprehendere impatienter desiderem – apud Platonicos me interim, quod sacris nostris non repugnet, reperturum esse confido».

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object of science»179.Thus, Christian Probabilism, having become theology, continues to seek God himself because it possesses him in Revelation, and it truly possesses him because it continues to search for him. «They do not know (nesciunt) that you are everywhere, that no place is able to contain you and that, nevertheless, you are present even to those who are the farthest away from you. May they convert and set themselves in search of you, since, contrary to how they have abandoned their Creator, you have never abandoned your creation. May they convert; and behold, suddenly they will find you in the intimate depths of their souls»180. Numerous Augustinian texts confirm such a philosophical paradox, which particularly belongs to Christian theology in the very moment in which it was founded.The De doctrina christiana denounces the «pugna verborum» which emerges from the same demand for saying something about God and his nature. That which one is not able to say is ‘ineffable’; yet, that which one is able to call ‘ineffable’ is not ‘ineffable’. One is, therefore, able to speak about God without saying it. If human language pronounces his name, it is because in such a way it «moves» the minds of men «to seize divine nature with the mind»: and this word – «movet» –, expresses the whole meaning of the Christian conversion181. In the Adnotationes in Job,Augustine admits at one 179 De ordine, II, 18, 47, ed. Green, p. 133,19-20: «Nulla scientia [Dei] est in anima nisi scire quomodo eum nesciat». 180 Confessiones,V, 2, 2, PL 32, 707, ed.Verheijen, p. 57,10-14: «Nesciunt quod ubique sis, quem nullus circumscribit locus, et solus es praesens etiam his qui longe fiunt a te. Convertantur ergo et quaerant te, quia non, sicut ipsi deseruerunt creatorem suum, ita tu deseruisti creaturam tuam. Ipsi convertantur, et ecce: ibi es in corde eorum». 181 Cfr. De doctrina christiana, I, 6, 6, 21, ed. Martin cit. (above, note 169), pp. 9,1-10,10: «Diximusne aliquid et sonuimus aliquid dignum Deo? Immo vero nihil me aliud quam dicere voluisse sentio; si autem dixi, non hoc est quod dicere volui. Hoc unde scio, nisi quia Deus ineffabilis est? Quod autem a me dictum est, si ineffabile esset, dictum non esset.Ac per hoc ne ineffabilis quidem dicendus est Deus, quia et hoc cum dicitur, aliquid dicitur et fit nescio qua pugna verborum, quoniam si illud est ineffabile quod dici non potest, non est ineffabile quod vel ineffabile dici potest. Quae pugna verborum silentio cavenda potius quam voce pacanda est. Et tamen Deus, cum de illo nihil digne dici possit, admisit humanae vocis obsequium, et verbis nostris in laude sua gaudere nos voluit. Nam inde est et quod dicitur Deus. Non enim re vera in strepitu istarum duarum sillabarum ipse cognoscitur, sed tamen omnes latinae linguae socios, cum aures eorum sonus iste tetigerit, movet ad cogitandam excellentissimam quandam immortalemque naturam».

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point the unavoidable necessity and effective impossibility of «arguing» (disputare) with God, just as Job – who becomes in this way the model of all the theologians of the Christian tradition – sought to do182. And again: the only way of speaking about God is «non dicendo dicere et dicendo non dicere»183. For if it is God, one cannot understand him; and if one understands him, it is not God. So that one is able neither to speak about God nor to be silent about him: «But you are not able to seize a thing of this kind with the mind. Such ignorance is more holy than a presumed science of him» – a presumed science which would therefore be false. «And in fact we are speaking of God. It has been said: ‘And God was the Word’ (Jo 1, 1). We speak of God. But why marvel if you don’t understand what we are saying? If in fact you understand it, it is not God. May it be a pious confession of our ignorance more than a bold profession of science which we don’t possess.To approach near to God with the mind is a great happiness; to understand him, however, is entirely impossible»184. All of these theological paradoxes are, in fact, the direct consequence of the conversion of thought, which was, at its base, the greatest paradox, in so far as it rendered possible, against every natural expectation, that the truth might be able to precede the search. This inversion of the course made Christian speculation possible and opened a new chapter for the history of philosophy.

182 Cfr. Adnotationes in Job, 39, PL 34, 885-886, ed. J. Zycha, Wien 1895 (CSEL, 28/2), p. 626,12-15: «Quaerendo enim cum omnipotente disputatur, non convincendo aut refellendo. Non ergo quia omnipotens est, ideo quiesciendum est a disputandum cum eo». 183 Epistolae, 232, ad Madaurenses, 5, PL 33, 1028, ed.A. Goldbacher, IV,Wien - Leipzig 1911 (CSEL, 57), pp. 514-515. 184 Cfr. Sermones, 117, 3, 4, 663: «Sed non potes tale aliquid cogitare. Magis pia est talis ignorantia quam praesumpta scientia. (…) De Deo loquimur. Quid mirum si non comprehendis? Si enim comprehendis, non est Deus. Sit pia confessio ignorantiae magis quam temeraria professio scientiae.Attingere aliquantum mente Deum magna beatitudo est: comprehendere autem, omnino impossibile». Cfr. also ibid., 5, 7-8, 665-666.

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1. The last of the ancient philosophers, the first of the new Edward Kennet Rand introduces Severinus Boethius as the central figure among his Founders of the Middle Ages and, beginning with the opening remarks in the chapter titled «The First of the Scholastics»1, he presents him as the most accomplished and, with the sole exception of Augustine, «the most original philosopher» which Roman culture had ever produced2.Though intentionally hyperbolic, this judgment reaffirms a common opinion among historians who, since the nineteenth century on, attempted to classify the works of Boethius among the fundamental stages of Late Antique and Early Medieval Latin speculative thought.The formula «the last of the Romans and the first of the Scholastics», consecrated by Martin Grabmann3, assumes its most direct significance within a particular view of the history of thought in which Boethius emerges above all as the initiator of the ‘scholastic method’ of theology – the project, formulated with a paradig1 E.K. RAND, Boethius, the First of the Scholastics, in ID., Founders of the Middle Ages, Cambridge (Mass.) 1928 (repr. New York 1957), pp. 135-180; cfr. ibid., p. 136: «Boethius was a name with which everybody had to reckon. He is one of the Founders». 2 Ibid., p. 135: «A century of barbarism had swept like a wave over Roman civilization, or dashed against its coasts, when there suddenly appeared the most thoroughgoing philosopher, and, with the exception of St. Augustine, the most original philosopher, that Rome had ever produced». 3 Cfr. M. GRABMANN, Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode, 2 voll., Freiburg im Breisgau 1909-1911, I, pp. 148-177.

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matic lucidity in the Opuscula sacra, of assuring through human mental categories the most ample clarification possible of the terms which express dogma. Boethius becomes in this way the hinge between the ancient intellectual patrimony preserved in Christian society by the Fathers, and the systematic reworking of this patrimony, which the medieval theologians had attempted to perform4. It is undeniable, however, that the Consolatio Philosophiae offered to the West for centuries an important literary model for the genre of the ethical-philosophical dialogue. Furthermore, the medieval fortune of his translation of the corpus of logic collected among the Hellenistic schools, and of his reworking of the scientific heritage of antiquity, contributed in a determinative way to the defining of Boethius as the mediator of the classical wisdom from the Late Imperial Latin world to the new, still uncertain Roman-Barbaric intellectual horizon. One may consider the ‘age of Theodoric’ as a – although brief – stage of cultural and spiritual ‘rebirth’, tied to the project of consolidating the new political state of the Roman-Barbaric West. In this milieu, one may designate Boethius in a particular way – even on the basis of some of his explicit programmatic declarations – as that one who, within such a process of intellectual recovery, assumed the task of officially incarnating the figure of the authentic ‘philosopher’, acquiring the burden of assuring the survival of classical speculative thought. In this light, the question regarding the effective impact of his speculative renovation and, consequently, the question regarding the role which must be attributed to him in the concrete development of the history of Western philosophy, assume a particular importance. Is it possible to delineate within the course of Boethius’ intellectual development an authentic and, to a certain extent, original form of thought? Or, rather, must the evaluation of his contribution to medieval speculative thought be substantially limited to the work of the translation, reworking, and synthetic transmission of important elements of ancient philosophical wisdom? In fact, whether taking into consideration the formal aspect of his writ4 Cfr. ibid., pp. 148-149 and 175-176; the same GRABMANN, ibid., p. 176 proposes a rapid overview of the opinions of some critics who, between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, had insisted upon Boethius’ role as the bridge between the Patristic and Scholastic eras.

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ings – their didactic character, sprinkled with occasional isolated questions – or evaluating the form of the medieval intellectuals’recension of his inheritance of thought, it could appear incorrect, at first sight, to see Boethius as the bearer of an original or coherent vision of the world, along with a consolidated and homogeneous conception of the truth. For him, ‘philosophy’ – or ‘wisdom’ – would seem, rather, to resolve itself in a scattered compilation of doctrines, which he sometimes called upon and put into practice in order to solve theoretical problems encountered per chance in his study of the diverse sectors of human science.He seems to confront these issues with a dependence upon the most divergent doctrinal systems in force during Late Antiquity – Neopythagorianism in the mathematical writings; Aristotelianism with streaks of Neoplatonism in the logical works; Neoplatonism itself, contaminated with elements directly drawn from Stoicism, in the Consolatio;Augustinianism and dialectic in the theological tractates. Various interesting indications, however, do not allow for the a priori rejection of the idea that the intellectual world of Boethius was characterized by a solid internal speculative unity. The literary presentation itself of the character of Philosophy in the Consolatio explicitly witnesses to this fact. Wisdom personified, characterized by traits which are significantly recognizable as human, and, at the same time, transferred into a divine dimension, displays, from the beginning of the work, her dominant character: a harmonic and inalterable uniformity. Regarding this continuity in the progress of true philosophy, one must take into account the famous design which Boethius described at the beginning of the second book of the major commentary in Peri hermeneias. His intention, following the completion of the translation of and commentary on the entire corpus of the writings of Aristotle and Plato, was eventually to move on to the demonstration that these two giants of ancient thought do not at all contradict one another in the manner of the other philosophers («non ut plerique dissentire»): furthermore, a profound agreement exists between the two masters, at least on the more important and delicate themes («in plerisque quae sunt in philosophia maxime consentire»)5.The fundamental (and found5

Cfr. BOETHIUS, In Aristotelis Periermeneias (vel De interpretatione), editio secunda,

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ing) idea of a unity («concordia») of true knowledge is nourished by the conviction that the best teachers of antiquity had contributed in different ways, but with a common finality, to assuring man’s homogeneous, complete, and unified vision of the world. Only in this way did their teaching aspire to give concrete existence to the truthful search for a verum hidden in the depths of nature: i. e., to that humanarum divinarumque rerum scientia which, since the time of Varro and Cicero, the Latin sapiential language promised to the cultivators of knowledge6. Vera sapientia is, in short, according to Boethius, that which shares in the same inalterability and perfection that are the essential qualities of its most authentic object: the Highest Good. Humanity can neither comprehend, nor describe this summum bonum; yet, it also can remain ignorant neither of its existence, nor of its necessarily being characterized in itself by an absolute unity and indivisibility: ignorance of this perfect unity leads men to the vain pursuit of particular and divisible goods7. This error also creeps into philosophy with the introduction of divisions II, 3, 433CD, ed. C. Meiser, II, Leipzig 1880, pp. 79,9-80,6: «Mihi autem si potentior divinitatis adnuerit favor, haec fixa sententia est, ut quamquam fuerint praeclara ingenia,quorum labor ac studium multa de his quae nunc quoque tractamus latinae linguae contulerit, non tamen quendam quodammodo ordinem filumque et dispositione disciplinarum gradus ediderunt, ego omne Aristotelis opus, quodcumque in manus venerit, in Romanum stilum vertens eorum omnium commenta latina oratione perscribam, ut si quid ex logicae artis subtilitate, ex moralis gravitate peritiae, ex naturalis acumine veritatis ab Aristotele conscriptum sit, id omne ordinatum transferam atque etiam quodam lumine commentationis inlustrem omnesque Platonis dialogos vertendo vel etiam commentando in latinam redigam formam. His peractis non equidem contempserim Aristotelis Platonisque sententiam in unam quodammodo revocare concordiam eosque non ut plerique dissentire in omnibus, sed in plerisque et his in philosophia maximis consentire demonstrem».In the following notes of this chapter,the works of Boethius are cited without indicating the author’s name, and always refer both to the corresponding columns in PL 63 and 64 (without indication of the volume), and to modern critical editions.Some variations will have been introduced which are related to punctuation. 6 Cfr. Consolatio Philosophiae, I, pr. 4, 3, 615A, ed. C. Moreschini, München Leipzig 2000, p. 12,8-10: «Haecine est bibliotheca (…) in qua mecum saepe residens de humanarum divinarumque rerum scientia disserebas?». For the ancient witnesses of this definition of philosophy, see above, cap. 1, p. 13 and note 7. 7 Cfr. Consolatio Philosophiae, III, pr. 9, 16, 755C-756A, p. 77,43-46: «Hoc igitur quod est unum simplexque natura pravitas humana dispertit et dum rei quae partibus caret partem conatur adipisci, nec portionem, quae nulla est, nec ipsam, quam minime affectat, assequitur».

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and partiality, which inevitably causes for man a loss of happiness (beatitudo – understood by Boethius to be the achievement of a condition of equilibrium between subjective desires and the image of absolute immutability that belongs to God)8. The Platonic doctrine of reminiscence demonstrates, in effect, that Wisdom’s task is to orient man toward such a condition of divine serenity by inspiring him to search for a primal lost truth. The objective reality of this truth is guaranteed, even for one who lives in the dispersion which is typical of corporeal life, by the fact that we all carry an indelible, though distant, memory of it in our interior9. Philosophia arises precisely from an orientation, which is natural for the entirety of humanity, toward the unique Good and its manifestations. Through philosophy scholars hunger to investigate and reconstruct, at least in part, the harmony of the ordo naturae by putting into effect the conceptual instruments developed by the sages of antiquity in order to measure and stabilize analogies among natural occurrences10. In the sixth book of the commentary on the Topica of Cicero, Boethius presents a more profound analysis of the concept of ‘necessity’, observing that there are some ‘unnecessary’ things which must be preferred to the ‘necessary’ ones. Obviously this does not apply to superfluous luxuries, such as a pompous banquet which cannot be considered better than a modest and essential repast.Yet, it does apply to certain things which belong to the species of bonum, and which, although not being ‘necessary’, are ‘better’ than other necessary goods. Philosophia is the most significant example. If ‘to live’ is necessary, and ‘doing philosophy’ is not necessary, it is still better ‘to live as a philosopher’, a quality proper to men, than simply ‘to live’, as the animals do11. Boethius 8 Cfr. ibid., pr. 9, 24-31, 756B-757A, pp. 78,71-79,93; pr. 12, 28-38, 780B782A, pp. 94,74-96,106. 9 Cfr. ibid., m. XI, 775A-777A, p. 91; pr. 12, 1, 777AB, pp. 91,1-92,4. 10 Cfr. ibid., pr. 12, 5-8, 778A, p. 92,14-25. 11 Cfr. In Topica Ciceronis commentaria,VI, 1161BC: «Necessaria etiam non necessariis partim praeferri, partim etiam postponi debent, quod Marcus Tullius tacuit: necessaria quippe praeferuntur his non necessariis quae non boni ratione sed voluptatis appetitione sunt constituta, veluti luxu regio parata convivia nullus sapiens iudicet esse meliora his quae naturae expleant indigentiam.Quaedam vero sunt quae ipsa specie boni,cum non necessaria sint,meliora sunt necessariis.Nam vivere necessarium est, et sine eo subsistere animal nequit, philosophari vero non est necessa-

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briefly observes elsewhere that ‘doing philosophy’ provides men with the source of happiness because it puts them in the condition of contemplating the most desirable good – the Truth. Furthermore, philosophy is such a good when it is communicated and taught, and, therefore, when the wisest men share in its bounty12. It is in harmony with such principles that Boethius claims for himself the role and the dignity of ‘philosopher’,either as an investigator, or as the disseminator of truth: «nos philosophi, quibus veritatis et falsitatis discretio curae est»13.The very claim for this task and for this dignity justifies the presentation of Philosophy, at the beginning of the Consolatio,as the nutrix of the true sage,when she rebukes the Muses, who are guilty of distracting with their blandishments not a common man, but «one nourished by the Eleatic and Academic studies»14: i. e., one reared and nourished by Philosophy herself15 with the spiritual food which strengthens the soul16. rium: melius tamen longeque excellentius est philosophum vivere quam tantum vivere; illud enim raro paucisque etiam utentibus ratione concessum,illud pecudibus commune nobiscum».Even the analysis of the concept of «rarus» (i.e.rare,or seldom) confirms such a form of reasoning:the «philosophans vita»,which is «rara»,is preferable to the «vita ipsa» which is «vulgaris»,that is,common to all:cfr.ibid.,1161C. 12 Cfr. De hypotheticis syllogismis, I, 1-4, praef., 831AD, ed. L. Obertello, Brescia 1969, pp. 204,1-206,36: Boethius is happy to be able to put the fruits of his own labor in common with the anonymous recipient of the work – perhaps the same Patricius to whom the commentary on the Topica is dedicated (cfr. OBERTELLO, Introduzione, in ed. cit., pp. 131-135) – since speculation regarding the truth, although being a desirable good as such, is rendered still more lovable by being participated in by more intelligences. Such a motivation is therefore at the base, in this text, of the project of making known in the West the doctrine of the hypothetical syllogism, expressed, in a partial way, only by writers in the Greek language. In general, it is also the motivation for Boethius’ work as mediator, translator, and commentator of the philosophical-scientific competence of the ancient Greeks. Regarding the principle that there is no happiness in Wisdom if it is not possible to participate in it, cfr. MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, Laelius (De amicitia), 23, 88, ed. Müller cit. (above, cap. 1, note 132), pp. 190,37-191,9. 13 In Aristotelis Periermeneias, ed. prima, I, 4, 314A, ed. C. Meiser, I, Leipzig 1877, p. 71,21-23. Cfr. also In Aristotelis Periermeneias, ed. secunda, I, praef., 396D, ed. Meiser, p. 10,18-19: «Oratio (…) philosophica vel dialectica, id est, qua verum falsumque valeat expediri»; cfr. also ibid., II, 4, 442B, pp. 95,27-96,1. 14 Cfr. Consolatio Philosophiae, I, pr. 1, 10, 591A, ed. Moreschini, p. 6,36-37: «Hunc vero, Eleaticis atque Academicis studiis innutritum». 15 Cfr. ibid., pr. 3, 2, 604A, p. 9,3-5: «Itaque ubi in eam deduxi oculos intuitumque defixi, respicio nutricem meam, cuius ab adulescentia laribus obversatus fueram, Philosophiam». 16 Cfr. ibid., pr. 2, 2, 599A, p. 8,2-4: «Tune ille es, ait, qui nostro quondam lacte nutritus, nostris educatus alimentis in virilis animi robur evaseras?».

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Philosophy is not, therefore, for Boethius an additional element of his intellectual personality; nor is it only a point of arrival for a program of scientific education which finds its fulfillment in the application of ancient philosophical texts. It is, on the contrary, a formative knowledge essential for his own ego, directed toward giving a sense and just measure to any sort of cognitive and practical operation. Only such a conception as this justifies the fact that he, on the point of death, entrusted to personified Philosophy the task of illuminating him regarding the sense of his own life and of explaining to him the incomprehensible event of its imminent, tragic conclusion. At the same time, she offers the ideological and conceptual coordinates which illuminate the true meaning of Boethius’ reform of the philosopher’s profession in the context of the unfulfilled project of Theodoric: how can one reestablish the Roman civil and intellectual tradition within the particular social-political situation determined by the twilight of the imperial institutions in the West? In order to formulate a methodologically correct response to such a question, it is now opportune to highlight the relationship which connects the thought of Boethius to the classical philosophical tradition, and, in particular, to late Neoplatonic reflection, of which he was the clear heir even in his first writings on the liberal arts.The cultural context which dominated in the Late Imperial epoch must also be taken into account, i. e., the Roman society which, from Constantine on, is recognized officially as ‘Christian’. Keeping in mind the influence of these two converging historical-cultural coordinates, it is therefore necessary to examine which indications, explicit or synthetic, can be identified in the texts of Boethius in order to reconstruct, in an adequate and complete way, his conception of philosophy, and to verify the continuity or eventual evolution of this conception in the course of his intellectual maturation.

2. Scientia, sapientia, philosophia The previous chapter demonstrated that, in ‘appropriating’ the truth of the philosophers, Christian intellectuals found in Augustine’s thought a way of giving life to a systematic rational philosophy by grafting onto it the Neoplatonic program of restoring

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the comprehensibility of a cosmos which is assumed to be ordered according to laws of a divine and universal reason. If this is true, Boethius’ speculative contribution must be seen in turn as grafting itself onto this very delicate branch of the problematic evolution of late ancient philosophy, i. e., on the wave formed by the ‘overturning’ of the Ciceronian critical reason that Christian thinkers had brought about.Yet, without entrusting himself, like the Fathers of the Church, to an immediate and direct convergence of vera philosophia and vera religio (that is, of intellegere and credere), Boethius founded his own systematic explanation of reality – and, in it, an explanation of the significance, the cause, and the finality of human existence in a cosmos ordered by a divine mind – on the solid basis of a renewed trust in an autonomous foundation in the natural field of human knowledge. Though he is a Christian who respects the authority of Augustine regarding the knowledge of faith, Boethius is also, as far as the methodological discipline of his own understanding goes, a scholar and an enthusiastic follower of Neoplatonic thought. He is convinced of the possibility of achieving for man, even with his natural forces alone, a renewed scientific understanding of reality.Yet, though accepting the essential Augustinian synthesis of reason and faith when it involves the data of Revelation, he strives autonomously to bear scientific reasoning – while recognizing its limits – to its greatest intellectual potential within all the other possible fields of knowledge. For this reason, Boethius makes his first important correction for the plan recommended by Augustine, from the beginning of his own work as writer-philosopher – that is, in the introduction to the De institutione arithmetica. He presents sapientia as a form of perfect knowledge, in herself divine, but already granted to man as the result of his search among the various fields of the liberal disciplines17.Wisdom is an intuitive knowledge of a definitive and absolute nature, but it does not exceed the limits of the created mind. It is proposed as both the goal and the reason for the pro17 Cfr. De institutione arithmetica, pref., 1079AB, ed. G. Friedlein, Leipzig 1867, p. 3,11-18: «Ita enim mei quoque mihi operis ratio constabit, si, quae ex sapientiae doctrinis elicui, sapientissimi iudicio comprobentur. (…) In quo nihil mirum videri debet, cum id opus, quod sapientiae inventa persequitur, non auctoris sed alieno incumbit arbitrio».

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gressive maturation of scientia. The various arts, or scientiae, cannot presume to subsist autonomously. They are the ‘means’, and they describe the necessary steps for the final achievement of sapientia («tam multis artibus ars una perficitur»). Only a man who has known – like Symmachus did, according to the rhetorical praise of the letter of dedication – how to raise himself to a higher consideration of the truth, enjoys the capacity of formulating a balanced judgment regarding the differentiated specificity of the various fields which constitute scientific knowledge: only this man can truly be called ‘a sage’18. Sapientia is the end of scientia (i. e., from the particular perspective of De institutione, the end of the quadrivium)19. Philosophia coincides with the stage of perfecting the cognitive human capacities which bears scientia to sapientia20. In fact, as Boethius specifies elsewhere, philosophy is the discipline which makes nature and the properties of all things comprehensible, in so far as philosophy presides over the intellectual comprehension of their true reality21.According to the formula coined in the first 18 Cfr. ibid., 1079B-1080A, pp. 3,20-4,18: «Sed huic munusculo, non eadem quae ceteris imminent artibus munimenta constituo, neque enim fere ulla sic cunctis absoluta partibus nullius indiga suis tantum est scientia nixa praesidiis, ut non ceterarum quoque artium adiumenta desideret. Nam in effigiandis marmore statuis alius excidendae molis labor est, alia formandae imaginis ratio, nec eiusdem artificis manus politi operis nitor exspectat. (…) Tam multis artibus ars una perficitur. At nostri laboris absolutio longe ad faciliorem currit eventum.Tu enim solus manum supremo operi inpones, in quo nihil de decernentium necesse est laborare consensu. Quamlibet enim hoc iudicium multis artibus probetur excultum, uno tamen cumulatur examine». – On this theme cfr. D’ONOFRIO, La scala ricamata cit. (above, cap. 1, note 7), pp. 11-63. 19 Cfr. above, note 17. 20 Cfr. De institutione arithmetica, praef., 1079CD, p. 7,21-26: «Inter omnes priscae auctoritatis viros, qui Pythagora duce puriore mentis ratione viguerunt, constare manifestum est, haud quemquam in philosophiae disciplinis ad cumulum perfectionis evadere, nisi cui talis prudentiae nobilitas quodam quasi quadrivio vestigatur, quod recte intuentis sollertiam non latebit». 21 Cfr. In Topica Ciceronis commentaria,VI, 1156D: «Quae vero alia disciplina naturam proprietatemque rerum omnium docet, vel quae omnino eorum quae intelligi possunt, scientiam profitetur, nisi haec tantum ex qua nos pauca praesumpsimus philosophia?». In this passage (1156C-1157A) Boethius acquires his starting point from Cicero’s definition of argumentum as «ratio quae rei dubiae faciat fidem» (cfr. above, cap. 1, note 15) in order to expose the error of those who presume to separate the argumenta, and therefore rhetoric and logic (i. e. the ars dicendi), from Wisdom (i. e. the ars intelligendi). Since the veracity of discourse must depend upon the correct comprehension of the things of which it speaks,

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commentary on Porphyry (the composition of which is more or less contemporary with the De institutione), philosophy is truly «amor et studium et amicitia quodammodo sapientiae». Such sapientia is not a form of wisdom dispersed and articulated in the numerous directions of the various arts, but rather it is that immediate contemplation-participation in the divinity of the truth which is at the origin of every other form of knowledge, both theoretical and practical22. One must still affirm, however, that the only possibility for achieving wisdom is to study the particular scientific disciplines. Anyone who scorns the arts can be called neither a ‘philosopher’ (investigator of the truth), nor a true ‘sage’23. If, therefore, philosophia joins itself to an intermediate position between scientia and sapientia, then all three activities of the soul – science, philosophy, and wisdom – will have to be oriented toward the study and acquisition of a common object of knowledge. Even in the initial pages of the De institutione arithmetica, Boethius, reformulating the words of his direct source, the Neopythagorian Nicomachus of Gerasa, proposes a first defeven the commentary of the Ciceronian rhetorical manual is a genuine philosophical operation.Within the competency of philosophy one indeed finds the direction of every effort applied to understanding the nature and property of all things. On the definition of argumentum see also: In Topica Ciceronis commentaria, I, PL 64, 1048B; De topicis differentiis, I, I, 2, 5-8, and 7, 1-2, 1174C and 1180C, ed. D. Z. Nikitas, in ID., Boethius’ De topicis differentiis und die byzantinische Rezeption dieses Werkes,Athens - Paris - Bruxelles 1990 (Corpus Philosophorum Medii Aevi - Philosophi Byzantini, 5), pp. 3,7-14 and 16,1-4; and CASSIODORUS SENATOR, Expositio Psalmorum, Ps. 144, 21, PL 70, 1028C, ed. M. Adriaen, Turnhout 1958, (CCSL, 97-98), II, p. 1297,342-344. 22 Cfr. In Isagogen Porphyrii, ed. prima, I, 3, 10D-11A, ed. S. Brandt, Wien Leipzig 1906 (CSEL, 48), p. 7,11-23: «Et prius quid sit ipsa philosophia, considerandum est. Est enim philosophia amor et studium et amicitia quodammodo sapientiae, sapientiae vero non huius, quae in artibus quibusdam et in aliqua fabrili scientia notitiaque versatur, sed illius sapientiae quae nullius indigens vivax mens et sola rerum primaeva ratio est. Est autem hic amor sapientiae intellegentis animi ab illa pura sapientia inluminatio et quodammodo ad se ipsam retractio atque advocatio, ut videatur studium sapientiae studium divinitatis et purae mentis illius amicitia. Haec igitur sapientia cuncto equidem animarum generi meritum suae divinitatis inponit, et ad propriam naturae vim puritatemque reducit. Hinc nascitur speculationum cogitationumque veritas et sancta puraque actuum castimonia». 23 Cfr. De institutione arithmetica, I, 1, 1081C, ed. Friedlein, p. 9,6-9: «Quibus quatuor partibus si careat inquisitor, verum invenire non possit, ac sine hac quidem speculatione veritatis nulli recte sapiendum est».

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inition of such an object.To begin, sapientia is comprehensio of the veritas of the things which truly are, and the substantiality of which is not subordinated to accidental change. It is right, therefore, to recognize that this is the condition of those things that the investigators of truth (in particular, the Pythagorians) have proposed as objects of the investigation of the sciences (mathematics). These objects are incorporeal, immutable entities, able to be listed according to a reformulation, in a arithmetic-Pythagorian key, of the list of Aristotelian categories. Only to these categories can one correctly apply the name of ‘being’ (quality, quantity, mathematical relations, actions, passions, places, times, etc.): Wisdom is the comprehension of the truth of things that are and that possess an immutable substantiality. And we call ‘things that are’ those things which do not grow, do not undergo increase or diminution, or any kind of mutation or variation. They are preserved, rather, by supporting themselves through their own capacity upon that single foundation of their own nature. Such are the qualities, quantities, the forms, the greatness, the smallness, the equalness, the habits, the actions, the dispositions, the places, the times, and everything which finds itself in any mode joined to corporeal things (quodammodo adunatum corporibus)24.

24 Ibid., 1079D-1080D, pp. 7,26-8,8: «Est enim sapientia rerum, quae sunt suique inmutabilem substantiam sortiuntur, comprehensio veritatis. Esse autem illa dicimus, quae nec intentione crescunt nec retractione minuuntur nec variationibus permutantur, sed in propria semper vi suae se naturae subsidiis nixa custodiunt. Haec autem sunt qualitates, quantitates, formae, magnitudines, parvitates, aequalitates, habitudines, actus, dispositiones, loca, tempora et quicquid adunatum quodammodo corporibus invenitur». Cfr. analogous terms and concepts in De institutione musica, II, 2, 1195D-1196D, ed. Friedlein cit. (above, note 17), pp. 227,20-228,2; cfr. also NICOMACHUS GERASENUS, Introductio arithmetica, I, I, 3-4, ed. R. Hoche, Leipzig 1866, pp. 2,20-3,8.The derivation of this list of essentiae from the table of Aristotelian categories – almost a review of it in a Pythagorian-Platonic key – is not difficult to recognize, especially if one takes into account certain particularities of late antique dialectical terminology in Latin (habitude is the habit, actus the action, dispostitio the site) and of the particular perspective upon which this text depends, that of the numerical sciences (for which magnitude, parvitas and aequalitas are the three principal forms of relation in the mathematical field). For a comparison between Boethius’ text and that of Nicomachus, which is the direct source, cfr. D’ONOFRIO, Fons scientiae. La dialettica cit. (above, cap. 1, note 7), pp. 125-135.

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Nevertheless, the sciences can gather such objects only under conditions which are very different from those making perfect wisdom possible. In order to submit objects to scientific measurement, the researcher is constrained to consider them in the only manner in which they present themselves to his reason – i. e., in their partial, corrupt, and individualized appearance conjoined with their corporeality.Yet, sapientia – the point of arrival for the correct act of philosophari – appears as an «integra comprehensio» of the truth, since it offers a complete possession of the perfection of those same objects that scientia investigates through their phenomenological manifestation contaminated by accidents and mutability in the sensible realm25. In such a double condition of essences, in itself immutable and mutable through a connection with corporeal matter, one finds, however, the most serious limitation for philosophy.The manifestation of the essentiae in the reign of material bodies inevitably submits their truth to a process of ontological corruption: this corruption takes the form of either expansion, producing ‘multiplicities’, which are studied, in themselves, by arithmetic, and, in their reciprocal relationship, by music; or division, producing ‘magnitudes’, which are studied by geometry, regarding them as stationary objects, and by astronomy, regarding their movements. This ontological process, once underway, goes on infinitely as a consequence of the intrinsic variability in its results. Clearly, it is not possible to possess an «integra comprehensio» of something potentially infinite, i. e., indefinable: «hanc igitur naturae infinitatem indeterminatamque potentiam philosophia sponte repudiat». In order to make possible the scientific knowledge of essences, reason, when it finds itself before an infinity of things, forges for itself certain corresponding instrumental notions of a limited type.These notions are finite representations of being, quantitative and/or spatial, which are able to become the object 25 Cfr. De institutione arithmetica, I, 1, 1081BC, pp. 8,11-15 and 9,8-13: «Haec igitur quoniam, ut dictum est, natura inmutabilem substantiam vimque sortita sunt, vere proprieque esse dicuntur. Horum igitur, id est, quae sunt proprie quaeque suo nomine essentiae nominantur, scientiam sapientia profitetur. (…) Est enim sapientia earum rerum, quae vere sunt, cognitio et integra comprehensio. Quod haec qui spernit id est has semitas sapientiae ei denuntio non recte esse philosophandum, siquidem philosophia est amor sapientiae, quam in his spernendis ante contempserit».

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of a rigorous definition and to be offered to the intelligence as instrumentally limited reflections of the infinite manifestations of entities which are perfect in themselves. Boethius comments that, even in this case, anyone who allows such elements of definite knowledge to escape his vision cannot be truly called a ‘philosopher’26. A serious problem now emerges. Obliged to bear the yoke of a representative modification of essences, the human mind seems to lose the opportunity of truly gathering their original truth. Boethius points to this dilemma in his commentary on the Topica by saying that every ars (meaning ‘every science’) is an imitatio naturae, which superimposes upon every authentic form of the essence, which is not directly known by man, the modifications imposed by the demands of the rational organization of acquired data.The data vary according to the methodological peculiarities of each field of investigation27.The scientiae are, however, a practical tool developed by men in order to dominate the limitless material of the manifestation of essences, and, as such, their nature seems to destine them to remain inexorably perfectible and distant from the effective fulfillment of their final scope.

26 Cfr. ibid., 1081CD, p. 9,13-27: «Illud quoque addendum arbitror, quod cuncta vis multitudinis ab uno progressa termino ad infinita progressionis augmenta concrescit. Magnitudo vero a finita inchoans quantitate modum in divisione non recipit; infinitissimas enim sui corporis suscipit sectiones. Hanc igitur naturae infinitatem indeterminatamque potentiam philosophia sponte repudiat. Nihil enim, quod infinitum est, vel scientia potest colligi vel mente comprehendi, sed hinc sumpsit sibi ipsa ratio, in quibus possit indagatricem veritatis exercere sollertiam. Delegit enim de infinitae multitudinis pluralitate finitae terminum quantitatis et interminabilis magnitudinis sectione reiecta definita sibi ad cognitionem spatia depoposcit. Constat igitur, quisquis haec praetermiserit, omnem philosophiae perdidisse doctrinam». 27 Cfr. In Topica Ciceronis commentaria, I, 1048B: «Omnis quippe ars imitatur naturam, atque ab hac materia suscepta rationes ipsa viamque conformat, ut cum facilius id quod ars quaeque promittit, tum elegantius fiat: velut parietem struere naturalis ingenii est, sed arte fit melius»; and ibid.,VI, prol., 1155CD: «Sed ars facultatem imitata naturae viam quamdam rationemque reperit, qua id effici facilius ac melius possit. (…) Oportuit enim (…) animadvertere omnem quidem artem sui materiam effectus ex natura suscipere, sed in ea tamen ratione propriam facultatem elegantiamque experiri».

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3. The dialogue with reason and the task of logic Human intelligence also finds itself in ‘check’, and philosophy proposes to resolve the situation with the development of instruments which put into motion the various sciences.This situation finds a form of literary confirmation when Philosophy herself, at the beginning of the Consolatio, reveals to the ailing Boethius his forgetfulness of the truth: an intellectual infirmity which arises from the disturbance taking place in Boethius’ mind through external disruptions, that is, through sensible passions which weaken his intelligence. In order to assure his return to a full comprehension of the truth, Philosophy believes that she must initiate with him, through the didactic-demonstrative instrument of the dialogue, a methodologically ordered procedure of particular and successive interrogations, that is, a process of scientific comprehension of reality in its various aspects28. In his commentaries on the first tractates of the Organon, Boethius gives logic the task of organizing the structure of mental representations of the truth. Logic is at the same time an instrument and an integral part of philosophy: an instrument, since only respect for its procedural norms assures the adequacy and epistemological dignity for the various forms of knowledge; a part of philosophy, because such rules themselves are already, as such, forms of knowledge of reality, the most general and most evident of all29.The theme of ortus logicae30, therefore, assumes an important relevance for Boethius’ conception of philosophy: the birth of logic and, with it, of scientific knowledge, took place when the ancient philosophers perceived the need to develop a formal discipline of thought which would guarantee the correspondence between the objects of knowledge and the words and concepts which express them. Such a correspondence is not immediate for all the forms of knowledge. It is immediate, for example, in the case of arithmetic, since numeric quantity subsists and is known only after having been abstracted from all accidental variability. But it is not immediate in the case of physics, be28

Cfr. Consolatio Philosophiae, I, pr. 6, 1, 650A, ed. Moreschini, p. 23,1-4. Cfr. In Isagogen Porphyrii, ed. secunda, I, 3, 73C-75A, ed. Brandt, pp. 140,13143,7. 30 Ibid., 73C, p. 140,13; ibid., 4, 75A, p. 143,9. 29

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cause the words used by man for expressing his knowledge related to the natural world do not correspond in the same objective and spontaneous way to corporeal res, since their nature, as complex and not necessary, is subject to accidentality31. In the failure to recognize such a difference one finds the «magnus error» of the bad philosophers, such as Epicurus, who believed that everything occurs in the res in the same manner in which reason knows them, and not otherwise. This is why they diffused false moral precepts founded upon a theoretically inadequate form of knowledge32. From this error sprang forth the dissensiones of the ancient thinkers, who based themselves upon subjective – and therefore inadequate – determinations regarding the relationship between things and words. The ‘true’ philosophers, however, – from the triad of the great masters (Socrates, Plato and Aristotle) up until the Neoplatonic commentators of the Organon – understood that they were obliged to work out a preliminary framework of a scientia disputandi, which would put reason in a position to distinguish which ratiocinatio was true, and which was not. They sought in this way to determine which reality corresponds to true comprehension, to the point where one might deter-

31 Cfr. ibid., 2, 72C-73A, pp. 138,17-139,1: «Neque enim sese ut in numeris, ita etiam in ratiocinationibus habet. In numeris enim quicquid in digitis recte computantis evenerit, id sine dubio in res quoque ipsas necesse est evenire, ut si ex calculo centum esse contigerit, centum quoque res illi numero subiectas esse necesse est. Hoc vero non aeque in disputatione servatur; neque enim quicquid sermonum decursus invenerit, id natura quoque fixum tenetur». 32 Cfr. ibid., 72BC, p. 138,3-17: «Cum igitur hic actus sit humani animi, ut semper aut in rerum praesentium comprehensione aut in absentium intellegentia aut in ignotarum inquisitione atque inventione versetur, duo sunt in quibus omnem operam vis animae ratiocinantis inpendit, unum quidem, ut rerum naturae certa inquisitionis ratione cognoscat, alterum vero, ut ad scientiam prius veniat quod post gravitas moralis exerceat. Quibus inquirendis permulta esse necesse est, quae vestigantem animum a recti itinere non minimum progressione deducant, ut in multis evenit Epicuro, qui atomis mundum consistere putat et honestum voluptate metitur. Hoc autem idcirco huic atque aliis accidisse manifestum est, quoniam per imperitiam disputandi quicquid ratiocinatione comprehenderant, hoc in res quoque ipsas evenire arbitrabantur. Hic vero magnus est error».The importance which the correctness of the theoretical competence of the philosopher has for its consequences on practice is pointed out by Boethius in the introduction to the second book of In Aristotelis Categorias, 201B, where he highlights his own activity as translator of fundamental texts of Greek wisdom, which allows him to contribute to the completion and perfecting of the civilizing mission of the Roman Empire.

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mine, in its most intimate origins, the incorrupta veritas of being33. Logic itself assumes the duty of putting the human mind, in the course of its most complex scientific operation, in the same condition in which it finds itself spontaneously in mathematical investigations.Through logic the mind works upon definite notions which have the assured normative stability lacking in natural things.These notions bring the mind nearer to the immutability of true forms, which are necessary for knowing. There is nothing strange, therefore, in the fact that Boethius identifies the object of logic with the primordial essentiae («quaedam prima natura ex quibus omnia velut ex aliquo fonte manarent»): only through the knowledge of them, in fact, is it possible to know also other, inferior realities, which issue from them in the order of a decreasing ontological perfection. The first codifier of logic, Aristotle, by taking note of the infinity of the corporeal res as the object of investigation of philosophy, sought to fix, in a restricted number of genres, the classifications of the realities which, in so far as they are defined, can become the object of science (scientiae subiectum). Such a mental operation leads to the formulation of the ten categories, and the establishment of a disciplina rerum et vocum significantium: as the greatest genres of reality, the categories are also the principles from which all existents receive their manner of being34. 33

Cfr. In Isagogen Porphyrii, ed. secunda, ibid., 73AB, pp. 139,1-18: «Quare necesse erat eos falli qui abiecta scientia disputandi de rerum natura perquirerent. Nisi enim prius ad scientiam venerit quae ratiocinatio veram teneat disputandi semitam, quae veri similem, et agnoscere quae fida, quae possit esse suspecta, rerum incorrupta veritas ex ratiocinatione non potest inveniri. Cum igitur veteres saepe multis lapsi erroribus falsa quaedam et sibimet contraria in disputatione colligerent atque id fieri inpossibile videretur ut de eadem re contraria conclusione facta utraque essent vera quae sibi dissentiens ratiocinatio conclusisset, cuique ratiocinationi credi oporteret esset ambiguum, visum est prius disputationis ipsius veram atque integram considerare naturam, qua cognita tum illud quoque quod per disputationem inveniretur, an vere comprehensum esset, posset intellegi. Hinc igitur profecta est logicae peritia disciplinae, quae disputandi modos atque ipsas ratiocinationes internoscendi vias parat, ut quae ratiocinatio nunc quidem falsa, nunc autem vera sit, quae vero semper falsa, quae numquam falsa, possit agnosci». For dissensiones philosophorum cfr. above, cap. 1, pp. 31-36. 34 Cfr. In Isagogen Porphyrii, ed. prima, I, 2, 9D-10C, ed. Brandt, pp. 5,14-7,2; In Isagogen Porphyrii, ed. secunda, I, 4, 75AB, p. 143,14-23; In Aristotelis Categorias, I, 160B-161B.

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The philosophical efficacy of the categories is two-fold: 1) Their utilization allows for the avoidance of ambiguity, since they impose the establishment, in a determined number of logical values, of the greatest generalities of human approaches to things which are the object of science. Aristotle circumvented the temptation to subsume all the concepts under a generic common denominator, such as ens or unum. In this way, he succeeded in overcoming analogies and confusions among signifiying terms by delineating with precision the privileged mental paths along which one may correctly pursue the infinite, individual, historical, and accidental forms which manifest the absoluteness of truth35. 2) On the other hand, the objective truth which the mind seeks to describe by operating with categorical classification cannot belong to the world of diversity and mutability. Furthermore, in order to be able to become the object of secure knowledge, it is necessary to presuppose that this objective truth enjoys those characteristics of immutability, endurance, and rigorous definition which are the essential conditions of true science. Each category describes, for this reason, an objective manifestation of the truth of being (i. e., essentiae), which becomes visible in the world of mutable appearances. One can say, therefore, that the categories are in some way «adunatae corporibus».Yet, the mind is obliged to presuppose that they also really subsist in a perfect ontological condition. In truth, however, regardless of his purely instrumental reworking of the names in the list proposed in De institutione arithmetica, Boethius does not identify the categoriae of logic with the immutable essentiae presented in his mathematical writings as realities perfect in themselves and as true existents. As products of the mind, the categories are not ‘being’, except insofar as they are names (that is, being is predicated of each one of them); and one cannot presuppose that they participate in some way in a common substance or nature, which may be called ens or bonum36. 35 Cfr. In Isagogen Porphyrii, ed. secunda, I, 4, 75AB, pp. 143,14-144,1; ibid., III, 7, 108C-109B, pp. 221,13-222,22; ibid., III, 8, 110C-111A, pp. 226,1-227,7. 36 Cfr. ibid., I, 4, 75BC, p. 144,1-6: «Quae quidem genera a se omnibus differentiis distributa sunt nec quicquam videntur habere commune nisi tantum nomen, quoniam omnia ‘esse’ praedicantur: quippe substantia est, qualitas est,

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This means that the nature of the objects of logic – which, emerging from logic, then become the objects of all the sciences – does not coincide directly with the nature of the objects of wisdom, toward which all philosophy, along with the parade of sciences which constitute it, must necessarily tend37. All of this confirms, therefore, the persistence of an impassable hiatus between the manner of being in itself of things and their perception on the part of man.This seems to compromise, as the Academics wanted to say, Boethius’ entire philosophical project, decreeing the impossibility of overcoming the contradictions among the philosophers and the consequently incurable theoretical and ethical disorientation of human kind. On the one hand, the cognitive condition of the human subject limits him to the forms through which he represents the nature of things; on the other hand, scientia attempts to reconstruct the objective reality in itself of the known objects.Yet, the table of the ten categories is only one – although the most complete and most easily usable – among the great many mental structures which aid human intelligence in its drive to approach, always to a relative degree, the truth of being in itself.The same situation of a division between objective reality and its interior representation becomes evident also in the consideration of other instrumental classifications developed by logicians in order to define the meanings of the voces which correspond to the res in language and in thought38. In general, logical human judgment cannot presume the role of imposing itself as an objective description of things which corresponds to the mode or modes of being of their reality in itself. It expresses, on the contrary, the subject’s work of distinguishing between quantitas est, et de aliis omnibus ‘est’ verbum communiter praedicatur, sed non est eorum communis una substantia vel natura, sed tantum nomen». 37 Cfr. ibid., II, 4, 91AB, p. 180,4-19: the central question for philosophy must be the consideration of the «quid» of things; and, for this very motive, the philosophers, choosing from among the diverse meanings of the term genus, gave their attention only to the third, which means universal substance. 38 One may in fact substitute or superimpose other diversely functional divisions upon the division of meaning in the ten categories: for example, the fourpart division into universal and particular substance, and universal and particular accident.Within this fourfold partition one finds another complementary type of order for the same conceptual fields, which, in the table of categories, are indicated by the distinction between the first (i. e. substance) and the other nine predicates, which adhere in it; cfr. In Aristotelis Categorias, I, 169C-170B.

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true and false in the relationship between words and meanings. It corresponds to the subject’s interior language, the formal verbal formulation of which does not belong to the sphere of being of things, which, as such, are always and only ‘true’39. It is obvious that «there cannot be true science if there does not really exist that which science knows»40.The existence of the knowable, however, does not condition in a unique way – neither univocally, nor necessarily – the constitution of science.The object does exist in its real objectivity, without depending upon whether the subject does or does not possess real knowledge of it41.Yet, the subject may possess diverse forms of knowledge of the same object: and every one of these forms, if correctly acquired and developed, reflects ‘some’ aspect of the reality in itself. In other words, the diverse forms of knowledge – each one in its own perspective – do not cease to be entirely ‘true’. For example, mathematics and physics may teach considerably different notions regarding the nature of the same thing, as in the case of the line and of the surface. And grammar and dialectic propose differentiated visions regarding the nature of the same object, that is, of discourse42. The fact that one of these two disciplines is true does not imply the falsity of the other: while it is evident that both sciences, teaching diverse things regarding the same reality (but not necessarily contradictory, and, furthermore, usefully complementary), contribute to the subject’s better approach to the ‘true’ nature of the thing43.The very multiplicity of ‘sciences’, 39

Cfr. ibid., 181AB. Ibid., II, 229A: «Quoniam scientia ad aliquid est (scibilis enim rei scientia dicitur), non poterit esse scientia, nisi sit res aliqua quae sciri possit». 41 Cfr. ibid., 230BC: «Scibile ergo et scientiam non esse simul illa res probat, quod si quis rem scibilem tollat, scientiam quoque sustulerit (nulla potest enim scientia permanere, si res quae sciri possit intereat), at si scibile esse constituas, non omnino scientia consequitur. Infantibus enim ea nobis quae nunc novimus erant et in suae naturae substantia permanebant, sed eorum apud nos scientia non erat. Multae quoque sunt artes quas esse quidem in suae naturae ratione perspicimus, quarum neglectus scientiam sustulit. Multumque ego ipse iam metuo ne hoc verissime de omnibus studiis liberalibus dicatur». 42 Cfr. Introductio ad syllogismos categoricos, 762C: «Non enim una atque eadem diversarum ratio disciplinarum, cum sit diversissimis disciplinis una atque eadem substantia materies. Aliter enim de qualibet orationis parte grammatico, aliter dialectico disserendum est, nec eodem modo lineam vel superficiem mathematicus ac physicus tractant». 43 Cfr. ibid., 762C: «Quo fit ut altera alteram non impediat disciplina, sed 40

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developed by humanity in the course of its history for approaching natural truth, offers a confirmation of the principle that knowledge does not reflect in the subject, except in a relative way, the original complexity of the object.

4. Philosophy and reality The problem of restoring the identity between the objects of knowledge and science, and the objects of wisdom – that is among mental concepts-productions and the reality of essences – is, in short, the first and fundamental problem of philosophy, which is the discipline treating the truth of the mental formulae which express reality. This explains why the Neoplatonic commentators on Aristotle attributed great importance to the questions related to the nature of universals, since the veracity itself of the objects of logic cannot exclude their effective correspondence with the ultimate reality of things.To attribute a scientific basis to the methods of philosophy is the equivalent of asking oneself what really corresponds to such objects and, therefore, whether they exist effectively or not44. The problem is resolved, according to Boethius, by transferring the question from ontology to gnoseology.The difference is not between the cognitive essence of the object of logic and the real essence of the object of metaphysics, but between the comprehensibility of the res and its effective reality.The cognitive representation need not always and necessarily be identical with the known object in order not to be false. Furthermore, the universal notion need not necessarily involve the existence in the same manner in which the corresponding res exists, and in which the primordial essentia – in which all participate – exists. In contrast, it is important to recognize for the future of philosophy that there

multorum consideratione coniuncta fiat vera naturae atque ex omnibus explicata cognitio». 44 Cfr. In Isagogen Porphyrii, ed. prima, I, 10, 19CD, ed. Brandt, pp. 25,20-26,10: the response to the first question of Porphyry regarding the nature of the universals (whether they are real or not) must necessarily be affirmative, in that, if one were to negate genres and species, they would cancel the existence of those things which, in so far as they reenter into the genres and species, truly are («res omnes quae vere sunt»).

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may exist between knowledge and the known object a difference which, without implicating falsity in the former, derives from the formal intervention of the subject in the cognitive operation. With this affirmation Boethius returns, even in the first pages of his philosophical works, to the presupposition of Neoplatonic gnoseology, according to which true intelligence necessarily modifies the nature of the object ‘in itself ’.This occurs precisely (as Plato teaches) in order to know the object, since the intellect assimilates the object to its own manner of being by abstracting it. Error arises from the production of illicit compositions among representations of things which are not able to be joined in nature, as in the case of the centaur.The correct intellective process, however, takes place by filtering knowledge through the operations of division and abstraction, which are objective (i. e., natural and necessary), but autonomously carried out by the subject. These operations belong to rational intelligence, which strives to introduce distinctions in the images which the senses communicate to it in a still confused state45. The reality of the universals is, therefore, necessarily in corporeal things, but their intellection is separated from sensible things: «sunt», or «subsistunt in corporalibus atque in sensibilibus, intelleguntur autem praeter sensibilia».Their existence is in the individuals, but the true notion which corresponds to them is in the intelligibles. In the same object, in fact, two diverse cognitive potentialities can subsist at once, depending on the condition under which the subject considers them. Thus, one may consider the same line to be curved or convex, according to two different 45 Cfr. In Isagogen Porphyrii, ed. secunda, I, 11, 84BD, ed. Brandt, pp. 164,3165,7: «Haec quidem est ad praesens de propositis quaestio; quam nos (…) hac ratiocinatione solvemus. Non enim necesse esse dicimus omnem intellectum qui ex subiecto quidem fit, non tamen ut sese ipsum subiectum habet, falsum et vacuum videri. In his enim solis falsa opinio ac non potius intellegentia est quae per compositionem fiunt. (…) Quodsi hoc per divisionem et abstractionem fiat, non quidem ita res sese habet ut intellectus est, intellectus tamen ille minime falsus est: sunt enim plura quae in aliis esse suum habent, ex quibus aut omnino separari non possunt, aut, si separata fuerint, nulla ratione subsistunt. (…) Omnes enim huiusmodi res incorporeas in corporibus esse suum habentes sensus cum ipsis nobis corporibus tradit, at vero animus, cui potestas est et disiuncta componere et composita resolvere, quae a sensibus confusa et corporibus coniuncta traduntur ita distinguit, ut incorpoream naturam per se ac sine corporibus in quibus est concreta, speculetur et videat».

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intellections and on the basis of two different definitions of the same object. In the same manner, the universals subsist in one mode, i. e., in the individuals, but they are the object of the intelligence in another mode, i. e., as if they were separated from bodies46. Philosophers had divergent visions regarding the universals in so far as they contemplated them under different perspectives. Plato considered them as substances separated from bodies, in as far as they are the object of intellections of such a genre. Aristotle, however, considered them as universalized intellections of the truth of subsistent realities in the sensible world47. On the one hand, Boethius notes that such diversity of opinion between the two cannot be resolved except at the highest speculative level («altioris enim est philosophiae»); and he also explains that he seems now to prefer the doctrine of Aristotle only because he is commenting on the Isagoge of Porphyry, which is an introduction to Aristotelian logic48.Yet, Boethius’ plan already allows one to foresee how the previously mentioned project of a final recovery 46 Cfr. ibid., 85A-86A, pp. 165,14-167,12: «Ita haec cum accipit animus permixta corporibus, incorporalia dividens speculatur atque considerat. Nemo ergo dicat falso nos lineam cogitare quoniam ita eam mente capimus quasi praeter corpora sit, cum praeter corpora esse non possit: non enim omnis qui ex subiectis rebus capitur intellectus aliter quam sese ipsae res habent falsus putandus est, sed, ut superius dictum est, ille quidem qui hoc in compositione facit falsus est, ut cum hominem atque equum iungens putat esse centaurum; qui vero id in divisionibus et abstractionibus assumptionibusque ab his rebus in quibus sunt efficit, non modo falsus non est, verum etiam solus id quod in proprietate verum est invenire potest. Sunt igitur huiusmodi res in corporalibus atque in sensibilibus, intelleguntur autem praeter sensibilia, ut eorum natura perspici et proprietas valeat comprehendi. (…) Subsistunt ergo circa sensibilia, intelleguntur autem praeter corpora. Neque enim interclusum est ut duae res eodem in subiecto sint ratione diversae, ut linea curva atque cava, quae res cum diversis definitionibus terminentur diversusque earum intellectus sit, semper tamen in eodem subiecto reperiuntur: eadem enim linea cava, eadem curva est. Ita quoque generibus et speciebus, id est singularitati et universalitati, unum quidem subiectum est, sed alio modo universale est, cum cogitatur, alio singulare, cum sentitur in rebus his in quibus esse suum habet. His igitur terminatis omnis, ut arbitror, quaestio dissoluta est. Ipsa enim genera et species subsistunt quidem alio modo, intelleguntur vero alio, et sunt incorporalia, sed sensibilibus iuncta subsistunt in sensibilibus, intelleguntur vero ut per semet ipsa subsistentia ac non in aliis esse suum habentia». 47 Cfr. ibid., 86A, p. 167,12-15: «Sed Plato genera et species ceteraque non modo intellegi universalia, verum etiam esse atque praeter corpora subsistere putat,Aristoteles vero intellegi quidem incorporalia atque universalia, sed subsistere in sensibilibus putat». 48 Cfr. ibid., 86A, p. 167,15-20.

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of the concord between the two great masters of antiquity – proposed by Boethius as the final scope of his entire philosophical work49 – must be precisely entrusted to a final clarification of the gnoseological implications of the problems regarding the subsistence of universals. Boethius is now capable of extending the same perspective, which allows him to resolve the question of universals, to the more general explanation of the irresolvable difference between the simple objectivity of being in itself and the complex and differentiated modes in which the res come to be known according to each one of the various sciences worked out by the ancient sages. In this way, even the surface multiplicity of the dissension of opinions among the philosophers, which had determined the crisis of ancient thought, can be adequately resolved as the consequence of the fact that they had formulated their diverse doctrines surrounding the same object in reference to different areas of scientific investigation. It must be recognized that human knowledge – obliged to take its cues from corporeal faculties, i. e., senses and imagination, which put it into contact with nature – can represent the truth of the object of wisdom, unified in itself, only in a partial mode and under indefinite forms, either numerically, as the stars in the sky, or qualitatively.This does not prevent, however, such an object, in so far as it is real, from being partially ‘known’, i. e., as objectively existing in a finite mode on the natural plane and, therefore, in itself really knowable. Its indefinability pertains not to its manner of being, but to the manner of knowing on the part of the knowing subject. Boethius formulated this observation, only in passing, in his commentary on the ninth chapter of De interpretatione, while explaining the difference between ‘contingent’ and ‘necessary’. Yet, this idea comes weighted with consequences for epistemology, confirming the importance which the adhesion to the Neoplatonic distinction between the objectivity of the representative capacity of the subject and that of the reality of the known object assumes within Boethius’ philosophical system50. The difference among the re49

Cfr. above, note 5. The manner of being for the ‘contingent’ concerns the future and, unlike the manner of being for that which is ‘necessary’ (the object of philosophy), it de50

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sults of the numerous sciences, which treat the same object under a variety of forms and with diverse cognitive instruments, instead of remaining the principle of fragmentation and contradiction among diverse subjects, must transform itself into a reason for collaboration and reciprocal consolidation among the various fields of research. Its value comes from being a motivating principle for philosophy, intended, however, not as a rigid acquisition of data, but as a research in progress.The scope of this research, even if it were to remain unreachable for humanity in this life, will always be the achievement of a common comprehension of the truth.The contradictions occurring in the teachings of others, if it does not lead to useless doctrinal rigidities emerging from the desire to show off before an ignorant public, allows each researcher to submit his own positions to verification in the pursuit of cognitive progress common to the entirety of humanity51. Every scientific form of knowledge is objective and necessary in itself, in so far as it reflects a necessary mode of appearance of the res to the intelligence of the subject.Yet, if judged in relation to the complexity of the investigative way pursued by philosophy in the search for wisdom, its particular results must be considered as stepping-stones toward further verifications in the other fields. One must value them as forms of ‘probable’ knowledge pends upon chance. It is neither ‘real’, nor ‘known’, not only for one who knows it, but also even considered in itself. Nevertheless, it can come about that even past and present events, in themselves necessary, appear indefinable and uncertain. But this depends only upon the limits of the subject who knows them and not upon their objective reality: for example, the number of the stars in the sky is «natura notissimum» but «nobis ignoratum». Cfr. In Perierm., ed. secunda, III, 9, 490D, p. 192,2-11: «In his quidem id est praeteritis et praesentibus rerum definitus eventus est, in futuris vero et contingentibus indefinitus est et incertus, nec solum nobis ignorantibus, sed naturae. Nam licet ignoremus nos utrum astra paria sint an imparia, unum tamen quodlibet definite in natura stellarum esse manifestum est. Et hoc nobis quidem est ignoratum, naturae vero notissimum. Sed non ita hodie me visurum esse amicum aut non visurum nobis quidem quid eveniat ignoratum est, notum vero naturae». 51 Cfr. Introductio ad syllogismos categoricos, 761C-762C: «Sed qui ad hoc opus lector accedit, (…) si quid est quod discrepet, ne statim obstrepat, sed ratione consulta, quid ipse sentiat quid nos afferamus, veriore mentis acumine et subtiliore consideratione diiudicet. (…) At si iam quisque suae scientiae defensor esse cupidus malit (…), si, inquam, malunt vindicare quam vertere quae vulgatis semel studiis imbiberunt, nemo expetit ut priora condemnent, sed ut maiora quaedam construant atque altiora coniungant». The passage cited immediately above in note 42 immediately follows in the text.

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– i. e., things still to be proven, to be tested («probare») or to be confirmed («adprobare») – and not as forms of ‘necessary’ knowledge52. Even if every scientia is a habit, that is, a permanent disposition which must not come about except through the accidental intervention of an external force53, nevertheless it must not, for this reason, be considered immutable. All the diverse paths of philosophy are directed toward the achievement of a common and single plan. It is, for this reason, evident that the results of the investigations fulfilled in the various disciplines are able to be corrected along the way on the basis of a constant comparison and in view of a reciprocal aim toward perfection54. For this same motive, the presentation of the philosopher and of philosophy in the writings of Boethius has, or seems to have, an oscillating, if not double course. Sometimes, in fact, the philosopher is rigorously identified with the teacher or demonstrator, in so far as he is the one who takes recourse to necessary arguments (or, better, «probable and necessary» and «necessary and not probable», but not «probable and not necessary»). Philosophy, therefore, is presented as the acquisition of non-contradictable forms of knowledge regarding the truth, the immutablity of which it reflects55. Sometimes, however, the dynamic and pro52 Cfr. In Topica Ciceronis commentaria, II, 1081D-1082A: «Quae enim necessaria sunt, haec propria considerantur natura. Quae vero probabilia sunt plurimorum iudicium exspectant. Ea namque sunt probabilia, quae videntur vel omnibus vel pluribus vel maxime famosis atque praecipuis, vel secundum unamquamque artem scientiamque eruditis, ut quod medico in medicina, geometrae in geometria, caeterisque in propria studiorum facultate veritatis». 53 Cfr. In Aristotelis Categorias, III, 242AC. Such an observation is connected even to the situation, already mentioned, of the character of Boethius at the beginning of the Consolatio, presented as a philosopher who, by an accident through external causes, has forgotten his own true knowledge. 54 Cfr. De topicis differentiis, I, 1, 3-6, 1173B-1174B, ed. Nikitas cit. (above, note 21), p. 2,5-19: the intent of this work, according to the presentation of the author, is to respond to the need for harmonizing the differences between the two diverse scholastic traditions – Greek and Latin – regarding the topica, on the basis of the principle for which philosophy pursues its own unique plan («ad perfectionem speculationis») through differentiated paths. 55 Cfr. ibid., I, 1182AB, pp. 18,17-19,14: «Philosophus vero ac demonstrator de sola tantum veritate pertractat atque ideo, sive sint probabilia sive non sint, nihil refert, modo dum sint necessaria. Hic quoque his duabus speciebus utitur argumenti, quae sunt probabile ac necessarium, necessarium ac non probabile. Patet igitur in quo philosophus ab oratore ac dialectico in propria consideratione dissideat, in eo scilicet quod illis probabilitatem, huic veritatem constat esse

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gressive nature of knowledge is accentuated, and the reader is exhorted not to remain anchored, out of laziness or arrogance (the principal vices which obstruct wisdom), to the notions gradually acquired through the study of the scientific disciplines56. In the first case Boethius assumes the consideration of philosophy as the result of the cognitive contribution formed by the various sciences, being, each in its own field,‘necessary’. In the second case, Boethius emphasizes the goal of philosophy in acquiring a knowledge of a superior order which allows one to go beyond the limitations of the rational human subject. And since all of philosophy is knowledge in progress, one may correctly describe Boethius as the bearer of a conception – one with no little significance for its influence on later medieval thinkers – of true philosophy as the history of philosophy. Philosophy is a collective process of humanity’s sapiential growth, nourished by the confrontation among the opinions of the better searchers for the truth, by the overcoming of inadequate forms of speculation (in particular, the Stoics are often an object of Boethius’ polemic), and by the verification of the more adequate schools of thought (in his logical works, above all, this would be Aristotelianism, and in the Consolatio, Platonism and Neoplatonism)57. It is now evident that, behind such a consideration of philosophy in constant progress, one finds the methodological model propositam. (…) Quo fit ut oratoribus quidem ac dialecticis haec principaliter facultas [scil. topicorum inventio] paretur, secundo vero loco philosophis. Nam in quo probabilia quidem omnia conquiruntur, dialectici atque oratores iuvantur; in quibus vero probabilia ac necessaria docentur, philosophicae demonstrationi ministratur ubertas». 56 Cfr. De syllogismis categoricis, I, 793D-794C: «Sed si qui ad hoc opus legendum accesserint ab his petitum sit ne in his quae nunquam attigerint statim audeant iudicare, neve, si quid in puerilibus disciplinis acceperint, id sacrosanctum iudicent, quandoquidem res teneris auribus accommodatas saepe philosophiae severior tractatus eliminat. Si quid vero in his non videbitur, ne statim obstrepant, sed, ratione consulta, quid ipsi opinentur, quidve nos ponimus, veriore mentis acumine et subtiliore pertractata ratione diiudicent». Cfr. also In Topica Ciceronis commentaria, II, prol., 1063BD; and a similar profession of an attitude open to the possible progress of knowing, even at the cost of renouncing that which one believes to have reached as something solidly demonstrated («ita non sum amator mei, ut ea quae semel effuderim meliori sententiae anteferre contendam»), concludes the Contra Eutychen et Nestorium (cfr. below the text cited within note 140). 57 Cfr. In Aristotelis Periermeneias, ed. secunda, III, 9, 491C, ed. Meiser, p. 193,2126;V, 12, 587BD, pp. 393,7-394,4.

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of Cicero. As an impressive example of this, Boethius, in a page of the commentary on the Topica, explicitly claims authorization from the Ciceronian method to propose an ameliorative correction for an opinion formulated by the Arpinian himself. Cicero, in fact, in the Tusculanae, proposes a definition of the concepts of ‘chance’ and ‘fortune’ which can be perfected on the basis of a different conception found in the Physics of Aristotle and which belongs, according to Boethius, to a higher philosophical level. Commenting on this operation, he clarifies that even if such a correction of Cicero’s words were to have sprung forth from his own personal reflection and not from an authoritative suggestion of Aristotle, the reader would have had to evaluate not the quality of the persons in conflict, but the validity and the reasonableness of the respective argumentations58. Cicero determined, however, his reductive conception of philosophy by the negative appraisal of the limits of the human capacity to approach the absolute; Boethius, on the contrary, convinced of the fact that similar contradictions often arise on account of the diverse perspectives of approach to a problem, grounds himself upon this reductive conception itself in order to defend a constructive evaluation of human knowledge, intended as the progressive approach of intelligence to the truth. In this same sense, in fact, once again in the commentary on the Topica, Boethius, turning to the theme of the inquisitive and open character of philosophical knowledge, emphasizes that, if human reason is always in movement, it is not because it renounces faith in the utility of its own acquisitions. On the contrary, the intelligence of man is constantly moved by a boundless love of truth, which does not allow it to rest content and to accept any sort of conciliatory deception. Reason strives to reach an absolutely superior end that ceaselessly attracts it59.

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5. The error of the ‘old philosophers’ The Boethian conception of Philosophy that has been described up to this point was destined to receive definitive consecration in the Consolatio, the true work of the author’s philosophical maturity in so far as it was the direct result of his ideal regarding the human participation in divine wisdom. When Philosophy appears to Boethius in prison, she is dressed in a garment which she herself has sewn with her own hands, and it is made of an «indissolubilis materia»60. Just as her garment is indestructible, so Wisdom is one and unalterable, and does not tolerate division into schools, currents of thought, or diverse and contrasting doctrinal specificities. Furthermore, it was the very presumption of the bad thinkers, incapable of preserving the authentic heredity of Socrates (and of his non-discordant disciples, Plato and Aristotle) that became a major cause of the persecutions and maltreatment suffered by Philosophy over the centuries. Boethius recognizes, without difficulty, the traces on the borders of her garment of the offenses committed by «the crowd of Epicureans and Stoics, and the others», who had ripped off small fringes.Waving this useless trophy, they went about vaunting their role as her spokesmen and carried into ruin those who had fallen into their deception61. Nevertheless, the efforts of those who continue to plunder partial and deceptive images of the truth can accomplish nothing against its superior solidity. Meanwhile, secure and unreachable, high above on her rock, the indefatigable mistress laughs at their vain attempts to lead her as a prisoner into their error62. The contempt of Philosophy for the exponents of the Hellenistic schools, who more than others had betrayed and corrupt60 Cfr. Consolatio Philosophiae, I, pr. 1, 3-6, 588A-590A, ed. Moreschini, p. 5,12-24. 61 Cfr. ibid., pr. 3, 7-8, 607A-608A, p. 10,20-28: «Cuius hereditatem cum deinceps Epicureum vulgus ac Stoicum ceterique pro sua quisque parte raptum ire molirentur meque reclamantem renitentemque velut in partem praedae traherent, vestem quam meis texueram manibus disciderunt abreptisque ab ea panniculis totam me sibi cessisse credentes abiere. In quibus quoniam quaedam nostri habitus vestigia videbantur, meos esse familiares imprudentia rata, nonnullos eorum profanae multitudinis errore pervertit». 62 Cfr. ibid., 11-14, 608A-610A, pp. 10,34-11,46.

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ed the true teaching of her sincere followers, later becomes more explicit when she describes some false positions assumed by those schools in the gnoseological field. If vera philosophia is one and indivisible, every erroneous evaluation regarding the order of cognitive processes and the order of the criteria which regulate the relationships between subject and object in the formation of science represents a dangerous deviation from the correct comprehension of the reality of things. Boethius becomes aware of how the intervention of authentic philosophers is necessary and cannot be remitted, since they are entrusted with the task of overcoming the consequences – not only theoretical, but also moral – of an inadequate appreciation of the principles which regulate the universe. In a poem of the fifth book of the Consolatio, Boethius openly exposes the ancient Stoics as the main perpetrators of the dangerous diffusion of this deceptive perspective:

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Quondam porticus attulit obscuros nimium senes, qui sensus et imagines e corporibus extimis credant mentibus imprimi, ut quondam celeri stilo mos est aequore paginae quae nullas habeat notas pressas figere litteras. Sed mens si propriis vigens nihil motibus explicat sed tantum patiens iacet notis subdita corporum cassasque in speculi vicem rerum reddit imagines, unde haec sic animis viget cernens omnia notio? Quae vis singula perspicit aut quae cognita dividit? Quae divisa recolligit alternumque legens iter nunc summis caput inserit nunc decedit in infima, tum sese referens sibi veris falsa redarguit?

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Haec est efficiens magis longe causa potentior quam quae materiae modo impressas patitur notas. Praecedit tamen excitans ac vires animi movens vivo in corpore passio. Cum vel lux oculos ferit vel vox auribus instrepit, tum mentis vigor excitus quas intus species tenet ad motus similes vocans notis applicat exteris introrsumque reconditis formis miscet imagines63.

Boethius’ extraordinary poetic sensibility in the verses of the Consolatio wisely aspires to reinvent a lyrical language for the dying Latin tradition. It often succeeds in giving a valuable metrical dress to the dense philosophical expositions which are imprisoned without constriction in refined formal structures and rhythmic cadences borrowed with liberty and with great respect from classical models. In this case, in particular, Boethius entrusts the exposition of two diverging gnoseological theories to a wise utilization – more efficacious upon the plane of images, and, nevertheless, absolutely rigorous and precise under the technical aspect – of the late Latin philosophical terminology. Many of the expressions used in this poem to describe the paths of human knowledge, despite the evident stylistic liberty of the poet in employing them, obey, with precision, the rules fixed by the ancient sources – Cicero above all – for translating into Latin the complex logical-gnoseological concepts worked out by the various Greek schools. Boethius inserted none of the words used in these verses as bearers of philosophical significance without a precise doctrinal reason. In a clear and unusual manner, the refined chisel of the poet knew how to subtly express images endowed with

63 Ibid.,V, m. IV, 850B-853B, pp. 151-152. In the last verses (33-40) I prefere the punctuation in the preceding editions to the one chosen by Moreschini («…passio, cum… …instrepit.Tum…»), because of the syntactical opposition between «cum…» and «tum…».

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intense lyrical efficacy, making particular use of the lexicon which was fit for a complex exposition of gnoseological theory. It is evident that, in attempting to translate these verses into a modern language, it is opportune, if one wishes to render better and correctly the complex philosophical density of the words, to turn to periphrastic speech, which does not loose sight of the technical specificity of the terms. One must renounce, in part, the immediacy of the rhythm and the concise sonorities which make the Latin so elegant:

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The Porch brought forth in ancient times Certain very obscure old men, Who believed that sensible and imaginative forms [of knowledge Drawn from external corporeal bodies Impress themselves upon minds, Just as sometimes the swift pen Is accustomed to imprint letters On the flat surface of a wax tablet Which has not yet received any marks. But if it is true that the thriving mind Produces nothing from its own faculties, And, remaining passive and inert, Is subject to impressions coming from bodies, And reflects, like a mirror, Empty images of things – From whence, then, does this view that perceives all things Thrive so in human souls? What is the power that perceives particulars? Or what power divides the things known? And again, what power reunites the results of the division And therefore, following one way or another, Now raises its head to the highest levels of truth, Now descends to the lower margins, Now, finally, returning to itself, It unmasks falsities with truths? Certainly this interior force, The efficient cause of knowing, is more powerful Than that which only experiences, Like material things, signs impressed from the outside. The sensible affection must come first, it is true, Exciting and stirring into movement The faculties of the soul in a living body.

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But when the light wounds the eyes And the sound echoes in the ears, Now the vigour of the mind awakens: Recalling the ideal images, which it preserves internally, When similar external information arrives, It connects them to the impressions coming from outside; And to the forms which it hides within itself It joins sensible images.

If the poem, as often occurs in the final books of the Consolatio, effectively provides an erudite verse commentary upon the doctrinal exposition contained in the preceding prose, it is evident that the gnoseological error denounced previously by Philosophy (and presented as typical of the obtuseness and the ignorance of uncultivated minds) is here polemically identified above-all as the position defended by the Stoics.Their doctrine is opposed by the Aristotelian teaching regarding the power of the intellectual soul to abstract from particulars. The followers of Zeno reduce the function carried out by the knowing subject to a pure receptive passivity toward the information coming from the senses. In turn, more in depth, this information is coagulated in the constitution of images corresponding to the grade – more unitary and representative, but still passive – of the imagination64. It is clear that the sensus and the imagines of which Boethius speaks (v. 3) are the result of the impression of perceived things upon the soul at the two lower, but also more determinative, grades of Stoic gnoseology: these lower grades produce and orient the entire formation of the cognitive image upon a terrain which is absolutely open to external modification65.This part of the soul is, therefore, similar in itself to a tabula rasa, a soft surface, free of writing, on which a pen traces, with greater or lesser depth according to the intensity of the pressure, the design of the letters (vv. 4-9)66. 64 Cfr. M. POHLENZ, Die Stoa. Geschichte einer geistigen Bewegung, 2 voll., Göttingen 1959, I, pp. 54-63, esp. pp. 55-56. 65 On the significance of imagines as products of sensible affection deposited in the sensitive memory, cfr. also In Isagogen Porphyrii, ed. secunda, I, 1, 71C, ed. Brandt, pp. 136,17-137,3. And again regarding the binomial sensus and imaginationes, cfr. In Aristotelis Periermeneias, ed. secunda, I, 1, 406A-407A, ed. Meiser, pp. 27,4-29,11. 66 With the term pagina one indicates in antiquity a surface written on only one side, such as a papyrus, or the surface of a wax tablet: cfr. S. RIZZO, Il lessico

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Personified Philosophy, who – one can assume from the context – pronounces in first person the words of the poem, decisively condemns this doctrine of the «old» Stoic philosophers, «obscure» in so far as they were disoriented and blinded by materialist prejudice. Their gnoseological doctrine can be easily presented as an actual philosophical ‘heresy’, particularly in so far as it is the assumption, for polemical reasons and rivalries among schools, of a position separated from the shared opinion of the more authentic friends of the truth. The choice of considering the subject as a passive receptor of corporeal images appears in all its gravity when it is assumed as the foundation of an entire speculative system, such as that which took place in the case of the Stoics.The construction of all three philosophical disciplines – logic, physics, and ethics – is in fact oriented by the presupposition that the understanding of the truth by the subject is purely the result of an inert and passive disposition, submitted to the modifications which produce upon its surface the ‘impressions’ emerging from the external world.The expression used here by Boethius for indicating the effect of such impressions or modification is nota (v. 13). It is a word which Cicero, in the Topica and, in turn, Boethius – either as a translator of Aristotle or as a commentator on Cicero – already applied to the Aristotelian shmei'on or suvmbolon, which indicate in general the result of the impression upon the soul of a meaning expressed by the vox67. Like the Augustinian signum (a term which may be correctly applied to this because of the applications which were made of it in the log-

filologico degli umanisti, Roma 1984 (Sussidi eruditi, 26), p. 35.The original technical significance of stilus as a metallic instrument for scratching the wax tablets and the same image of the pressure with which the letters are traced confirm that Boethius refers, in these verses, to the writing instrument most in use in antiquity – and also in the Middle Ages – for private writing (with a clear reference, therefore, to the Stoic image of the tabula rasa, frequently used by the entire tradition of medieval and modern empiricism). 67 Cfr. BOETHIUS’ translation of ARISTOTELES, De interpretatione, 1, 16a, ed. L. Minio-Paluello, Bruges - Paris 1965 (Aristoteles latinus, II/1), p. 5,8; cfr. also MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, Topica, 8, 35, ed. Friedrich cit. (above, cap. 1, note 13), p. 432,33-34: «Itaque hoc quidem Aristoteles suvmbolon appellat, quod latine est nota»; and again BOETHIUS, In Topica Ciceronis commentaria, IV, 1111B: «Nota vero est quae rem quamque designat». – One also observes in the poem of Boethius the play upon the ambiguity of notae, used in v. 8 to designate the letters or the written words.

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ical-semantic literature of the early Middle Ages)68, the term nota expresses – above all when it is used in reference to the Ciceronian discussions regarding Hellenistic gnoseology – the particular connotation of the truth which characterizes, according to the Stoics, the content of an evident experience (that is, the fantasiva, in Latin, visum)69, while also allowing one to distinguish it in a definite manner from other forms of knowledge («veritatis nota»)70. Explaining their doctrine in the Academica of Cicero, the Stoics pretend even to found their fundamental weapon for opposing the detractors of sensory evidence upon the very definition of the nota as the logical connotation of the truth arising from the immediate contact with the objective reality of the external res (cfr. also Boethius, v. 29: «impressae notae»)71. In response to this denigration of psychic activity by the Stoic materialist empiricism, Philosophy seeks to recover the multiple productive energies of knowledge which fecundate the interior life of the human soul (vv. 10-25).The «motus» from which the «mens» draws its vigor («vigens) (vv. 10-11) are not, in fact, the passions (according to the meaning which the expression «animi motus» assumes with great frequency in the writings of Cicero)72. Describing them as «proprii motus» of the mind, 68

Cfr. AURELIUS AUGUSTINUS, De dialectica, PL 32, 1410, edd. B. D. Jackson J. Pinborg, Dordrecht - Boston 1975, p. 86; De doctrina christiana, I, 2, 2, PL 34, 1920, ed. Martin cit. (above, cap. 1, note 169), p. 7,1-14; De magistro, 1, 2-3, PL 32, 1195-1196, ed. Daur cit. (above, cap. 1, note 147), pp. 159,71-160,20; etc. Cfr.A. MAIERÙ, «Signum» dans la culture médiévale, in Sprache und Erkenntnis im Mittelalter, Akten des VI Intern. Congresses für Mittelalterliche Philosophie (Bonn, 29. aug. - 3. sept. 1977), Berlin 1981, 2 voll. (Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 13/1-2), I, pp. 51-72; D’ONOFRIO, Fons scientiae. La dialettica cit. (above, cap. 1, note 7), p. 159 and note 1. 69 Cfr. MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, Lucullus (Academica priora), 6, 18, ed. Müller cit. (above, cap. 1, note 2), p. 30,12-13.The correspondence between visum and fantasiva is explicitly confirmed by BOETHIUS, In Isagogen Porphyrii, ed. prima, I, 10, 19B, ed. Brandt, p. 25,8-11, in order to indicate the images which the mind recognizes in the information coming from the senses or even (connecting two different philosophical meanings of the Greek term) those images which, as in the case of the centaur, the mind constructs artificially from the sensory data. 70 Cfr. MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, ibid., 11, 33, p. 36,31-35. 71 Cfr. ibid., 11, 35, p. 37,29-32: «Non enim urguent, ut coarguant neminem ulla de re posse contendere nec adseverare sine aliqua eius rei, quam sibi quisque placere dicit, certa et propria nota». For the probablist reply to this doctrine, cfr. ibid., 26, 84, p. 57,28-31; cfr. also above, cap. 1, pp. 24-25 and note 33-36. 72 Cfr. MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, De officiis, I, 6, 19, ed. Müller cit. (above, cap.

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Boethius wants to indicate by these terms the organizational processes according to which knowledge articulates itself. They correspond to that which we intend when we speak of ‘faculties’ of the soul, arranged along a succession of grades in reference to a different organization of data, and to the greater or lesser dignity of the result73. Before taking into consideration other inferior manifestations of human cognitive activity, the indignation of Philosophy suddenly lifts the veil from the most elevated and precious degree of knowledge, the essential function of which would be dangerously sacrificed by the Stoic «a posteriori» interpretation of the mechanism of knowledge (vv. 16-17): the cernens omnia notio, which regulates and governs, above every other principle, the psychological sphere («animis viget»). It seems essentially to identify itself with the highest, all-embracing, and almost divine view, which Philosophy herself would acquire when she arrives at the contemplation of the collectivity of all things («haec… notio», that is, in a certain sense, «that which is my own faculty of knowledge»). It is an image which effectively recalls the solemn description with which Boethius, at the beginning of the work, introduced his interlocutor.The dimension of her figure «was of uncertain size: now, in fact, she lowered herself to the accustomed dimension of men; now, however, she was pushing herself to touch heaven with loftiness of her head (summi vertices cacumine), and furthermore, when she raised her head still higher, she penetrated the very heavens and she was taken from the views of the men who were observing her»74.Again, as we will see further on, when she returns to allude to this highest level of knowledge, and invites men to follow her toward such heights in order to render 1, note 7), p. 8,29; 21, 73, p. 26, 11-12; 28, 100, p. 35,9; 36, 131, p. 45,12; 38, 136, p. 46,31; etc. 73 For a similar use of the syntagma motus animae (as a translation of the yuch'" kinhvsei" encountered in the philosophical language of Maximus the Confessor), cfr. IOHANNES SCOTUS ERIUGENA, Periphyseon, II, 23, PL 122, 572C-580A, ed. É. Jeauneau, 5 voll., Turnhout 1996-2003 (CCCM, 161-165), II, pp. 63,146973,1714. 74 Consolatio Philosophiae, I, pr. 1, 1-2, 588A, ed. Moreschini, pp. 4,3-5,12: «Mihi supra verticem visa est mulier (…) statura discretionis ambiguae. Nam nunc quidem ad communem sese hominum mensuram cohibebat, nunc vero pulsare caelum summi verticis cacumine videbatur; quae cum altius caput extulisset, ipsum etiam caelum penetrabat respicientiumque hominum frustrabatur intuitum». Cfr. even the assonance with v. 22 of the poem.

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themselves capable of recognizing the perfect, but never contradictory, order which thrives in all of creation, Philosophy herself speaks of it as the «peak of intelligence» (summae intelligentiae cacumen)75. Yet, even the term notio – here used to indicate the superior and regulating function of the human intelligence,capable of seizing the truth in its totality, without limitations or fragmentations – has a precise philosophical value of classical origin. Even according to the Ciceronian lexicon, notio or notitia rerum is the result of the re-cognition of reality as object.This refers to that acquisition of the interior truth on the part of the soul, which is related to the distinctive efficacy of the signifying notae, and which corresponds to that which the Greeks – according to their adhesion to either the Platonic tradition, or to the Stoic tradition – call respectively e[nnoia or provlhyi"76.The first case concerns a conception which comes from the interiority of the soul, or, moreover, from the most intimate noetic depths of the spiritual life.The second case, in accordance with Stoic materialism, concerns the pure, striking receptivity with which the mind gives its assent to sensible evidence.Aside from such divergent theories, however, Cicero’s notio is the principle of distinguishing the true from the false. It is the tribunal in which one discusses and judges the correspondence between the interior product of the mind and the exteriority of the res77. Here Boethius recovers the spiritual autonomy and supremacy of the cernens omnia notio in respect to every inferior activity of the intelligent soul: it coincides correctly with the highest cognitive function, the efficacy of which should not be put into the least doubt. It is, in fact, the highest criterion which allows man to reach the truth.Yet, this truth does not belong to the mode of appearance of objects communicated by the sense perceptions, being mutable and subject to accidents, but to the manner of be-

75 Cfr. ibid.,V, pr. 5, 12, 856A, p. 154,48-49: «Quare in illius summae intellegentiae cacumen, si possumus, erigamur». 76 Cfr. MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, Lucullus, 10, 30, p. 35,30-31. 77 Cfr. ibid., 11, 33, p. 36,29-31: «Quae ista regula est veri et falsi, si notionem veri et falsi propterea quod ea non possunt internosci nulla habemus?». Cfr. also: ID., ibid., 9, 27, pp. 33,37-34,3; 41, 128, p. 77,19-20; De natura deorum, I, 16, 43, ed. Müller cit. (above, cap. 1, note 25), p. 18,35-37; 18, 46, p. 20,7-8; II, 17, 45, p. 62,15-17; III, 7, 16, p. 112,29-31; De officiis, III, 20, 81, p. 116,2-4; etc.

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ing in itself of the things which exist. It can be judged only by an intuitive and unmediated penetration into the ultimate reality of all things, which have been gathered into their original mode of being (and, therefore, of their true being). The pure content of the totalizing notio, however, in so far as it coincides with the absolute truth, cannot be expressed analytically, but only in very general formulations. One can point to examples such as the first principles of Aristotelian logic, or to other veridical intuitions of the highest extension, which, though capable of having a decisive axiomatic value for all subordinate knowledge, cannot result immediately in an effective precision of determined and singularly comprehensible, conceptual fields. It follows that, in order to express itself in more precise manifestations of truth and to be applicable to definite and describable objects, the primordial intuition of the truth will have to be diluted within the lower levels, which will inevitably attenuate the stability and certainty of its contents. Suddenly, after the initial demand for the elevated spiritual origin of the truth intuited by the mind, Philosophy passes on to reclaim a recognition of the autonomy, apart from sensible materialism, even for the inferior activities with which the intelligence, descending along the grades of knowledge, articulates its science in forms ever less extended and, therefore, more determined and subject to the analytical and synthetic tools of logic (vv. 18-25). The initial view, being intuitive and omni-comprehensive, anticipates in itself and regulates the entire sphere of cognitive activities. Then a succession of minor potentialities articulates the self-generation of the forms determining the truth, which constitute, in their unity, the daily human processes of the evaluation and the organization of external reality. One power (vis) distinguishes single aspects of truths already collected into a unity within the universal notio (v. 18); another, almost at the same time, applies the diairetic method (i. e., divisio), actualizing the descent of meanings along the scale of genres and species (v. 19); another goes back over the itinerary of the preceding processes and applies to every step of the same scale, with the synthetic method, an exact definitio of the corresponding concept (vv. 20-23); and the same power, or perhaps another, achieves, as the result of the preceding movement of ascent and descent along the hierarchy of knowledge, the argu-

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mentative discretio of true and false, and unmasks error, comparing it to certainties previously acquired (vv. 24-25).This process does not involve, however, diverse faculties or forms substantially distinct from the soul, working independently one from the other, but a complex movement of a unifying and articulated interior force surrounding the objects themselves. It is a discursive rationality which modifies and substitutes from time to time its own procedures, in order to better approach a clear description of the manner of being of the known object. It is a progressive improvement of knowledge even if, in this way, reason distances itself from the stability of the universal notio by drawing secondary and multiple consequences and applications from it. It is evident, however, that this process of descent from the highest universal to the comprehensibility of the particular, in so far as it bears a diminution of the soul’s original perfection, will never be the result of the soul’s spontaneous self-degradation in movement toward the lower levels. Primordial intuitive knowledge, though coinciding with the supreme activity of the mind, would risk remaining immobile, infecund, and in every case unknown to the daily vivacity of the consciousness, if it had not been stimulated in some way by external factors to exit from the sphere of pure interiority and to project itself toward the world. For this reason, Philosophy calls upon sensible information, filtrated through the sensible instruments of the body, to carry out an important role as the occasional principle for the activation of knowledge. If, in fact, it is true that a gnoseology completely «a posteriori» would reduce the soul only to a ‘material cause’, that is, to a purely passive container of the intelligence (vv. 26-29), it is therefore necessary to recognize that without sensible experience, which produces the precise contact between the external world and the sphere of psychological interiority, the interior mind would remain immobile and no stimulus would inspire it to activate the ascending-descending pyramid of its operations. Thus, the passio – that is the affection that induces the receptive centers of exterior sensibility of the living body to initiate the reaction of the soul from which knowledge springs forth – must precede in chronological order (not, certainly, according to dignity or efficacy) the activity of the interior powers (vv. 30-32). The final verses of the poem actually present a theory, which

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seems directly inspired by the Aristotelian doctrine of abstraction78, of the complementarities of action between the intellectual part of the soul and the sensitive part. Intelligible knowledge depends upon the modification of the corporeal senses in respect to the results of external impressions; but there is also, in the complement and in the inverse of this dependence, a modification of the data coming from the senses on the basis of being situated in universal forms interiorly possessed by the intellective soul (vv. 33-40). In effect, in the fourth chapter of book G of De Anima, Aristotle speaks explicitly of the convergence of the sensitive faculty, which distinguishes the corporeal qualities, and the intellectual faculty (separated from corporeality), which is the source of the intelligible forms. The intellect recognizes the similarity of such forms with the images of external substances, the existence of which is recorded by the senses with the perception of the accidental qualities79. The operation of the intellect, allowed by the presence of the universal intelligible entities in the soul, rests, according to Aristotle, in a state of potential inactivity. Only after the senses have called intellective thought into action, can the forms actualize themselves in the consciousness80. It is not an accident, however, that, in order to explain the meaning of such intellective potentiality, he also introduced the image of the wax tablet, on which «there is nothing written in act»81. Leaving aside the problem of the relations between passive and active intellect, and the various solutions which the commentators on the De Anima had

78 LUCA OBERTELLO interprets it in this way in the commentary of his Italian translation: SEVERINO BOEZIO, La consolazione della Filosofia. Gli opuscoli teologici, Milano 1979 (I classici del pensiero), a c. di L. Obertello, p. 304, note 29: «Questi ultimi versi contengono le linee essenziali di una vera e propria gnoseologia di stampo aristotelico, assai simile a quella predominante poi nella Scolastica matura». 79 Cfr. ARISTOTELES, De anima, III, 4, 429ab; cfr. also THOMAS AQUINAS, Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, q. 2, a. 6, ad 3, ed. A. Dondaine, in Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P. M. edita, XXII/1, Roma 1975, pp. 66b,127-67a,133: «Homo praecognoscit singularia per imaginationem et sensum, et ideo potest applicare cognitionem universalem, quae est in intellectu, ad particulare: non enim proprie loquendo sensus aut intellectus cognoscunt, sed homo per utrumque, ut patet in I De anima». 80 Cfr. ARISTOTELES, ibid., 429b-430a. 81 Ibid., 430a: «w{sper ejn grammateivw/ w/'J mhqevn ejnupavrcei ejnteleceiva/ gegrammevnon».The assonance of these words is clear with v. 8 of Boethius’ poem.

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given it, the fact remains that Boethius considers – in a not quite ‘Aristotelian’ manner – the interior powers of the soul to be innate principles of cognitive activity, despite his conviction that their vigor is sustained and put into movement («excitus») by the occasional addition of the senses. Boethius confirms this idea twice in the final verses of the poem (vv. 36-40), though with different, but interchangeable words. He emphasizes either the presence to the mind of innate images of the truth («species» or «formae»), or the operation which the mind itself fulfills when, recognizing a similarity between these perfect ideal notions and the cognitive modifications coming from outside («motus»), it recalls («vocans») the innate images of truth from the silent deposit of the memory in order to apply their meaning to the information of the senses («notae», once more, and «imagines»). Only in this way, once such an encounter between the true interior and the external world has been realized (i. e., between ‘internal ideal images’ and ‘sensory images’ or ‘impressions coming from outside’), does the soul, according to Boethius, become capable of re-cognizing and determining the truth of known objects.

6. Neoplatonic gnoseology and the ‘overturning’ of the relationships between subject and object Boethius opposes the gnoseological materialism of the «old» Philosophers with a revival of the Peripatetic doctrine of knowledge, which was not, however, so radically empirist as it was in the original Aristotelian formulation. On this basis he emphasizes, on the one hand, the subject’s capacity for giving birth to knowledge; and he higlights, on the other hand, an eidetic innatism, thanks to which such an activity is granted to the subject by the «a priori» possession of the general forms of truth.These forms are the immutable models of reality: it is only through a comparison with these models that the intelligence can ‘re-cognize’ the true meaning of the data carried within it by sensory contact with the world.They are, in short, the essentiae of the De institutione arithmetica, or the intelligibilia of the second commentary on Porphyry82, gathered at the peak of human wisdom. 82

Cfr. above, pp. 86-89.

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Therefore, it is now even clearer that the philosophical paradigm which has inspired, for the most part, the entire Boethian conception regarding the functioning of knowledge and his revision of the gnoseological technique of Aristotle – as it emerges with great clarity from his presentation of the problem of universals83 – must be identified with the teaching of the Greek Neoplatonists. These thinkers, during the final centuries of the moribund Roman society, gave life to the project of realizing a harmonic «concordia» among the teachings of the great masters of Antiquity.They worked out a speculative system founded upon the Platonic doctrine of the ascending spirituality of the truth, but endowed with the fruits of the precious logical-scientific instrumentalization settled upon by Aristotle. Such a doctrinal synthesis allows the refined Neoplatonic psychology to safeguard the autonomous operation of the knowing subject. Its significant outcome is in fact a decisive shift in respect not only to ancient materialism, but also to the inductive Aristotelian method itself: the supporting axis of the truth of knowing moves in fact from the dependence upon a necessity emerging from the corporeal object, to an interior objectivity of the theoretical and immaterial order, determined only by the autonomous manner of acting upon cognitive data which is proper to the spiritual subject84. It is in the more speculatively dense pages of the final two books of the Consolatio that the comparison between the objective truth of the res and the results of the operations of the human cognitive faculties becomes explicitly problematisized, theorized and resolved. Here the supreme task of Philosophy concretely becomes visible in the project to help Boethius’ still weak and confused mind to find healing from the incapacity of understanding the incompatibility between the innate certainty of a divine governance of the world and the observation of the apparent illogic of earthly events, which seem to depend more upon accident than upon obedience to universal reason. At the beginning of the sixth prose of the fourth book, Boethius laments the 83

Cfr. above, pp. 96-99. Cfr. PLOTINUS, Enneades,V, 3, 2-4, edd. Henry - Schwyzer cit. (above, cap. 1, note 92), t. II, pp. 300-304. Cfr. the philosophical commentary regarding the third tractate of the fifth Ennead proposed by W. BEIERWALTES, Selbsterkenntnis und Erfahrung der Einheit, Frankfurt a. Main 1991. 84

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impossibility of justifying the presence of disorder and injustice within a cosmic story guided by the highest Good. Philosophy solemnly announces the necessity of reaching a unitary solution for all the apparent contradictions which spring forth from the incommensurability between the human condition, scattered within the spatial-temporal dimension, and the eternal identity of the divine truth85. The fundamental philosophical dilemma – which will have to be resolved in the light of the presupposition, essential for Boethius’ metaphysics, of the derivation of all that which is and which changes from the perfect immutability of the divine mind86 – is, therefore, that of the difficult reconciliation between the perfection of the divine principle of the cosmos and the accidental and disordered multiplicity which descends from it.The two terms of this contradiction are, ultimately, two apparently incompatible concepts, to which human intelligence usually has recourse, for naming and explaining the unfolding of the universe: first, providence, which indicates the causal simplicity of the divine intelligence, immutably working even in the variable and multiple realities; second, fate, which indicates the succession – seemingly accidental and deprived of logical order – of all the spatial-temporal articulations in which the derivation of things from the common principle spreads forth87. Philosophy has no difficulty in showing how such interior contradictions embrace in their coils only the men who are not philosophers and who ignore the principles of the universal order or, having allowed for them, do not really understand their significance. She sings the praises of the admirable law which orders the universe, while disapproving the fact that men know it only in a partial form, since 85 Cfr. Consolatio Philosophiae, IV, pr. 6, 2-4, 813A-814A, ed. Moreschini, p. 121,4-13: «Tum illa paulisper arridens: Ad rem me, inquit, omnium quaesitu maximam vocas, cui vix exhausti quicquam satis sit.Talis namque materia est ut una dubitatione succisa innumerabiles aliae velut hydrae capita succrescant, nec ullus fuerit modus, nisi quis eas vivacissimo mentis igne coerceat. In hac enim de providentiae simplicitate, de fati serie, de repentinis casibus, de cognitione ac praedestinatione divina, de arbitrii libertate quaeri solet, quae quanti oneris sint ipse perpendis». 86 Cfr. ibid., 7, 814A, p. 122,20-23: «Omnium generatio rerum cunctusque mutabilium naturarum progressus et quicquid aliquo movetur modo causas, ordinem, formas ex divinae mentis stabilitate sortitur». 87 Cfr. ibid., 8-10, 814A-815A, p. 122,24-40.

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the ignorance of the causes produces turmoil in their souls88. She strives, therefore, to show, with disarming lucidity, to what extent the distinction and apparent opposition between fate and providence hide, in fact, a false problem, emerging from the weakness of human knowledge. A created being possesses only a partial, and therefore erroneous, evaluation of the universal harmony which God alone is able to seize from on high through his absolute vision, so that men, restricted to a limited and incomplete perspective, unjustly believe they exist in a world of imperfections and injustices. Boethius entrusts the ‘overturning’ of the erroneous conception of knowledge to the pages of the fourth and fifth proses of Book Five, between which he inserted the poem describing the materialistic error of the Stoic philosophers. It becomes clear that the manifestation of the truth of things in the soul depends much more upon the interior operative capacities of the knowing subject than upon his passive submission as a spectator before an object. The cause of obscurity for questions of such a kind is the fact that the cognitive motion of human reason does not succeed in raising itself to the simplicity of divine foreknowledge. Because if, however, one could succeed somehow in thinking in such a way, no further doubt of any kind would remain89. (…) You say that you strongly doubt the possibility of any sort of foreknowledge of those things which do not occur necessarily. In fact, it seems to you that there is a contradiction between these two aspects (that is, foreknowledge and contingency).You think that either it is possible to foresee things, and therefore the conclusion, which inevitably follows, is that these things are necessary; or no necessity subsists in these things, and therefore no foreknowledge of them is possible, because it is impossible to have scientific knowledge of anything unless it is absolutely certain.Yet, if it were possible to

88 Cfr. ibid., pr. 5, 5-7, 810AB, pp. 119,16-120,25; and ibid., m. V, 811A-812A, pp. 120-121. 89 Ibid.,V, pr. 4, 2, 847A, pp. 146,5-147,9: «Cuius caliginis causa est quod humanae ratiocinationis motus ad divinae praescientiae simplicitatem non potest amoveri; quae si ullo modo cogitari queat, nihil prorsus relinquetur ambigui».

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foresee as certain those things which do not occur with certainty, one would be dealing with only obscurity of opinion, and not with the truth of science.You believe, in fact, that the consideration of a thing in a manner different from how it effectively is results in something far from the achievement of science. The cause of this error is the fact that the one who knows something is convinced that his scientific knowledge is determined always and only by a power coming, in a natural way, from the things themselves which are known. It is, however, very much the opposite. All that is known, in fact, is understood not so much according to its own power as, rather, according to the capacity of the one who is knowing90.

The more the cognitive functions carry out their own action by distancing themselves and unchaining themselves from the material conditions, the more closely will they approach the truth of the known res. Affection (passio), which finds itself at the lowest level of knowledge, already carries out the task of introducing the qualities of corporeal objects into the subject’s sphere of action: it does so only to offer to the subject, without conditioning it, the elementary cognitive data on which to exercise its judgment. Though being constantly in act by balancing its own cognitive vigor, the soul, when called upon by the information of the senses, revives the universal forms deposited in its memory in order to evaluate the significance of the received data. Therefore, the highest faculties and those nearest to the pure actuality, which govern from on high the entire functioning of the human mind, become progressively freer from the suggestions of the external determinations by ascending the hierarchy of knowledge:

90 Ibid., 21-25, 848B-849A, pp. 148,60-149,75: «Sed hoc, inquis, ipsum dubitatur, an earum rerum quae necessarios exitus non habent ulla possit esse praenotio: dissonare etenim videntur, putasque, si praevideantur, consequi necessitatem, si necessitas desit, minime praesciri, nihilque scientia comprehendi posse nisi certum. Quod si, quae incerti sunt exitus, ea quasi certa providentur, opinionis id esse caliginem non scientiae veritatem.Aliter enim ac sese res habeat arbitrari ab integritate scientiae credis esse diversum. Cuius erroris causa est quod omnia quae quisque novit ex ipsorum tantum vi atque natura cognosci aestimat quae sciuntur. Quod totum contra est: omne enim quod cognoscitur non secundum sui vim, sed secundum cognoscientium potius comprehenditur facultatem».

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The same object of knowledge – for example,‘man’ – is considered in one way by the senses, in another way by the imagination, in another way by reason and in another way, yet again, by intelligence. Sense, in fact, judges the sensible form (figura) of the object in its inherence to the matter which is subjected to it; imagination judges the same sensible form (figura), but separated from matter; reason, then, raises itself completely above every sensible form, and, with the capacity of universal consideration which is appropriate to it, it directly examines the intelligible form (species), which rests above singulars. Finally, the eye of the intelligence rises even higher still: it raises itself, in fact, beyond the totality of all things and contemplates the absolutely simple form (forma) of the truth with the pure, sharp vision of the mind. But here it is necessary to pay the greatest attention to what follows: that is, to the fact that the higher faculty of comprehension (comprehendendi vis) embraces within itself that lower faculty, while that lower faculty is absolutely incapable of raising itself to the level of the superior faculty. In fact, sense is incapable of knowing anything which is separated from matter; nor is imagination able to consider the universal species; nor is reason able to seize the simple form: intelligence, however, as an observer which sees from on high, in the same moment in which it understands the form, also judges all the inferior kinds of knowledge. Yet, it understands them in the same way in which it seizes the form itself, which is not able to be grasped by any other faculty. Intelligence knows, in fact, either the universal of reason, or the sensible form of the imagination, or sensible matter, without using reason, imagination, or the senses; rather, so to speak, it looks upon all from on high formally, with the unifying glance of the mind. (…) Do you see, therefore, how, in the act of knowing, each faculty depends much more upon its own power, and not upon the capacity of the things which are known? This is the correct order of things. In fact, from the moment that every form of knowledge resolves itself in an activity of the knower, it is necessary that each faculty adequately carries out its task, dependending not upon an external power, but upon its own power91. 91 Ibid., 27-33 and 38-39, 849A-850B, pp. 149,80-150,100 and 150,111151,116: «Ipsum quoque hominem aliter sensus, aliter imaginatio, aliter ratio,

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The knowing subject, in short, is not mechanistically subordinated to the manner in which the obiecta present themselves to its sources of information regarding the external world. On the contrary, the subject modifies the representation of various known objects in a measure proportional to its capacity to compare their appearances with an interior truth. This truth is possessed in a form more or less differentiated by various beings endowed with knowledge: lower animals and those not capable of movement, such as the marine shells or the invertebrates which live attached to rocks, enjoy a representation of the truth exclusively limited to sensible knowledge, which allows them to react only to the more elementary stimuli coming from outside; the mobile animals, using the imagination, reconstruct internally in a more organized manner the same objective reality and know how to distinguish between desirable things and things to avoid; and at an evidently higher level one finds the human capacity to devise, with reason, a systematically ordered and rigorous reformulation of the structure of reality, and to entrust it to theoretical designs of the scientific disciplines92. ‘To know’ is truly the effect of a complex activity, determined by the articulated contribution of distinct faculties of the mind. These faculties produce cognitive information which are profoundly different for nature, form, and extension, according to the gnoseological level to which they correspond. Already the aliter intellegentia contuetur. Sensus enim figuram in subiecta materia constitutam; imaginatio vero solam sine materia iudicat figuram; ratio vero hanc quoque transcendit speciemque ipsam, quae singularibus inest, universali consideratione perpendit. Intellegentiae vero celsior oculus exsistit; supergressa namque universitatis ambitum, ipsam illam simplicem formam pura mentis acie contuetur. In quo illud maxime considerandum est: nam superior comprehendendi vis amplectitur inferiorem, inferior vero ad superiorem nullo modo consurgit. Neque enim sensus aliquid extra materiam valet vel universales species imaginatio contuetur vel ratio capit simplicem formam; sed intellegentia quasi desuper spectans concepta forma quae subsunt etiam cuncta diiudicat, sed eo modo quo formam ipsam, quae nulli alii esse poterat, comprehendit. Nam et rationis universum et imaginationis figuram et materiale sensibile cognoscit nec ratione utens nec imaginatione nec sensibus, sed illo uno ictu mentis formaliter, ut ita dicam, cuncta prospiciens. (…) Videsne igitur ut in cognoscendo cuncta sua potius facultate quam eorum quae cognoscuntur utantur? Neque id iniuria; nam cum omne iudicium iudicantis actus exsistat, necesse est ut suam quisque operam non ex aliena sed ex propria potestate perficiat». 92 Cfr. ibid., pr. 5, 2-4, 854A-855A, pp. 152,10-153,20.

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five corporeal senses, for example, react in diverse modes and produce notions which greatly differ from one another when they separately refer to the same object.The surface of the same spherical body is, for instance, judged in different modes by vision, which considers it from on high in its entirety, and by touch, which lingers analytically on the parts which constitute it93. Similarly, rescaling the hierarchy of the cognitive faculties, there are many modes in which the same object is grasped by the mind. For example, one could examine ‘man’: either through the senses, which, when producing a complex sensation, describe the corporeal human figure as determined in his accidental particularities in combination with matter; or by the imagination, which abstracts this same individual figure from matter; or by reason, in the strict sense, which proceeds through the discursive formulae according to the rules of logic, and abstracts the figure from the particular connotations of the individual to the point of working out the corresponding universal notion; and finally, from the elevated eye of higher intelligence, which rises beyond the world of multiple things in order to seize their subsistent unity in the simple, pure, and immutable form of the totality of truth. Above all, the individualization of this final, most elevated grade of the hierarchy of the faculties of the soul illuminates, from on high, the Boethian doctrine of knowledge. The superrational intelligence – capable of directly intuiting, in an all-comprehensive view (the cernens omnia notio of the fourth poem, again presented further ahead as «scientiae vis praesentaria notione cuncta complectens»94), the authentic perfection of the truth – is the form which is possessed, in a constant and inalienable way, by 93 Cfr. ibid., pr. 4, 26, 849A, p. 149,75-79: «Nam, ut hoc brevi liqueat exemplo, eandem corporis rotunditatem aliter visus, aliter tactus agnoscit; ille eminus manens totum simul iactis radiis intuetur, hic vero cohaerens orbi atque coniunctus circa ipsum motus ambitum rotunditatem partibus comprehendit».The same idea is already operative in De institutione musica, I, 1, 1167CD, ed. Friedlein, pp. 178,24-179,20, in harmony with the Neopythagorian ideas of Nicomachus of Gerasa.When we contemplate a triangular body with our eyes, we first perceive its more material aspects and not the geometirc structure, which only later, with scientific rationality, will we be capable of recognizing. Even after formulating the rational definition of the triangular form, however, we will still have to remember that, in order to grasp effectively the ‘true’ nature of the object in itself, we cannot omit the information of the lower order coming from the senses. 94 Consolatio Philosophiae,V, pr. 6, 43, 862B, p. 161,156.

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the divinity.The direct contemplation of reality cannot exist, except as a form of knowledge which is divine in itself. Intelligent creatures are able, partially and episodically, to participate in this knowledge95. Yet, it is possessed in its perfection only by the supreme mind, which is the cause of everything96.

7. The simple unity of true knowledge Boethius draws his doctrine of knowledge, which determines the entire orientation of its philosophical and theological thought, directly from the well of Neoplatonism. Grounding themselves upon a synthesis of ideas from classical Philosophy (in particular upon the Platonic gnoseological principle ‘like knows like’97, joined to the Aristotelian conception according to which every cognitive faculty works out a different type of comprehension of the same object98), the followers of Plato have clearly recognized in the phenomenological existence of multiplicity the result of a cognitive projection of the simplest reality of the One. This projection is the act of knowledge appropriate to the first cognitive hypostasis, the Intellect, thanks to which all things begin to live and diversify themselves reciprocally in order to subsist in multiplicity99. Above all, Boethius found in Proclus – particularly in his texts dedicated to the philosophical reconciliation between divine providence and the liberty of creatures – a clearly articulated and ascending description of the cognitive faculties. In particular, Proclus’ vision was used to show how all the apparently contrasting aspects of the universe are explainable as effects of the diverse forms of knowledge, set out according to an order within which the superior faculties understand and justify the variations of the inferior faculties: sense, fantasy, rationality 95

Cfr. In Isagogen Porphyrii, ed. prima, I, 3, 11AD, ed. Brandt, pp. 8,6-9,12. Cfr. Consolatio Philosophiae,V, pr. 6, 41-45, 862BC, pp. 160,150-161,165. 97 Cfr. PROCLUS PHILOSOPHUS (PROCLUS DIADOCHUS, sive ATHENIENSIS), De providentia et fato, in Tria opuscula (De providentia, libertate, malo), Latin trans. of William of Moerbeke, Greek text from Ysaak Sebastocrator and others, ed. H. Boese, Berlin 1960, II, c. 8, 31, p. 140,7-9: «Omnia enim simili cognoscuntur: sensibile sensu, scibile scientia, intelligibile intellectu, unum uniali». 98 Cfr. ARISTOTELES, Topica, I, 17, 108a; De anima, III, 8, 431b-432a. 99 Cfr. PLOTINUS, Enneades,V, 3, 10, edd. Henry - Schwyzer, t. II, pp. 315-317. 96

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(diavnoia, or ‘dianoetic’ – according to the terminology of Plato’s Republic –, that is, discursive and deductive knowledge, which produces science by abstracting the universal truths), and intellect or intelligence (nou`'", or ‘noetic’, intuitive and direct knowledge, which is imperfect in man, but perfect in divine providence)100. Respecting the Aristotelian rule that cognitive subjects which employ the higher faculties are capable of understanding internally even the mode of knowing proper to the lower faculties (so that every inferior faculty is guided and corrected in its progression by that faculty of the immediately superior order), it is clear that the higher faculties are closer to the truth than the lower101. If our soul, in the act of knowing, were to limit itself to reflecting the external things within itself like a passive container, it would not even be possible to have the development of fantastic images. The soul, though drawing from suggestions coming from the external world, is in fact capable of formulating the representation – formally unobjectionable, but not verifiable – of something which does not exist102. On the other hand, the entire history of 100 Cfr. PROCLUS PHILOSOPHUS, De decem dubitationibus, in Tria opuscula, ed. Boese cit., I, q. 1, 2-5, pp. 4,1-10,40. Cfr. also PLATO, Respublica,VI, 511de. – In order to avoid terminological confusions, which could occur in the presentation of the doctrines of authors who lived in more recent phases of the philosophy of the Latin Middle Ages, it is opportune to highlight the peculiar meaning which the term ‘noetic’ assumes in the Platonic perspective, in respect to the Aristotelian tradition; and, consequently, the variation in the significance of the concepts of ‘noesis’ and ‘noetic knowledge’ respectively in the studies on Platonizing gnoseology (superior intuitive knowledge) and in those regarding the doctrine of knowledge in the Aristotelianizing and scholastic environment (abstract and logical-deductive knowledge of the intellective soul). Cfr. L. SILEO, L’esordio della teologia universitaria: I maestri secolari della prima metà del Duecento, in Storia della Teologia nel Medioevo, 3 voll., dir. G. d’Onofrio, Casale Monferrato 1996, II, La grande fioritura, [pp. 603-644], p. 606, note 2. 101 Cfr. Consolatio Philosophiae,V, pr. 5, 1, 854A, ed. Moreschini, p. 152,1-10. The ascending re-comprehension of the operations of the inferior faculties into those of the superiors is in effect already sketched out by ARISTOTELES, De anima, III, 4, 429b.The Neoplatonic conception, however, does not involve the leading back of the lower functions to the activities of the higher powers, but (as it becomes evident in the passage of Boethius cited in full above in the text) the going beyond and validation of the manner according to which the same object is received by the inferior faculties into that of the more comprehensive and elevated faculties. 102 Cfr. In Isagogen Porphyrii, ed. secunda, I, 10, 82BC, ed. Brandt, p. 160,3-5: «Omne quod intellegit animus aut id quod est in rerum natura constitutum in-

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ancient philosophy exhibits the consciousness of how much the sensible appearances may be deceptive and must cede and surrender to the clearer and more solid conceptual determinations developed according to the rules of scientific reason103. Human reason, therefore, conscious of its own limits, must recognize the existence of a higher grade of the approach to the truth, which is still more pure and perfect. Only the divinity of God enjoys this truth in a perfectly real and inalienable manner, since He possesses the perfect representation of the entire truth of reality which is not subject to the spatial-temporal limits constricting the rational doctrines of humanity. We must recognize that only our limited cognitive condition leads us to imagine that the divine ‘pre-vision’ is able to precede and determine the free occurrence of the future; or that providence should introduce some sort of necessity in that which, under the all-comprehending eyes of God, subsists in an eternal present, without succession and causal subordination of knower and known104. Since man is capable of asking questions and advancing doubts even regarding that which reason offers and describes to him, he eventually achieves the possibility of aspiring to the participation, in some manner, in the perfection of the higher intelligence. Yet, though he can only acquire a taste of this simple serenity for a very brief moment, he can still preserve a memory of such a momentous experience, which will then guide him in the successive investigations regarding worldly and particular reality. Philosophy can now triumphantly proclaim her conclusion. She speaks in the name of all humanity in search of a consolatory solution for the grave speculative knots impeding the recognition of the universal vigor of the divine law in the universe, which apparently seems wounded by natural causality and human evil:

tellectu concipit et sibimet ratione describit, aut id quod non est vacua sibi imaginatione depingit». Cfr. also ibid., 11, 84BC, p. 164,7-12: «In his enim solis falsa opinio ac non potius intellegentia est quae per compositionem fiunt. Si enim quis componat atque coniungat intellectu id quod natura iungi non patitur, illud falsum esse nullus ignorat, ut si quis equum atque hominem iungat imaginatione atque effigiet centaurum». 103 Cfr. Consolatio Philosophiae,V, pr. 5, 5-7, 855AB, p. 153,21-37. 104 Cfr. ibid., 8-10, 855B, pp. 153,38-154,44.

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If, therefore, as participants in reason, we were able to have even the capacity of judgment which belongs to the divine mind, then, in the same manner in which we have recognized that imagination and sense must cede to reason, so we would maintain that it is ever just that human reason submit to the divine mind. Thus, to the degree that it is possible, let’s force ourselves to rise up to the highest peak of that ultimate intelligence. Only there, in fact, will reason see clearly that which it is not able to consider by itself: namely, in what way providence sees as certain and definite even the things that seem to be uncertain, and how this knowledge is unfailing and coincides with the simplicity – which is not constrained by any limit – of the highest science105.

Human reason, only by adhering firmly and securely to the stability of the divine mind in the measure allowed to its limited cognitive condition, can arrive at recognizing the absence of contradiction which reigns in the universal panorama of the cosmic order. In turn, it may comprehend that fate and providence are not different orders of reality, but the result of two different forms of the cognitive approach to the unique, eternal, providential order established by God106. Human intelligence – while remaining immersed in the flux of historical necessity and naturally implicated in complexity and multiplicity – comprehends fate as a fragmented and conditioned succession of incoherent events. This process in itself, however, is perceived and regulated by the simple consideration of God’s providence in the unifying, efficacious harmony of a timeless instant. One may compare this phe105 Ibid., 11-12, 855B-856A, p. 154,44-54: «Si igitur, uti rationis participes sumus, ita divinae iudicium mentis habere possemus, sicut imaginationem sensumque rationi cedere oportere iudicavimus, sic divinae sese menti humanam submittere rationem iustissimum censeremus. Quare in illius summae intelligentiae cacumen, si possumus, erigamur: illic enim ratio videbit quod in se non potest intueri: id autem est, quonam modo etiam quae certos exitus non habent certa tamen videat ac definita praenotio, neque id sit opinio, sed summae potius scientiae, nullis terminis inclusa simplicitas». 106 Cfr. ibid., pr. 6, 1, 858A, p. 155,1-5: «Quoniam igitur, uti paulo ante monstratum est, omne quod scitur non ex sua sed ex conprehendentium natura cognoscitur, intueamur nunc, quantum fas est, quis sit divinae substantiae status, ut quaenam etiam scientia eius sit possimus agnoscere». Cfr. also ibid., m. V, vv. 10-15, 857A, p. 155.

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nomenon to a system of orbits turning around a single center, in which the complexity of the reciprocal intersection of peripheral movements depends only upon the dominating simplicity of the common hinge. In a similar way, all the individual wills, which understand themselves to be connected in a cosmic history within a nexus deprived of liberty, will discover their true and autonomous subsistence if they learn how to recognize themselves as oriented by the participation in a universal love which draws everything into the superior and perfect simplicity of the divine will107. An intimate correspondence between the mobilis series of fate and the stabilis simplicitas of providence is perceived by the divine view that contemplates all without distinguishing or dividing. Boethius, in a rapid, but very expressive suggestion, compares this correspondence with other pairs of seemingly contradictory terms: Thus the same relation that subsists between intelligence and reason also subsists between being and becoming, between eternity and time, between the center and the circumference of a circle; and this is the relationship that subsists between the mobile succession of events, which is called fate, and the stable simplicity of providence108.

The absolute truth of all that exists, that is knowable, and that is operative in the universe of multiplicities, always and necessarily exists – according to the law fixed once and for all in Western wisdom by Parmenides and received as the foundation of every investigation by the Neoplatonic tradition –, as immutable and identical being (id quod est); yet, all that which is not the One unfolds by assuming, in comparison with all other things, the forms of becoming (id quod gignitur). This means that all that which is posterior to the One is in the One in so far as it subsists in the One and is known by the One; but it becomes when it is known by other things which are posterior to the One.The relationship between eternal and temporal is no different, if these two categories 107

Cfr. ibid., IV, pr. 6, 11-16, 815A-817A, pp. 122,40-124,74. Ibid., 17, 817A, p. 124,74-78: «Igitur, uti est ad intellectum ratiocinatio, ad id quod est id quod gignitur, ad aeternitatem tempus, ad punctum medium circulus, ita est fati series mobilis ad providentiae stabilem simplicitatem». 108

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are intended according to the Augustinian doctrine, which has a Platonic-Stoic origin: aeternitas is the divine condition of the absolute presence of the whole of truth, while tempus is the condition of subordination to the relationship with the other – the condition of all that which is not God in so far as it is not in God109. In this ontological and cognitive absorption of multiplicity and diversity into the immutable perfection of unity, one also finds the resolution for the apparent and errant distinction of the objects of ratiocinatio from those of the instantaneous intuition of the intellectus. In order to clarify this fundamental discovery, Boethius lingers over the importance of the inadequacy of the human subject, either when he asks himself whether the succession of natural effects coming from natural causes arises from a materialistic causality or from the governance of a superior intelligence110; or when he strives to understand how the efficacy of the free-will, which moves rational beings, can be introduced into such a necessary causal concatenation111; or again, and above all, when he asks how such a free determination of choice can be compatible with the providential divine prevision of the entire future on the part of divine intelligence112. Only the divine providential view perceives, in an a-temporal instant, the true density of free acts and of the responsibilities which result from them113. Thus follows the obvious conclusion that our presumption regarding the imperfect guidance of a cosmos apparently fraught with disparities and inequalities – especially (but not only) of the moral order – is entirely unfounded114. Only an intelligence which contemplates the entire universe from above, in a privileged and omniscient position («ex alta providentiae specula), can licitly evaluate and determine the harmonious correspondence of all the parts of creation («quid unicuique conveniat agnoscit et 109 On this theme cfr. P. PORRO, Forme e modelli di durata nel pensiero medievale, Leuven 1996 (Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, De Wulf - Mansion Centre, Ser. I, 16), pp. 83-86. 110 Cfr. Consolatio Philosophiae,V, pr. 1, 8-19, 830C-832A, pp. 136,17-138,56. 111 Cfr. ibid., pr. 2, 1-10, 834A-837A, pp. 138,1-139,25. 112 Cfr. ibid., pr. 3, 1-13, 838B-840A, pp. 140,1-142,40. 113 Cfr. ibid., pr. 2, 11, 837A, p. 139,25-28; m. II, 837A-838A, p. 140. 114 Cfr. ibid., IV, pr. 6, 21-25, 817BC, pp. 124,90-125,105.

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quod convenire novit accommodate»). Since God is the only one responsible for the universe, he is therefore also the only judge of the insigne miraculum of its order, which, however, stupefies and terrorizes those who do not manage to understand it115. For this reason, knowledge is true only when an exact representation of the known reality is concretized within it.This occurs only when there is no contradiction between the necessity of fact regarding the res and the necessitas veritatis of the thought which expresses it. Only divine contemplation is endowed with an exhaustive notion of the real universe: God, within himself, perceives as evident the intrinsic necessity of all real events – past, present, and future – with all the cognitive elements that characterize their reality without any contradiction, or any mixing of truth and falsity116. Therefore when God – in the fulfilled absoluteness of his supernatural and super-historical view – sees (better than ‘foresees’) a thing truly characterized either by free-will, chance, necessity, or other such characteristics, it is inevitable that this thing is respectively free, by chance, or necessary, because He has so thought it and desired it117. The man who goes in search of true wisdom, and seeks the prize of true happiness, should accept the difficult task of using the intelligence for gathering, as far as it is possible, a persuasive trace of the unconquerable profundities of divine judgment. Only in this way could he reach an indemonstrable certainty that everything which appears unjustified and confused before its subjective opinion, is in fact a sign of a rectus ordo, perfect in all its parts118.

115

Cfr. ibid., 29-31, 818AB, pp. 125,113-126,121. Cfr. ibid.,V, pr. 3, 14-36, 840A-842B, pp. 142,40-145,111; m. III, 843A846A, pp. 145-146. 117 Cfr. ibid., pr. 5, 21-40, 860B-862B, pp. 157,77-160,150. 118 Cfr. ibid., IV, pr. 6, 34, 818B, p. 126,127-129: «Hic igitur quicquid citra spem videas geri, rebus quidem rectus ordo est, opinioni vero tuae perversa confusio». And cfr. ibid., 54-56, 820B, p. 129,191-200: «Neque enim fas est homini cunctas divinae operae machinas vel ingenio comprehendere vel explicare sermone. Hoc tantum perspexisse sufficiat, quod naturarum omnium proditor Deus idem ad bonum dirigens cuncta disponat, dumque ea quae protulit in sui similitudinem retinere festinat, malum omne de reipublicae suae terminis per fatalis seriem necessitatis eliminet. Quo fit ut quae in terris abundare creduntur, si disponentem providentiam spectes, nihil usquam mali esse perpendas». 116

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8. Beginning and end of sapientia: theological knowledge Through such a purification of the cognitive intelligence, as expressed by the personified Philosophy in the conclusion of the Consolatio, Boethius leads us back to the point of departure for our analysis of his writings.This coherent closing of the circle in his works describes the significance of being a ‘true philosopher’. One reaches sapientia, the object of philosophy («studium sapientiae»), through an ascending perfection of the human cognitive capacities. This is made possible by the contribution of various scientiae, which pursue, with single, limited and diverse steps, the complex reconstruction of an object that is in itself ‘absolute’ and penetrable only by a view which is superior to that of discursive reason, that is, intuitive and totalizing. This is the same view which, guiding the knowing subject from the beginning, has allowed for the intuition, with its first cognitive motions, of the nature of the immutable and, for this reason, divinely true essentia, the object of every true knowledge.Thus, in a poem of the Consolatio, which is among the most complex in terms of speculative profundity, Philosophy notes that the one who seeks the truth, that is, the true philosopher, is half-way between ignorance and knowledge of the truth: he is neither truly ignorant, nor truly comprehending119. At the beginning of the Consolatio, the character of Boethius, who addresses the apparition by calling her the mistress of all the virtues who has descended from heaven («omnium magistra virtutum supero cardine delapsa»)120, confirms her divine origin 119 Cfr. ibid.,V, m. III, 843A-846A, pp. 145-146: «Quaenam discors foedera rerum / causa resolvit? Quis tanta Deus / veris statuit bella duobus / ut quae carptim singula constent / eadem nolint mixta iugari? / An nulla est discordia veris / semperque sibi certa cohaerent, / sed mens caecis obruta membris / nequit oppressi luminis igne / rerum tenues noscere nexus? / Sed cur tanto flagrat amore / veri tectas reperire notas? / Scitne quod appetit anxia nosse? / Sed quis nota scire laborat? / at si nescit, quid caeca petit? / Quis enim quicquam nescius optet? / Aut quis valeat nescita sequi / quove inveniat? Quis reppertam / queat ignarus noscere formam? / An cum mentem cerneret altam / pariter summam et singula norat, / nunc membrorum condita nube / non in totum est oblita sui / summamque tenet singula perdens? / Igitur quisquis vera requirit / neutro est habitu; nam neque novit / nec penitus tamen omnia nescit, / sed quam retinens meminit summam / consulit alte visa retractans, / ut servatis queat oblitas / addere partes». 120 Ibid., I, pr. 3, 3, 604A-605A, p. 9,6-7.

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(«qui te sapientium mentibus inseruit Deus»). He nostalgically recalls his past conversations with her, which had as an object the humanarum divinarumque scientia: he had sought with her aid the secret, invisible, but eternally operative forces of nature («cum tecum naturae secreta rimarer»), and dedicated such an investigation to the programmatic conformation of human reason, both theoretical and practical, to the cosmic universal order («cum mores nostros totiusque vitae rationem ad caelestis ordinis exempla formares»)121. For this reason Boethius can declare himself convinced that, while the true and final scope of wisdom is nothing other than the orientation of men toward God, human ignorance, which always lies to itself, is not able to change the true order of things.Thus, his enemies have hurled at him the very grave accusation of sacrilege. Yet, it was Philosophy herself, living in him and driving from his soul every desire for mortal goods, who was forbidding that a sacrilege might be committed under his gaze. She was whispering daily in his ears and instilling in his thoughts the Pythagorian saying, «Follow God!» The true task of philosophy is in fact to lead men to a life of such a high cognitive and moral perfection in order to render them, as far as possible, similar to God («ut me consimilem Deo faceres»)122. In confirmation of all that we have ascertained in the didactic writings of Boethius, even this fundamental theme of spiritual similarity with God assumes, within the pages of the Consolatio, an oscillating movement.At one moment, it is presented as a natural connotation of reason, given by God to human kind in order to draw men to himself (making him, unlike all the other essences, «Deo mente consimilis»)123. At other times, however, he portrays this same similarity as the exhausting result of a process – the course of which demands the duration of the entire earthly life – of man’s orientation toward the Good (it is the theme developed in the third book of the work).The final achievement of such a plan will correspond, for man, to becoming God – not through nature, which is impossible, but through participation124. It is easy 121

Cfr. ibid., pr. 4, 3-8, 614A-617A, p. 12,8-27. Cfr. ibid., 37-39, 628A-630A, p. 17,127-137. 123 Ibid., II, pr. 5, 26, 694A, p. 44,74-75. 124 It is interesting to observe how such argumentation is expressed by Philosophy with rigorous syllogistic-geometric progression, as a corollarium of the 122

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to recognize, however, how even in this case such an oscillation is indicative only of a difference between the description of the results which must arise from the final achievement of the plan of true philosophy, and that of the complexity of the articulated progress which must lead to this end. In other words, it is the dynamic balance between the possession of sapientia and the exercise of the scientia, which would conduct men to sapientia itself. The primary motive for philosophy is the natural and unstoppable search for happiness, and the achievement of the ‘good’ – being a prize in itself, in so far as, on the basis of the Platonic idea of self-identification of the knower with the known object, it fulfills itself in the identity with God125. From these two points, it follows that, through the unexpected reconciliation of opposites, human and divine, it will be the possession of the same (means) that will assure for man the achievement of the similarity with the divine (end)126. preceding demonstrations, with the goal of highlighting their rigorous logical necessity (cfr. also the texts cited in the two following notes); cfr. ibid., III, pr. 10, 20-25, 767AB, pp. 83,71-84,86: «Atqui et beatitudinem et Deum summum bonum esse collegimus; quare ipsam necesse est summam esse beatitudinem quae sit summa divinitas. (…) Super haec, inquit, igitur veluti geometrae solent demonstratis propositis aliquid inferre quae porismata ipsi vocant, ita ego quoque tibi veluti corollarium dabo. Nam [a] quoniam beatitudinis adeptione fiunt homines beati, [b] beatitudo vero est ipsa divinitas, [c] divinitatis adeptione beatos fieri manifestum est. Sed uti iustitia adeptione iusti, sapientiae sapientes fiunt, ita divinitatem adeptos deos fieri simili ratione necesse est. Omnis igitur beatus Deus: sed natura quidem unus, participatione vero nihil prohibet esse quam plurimos». 125 Cfr. ibid., IV, pr. 3, 7-10, 798AB, p. 109,20-29: «Postremo, cum omne praemium idcirco appetatur quoniam bonum esse creditur, quis boni compotem praemii iudicet expertem? At cuius praemii? Omnium pulcherrimi maximique; memento etenim corollarii illius, quod paulo ante praecipuum dedi ac sic collige: [a] cum ipsum bonum beatitudo sit, bonos omnes eo ipso quod boni sint fieri beatos liquet; [b] sed qui beati sint, deos esse convenit; [c] est igitur praemium bonorum – quod nullus deterat dies, nullius minuat potestas, nullius fuscet improbitas – deos fieri». 126 Cfr. ibid., II, pr. 4, 22-25, 684A-685A, pp. 39,68-40,80: «Quid igitur, o mortales, extra petitis intra vos posita felicitatem? Error vos inscitiaque confundit. Ostendam breviter tibi summae cardinem felicitatis. Estne aliquid tibi te ipso pretiosius? nihil, inquies. Igitur si tui compos fueris, possidebis quod nec tu amittere umquam velis nec fortuna possit auferre. Atque ut agnoscas in his fortuitis rebus beatitudinem constare non posse, sic collige: [a] si beatitudo est summum naturae bonum ratione degentis, [b] nec est summum bonum quod eripi ullo modo potest, [prob. b] quoniam praecellit id quod nequeat auferri, [c] manifestum est quin ad beatitudinem percipiendam fortunae instabilitas adspirare non possit».

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Such is for Boethius, in harmony with the foundations of Christian anthropology, the ultimate theological meaning of the Platonic doctrine of anamnesis: philosophy has the task of revealing to man the traces of the Good which remain in the soul after its accidental union with the body. Reminiscence of the truth does not depend upon a ‘pre-existence’ of the soul, but upon the natural condition in which God places it. God gives the soul life as a rational entity predisposed toward contemplating him.To ‘refind oneself ’ and to possess one’s interiority means that man succeeds in effectively understanding such a natural condition127. In order to guide it to the achievement of such a result, Philosophy raises human intelligence with its wings toward that contemplation of the Highest Good which is able to be defined platonically as its true homeland.Yet, she must first perform the preliminary liberation of man from every corporeal perturbation. Man must escape from that which blocks the discovery – which is entirely interior – of the true sapientia128. For this reason, always according to the teaching of Plato, only the wise man is truly free and is capable of doing that which he wants129. Philosophy now succeeds in her task of rendering men similar to God by leading them from their condition of subjective and limited knowledge to a direct, intuitive, and superior comprehension of the truth of the providential order of the universe and of the height of the Good which governs, sustains in being, and directs all things. As the conclusion of the work clearly shows, the possibility of the human contemplation of the absolute in the fullness of its divinity is, therefore, not only possible as an arrival point for Boethian philosophia, but it is, more127 Cfr. ibid., III, m. XI, vv. 9-12, 776A-777A, p. 91: «Non omne namque mente depulit lumen / obliviosam corpus invehens molem; / haeret profecto semen introrsum veri / quod excitatur ventilante doctrina». 128 Cfr. ibid., IV, pr. 1, 8-9, 787A-788A, p. 101,30-36: «Et quoniam verae formam beatitudinis me dudum monstrante vidisti, quo etiam sita sit agnovisti, decursis omnibus quae praemittere necessarium puto, viam tibi quae te domum revehat ostendam. Pennas etiam tuae menti quibus se in altum tollere possit adfigam, ut perturbatione depulsa sospes in patriam meo ductu, mea semita, meis etiam vehiculis revertaris». 129 Cfr. ibid., pr. 2, 45, 796A, p. 107,133-137: «Veramque illam Platonis esse sententiam liquet solos quod desiderent facere posse sapientes, improbos vero exercere quidem quod libeat, quod vero desiderent explere non posse».

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over, the constitutive presupposition of the sapientia toward which it tends during its entire journey. This is an exigency which Boethius shares with the Neoplatonists.Yet, far from resolving it in an essentially negative form of knowledge and in a nostalgic pining for a lost unity with the divine, he proposes to fulfill the demand as a determining condition for the organic validity of the complex of human science. It is not, therefore, out of place to maintain that Boethius proposed his solution to the Ciceronian philosophical impasse through a personal rethinking of the Augustinian overturning of the relations between subject and object in cognition. Such a speculative approach is also not in contradiction with a sincere acceptance of the fundamental principle of Christian hermeneutics, according to which the truth, in itself destined to remain irredeemably unknown for men, was put at their disposal, integrally and without veils, by Revelation. The adherence to such an orientation for human research in the field of theology – marked also in the Opuscula sacra by an explicit invocation of the authority of Augustine130 – allows Boethius, in homage to his organic consideration of human science, to extend its advantages to philosophical research as well, which is the preparation and the anticipation of theological knowledge.Thanks to the work of the Fathers of the Church, the doctrine of Revelation requires the application of the integrating capacities of the dianoetic ratio to a truth that man possesses through the Bible in an immediate, but, for the most part, inexplicit form. This means that, if all philosophical research, in its complexity, aims at the comprehension of the Highest Good, then theological knowledge is the greatest of the disciplines that human intelligence develops for carrying it to completion.Theology is, however, characterized in a specific way in respect to the other sciences, since, departing from a given historical moment, the principal impetus for its research was not simply an a priori intuition of the noetic order (i. e., of the truth and immutability of the essentiae): it is, rather, a direct communication, on the part of the divinity itself, of all the notions which enable man to com130 Cfr. De trinitate, prol., 1249B, ed. Moreschini cit. (above, note 6), pp. 166,29-167,33.

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prehend its truth.Theology, therefore, is still a philosophical discipline, to the degree in which the philosophers of antiquity – Aristotle included – , using the natural forces of man, had already established it at the peak of the hierarchy of the human sciences131.Yet, it now enjoys, in the Christian era, a privileged position in respect to all the other forms of knowledge thanks to the opening of Revelation, which exalts philosophy to a level higher than the natural capacities of knowing, and, evidently, still nearer to the realization of sapientia itself. All five opuscula, which Boethius dedicated to the comprehension of the dogmas of the Christian faith, confirm the theological fulfillment of human philosophy. The second, in particular, which contains a brief synthesis of Trinitarian doctrine, offers an explicitly formulated rule regarding the correct epistemological arrangement of theological knowledge which seems to anticipate the results of a great part of the medieval meditations upon such an argument. Up until the exordium, in fact, the possibility of resolving the proposed questio («utrum Pater et Filius et Spiritus sanctus de divinitate substantialiter praedicentur») is subordinated to the specification of the source (i. e., according to the dialectic terminology, of the tópos) from which the principles (or fundamenta) of any sort of arguments related to the divinity must be drawn. Such a source cannot be other than Revelation, in which God himself has communicated to men the truth regarding the nature and the origin of all things. Revelation must then be used as a source of first principles for any sort of theological investigation132. At the end of the demonstration Boethius asks John the Deacon, to whom the text is dedicated, to carry to fulfillment the co-penetration of reason and faith, which he attempts to achieve in these pages through the only verification possible: that is, through the comparison of results achieved through a rational 131

Theology is the greatest of the philosophical-speculative sciences according to the division of philosophy proposed by Boethius ibid., 2, 1250AB, pp. 168,68-169,83; cfr. D’ONOFRIO, La scala ricamata cit. (above, cap. 1, note 7). 132 Cfr. Utrum Pater et Filius et Spiritus sanctus de divinitate substantialiter praedicentur, 1299D-1300D, ed. Moreschini cit., p. 182,1-5: «Quaero an Pater et Filius ac Spiritus sanctus de divinitate substantialiter praedicentur an alio quolibet modo viamque indaginis hinc arbitror esse sumendam, unde rerum omnium manifestum constat exordium, id est ab ipsis catholicae fidei fundamentis».

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approach with the authentic formulation of the dogma as it is found in Scripture133. The idea that Christian theology can be the subject of a methodological regularization of a scientific type emerges even in the fourth tractate, De fide catholica, which the author presents precisely as an exposition of the fundamenta of the Christian religion. The entire comprehension of the faith on the part of believers rests upon these ‘foundations’134. In this sense one could maintain that, with the intent to arrange a form of Christian theological science founded upon Revelation, Boethius had set out 133 Cfr. ibid., 1302BC, p. 185,64-67: «Haec si se recte et ex fide habent, ut me instruas peto; aut si aliqua re forte diversus es, diligentius intuere quae dicta sunt et fidem, si poteris, rationemque coniunge». 134 Cfr. De fide catholica, 1333A, ed. Moreschini cit., p. 195,7-8: «Haec autem religio nostra, quae vocatur christiana atque catholica, his fundamentis principaliter nititur». It is opportune to note that, from such a methodological correspondence between the second and the fourth of the Opuscula, it is possible to draw forth an internal argument in favor of Boethius’ authorship of the latter (along with the fact that, in light of recent studies, valid reasons against the authenticity – neither logical, nor ideological – no longer seem to be tenable). Among the first fundamenta, or principles of theological knowledge assured by Revelation, the fourth opusculum includes, in fact, in parallel with the content of the first and the second: the predicability of the substantia, in an equal and unitary way, in each of the three divine persons; the non-reciprocity of the Trinitarian predications, which prevents – as for prime numbers in mathematics – the infinite multiplication of the divine generation of the Son; and the denunciation of the error of the heretics who, not taking into account the inaccessibility of such truths, advanced the presumption of translating them into terms of anthropomorphic and carnal comprehension (cfr. ibid., 1333AD, pp. 195,7-196,38; and one may compare this text with Utrum Pater et Filius et Spiritus sanctus, 1300D1301A, pp. 182,5-183,18).The dependence of the fourth opusculum upon a theological-speculative methodology is confirmed even by the presentation of the doctrine of the multiple senses of Scripture, deduced from the teaching of the Fathers of the Church and recalled on the occasion of the granting of the foundations of Revelation to Moses on Sinai (cfr. De fide catholica, 1334CD, p. 198,8291), and by the analysis of the rule of auctoritas in the theological field, articulated in three fundamental categories: the authority of the Scriptures, the universal tradition, and the local legislation of the particular churches (cfr. ibid. 1338AB, pp. 204,243-205,251). – For the past discussions regarding the authenticity of the fourth opusculum, see:W. BARK, Boethius’ fourth Tractate, the so-called De fide catholica, in «Harvard Theological Review», 39 (1946), pp. 55-69; H. CHADWICK, The Authenticity of Boethius’ Fourth Tractate, De fide catholica, in «Journal of Theological Studies», 31 (1980), pp. 551-556; F. TRONCARELLI, Aristoteles Piscatorius. Note sulle opere teologiche di Boezio e sulla loro fortuna, in «Scriptorium», 42 (1988), 1, [pp. 319], pp. 4-9; C. MICAELLI, Studi sui trattati teologici di Boezio, Napoli 1988, pp. 1142; L. OBERTELLO, I trattati teologici di Boezio, in «Filosofia», 1991, [pp. 439-446], pp. 440-442.

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to formulate, in the fourth tractate, a list of first principles concerning the primary dogmatic positions of the Christian faith. This corresponds more or less, in the field of a theology founded upon Revelation, to the list of communes conceptiones, which he proposed in the third tractate, known as De hebdomadibus, in order to develop a Euclidean type of a natural theological knowledge135. The first and the fifth tractates offer concrete examples regarding the possibility of realizing such a Christian speculative theology. The methodological introduction of the De Trinitate confirms that the investigation of a problem (quaestio) concerning the themes of the faith must first take its directions from the content of Revelation, but must then proceed with the natural instruments of investigative reason.The rational explanations of the truth of dogmas, which is in itself superior to any logical determination, cannot be other than limited and imperfect.This is because of the nature of the argument («ex ipsa materiae difficultate»), or because of the already mentioned human weaknesses – laziness and animosity – which impede the serenity necessary for the treatment of more elevated themes. It is therefore necessary to recognize that no researcher can presume the ability to draw from himself alone an adequate comprehension of the formulae which express the depth of divinity. This follows the admission that the limits of natural reason also limit the investigative capacity within the philosophical disciplines136. If even the other sciences recognize their limitation in the fulfillment of their own 135

Cfr. Quomodo substantiae, 1311AB, ed. Moreschini, p. 187,14-16: «Ut igitur in mathematica fieri solet ceterisque etiam disciplinis, praeposui terminos regulasque quibus cuncta quae sequuntur efficiam». In the third opusculum the formulation of the first principles of the demonstration, expressed in the form similar to that of mathematics or of the other sciences, is applicable to every investigation of natural [i. e. philosophical] theology: it involves, in fact, scientific axioms which are valid in all the disciplines, and therefore also in the rational analysis of questions regarding the nature of divine being and its relations with creation.Vice-versa, the fundamenta revealed by theological research, applied in the second and expressed in the fourth opusculum, arise from a summary formulation of the dogmas of the faith – and could be identified with capita dogmatica which Cassiodore attributes to the paternity of Boethius in Anecdoton Holderii: cfr. BARK, Boethius’ fourth Tractate cit. (preceding note), pp. 58-59. 136 Cfr. De trinitate, prol., 1247-1249A, pp. 165,1-166,23: «Investigatam diutissime quaestionem, quantum nostrae mentis igniculum lux divina dignata est, formatam rationibus litterisque mandatam offerendam vobis communicandamque

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results (as in medicine, which does not always heal the sick man, even if the doctor has done all that which, on the basis of his own science, he was able to do in order to cure him), how much more does such a limitation of natural knowledge hold sway with regard to a quaestio concerning the faith. So much more must tolerance be granted to one who strives to investigate the faith with a correct methodology137.The concept of philosophy as a search in continuous progress then becomes clear in this theology rooted in the Augustinian vision. In initiating the direct treatment of the Trinitarian problem, in the second chapter of the tractate, Boethius exhorts the reader to approach the question within the possibilities of human intelligence and recalls a suggestion found in the Tusculanae disputationes: it is necessary to content oneself with the manner in which each person will be able to have a persuasive knowledge (fides) of each object taken under consideration; and this takes on even greater significance when one treats the divine principle of reality138. The Contra Eutychen et Nestorium is characterized by the formulation of a precise methodological proposal, founded upon the curavi, tam vestri cupidus iudicii quam nostri studiosus inventi. Qua in re quid mihi sit animi quotiens stilo cogitata commendo,cum ex ipsa materiae difficultate tum ex eo quod raris, id est vobis tantum, conloquor, intelligi potest. Neque enim famae iactatione et inanibus vulgi clamoribus excitamur,sed,si quis est fructus exterior, hic non potest aliam nisi materiae similem sperare sententiam. (…) Sed ne [edd. sane] tantum a nobis quaeri oportet quantum humanae rationis intuitus ad divinitatis valet celsa conscendere». In light of the present observations, in the last sentence of this excerpt, the preferable reading seems to be «sed ne», assured by the best manuscripts,as opposed to «sane»,proposed by the critical editions (either in the precedent of Peiper and Rand, or now of Moreschini) as an amendment suggested by an interpretation in a purely «rationalistic» sense of the method of Boethius: theology must instead, according to what has been said, aspire to a comprehension of the Biblical data which, in so far as they are the outcome of God’s revelation, goes beyond the natural capacities of created reason. 137 Cfr. ibid., 1249AB, p. 166,23-29: «Nam ceteris quoque artibus idem quasi quidam finis est constitutus, quousque potest via rationis accedere. Neque enim medicina aegris semper affert salutem, sed nulla erit culpa medentis, si nihil eorum quae fieri oportebat omiserit; idemque in ceteris. At quantum haec difficilior quaestio est, tam facilior esse debet ad veniam». 138 Cfr. ibid., 2, 1250A, p. 168,64-67: «Age igitur, ingrediamur et unumquodque ut intellegi atque capi potest dispiciamus: nam, sicut optime dictum videtur, eruditi est hominis unumquodque ut ipsum est, ita de eo fidem capere temptare»; cfr. MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, Tusculanae disputationes, V, 7, 19 ed. Müller cit. (above, cap. 1, note 1), p. 432,15-17: «Propriis enim et suis argumentis et admonitionibus tractanda quaeque res est».

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definition of the terms inherent to the quaestio, in order to evaluate their correct semanticity and to fix the limits of their applicability, assured by the dogmatic formulae, to the mystery of faith139. Again we can affirm that the correctness itself of such a method is guaranteed by the presupposition that all rational investigations, even those founded upon the words of Revelation, must always be considered perfectible and never definitive, in so far as the absoluteness of the truth exceeds the human capacity of comprehension. Since (as Boethius clarifies even in the third tractate), all that which is good in creatures derives not from themselves, but from the Highest Good, even in human inquiries for the truth one must not retain anything which renders the single opinions of the theologian an object of love as such. If the rational demonstrations founded upon the expression of the faith are, at least in part, good, the text of Revelation, from which these demonstrations are taken, must be even greater140. Therefore, the principle of progress in knowledge, above all in the field of Christian theology, remains valid for Boethius, and from it there arises a sincere exhortation to renounce any sort of prejudicial positive appreciation of the results of one’s own research141. He exhorts the reader not to allow himself to be led 139 Cfr. Contra Eutychen et Nestorium, praef., 1341A, ed. Moreschini cit., p. 209,55-58: «Quoniam vero in tota quaestione contrariarum sibimet haereseon de personis dubitatur atque naturis, haec primitus definienda sunt et propriis differentiis segreganda». One of the most attentive heirs and interpreters of this theological methodology, recommended by the fifth Boethian opusculum, was, in the ninth century, the monk Ratramnus of Corbie: cfr. G. D’ONOFRIO, Dialectic and Theology: Boethius’ Opuscula sacra and Their Early Medieval Readers, in «Studi Medievali», Ser. 3a, 27.1 (1986), [pp. 45-67], esp. pp. 57-61; ID., Discussioni teologiche nel regno di Carlo il Calvo, in Storia della Teologia nel Medioevo cit. (above, note 100), I, I princìpi, [pp.197-242], esp. pp. 221-224. 140 Cfr. Contra Eutychen et Nestorium, 8, conclus., 1354CD, p. 241,771-779: «Haec sunt quae ad te de fidei meae credulitate scripsi. Qua in re si quid perperam dictum est, non ita sum amator mei, ut ea quae semel effuderim meliori sententiae anteferre contendam. Si enim nihil est ex nobis boni, nihil est quod in nostris sententiis amare debeamus. Quod si ex illo cuncta sunt bona, qui solus est bonus, illud potius bonum esse credendum est quod illa incommutabilis bonitas atque omnium bonorum causa perscribit». 141 Cfr. ibid., praef., 1339B-1340B, pp. 207,24-208,42: Boethius applies such a principle to himself first, before the others, professing his own openness to correct all that may be found lacking or imperfect in his writing. In the account in the prologue, however, he recognizes this to be (in an evident parallel with how much Cicero claims in the Accademica for the probablists) an advantage over all

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astray by representative images of God forged in imitation of natural realities and, when considering divine things, to be ready to rise, to the degree in which it is possible for man, up to the nondiscursive fullness of a knowledge superior to normal rationality (that is, of a noetic grade, superior to the dianoetic grade)142.This confirms that true theological research (that is, Christian theology) is placed at the highest level of philosophical research as the greatest result of the progressive approach to sapientia in all its complexity, while also maintaining the full awareness of the limitation which is inherent even in the boldest attempts of human cognitive investigation. In pursuing such a project, Boethius shows that he has inherited and harmonically synthesized the teachings of Cicero, Augustine, and Proclus: from Cicero, the indication of the limits and, at the same time, of the potentialities of rational knowledge; from Augustine, the consciousness of the necessity of carrying such potentialities to the greatest development, under the protective shadow of the certainty in an absolute truth, of which only the followers of Christ are sure to possess, thanks to the indubitable content of Revelation; from the Neoplatonists, and in particular from Proclus, the assurance of the possibility of stabilizing a direct contact between scientific aspiration and the sapiential possession of the truth, on the basis of a gnoseological doctrine which explains how every true form of knowledge, from the most limited to the most complex, must always be received as progress in the approach of humanity to Being and Good.

the other competitors in the council regarding the Eutychian doctrines, in so far as such an attitude renders him immune from the presumption of false knowledge. 142 Cfr. De trinitate, 6, 1256A, p. 180,354-181,365: «Nos vero nulla imaginatione diduci sed simplici intellectu erigi et ut quidque intellegi potest ita aggredi etiam intellectu oportet. (…) Quod si sententiae fidei fundamentis sponte firmissimae, opitulante gratia divina, idonea argumentorum adiumenta praestitimus, illluc perfecti operis laetitia remeabit unde venit effectus. Quod si ultra se humanitas nequivit ascendere, quantum inbecillitas subtrahit vota supplebunt». On the noetic grade of knowledge as an instrument appropriate to theological science, cfr. ibid., 2, 1250B, p. 169,78-82: «In naturalibus igitur rationabiliter, in mathematicis disciplinaliter, in divinis intellectualiter versari oportebit neque diduci ad imaginationes, sed potius ipsam inspicere formam quae vere forma neque imago est» (passage cross-referenced also in my essay La scala ricamata cit. [above, cap. 1, note 7]).

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With this background Boethius assumed as his own the precious Platonic cognitive methodology that guides the dianoeticdiscursive reason of the sciences to the point of raising itself, according to its own possibilities, up to the noetic intellect. This methodology, as the crown of the investigative efforts pursued in the course of his entire intellectual life, offered to Theodoric’s philosopher the correct speculative base for leading the human mind, in the most adequate manner allowed by its natural imperfection, to the fullness of knowledge which God himself enjoys.

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CHAPTER 3

THE THEOLOGICAL MISSION OF THE SAGE

1. The founders of Paris Four were the founders of the University of Paris: Rabanus, Claudius, Alcuin, the schoolmaster of Charles, and John, named Scottus, even if he was Irish by birth, because Ireland was called at that time the Greater Scotia. John Scottus was also one of the four commentators on the works of the blessed Dionysius, who were in fact four: John Scottus, John Saracenus, Maximus, and Hugh of Saint-Victor.

Thomas of Ireland, active in the faculty of theology in Paris at the beginning of the thirteenth century, established this legend in his De tribus sensibus sacrae Scripturae1. Certain modern historians 1 THOMAS HYBERNICUS (sive PALMERANUS), De tribus sensibus sacrae Scripturae, ms. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 15966, f. 7vb (commentary on Ps 9, 1): «Et fuerunt quatuor fundatores studii Parisiensis scilicet Rabanus, Cla‹u›dius, Alquinus magister Karoli, et Johannes dictus Scotus, natione tamen Hybernicus, nam Hybernia dicitur maior Scocia, qui etiam fuit quartus commentator in libris beati Dyonisij. Quatuor enim commentatores fuerunt librorum beati Dyonisij, scilicet Johannes Scotus, Johannes Sarracenus, Maximus, et Hugo de Sancto Victore». Thomas Hybernicus, or Palmeranus (from Palmerstown, his native city), was a bachelor in theology at the Sorbonne in 1306; cfr. J. QUÉTIF J. ECHARD, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum, I, Paris 1719, pp. 744-746; Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, XV, 1, p. 778; Dictionary of National Bibliography, XIX, pp. 654-655; B. HAURÉAU, Thomas d’Irlande, théologien, in Histoire littéraire de la France, XXX, Paris 1888, pp. 398-408 (this passage from De tribus sensibus is translated in French on pp. 405-406). Cfr. also G. THÉRY, Existe-t-il un commentaire de J. Sarrazin sur la «Hierarchie céleste» du Pseudo-Denys?, in «Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques», 11 (1922), [pp. 72-81], esp. pp. 73-74; M. D. CHENU, Introduction à l’étude de saint Thomas d’Aquin, Montréal - Paris 1954, p. 22, note 2.

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have drawn from this source in treating the idea of an institutional continuity between the Palace school of Charlemagne and the Sorbonne. The first to have held the position of ‘rector’ (capital) would have been, in order:Alcuin, Rabanus Maurus, Claudius of Turin, and John Scotus Eriugena2. In a brief note in his Speculum historiale,Vincent of Beauvais recounts the legend of the «four founders», perhaps for the first time in this form, and presents all four as disciples of Bede3.The 2

Cfr. CAESAR EGASSIUS BULAEUS (CÉSAR ÉGASSE DU BOULAY), Historia Universitatis Parisiensis a Carlo Magno ad nostra tempora, 6 voll., Parisiis 1665-1673, Petrus de Bresche, I, pp. 100-110 (between the other things, on pp. 84-85, he maintains that John the Scot is the author of De disciplina scholarium pseudoBoethian, and, on pp. 91-100, that the foundation of University of Paris goes back directly to Charlemagne and Alcuin); Histoire littéraire de la France, IV, Paris 1738, pp. 222-226, and J. B. L. CRÉVIER, Histoire de l’Université de Paris, I, Paris 1861, pp. 38-42 (they propose a list of successors as head of the school, who would include, after Alcuin and before John Scotus Eriugena, among others, the grammarian Clemens Scotus, Claudius of Turin, Aldric of Sens, and Amalarius of Metz); P. FÉRET, La faculté de théologie de Paris et ses docteurs les plus célèbres, Moyen Age, I, Paris 1894, pp. V-VI; etc. In confirmation of the presence of Eriugena in a post of importance in the palace school, Du Boulay (ibid., pp. 183-184) and Crévier recalls a letter (from 860-861) of Pope Nicholas I to Charles the Bald, in which he speaks of him as an author under suspicion («cum… non sane sapere… dicatur») and who had to be removed from the «studium» of Paris, «cuius capital iam olim fuisse perhibetur». But M. CAPPUYNS, Jean Scot Érigène, sa vie, son oeuvre, sa pensée, Louvain - Paris 1933, pp. 59-62 and 155-157, followed by L. TRAUBE, in MGH, Poetae Latini Medii Aevi, 3, Berlin 1896, pp. 519-520, has definitively shown the untenability of this document, which is an altered version (going back probably to the seventeenth century and perhaps to Du Boulay himself) of a text, the authenticity of which is even today under discussion: cfr. M. BRENNAN, Materials for the Biography of Johannes Scottus Eriugena, in «Studi Medievali», Ser. 3a, 27.1 (1986), [pp. 413-460], p. 430, test. n. 10; P. LUCENTINI, Platonismo medievale. Contributi per la storia dell’Eriugenismo, Firenze 1979, pp. 18-19 and 38. 3 Cfr. VINCENTIUS BELLOVACENSIS, Speculum historiale, XXIII, 173, in ID., Speculum quadruplex sive Speculum maius, IV, Duaci 1624, Balthazar Bellerus (repr. Graz 1965), p. 960a: «Hoc itaque monasterium [scil. s. Martini Turonensis], post hoc, ut dictum est, donante Carolo sucepit regendum Alcuinus, scientia vitaque praeclarus, quia sapientiae studium de Roma Parisios transtulit, quod illuc quondam a Graecia translatum fuerat a Romanis. Fueruntque Parisijs fundatores huius studij quatuor monachi Bedae discipuli, Rabanus & Alcuinus, Claudius & Iohannes Scottus». Cfr. BRENNAN, Materials cit., p. 447, test. n. 26.This text is partially included in the Cronicon of Martin Polonus (or Martin of Troppau): cfr. MARTINUS OPPAVIENSIS (sive POLONUS), Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum, ed. L.Weiland, in MGH, Scriptores, XXII, Hannover 1872 [pp. 377-475], pp. 426-427 (but the chronological relationship between the work ofVincent and that of Martin do not seem to me entirely definable).The phrase which interests us is found neither in Martin,nor in the Chronica of Helinand of Froidmont (or even in the version of this work published in PL: HELINANDUS DE PERSENIA [sive FRIGIDI MONTIS],

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legend was subsequently repeated in various forms by a great number of late medieval and Renaissance witnesses4. It is likely, however, that this legend, in its original form, involved neither John the Scot (nearly two generations younger than the others), nor Claudius of Turin (who came from the province of Iberia). Rather, besides Alcuin and his disciple Rabanus, the legend concerned the two mythical Irish monks, Clemens (or Claudius Clemens), and a second, who in some late sources was called «Iohannes». One finds these latter two in the Gesta Karoli of Notker Chronicon, PL 212, [771-1082], 837B seqq.), which Vincent uses as basis for this page. Du Boulay (Historia Universitatis Parisiensis cit., p. 110) indicates Helinand as the source of the note on the four founders, probably forcing the issue in order to consolidate his thesis that the foundation of University of Paris must go back to the times of Charlemagne, and not, as certain historians would want to say, to the times of Philip Augustus (to whom Helinand belongs). Also H. RASHDALL, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 3 voll. (Oxford 1895), edd. F. M. Powicke A. B. Emden, Oxford 1936, I, p. 273, note 1, advises one not to take as certain all the erudite information of Du Boulay on this argument. 4 BRENNAN, Materials cit., p. 447, note 20, indicates the catalogue of the Chartreuse of Salvatorberg (Erfurt, saec. XV ex.), ed. P. LEHMANN, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge Deutschlands und der Schweiz, II, München 1928, pp. 549,10-14 and 550,12-17; and, at the suggestion of H. J. FLOSS (in PL 122, Prooem., p. XXV), the Chronicon of Antonino Pierozzi († 1459), which, however, draws from Vincent of Beauvais other information on Eriugena (cfr. VINCENTIUS BELLOVACENSIS, Speculum historiale, XXIV, 42, ed. cit. [preceding note], p. 976b), drawing again from Helinand (cfr. BRENNAN, ibid., p. 446, test. n. 24), but not the note on the founders of Paris: cfr. ANTONINUS FLORENTINUS (ANTONINUS PIEROZZI), Chronicon, tit. XVI, cap. II, 3, Basileae 1489, Nikolaus Kessler, 3 voll., II, f. CLXXXIXrv. On this, however, among other posterior witnesses to Vincent one can recall: IOHANNES BOSTONUS BURIENSIS (JOHN BOSTON OF BURY, first half of 15th century), Catalogus scriptorum ecclesiae, ed. in T. TANNER, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, London 1747, pp. XXVII and XXXIII; MARCUS ANTONIUS COCCIUS SABELLICUS († 1506), Rapsodiae historiarum Enneades… ab orbe condito, enn. VIII, l. IX, 2 voll., Parisiis 1516-1517, Iohannes Parvus (Jean Petit), II, f. 198v; LILIUS GREGORIUS GIRALDUS († 1552), Historiae poetarum tam Graecorum quam Latinorum Dialogi decem, Dial.V, Basileae 1545, Michael Isingrinus (Isingrin), p. 222.A long list, not always precise, of other more recent witnesses was offered by THOMAS DEMPSTERUS (DEMPSTER) († 1624), Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Scotorum, Bononiae 1627, Nicolaus Thebaldinus, p. 546.The foundation of «gymnasium parisiense» is finally led back to Alcuin and to Charlemagne even by DONATUS ACCIAIOLUS (ACCIAIUOLI) († 1478), Vita Caroli Magni, in MARQUARDUS FREHERUS (MARQUARD FREHER), Corpus Francicae historiae veteris et sincerae, Hanoviae 1613,Typis Wechelianis apud haeredes Ioannis Aubrii, p. 558: «cuius opera tunc primum Parrhisiense gymnasium a Carolo institutum tradunt»; and by MICHAEL RITIUS (MICHELE RICCIO) (saec. XVI in.), De regibus francorum, I, ibid., p. 537: «Optimarum artium scholas instituit, & studiorum conventum, quem Parrhisiis universitatem vocant».

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Balbulus5, which states that the two monks arrived on the coast of France in order to offer their wisdom for sale, and that they received from Charlemagne himself the responsibility of guiding the education of the young in France and Italy6. 5 Cfr. NOTKER BALBULUS SANGALLENSIS, Gesta Karoli, 1, 1, PL 98, 1371D1373A, ed. H. F. Häfele, in MGH, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, N.S., XII, Berlin 1959, pp. 1,6-3,3: «Qui [scil. Karolus] cum in occiduis mundi partibus solus regnare coepisset et studia litterarum ubique propemodum essent in oblivione ideoque verae deitatis cultura teperet, contigit duos Scottos de Hibernia cum mercatoribus Brittannis ad litus Galliae devenire, viros et in saecularibus et in sacris scripturis incomparabiliter eruditos. Qui cum nihil ostenderent venale, ad convenientes emendi gratia turbas clamare solebant: ‘Si quis sapientiae cupidus est, veniat ad nos et accipiat eam; nam venalis est apud nos’. (…) Denique tam diu clamata sunt ista, donec ab admirantibus vel insanos illos putantibus ad aures Karoli regis, semper amatoris et cupidissimi sapientiae, perlata fuissent. Qui (…) primum quidem apud se utrumque parvo tempore tenuit. Postea vero cum ad expeditiones bellicas urgeretur, unum eorum nomine Clementem in Gallia residere praecepit, cui et pueros nobilissimos, mediocres et infimos satis multos commendavit. (…) Alterum vero nomine ‹…› in Italiam direxit, cui et monasterium sancti Augustini iuxta Ticinensem urbem delegavit, ut illuc ad eum qui voluissent ad discendum congregari potuissent». On the Gesta Karoli, cfr. G. VINAY, Alto Medioevo Latino, Conversazioni e no, Napoli 1978, pp. 350-374. 6 The name of the second of these two persons (cfr. preceding note) has disappeared in the oldest manuscript tradition of the Gesta Karoli (only some reliable codices propose the name «Albinus»: cfr. ed. cit., ibid.). From evidence such as that reported more than once by William of Malmesbury (13th century) regarding the fact that John the Scot «relicta patria, Franciam ad Karolum Calvum transierat» (GUILLELMUS MALMESBERIENSIS, De gestis pontificum Anglorum,V, 240, ms. Oxford, Magdalen College, Lat. 172, f. 92r; and cfr. ID., De gestis regum Anglorum, ed.W. Stubbs, London 1887 [Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores, 90, I], p. 131; cfr. BRENNAN, Materials cit., pp. 438-446, test. n. 23), some intermediate medieval witnesses, if not the same Vincent of Beauvais, may have confused the figure mentioned by Notker with Eriugena.Yet, already a first explicit distinction between John ‘Scottus’ the translator of Dionysius and another author of the same name, an author of exegetical texts (in particular of a commentary on Matthew which will often be attributed to him by successive witnesses), is found in SIGEBERTUS GEMBLACENSIS (11th-12th centuries), De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, 65 and 95 (94), PL 160, 561A and 568C-569A, ed. R.Witte [Catalogus… de viris illustribus], Frankfurt a. Main 1974, p. 71,454-457 and 80,653-655 (cfr. BRENNAN, ibid., p. 435, test. n. 18); on the attribution to Eriugena of a commentary on the first Gospel, cfr. the recent studies of G. PIEMONTE, Recherches sur les Tractatus in Matheum attribués à Jean Scot, in Iohannes Scottus Eriugena. The Bible and Hermeneutics, Proceedings of the Ninth International Colloquium of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies (Leuven - Louvain-la-Neuve, June 710, 1995), ed. by G. van Riel - C. Steel - J. McEvoy, Leuven 1996 (Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Ser. 1, 20), pp. 321-350, and ID., Some Distinctive Theses of Eriugena’s Eschatology in his Exegesis of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, in History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time, Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Stud-

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Thomas of Ireland, however, was the first to identify explicitly the John the Scot, the founder of Paris, with the Eriugena who ies (Maynooth - Dublin, August 16-20, 2000), ed. by J. McEvoy - M. Dunne, Leuven 2002 (Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Ser. 1, 30), pp. 227-242. From here arises a complicated story of the intersection between the legend of the merchants of wisdom and that of the founders of Paris, with continuous confusions and distinctions among the various persons who were involved in it. ROBERTUS GAGUINUS (ROBERT GAGUIN) († 1501), Compendium de origine et gestis Francorum, IV, Paris 1511, Iohannes Parvus, f. 53v, is one of the first modern witnesses of the fusion of the two streams.Yet, it is above all from the parallel information of IOHANNES TRITHEMIUS (JEAN TRITHÈME) († 1516), De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, Parisiis 1512, Bertholdus Rembolt et Iohannes Parvus, ff. 63v and 70v, and of IOHANNES BALEUS (JOHN BALE) († 1563), Scriptorum illustrium Maioris Brytanniae, 2 voll., Basileae 1557-1559, Iohannes Oporinus, cent. 2, I, pp. 210-211, and cent. 14, II, pp. 202-204 (cfr. Brennan, ibid., respectively p. 449, test. n. 30, and pp. 450-453, test. n. 32), that the identity of the two persons mentioned by Notker was defined in the form with which it became received by numerous other posterior witnesses. These include: IOHANNES MAJOR (sive MAIOR, JOHN MAJOR) († 1559), De historia gentis Scotorum (first edition, Parisiis 1512), 2, 13, Engl. trans. by A. Constable, Edinburg 1892 (Publications of the Scottish history society, 10), pp. 101-102; LILIUS GREGORIUS GIRALDUS (GIRALDI), Historiae poetarum cit. (above, note 4), ibid.; VERGILIUS POLYDORUS († 1555 ca.), Anglicae historiae libri XXVI, IV, Gandavo [s. a.], p. 227; IOHANNES GUALTERIUS (sive JANUS GRUTERUS, JAN GRUTER) († 1627), Chronicon chronicorum Ecclesiastico-Politicum, Francoforti 1614, Officina Aubriana, I/II, p. 998, and II/II, p. 1297; CAESAR EGASSIUS BULAEUS, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis cit. (above, note 2), I, pp. 568569 and 610; THOMAS DEMPSTERUS, Historia Ecclesiastiac cit. (above, note 4), pp. 12-15, 175-176, 476-478, 547; T.TANNER, Bibliotheca cit. (above, note 4), p. 182; etc.According to the common elements of this complex tradition, the merchants of wisdom would be two Irishmen of the names Claudius Clement and John, easily identifiable therefore with two of the four founders of the University of Paris. John, called by many «Iohannes Mailrosius» (that is, from Melrose: this name appears for the first time in Bale, while Trithème calls him simply «Iohannes monachus scotus»), disciple of Bede, would be founder not only of the University of Paris, but also of the University of Pavia, where, as told by Notker, he would have been invited by Charlemagne himself. Many of the authors mentioned distinguish him from Eriugena, even if a De divisione naturae is often attributed to him, and sometimes even a De primo rerum principio, only to bring in more confusion among the «Scoti» of the name John. Even Clemens Scotus («Clemens monachus Scotus» in Trithème), despite often being called Claudius Clemens and sometimes even «Claudius Altissidorensis», is generally distinguished from Claudius of Turin; as master of grammar contemporaneous with Alcuin, he was mentioned for the first time after Notker by the Catalogue of the abbots of Fulda of the tenth century (cfr. Catalogus Abbatum Fuldensium, ed. G. Waitz, in MGH, Scriptores, XIII, Hannover 1881, [pp. 272-274], p. 272,26-29; cfr. J. F. KENNEY, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland, I, New York 1929, pp. 537538). In addition, THOMAS DEMPSTERUS, ibid., p. 476, notes having read the following heading in a commentary on Paul: «Claudii Episcopi Alcuini quondam, cum sub venerabili Bedae, tum in fundatione Academiae Parisiensis collega Commentarii». It concerns the Paris edition of 1542 of the commentary on

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commented on the Areopagite. Perhaps he was motivated by a certain cultural patriotism which would also justify, in Thomas’ text, the recollection of a prophecy attributed to the wizard Merlin, according to which, after the flourishing of the study of wisdom in the Paris of modern times, scholarship would one day return to the islands from which it came: first to England, and, when the time was ripe, to Ireland7. This prophecy announced a return and, at the same time, a closing of the circle, which tells the story of the happy kingdoms in which wisdom and victory advanced side by side: for it is in such kingdoms that, according to the Platonic saying, «the philosophers were reigning and the kings were philosophers»8. Galatians of Claudius of Turin, edited by Pierre de la Pesselière (Petrus Pesseliaerius), which is mentioned also by Gruter; but the text of Dempster, which speaks of it as a «prima editio commentarii in Epistolas Pauli ad Galatas promata ex Bibliotheca Petri Pesselieri Cenobitae Altissidorensis», has also given rise to the false notion of a mysterious «Petrus Pesselierus», Benedictine of the Carolingian age, noted by J. LELONG, Bibliotheca sacra, II, Paris 1723, p. 899, and, therefore, also by F. STEGMÜLLER, Repertorium biblicum medii aevi, IV, Madrid 1954, p. 361, n. 6775. 7 Cfr. THOMAS HYBERNICUS, De tribus sensibus sacrae Scripturae, ibid.: «Ob loci igitur amenitatem et proprie fertilitatem et regni pacificam tranquillitatem, ac regum consuetam et innatam pietatem, ordinate providit Deus, ut ibi [scil. Parisiis] studia florerent, sapientialia, et ut ait sanctum vaticinium Merlini, ‘vigebunt studia ad Vadabonum in Anglia tempore suo ad partes Hybernie transitura, ad Vadasaxa’.» This same prophecy is reported by ALEXANDER NECKHAM, De naturis rerum, II, 174, ed.Th.Wright, London 1863, p. 311. On the existence of a tradition which considers John the Scot the initiator even of the story of the University of Oxford, cfr. BRENNAN, Materials cit., pp. 448 and 451-453 (and note 26), test. n. 28 and 32. 8 Cfr. THOMAS HYBERNICUS, ibid.: «Cuiuslibet enim regni gloria crevit in immensum, quamdiu arcium liberalium studia in ipso floruerunt, qui inquam hostes illi regno restiterunt, quamdiu studia in eis floruerunt. Sicut patuit de Alexandro Machedono in Grecia, de Julio Cesare in Ytalia, de sancto Ludovico rege in Francia; milicie enim victoria et philosophia et gloria quoque simul concurrunt, et merito, quia philosophia vera docet iuste et recte regnare.‘Per me enim regnant reges’ dicit Sapientia Proverbiorum VIII (Pv 8, 15).Tunc enim felix erat res publica quoniam philosophi regnabant et reges philosophabantur». Regarding the theme of the philosopher-king, cfr. PLATO, Respublica, V, 473cd; BOETHIUS, Consolatio Philosophiae, I, 4, 5, PL 63, 615A-616A, ed. Moreschini cit. (above, cap. 2, note 6), p. 12, 15-18; and ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Epistola ad Karolum, in Epistolae, ed. E. Dümmler, in MGH, Epistolae, 4 (Karolini aevi, 2), Hannover 1895, 229, p. 273,2-8. In this passage of Thomas of Ireland there are strong textual similarities with a page of Alexander Neckam cited in the preceding note, and with GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS († 1223 ca.), De principis instructione liber, dist. I, praef., ed. C. F. Warner, London 1891, pp. 7-8. On the theme of the foundation of the Uni-

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According to this account, John the Scot’s contribution to the origins of medieval wisdom would have occurred at a key moment in the translatio studiorum from ancient Greece to scholastic Europe.Thomas of Ireland, in fact, inserts the digression regarding the origins of the University of Paris into a commentary on the description of the house decorated by the seven columns which divine Wisdom has constructed in order to invite sages to her banquet (Pv 9, 1)9. According to Thomas, John the Scot assumes an essential role in this process precisely through his Latin translation of the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, since Dionysius – as noted in the narrative of the Passio Dionysii of abbot Hilduin of Saint-Denys, from which Thomas drew amply in his composition of this work – would have been the first advocate for the transfer of Christian wisdom into France10. Furthermore, according to Hilduin, Dionysius, even before his conversion, was considered one of the greatest of the pagan philosophers: one finds evidence for his stature in his capacity to comprehend, through reason alone, not only that there existed a God, creator of the universe, but also that this God had suffered for humanity, as attested by the eclipse of the sun after the death of versity of Paris, cfr. A. GABRIEL, ‘Translatio Studii’. Spurious Dates of Foundation of Some Early Universitis, in Fälschungen im Mittelalter, Internationaler Kongress der MGH (München, 16.-19. September 1986), 6 voll., Hannover 1988-1990, I (Schriften der MGH, 33/1), [pp. 601-626], esp. pp. 605-612. 9 Cfr. THOMAS HYBERNICUS, ibid., f. 7va-b: «Sapientia igitur Dei Patris ‘edificavit sibi domum’ in studio Parisiense. Primo enim civitas Atheniensium mater erat studiorum, que dividebatur in tres partes principales, scilicet Mercurii, Martis et Solis. Nam Athenienses singulos vicos denominabant a diis quos colebant. (…) [Civitas Parisiensis] velud civitas Athenarum in tres partes dividitur, scilicet in partem mercatorum artificum et popularium, quae dicitur magna villa, et in partem nobilium, ubi curia regalis et cahedralis ecclesia resident, quae dicitur civitas, et in partem studencium et collegiorum, qui dicitur universitas. Studium enim primo de Grecia fuit Rome translatum, deinde tempore magni Karoli, circa annuum domini DCCC fuit translatum de Roma Parisius». On the theme of translatio studiorum, cfr. É. GILSON, L’humanisme médiéval, in ID., Les idées et les lettres, Paris 1932, pp. 171-196; F. J. WORSTBROCK, ‘Translatio artium’. Über die Herkunft und Entwicklung einer kulturhistorischen Theorie, in «Archiv für Kulturgeschichte», 47 (1965), pp. 1-22; A. G. JONGKEES, Translatio studii: les avatars d’un thème médiéval, in Miscellanea Mediaevalia in memoriam J. F. Niermeyer, Groningen 1967, pp. 41-51; T. HUNT, Aristotle, Dialectic and Courtly Literature, in «Viator», 10 (1979), [pp. 95-129], pp. 95-96; GABRIEL, ‘Translatio Studii’. cit. (preceding note). 10 Cfr. THOMAS HYBERNICUS, ibid., f. 7vb: «Beatus autem Dionysius postea venit Parisius ut civitatem Parisiensem ad instar Athenarum matrem faceret studiorum». Cfr. HILDUINUS SANCTI DIONYSII, Passio Dionysii, 20, PL 106, 39D-40B.

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Christ11. John the Scot, or John Scotus (or Scottus) Eriugena, one of the founders of the Paris school and one of the four commentators upon the works of Dionysius, stands out in the eyes of his later compatriot as one of the great masters who made possible, through his intellectual works, the birth of a Christian cultural civilization, the result of a true synthesis between the discoveries of ancient philosophical thought and the contribution of the faith to the human possession of the truth. Beyond the legendary elements on which Thomas of Ireland’s proposal is founded, one can find here a stimulating invitation to establish a new treatment of the problem of the apparent cultural and speculative excellence of John the Scot in respect to other thinkers of the same epoch.The legend which connects him and the other chief Carolingian masters within the common theme of the birth of the most important school of Christian theology offers, in fact, a possible starting point for reflecting upon the possibilities of better contextualizing in Eriugena’s time the intellectual contribution documented in his main works. Furthermore, one may also identify, in the very context of the formulation and definition of wisdom as vera philosophia Christiana, a continuity of inspiration between the intellectual work of Alcuin and his own companions, on the one hand, and the great speculative synthesis of the Periphyseon on the other.

2. The defense of Christian truth in the Carolingian schola Christi Let us return to Dionysius the Areopagite and to the narrative of Hilduin.The obvious intent of the author is to celebrate the contribution of the faith in leading the true believer out of the labyrinth of contradictions among ever partial truths of the an-

11 Cfr. THOMAS HYBERNICUS, ibid., f. 7va: «Beatus autem Dionysius summus philosophorum Atheniensium visa eclipsi solis supernaturali in die passionis Christi conversus fuit. Erat enim contra naturam, cum luna erat plena, eclipsis autem solis non potest esse nisi in coniunctione eius cum luna, tum quia eclipsis non aufert lumen universis partibus terrae, tum quia per tres horas durare non potest, quorum contrarium fuit hic. Ideo philosophi Atenienses compulsi sunt dicere, aut auctor naturae patitur, aut machina mundi dissolvetur». Cfr. HILDUINUS SANCTI DIONYSII, ibid., 5, 27AB; cfr. also ibid., 4, 26CD; 6, 27BC; 11, 31AC.

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cient philosophies12. As we know, this is a typically Augustinian idea.The Dionysius presented by Hilduin resembles in no small way the young Augustine, the philosopher of the Confessions who traversed the various paths open to him by human reflection in the vain search for a satisfying and definitive truth. It was this Augustine who considered the dissensiones among the philosophers of the various pagan schools as the principal indication of evidence for their failure to acquire the truth; while, at the same time, he considered the unity of the Christians to be the most evident sign of the genuine possession of the truth. It is no accident, however, that the legend of Dionysius the Areopagite, a pagan philosopher converted to Christian wisdom, was composed by the hand of a Benedictine monk during the full political and cultural Carolingian Renaissance. The collapse of the Roman Imperial institution had surprised the exponents of a culture which had grounded its validity upon the exclusive possession of the truth on the part of the only valid school of thought: the «schola Christi», the universality of which had been guaranteed by the political solidity of the Empire. The interior tragedy of such personalities as Boethius and Cassiodore, attentive and passionate readers of the classics along with the works of Augustine, is in the failure of their attempts to identify their current universal-spiritual vocation with the solidity of the historical reality in which they lived.Yet, after the experience of the lack of political uniformity in the centuries of the first Roman-Barbaric kingdoms, the West rediscovered in the military force of the Franks the possibility of recovering that historical unity which is the manifest sign of the possession of an absolute universal truth, that is, of a truth of divine origin. The theme of the translatio studiorum – invented perhaps by Alcuin himself with his explicit intent of wanting to construct a new Athens in France – now appears as the ideological justification for the other more historical and complex theme, the trans12 Cfr. HILDUINUS SANCTI DIONYSII, ibid., 17, 37D: «Multa praeterea tam voluminibus, quam differentibus ad diversos epistolis, ut fluvius eloquii mystici [Dionysius] edidit, et velut oraculum sancti Spiritus, praecipuo opere et vera ac philosophico magisterio praesagivit, ad subvertendos errores et destruendos nodos syllogismorum gentilium, atque evacuandum cultum idolorum, seu commendandam patriae coelestis beatitudinem, et aeternae vitae immortalitatem».

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latio imperii13.The function of the sage, who was called upon by the emperor to guarantee the force of a political project with the defense of the religious idea that sustains it, clearly acquires, above all, a theological function in the widest sense. Theologia is, however, a rather ambiguous word in the story of early medieval thought. The writers of this age devoted themselves primarily to scriptural exegesis and to the systemization of the ecclesiastical and patristic heritage.They had little interest in the epistemological definition of particular fields of knowledge as methodologically differentiated from others14. They inherited from ancient times a summarized exposition of the elementary sciences, formalized in the sequence of the seven liberal arts, and they did not question the intermediary sources of this systematic learning about the critical principles which differentiate a scientific form of knowledge from a non-scientific one. Actually, according to the general Augustinian inspiration typical of the intellectual world of the time, science is the complex, yet unitary, result of every inquiry, gradually leading to a mental reconstruction of the order that had been given once and forever by the Creator to the created world. A coherent and compact view of the whole emerges from this detailed organization of separate disciplines: a form of knowledge that exceeds normal human capacities and is called sapientia, wisdom15. Since the final subject of 13 Cfr. ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Epistola ad Karolum, in ID., Epistolae, ed. Dümmler cit. (above, note 8), 170, p. 279,20-26; Epistola ad Karolum, ibid., 171, pp. 281,20-282,12; Epistola ad Karolum, ibid., 174, p. 288,17-27; Epistola ad Karolum (dedicatio De fide sanctae Trinitatis), ibid., 257, p. 414,20-33. Cfr. also H. GRUNDMANN, Sacerdotium – Regnum – Studium. Zur Wertung der Wissenschaft im 13. Jahrhundert, in «Archiv für Kulturgeschichte», 34 (1952), pp. 5-21; D. BULLOUGH, Alcuin and the Kingdom of Heaven: Liturgy,Theology and the Carolingian Age, in Carolingian Essays, ed. by U.-R. Blumenthal, Washington 1983, pp. 1-69; C. LEONARDI, Alcuino e la scuola palatina: le ambizioni di una cultura unitaria, in Nascita dell’Europa ed Europa carolingia: un’equazione da verificare, Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, XXII/1, Spoleto 1981, pp. 459-496. 14 One of the first medieval discussions about the scientific value of a determinated form of knowledge is perhaps to be found in the Epistola ad Desiderium Cassinensem (De communibus medico cognitu necessariis locis) of CONSTANTINUS AFRICANUS, PL 150, 1563C-1566A, concerning the epistemological status of medicine («medicina scientiane sit necne»). Cfr. L.THORNDIKE, A Catalogue of Incipits of Mediaeval Scientific Writings in Latin, London 1963, p. 887. 15 Cfr. R. LORENZ, Die Wissenschaftslehre Augustins, in «Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte», 67 (1955-1956), pp. 29-60 and 213-251.

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all knowledge is Truth, and Truth is God, theology is not a special and differentiated branch of knowledge, and every true investigation is a theological one.Wisdom is the summary of all the individual sciences.Thus, being a vera sapientia, theology is therefore the vera philosophia, differentiated from, and yet involving, every particular form of rational understanding. This idea of the coincidence of theology and philosophy characterizes the whole of intellectual inspiration in early medieval times: all theoretical knowledge, which investigates the real nature of things beyond the sensible appearances, can only be a form of theological knowledge. Moreover, always in agreement with the Augustinian ideal, to possess the truth, for Christians, also means to have received the task of defending it.And to defend the Christian truth means to defend the spiritual unity, which becomes unanimitas, of the empire16.The consent to Christian faith needs to be universal; otherwise, the universality itself of every true principle of knowledge could be compromised.Actually, after the tragic experience of the lack of political unification following the fall of the Roman empire, the diffusion and the stability of the common Christian faith appear to be the unique guarantee for the preservation of the delicate blend of diverse populations achieved through military power by the Frankish kingdom. It is the uniformity itself of the Christian school – which is both ideological (i. e., philosophical) and religious (i. e., theological) – that had become, at the time of Charlemagne, a token of truthfulness17. The truth which Charles has diffused, and now imposes on his subjects, is, in fact, the same, eternal and indivisible one which the Roman Church has retained and preserved from any corruption during the centuries and all over the 16

Cfr. ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Epistola ad Karolum, in ID., Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, 202, p. 336,17-22.The theme of the unanimitas recurs in the pages of Alcuin and in the documents of Charlemagne, in either a political or theological sense: cfr. M. CRISTIANI, Dall’unanimitas all’universitas. Da Alcuino a Giovanni Eriugena. Lineamenti ideologici e terminologia politica della cultura del secolo IX, Roma 1978 (Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, Studi Storici, 100-101-102), esp. pp. 7-28. 17 Cfr. for example ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Expositio in Psalmos graduales (Ps 122, 2), PL 100, 624C; Epistola ad Karolum (dedicatio De fide sanctae Trinitatis), in ID., Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, 257, p. 415,33-36; Commentaria in Iohannis Evangelium, 7, 39 (Jo 17, 21), PL 100, 966D-967A; Contra Felicem Urgellitanum episcopum libri VII, I, 4, PL 101, 130C-131D.

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world. So that, as Charles himself is acclaimed as the defender of Christian truth, so also the court of wise men who surround him is charged with the task of defending and maintaining in its essential unity the authentic knowledge of this Truth. Now to understand what early medieval theology is means precisely to describe the real nature and the extent of this task.

3. The rules of theological method in the Carolingian age: lectio, traditio, ratio In a general way, the return to a scriptural foundation for every true interpretation of the mystery can be considered as the first rule for the knowledge of theological truth. Indeed, in Scripture lies the entire extent of Christian Truth, but simple believers need to be guided to the correct understanding, within their limits, of the essential and deeply significant language of the inspired authors18. Immediately after the Scriptures, the second, essential instrument would be a reading of the texts of the Fathers, who are the authorized interpreters of Revelation, recognized as such by the entirety of Ecclesiastical tradition. To be sure, the Fathers of the Church have already written in their exegetical treatises more than what is required for a correct and accurate interpretation of the Bible: yet, their language, too, is sometimes difficult to understand; the turn of their sentences is sometimes too complex; their 18 Cfr. ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Epistola ad populum Cantuariensem, in ID., Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, 129, p. 191,31-37: «Primo omnium, qui in ecclesia Christi Deo deserviant, discant diligenter, quomodo Deo placent, quomodo fidem catholicam, quam primum doctores nostri in eis fundaverunt, obtinere firmiter et praedicare valeant. Quia ignorantia scripturarum ignorantia Dei est; et si caecus caecum ducit, cadunt ambo in foveam: et econtra multitudo sapientium salus est populi. Adducite vobis doctores et magistros sanctae Scripturae, ne sit apud vos inopia verbi Dei, aut vobis desinit qui populum Dei regere valeant; ne fons veritatis in vobis essiccetur». Cfr. also: ID., Epistola ad Gislam, ibid., 15, p. 41,31-45; Epistola ad Aedilbertum, ibid., 31, p. 73,2-5; Expositio in Epistolam Pauli Apostoli ad Hebraeos, 5 (Hbr 5, 13-14), PL 100, 1055D-1056B, from an idea of John Chrysostom (cfr. IOHANNES CHRYSOSTOMUS, Homiliae, 8, Latin trans. by MUTIANUS, PG 63, 295). Cfr. also HRABANUS MAURUS, De institutione clericorum, 3, 2, PL 107, 379BC, ed. A. Knöpfler, München 1901, p. 191: «Fundamentum autem, status et perfectio prudentiae scientia est sacrarum Scripturarum, ac si quid aliud est quod sapientiae nomine rite censeri possit, ab uno eodemque sapientiae fonte derivatum, ad eius respectat originem».

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digressions too dispersive19. Thus the monastic libraries of the ninth to eleventh centuries were, over the years, more and more filled with new, but unoriginal treatises compounded of extracts from patristic texts, held together by short connecting sentences. From Alcuin to the time of Anselm, there is a true flourishing of exegetical compilations from patristic sources, often even copies of each other, of little interest – at first sight – for a modern reader20. The scriptural lectio and the predisposition for useful dossiers of information drawn from the patristic-ecclesiastical tradition already stand out as, without a doubt, the most garish aspect of the theological literature of the Carolingian epoch, dominated by florilegia and scriptural commentaries sewn together with patris19 Cfr. ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Epistola Gislae et Rotrudae ad Alcuinum, in ID., Epistolae, 196, p. 324,25-29; HRABANUS MAURUS, Epistola ad Haistulfum Moguntiacensem (dedicatio Comm. in Matthaeum), in ID., Epistolae, ed. E. Dümmler, in MGH, Epistolae, 5 (Karolini aevi, 3), Berlin 1899, 5, p. 388,20-30 and 389,9-21. 20 For an open and programmatic description of this method of defloratio of patristic texts, cfr. ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Adversus haeresin Felicis liber, 1-2, PL 101, 87C-88B, ed. C. B. Blumenshine, Città del Vaticano 1980 (Studi e Testi, 285), pp. 55,3-56,6: «Legimus in saecularis litteraturae historiis quosdam viros medicinalis artis peritos, dum antiquas civitates pestilentiae lue infectas audierunt, amore civium suorum aliquod medicamenti genus provida solicitudine excogitare quo cives suos a grassantis morbi infestatione praemunirent ne ingruens periculum ex insperato partem cognatae subverteret multitudinis (…). Ecce pars quaedam mundi haereticae pravitatis veneno infecta est. (…) Hanc ergo pestilentiae luem abhorrens, antiquorum Patrum pigmentarias perscrutare curavi cellas, vel posterioris temporis venerabilium Doctorum florentia percurrere prata festinavi, ut aliquod medicamenti genus civibus meis, filiis scilicet sanctae ecclesiae conficerem, quo se ab hac pestilentiae contagione praemunire, divina auxiliante gratia, potuissent. Ex paternis videlicet thesauris species colligens pigmentorum vel florum, et singulorum adnectens nomina auctorum ut salubrior esset et firmior confectio quo ex clarissimorum virorum sapientiae et sanctitatis erueretur gazis». Cfr. also: ID., Epistola ad Gislam (dedicatio Commentarii in Iohannem), in ID., Epistolae, 213, pp. 356,31-357,14; Epistola ad Gislam (dedicatio secundae partis Commentarii in Iohannem), ibid., 214, pp. 357,34-358,5; Epistola ad Arnonem, ibid., 243, p. 389,13-18; Epistola ad Oniam, Candidum et Fredegisum (dedicatio Commentarii super Ecclesiasten), ibid., 251, p. 407,8-9 and 27-30 (vv. 5-8); Commentaria super Ecclesiasten, versus postf., PL 100, 720B, vv. 1-8; Adversus Elipandum Toletanum libri quatuor, III, 1, PL 101, 271A. Cfr. moreover: BEATUS LIEBANENSIS, In Apocalipsin libri duodecim, praef., 1, 2-9, ed. H. A. Sanders, Rome 1930, pp. 1-2; HRABANUS MAURUS, Epistola ad Haistulfum Moguntiacensem (dedicatio De institione clericorum), in ID., Epistolae, ed. Dümmler cit. (preceding note), 3, p. 385,2230 and 386,16-25; Epistola ad Hilduinum Sancti Dionysii (dedicatio Commentariorum in Reges), ibid., 14, pp. 402,32-403,6; Epistola FRECULFI LEXOVIENSIS ad Hrabanum, ibid., 7, p. 392,10-22; etc.

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tic fragments. From the beginning, however, the Carolingian authors realized that an analytical and attentive exegetical production, founded upon an obedient appeal to the texts of the Fathers, could not exhaust the task of the true defenders of the Christian faith. The more cultivated among the believers were obliged to intervene in defense of the city of God on account of the continuing presence of heretics who disturbed the peace from within. Even heretics strive to present themselves as the true heirs of the teaching of the Fathers and to support their erroneous affirmations with a distortion of both scriptural and patristic texts. It is evident, therefore, that other instruments must be applied in order to distinguish the truth of the Christian teaching from their errors. Heretics not only endanger their acolytes’ redemption, but they also put into peril the political and spiritual unity of Christendom, that unity which is, as we have seen, the principle itself of its survival. Heretics repeat the same error of the philosophers of the ancient world, and, like them, they bring divisions into what is authentically indivisible21.They presume to make use of the tools of human reasoning in order to explain the meaning of revealed mystery, the true integral comprehension of which is in itself forbidden to human intelligence22. Consequently, like the ancient philosophical sects, heretics fall into incongruousness and contradiction through their deviating doctrines. Alcuin remarks, incidentally, that the compound of trueness and falsity which gives birth to heresy permits the genuine supporter of the true faith to introduce into the discussion the aid of human reasoning, which can distinguish deception from persuasion, and true statements from untrue23.An appeal is made to the ‘rea21 Cfr. ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Commentaria in Iohannis Evangelium, 5, 25 (Jo 10,1-7), PL 100, 883BC and 884D-885A; Libri Carolini (Capitulare de imaginibus), 3, 9, PL 98, 1130AC, ed. H. Bastgen, MGH, Leges, 3, Concilia, 2, Supplementband, Hannover - Leipzig 1924, pp. 121,25-122,11. Cfr. also HRABANUS MAURUS, De rerum naturis, 15, 1, PL 111, 415D-416A: «Hi philosophorum errores etiam apud Ecclesiam induxerunt haereses. (…) Eadem materia apud haereticos et philosophos volutatur, idem retractatus implicantur: sed spretis erroribus gentilium atque haereticorum, quae sit vera philosophia secundum catholicorum patrum sensuum dicendum nobis est». 22 Cfr. ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Adversus haeresin Felicis liber, 37, 102C, ed. Blumenshine cit. (above, note 20), p. 75,8-11; Contra Felicem Urgellitanum,VI, 1, PL 101, 199C-200D; 6, 3, 215BC; 7, 10, 222CD; etc. 23 Cfr. ID., Epistola ad monachos Hiberniae, in ID., Epistolae, ed. Dümmler cit.

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son’ of the heretic to recognize the logical invalidity of his position in the face of the traditio from which he attempts to separate himself24. It is at this point that profane science is invited to collaborate with true theological wisdom. The early medieval writers do not hide their confidence in this theological recovery of profane science. Among his short accounts of the Greek schools of philosophy, Isidore of Sevilla, followed verbatim by Rabanus Maurus in book XV of De rerum naturis, comments on the position of the Academics that Truth does exist, but lies in the darkness, as if hidden in a never-ending well, by saying that it is true that a great deal of things are, through God’s will, impossible to understand for men; yet, there are still many possibilities open to human discernment for assuring some particular and determined forms of true knowledge: «Sicut fatendum est multa incerta et occulta esse quae voluit Deus intelligentiam hominis excedere, sic tamen plurima esse quae possint et sensibus capi, et ratione comprehendi»25. Fridugisus of Tours presents his philosophical (above, note 8), 280, p. 437,16-25: «Quanto magis periculosa nunc esse tempora noscuntur (…), tanto instantius ipsa catholicae fidei veritas ubique inter vos discenda est et docenda, ut habeant orthodoxae fidei praedicatores, quo possint contradicentibus veritati resistere, et palam vincere adversarios apostolicae doctrinae. Erumpunt subito apostatica seducti calliditate pseudodoctores, novas et inauditas introducentes sectas, qui dum novis dogmatibus sibi laudem adquiri putant, inveniuntur reprehensibiles omnibusque odibiles esse, sicut in Hispaniae partibus vidimus factum. Unde, sanctissimi patres, exhortamini iuvenes vestros, ut diligentissime catholicorum doctorum discant traditiones, et catholicae fidei rationes omni intentione adprehendere studeant, quia sine fide Deo inpossibile est placere». Cfr. also ID., Epistola ad Fredegisum, ibid., 289, pp. 447,28-448,4; Contra Felicem Urgellitanum, 5, 1-2, PL 101, 187D-189C. 24 Cfr., for instance, ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Adversus Elipandum Toletanum, IV, 7, PL 101, 291C: «Quod certisisme eiusdem synodi litteras legentes agnoscere potestis, si aliqua in vobis rationalis creaturae particula remanserit. Hoc solum vobis restat remedii, ut tota mentis alacritate relinquatis infidelitatem illius Nestorii atque vestram». – In the same work, Alcuin affirms explicitely that the ‘conversion’ of Felix of Urgel to the Catholic truth has a rational foundation; cfr. ibid., I, 12, 249A: «Nunc vero Deo miserante rationabili disputatione convictus, et absolutus ab errore vestro, et in catholicae pacis unanimitatem reductus»; and I, 16, 252B: «Sed et idem Felix (…) voluntarie veniens ad Aquis Palatium, ibique in praesentia domini regis et optimatum illius sive sacerdotum Dei rationabiliter auditus et veraciter convictus (…) in pacem catholicae unanimitatis reversus est cum suis discipulis». 25 Cfr. ISIDORUS HISPALENSIS, Etymologiae,VIII, 6, 11-12, PL 82, 306B; HRABANUS MAURUS, De rerum naturis, XV, 1, PL 111, 414D.

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letter concerning the substiantiality of «nihil» and «tenebrae» as «pauca ratione simul et auctoritate congesta», and the result of his rational inquiries as «probabiles sententiae»26. Dungal of SaintDenys, in a letter dedicated to the computation of the moon’s phases, confirms that a correct demonstration must be supported by the joint contribution of probabilis ratio and traditio27. Practically, this means that the Christians may freely exclude the seven liberal arts from their rejection of paganism28.They develop for man the mental reconstruction of the order which God has imposed upon creation.The Carolingian sage, following the manner of Augustine and the better exponents of the Patristic age, can therefore make use of this natural contribution for consolidating the knowledge of the truth.When no authority – neither scriptural, nor patristic – is at one’s disposal for the solution of a theological question, recourse to rational methods is not only allowed, but unavoidable. Christian Revelation is expressed in human language and through limited images drawn from the created world. Its correct understanding, therefore, is made possible for man by means of the natural methods of reason, which he improved and elaborated in order to distinguish true from false 26 Cfr. FRIDUGISUS (FREDEGISUS) TURONENSIS, Epistola ad proceres palatii de substantia nihili et tenebrarum, ed. E. Dümmler, in Epistolae variorum Karolo Magno regnante scriptae, in MGH, Epistolae, 4 (Karolini aevi, 2), Hannover 1895, 36, [pp. 552,29-555,32], p. 555,30; cfr. also ibid., p. 553,4-7: «Huic responsioni obviandum est, primum ratione, in quantum hominis ratio patitur; deinde auctoritate, non qualibet, sed divina dumtaxat, quae sola auctoritas est solaque immobilem obtinet firmitatem». Cfr. M. L. COLISH, Carolingian Debates over Nihil and Tenebrae:A Study in Theological Method, in «Speculum», 59 (1984), pp. 757-795. 27 Cfr. DUNGALUS SCOTUS (SANCTI DIONYSII), Epistola ad Karolum, in ID., Epistolae, ed. E. Dümmler, in MGH, Epistolae, 4 (Karolini aevi, 2), Hannover 1895, 1, p. 575,8-9. 28 Cfr. ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Epistola ad monachos Hiberniae cit. (above, note 23), p. 437,25-31: «Nec tamen saecularium litterarum contempnenda est scientia, sed quasi quoddam fundamentum tenerae infantium aetati tradenda est grammatica, aliaeque philosophicae subtilitatis disciplinae, quatenus quibusdam sapientiae gradibus ad altissimum evangelicae perfectionis culmen ascendere valeant». Cfr. also ID., Epistola ad Arnonem, in ID., Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, 207, p. 345,16-25; Epistola ad Karolum, ibid., 307, p. 470,19-26; KAROLUS MAGNUS, Epistola de litteris colendis, ed.A. Boretius, in MGH, Leges, 2, Capitularia regum Francorum, 1, Hannover 1881, 29, p. 79,5-46; DUNGALUS SCOTUS, Epistola ad Karolum cit., p. 575,12-18; WALAHFRIDUS STRABO (AUGIENSIS), De rebus ecclesiasticis, edd. A. Boretius - V. Krause, in MGH, Leges, 2, Capitularia regum Francorum, 2/3, Hannover 1907, p. 401,12-14.

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knowledge. As plainly indicated in a Cassiodorian text, which is the common source of some similar passages in the Libri Carolini and in Sedulius Scotus’ commentary on Saint Paul, it is possible to rediscover in the Scriptures the rules and proceedings of the human arts.They lie indeed potentially in the depth of each biblical text, as wine is hidden in the vine and a tree’s leafy branches in its roots29. Following the Fathers, the medieval commentators on Scripture can locate and decode the presence of rational truths within the pages of the Revelation.Thus they prepare ‘milk’ for the children of faith (cf. Hbr 5, 11-12): this means, for the less cultivated among the believers, healthy food which nourishes them and protects them from the danger of false preachers until they become able to eat the solid food of theology, suitable only for the most mature among the followers of Christ30. Theological wisdom consists therefore in a knowledge resulting from a renewed encounter – after the division caused by original sin – between human intelligence and divine Truth, that is, resulting from an intellectual acknowledgement of the truth of faith, as Alcuin himself shows in discussing the unacceptability of forcing the heathen populations recently integrated into Carolingian empire to accept Christian religion. Faith cannot be forced; but since will is a part of the human rational soul, it is possible to produce a rational inclination in the minds of a still uncivilized audience tending towards acceptance of Revelation31. Conse29 Cfr. CASSIODORUS SENATOR, Expositio Psalmorum, praef., 15, PL 70, 21B, ed. Adriaen cit. (above, cap. 2, note 21), I, pp. 20,92-99. Cfr. also: Libri Carolini, II, 30, 1105D-1106A, ed. Bastgen cit. (above, note 21), p. 97,30-38; SEDULIUS SCOTUS, Collectaneum in Epistolam ad Romanos, II, PL 103, 33CD; HRABANUS MAURUS, De benedictionibus Dei, 15, PL 129, 1412A-1414C. On the carolingian concept of the scriptural exegesis, cfr. Libri Carolini, I, 5, 1119BD, p. 19,26-40; cfr. also J. J. CONTRENI, Carolingian Biblical Studies, in Carolingian Essays cit. (above, note 13), pp. 71-98. 30 Cfr. for instance ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Expositio in Epistolam Pauli ad Hebraeos, 5, 11-14, PL 100, 1055B-1056B; SEDULIUS SCOTUS, Collectaneum in Epistolam ad Romanos, III, 34C.The same example is also taken by IOHANNES SCOTUS ERIUGENA in his Commentarius in Iohannis Evangelium, 1, 31, PL 122, 310B, ed. É. Jeauneau, Paris 1972 (SC, 180), p. 170,24-26. 31 Cfr. ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Epistola ad Arnonem, in ID., Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, 113, p. 164,27-34; «Sed et hoc sciendum est, quod fides (…) ex voluntate fit, non ex necessitate. Quomodo potest homo cogi, ut credat quod non credit? Inpelli potest homo ad baptismum, sed non ad fidem. (…) Docendus est

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quently all items of philosophical learning are useful in achieving the final realization of a direct conversation between the soul and God («Dei omnipotentis frui confabulatione», «Deum loquentem audire», «Deo loqui»)32. The rules of dialectic above all help the theologian to unmask the absurdity of every deviance from the true faith. So, for instance, in the writings of Alcuin the discretio doctrinarum, which is the principal object of every discussion33, is very often accomplished programmatically by reason through the application of logical skills34. Paulinus of Aquileia, too, even if he frequently accuses the Adoptionists of an exaggerated and rash use of dialectical disputationes, admits that his own work, even though based on the usual collection of scriptural and patristical testimonies, has the form of disputationum colloquia35. Obviously, grammar and rhetoric also gradually claim a role in early medieval theology, both individually and in conjunction with dialectic36. Thus, for example, in the controversy between Agobard of Lyon and Fridugisus of Tours, as testified to in the Liber contra obiectiones Fredegisi abbatis of the former, the two contenders represent two possible attitudes for Carolingian theologians: if the younger Fridugisus, on the one hand, conducts foritaque homo rationalem habens intelligentiam et multimoda praedicatione adtrahendus, ut sacrae fidei veritatem agnoscat». 32 Cfr. ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Epistola ad Gislam et Rotrudam, ibid., 228, p. 372,7-9; Epistola ad Arnonem, ibid., 258, p. 416,13-14; Epistola ad discipulum quendam, ibid., 270, p. 429,6-9; Contra Felicem Urgellitanum, 2, 2, PL 101, 147AB. 33 Cfr. ID., Expositio in Epistolam Pauli ad Hebraeos,V, 13-14, PL 100, 1056A. 34 Cfr. for instance ID., Epistola ad Gundradam, in ID., Epistolae, ed. Dümmler, 204, pp. 338,31-33; Epistola ad Karolum (dedicatio De fide sanctae Trinitatis), ibid., 257, p. 415,6-15. 35 Cfr. PAULINUS AQUILEIENSIS, Liber Sacrosyllabus contra Elipandum, 9, PL 99, 160C; ID., Contra Felicem Urgellitanum, I, 18, PL 99, 370B, ed. D. Norberg, Turnhout 1990 (CCCM, 95), p. 24,15. 36 Applications of grammatical teachings in the theological field are to be found, for instance, in: ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Epistola ad Gundradam, in ID., Epistolae, 204, p. 338,9-30; ID., Adversus Elipandum Toletanum, III, 7, PL 101, 275D-276B; and in the Libri Carolini, 1, 1, 1007CD and 1008BC, ed. Bastgen cit. (above, note 21), p. 9,22-29 and 10,7-18; 1, 2, 1012D-1013B, pp. 13,41-14,12; etc. – About rhetoric see, for example, ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Contra Felicem Urgellitanum,V, 7, PL 101, 194CD;VII, 9, 196C; and Libri carolini, I, 23, 1056CD, p. 52,4-20; II, 1, 1067BC, p. 63,22-28; II, 30, 1108D-1109A, p. 100,9-15, etc.Very often the common source of such theological applications of rhetoric in Carolingian texts is the Expositio Psalmorum of Cassiodore.

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mal analysis of speeches founded upon dialectical and grammatical evaluations of the meaning of words and of their location in sentences, Agobard, on the other hand, represents the traditional point of view of the respectful reader of patristic texts, being more attentive to the substance than to the form of the discussion37. The observation of nature is another field offering to human intelligence the sight of decipherable vestiges of divine order. As Paulinus says, the true theologian can support his own arguments against heresy with scientific references, geometrical or arithmetical, which he calls materialia themata disputandi38. Countless are the arguments in early medieval theological literature which are drawn from arithmological semantics, from musical analysis of measures and proportions, or from astronomical calculations of motion and weight39. All the fields of ancient scientific tradition, though highly simplified in late ancient sources, codified in the summarized teaching of the seven liberal arts, and often not completely understood by medieval scholars, offer noteworthy contributions for the clarification and consolidation of their theological ideas. The foremost achievements in Carolingian theological literature, from the De fide sanctae Trinitatis of Alcuin to the intellectu37 Cfr. AGOBARDUS LUGDUNENSIS, Contra obiectiones Fredegisi, PL 104, 159174, ed. L. van Acker, Turnhout 1981 (CCCM, 52), pp. 281-300. Cfr. also COLISH, Carolingian Debates cit. (alla nota 26), p. 766; J. MARENBON, From the Circle of Alcuin to the School of Auxerre. Logic,Theology and Philosophy in the Early Middle Ages, Cambridge 1981, pp. 62-66. 38 Cfr. PAULINUS AQUILEIENSIS, Liber sacrosyllabus contra Elipandum, 10, PL 99, 161B. 39 Cfr. for instance: ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Epistola ad Gallicellum, in ID., Epistolae, 81, 123-124; Epistola ad Arnonem, ibid., 243, pp. 389,35-339,1 and 390, 25-32; Interrogationes et responsiones in Genesim, 42, PL 100, 520D-521A; Commentaria in Iohannis Evangelium, 2, 8, PL 100, 802CD. Cfr. also: Libri Carolini, IV, praef., ed. Bastgen cit. (above, note 21), 1182D1183B, pp. 169,40-170,16; IV, 13, 1207C1209C, pp. 194,4-195,28; PAULINUS AQUILEIENSIS, Epistola ad Karolum, in Epistolae variorum cit. (above, note 26), p. 524,16-25; HRABANUS MAURUS, De laudibus sanctae Crucis, 7, PL 107, 177-178C, ed. M. Perrin,Turnhout 1997 (CCCM, 100), pp. 71-72; ecc. Carolingian writers follows here too, with success, patristic and late antique models: Augustine, Isidore and Bede. See H.-I. MARROU, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique, Paris 1938, pp. 187-210; J. FONTAINE, Isidore de Séville, 2 voll., Paris 1983, I, pp. 341-350, and ibid., II, pp. 453-589; P. RICHÉ, Éducation et Culture dans l’Occident barbare, Ve-VIIe siècles, Paris 1962, pp. 347 and 434436.

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al work of John the Scot, are the result of a progressive improvement, generation after generation, in this methodology.

4. Theology and dialectic Even the first official public intervention of Eriugena – his participation in the controversy regarding the divine praedestinatio, in the year 851 – connects itself to a phase of the already initiated maturation of this grandiose and collaborative Carolingian theological project. In his De predestinatione, in fact, the daring critique of a delicate dogmatic problem was enclosed within the constant reference to the teaching of the Church, on the one hand, and a formal and explicit condemnation of every rationalistic attitude which appears presumptuous and destructive in respect to the Truth of the Catholic tradition, on the other: If therefore, as the holy Augustine says, «it is right to believe and to teach – and this is, moreover, the foundation itself of human salvation – that philosophy (that is, the love for wisdom) and religion are not two different things, since those whose teaching (doctrina) we do not approve do not even share the mysteries of the faith (sacramenta) with us», what else does doing philosophy mean, but to set forth the rules of true religion, through which the highest and first cause of all things, God, is both humbly worshiped and reasonably investigated? Therefore it is concluded that true philosophy is true religion and, by means of a logical conversion, that true religion is true philosophy (veram esse philosophiam veram religionem conversimque veram religionem esse veram philosophiam)40.

40 IOHANNES SCOTUS ERIUGENA, De praedestinatione, 1, PL 122, 357C-358A, ed. G. Madec, Turnhout 1978 (CCCM, 50), p. 5,9-18; ed. E. Mainoldi, Firenze 2003, p. 6,11-21: «Si enim, ut ait sanctus Augustinus,‘creditur et docetur, quod est humanae salutis caput, non aliam esse philosophiam, id est sapientiae studium, et aliam religionem, cum hi quorum doctrinam non approbamus nec sacramenta nobiscum communicant’, quid est aliud de philosophia tractare, nisi verae religionis, qua summa et principalis omnium rerum causa, Deus, et humiliter colitur et rationabiliter investigatur, regulas exponere? Conficitur inde veram esse philosophiam veram religionem conversimque veram religionem esse veram philosophiam». In the following notes of this chapter, the works of John the Scot are cited without indicating the author’s name, and always refer both to the corresponding columns in PL 122 and to modern critical editions.

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This famous identity which Eriugena establishes between true reason and true faith, coming from a suggestion of Augustine41, if it is a true identity, involves neither disrespect for the rational demands upon religious orthodoxy, nor any possibility of contradiction between human and divine truth.The genuinely Augustinian trust in the absoluteness of the Truth in itself in fact implies the impossibility of a disagreement among various true forms of knowledge. Thus, given the natural imperfection of human knowledge, this trust transforms itself into an invitation to use the knowledge of the truth of the faith (biblical data or teachings of the authorized interpreters, that is, the Fathers and the councils) as a measure of comparison or verification for all the hermeneutical operations which can be rationally performed by the interpreter of Scripture42. John the Scot is a sharp – and very much representative – witness of the Christian conception of the liberal arts in general, and of dialectic in particular, as the natural and privileged sources of indubitable knowledge, that is, scientific knowledge. God himself has providentially bestowed these arts upon humanity as indispensable springs of new energy for cognitive enrichment and for the defense of the faith.The rules of dialectic, recommended by both Augustine and Alcuin as the fundamental instrument for corroborating the science of the Christian mysteries, are programmatically put into operation in the De praedestinatione. Right from the beginning of the book, John the Scot justifies and defends the recourse to this discipline, defining it, in the most general sense, as the art of discussion (disputatoria ars or disputandi disciplina).Yet he immediately refines, with unambigous clarity, its anterior and formative nature in respect to any other form of knowledge which claims to be scientific: «disputandi disciplina 41

AURELIUS AUGUSTINUS, De vera religione, 5, 8; see above, cap. 1, p. 73, note

175. 42 Cfr. G. MADEC, Jean Scot au travail: quelques observations sur le De divina praedestinatione, in Culture et travail intellectuel dans l’Occident médiéval, Bilan des «Colloques d’humanisme médiéval» (1960-1980), éd. G. Hasenohr - J. Langère, Paris 1981, pp. 155-161; G. SCHRIMPF, Das Werk des Johannes Scottus Eriugena im Rahmen des Wissenschaftsverständnisses seiner Zeit, Münster 1982 (BGPTMA, N.S. 23), pp. 72-131; ID., Der Beitrag des Johannes Scottus Eriugena zum Prädestinationsstreit, in Die Iren und Europa im früheren Mittelalter, hrsg. von H. Löwe, Stuttgart 1982, I, pp. 819-865.

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quae est veritas»43. Simple and concise, this formula is axiomatic. In opposition to the errors of his adversary, Gottschalk of Orbais, and of heresy in general, one must rely upon the rules of this art in order to avoid being captured by deceptive and sophistic reasoning: invalid arguments leading, through their false conclusions, to impious doctrines («prava dogmata»), which would no longer be refutable. Yet the antidote is extracted from the very poison of the serpent. For the philosopher of the court of Charles the Bald, this antidote is the real reason for his participation in the predestination controversy. Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims – who had already demonstrated the impossibility of sustaining the positions of Gottschalk through citations and interpretations of the correct opinions extracted from the Fathers – invited John the Scot to compose his own strictly philosophical response: Gottschalk’s subtle argumentations, which supported a dangerous theological position through a recourse to a skilled knowledge of the trivium, demanded an equally sound methodological response44. Eriugena chose dialectic as the natural terrain for testing the alleged coherence of the propositions of his adversary. Unlike rhetoric, through which «vera suadentur et falsa», the art of dialectic demands in effect the prerogative of revealing and defending only the truth45.Within Eriugena’s carefully woven re43

De praedestinatione,1,2,358BC,ed.Madec,p.6,32-33;ed.Mainoldi,p.5,9-10. Cfr. G. D’ONOFRIO, La nuova edizione del De divina praedestinatione liber di Giovanni Scoto, in «Studi Storico Religiosi», 5/2 (1981), pp. 267-288 (esp. pp. 278-279). Cfr. also: H. LIEBESCHÜTZ, Texterklärung und Weltdeutung bei Johannes Eriugena, in «Archiv für Kulturgeschichte», 40/1 (1958), pp. 74-77; J. JOLIVET, Quelques cas de «platonisme grammatical» du VIIe au XIIe siècle, in Mélanges offerts à René Crozet, Poitiers 1966, I, pp. 97-98; ID., L’enjeu de la grammaire pour Godescalc, in Jean Scot Érigène et l’histoire de la philosophie, Colloque International du C.N.R.S. (Laon, 7-12 juillet 1975), éd. par R. Roques, Paris 1977, pp. 79-88. 45 Cfr. a nearly literal citation of AURELIUS AUGUSTINUS, De doctrina christiana, IV, 2, 3, PL 34, 89, ed. Martin cit. (above, cap. 1, note 169), p. 117 in De praedestinatione, 1, 3, 358C-359A, ed. Madec, p. 7,47-60; ed. Mainoldi, pp. 8,22-10,3.Augustine affirms in this passage that if rhetoric is able to persuade one to accept either truth, or falsity, the competence and the study of its rules should not to be abandoned to the hands of the heretics, but the believer must know how to master them in order to fortify his own possession of the truth. John the Scot, interpreting this auctoritas of Augustine, opposes his own true dialectic to the rhetoric and the false dialectic of Gottschalk. It is, however, opportune to note that his adversary would have certainly protested that he did not deserve the accusation: cfr. GODESCHALCUS SAXONICUS (ORBACENSIS), Responsa de diversis, VII, ed. in C. LAMBOT, Oeuvres théologiques et grammaticales de Godescalc d’Orbais, Louvain 44

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buke, one finds a constant recourse to a fundamental and extremely simple principle: Gottschalk does not speak the truth, and therefore he does not behave as an honest debater; and, inversely, if he does not found his appeal to demonstration upon respect for the rules of dialectic, it is because he cares only for imposing his personal opinions. One cannot consider him a dialectician, but rather a ‘sophist’; or worse, he is a rhetorician who strives «res falsas persuadere». Like free will, dialectic is one of the gifts granted to men by divine providence in order that they might fulfill the perfections of their nature. Man, in his freedom, may choose between the correct use of this capacity, which occurs every time it «vera falsaque discernit, confuse dividit, separate colligit, in omnibus veritatem inquirit»46; and the condescension to the aspirations contrary to the authentic nature of knowing, when «falsa pro veris approbans alios in errorem mittat, falsisque ratiocinationibus simplicium sensus confundat, confundendo caliginat».Yet, in this latter case, just as it happens to free will after sin, dialectic definitively loses the power to accomplish the end which naturally belongs to it, that is, the teaching of the truth in order that «oculus interior, qui est animus, ad notitiam purae ipsius veritatis perveniat»47. The De praedestinatione in its entirety presents itself as a coherent fabric of precise and articulate applications of the rules of dialectic: that is, the logical tools emerging from the various schools of antiquity and reworked by the late antique manualists into an organic program for the formal analysis of the various defining and argumentative aspects of the language of the sciences48. In the efficacious union of logic and ontology, which characterizes in a particularly pronounced way Eriugena’s Platonizing system of thought, dialectic is elevated from the rank of pure «scientia 1945, p. 155,5-6: «Dialectica vera discernit a falsis non autem, quod absit, confundit vera cum falsis». 46 Cfr. De praedestinatione, 7, 1, col 382BC, ed. Madec, 45,17-22; ed. Mainoldi, p. 70,3-7. 47 Cfr. ibid., 382C, p. 45,22-26; p. 70,7-11. John the Scot returns to the ignorance of the liberal arts as the cause of the error of the heretics in the same De praedestinatione, 18, 1, 430C, pp. 110,5-111,10; p. 188,16-21. 48 Cfr. my Fons scientiae. La dialettica cit. (above, cap. 1, note 7), where, on pp. 275-320, the dialectical structure De praedestinatione of Eriugena was analyzed in detail.

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sermocinalis» to the dignity of a true discipline of investigation of the truth and of the reality of being. Human reason – formed in the image of the divine intellect – must correctly apply the instrument of dialectic prior to and along with the other six liberal disciplines. It acquires in this way the capacity to reflect, in the order which it learns to stabilize between the words and ideas, the true image of the superior hierarchical order, established for each truly existing thing from the moment of creation: as Eriugena says openly in the first book of the Periphyseon, the duty of dialectic is in fact to reconstruct the order which God has instituted for things. In fulfilling this role, dialectic becomes the first root of any true knowledge of things: «dialecticae proprietas est rerum omnium quae intelligi possunt naturas dividere, coniungere, discernere, propriosque locos unicuique distribuere». For this reason the sages call it the «vera rerum contemplatio»49. The true contemplation of things: since what for men is ‘true knowledge’, is in God the existence itself of true things50, philosophical reason sustained by the arms of dialectic is defined by Eriugena as «ratio discretionis naturarum»51, or «doctrina cognitionis et diiudicationis naturarum»52. In practice it is the mental activity which reflects in its descriptive and organizational method the order itself of nature as the result of two operations which are simultaneously opposed and symmetrical, that is, the division and reunification of the singular and the universal53: «illa 49

Periphyseon, I, PL 122, 486B, ed. Jeauneau cit. (above, cap. 2, note 73), p. 62,1879-1883; in this and in the subsequent notes of this chapter, the citation of Periphyseon will be from the ed. Jeauneau without reference to volumes, the numeration of which coincides with that of the five books of the work. 50 Cfr. ibid., II, 535CD, p. 16, marg. [28],154-156: «Intellectus enim rerum veraciter ipsae res sunt, dicente Sancto Dionysio: ‘Cognitio erorum quae sunt ea quae sunt est’» (= PS. DIONYSIUS AREOPAGITA, De ecclesiastica hierarchia, I, 3, PG 3, 367A). Cfr. also ibid., 559AB, p. 45,1054-1059: «Intellectus enim omnium essentia omnium est. (…) Nil enim est aliud omnium essentia nisi omnium in divina sapientia cognitio». Once again the citation of the same words of pseudo-Dionysius follows this affirmation. 51 Ibid., I, 481B, p. 55,1659-1660. 52 Ibid., IV, 827A, p. 121,3665-3666. 53 On the distinction and complementarity of analytica and diairetica, cfr. Annotationes in Marcianum, IV, ed. C. E. Lutz, Cambridge (Mass.) 1939, p. 81,22-24; Periphyseon, II, 525D-526C, pp. 4,36-5,63; Expositiones super Hierarchiam caelestem sancti Dionysii, 7, PL 122, 184C-185A, ed. J. Barbet,Turnhout 1975 (CCCM, 31), pp. 106,578-107,587; ibid., 15, 252B, pp. 187,35-188,38. Cfr. also K. SAMSTAG, Die

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pars philosophiae quae dicitur dialectica», and which «circa generum divisiones a generalissimis ad specialissima iterumque collectiones a specialissimis ad generalissima versatur»54. The hierarchy of beings which manifests itself in this way to the vision of the human mind is not an artificial invention. Since the truth of dialectic is subordinate to its correspondence to the universal thought of the Word, the intelligible cosmos which it describes must be a reproduction – imperfect, but infinitely perfectible – of the real nature of the universe.Thus, John the Scot reconnects himself to the Augustinian teaching, which the Carolingian masters embraced and made their own, regarding the liberal arts grounded in nature55. He explicitly applies its fundamental sense as a direct particularity to dialectic: That art which divides genera into species and resolves species into genera, which is called dialektikhv, is not the product of human contrivances, but was created in the nature of things by the author of all the arts which are truly arts, and it was discovered there by the wise, and it was employed by them for the tireless investigation of the truth of things56. Dialektik des Johannes Skottus Eriugena, Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde der philosoph. Fakultät (I Section) der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität zu München,Wertheim 1929, pp. 11-12. 54 Periphyseon, I, 463B, pp. 32,900-33,902. 55 Cfr. AURELIUS AUGUSTINUS, De vera religione, 30, 56-31, 57, PL 34, 147, ed. Daur cit. (above, cap. 1, note 170), p. 224,73-5: «Haec autem lex omnium artium cum sit omnino incommutabilis, mens vero humana, cui talem legem videre concessum est, mutabilitatem pati possit erroris, satis apparet supra mentem nostram esse legem, quae veritas dicitur. Nec iam illud ambigendum est incommutabilem naturam, quae supra rationalem animam sit, Deum esse: et ibi esse primam vitam et primam essentiam ubi est prima sapientia. Nam haec est illa incommutabilis veritas, quae lex omnium artium recte dicitur et ars omnipotentis artificis». ID., De doctrina christiana, II, 32, 50, PL 34, 58, ed. Martin cit. (above, cap. 1, note 169), p. 67,1-4: «Ipsa tamen veritas conexionum non instituta, sed animadversa est ab hominibus et notata, ut eam possint vel discere vel docere: nam est in rerum ratione perpetua et divinitus instituta». ID., De musica,V, 1, 1, PL 32, 1147: «Cetera, si placet, more nostro investigemus sensu nuntio, indice ratione: ut illos etiam veteres auctores non instituisse ista quasi quae in natura rerum integra et perfecta non fuerint, sed ratiocinando invenisse et appellando notasse cognoscas». Cfr. also, in the Carolingian age: ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Epistola ad Karolum regem, in ID., Epistolae, 148, ed. Dümmler cit. (above, note 8), p. 239,18-21: «Nam philosophi non fuerunt conditores harum artium, sed inventores. Nam creator omnium rerum condidit eas in naturis, sicut voluit; illi vero, qui sapientiores erant in mundo, inventores erant harum artium in naturis rerum». 56 Periphyseon, IV, 748D-749A, p. 12,283-288: «Ars illa quae dividit genera in

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All the disciplines of human knowledge, with their certainties and rules, spring from this single source of true knowledge and from its double invention of a simultaneously ascending and descending truth: from there they go on to develop their science in the fields of research which belong to their specific competencies57. Dialectic is, for the late antique sources and for all the writers of the Carolingian age, not simply a method for philosophical knowledge, but rather the ars artium and disciplina disciplinarum58. Dialectic is truly the mother of all knowledge and all sciences, «mater artium»59, the origin and cause of all the expressions of true knowledge. It will be natural, therefore, to recognize that even the major work of Eriugena – the great speculative fresco of the Periphyseon – entrusts the formation and development of a system of thought to a correct application and operation of the rules of dialectic, though in a less explicit manner than the De praedestinatione. Dialectic, in the Periphyseon, forms and develops a system of thought that provides that which men can know regarding God, the origin of creation, and the formation, the productive development, and the final end of all created reality.

5. The ‘noetical’ sources of truth According to a fundamental rule of Aristotelian epistemology, the presupposition of every argument and proof, as of any sort of organizing classification of discourse within the competence of the dialectica disciplina, is always a process of ascending from the particular applications of the logical rules to the higher and more general principles of human thought. All successive rational despecies et species in genera resolvit, quae dialektikhv dicitur, non ab humanis machinationibus est facta, sed in natura rerum ab auctore omnium artium, quae vere artes sunt, condita, et a sapientibus inventa, et ad utilitatem sollertis rerum indagis usitata». 57 Cfr. ibid.,V, 870B, p. 16,428-431, where, in respect to dialectic, «mater artium», the other two disciplines of the trivium are «veluti quaedam ipsius brachia rivulive ex ea manantes, vel certe instrumenta, quibus suas intelligibiles inventiones humanis usibus manifestat». 58 Cfr. CASSIODORUS SENATOR, Institutiones, II, 3, PL 70, 1167D, ed. R. A. B. Mynors, Oxford 1937, p. 110,17; AURELIUS AUGUSTINUS, De ordine, II, 13, 38, PL 32, 1013, ed. Green cit. (above, cap. 1, note 144), p. 128,1-11 (text literally inserted by HRABANUS MAURUS in his De institutione clericorum, III, 20, PL 107, 397C). 59 Cfr. the text of CICERO cited above, cap. 1, note 84.

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ductions can arise and develop from these principles60. Such principles are the koivnai dovxai (not only ‘common opinions’, but ‘universal notions’), which Aristotle demands for ajpodeiktikai; ajrcaiv (‘principles of demonstration’).These principles must necessarily be received as essential premises (protavsei~) in any sort of logical operation. Even John the Scot encloses within the limits outlined by these first principles the entire vast dominion of dialectical procedures: «Dialectica est communium animi conceptionum rationabilium deligens investigatrixque disciplina»61, is the formula which describes the aim and subject of the disputandi disciplina. It is found within a list of definitions of the seven liberal arts, explicitly proposed in the Periphyseon in order to fix the loci of each of them, that is, the borders of every form of scientific knowledge, with which it is then possible to have an infinite number of articulations and explanatory developments62. Dialectic is now the art which chooses («deligens»), and therefore which seizes, extracts, considers attentively, understands, and penetrates the most general categories of human thought. Its successive articulations will be the concepts, the propositions, the reasonings and the demonstrative argumentations, that is, all the different logical classifications, each one of which is nothing other than one of the numerous possible detailed explications of the immediate contents of the «conceptiones communes». The fundamental character of these general principles is their immediate evidence, which is the essential connotation of their primordial and universal nature. Like the axioms on which the geometry of Euclid is founded, a «communis animi conceptio» must be, as Boethius teaches, an «enuntiatio quam quisque probat auditam», that is, a statement which, at the moment of its formulation, imposes itself upon the assent of the one who understands its true significance63. In Eriugena’s vocabulary, the Greek word enthymema sometimes appears to define similar forms of intuitive 60

Cfr. ARISTOTELES, Metaphysica, B, 2 996b, and G, 3, 2005a. Periphyseon, I, 475A, p. 48,1407-1408. 62 Cfr. ibid., 475B, p. 48,1418-1419: «Hi sunt generales loci artium liberalium, his terminis continentur, intra quos alii innumerabiles sunt».The complete list of the of the definitions of the arts is ibid., 475AB, p. 47,1402-48,1427. 63 Cfr. BOETHIUS, Quomodo substantiae, 1311B, ed. Moreschini cit. (above, cap. 2, note 6), p. 187,17-18. Cfr. above, cap. 2, p. 138 and note 135. 61

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knowledge, which are direct and irrefutable expressions of the truth.This use agrees with the late antique tradition of the studies of dialectic, in which enthymema is the common name of the topical source of those argumentations which are endowed with a greater persuasive force64. In the definition of dialectic as «communium animi conceptionum rationabilium disciplina», the language of the Periphyseon is therefore very precise and technically meaningful. John the Scot, in speaking of «animi conceptiones», or even of «mentis conceptiones»65 – in evident agreement with the Platonic gnoseology which we have seen operating in the thought of Boethius – intends to clarify that the place where such superior and preverbal concepts are formed is the intellectus, the faculty of noetic, intuitive, and pre-discursive contemplation of the Truth66. Yet, such «conceptiones» are also «rationabiles», 64 The word enthymema indicates either a locus, i. e., one of the pre-discursive sources of argumentations, or one of the modi of the syllogism (the third of the hypothetical syllogism): cfr. my Fons scientiae. La dialettica cit. (above, cap. 1, note 7), pp. 248-249, 254-255 and 265. In De praedestinatione, 9, 3, 391B, ed. Madec, pp. 57,58-58,64, ed. Mainoldi, p. 92,13-18, John the Scot explains that when we express with the voice that which is conceived interiorly by the soul, the «vis significationis» of our words is always inferior to that of our thoughts; but the arguments called enthymemata are the verbal formulations which are closer in intensity to the original conception. It is then interesting to observe that Remigius of Auxerre, a master very close to Eriugena (in particular for the information related to philosophy and to the liberal arts), comments on the definition of Boethius regarding the communes conceptiones in the Quomodo substantiae with an explicit reference to such a notion; cfr. REMIGIUS AUTISSIDORENSIS, Commentarius in Opuscula sacra Boethii, ed. E. K. Rand (where the text is erroneusly ascribed to John the Scot), München 1906 (Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters, I, 2), p. 50,6-9: «Conceptiones animi Graeci (…) appellant (…) ENTYMEMA (…). Entymema autem dicitur quasi ‘in anima’: TYMH enim Graece dicitur, latine anima». On the commentary of Remigius on the theological opuscula of Boethius and on its relationship with John the Scot, see my studies: Giovanni Scoto e Boezio: tracce degli Opuscula sacra e della Consolatio nell’opera eriugeniana, in «Studi Medievali», Ser. 3a, 21.2 (1980), pp. 707-752 (for enthymema, cfr. esp. p. 716); and Giovanni Scoto e Remigio di Auxerre: a proposito di alcuni commenti altomedievali a Boezio, in «Studi Medievali», Ser. 3a, 22.2 (1981), pp. 587-693 (cfr. esp. pp. 655-657). 65 For example in the Annotationes in Marcianum, ed. Lutz cit. (above, note 53), p. 103,30-32. In one case the Greek word enthymema is rendered by John the Scot with «mentis conceptio» even when he translates from Greek: cfr. MAXIMUS CONFESSOR, Quaestiones ad Thalassium, edd. C. Laga - C. Steel (una cum latina interpretatione IOANNIS SCOTTI ERIUGENAE),Turnhout 1980-90 (CCSG, 7 and 22), I, pp. 12,66 and 13,75. 66 A gloss that John the Scot affixes to the text of Maximus the Confessor cited in the previous note (cfr. ibid., p. 14,28-30) offers a quite eloquent confirma-

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which means to say that they become explicit through dianoetic processes, which are discursive and argumentative. Such ‘rational’ processes distance themselves in part from the original,‘intellectual’ purity of the truth; yet, our limited thought needs them in order not to lose its appropriate object from sight. Besides being limited, human consciousness is also fallen. At one time, when Adam was living in the terrestrial Paradise in a perfect state of grace, intellectual contemplation was his normal cognitive condition. He understood the truth without the necessity of resorting to processes mediated by deduction, «omni ratiocinationis necessitate absolutus»67.After the fall this original wisdom was substituted by the «mixed» science offered by the tempter serpent, that is, a confused form of knowledge, in which falsity has assumed the forms of the truth, and the particular has assumed the forms of the universal68. Following this fall, reason itself fell into deception and was deprived of the power to explain without labor the nature of objects which the intellect was presenting to it. Its strength, in effect, consisted in the capacity to adhere constantly to the noetic intuitions.After the complete overturning of the harmony of knowledge, reason was overwhelmed by dispersion and disorder. Reason now strives to recompose the lost unity through its own operations and, as Eve after the sin, it is condemned to generate its own conclusions («conceptus») through labor and pain69. tion of this ‘intellectual’ function (in a Neoplatonic sense) of the enthymema: «Mentis conceptus est ubi ultra planae expositionis modum altissimos infert intellectus». 67 Cfr. Periphyseon, IV, 855A, p. 160,4933-4937: «Ubi aperte datur intelligi quod, si homo non peccaret, non solum interiori intellectu, verum etiam exteriori sensu naturas rerum et rationes summa facilitate, omni ratiocinationis necessitate absolutus, purissime contemplaretur». For the Neoplatonic tripartition of the cognitive faculties, cfr. ibid., III, 572C-574B, pp. 63,1469-66,1519, with references to MAXIMUS CONFESSOR, Ambigua ad Iohannem, 6, 3, PG 91, 1112D1113A, and latina interpretatio, ed. É. Jeauneau, Turnhout 1988 (CCSG, 18), pp. 48,119-49,145. 68 Cfr. Periphyseon, IV, 827AB, pp. 121,3655-122,3669;V, 919AC, p. 83,26482674. 69 Cfr. ibid., IV, 855A, pp. 160,4937-161,4953. For this interpretation in a gnoseological key of the biblical account of original sin, cfr. my study Le fatiche di Eva. Il senso interno tra aisthesis e dianoia secondo Giovanni Scoto Eriugena, in Corpo e anima, sensi interni e intelletto dai secoli XIII-XIV ai post-cartesiani e spinoziani, Atti del Convegno internazionale (Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Educazione e

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Dialectic is the discipline which allows for the regulation, consolidation, and support of these exhausting operations of reason. Before sin, in the state of grace, man exercised a perfect form of dialectic, governed by the intellect and directed toward an immediate cognitive consideration of the truth, which was articulated, but harmoniously complementary to noetic intuition. After sin, this power was laboriously and gradually rediscovered by the sages, who codified it in the manuals of Logic. Postlapsarian dialectic will be true to the degree in which it allows itself to be guided in its operations by the light of those few intuitive premises, immediately true in as far as they are evident, which still spring from the fallen intellect.Thus it will be much more capable of constructing an authentic science of the truth to the degree to which it succeeds in entering into the depths of such premises, in articulating their contents, in analyzing them in their particular forms, and in recomposing their universal meaning70. Thus fallen humanity may still investigate the traces of the lost knowledge of the truth, but only through the constant and onerous employment of a reason which must be formed and trained through study, ever conscious that its results can be only provisory and imperfect. Its conclusions are in fact necessarily always inferior to the end they strive to reach. Dionysius the Areopagite, the most authoritative among theologians after Paul (i. e., among the interpreters of Scripture), affirms in the De divinis nominibus that no vox significativa, that is, no human linguistic expression endowed by sense, can signify the

dei Processi Culturali e Formativi, 18-20 settembre 2003), a c. di G. Federici Vescovini - V. Sorge - C.Vinti,Turnhout 2005 (Textes et études du Moyen-Âge, 30), pp. 21-53. 70 Like all the other disciplines of knowledge, dialectic is directly grasped by the intellect in a simple and universal form, and, only after such an original intuition, is it then drawn forth, exteriorized, and studied in its details by reason; cfr. Periphyseon, III, 708CD, p. 129,3720-3724: «Omnis namque ars in animo sapientis universaliter formata diversis litterarum et syllabarum dictionumque temporalibus morulis necessario particulariter ordinateque in aures discentium diffunditur». Cfr. also Annotationes in Marcianum, ed. Lutz cit. (above, note 53), p. 86,2429: «PERCEPTAE ARTES dicuntur quia communi animi perceptione iudicantur, ideo perceptae artes liberales dicuntur quoniam propter semet ipsas adipiscuntur et discuntur, ut in habitum mentis perveniant; et dum perveniunt ad habitum mentis, antequam perveniunt ipsae disciplinae sola ipsa anima percipiuntur nec aliunde assumuntur, sed naturaliter in ipsa anima intelliguntur».

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nature of God. Before the divine, man must remain in silence and must entrust himself to the simple words of the orthodox faith71. Reason insists upon and claims the right to discuss (disputare) at least these words of faith.The theologian then proposes two ways (mevtodoi), reciprocally opposed and complementary: the way of affirmation and that of negation. He recalls that the words of faith participate necessarily in both ways, in so far as they simultaneously affirm and deny something concerning God. Every human word is able to signify God in the appropriate sense only when it is negated; and only in a metaphorical sense when it is affirmed72. Yet there is more. The theological predication of terms with the prefix «plusquam-» (ujper-), which participate not only in the form of affirmative theology, but also in the anagogical import of negative theology, allows for the reconciliation of the apparent contradictions between these two forms. It assures in fact the predication of God in terms having at the same time as much determined significance (and therefore of a dialectical, defining nature) as metaphorical significance (significant, but not in a limiting manner)73. In this way the theology of man has an appropriate language through which it is able to express the true nature of its final object without limiting it. This true reform of theological knowledge allows, in effect, the final fulfillment of the passage from rational, mediate knowledge to the immediate contemplation of the divine on the part 71 Cfr. PS. DIONYSIUS AREOPAGITA, De divinis nominibus, 13, 3, PG 3, 980C, quoted in the translation of Eriugena in Periphyseon, I, 456A, p. 23,587-589: «Nulla verborum seu nominum seu qualicunque articulatae vocis significatione summa omnium atque causalis essentia potest significari». 72 Cfr. Periphyseon, I, 458AB, p. 26,674-688: «De hoc negotio nescio quis breviter atque aperte potest dicere. Aut enim de huiusmodi causa per omnia tacendum est et simplicitati orthodoxae fidei commitendum, nam exsuperat omnem intellectum, sicut scriptum est:‘Qui solus habes immortalitatem et lucem habitas inaccessibilem’ (1Tim 6, 16).Aut si quis de ea disputare coeperit, necessario multis modis multisque argumentationibus verisimile suadebit, duabus principalibus theologiae partibus utens, affirmativa quidem, quae a graecis KATAFATIKH dicitur, et abnegativa, quae APOFATIKH vocatur. Una quidem, id est APOFATIKH, divinam essentiam seu substantiam esse aliquid eorum quae sunt, id est quae dici aut intelligi possunt, negat; altera vero, KATAFATIKH, omnia quae sunt de ea praedicat, et ideo affirmativa dicitur, non ut confirmet aliquid esse eorum quae sunt, sed omnia quae ab ea sunt de ea posse praedicari suadeat». Cfr. PS. DIONYSIUS AREOPAGITA, De mystica theologia, 3, PG 3, 1032D-1033D. 73 Cfr. Periphyseon, I, 459B-462D, pp. 27,732-32,884.

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of the superior faculty of the soul, the intellectus. In the intuitive power of the intellectus, all the inferior faculties are raised up and surpassed altogether. Natural theology, entrusted to reason, remains circumscribed within the environment of affirmative theology alone, which proceeds by way of mediated demonstration, and is bound to a form of merely probable knowledge.The theology of the intellect, however, simpla theologica scientia, directly penetrates per negationem into the perfect and secret infinity of the Word, where there are hidden, in an incomprehensible harmony of unity and multiplicity, the eternal reasons of all things74. It is here that the true object of theological knowledge appears, beyond every definition and, therefore, beyond every contradiction among the meanings of opposites which reciprocally exclude themselves. This is possible because, in the created universe and for the created universe, God is the incomprehensible one who renders himself manifest, the infinite one who defines himself, the coincidence of all opposites: For everything which is the object of knowledge, intelligible or sensible, is nothing else but the appearance of that which does not appear, the manifestation of that which is hidden, the affirmation of that which is denied, the comprehension of that which is incomprehensible, the pronunciation of that which is ineffable, the access to that which is inaccessible, the intelligibility of that which is unintelligible, the corporeity of that which is incorporeal, the essence of that which is superessential, the form of that which is formless, the measure of that which is without measure, the number of that which is without number, the weight of that which is without weight, the rendering material of that which is spiritual, the rendering visible of that which is invisible, the localization of that which is without space, the temporalization of that which is without time, the definition of that which is infinite, the circumscribing of that which is uncircumscribable, and all the 74 Cfr. Commentarius in Iohannis Evangelium, 32, 312CD, ed. Jeauneau cit. (above, note 30), pp. 186,68-188,73: «‘Alius ab eadem’ simpla theologica scientia, quae maxime circa Christi intellectum circumvolvitur, ‘in ipsam perfectam secretamque divinam infinitatem, per negationem’, omnibus quae post Deum sunt moriens,‘veluti a quodam intellectu Christi ad ipsius divinitatem mystice ascendit’».The words in quotation marks in the text are from MAXIMUS CONFESSOR, Ambigua ad Iohannem, 43, 1360CD, in the latina interpretatio of Eriugena, ed. Jeauneau cit. (above, note 67), pp. 218-219.

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other things, either those which are thought or perceived by the pure intellect, or those which can never be grasped by the coils of the memory and which escape the capacity of the mind75.

It is here that the contradiction itself between faith and science, the oxymoron of theology, is definitively reconciled and resolved: «fides indemostrabilis scientia est»76. In taking up the principal themes debated by Carolingian theologians, John the Scot gathers the fruits of this new methodological proposal77. It is easy to recall, however, how he presents 75 Periphyseon, III, 633AB, pp. 22,589-598: «Omne enim quod intelligitur et sentitur nihil aliud est nisi non apparentis apparitio, occulti manifestatio, negati affirmatio, incomprehensibilis comprehensio, ineffabilis fatus, inaccessibilis accessus, inintelligibilis intellectus, incorporalis corpus, superessentialis essentia, informis forma, immensurabilis mensura, innumerabilis numerus, carentis pondere pondus, spiritualis incrassatio, invisibilis visibilitas, illocalis localitas, carentis tempore temporalitas, infiniti diffinitio, incircumscripti circumscriptio, et caetera quae puro intellectu et cogitantur et perspiciuntur et quae memoriae sinibus capi nesciunt et mentis aciem fugiunt». 76 They are the words of MAXIMUS CONFESSOR, Quaestiones ad Thalassium, 33, schol. 2, lat. interpr., edd. Laga - Steel cit. (above, note 65), I, p. 230,4. Cfr. also ibid., 35, schol. 1, lat. interpr., I, p. 240,1-3: «Ineffabilis theologia est ipsa perfecta per excellentiam ignorantia, quae tantum ignorat quantum non cognoscit quae naturaliter cognoscenda sunt». 77 They find in fact in the Periphyseon the possibility of reconsidering: the question of divine ignorance (cfr. ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Contra Felicem Urgellitanum,V, 9, PL 101, 196A-198A, and De fide sanctae et individuae Trinitatis, II, 12, 31BC; PAULINUS AQUILEIENSIS, Contra Felicem Urgellitanum, III, 12, PL 99, 444C445A, ed. Norberg cit. (above, note 35), pp. 96-97; cfr. also Periphyseon, II, 593C596D, pp. 93,2205-98,2336); the controversy opened by Fridugisus regarding the substantiality of nothing and of darkness (cfr. FRIDUGISUS TURONENSIS, Epistola cit. [above, note 26]; cfr. also Periphyseon, III, 680D-681B, pp. 88,2541-89,2569); or again the prolonged reflection on the problems of the categorical predication in God (cfr. ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, De fide, epistola nuncupatoria, 12CD, and ibid., I, 15, 22C-24B; cfr. also Periphyseon, I, 463A-524B, pp. 32,887-111,3495). In effect, in all these renewed treatments of the questions discussed between the first and the second generations of Carolingian intellectuals, there is the attribution, to the terms involved in the theological discussion, of an anagogical import which transcends the literal meaning.Though maintaining the original semantic value, the attribution leads to a renewed understanding of mystery, in which the question is no longer the possibility of constricting the divine object between the limits of comprehension for the human mind. On the other hand, the human mind is in this way raised from theological knowledge to the point of intuiting in the words the unfolding of meanings superior to those which are normally debated by reason. And since the intuition of these meanings makes itself clear, with the help of the Scriptures and the Fathers, in the knowledge of the primor-

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the most important application of this conception of the knowledge of the truth in his introduction and detailed analysis of the dialectical operation which he considers the primary and the fundamental one – and which can be regarded as the intellectual root of the entire systematic development of his theological thought: the famous universal division of nature that opens the dialogue between the Master (Nutritor) and Disciple (Alumnus), and grounds, constructs, and organizes the textual web of the entire Periphyseon.

6. The nature of the division One of Eriugena’s glosses on the ninth book of the De nuptiis of Martianus Capella outlines this same doctrine through a suggestive philosophical rereading of the myth of Orpheus. On the basis of an etymology deduced from the adjective eujruv~ («vast», «ample») and from the substantive dichv («justice» and therefore even «sentence», «judgement»), the character of Eurydice is proposed as the symbol for the most intimate and penetrating intuition of the truth allowed to the human soul. She represents a profunda intentio, which allows for primordial, immediate, and intimate contact with the foundations of every science (of music, in particular, to which the passage of Martianus was dedicated, but, through extension, of the liberal arts in general). The artist Orpheus – whose name (from o[pio~ fonhv, «beautiful voice, bearer of fruits», in Latin pulchra vox) means, according to Eriugena, the richness and the fecundity of the vocal expression which gives exterior form to the profundissimae rationes of the truth – loses sight of the intuitive principles from which arise all his works, if he does not order their formulation methodically, respecting the rational rules which assure the efficacy (virtus) of his art. In order to find the lost bride, the poet-scientist must now return to the hidden sources of his discipline, with a sort of descent into the depths of an interior infernum of the soul, in which the original

dial causes, in which and through which the divine love communicates itself to created realities, the final nature of all theological research reveals itself to be that of direct knowledge of the causes (as opposed to the end of natural science, which is knowledge of the effects): cfr. Periphyseon, III, 629AB, p. 17,431-447.

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elements of knowledge are guarded. Only at the end of this intimate pilgrimage up to the secret sources of human knowledge can reason bring (reduci) its rules (regulae) back to light, that is, return to the study of the modes which allow it to give organic expression (dispositio) to the contents of such a rediscovery (inventio) of the truth78.Yet, the reacquisition of the capacity to organize, with the instruments of corporeal language, the spiritual, nearly divine density of the profunda intentio is ephemeral. When Orpheus attempts to establish a solid correspondence between the transitory utterances of the exterior voces and the eternal stability of the spiritual truth, he does not succeed in holding the shadow of Eurydice on earth. She returns to immerse herself in the abyss of essential, invisible, and incommunicable truth.The poet, who retains in his hands only the empty and fleeting sounds, which no longer have authentic significance, remains sad: he is like an intellectual soul deprived of the enjoyment of true reason79. The great speculative fresco of Eriugena’s Periphyseon offers, on more than one occasion, interesting examples of the difficulty which the exterior language of science encounters when it is forced by the philosopher to express the most profound truths: the truths that the soul strives to intuit with a single glance, transcending the limits of its own accustomed theoretical-rational procedures. On the one hand, John the Scot enthusiastically shares the natural conception of theological knowledge common to the Carolingian intellectual civilization.Yet, on the other hand, the mystical orientation of his Greek sources convinces him of how much the true, final contemplation of the most intimate aspects of the truth is often attenuated, if not obfuscated, by the 78 Cfr. above, in the texts of notes 55 and 56, the application of the concept inventio and of the verb invenire to the theme of the birth of the liberal arts. 79 Cfr. Annotationes in Marcianum, IX, 480, 19, ed. Lutz cit. (above, note 53), pp. 192-193: «Eurydice dicitur profunda intentio. Ipsa ars musica in suis profundissimis rationibus Eurydice dicitur, cuius quasi maritus Orpheus dicitur, hoc est ORIOÇ FONH, id est pulchra vox. Qui maritus, si aliqua neglegentia artis virtutem perdiderit veluti in quendam infernum profundae disciplinae descendit, de qua iterum artis regulas iuxta [quas] musicae voces disponuntur reducit. Sed dum voces corporeas et transitorias profundae artis intentioni comparat, fugit iterum in profunditatem disciplinae ipsa inventio, quoniam in vocibus apparere non potest, ac per hoc tristis remanet Orpheus, vocem musicam absque ratione retinens» (the quas between parenthesis is my emendation to the edited text of Lutz, which transcribes from the manuscript: qua si).

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continuous attempt on the part of discursive rationality to give flesh to the results of its investigations through the rigid grid of formal norms and instruments of investigation in the liberal arts. The first of such conflicts between scientific knowledge and the intuition of a truth of a superior order appears, at the beginning of the work, in the very presentation of the concept of natura.This concept is a product of the mind, but it is in itself indefinable and impenetrable in so far as it expresses an absolute notion. It is jointly predicable of all things which the soul is able to perceive, and of those which exceed its normal intentio. Yet, from the beginning, both the introduction of the name natura, and the division which is proposed in order to better understand its significance, are characterized by an open appeal to the terminology of the discipline of dialectic, directly drawn from the vocabulary of the late ancient manuals: When, with repeated attempts, I seek to present to myself with my thought, and when, with still greater effort – to the degree that my strength allows – I seek to understand in what way the first and the highest division of all things – that is, of those which are able to be perceived by the intellect, and, along with them, of those which exceed its capacity of penetration (quae vel animo percipi possunt vel intentionem eius superant) – is the division between those things which are and those which are not (in ea quae sunt et in ea quae non sunt), then the only term which comes to my mind which is able, as a genre (generale vocabulum), to comprise them all, is that which in Greek is called fuvsi" and in Latin, nature. (...) Therefore nature is the general name (generale nomen), as it was said, comprising all the things which are and all the things which are not (omnium quae sunt et quae non sunt). (…) Because, therefore, we are in agreement on the fact that this term is general (generale), I would like you now to apply to this term the rule of the division according to the articulation through differences into species (velim dicas divisionis eius per differentias in species rationem); or, if you prefer, first I shall seek to formulate such a division, then you will have the task of judging whether it is correct. (…) It seems to me that the division of nature (divisio naturae) comprises, on the basis of four differences, four species (per quattuor differentias quattuor species recipere), of which the first is for indicating the nature which creates and is not created (quae creat et non creatur); the second,

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that which is created and creates (quae et creatur et creat); the third, that which is created and does not create (quae creatur et non creat); the fourth, that which does not create and is not created (quae nec creat nec creatur).These four species form then two pairs of terms, which can be reciprocally contrasted: the third, in fact, is contrasted with the first, the fourth with the second. But the fourth puts itself in the category of impossible things, the being of which is to be not possible to be (cuius esse est non posse esse)80.

Before any further development, the fundamental term natura is presented as generale vocabulum or generale nomen, capable of comprising all knowable and unknowable things («quae vel animo percipi possunt vel intentionem eius superant»). Eriugena affirms, thereafter, that on the basis of four differentiae it is possible to recognize in it – that is, within its meaning of genus – the comprehension of four species, or formae (a word which, according to a clarification made by Cicero in the Topica, has in Latin, in the field of logic, the same significance as species)81. On the basis of this language it would seem correct to identify the logical operation conducted by Eriugena regarding the 80

Periphyseon, I, 441A-442A, pp. 3,1-4,25: «Saepe mihi cogitanti diligentiusque quantum vires suppetunt inquirenti rerum omnium quae vel animo percipi possunt vel intentionem eius superant primam summamque divisionem esse in ea quae sunt et in ea quae non sunt horum omnium generale vocabulum occurrit quod graece FUÇIÇ, latine vero natura vocitatur. (…) Est igitur natura generale nomen, ut diximus, omnium quae sunt et quae non sunt. (…) Quoniam igitur inter nos convenit de hoc vocabulo generale esse, velim dicas divisionis eius per differentias in species rationem, aut, si tibi libet, prius conabor dividere, tuum vero erit iudicare. (…) Videtur mihi divisio naturae per quattuor differentias quattor species recipere, quarum prima est in eam quae creat et non creatur, secunda in eam quae et creatur et creat, tertia in eam quae creatur et non creat, quarta quae nec creat nec creatur. Harum vero quattuor binae sibi invicem opponuntur: nam tertia opponitur primae, quarta vero secundae. Sed quarta inter impossibilia ponitur, cuius esse est non posse esse». Regarding the Ciceronian model for the formula «mihi… cogitanti», cfr. above, cap. 1, note 2. 81 Cfr. MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, Topica, 7, 30, ed. Friedrich cit. (above, cap. 1, note 13), p. 431,18-25: «In divisione formae [sunt], quas Graeci ei[dh vocant, nostri, si qui haec forte tractant, species appellant, non pessime id quidem, sed inutiliter ad mutandos casus in dicendo: nolim enim, ne si latine quidem dici possit, specierum et speciebus dicere, et saepe his casibus utendum est; at formis et formarum velim. Cum autem utroque verbo idem significetur, commoditatem in dicendo non arbitror neglegendam».The interchangeability of species and formae as elements of the division is attested to in many passages of the Periphyseon: cfr. II, 529A, pp. 8,134-136; III, 619A, p. 3,1;V, 1019A, pp. 222,7224-223,7230; etc.

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concept of natura with a divisio in the strict sense.This name designates – according to the teaching of the Hellenistic schools received through the late ancient Roman sources of dialectic – the distribution of more ample universal realities – the ‘genera’ – in other realities which are always universal, but less extended – the ‘species’ – by means of the predication of numerous ‘specific differences’. This would be the true logical division which Porphyry, in the Isagoge, constructed upon the theoretical roots of the Aristotelian doctrine of the categories82. The same sources consider, however, another typology of division, which is called in Latin partitio, and which emerges from a utilization of the concepts of physical-mathematical origin, such as totum and partes. The development of this process of division is in this case irregular and variable, in so far as it is determined by reasons of an empirical and quantitative type, and not by symmetry or proportionality in the order of conceptual meanings83. In general, the Latin authors follow Cicero by recognizing in the partitio a typology of articulations only within corporeal and sensible substances, while the divisio is only of intelligible and universal substances84.Therefore, the first, which does not depend necessarily upon an exhaustive and indubitable knowledge of the whole, bears fruit especially in sensible knowledge and is preferably applied to argumentations of an imperfect type – rhetoric, as op82 Cfr. above, cap. 2, pp. 113-114, the recognition on the part of Boethius of the divisio as one of the powers of the discursive ratio. 83 Cfr. MARTIANUS CAPELLA, De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae, IV, 350-354, ed. Willis cit. (above, cap. 1, note 145), pp. 113,21-115,17; BOETHIUS, De divisione, PL 64, 877B-878D; ID., In Isagogen Porphyrii, ed. secunda, I, 8, PL 64, 80A-81B, ed. Brandt cit. (above, cap. 2, note 22), p. 154,9-157,6; ID., De topicis differentiis, II, PL 64, 1192D, ed. Nikitas cit. (above, cap. 2, note 21), p. 42,10-15. For the Neoplatonic sources, cfr. AMMONIUS, In Aristotelis De interpretatione commentarius, 1, 2, ed. A. Busse, Berlin 1897 (CAG, IV/5), p. 15,16-20. Boethius again accepts in the De divisione two final typologies of division, even in this case founded upon the doctrine of the categories: the division of a semantic term into its multiple possible meanings (divisio vocis in significationes) and the division of substances and accidents (divisio secundum accidens). Cfr. my Fons scientiae. La dialettica cit. (above, cap. 1, note 7), pp. 192-194. 84 Cfr. MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, Topica, 5, 26 - 8, 34, pp. 429,37-432,27; MARTIANUS CAPELLA, ibid.,V, 475-480, p. 167,1-23; BOETHIUS, In Topica Ciceronis commentaria, I, 1058D-1060, and III, 1094A-1098A, 1104D-1108B; QUINTILIANUS, Institutio oratoria,V, 10, 63, ed. L. Radermacher, 2 voll., Leipzig 1971, I, p. 261,5-11.

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posed to dialectic. The second, however, would be the true and proper logical division, that is, dialectic, in the appropriate sense, and it belongs to the competence of dianoetic reason (i. e., scientific-demonstrative). Through another attentive analysis, however, it seems clear that Eriugena’s divisio naturae, though certainly not a partitio of corporeal objects and of rhetorical structure, also cannot be correctly considered a true logical divisio of a genus into the species which compose it. In fact, according to the doctrine of Porphyry, the differentiae which allow for the fulfillment of a divisio in the appropriate sense must be individuated on the basis of a character which must be predicable, even in a different form (i. e., either affirmative or negative, either active or passive), of each one of the members into which the whole is divided. This character is called, according to classical logic, the ‘ground of the division’ (fundamentum divisionis)85. It is now evident that neither human reason, in the condition of sinful nature, nor its weak dialectical instruments, can claim to have a rigorous, definitive, and exhaustive knowledge of the meaning of natura: this is a word, in fact, which – as we have noted – aspires to embrace the predictability of all that which can be thought, and of all that which cannot be thought; of that which is knowable and not knowable; of that which is definable and infinite, in so far as it intends to comprehend in its unitary meaning both God and the things which have derived their being from God. The difficulty in cataloguing Eriugena’s fourfold division as an authentic dialectical divisio is evident above all in the fact that it includes among its terms something absolutely incomprehensible for reason.A mind cultivated and educated by reading the Fathers

85 Cfr. ANTOINE ARNAULD - PIERRE NICOLE, La logique ou l’art de penser…, Paris 1662, II, 15, edd. P. Clair - F. Girbal, Paris 1965, pp. 161-164; W. HAMILTON, Lectures on Logic, II, 25, Edinburg - London 1860; W. S. JEVONS, Elementary Lessons on Logic: Deductive and Intuitive…, Lesson 12 (London 1870), London 1909, pp. 105-108; C. JOURDAIN, s.v. Division, in M. A. FRANCK, Dictionnaire des Sciences Philosophiques, Paris 18853, pp. 408-409; R. EISLER, Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe, Berlin 1927, I, pp. 314-315; J. HOFFMEISTER, Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe, Hamburg 19552, p. 193; J. SANTELLER, s.v. Einteilung, in W. BRUGGER, Philosophisches Wörterbuch, Freiburg 1959, p. 66; H. SCHMIDT - G. SCHISCHKOFF, Philosophisches Wörterbuch, Stuttgart 1965, p. 126; N. ABBAGNANO, Dizionario di Filosofia,Torino 19711, p. 264; etc.

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of the Church has no difficulty in recognizing at least the first three of the four species of natura: that which creates and is not created is God, the universal uncaused cause; the third, that which is created and does not create, is symmetrically the inverse of the first and clearly corresponds to the world of multiple individuals, remote effects of the efficacious divine creator; but even the second nature, that which is created and creates, is easily recognizable in the eternal ideas, models and primordial causes of multiple beings: created, in so far as they are thought by the Father in the Word, but in themselves also creators of their individual effects. It is, however, more difficult to recognize and comprehend the truth of the fourth level, where nature is that which is not created and does not create, the logical necessity of which is presupposed by the argumentative rigor of the fourfold division itself: being divine in so far as it is uncreated, such an ultimate reality will have to be outside of created time, and therefore it is the point of arrival for the entire history of being and creating, when God will be only God, and everything will find in God, at the end of the process of creation, its own truth. An adequate comprehension of this final grade of truth is, for the moment, impossible. Only after having fully investigated the sense of the three preceding moments and their succession, will human intelligence be capable of approaching the profound truth of the fourth grade of the division, which is postulated for now by the simultaneous convergence of reason and revelation: «quarta (natura) inter impossibilia ponitur, cuius esse est non posse esse» is the Master’s conclusion at the end of the initial exposition of the terms of the division. The linear and simple rigor of the Porphyrian division is therefore not applicable in an immediate way to the higher truth enclosed in that whole which bears the name of natura.This difficulty emerges also from the fact that, in the very opening text of the Periphyseon quoted above, one is able to recognize the presence, or better the opposition, of two different divisions of nature. Beyond the fourfold division, in fact, one encounters in the same text even a bipartite division of that which is fully expressed by the word natura, that is, a division into esse and non esse. In this case it is necessary to exclude not only the interpretation of this twopart division as a partitio of the corporeal and sensible order; one must also exclude the Porphyrian divisio, the logical-dianoetic

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(i. e., regular and symmetric) character of which is far from this division of a whole, which surpasses the human capacities of knowledge. No common term, which is logically definable or recognizable for the mind and is understandable as endowed by a full meaning, can be predicated of the two opposite elements – being and not-being – resulting from this two-part division. It is not possible to individuate here any logical differentiae which could distinguish the two terms res quae sunt and res quae non sunt as two different species, participants in a common and superior genus. A few lines after, Eriugena tries to penetrate the difficult comprehension of this superior division of nature by suggesting five (if not more) possible interpretationes modi, which are apparently irreconcilable among themselves. Rather than resolving the problem, however, they only distance the reader even further from the hope of clarifying it in a logically rigorous way86. The correct resolution for this complex superimposition of more diverse interpretive schemes of a single reality comes, nevertheless, from a later section of the work, within an overview of the division of nature at the beginning of the second book. Here John the Scot takes up once again his doctrine of the division with a clear reference to the Neoplatonic distinction and hierarchical structure of the faculties of knowledge (sense, reason, intellect), to which corresponds the ascending order of not only two, but even three different forms of ‘division’.With these forms – as it was made clear from our reading of Boethius’ works – the knowing subject seizes the same object in distinct, diversely verifiable modes. If therefore the partitio lies within the competence of the sensus, and the regular and symmetric Porphyrian divisio lies within the competence of the ‘dianoetic’ ratio, it follows that 86 Cfr. Periphyseon, I, 443A-446A, pp. 4,45-8,153.The different modes of interpretation of the couple esse-non esse are deduced from various patristic sources and reveal an ample perspective of theological thought, not reducible, however, to a simple and coherent unitariness of meaning: 1) they are the knowable things, they are not those which escape creaturely knowledge; 2) they are the things which, in the hierarchy of reality, connect themselves to an inferior grade in respect to those which are not, to those higher; 3) they are the primordial causes, they are not their multiple and sensible effects; 4) they are spiritual entities, they are not those which are corporeal and submitted to accidents; 5) they are the men in the condition following original sin, while being is predicable only from the health which preceded sin and will follow redemption.

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a third division of the super-logical order corresponds to the nou`", or ‘noetic’ intellectus. Here John the Scot presents this higher form of division as «a certain intelligible contemplation of the whole» (intelligibilis quaedam universitatis contemplatio), the object of which is exclusively and directly the reality of the universitas, comprising all that which is comprehensible: Since in the preceding book we briefly proposed the universal division of universal nature, not as if it were the division of a genre into species (non quasi generis in formas), nor of a whole into parts (seu totius in partes), (…) but as a certain intelligible contemplation of universality (sed intelligibili quadam universitatis contemplatione) – and I call universality God and the creature –, now, if it seems opportune to you, let us repeat with greater details the same division of nature87.

In the opening of the first book, it is evident that the superior intellect itself allowed for the intuitive perception of the highest truth of the concept natura by offering to dianoetic reason a more accessible formulation through the two-part division of quae sunt and quae non sunt. Receiving this formulation, dianoetic reason operates as an inferior, but still indispensable instrument for the intellect in the discursive explication of its own intuitions, which are indistinct in themselves. Departing from this initial participation in the highest truth which can be perceived by way of a natural ‘intuition’, the ratio must fulfill the task of logically explicating the contents and consequences of this truth. The cognitive power of the intellectus, or animus, seizes, in a verifying and totalizing mode, the essence of its object without betraying its meaning through analytical descriptions of its singular properties and relations with other essences. In fact, it directs itself only toward absolute forms of truth, that is, as we know, toward the communes conceptiones animi, which are intuitive and primary forms of knowledge. It is evidently just and legitimate to locate among these forms even Eriugena’s intuition of the profound and indefinable meaning of the word natura. Such highly elevated percep87 Ibid., II, 523D, p. 3,1-5: «Quoniam in superiore libro de universalis naturae universali divisione non quasi generis in formas seu totius in partes (…) sed intelligibili quadam universitatis contemplatione – universitatem dico Deum et creaturam – breviter diximus, nunc eandem naturae divisionem latius, si videtur, repetamus».

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tions of truth require the mediation and the support of ratio in order to be formulated in logically coherent, comprehensible, and communicable terms by means of language, as are the elements of the divisio logica – that is, genera, species, and differences88. When it measures itself against the complexity of the universalis divisio of natura, ratio faces a unique difficulty: this division must in fact comprehend within itself – as if they were elements of an unitary conceptuality – extremely distant and inconceivable realities: that which is divine, and that which is not divine. This is the object, however, toward which reason necessarily leads, when it perceives the most profound sense of the superior division of the intellectus, which comprehends all that is thinkable and not thinkable by articulating it in the supreme categories of quae sunt and quae non sunt. On the one hand, it is impossible to reach an adequate ‘ground’ for such a division; on the other hand, it is impossible to renounce the attempt to render comprehensible, through the signifying capacities of discursive reason, the contents of the superior intuition of the truth. John the Scot, therefore, wisely returns to the basic rules for the theological method recommended by the principal authors of the Carolingian age. The truths concerning God and his relationship with existing things, which can be neither known, nor investigated by man with the instruments of natural knowledge, are able to be – even must be! – drawn from the scriptural lectio. In the Sacred Scriptures it is not difficult to trace the sole ‘ground’ of divisibility of the whole which comprehends God and all reality which is not God, that is, the idea, unfathomable for human reason, of creatio. Through the grammatical declination of the corresponding verb, creare, in its four possible forms – that is, affirmative and negative, active and passive –, such a notion is in fact predicated in the Bible with various actualizations of significance which touch upon reality, both that which is divine and that which is 88 Cfr. ibid., II, 578C, p. 71,1649-1656: «Quodcunque anima per primum suum motum, qui est intellectus, de Deo et primordialibus causis uniformiter et universaliter cognoscit, secundo suo motui, qui est ratio, eodem modo uniformiter universaliterque infigit. Quodcunque autem a superioribus per intellectum in ratione formatum accipit, hoc totum in discretas essentias, in discreta genera, in diversas formas, in multiplices numeros per sensum inferioribus effectibus distribuit».

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derived from God.The fourfold division and re-composition of all that which participates in the significance of the term creare arises in this way from a symmetric and absolutely exhaustive use of all the possible forms of predication of this verb, and therefore from its entire and multifarious capacity of signification.Thus the philosopher is guaranteed, by the collaboration between his reason oriented by superior intellectual contemplation and the certainty coming from revelation, that no signifying element can escape from the formal assurance of this mental operation.

7. Intellectus and essentia The initial pages of the second book of the Periphyseon, in which Eriugena introduces his rereading of the doctrine of the divisio naturae in a gnoseological key, contain, in the redactions subsequent to the oldest version, a conspicuous series of observations and clarifications.All these glosses, originating from the interventions of an Irish scribe conventionally indicated by the abbreviation i2, are evidently directed toward overcoming difficulties which creaturely logic encounters in the analysis or in the comprehension of the fundamental logical operation dominating the structure of the work89. Already, for example, in commenting on the lines cited in full above, i2 inserts a gloss to clarify that, when 89 Regarding the figure of the scribe i2 and the evaluation of his interventions in relation to the thought of Eriugena, the editor of the Periphyseon Édouard Jeauneau advanced a strongly restrictive interpretation, which supported him in eliminating from the critical text the majority of passages introduced by this second Irish hand in the oldest version (above all in the second book) and then incorporated into the successive redactions of the work (up until the first editions, including that of Heinrich Joseph Floss in PL 122). He held that they were clumsy misunderstandings or illicit corrections of the authentic thought of the author. Cfr. É. JEAUNEAU, Nisifortinus: le disciple qui corrige le maître, in Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages.A Festschrift for Peter Dronke, Leiden 2001, pp. 113-129.The discussion regarding such an interpretive proposal is still open among scholars. On the basis of the present analysis it seems licit to maintain that at least these interventions related to the recapitulation of the divisio naturae at the beginning of the second book – which Jeauneau places in the apparatus of the critical edition [and which in the citations placed in the following notes will be closed between square parentheses] – offer a coherent increase of intellectual reflections, useful for a better comprehension of the speculative plan followed by Eriugena, from the very first pages of the first book, in the working out of this fundamental doctrine.

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one is pondering the divisio universalis, every use of concepts such as ‘genus-species’ or ‘whole-part’ in order to express the relationship between God and creatures, is always and only to be received «metaphorice». With such terms created intelligence strives, not being able to do otherwise, to rationally express the forms and contents of the true universal division, which is «intelligibilis», that is, super-rational90. Once again, in the first redaction, the Master warns, in agreement with such an idea, that only with caution can one consider God the first «forma vel species», since he is «informe principium» of all the «formae» and all the species91; i2 then confirms that God is justly called informe principium in so far as his perfect and unknowable essence cannot be constrained between the limits of a «forma» which allow for definitive knowledge of it92. Under the aegis of the theology of pseudo-Dionysius, these reflections introduced by i2 highlight – in such a repetitive manner in order that it be unequivocal – the ineffability of God as form.This further emphasizes the impossibility – if not in an instrumental and inappropriate manner – of 90 Cfr. ibid., II, 523D-524A, p. 3, marg. [1],1-9: «[Non enim Deus genus est creaturae et creatura species Dei, sicut creatura non est genus Dei neque Deus species creaturae.Eadem ratio est in toto et partibus:Deus siquidem non est totum creaturae neque creatura pars Dei, quomodo nec creatura est totum Dei neque Deus pars creaturae, quamvis altiori theoria iuxta Gregorium theologum pars Dei simus qui humanam participamus naturam, quoniam ‘in ipso vivimus et movemur et sumus’ (Act 17, 28) metaphoriceque Deus dicatur et genus et totum et species et pars. Omne enim quod in ipso et ex ipso est pie ac rationabiliter de eo praedicari potest]». The passage of Gregory (of Nazianzus?) cited here is recognized by Jeauneau in a text upon which MAXIMUS CONFESSOR (cfr.Ambigua ad Iohannem,3, PG 91,1068D-1069A;lat.interpr.,ed.Jeauneau cit.[above,note 67] p.21,1-7) comments with the following words:«pars igitur sumus et dicimur Dei,eo quod essentiae nostrae rationes in Deo praesubstitutae sunt» (ibid., 1081C; lat. interpr., p. 30,263-264).A citation of the same verse from Luke follows (ibid.,1083B;lat.interpr.,p.30,288-289).It is opportune to observe how much such a use of Maximus on behalf of i2 is coherent with the thought and the style of John the Scot. 91 Cfr. ibid., II, 524D-525A, p. 3,11-13: «(…) Si rite forma vel species dicenda est prima omnium causa quae superat omnem formam et speciem, dum sit formarum et specierum omnium informe principium». 92 Cfr. ibid., 525A, p. 3, marg. [2],10-17: «[Informe autem principium propterea Deum dicimus, ne quis eum formarum numero aestimet censeri, dum sit formarum omnium causa. Ipsum etenim omne formatum appetit, cum sit per se ipsum infinitus et plus quam infinitus; est enim infinitas omnium infinitatum. Quod igitur nulla forma coartatur vel diffinitur quia nullo intellectu cognoscitur, rationabilius dicitur informe quam forma, quia, ut saepe dictum est, verius per negationem de Deo aliquid praedicare possumus quam per affirmationem]».

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including God among the logical representations of the naturae which are connected with the intellectual process of the division. Thus, if in the first of the four naturae (or universitatis considerationes), God is rationally describable as cause and origin of that which is created, in the fourth book God is envisioned as the end toward which things seek to return by ceasing from movement93. While the first nature, as cause, is said «creare», the fourth nature, as end, is said «non creare», since it will no longer produce any reality articulated in space and time, or in genres and species. Furthermore, all things will be in God «quieta», as in «unum individuum atque immutabile».Yet, at the same time, the motive is evident for which the fourth nature is also said «non creari»: like the first, the fourth is in fact predicated of God, who is not subordinated to external causality94.Yet, in order to grasp and evaluate adequately the weight of such an effort of ‘conceptualization’ of the divine nature, in so far as it is cause and in so far as it is universal end, it is fundamental to recall the particular conditions which, according to the Platonic gnoseological perspective, char93

Even ‘beginning’ and ‘end’ are not actual names of God, that is, of his essence (propria natura), but are names of relation (habitudo), in so far as they express his relationability with the creature (cfr. BOETHIUS, In Aristotelis Categorias, II, PL 64, 237AC).Thus they only have value, according to the rules of dialectic, for the cognitive-subjective condition of whoever contemplates the relationship between the two substances considered; cfr. Periphyseon, II, 528A, p. 7, marg. [7],41-45: «[Principium enim et finis divinae naturae propria nomina non sunt, sed habitudinis eius ad ea quae condita sunt. Ab ipsa enim incipiunt atque ideo principium dicitur, et quoniam in eam terminantur ut in ea desinant finis vocabulo meruit appellari]». 94 Cfr. ibid., 526C-527B, pp. 5,64-6,92: «Quaternarum itaque praedictarum formarum binis in unum coeuntibus fiat analytica, id est reditiva collectio. Prima nanque et quarta unum sunt, quoniam de Deo solummodo intelliguntur. Est enim principium omnium quae a se condita sunt et finis omnium quae eum appetunt ut in eo aeternaliter immutabiliterque quiescant. Causa siquidem omnium propterea dicitur ‘creare’ quoniam ab ea universitas eorum quae post eam ab ea creata sunt in genera et species et numeros differentias quoque caeteraque quae in natura condita considerantur mirabili quadam divinaque multiplicatione procedit; quoniam vero ad eandem causam omnia quae ab ea procedunt dum ad finem pervenient reversura sunt, propterea finis omnium dicitur et ‘neque creare neque creari’ perhibetur. (…) Quod autem de prima et de quarta dicitur, hoc est: ‘nec illa nec ista creatur’, cum et illa et ista unum sint – utraeque enim de Deo praedicantur –, nulli recte intelligentium obscurum esse arbitror: a nullo enim creatur, quod causa superiori se, vel sibi coaequali caret. Est enim prima omnium causa Deus, quem nil praecedit, nil ei cointelligitur quod sibi coessentiale non sit».

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acterize the fulfillment even of this act of knowledge. Here a new note added by i2 explicitly confirms these conditions.The divine nature is said ‘to have forms’ only in so far as our intelligence forces it through a process of comprehension. Every attempt to include it among the results of mental operations, such as the division of natures, is nothing except the effect of the procedure with which created intelligence ‘informs’ itself («formatur») while striving to acquire a knowledge of its object by introducing into it divisions and definitions of «formae»95. The following pages of the second book again confirm the idea that the ultimate truth of the divisio universitatis resides more in the organic structuralization of the manner of being and operating of the knowing subject, than in the real subsistence of the known object. Here one finds a long comparison (belonging to the most ancient version of the text, but integrated in more points by the hand of i2) between the system of division of Eriugena and the system of Maximus, which, despite some formal differences, appear to be entirely harmonious. This comparison confirms with insistence that the true reality of all things is in the unity of the corresponding notions of the intellect96.To know the res means, therefore, to unify them, while not to know them is equal to dividing them; and inversely, if to unite them intellectually is to know their true nature, to divide them means to lose from sight their actual truth, which is intellectual and real at the same time. A sentence from pseudo-Dionysius, of capital importance for the comprehension of Eriugenian ontology, is therefore introduced (again through the hand of i2) as an authoritative confirmation of the principle for which the knowledge of things is the reality of the things themselves: «Intellectus enim rerum ve95

Cfr. ibid., 525BC, p. 4, marg. [3],18-24: «[Universalem vero naturam formas habere propterea dicimus, quoniam ex ea nostra intelligentia quodam modo formatur dum de ipsa tractare nititur; nam per se ipsam universa natura non ubique formas recipit. Eam siquidem Deo et creatura contineri non incongrue dicimus, ac per hoc in quantum creatrix est nullam formam accipit in se ipsa, formatae vero a se naturae multiformitatem praestat]». One must note that the marginal title (placed in the margin of Jeauneau’s edition, p. 4) refers to this gloss of i2 (and not to the text to which it is joined): «De eo quod universitas in Deo considerata informis est, in creatura vero multiformis». 96 Cfr. ibid., 529C-545B, pp. 9,149-27,574, with citation of long extracts by MAXIMUS CONFESSOR, Ambigua ad Iohannem, 37, PG 91, 1304D-1316A (lat. interpr., ed. Jeauneau, pp. 179-187).

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raciter ipsae res sunt, dicente sancto Dionysio: ‘Cognitio eorum quae sunt quae ea quae sunt est’»97.This principle is the inverse, and, at the same time, the complement to the rule which, from Boethius on, established for the speculative world of the early medieval ages the Neoplatonic-Christian rethinking of the relationships between knowing subject and known object: «quodcumque intellectus comprehendere potuerit, id ipsum fit»98. These and other expressions in the Periphyseon indicate a medi97

Ibid., II, 535CD, p. 16, marg. [28],154-156.The complete citation is from PS. DIONYSIUS AREOPAGITA, De ecclesiastica hierarchia, 1, 3, PG 3, 376A; latina interpretatio by Eriugena, PL 122, 1073AB: «Deificatio autem est ad Deum, quantum possibile, et similitudo et unitas; omni autem hoc commune Ierarchiae summum: ad Deum et divina attenta dilectio, divinitus atque potenter sacrificata et ab eorum contrariis perfecta et inconversibilis reversio, cognitio eorum quae sunt quae ea quae sunt est, intellectualis veritas et visio et scientia, uniformis consummationis divina participatio, ipsius unius quantum possibile contemplationis refectio, nutriens invisibiliter et deificans omnem in se extentum».The same citation returns in Periphyseon, II, 559AB, p. 45,1051-1062, in a passage belonging to the first version, in which the same concepts adopted in this insertion of i2 establish the Christological exegeses of Ps 109, 3 («in splendoribus sanctorum ex utero ante luciferum genui te»); cfr. esp. ibid., 559B, p. 45,1055-1062: «Non enim Deus cognovit omnia postquam facta sunt, sed antequam facta essent cognovit omnia quae facienda erant. Et, quod est mirabilius, propterea omnia sunt, quia praecognita sunt. Nil enim est aliud omnium essentia, nisi omnium in divina sapientia cognitio. ‘In ipso enim vivimus et movemur et sumus’ (Act 17, 28; cfr. above, note 90).‘Cognitio enim’, ut ait sanctus Dionysius,‘eorum quae sunt quae ea quae sunt est’». 98 This formula, which, according to John the Scot, is deduced from the the Ambigua ad Iohannem of Maximus the Confessor, recapitulates the doctrine of the similarity-identification between the nature of the knowing subject and that of the known object and it serves as the ground for Eriugena’s conception, in an eschatological perspective, of the eternal beatitude as deificatio: cfr. ibid., 449D450A, p. 14,328-329.The editor JEAUNEAU says that he was not able to trace this citation in the work of Maximus («locum non inveni», p. 14, app.) and only suggests a consideration of ARISTOTELES, De anima, III, 4, 429b («the intellect is, in a certain way, the intelligibles themselves as a potency, but in act it is none of these things before thinking of them»), and 8, 431b («the soul is, in a certain way, all beings»). I. P. SHELDON-WILLIAMS, however, proposes in his edition of the first book of the Periphyseon (Dublin 1968 [Script. lat. Hiberniae, 7], p. 55, appar.) a parallel with the eleventh book of the Ambigua ad Iohannem, PG 91, 1220A (lat. interpr., p. 120,93-95), where, in direct dependence upon the Neoplatonic gnoseological perspective, the doctrine of deification of the soul which knows God is justified by showing how the intelligence and the intellect (that is, the subject and the object of intellection) are identified with one another through the coming into act of knowledge.This occurs in a synthesis, the result of which is the true actualized intelligence: «Hoc enim finis est intelligentis et intellecti intelligentia, quasi diffinitibus extremorum ad se invicem copulationis subsistens. Intelligens namque anima stat intelligendo illud quod intellectum est post eius intelligentiam».

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ated process of progressive identification between knower and known, which operates in time when the subject is a creaturely intelligence endowed with limited cognitive capacities and is in constant progress. Yet, the same expressions denote, in an axiomatic way, the a priori identity between subject and object when the knower is God, who projects and brings into existence each thing with his own perfect, fulfilled, and unlimited thought, before any temporal succession.Thus, in perfect coherence with such premises, John the Scot affirms that the intellectus omnium, that is, the Word, is clearly the essentia omnium99. In the third book, he comes to proclaim that if truly «intellectus omnium est omnia», and if the divine bounty «intelligit omnia», then «ipsa [scil. divina bonitas] sola est omnia», since God is the «gnostica virtus» which has known all things before they were, and has known them in himself. Outside of his intellect, nothing exists100. Just as every act of dianoetic reason is nothing other than an attempt to give visibility, articulation and communicability through sensible and corporeal expressions to an ineffable intuition of the truth of the noetic intellect, so the appearance of reality of every created thing through an act of knowing by both the human and angelic faculties is nothing other than a manifestation of its primordial, invisible essence subsisting in God. Furthermore, just as the reality of all things appearing as single substances is in God, who makes them exist while knowing them, so the truth of all divisional, definitional, and argumentative knowledge of the dianoetic order must resolve itself in the unity of a 99

Cfr. Periphyseon, II, 559A, p. 45,1054-1055: «Intellectus enim omnium essentia omnium est».The hand of i2 adds to these words the following theological explanation, p. 45, marg. [87],371-375: «[Siquidem id ipsum est Deo cognoscere priusquam fiant quae facit, et facere quae cognoscit. Cognoscere ergo et facere Dei unum est. Nam cognoscendo facit et faciendo cognoscit. Cognitio non praecedit factum nec factum praecedit cognitionem, quia semel et simul sunt omnia coaeterna praeter rationem creantis et creati]».The subsequent lines (p. 45,1055 ff.) are cited above, in note 97. 100 Cfr. ibid., III, 632D-633A, p. 22,577-583: «Summae siquidem ac trinae soliusque verae bonitatis in se ipsa immutabilis motus et simplex multiplicatio et inexhausta a se ipsa in se ipsa ad se ipsam diffusio causa omnium, immo omnia sunt. Si enim intellectus omnium est omnia et ipsa sola intelligit omnia, ipsa igitur sola est omnia, quoniam sola gnostica virtus est ipsa quae, priusquam essent omnia, cognovit omnia, et extra se non cognovit omnia quia extra eam nihil est».

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noetic, superior, and immediate knowledge101. It is therefore indispensable that the two terms of this comparison, the divine and the human intellect, return to primordial unity at the end of time, in order that the recuperation of the truth-reality of the primordial essences (which are in the Word in so far as they are known) in the divine intellect might be guaranteed for the human intellect. In this perspective, the question of whether the reunification of creation in God will be the real ontological condition of all of nature at the moment of the reditus, or only the result of a mental, and therefore unreal and ineffective, condition, assumes a new determining valence. The question in fact raises the issue of whether the intellect of creatures will be capable of comprehending and realizing in itself that which is and is known by the Word. In the second book the definitive response of Eriugena is expressed, or, to be more exact, anticipated («praelibandum [est]») by yet another integrative gloss introduced by i2. It is found only in the third version of the work: this implies that only in the advanced phase of the revision of the text, and in reference to the mature exposition of the eschatology in the final books, was it possible to clarify that only with their union in the Word, promised for the conclusion of the times and guaranteed by the historical occurrence of the Incarnation, could men recover the true unifying comprehension of reality, overcoming the limits of dianoetic division. Such significant doctrinal progress is proposed by i2 through the recourse to a technical expression – destined to have an interesting fate in the story of early medieval speculation – which explicates it by means of a correct logical formulation: «haec omnia quae difficilia tibi videntur uno argumento possunt concludi». If all things are unified in Christ, «qui omnia intelligit, immo est omnium intellectus», the same unity has to be realized in human nature: Here, however, it is possible to savor in advance (prelibandum) what we shall subsequently say, since all these things, which seem to you particularly difficult, can be demonstrated with 101 Cfr. ibid., 633B, pp. 22,599-23,603: «Nam et noster intellectus cum sit per se et incomprehensibilis, signis tamen quibusdam et manifestatur et comprehenditur dum vocis vel litteris vel aliis nutibus veluti quibusdam corporibus incrassatur».

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a unique argument (uno argumento). If in fact Christ, who has the intelligence of all things, – moreover, who is the intelligence of all things (immo est omnium intellectus) – really reunited in himself all the things which he assumed by the Incarnation, who would doubt that that which has already occurred at the summit and in the principal archetype of the entirety of human nature, will one day realize itself, by following him, in the entirety of such a nature, just as we shall show in the fifth book?102

Even the initial «if» suggests the dialectic morphology of this unum argumentum, the central topical argument, which grounds Eriugena’s entire synthesis between reason and faith103. Two

102

Ibid., II, 545AB, versio III, pp. 210b,1454-212b,1464, and versio IV, pp. 211a,1461-213a,1472: «Sed hic breviter praelibandum quoniam haec omnia quae difficilia tibi videntur uno argumento possunt concludi. Si enim Christus, qui omnia intelligit, immo est omnium intellectus, re ipsa omnia quae assumpsit adunavit, quis dubitat quod praecessit in capite et principali exemplo totius humanae naturae in tota fore subsecuturum sicut in quinto libro tractabimus?». Jeauneau transcribes this text in the only Synopsis versionum and does not accept it, even in the margin, in the basic edition. On the expression unum argumentum, which evokes the definition of the argument of the Proslogion in Anselm of Aosta, cfr. below, cap. 4, § 5. 103 According to the rules of late ancient dialectic it is a locus (or tovpo") a comparatione maiorum. In this form it involves the amplification of an argumentation upon the consequences of the Incarnation inserted by the same John the Scot in his writings on the fourth Gospel.Already in the Commentarius in Iohannis Evangelium, I, 21, 297C-298A, ed. Jeauneau cit. (above, note 30), pp. 98,15-102,30, in effect, John’s announcement of the Word-made-man is received as the apodictic motivation (ratio), which justifies the faith in the deification of the redeemed: that is, as a true topic argumentum, a logical principle which renders credible a truth not yet known, according to the definition which it receives from the logic of the philosophers («ratio quae rei dubiae facit fidem»). Synthetically, but still more explicitly, the same ratio returns in Eriugena’s Omelia on the Prologue of John, 21, PL 122, 295BC, ed. É. Jeauneau, Paris 1969 (SC, 151), p. 304,15-17: «ex his quae maiora sunt accipe argumentum quo rei de qua dubitas possis fidem accommodare».The intuitive consequence of the argumentum – which is coherent with the rule according to which the synthetic formulation of an argumentum is able to flow into argumentatio, that is, into a discursive explication of the corresponding logical passages – is imbedded in the main verse of the Johannine Christology (Jo 1, 14, «et Verbum caro factum est») and was translated by Eriugena into the forms of a rigorous deductive articulation (cfr. ibid., 295C, p. 306,18-29). In this way, the efficacious, communicative immediacy of the revealed words gives rise to the dialectical translation of their final, intimate meaning: if in the Incarnation of the Word, that which is higher descended toward that which was lower, why not recognize that that which is inferior is able to ascend, through the grace of deification, into that which is superior? – On the definition of argumen-

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premises lead Eriugena to his logical conclusion: first, just as the risen Lord realizes in himself the perfection of both divine and human nature, so also he reunites in his perfect knowledge all the cognitive faculties, both divine and creaturely104; second, all things are re ipsa in the Word, since «intellectus rerum ipsae res sunt». One may therefore logically deduce that, what is possible for the Incarnate Word must necessarily be possible also for all of human nature, when it will be fulfilled in its complete actuality. This means that all men, in the moment of the final restoration of created perfections, will see in their intellectus the reality of creatures «re ipsa».This will occur in so far as their vision, reconnected and entirely assimilated to the intellectus of the Word, will have as an object the primordial causes through the recovery of the pristine identity of esse and intelligere.This will conclude the return of reality – which is actually divided in multiplicity – to the One.

8. From division to universal reunification: the reditus to the truth The complete work of the six days comes to fruition in man. In man God has created the entire universe; and, as far as he is created in the image of God, man is all creatures and is superior to all creatures at the same time105. The knowledge of God is now for man, above all, knowledge of himself in God, in the divine notion which presides over creation106. The theology of man is tum as ratio quae rei dubiae facit fidem see above, cap. 1, note 15, and cap. 2, note 21; on the use of topical argumenta in late ancient and early medieval logic cfr. my Fons scientiae. La dialettica cit. (above, cap. 1, note 7), pp. 257-266. 104 Cfr. Periphyseon, II, 541B, pp. 23-24, marg. [47],227-259. 105 Cfr. ibid., IV, 764B, pp. 33,891-34,895: «Cur autem in ipso omnem naturam voluit creare, si a me quaeris, respondeo: quia ad imaginem et similitudinem suam voluit eum facere, ut quemadmodum principale exemplum superat omnia essentiae excellentia, ita imago eius superaret omnia creationis dignitate et gratia». 106 Cfr. ibid., 768C-769A, pp. 40,1072-41,1089: «NUTRITOR. Possumus ergo hominem diffinire sic: Homo est notio quaedam intellectualis in mente divina aeternaliter facta. ALUMNUS. Verissima et probatissima diffinitio hominis est ista, et non solum hominis, verum etiam omnium quae in divina sapientia facta sunt. (…) N. Num tibi videtur rerum omnium sensibilium et intelligibilium, quae potest humana mens intelligere, notionem quandam in homine esse? A.Videtur

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for all creation the knowledge of itself in God, in the totalizing notion which God has of his work107. From human theology to cosmic theology, the history of creation now appears as the selfknowledge of the universe which learns in God that the whole strives toward God as the ultimate end. A unitary and superior knowledge is born from the reconciliation of the universe with God, just as it occurs between two disputants in a single dialogue108. It is as if all the contradictions were overcome and resolved by the universal knowledge which actuates itself in the very intellect which is proper to all Christian humanity: the Word.The intellectual unity reached by the theologian surpasses all the dissensiones which characterize the labor of reason. The thinker, nourished by the anagogical experience of the Greek Fathers, has thus found the perfect response for the project of recovery and the maintenance of Christian unity which had been delineated and pursued on the political field by Alcuin. Upon reaching the Word, all human faculties will be able to see at once in itself – that is, in the unity of the rationes primordiales – the divine essence and the essence of all things. This will be possible because, at the end of the times, every human cognitive activity will be resolved in the activity of the noetic intellect.The intellect, carrying out every cognitive effort only in God, will participate, in a definitive form and to the greatest possible deplane. Et quidem per hoc maxime intelligitur homo esse quod cunctorum, quae sive aequaliter sibi creata sunt sive quibus dominari praecipitur, datum est ei habere notionem. Quomodo enim dominatus eorum homini daretur, quorum notionem non haberet? Siquidem dominatus illius erraret, si ea quae regeret nesciret. Quod apertissime divina nobis indicat scriptura dicens:‘Formatis igitur dominus Deus de humo cunctis animantibus terrae et universis volatilibus caeli, adduxit ea ad Adam ut videret quid vocaret ea: omne autem quod vocavit Adam animae viventis, ipsum est nomen eius’ (Gn 2, 19)». 107 Cfr. ibid., 769A, p. 41,1093-1097: «Quid ergo mirum si rerum notio, quam mens humana possidet, dum in ea creata est, ipsarum rerum quarum notio est substantia intelligatur, ad similitudinem videlicet mentis divinae, in qua notio universitatis conditae ipsius universitatis incommutabilis substantia est?». 108 Cfr. ibid., 780BC, p. 57,1578-1591: «Nam et nos, dum disputamus, in nobismet invicem efficimur. Siquidem dum intelligo quid intelligis, intellectus tuus efficior, et ineffabili quodam modo in te factus sum. Similiter quando pure intelligis quod ego plane intelligo, intellectus meus efficeris, ac de duobus intellectibus fit unus, ab eo quod ambo sincere et incunctanter intelligimus formatus. (…) Ac per hoc et ego in te creor, et tu in me crearis. Non enim aliud sumus, aliud noster intellectus.Vera siquidem ac summa nostra essentia est intellectus, contemplatione veritatis specificatus».

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gree, in the manner of knowing appropriate to the divine Word by means of assimilation109. Since in God knowledge of the causes is the subsistence of all things which are, even in the restored human intellect the knowledge of the individual res will resolve itself in their true being in God. Definitively, if the true being of things is their being known in God, the true knowing of intelligible things will be to recognize one’s own being and the being of others in their being known by God. This will be the condition of the blessed who contemplate «simul» all things in the true Good, that is, in the totalizing unity of primordial causes. Once coming to be in God they will rejoice in a true judgment in so far as it will be totalizing and not founded upon a division of natura into rationally conceptualized partes. This is the spiritual man of Saint Paul, who, with the help of the grace which surpasses his nature, judges in God the unitary truth (the «totum») of all things, leaving behind all the multiplicities and particularities (the «partes») and recognizing in God the universal unity of nature in the primordial reasons of being, true tempora aeterna110.The knowledge reserved for him is that which was 109 Cfr. ibid., II, 575C, p. 68,1554-1560: «Si igitur humana natura non solum ad dignitatem angelicam in Christo renovata pervenit verum etiam ultra omnem creaturam in Deum assumpta est, et quod factum est in capite in membris futurum esse impium est negare, quid mirum si humani intellectus nil aliud sint nisi ineffabiles incessabilesque motus – in his dico qui digni sunt – circa Deum, ‘in quo vivunt et moventur et sunt?’ (cfr. Act 17, 28; cfr. also above, notes 90 and 97)». 110 Cfr. ibid.,V, 970AD, pp. 154,4993-155,5030: «O quantum beati sunt, qui simul omnia, quae post Deum sunt, mentis obtutibus vident et visuri sunt! Quorum iudicium in nullo fallitur, quoniam in veritate omnia contemplantur; quibus in universitate naturarum nihil offendit vel infestum est. Non enim de parte iudicant, sed de toto, quoniam neque intra partes totius neque intra ipsum totum comprehenduntur, sed supra totum eiusque partes altitudine contemplationis ascendunt. Nam si in numero partium totius seu in ipso toto concluderentur, profecto neque de partibus neque de toto recte possent iudicare, ideoque ei qui de partibus ac de toto recte iudicat necesse est prius omnes partes omneque totum universitatis conditae mentis vigore et puritate superare, sicut ait Apostolus:‘Spiritualis homo iudicat omnia, ipse autem nemine iudicatur’ (1Cor 2, 15). Sed quorsum ascendit ‘spiritualis’ ille ‘homo’, qui de omnibus iudicat et de quo nemo iudicare potest nisi ipse solus qui fecit omnia? Nunquid in eum, qui omnia superat et ambit et in quo sunt? In ipsum itaque Deum ascendit, qui universitate creaturae simul contemplatur et discernit et diiudicat; neque eius iudicium fallitur, quoniam in ipsa veritate, quae nec fallit nec fallitur quia est quod ipsa est, omnia videt.Virtute siquidem intimae speculationis ‘spiritualis homo’ in causas rerum, de quibus ‘iudicat’, intrat. Non enim iuxta exteriores sensibilium rerum species discernit omnia, verum iuxta interiores earum rationes, et incommutabiles occasiones, principali-

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promised by the Scriptures to the blessed through the symbol of the fruits of the tree of life, denied to Adam after sin111.

9. Beyond the vera philosophia To know the truth is to become the truth.That spiritual man ‘become God’ is the end of theological knowledge, which is also the end of the divine project in the world.Yet, the knowledge of all things in the primordial causes and of the causes in God is not the true, full knowledge of God in himself and for himself. On the one hand, the beatific contemplation of the truth in its causes, for which Adam was originally destined, is possible for the entirety of human kind, in so far as this contemplation belongs to the created intellectus redeemed in the future and perfect realization of its natural capacities. On the other hand, it is also necessary to admit that the pure knowledge of God in himself – which must carry the created subject beyond the mediation of the primordial rationes, up to the full identity with the divine object, that is, to an authentic deificatio – will be hypostasized and made accessible only with the final ascent to a transcendent condition in respect to all that which is created. It is not the result of a possiaque exempla, in quibus omnia simul sunt et unum sunt. Ibi ergo ‘spiritualis homo iudicat omnia’, ubi omnia unum sunt et vere et immutabiliter vivunt et subsistunt, et quo omnia quae ex primordialibus suis causis profecta sunt reversura sunt et quorum nihil extra relinquetur temporalibus mutabilitatibus subiectum seu localibus circumscriptionibus inclusum, quando universitas naturae super omnia localia et temporalia spatia in causas suas, in quibus omnia unum sunt, finito sensibili mundo, revertetur. Nam et ipsa loca et tempora cum omnibus quae in eis adhuc in hac vita ordinantur et moventur et circumscribuntur, in suas aeternas rationes redire necesse est. Quas rationes tempora aeterna divina vocat historia (cfr. Rm 16, 25; and Tt 1, 2 according to the versio antiqua)».The overcoming of the logical rule of the whole and of the parts supports this super-logical solution of the reditus, because the ‘whole’ is able to be contemplated only by a mind which finds itself outside of it, that is, neither comprised of ‘parts’, nor existing in the same ‘whole’: such is only the mind of God, but such will be also the mind of those who, in the reditus, adhere to the mind of God, exceeding and comprehending in unity the entirety of the created universitas. 111 Cfr. ibid., IV, 833AB, p. 129,3950-3956: «Cui viro atque mulieri (intellectui videlicet sensuique) divina lex non solum concessit, verum etiam praecepit de ligno vitae comedere, de sapientia profecto Patris et Verbo, quod est Dominus Iesus Christus, qui in medio humanae naturae paradisi plantatus est, qui est spiritualis panis, quo angeli perfectique homines, quorum conversatio in caelis est (cfr. Phil 3, 20), vescuntur».

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ble theological process for all human beings on the basis of a natural actualization, even of the highest degree, of the cognitive potentialities of creatures112. This contemplation would have to spring from a form of intelligentia which must inevitably appear, for any sort of created mind, impossibilis113.This is valuable as an explanation (and also as a conclusive confirmation) of the formula recalled above, with which John the Scot was sculpting – with a few incisive words at the beginning of the first book – the presentation of the fourth nature («quae nec creat, nec creatur»), when he expressed its conceptual indeterminability through a clear denunciation of its logical and ontological inadmissibility («inter impossibilia ponitur, cuius esse est non posse esse»)114. 112 Cfr. ibid., 979BC, p. 166,5413-5429: «Ligni autem vitae, quod est Christus, fructus est beata vita, pax aeterna in contemplatione veritatis, quae proprie dicitur deificatio.‘Est enim beata vita’, ut ait Augustinus (Confessiones, X, 23, 33, PL 32, 793, ed.Verheijen cit. [above, cap. 1, note 96], p. 173,10),‘gaudium de veritate’, quae est Christus. Et fortassis hoc est quod ait Apostolus: ‘Omnes quidem resurgemus, sed non omnes immutabimur’ (1Cor 15, 51) (…), ac si aperte diceret: omnes nos qui homines sumus, nemine excepto, in spiritualibus corporibus et integritate naturalium bonorum resurgemus et in antiquitatem primae conditionis nostrae revertemur, sed non omnes immutabimur in deificationis gloriam, quae superat omnem naturam et paradisum. Itaque sicut aliud est generaliter resurgere, aliud est specialiter immutari, ita aliud est in paradisum redire, aliud de ligno vitae comedere: in uno quidem naturae significatur restauratio, in altero vero commendatur electorum deificatio». 113 Cfr. Commentarius in Iohannis Evangelium, I, 25, 300C-302B, ed. Jeauneau cit. (above, note 30), pp. 114,1-126,99; cfr. esp. 300D, 301CD and 302A, pp. 116,17-19, 122,59-61 and 79-82: «Nam et angeli Deum suum, qui omnem intellectum exsuperat, in sua natura cognoscere non potuerunt, quia invisibilis et incognitus est. (…) Dicendum quia nullus humanae seu angelicae naturae particeps ipsum Deum per seipsum in sua propria natura potest contemplari. (…) Apertissime et sanctus Ambrosius et Dionysius Ariopagita absque ulla cunctatione inculcant Deum, summam dico trinitatem, nulli per seipsam umquam apparuisse, nunquam apparere, nunquam apparituram». 114 Cfr. above, pp. 178-179 and p. 182. It is not by chance that, in Eriugena’s translation of an important text of Maximus the Confessor on the theophanies, the expression ajmhcanov~ e[nnoia (that is, more or less, «un-artificial knowledge»), which designates in Greek the result of such an eschatological cognitive situation founded upon the absolute removal of any logical-semantic limitation, was rendered in Latin as «impossibilis intelligentia»; cfr. MAXIMUS CONFESSOR, Ambigua ad Iohannem, 30, PG 91, 1288B, lat. interpr., ed. Jeauneau cit. (above, note 67), p. 167,4-9: «Ex his quae secundum essentiam sunt, hoc est ex ipsa essentia, Deus nequaquam quid subsistens cognoscitur. Impossibilis enim et omnino invia omni creaturae visibili et invisibili secundum quod aequum est circa hoc constituta est intelligentia, sed ex his quae circa essentiam sunt solummodo quia est, et haec et bene et pie contemplantium aspectibus Deus seipsum subinfert».

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Nevertheless, Revelation promises a purer contemplation of the divine, as the summit of the grace of reconciliation between God and creature, to those who are allowed to push their natural consideration of the truth to the point of being assumed by the divinity of the Word into a final and complete deificatio.These will be, among the blessed, those alone to whom it will be conceded to transform themselves into new realities, superior to the defined and circumscribed manner of being of that which is created. They, through a paradox which rational logic is only able to work out and accept by not demanding to understand it, will no longer be counted ‘among the things that are’115. The fruition of this final and supernatural grade of being and knowing was conceded in the course of history – in an episodic, extraordinary, and absolutely free form – to a single man, the evangelist John, who was led by a very special grace («per sublimitatem gratiae») to the point of becoming something superior to humanity and to creatureliness. He acquired a condition which mirrored that of Christ when he joined his own divinity to humanity in history. Only by anticipating such a privilege in his own person, unique in the history of humanity, was the prophetic Johannine eagle able to fly above every possibility of knowledge («ultra omnem theoriam»), above all visible things and their primordial causes («ultra omnia quae sunt et quae non sunt»), and therefore not only beyond sense perception and rational comprehension, but even beyond noetic intuition of the highest and most original truths116. Penetrating into the nature of 115

Cfr. Periphyseon,V, 905B, pp. 64,2065-65,2073: «Eos enim qui divinam super omnia communionem participant, inter omnia connumerari vera non sinit ratio. De seipsa namque Veritas ait:‘Ubi ego fuero, illic et minister meus’ (Jo 12, 26). Ipsum incunctanter super omnia esse credimus. Ministri igitur ipsius super omnia sunt, ceteri vero, qui virtutem purae contemplationis non attingunt, inferiores ordines obtinent, sive in theophaniis, sive in inferiorum naturarum sublimitatibus». 116 Cfr. Omelia, 1, 283B, ed. Jeauneau cit. (above, note 103), pp. 200,3-204,11: «Vox altivoli volatilis non aera corporeum vel aethera vel totius sensibilis mundi ambitum supervolitans, sed omnem theoriam, ultra omnia quae sunt et quae non sunt, citivolis intimae theologiae pennis, clarissimae superaeque contemplationis obtutibus transcendentis. Dico autem quae sunt, quae sive humanum sive angelicum non omnino fugiunt sensum; quae vero non sunt, quae profecto omnis intelligentiae vires relinquunt, cum post Deum sint et eorum numerum quae ab una omnium causa condita sunt non excedant». On the emendation of this text in respect to the edition, cfr. a summary of the critical debate in G. D’ONOFRIO, Oltre la teologia. Per una lettura dell’Omelia di Giovanni Scoto Eriugena sul Prologo del

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God in himself, John was able to know him because he was allowed to become God himself117. «Non homo, sed plusquam homo», he penetrated entirely into the mystery of the Trinity118.Yet, from this achieved height, beyond human theology, from this primordial taste of deification on the part of humanity, the divine messenger then descended to announce to other men the contents of his own vision. He formulates the doctrine of the Word in which the two high divinely revealed mysteria are summed up, the Trinitarian and the Christological mysteries. In order to do it, he had to translate them into terms of a language which would be communicable to the intelligences of believers. By pronouncing these words, which are comprehensible in speech, but full of mystery in significance, he rendered God, as far as it was allowed, accessible to the cognitive faculties of man119. The differentiation of the cognitive states typical of intelligent creatures during temporal life is, therefore, destined to remain even in the reditus. Since creatures can never directly contemplate God, even after the end of history all will know him only through phantasiae. All human beings, redeemed and not redeemed, will take part in the celestial Jerusalem according to the actualization of the grades which realize the distribution of the mansions corresponding to their diversely merited retributions. Yet, while the damned will continue, as they did in life, to consider only falsae phantasiae or particular aspects of the truth, without succeeding in elevating themselves to a global comprehenQuarto Vangelo, in «Studi Medievali», Ser. 3a, 31.1 (1990), [pp. 285-356], esp. pp. 290-293. 117 Cfr. Omelia, 4, 285BC, p. 218,1-4: «Spiritale igitur petasum, citivolum, deividum – Iohannem dico theologum – omnem visibilem et invisibilem creaturam superat, omnem intellectum tranat, et deificatus in Deum intrat deificantem». Also for the text of this passage, cfr. D’ONOFRIO, ibid., pp. 352 and 355. 118 Cfr. Omelia, 5, 285C-286A, pp. 220,1-222,7: «Non ergo Iohannes erat homo, sed plusquam homo, quando et seipsum et omnia quae sunt superavit, et ineffabili sapientiae virtute purissimoque mentis acumine subvectus, in ea quae super omnia sunt, secreta videlicet unius essentiae in tribus substantiis et trium substantiarum in una essentia, ingressus est. Non enim aliter potuit ascendere in Deum nisi prius fieret Deus». Cfr. also ibid., 286A, p. 224,13-17: «Sanctus itaque theologus, in Deum transmutatus, veritatis particeps, Deum Verbum subsistere in Deo Principio, hoc est Deum Filium in Deo Patre, pronuntiat: ‘in principio’, inquit, ‘erat Verbum’». 119 Cfr. ibid., 3, 285B, p. 216,35-36: «Aeterna eius in notitiam fidelium animarum introducit». Cfr. D’ONOFRIO, ibid., pp. 294-310.

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sion of the truth, only the blessed will enjoy the verae phantasiae, that is, the theophaniae120. Nevertheless, even in the beatific vision there will be a division into successive gradations of knowledge. Only the elect, among the redeemed, will acquire in the reditus specialis the contemplation of the purest theophanies, which, beyond any natura and in direct communion with the Word, manifest, in the most elevated degree possible for creatures, the very essence of God121. Not all men, therefore, completely realize this project, but all come to take part in the domus Dei.There are many dwelling places in the domus Dei,but a single order,because there is one Lord alone who governs. John the Scot entrusted the explanation regarding this doctrine of reditus specialis to the exegesis of the parable of the 120 Cfr. Periphyseon,V, 963C, p. 145,4686-4691: «Et sive in eis [scil. phantasiis] impiorum supplicia, sive iustorum praemia disponentur, ubique tamen bonas esse non dubitavi asserere, quoniam et beatorum felicitas, quae in contemplatione veritatis constituitur, in phantasiis, quas propter differentiam aliarum phantasiarum theologi theophanias appellant, administrabitur». Cfr. also ibid., 983BC, pp. 172,5609-173,5624, the interpretation of the parable of the rich man and the poor man, inspired by Claudianus Mamertus, in which it is confirmed that not a spatial distance, but only a profound spiritual difference will separate the joy of the beatitude from the sadness of impiety; cfr. M. CRISTIANI, L’espace de l’âme. La controverse sur la corporéité des esprits, le De statu animae de Claudien Mamert et le Periphyseon, in Eriugena. Studien zu seinen Quellen,Vorträge des III. Internationalen Eriugena-Colloquiums (Freiburg im Breisgau, 27.-30. August 1979), hrsg. von W. Beierwaltes, Heidelberg 1980 (Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Jahrg. 1980, 3. Abh.), pp. 149-163. On the complexity of Eriugena’s notion of phantasia, cfr. J. C. FOUSSARD, Apparence et apparition. La notion de phantasia chez Jean Scot, in Jean Scot Érigène et l’histoire de la philosophie cit. (above, note 44), pp. 337-348. 121 Cfr. ibid., 982B-983A, pp. 170,5554-172,5599: «In ipsum itaque paradisum, veluti in amplissimum secretissimumque templum, omnes homines, unusquisque secundum suam analogiam intrabit (…). Hinc Propheta:‘Vota mea’, inquit, ‘reddam in conspectu omnis populi eius, in atriis domus Domini, in medio tui, Jerusalem’ (Ps 115, 18-19). Jerusalem (…) est domus Domini in monte supernae contemplationis aedificata, ad quam Propheta hortatur omnes homines per virtutum gradus et speculationum altitudines ascendere. (…) De hac domo videtur Dominus dixisse ‘in domo Patris mei mansiones multae sunt’ (Jo 14, 2). In atriis domus huius omnes homines mansiones possidebunt, dum in causas suas redituri sunt, sive bene in carne sive male vixerint. (…) In paradiso itaque humanae naturae unusquisque locum suum secundum proportionem conversationis suae in hac vita possidebit: alii exterius veluti in extremis porticibus, alii interius, tanquam in propinquioribus atriis divinae contemplationis, alii in amplissimis divinorum mysteriorum templis, alii in intimis super omnem naturam in ipso et cum ipso, qui superessentialis et supernaturalis est, theophaniis». On the pauline «conversatio», cfr. the passage from the book IV cited above, note 111.

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ten virgins (Mt 25, 1-13). A definitive clarification emerges from these penetrating pages regarding the gnoseological nature of the reditus, in its gradations, up to deification.The ten virgins symbolize rational humanity’s general return to God, in which the very return of the entirety of nature is accomplished122. The lamps of the virgins symbolize the cognitive capacities of each person, directed toward the bridegroom and the bride, that is, Christ and the Church.The number ‘ten’ indicates the solidity of the spiritual city, which is beyond the nine orders of angels123. The light (of the lamps, that is, the truth which is the object of knowledge) is the same for all, but not all participate in it in the same way or to the same degree. Some possess the capacity of the light; others possess the light itself (the oil in the lamps); but only the latter are able to enter with the bridegroom and participate in the spiritual marriage124.The number ten was also divided into two halves: the vessels (vasa) of the ten virgins are equal, just as all men equally possess rationality, which the parable symbolizes by virginity, or 122 Cfr. ibid., 1011A, pp. 211,6848-6852: «Totius rationabilis creaturae, quae specialiter in homine creata est et cui naturaliter inest affectus beatitudinis et cognitionis summi boni facultas, hoc est excelsissimae Trinitatis, ex qua manat omne bonum, ipse Dominus in Evangelio decem virginibus assimilavit universitatem». 123 Cfr. ibid., 1011AC, pp. 211,6852-212,6875: «[Decem virgines],‘quae accipientes lampadas suas’, hoc est capacitatem aeternae lucis cognoscendae, ‘exierunt obviam sponso et sponsae’ (Mt 25, 1), Christo videlicet et Ecclesiae, quae iam in caelo est, partim in sanctis angelis, partim in purgatissimis hominum animabus, in quibus primitiae naturae humanae, quae adhuc in captivitate est, moralis vitae fragiliumque membrorum caelestis patriae civibus inserunt. (…) Et animadverte quod tota humanitas denario numero comparatur quoniam decimam in aedificatione superae civitatis possidet regionem. Decem itaque virgines, hoc est tota humanae naturae numerositas, naturali appetitu obviam diligenti se et ad eam venienti exit, non gressibus corporibus sed affectibus mentis». 124 Cfr. ibid., 1011C, p. 212,6876-6894: «Sed quamvis aequalis motus sit rationalis naturae ad finem suum, qui est Christus, aequalisque aeternis luminis, quae per lampades significatur, appetitio, non tamen aequaliter ‘lucem’ illam ‘quae illuminat omnem hominem venientem in hunc mundum’ (Jo 1, 9) participat. (…) Ideoque non aequaliter obviam sponso et sponsae virgines exibunt: nam qui non solum capacitatem veri luminis, verum etiam et ipsum lumen, quod oleum conformat, possident, ad ipsum sponsum pervenient, et cum ipso in spirituales nuptias intrabunt. Qui vero solam luminis capacitatem possident, non autem ipso lumine illuminantur et ornantur, obviam Christo procedent, hoc est, non solo naturaliter insito appetitu, sed etiam reipsa et experimento ad sola naturalia humanitatis bona, quae in Christo subsistunt, ascendent, non autem ad supernaturalem deificationis in eo gratiam et laetitiam pervenient».

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the purety of the original natural condition.Yet, cognitive virtue is different, not depending upon the condition of the light, which is equally distributed to all, but upon the nature of the intelligences. Some can enjoy the light to the fullest; others to a lesser degree; and still others are entirely excluded from it125. Should someone ask why, since the capacity for knowing is distributed uniformly among all the rational minds, it is not possibile for all intellects to have an identical contemplation of the truth, one would have to respond that such a distribution of the cognitive capacities, like the mystery of the distribution of the angels into nine ranks, is inexplicable for the human mind126: «et quis huic interrogationi respondebit?».Yet, a reasonable justification for this can be found, as the book of Wisdom teaches, in the presupposition of the universal harmony foreseen by God for all creation through the union of proportionally diverse grades. It is like the polyphonic harmony of a choir, which, in its complementary diversity, celebrates in the fullest manner the beauty of the divine project. Such harmoniae pulchritudo of creation is in fact perfected by the multiple distribution of the grades of contemplation with which creatures are able to participate in the theophanic manifestation of God127. In the reditus specialis, only a few will complete the ascent «ultra naturam in ipsum Deum» into the special condition of deifica125 Cfr. ibid., 1012AB, p. 213,6900-6911: «Vasa itaque similia sunt prudentium et imprudentium virginum, quoniam ratio, quae veluti naturalis divini luminis sedes est, uniformiter integritati, veluti cuipiam virginitati, naturae incorruptibilis, quae in nullo augetur vel minuitur, distributa est, quamvis non uniformiter divinum lumen accipiat. Nec hoc in culpa ipsius luminis, aut invidia, aut inopia constituitur, quoniam omnibus praesens est omnibusque aequaliter superfulgens et inexhausta effusione omnibus aequaliter profluens, sed quoniam non eadem virtus est oculorum, quibus lux mentium percipitur, sequitur ut alii plus, alii minus ea fruantur, alii penitus ab ea secluduntur». On Eriugena’s exegesis of this parable, cfr. also P. A. DIETRICH - D. F. DUCLOW, Virgin in Paradise: Deification and Exegesis in Periphyseon V, in Jean Scot Écrivain, Actes du IVe Colloque International (Montréal, 28 août - 2 septembre 1983), éd. par G.-H.Allard, Montréal - Paris 1986, pp. 29-49. 126 Cfr. ibid., 1012C-1013A, pp. 213,6922-214,6937. 127 Cfr. ibid., 1013A, p. 214,6937-6944: «Et quis huic interrogationi respondebit? Nemo, nisi cogitans intra seipsum, quod scriptum est:‘Omnia in mensura et numero et pondere’, id est ordine, fecit Deus (Sap 11, 21). Et qualis pulchritudo universitatis a Deo conditae foret, si omnia Deus aequaliter constitueret? Nam et sensibilis harmoniae dulcedo et pulchritudo non ex similibus sonis, sed ex diversis, ratis tamen proportionibus sibi invicem compactis ordinatur».

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tio128. It is not by chance that John the Scot, in his exegetical writings on the fourth Gospel, explicitly declared that, like the knowledge reserved for the redeemed, their assumption as sons of God by means of grace will be «omni naturae per se ipsam impossibile»129. All of the redeemed, in the «totius humanae numerositatis generalis ad pristinum statum reversio», will be fed by the tree of life, that is, the Word.Yet, not all are fed to the same degree. Only the elect will pluck the fruit of a vision similar to the incomprehensibilis et incredibilis visus which allowed the Evangelist John to penetrate the mystery of the Trinity. The discussion of this mystery of the Trinity, similar to the inquiry regarding the concept of deificatio, must be reserved in life only to the wise, who are capable of approaching it without feeling or drawing scandal for the other believers130. «Incomprehensibilis» and «incredibilis»: both faith and reason halt before the mysterium of the fourth nature.They remain in the condition of human limitation after original sin, unless they, through the gift of grace, are transformed into «sapientia», that is, into the capacity, which is superior to all natural conditions, of

128 Cfr. ibid., 1014D-1015A, p. 216,7026-7035: «In ea siquidem [scil. parabula] totius generis humani generalis reditus primo, deinde specialis gentilis populi conformatur. In hac autem similiter per decem virgines obviam sponso exeuntes totius humanae numerositatis generalis ad pristinum naturae statum recursio, specialis autem per quinque prudentes omnium sanctorum – species enim humani generis est electorum numerus – non solum ad antiquum naturae principium reditus in generalitatem humanitatis, verum etiam ultra naturam in ipsum Deum in specialitate deificationis ineffabilis insinuatur ascensus». 129 Commentarius in Iohannis Evangelium, I, 20, 297B, ed. Jeauneau cit. (above, note 30), pp. 96,13-98,14; cfr. also Omelia, 21, 295BC, ed. Jeauneau cit. (above, note 103), pp. 304,13-306,19: «Et ne forte dicas: impossibile videtur mortales fieri immortales (…), si (…) quod plus est procul dubio praecessit, cur incredibile videtur quod minus est posse consequi?». 130 Cfr. Periphyseon, 1015AC, pp. 216,7035-217,7065: «Omnes quippe in paradisum, ut praediximus sunt reversuri, sed non omnes de ligno vitae sunt fruituri; vel certe omnes de ligno vitae sunt accepturi, sed non aequaliter. (…) Fruentur itaque omnes homines ipsius fructu participatione naturalium bonorum generaliter; fruentur electi sui excelsitudine deificationum ultra omnem naturam specialiter. (…) Sed (…) sensus ipsius nominis, quod est theosis, quo maxime Graeci utuntur significantes sanctorum transitum in Deum non solum anima, sed etiam et corpore, ut unum in ipso et cum ipso sint, quando in eis nil animale, nil corporeum, nil humanum, nil naturale remanebit, altus nimium visus ultraque carnales cogitationes ascendere non valentibus incomprehensibilis et incredibilis, ac per hoc non publice praedicandus, sed de eo inter sapientes tractandum».

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knowing eternal realties131. «Sapientia» is the oil which lights the lamps of the five prudent virgins, the supreme spiritual philosophy. It is ‘more than true’, comprising both holy action and true knowledge, and allows the elect to have access to the truest happiness132.Thus, when the intelligible day (dies intellectualis) arrives after the conclusion of historical times, in the profundity of knowledge of each person (that is, in relation to the various cognitive capacities, now definitively in act), the final truth in itself of all essences will be present and realized133.Yet, only the «perfectissimi animi» of the elect acquire the grace for the «supernaturalis contemplatio», which allows full recognition of the mystery of the Incarnation. Its comprehension remains, however, impossibile, whether on the level of faith, or on the level of intellect (now having become harmonious complements, nearly interposable) for those who remain in the condition of carnal and opinionated knowledge.They do not succeed in penetrating into the interior of the «internae nuptiae divinae puraeque contemplationis», that is, into the most profound mystery of the union between man and the divine which is accomplished in Christ in history and will be accomplished in his most faithful followers in eternity134. In the conclusion of the parable, the closing of the door of the common house symbolizes the definitive entrance of the elect

131 Cfr. ibid., 1015CD, pp. 217,7065-218,7073: «Multa quippe divina mysteria a sanctis Patribus intacta ob hanc causam praetermissa sunt; infirmi siquidem oculi claritatem luminis sufferre nequeunt. Sufficiunt, ut arbitror, haec pauca paradigmata ex divinis parabolis assumpta, ad generalem specialemque humani generis suadendum reditum in principium suum, primordialem dico conditionem, inque ipsum Deum, in his qui sincerissima eius participatione digni sunt frui». 132 Cfr. ibid., 1017A, p. 220, 7136-7139: «Prudentes virgines lampadas suas, rationabiles videlicet motus, bonae actionis pinguedine puraeque conscientiae claritate exornant: quibus duo, actu dico et scientia, fatuae virgines carent». 133 Cfr. ibid., 1017B, p. 220,7142-7143: «In illa die intellectuali, in quo unusquisque profunda conscientiae suae rimabit». 134 Cfr. ibid., 1017C-1018C, p. 221,7162-7202: «Venit sponsus et paratas virgines inque suo adventu ornatas praeoccupavit et ad suas nuptias introduxit, hoc est, in suam deificationem, qua perfectissimos animos supernaturali contemplationis suae gratia glorificat, ceteris in naturalium bonorum plenitudine relictis, et excelsitudine ineffabilis deificationis,‘quam nec oculus vidit, nec auris audivit, nec in cor hominis ascendit’ (1Cor 2, 9), exclusis. (…) Quanti sunt qui (…) per suas falsas cogitationes carnalesque opiniones ad internas divinae puraeque contemplationis nuptias postulant intrare?».

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into such a direct contemplation of God.The twofold repetition of the name of Christ, however, on the part of those who remain excluded, signifies, in contrast, the eternal incapacity of understanding the mystery of the unification («intimae nuptiae») of the two natures of Christ, and of the three persons of the Trinity, for those whom Christ ‘does not know’, that is, for those who are not allowed to know his true,‘impossible’ reality135.

135 Cfr. ibid., 1017D-1018D, pp. 221,7170-222,7214: «Et hoc est quod ait:‘Et clausa est janua’ (Mt 25, 10), introitus videlicet contemplationis divinae facie ad faciem, ad quam incaute in hac vita viventes oleumque actionis et scientiae in rationis suae receptacula non infundentes, etiamsi clamaverint, sera quandoque poenitentia compuncti, non intrabunt, dicentes ‘Domine, Domine, aperi nobis’ (Mt 25, 11). Ista autem geminatio Dominici nominis (…) certe simplicium fidelium minus catholicae fidei altitudinem considerantium ignaviam significat, putantes Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum duabus substantiis esse compositum, dum sit una substantia in duabus naturis, et petunt quae sibi non conveniunt. (…) Quanti sunt qui divinam essentiam in tribus substantiis et tres substantias in una essentia aut penitus ignorant aut penitus abnegant? (…) Quanti sunt, qui Dominum Jesum Christum ita segregant ut neque divinitatem illius humanitati neque humanitatem divinitati in unitatem substantiae, seu ut Latini usitatius dicunt in unitatem personae adunatam vel credant vel intelligant, cum ipsius humanitas et divinitas unum et inseparabile unum sint salva utriusque naturae ipsius ratione. Geminantibus itaque substantiam Christi et dicentibus ‘Domine, Domine, aperi nobis’, iuste congrueque respondetur: ‘Amen, dico vobis, nescio vos’ (Mt 25, 12), hoc est, intimas secretasque meae divinitatis et humanitatis nuptias, quas meis purissime intelligentibus priusquam fieret mundus praeparavi et ad quas jam finito mundo introduxi, nescire vos permittam (…), intra tamen naturalium bonorum, quae in vobis creavi, terminos residere vos concedo. (…) Verbum itaque adunatum carni et caro adunata Verbo in unitatem inseparabilem unius eiusdemque substantiae ex duabus naturis, divina videlicet et humana, non alios recipit, nisi eos qui simplici perfectae contemplationis oculo unitatem substantiae suae intuentur». Eriugena’s Christological terminology is particularly bold here, in so far as the term «persona» (which expresses the unity of the two natures of Christ in the Latin catechetical tradition) is substituted by «substantia» (similarly close to the Greek terminology which John the Scot often shows himself to prefer in the Trinitarian formulae), with the evident intention of assuring, in the light of the philosophical foundations of the system of the Periphyseon, the substantial recognition of the absolute and complete unification of the «naturae».The idea of the symmetry of the gnoseological order between the Incarnation of Christ and the deification of the blessed is exposed in some interesting pages of MAXIMUS CONFESSOR: cfr. Ambigua ad Iohannem, 27, PG 91, 1280BC, and lat. interpr., ed. Jeauneau cit. (above, note 67), p. 162,101-112; Quaestiones ad Thalassium, 22, PG 90, 317B-320A, edd. Laga - Steel cit. (above, note 65), I, pp. 137,4-139,49, and lat. interpr., pp. 136,4-138,41; and schol. 1-3, 321CD, edd. Laga - Steel, I, pp. 143,1-145,17, and lat. interpr., pp. 142,1-144,15 (with precision, in Eriugena’s translation, of the Christological terminology: a substantia [ujpovstasi~] and two essentiae [oujsivai]).

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*** The basically Augustinian inspiration of his theological thought led Alcuin to stigmatize the multiplication of the truth as the primary reason for the error of those who contaminate the purity of the faith with the presumption of the intellect. He actually perceived in heresy the risk of compromising, along with the unity of the Church, the very redemption of human kind136.This idea, in fact, finds the greatest expression of its potential in Eriugena’s renewal of the Carolingian method through a plan that moves from the political to the cosmic sphere. The Vita of Alcuin, written by an anonymous disciple of Tours, relates – directly drawing this image from the Dialogi of Gregory the Great, where it is referred to Saint Benedict – that the future teacher of Charlemagne had a mystical vision while reading John’s Gospel in public. Having fallen into ecstasy, he would have seen «omnis mundus collectus (…) sub una clausura». Yet, as Gregory already made clear, this experience did not take place because the world was constricted within the view of man. On the contrary, the mental power (the «animus») of that one who was seeing had been «dilatatus» to the point of being able to contemplate «in Deo» all that which exists «infra Deum»137. One would be tempted to say that John the Scot had known how to describe in philosophical and analytical terms the articulation of the cognitive process which leads to these mystical results. Just for this reason, however, it is important to highlight that the theology of Eriugena is of a speculative – not an ecstatic or 136

It is interesting, for example, to find clearly expressed on a page of the Libri Carolini the demand for founding the unity of Western theology upon a final eschatological vision.This is made possible only by the maintenance of Catholic orthodoxy through the centuries.This topic was described with terms which, although coming from scattered and numerous hints of Augustine, are similar in an extraordinary way to those which are gathered by Eriugena: the interior man, the eternal Sabbath, the final triumph of the truth, the being the whole of God in all things, etc. Cfr. Libri Carolini, I, 1, 1010B-1011B, ed. Bastgen cit. (above, note 21), pp. 11,33-12,29. 137 Cfr. Vita Alcuini, 4, 10, PL 100, 96AD; cfr. also GREGORIUS I PAPA (MAGNUS), Dialogi, II, 35, 2-7, PL 77, 196D-200C, ed.A. de Vogüé, 3 voll., Paris 19781980 (SC, 251, 260, 265), II, pp. 236,15-240,71. Cfr. D. N. BELL, The Vision of the World and the Archetypes in the Latin Spirituality of the Middle Ages, in «Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge», 44 (1977), pp. 7-31.

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visionary – nature. It is a knowledge, which consists essentially in the description of a theoretical progress which wants to be scientific and organized. Its final result, not its development, is contemplative. This is true in so far as other, more explicit mystical theologies have found ample inspiration in Eriugena’s conception in the following centuries. John the Scot has clearly sketched out a cognitive and philosophical task for the theologian. Having conducted human intelligence to the eschatological fulfillment of the universalistic, early-medieval ideal of Christianitas, he joined the search for a complete recovery of being in the One – which was advanced by the Greek Fathers – with the historical and systematic perspective of the Augustinian City of God. One may safely say that both the philosophical Middle Ages, and the theological Middle Ages, begin at this point.

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1. Words and argumentations The compliments exchanged between a master and his former disciple often exhibit more or less veiled rhetorical allusions to the contents of the formative experiences in which, and thanks to which, their friendship was born. Such a case occurs when Anselm of Aosta, prior of Bec, writing to Lanfranc,Archbishop of Canterbury and Anselm’s former teacher of the liberal arts, asks that the master no longer address him in his letters with the titles ‘lord’ or ‘father’: he is in fact and will always remain his ‘servant’ and ‘son’. He maintains the legitimacy of such a request by playing on the dialectical rule regarding relations implied in the meaning of these four words: «I do not in fact understand», he complains, «for what motive you do not want to respond to my letters.You write instead to a certain domino et patri A, who is unknown to me. Because if, however, you desire with these words to address your former student, who remains your servus and filius, for what motive do you strive to overthrow, through an opposition of relative terms, that which you will never succeed in destroying through a negation of opposites?». This means to say that the couples ‘father’-‘son’ and ‘servant’-‘lord’ are pairs of relative opposites, that is, of contradictory terms which exclude themselves reciprocally, as one reads in the Categories of Aristotle1. 1 Cfr. ARISTOTELES, Categoriae, 6b, and Latin trans. of BOETHIUS, ed. L. MinioPaluello, Bruges - Paris 1961 (Aristoteles latinus, I/1), p. 18,22-25; BOETHIUS, In Aristotelis Categorias, II, PL 64, 220-221.

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A father is always a non-son, and a lord is always a non-servant. If, then, Lanfranc addresses Anselm by calling him ‘father’ and ‘lord’, it is as if he were seeking to negate in him the predicability of the opposites ‘son’ and ‘servant’, which, according to the young prior, is absurd and unreasonable2. Such subtle and humorous allusions to their lessons carried out in Bec testify to the significant role which dialectic plays within the early medieval program of formation.Anselm’s youthful instruction provided – as also in the case of John the Scot and the majority of the intellectuals who lived in the centuries between Alcuin and Abelard – the learning and the practice of the logical rules drawn from the texts which form, in this period, the elementary corpus dialecticum. During the nineteenth century scholars often highlighted the ‘modernity’ of certain features in Anselm’s conception of logic. Such judgments generally refer to the penetrating structural analysis of language exhibited in Anselm’s De grammatico. In this work he discusses the implications regarding the predication of substance and the predication of quality, striving to explain them by means of multiple syllogistic deductions. Scholars have pointed out that this dialogue anticipated both later medieval semantic ideas, and logical techniques proposed at the beginning of the twentieth century in the Principia mathematica of Russell and Whitehead: Anselm had composed these ideas with the intention of resolving, on the basis of a simplification of the grammatical order, the ambiguity of propositions endowed with an indirect and hidden significance3. 2

Cfr. ANSELMUS CANTUARIENSIS, Epistola ad Lanfrancum Cantuarensis episcopum, in ID., Epistolae, 57, PL 158, 1118D-1119A, ed. F. S. Schmitt, Opera Omnia, 6 voll., Rome - Edinburg 1946-1961, III, p. 172,10-15: «Quaerendo queror et querendo quaero cur mihi numquam rescribatis, sed nescio cui vestro ‘domino et patri’ prima litterarum notato. Aut si servo et filio vestro scribitis, cur quod destruere non potestis per oppositam negationem, subvertere tentatis per relativam oppositionem? Precor itaque ut, quotiens litteras dignationis vestrae suscepero, aut videam cui scribitis, aut non videam cui non scribitis».The works of Anselm of Aosta (or of Bec, or of Canterbury) will be cited in this chapter without the name of the author, and citations always refer both to the corresponding columns in PL 158 and to the volume (only the first time), pages, and lines of Schmitt’s edition. 3 Cfr. D. P. HENRY, The De grammatico of St.Anselm.The Theory of Paronimy, Notre-Dame (Ind.) 1964; Saint Anselm as Logician, in Sola Ratione. Anselm-Studien für F. Schmitt, Stuttgart - Bad Canstatt 1970, pp. 13-17; Medieval Logic and Metaphysics, London 1972; Predicables and Categories, in The Cambridge History of Later

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Analytical interpretations of this type, though of great importance for either the theory or the genealogy of modern logic, risk clouding to a certain extent an adequate historical appreciation of Anselm’s interest in the dialectical studies, which was as profound for philosophical reasons, as it was fecund for theological reasons. The correct knowledge of the rules of dialectica involve for him – no less than for Augustine or for John the Scot – important metaphysical implications. He in fact ascribes to the rules of logic, along with the other prominent examples of the late ancient and early medieval Latin speculation, the ambition and the capacity to seek the truth which God established ab aeterno for the universe4. Thus, when in the De veritate he affirms that the truth of a proposition resides in its formal rectitudo,Anselm attributes implicitly to dialectic the task of assuring in human language the capacity of referring to the effective existence of that which truly is, that is, of that which God wants simply ‘to be’, and ‘to be’ in the appropriate mode in which it is5. The subtle novelties which Anselm introduces into his analyses of the significance of human speech do not differ greatly, at least in their fundamental inspiration, from the idea shared by all Medieval Philosophy, edd. N. Kretzmann - A. Kenny - J. Pinborg, Cambridge 1982, pp. 128-142; Anselmian Categorial and Canonical Language, in Les mutations socioculturelles au tournant des XIe-XIIe siècles. Études Anselmiennes (IVème session), Actes du Colloque International du C.N.R.S. (Le Bec - Hellouin, 11-16 juillet 1982), éd. par R. Foreville - C.Viola, Paris 1984, pp. 537-548. Cfr. also A. GALONNIER, Le De grammatico et l’origine de la théorie des propriétés des termes, in Gilbert de Poitiers et ses contemporains.Aux origines de la Logica modernorum, Actes du Colloque de Poitiers (17-22 juin 1985), Napoli 1987, pp. 353-375. 4 Cfr. the same perspective in H. LANG, Anselm’s Theory of Signs and His Use of Scripture, in Les mutations cit. (preceding note), [pp. 443-453], esp. pp. 445-447. 5 Cfr. De veritate, 2, 469B-470B, ed. Schmitt, I, pp. 177,9-178,27: «MAGISTER. Quando est enuntiatio vera? DISCIPULUS. Quando est quod enuntiat, sive affirmando, sive negando. (…) M. An ergo tibi videtur quod res enuntiata sit veritas enuntiationis? D. Non. (…) Res enuntiata non est in enuntiatione vera. Unde non eius veritas, sed causa veritatis eius dicenda est. (…) M.Ad quid facta est affirmatio? D. Ad significandum esse quod est. M. Hoc ergo debet. D. Certum est. M. Cum ergo significat esse quod est, significat quod debet. D. Palam est. M. At cum significat quod debet, recte significat. D. Ita est. M. Cum autem recte significat, recta est significatio. D. Non est dubium. M. Cum ergo significat esse quod est, recta est significatio. D. Ita sequitur. M. Item cum significat esse quod est, vera est significatio. D. Vere et recta et vera est, cum significat esse quod est. M. Idem igitur est illi et rectam et veram esse, id est significare esse quod est. D.Vere idem. M. Ergo non est illi aliud veritas quam rectitudo. D.Aperte nunc video veritatem hanc esse rectitudinem. M. Similiter est, cum enuntiatio significat non esse quod non est».

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the authors of his time, according to which dialectica, through the recourse to its formal laws, performs the task of producing a verbal and conceptual, as well as an adequate and similar, image of the order of creation. It follows therefore that our critical judgment on the historical value of his logical inventions must always take into account that he has proposed them as deeper considerations of the same elementary formal procedures which appear in the texts of the corpus dialecticum in circulation in the monastic schools since the beginning of the Carolingian age. Regarding the nature of such a corpus, it is interesting to observe how even in the times of Anselm, no less than in the years of Alcuin, this was mostly formed by texts (such as the Isagoge of Porphyry, the Categoriae and the De interpretatione of Aristotle, the unfinished Dialectica of Augustine and the Categoriae decem erroneously attributed to him, the De definitionibus of Marius Victorinus, the Topica of Cicero commented on by Boethius) which propose, above all, more profound considerations of the rules concerning the ambit of the significance of words and their relationship with things. In contrast, one finds in this program of dialectical studies, which is formed by texts of ancient or late ancient origin, much less interest in the doctrines of demonstration: there is no trace, in fact, of the works of Aristotle or Boethius regarding the apodictic and the syllogism. It was possible to draw up an outline of very elementary syllogistic rules – so synthetic as to seem practically useless – from the compendium of the Perihermeneias of Apuleius and from the rapid schematizations proposed by Martianus Capella in the De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae, or by Cicero himself in the Topica. If it were licit to interpret the story by way of suppositions, one might ask the question whether the reason for this lack of interest for that which would later become one of the most frequent and applied aspects of the study of logic truly lies in the fact that the authors of the early Middle Ages had access neither to the manuscripts of the monographs of Boethius on the syllogism, nor his translations of the Analytica or the Aristotelian Topica – texts which returned to the light only in the final years of the twelfth century.Another possibility would be, in fact, that these works were not copied and didn’t circulate in the early medieval centuries because they didn’t provoke sufficient curiosity for justifying in the scholars’ eyes

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the necessary effort for overcoming the difficulty of reading them and understanding them. However this may be, it is incontestable that the incomplete character of the corpus of logic which they actually had at their disposal oriented, in a rather particular way, the study and the comprehension of the ars disputandi in all the European monastic schools. On the other hand, a reading of the fourth book of the De nuptiis of Martianus as a reworked and abbreviated example of Varro’s lost manual of dialectic clearly demonstrates that this particular tendency, which restricted logic to the study of the term and the proposition, was already established in the schools of the late Roman Empire, when the study of syllogisms, argumentations and, above all, the sharp practice of the fallaciae, were usually consigned to the field of rhetoric. In effect, it is not by chance that the oldest manuscripts had already transmitted this synthetic educational program by assembling and systematizing doctrines which had been worked out by different and often contrasting ancient philosophical schools. The teachings of the Aristotelian Organon were cohabitating, without competition, with the elements of Stoic semantics and syllogistics, while also grafting themselves onto the openly ontologizing background of the Neoplatonic hierarchization of genres and species. Such a synthesis was evidently possible because, as it has already become evident in the preceding pages, the late ancient world received these doctrines on the condition that they be stripped of their original strict ties to the speculative systems in which they had been conceived6. Though rich in fecund developments, perhaps this was the inevitable result of the impoverishment of the content of the scholastic reflections upon the nature of the world and upon the possibility of reaching a universal and necessary truth. This situation finished by transforming logic into a purely formal instrument, destined exclusively to verify the exterior correctness of the argumentations and to guarantee the dialogical agreement among the participants in research. An authentic apodictic science was no longer possible, and, above all, it was not necessary in such a speculative context, which was too heterogeneous and inconsistent. 6

Cfr. above, cap. 1, pp. 20-22.

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We know already how this situation had inspired the Christian intellectuals of the early Medieval period – from Augustine on – to develop a type of philosophical reflection which was both formally autonomous in its internal proceedings, but also, in principle, subordinated to the reception of the external truth of faith.Thus, if for the pagan sages the failure of the ‘inventive’ capacity of dialectic had been the consequence of their renunciation of any presumption to discover and to possess the metaphysical truth, for the Christian thinkers the opposite was true: instead, their awareness of such a collapse of ancient philosophy signified a spontaneous adaptation of the philosophical norms to the truth which was completely revealed by the words of Sacred Scripture and which now was appearing to them as absolutely exhaustive for everything which is opportune to know in the fields of physics, metaphysics, and morality. It is now easy to understand why, in the context of early Christian culture, the task of furnishing a methodological foundation for the knowledge of the truth was entrusted above all to the rules of logic regarding the signifying term, that is, of the first part of dialectic. Within their study of the liberal arts, Christian scholars were interested above all – after the grammatical foundations of the language – in the comprehension of the words and of the semantic propositions which constitute the text of Revelation, and not in the pretence of deducing principles which would be useful for articulate demonstration and capable of introducing future progress in the human approach to the divine perfection of the Truth. According to the entire philosophical-theological culture of the early Medieval period, all human knowledge, in effect, finds its starting point by recalling the fact that God created the world by means of the Word, which is his own expression, endowed with full and perfect meaning. A vox significativa, if it is true, is always a sign of the presence in the created universe of the vox Dei, that is, of the divine creative Word.The comprehension of the relationship between the exterior sound of the vox and the res which it signifies is now the privileged key for initiating the intelligence of the believers into the mysteries of creation and of grace. It is not difficult to verify in the writings of the authors between the ninth and eleventh centuries the emergence of an ev-

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ident preference accorded to the logic of the term and the mental concept over the norms of propositional and syllogistic argumentation. For example, several pages in the works of Alcuin, of Beatus of Libana, and of Paulinus of Aquileia, are dedicated to determining (especially against the Iberian Adoptionists) the meaning of the Trinitarian or Christological terms by means of the rules of the substantial definition and of the categorical predication7. In some passages of the Libri carolini, the rational criticism of the affirmations of the radical iconoclasts or anti-iconoclasts was also founded above all upon the laws of predication and categories8. Even the speculative profundities of the philosophical synthesis of the Periphyseon of John Scotus Eriugena, as we have seen, are the result of the intelligence’s imposing effort to achieve a dialectical determination of the meaning of the words which philosophy and revelation use for expressing the truth of being, from the highest level of the divine supersubstantiality to the lowest grade of corporeal reality9. Now, it is true that these same authors – more than the writers of the following tenth and eleventh centuries – voluntarily use other instruments of dialectic, such as the rules which preside over the formulation of logical judgment and over its conversion, the square of opposition, topical arguments, and syllogisms. We have indicated evident signs of the use of these even in the writings of John the Scot, be7 On the Trinity, cfr. ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Epistola ad Karolum (dedicatio De fide sanctae Trinitatis), in ID., Epistolae, ed. Dümmler cit. (above, cap. 3, note 8), 257, p. 415,9-15; ID., De fide sanctae Trinitatis, I, 3, PL 101, 16AB; ibid., I, 7, 18AC; ibid., 9, 19AC; 10, 19CD; ID., De trinitate ad Fridugisum quaestiones XXVII, 6-10, PL 101, 59C-60B; PAULINUS AQUILEIENSIS, Liber sacrosyllabus contra Elipandum, 11, PL 99, 162C-163B. On the Incarnation, cfr. ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Epistola ad Gundradam, in ID., Epistolae, 204, p. 339,21-29; ID., De fide sanctae Trinitatis, III, 8, 42C-43B; ID., Contra Felicem Urgellitanum, I, 11, PL 101, 136A-137B; ibid., III, 8, 167B-168A; ibid., IV, 9, 182C-183C; ibid., VII, 11, 223B-224D; PAULINUS AQUILEIENSIS, Contra Felicem Urgellitanum, I, 48, PL 99, 404AC, ed. Norberg cit. (ch.3, note 35), II, 22, pp. 73,14-37; BEATUS LIEBANENSIS, Adversus Elipandum, II, 2-4, PL 96, 977D-980C, and II, 9-10, 982D-984D. For theological discussions also on other themes, always conducted in the light of the rules of categorical predication, cfr. again ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Epistola ad Arnonem, in ID., Epistolae, 268, p. 426,35-39; ID., Epistola ad Karolum, ibid., 307, pp. 470,27-471,6; ID., De animae ratione, 6, PL 101, 641C-642A; ID., De fide sanctae Trinitatis, I, 8, 18C-19A. 8 Cfr. Libri Carolini, praef., PL 98, 1002B-1003C, ed. Bastgen cit. (above, cap. 3, note 21), pp. 3,15-4,11. 9 Cfr. above, cap. 3, pp. 162-168.

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ginning with the De praedestinatione10. However, they employ these doctrines primarily, if not exclusively, in so far as they recognize them as complementary to the explication of the semantic contents of the logical term. In effect, one may even consider, from the formal point of view, both the propositions and the syllogistic forms of reasoning as voces significativae, that is, as expressions of a unitary concept of the mind, despite the fact that they are complex and formulated by means of an elevated number of words and definitions.This is true not only for the mental operations related to the natura in John the Scot, but also for those related to divine omnipotence and its possible extension in the works of Peter Damiani. That which strikes the reader of the theological and philosophical works of Anselm – including the De grammatico –, however, is the fact that not only did he possess the explicit desire to offer an analytic ‘comprehension’ of the object of his research, but he also had the clear intention of ‘demonstrating’ its truth, without founding such a ‘demonstration’ upon a principle of authority. This is true even if the logical procedures which he knows and employs are nevertheless those same procedures which come from the restricted dialectical corpus at his disposition: actually, they are procedures still linked to the limited field of the logica vetus and, in particular, to the teachings of categorical predication and of substantial definition.Anselm explicitly proposes, in effect, to contextualize the theological investigations within the framework of rational, autonomous knowledge of Christian Revelation. This would be a knowledge which will no longer be only and exhaustively explicative of the pure ‘meaning’ of the words of faith, but also argumentative and demonstrative, in the genuine sense of classical apodictic. One may say, therefore, that Anselm strives for a true restoration of the authentic demonstrative force of philosophical knowledge, by advancing along a speculative path which implies an overturning of the anti-rationalistic criticism carried out by the first Christian thinkers. Rationality is no longer limited to carrying out, in its service to the truth, the function of an interpreter of sacred texts, as it did even in the writings of John the 10

Cfr. above, cap. 3, p. 165 and note 48.

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Scot and in those of the more courageous thinkers of the immediately preceding centuries. Anselm’s speculative project – that which in modern studies is often classified under the label (coined by Anselm himself) of an analysis of the divine things conducted sola ratione11 – is, on the contrary, directly put into relation with the legitimacy of a rehabilitation of the ‘inventive’ and ‘autonomous’ capacity of dialectica, which had been reduced for centuries to pure ‘heteronymous’ finalities, that is, to the verification, as a result of its rules, of the formal legitimacy of the affirmations pronounced by other disciplines. Most surprisingly, Anselm was the first to intuit, some years before Abelard, the exigency of restoring this confidence in the ‘apodictic’ capacity of the logical deductions without having had at his disposition the Aristotelian and Boethian treatises upon argumentative demonstration.

2. The preoccupations of the teacher Anselm found fruit in the same dialectical material upon which his predecessors had founded their hermeneutic of Revelation. Yet, he applies such instruments with the purpose of rationally providing evidence for the purely logical necessity of that which, for the believer, has no need of being confirmed or consolidated by means of arguments external to the faith. Just a few years before, Peter Damiani had concluded – in a definitive way, in his own opinion – his own personal crusade against the presumptions of dialectic by formulating that which, in the eyes of a modern scholar, appears as a compromise between the two combatants. He accomplished this, on the one hand, by absolutely prohibiting rational human intelligence from introducing any form of logical necessity into the comprehension of the divine nature; and, on the other hand, by conceding to the mind the right to determine, in an absolute and incontrovertible manner, the logical necessity of all that which God has externally established in the truth within creation12. This, as de11

Monologion, 145A, ed. Schmitt, I, p. 13,11. Cfr. PETRUS DAMIANUS, De divina omnipotentia, 5, PL 145, 603CD, ed. K. Reindel, Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, in MGH, Die Briefe der deutschen 12

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fined in its extreme terms, is the limit for the powers of dialectica which, with a consistent attitude, intellectuals of the early medieval period never dared to surpass.Anselm appears more audacious, or certainly more subtle, when he strives to determine through dialectic even that which concerns God himself, beginning with his very existence. He sets out, in fact, from the presupposition that even that which is particular to God in a necessary way reenters into those things which are the object of his will. The fact that God exists also belongs to the complexity of the universal order which dialectic is called upon to penetrate and reconstruct. The first to understand clearly the audacity of his former disciple – and to become troubled by it in no small way – was Lanfranc himself. He, having been invited to express a judgment upon the first draft of the Monologion, did not delay in appealing to the young theologian for moderation in research. He stressed that the truth of the great themes of the faith cannot be considered the effect of the rational arguments of man, because it is the principle which rules them and guides them when they are correct. It is Anselm himself who informs us about the episode in two of his letters to Lanfanc, who had become archbishop of Canterbury some years before.At first he submits the tractate to the «paterna censura» of the teacher13.Then he records his heartfelt «paterna admonitio», which advised him to consider, with greater caution, his own argumentative aspirations regarding the balance of spiritual meditation, and to compare his work more often with those who are experts in the reading of the Scriptures. In this way he would better consolidate the weaknesses of the ratio with the solidity of the divinae auctoritates14. Kaiserzeit, III, München 1983-1989, 119, p. 354,1-10: «Haec plane, quae ex dialecticorum vel rhetorum prodeunt argumentis, non facile divinae virtutis sunt aptanda mysteriis, et quae ad hoc inventa sunt ut in sillogismorum instrumenta proficiant vel clausulas dictionum absit ut sacris se legibus pertinaciter inferant et divinae virtuti conclusionis suae necessitates opponantur. Quae tamen artis humanae peritia, si quando tractandis sacris eloquiis adhibetur, non debet ius magisterii sibimet arroganter arripere, sed velut ancilla dominae quodam famulatus obsequio subservire, ne si praecedit, oberret, et dum exteriorum verborum sequitur consequentias, intimae virtutis lumen et rectum veritatis tramitem perdat». 13 Cfr. Epistola ad Lanfrancum Archiepiscopum Cantuarensiem, in Epistolae, 72, 1134C, ed. Schmitt, III, p. 193,3. 14 Cfr. Epistola ad Lanfrancum Archiepiscopum Cantuarensiem, ibid., 77, 1138D-

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Nevertheless, Lanfranc of Pavia – master and prior in Bec during the youth of Anselm and, in 1070, less than five years after the decisive battle of Hastings, chosen by William the Conqueror to govern the diocese of Canterbury – was enjoying among his contemporaries a solidly attested reputation as an intellectual and a theologian well formed by his studies of the liberal arts. Many historical testimonies of these years present him as an intellectual solidly armed with competence and endowed with a great speculative capacity, both of which rested upon a solid scientific preparation: «Lanfrancus philosophus», according to Adam of Bremen15; «dialecticus», in the note with which Sigebert of Gembloux presents Lanfranc’s Commentary on the Epistles of Paul as a series of transcriptions of the Pauline argumentations in syllogistic form16; and, in the words of Eadmerus of Saint-Andrews, «vir strenuus et in divinis atque humanis rebus excellenti scientia praeditus»17: an allusion to the Ciceronian definition of philoso-

1139A, p. 199,4-17: «Gratias immensas agit cor meum vestrae celsitudini, quae inter tot et tantas suae dignitatis occupationes nec gravatur nec dedignatur otiositatis meae verbositatem paterna benignitate attendere et benigna sapientia corrigere. (…) Gratanter itaque paternam admonitionem vestram suscipio, et humiliter responsionem nostram suggero. De illis quidem, quae in illo opusculo dicta sunt, quae salubri sapientisque consilio monetis in statera mentis sollertius appendenda et cum eruditis in sacris codicibus conferenda, et ubi ratio deficit, divinis auctoritatibus accingenda: hoc et post paternam amabilemque vestram admonitionem et ante feci quantum potui». 15 Cfr. ADAM BREMENSIS, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, III, 52 (51), ed. B. Schmeidler, in MGH, Scriptores rerum germanicarum in usum scholarum, Hannover 1917, p. 197,7-11: «Deinde [rex Willehelmus] ablatis scandalis Lanfrancum philosophum in ecclesia posuit doctorem, cuius studio et prius in Gallia et postmodum in Anglia multi ad divinum animati sunt obsequium».These words of Adam are literally recorded by the anonymous ANNALISTA SAXO (perhaps Arnold of Berge?), ad an. 1066, ed. G. Waitz, in MGH, Scriptores, 6, Hannover 1844, p. 696,6-9. 16 Cfr. SIGEBERTUS GEMBLACENSIS, De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, 155, PL 160, 582C-583A, ed.Witte cit. (above, cap. 3, note 6), 156, p. 97,1045-1048: «Lanfrancus dialecticus et Cantuariorum archiepiscopus, Paulum apostolum exposuit, et ubicumque locorum oportunitas occurrit, secundum leges dialecticae proponit, assumit, concludit». In these worlds one clearly finds an allusion to an occasional recognition in the Pauline text of the articulation of the three propositional structures of the syllogism, «propositio», «assumptio» and «conclusio», and to their emergence in the articulated ordering of the argumentatio from the original signifying synthetic of the dialectical loci, that is, of the tópoi or argumenta. 17 EADMERUS CANTUARIENSIS, Historia novorum in Anglia, ed. M. Rule, in Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores (Rolls Series), 81, London 1884, p. 10.

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phy18, which also appears in the anonymous Vita Lanfranci19 and in numerous other historical sources of the eleventh and twelfth centuries offering information about the life of the archbishop and his school20. His contemporaries were therefore in agreement in presenting the work of Anselm’s teacher as that of a ‘true philosopher’.Yet, it is now clear how the scholars of the early medieval period, and therefore Lanfranc himself, had a particular understanding of philosophia.The intellectuals who practiced the liberal arts in this context did not do it in order to work out some sort of conception of the world or of being which might be able to substitute, or even only to extend or correct, the Christian religious vision, which they considered sufficient for their every desire for knowledge. When he finds in the First Epistle to the Corinthians a distinction between two branches of wisdom, that is, the form of perfect knowledge, which is proper to God, and the imperfect form, which is proper to humans, Lanfranc, in his already men18 Cfr. above, cap. 1, note 7.The Ciceronian formula enters the Middle Ages through Augustine, who cites it on many occasions: e. g. AURELIUS AUGUSTINUS, Contra Academicos, I, 6, 16, PL 32, 914, ed. Green cit. (above, cap. 1, note 94), p. 12,14-15; see then: CASSIODORUS SENATOR, Institutiones, II, 5, PL 70, 1167D, ed. Mynors cit. (above, cap. 3, note 58), p. 110,15-16; ISIDORUS HISPALENSIS, Etymologiae, II, 24, 1-2, PL 82, 140C; ALCUINUS EBORACENSIS, Epistola ad Karolum, in ID., Epistolae, 307, ed. Dümmler, p. 466,23-24; ID., De rhetorica et virtutibus, PL 101, 947-948; ID., De dialectica, ibid., 952A. 19 Cfr. Vita Lanfranci, 6, PL 150, 41D-42A, ed. M. Gibson, in Lanfranco di Pavia e l’Europa del secolo XI, nel IX centenario della morte (1089-1989), Atti del Convegno intern. di studi [Pavia, Collegio Borromeo, 21/24 sett. 1989], a c. di G. d’Onofrio, Roma 1993, [pp. 659-715], p. 685: «Effulsit eo magistro obedientiae coactu philosophicarum ac divinarum litterarum bibliotheca, nodos quaestionum in utraque solvere potentissimo». 20 Cfr. ROBERTUS DE TORIGNIACO, Chronica, ad an. 1023, ed. L.C. Bethmann, in MGH, Scriptores, 6, Hannover 1844, p. 478,42-46: «Lanfrancus vero disciplinas liberales et litteras divinas in Galliis multo edocens»; ORDERICUS VITALIS, Historia Ecclesiastica, IV, ed. M. Chibnall, Oxford 1969, II, p. 250: «Hoc magistro [scil. Lanfranco] primitus Normanni litteratoriam artem perscrutati sunt et de schola Beccensis eloquentes in divinis et saecularibus sophistae processerunt» (always according to Orderic Vitalis, ibid., Lanfranc knew how to combine the intellectual contributions of the masters of the liberal arts, such as Aristotle and Cicero, and of the masters of exegesis, Augustine and Jerome; for this reason Athens itself, at the moment of his greatest cultural splendor, would have been happy to enroll him among their masters); FLORENTIUS WIGORNIENSIS, Chronicon ex chronicis, a. 1070, ed. B. Thorpe, II, London 1849, p. 7: «Lanfrancus (…) vir undecumque doctissimus, omnium liberalium artium divinarumque simul ac saecularium litterarum scientia peritissimus».

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tioned Commentary, recognizes philosophy in the second. He identifies it with the liberal arts, explicitly naming the quadrivium, rhetoric, and dialectic, and denounces the absurd pretenses of the philosophers who believe themselves capable of unquestionable judgments upon the comprehension of the divine mysteries21. But his distinction between the theological field and the philosophical field of knowledge does not yet imply, in this epoch, any division of method or of normative epistemology. In the words of Paul, according to Lanfanc, the duplication of sapientia regards not the matter, but the investigator of the research. Divine wisdom is the knowledge that God himself enjoys of his own nature and of the created word. Human wisdom is always, and only, the partial measure in which man is able to approach the perfection of divine knowing. Even for Lanfranc, therefore, in perfect accord with the Augustinian matrix of the culture of his time, the Truth is one, and it is identified with God.The perfect model of knowledge is Christ, in whom human wisdom was carried to the greatest possible perfection. Only by knowing Christ is it possible to have a perfect science, while all the other forms of knowledge are always imperfect and partial22. Philosophy is a search for the Truth, and for the Christian the Truth is the faith. Therefore philosophy is the investigation of the faith. To be more precise, according to a vocabulary which is not that of the early Middle Ages, philosophy is theology; or it is at least an introduction to theology. As a perfect disciple of Augustine, Lanfranc is a theologian in so far as he is a philosopher.Yet, he is even a philosopher in so far as he is a the21

Cfr. LANFRANCUS CANTUARIENSIS, Commentarius in Epistolas Pauli, 1Cor 2, interlinearia, 1-8, PL 150, 161-162; and ibid., marginalia, 1, 3-4, 161BC: «SUBLIMITATEM SERMONIS: vocat logicam, quia ipsa tota de artificiosa oratione est. SAPIENTIAM: vocat quadruvium, et maxime libros Platonicos, speciem nomine generis designans (…). PERSUASIBILIBUS: rhetoricam tangit, in qua dantur praecepta apposite loqui ad persuasionem». 22 Cfr. ibid., Rm 2, 20, marginalia, 31, 113C: «FORMAM SCIENTIAE: si quis velit scientiam et veritatem habere, in te possit formam et exemplar aspicere»; ibid., Col 2, 2, marginalia, 2, 323B: «Qui enim perfecte scit Christum, scit quod de Deo sentiendum sit, et quomodo, et in quibus vivendum sit». Inversely, whoever knows God in an erroneous way is not capable of knowing any other truth, nor is he capable of distinguishing good from evil in his temporal life; cfr. ibid., Rm 1, 32, marginalia, 31, 110A: «NON INTELLEXERUNT: id est non solum de Deo falsa senserunt, sed etiam cognitionem bonarum ac malarum rerum amiserunt».

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ologian: he in fact knows that knowledge of Christ, that is, the faith, is not possible in the believer without the foundation of the intelligence which allows him to comprehend the meaning of Revelation. Thus, salvation is not possible for man without the help of interpretive reason23.The redaction itself of the Epistles of Paul openly attests to this fact, since, in composing them, Paul – according to the testimony of an ancient prologue of patristic origin, which Lanfanc, imitating Rabanus Maurus and other medieval authors, transcribes at the beginning of his own Commentary – sought to formulate solutions for new questions relating to ecclesiastical organization, the interpretation of texts, or the perfecting of doctrine, which emerged in the Christian communities after the first diffusion of the Gospel24. Following the pattern of this interpretation of the work of Paul, Lanfranc implicitly proposed a justification for his personal role as commentator. Confronting the emergence of new interpretive difficulties caused by the heretics and by their errors in the reading of the scriptural texts, the theologian-priest, successor to the Apostles, is invited to rethink, with a renewed hermeneutical engagement, the words of the Bible, and, if necessary, even to rethink the contribution of the first recognized interpreters of Revelation, that is, the Fathers of the Church. If the realization of such a project is evidently subordinated to the utilization of an adequate method which allows human reason to interpret correctly the sacred doctrine without altering its truth, it is clear that this method must be drawn from the teachings of the seven liberal arts: their principles have been established in the very nature of things by that same power of the Holy Spirit who inspired the sacred authors, and who is at the origin of every truth, every form of true knowledge, and every technical capacity for human knowledge: 23

Cfr. ibid., 1Cor 15, 44, marginalia, 3, 212A, on the rationality of the human soul as a necessary means for knowing God: «SEMINATUR CORPUS ANIMALE: essentia illa qua humanum corpus vivificatur, ex qua sui parte vivificat et terrena appetit, anima dicitur. Ex qua autem sui parte ratione utitur et Deum diligit, rationalis appellatur». 24 Cfr. ibid., praef., 101B, where is literally cited a text of PELAGIUS (Expositiones XIII Epistolarum Pauli, ed. A. Souter, Cambridge 1926 [Text and Studies, 9/2], p. 3), used also by numerous other Pauline commentators, such as Rabanus Maurus, Bruno of Würzburg, Robert of Bridlington, etc.; for the list, cfr. F. STEGMÜLLER, Repertorium Biblicum Medii Aevi, XI, Madrid 1980, p. 296.

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«a quo et per quem est omnis utilis peritia». It is therefore licit for the theologian treating the scriptural text to follow the same rules which the Holy Spirit has imposed upon the world25. In agreement with the Augustinian tradition, which had been received and diffused in the early Middle Ages from the time of the writers of the Carolingian age, Lanfranc recognizes dialectic as the discipline capable of regulating the steps which must be followed for all the other arts or techniques in order that their respective arguments be convincing. One is able to say, therefore, that for him philosophia and dialectica coincide.The philosophical method, which in his opinion allows for regulating every reasonable form of research which seeks to be true – therefore including even theological research –, thus coincides, above all, with the ensemble of the liberal arts, but, in a still more precise and essential manner, with dialectic. On the other hand, Lanfranc never tires, in all of his writings, of recalling the imperfection of the form of knowledge allowed to men in this life, and of exhorting men not to mix unjustly the sacredness of divine things with the limitation and the relativity of human science. This means that for him theological knowledge – derived from the compenetration of Revelation, which comes from God, and reason, which is the true «imago Dei» in man26 – is always a necessarily partial comprehension of the Scriptures which has been adapted to human minds. Since dialectic and philosophy coincide, the use and the abuse of one corresponds to the use and the abuse of the other. It is true that the main goal – practically the only one – of philosophy is to produce in the intelligence of man an adequate form of knowledge of divine things, but a true philosophy must also be capable 25

Cfr. LANFRANCUS CANTUARIENSIS, ibid., 1Cor 2, 13, marginalia, 15, 163B: «NON IN DOCTIS. In doctis humanae scientiae verbis se loqui [scil. Paulus] abnegat. Et tamen in Scripturis eius tanta locorum disputationum subtilitas, tanta et tam subtilis benevolentiae captatio, cum res exigit, invenitur, ut tanta vel ea maior in nullo Scripturarum genere reperiatur. Unde procul dubio credendum est non eum regulas artium saecularium in scribendo vel loquendo cogitasse, sed per doctrinam sancti Spiritus, a quo et per quem est omnis utilis peritia, talia et taliter dixisse, quae per singula exponerem, nisi imperitorum talium doctrinarum murmur timeretur».The recollection of the tópoi and the captatio benevolentiae are proposed as examples of the logical and rhetorical rules, and are introduced to signify the part for the whole, that is, the liberal disciplines all together. 26 Cfr. ibid., Col 3, 10, marginalia, 8, 328C.

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of recognizing its proper and necessary limits.Thus the context in which the direct identification between philosophy and dialectic comes to be explicitly formulated by Lanfranc is a negative exhortation, directed toward not abusing both arts: «videte ne quis vos decipiat per philosophiam», says Saint Paul; and Lanfranc: «id est per dialecticam»27. If Lanfranc perceived something in Anselm’s tractate which disturbed him, it was most likely the excessively overt rationalization of revealed data, systematically pursued to the point of claiming a total natural human comprehension of the divine. It is not difficult to understand that he feared recognizing in the work of a beloved and esteemed disciple an echo of the same perilous attitude which he himself had previously fought in the person and in the writings of Berengar of Tours. He had accused Berengar of having constructed, with the help of investigative reason, an erroneous and dangerous doctrine which claimed to offer an adequate philosophical explanation of the impenetrable mystery of the Eucharistic transformation.Yet, in the tractate De corpore et sanguine Domini, Lanfranc had analytically confuted his adversary’s rational argumentations through a methodical recourse to dialectic, even though he had hidden the cold and rigourous methodology of logical demonstration – as he openly declared – under the veil of a clear, rounded, flowery, and truly readable style, which any person could easily digest as a literary work28. 27

Ibid., 2, 8, interlinearia, 323-324; cfr. also ibid., 2, 4, interlinearia, 323-324: «UT NEMO VOS DECIPIAT IN SUBLIMITATE SERMONUM: loquens dialectice vel rhetorice, in sublimitate locorum et syllogismorum». 28 In a famous passage of the De corpore et sanguine Domini, Lanfranc in fact affirms that he wanted «tegere artem», that is, to use dialectic without exhibiting its deductive aridity as the heretic openly does; and therefore to substitute often in the dialectical formulae, which could be applied to the question of the Eucharist against the demonstrative boldness of Berengar, equivalent formulae («aequipollentes»); cfr. LANFRANCUS CANTUARIENSIS, De corpore et sanguine Domini, 7, PL 150, 416D-417B: «Relictis sacris auctoritatibus, ad dialecticam confugium facis. (…) Verum contra haec quoque nostri erit studii respondere, ne ipsius artis inopia me putes in hac tibi parte deesse. (…) Etsi quando materia disputandi talis est ut per huius artis regulas valeat enucleatius explicari, in quantum possum, per aequipollentias propositionum tego artem, ne videar magis arte quam veritate sanctorumque Patrum auctoritate confidere».This tendency to veil the use of dialectic in the polemic against the heretic appears symmetrically inversed, in a significant way, in respect to the attitude shown in the Pauline commentary.There, in fact, Lanfranc explains, without exaggeration, the deductive-demonstrative approach

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For what motive did Lanfranc – the «philosophus» and «dialecticus» who had explained the text of Saint Paul by demonstrating the hidden presence of syllogisms and other dialectical procedures – distrust the heretic Berengar in his early years, and later discourage his esteemed disciple from the excessive introduction of philosophical procedures in a discourse concerning sacred questions? The answer is perhaps already implicit in the formulation of the question itself. The dialectic which he had used – made explicit when commenting on Saint Paul, and masked when confuting the heretic, since it would be too evident and would bother the reader – is correct and efficacious for enriching the human knowledge of the truths of faith. The dialectic which Berengar abused (and which perhaps now lurks in the work of Anselm) is, on the contrary, erroneous and sophistic, like the false science of which Paul warns Timothy (2Tm 6, 2021) and which, as such, leads without a doubt into heresy. The difference is of no little merit. Lanfranc has introduced rationality into the theological discourse only in order to explicate, or eventually to extend and deepen, a truth which in itself already exists and is latent in the sacred text. Berengar has claimed, however, to make the Truth depend upon his conclusions, and not vice-versa. He is mistaken, therefore, because he used dialectic as an instrument not of simple clarification, but as a means for the very invention of the truth. Thus, it is not difficult to understand how Lanfranc distinguished between his own dialectic and that of Berengar. The scholar of Tours, in fact, as an ignorant pagan philosopher, sought to make the truth of dogma depend only upon the formal correctness of his own dialectical operations. Since a type of reasoning which is only formally regulated does not prove anything necessarily true, Berengar’s reasoning, plucked free from Revelation, remains a mere wretched game of formalisms without sense. Stripped of the only genuine principles from which the Truth surges forth, such dialectic can easily fall into formal gaffs, and for this reason the true philosopher must know how to recognize such hidden in the discourse of the Apostle; here, on the contrary, always in order not to exaggerate, he attenuates the weight of the nevertheless necessary recourse to dialectic.

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errors and denounce them29.A complete overturning of the situation is therefore possible: one may apply the true dialectic, subordinated to Revelation, against those who abuse it, showing how their shoddy teachings produce only unsustainable absurdities30. If, therefore, true dialectic does not presume to demonstrate dogma, but only to explain its contents in a form best adapted to the level of comprehension of the human intelligence, Lanfranc certainly perceived, in the theological proposal of the Monologion, the risk of repeating the temptation of the philosopher who entrusts himself excessively in the power of reason. Such overconfidence demands that the truth depend upon the correctness of human mental procedures. Yet, the opposite is in fact true: the truth of logical rules, and therefore the truth of everything, depends upon the truth of divine thought, which is eternal, immutable, and as such never comprehensible by a fragile and mutable created intelligence.The argumentations of Anselm certainly did not result in dangerous and erroneous conclusions like those of Berengar.Yet, even though the Monologion maintains the respect for Christian dogma as the final criterion for the verification of the correctness of all mental procedures, it is not difficult to understand why the teacher was preoccupied by the fear of seeing in it the rebirth of the dangerous ambition of one who presumes to overturn the correct and authentic order of every form of knowledge.

29 For example, Lanfranc accuses Berengar of having constructed syllogisms with two particular premises, contrary to an elementary Aristotelian norm (cfr. ibid., 7, 417D-418A); of having treated as tópoi propositions which are not tópoi (ibid., 417BD); and of having confused the category of relation with the category of substance (ibid., 20, 436AC); etc. 30 Cfr. ibid., 22, 440B-441D.The truth of faith has no need of support from dialectic: it must, however, necessarily result in correctness, in so far as it is true, if submitted to a strict dialectical examination. And, vice-versa, the doctrine of the heretic, which certainly is not true in so far as it separates itself from the Catholic truth professed in the whole world, is able to be confuted with the help of dialectic, since it involves unsustainable consequences, as Lanfranc strives to show (cfr. ibid., 440B: «credulitatem tuam quid sequatur»).This serves as a counterproof of the fact that the truth generates truth and that outside of the truth rational instruments can only lead to absurdity (cfr. ibid., 440D: «ergo falsa sunt quae proponis»).

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3. Per fidem ad intellectum: the system of the truth Anselm’s response to the perplexities of Lanfranc was immediate and free of hesitation or ambiguities. Recalling the hermeneutical principle indicated in the very opening of the Monologion, he wrote to the Archbishop and insisted upon his own intention of respecting without reserve Christian authority. He also stressed the fundamental harmony which he always strove to assure, in the entirety of his treatise, between his own rational conclusions, on the one hand, and the Sacred Scriptures and the teachings of Augustine – the source not only of the content of his work, but also and above all the source of the method applied in it –, on the other31. Far from having overlooked or refused the principle of authority, Anselm believed that he had put it into action in the best and most effective way, since he, instead of simply citing patristic sources, had rather reproduced in his book the same mental procedures which had led the Fathers to their doctrinal affirmations. If, however, despite this assurance, his former teacher continued to nourish doubts regarding the correctness or the results of his methodology, Anselm would submit himself completely to his judgement and would even accept tossing the fruit of his labor into the flames. These words lead to the fundamental problem which must be resolved for a correct approach to the theological thought of Anselm: what is the final sense and what are the effective consequences of his rediscovery of the apodictic character of logical procedures? How can he claim, while openly putting himself under the protection of the authority of the Scriptures and of the model of the Fathers, that even for him – as for his contemporary 31 Cfr. Epistola ad Lanfrancum, in Epistolae, 77, 1139A, ed. Schmitt, III, p. 199,17-21: «Nam haec mea fuit intentio per totam illam qualemcumque disputationem, ut omnino nihil ibi assererem, nisi quod aut canonicis aut beati Augustini dictis incunctanter posse defendi viderem; et nunc quotiescumque ea quae dixi retracto, nihil aliud me asseruisse percipere possum». Cfr. Monologion, prol., 143C-144A, p. 8,8-14: «Quam [scripturam] ego saepe retractans nihil potui invenire me in ea dixisse quod non catholicorum Patrum et maxime beati Augustini scriptis cohaereat. Quapropter si cui videbitur quod in eodem opusculo aliquid protulerim quod aut nimis novum sit, aut a veritate dissentiat, rogo ne statim me aut praesumptorem novitatum, aut falsitatis assertorem exclamet, sed prius libros praefati doctoris Augustini De Trinitate diligenter perspiciat, deinde secundum eos opusculum meum diiudicet».

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intellectuals – dialectic is only a formal argumentative instrument, subordinate to the preliminary adhesion to the truth of the faith? If such an admission implies a prejudicial limit to the power of logical arguments, why does he recognize their argumentative force to the point of conceiving an entire tractate upon God and upon all his attributes – perfect and full of mystery –, entirely composed, from beginning to end, of a purely rational exposition of the contents, without any scriptural or patristic citations? How can it do without, at least in an explicit form, any acceptance of true principles which are external to reason, and which, as occurs for all dogmas imposed upon Christian believers, have value separate from the formulation of a correct critical judgment on the part of the intelligence? It will be possible to respond to this question only by submitting the meaning, finality, and effective results of the procedure of his arguments to an attentive and detailed analysis. Lanfranc was right: since all that which is created and all that which exists has been corrupted by the consequences of original sin, even human reason is limited. In order to avoid committing errors, reason can only apply itself to objects which can be located and measured within its own natural limits.This is to say that it must always found its own operations upon a totalizing knowledge of the object which it is striving to know.Yet now, in order to ground a philosophical knowledge of the absolute truth, reason must limit itself to working within a closed and complete system of notions in order to have the possibility of mastering all of its contents, at least from the formal point of view. Such is the case, for example, when the total knowledge of the formal rules which govern the system of numbers assures the exactness of the arithmetic operations, even if the numbers are and remain infinite.Yet, this is possible because, though human reason knows only a limited quantity of numbers, it may still comprehend the conditions which regulate their relations, since the numbers themselves show that such conditions are always the same. In order to avoid, however, the problem that its dialectical procedures remain only probable before the inconclusive extension of an object such as the divine nature, reason must become capable of embracing, with a single glance in its totality, all that which concerns God: that is, the fulfilled totality of that absolute truth

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which reason hopes to reconstruct and describe. Nevertheless, this is, in principle, impossible. Yet, though human reason is by nature limited, divine reason is the universal Logos itself, the infinite place which embraces and encloses in itself the totality of the truth. In consonance with the Augustinian roots of his thought, Anselm knows that the reason of man may convert – that is, it may entrust itself without reserve to the reason of God, when God speaks to it and communicates himself to it. He knows that by this simple act of adherence to something which is similar, but ineffably superior, to it, human reason comes to find itself conjoined within a system of knowledge which is at the same time infinite and circumscribed. Only in this way does it come to be in possession of a totalizing and absolute certainty, which is necessary for being able to avoid erring in its mental operations regarding God. One can now say that the novelty of Anselm’s manner of thinking evidently lies in his full comprehension that human and dialectical reason, if it submits to the truth of Revelation, is able to be led back into a system endowed with knowledge of the absolute, which is the very system of truth in itself, and to discover within it a new and fecund demonstrative force. Therefore it is able to advance from here, step by step, toward ever further certainties, with particular demonstrations regarding the specific contents of such a system of truth.These contents are always true and necessary – if they are correct –, since they are always consolidated a priori by the efficacy of an intellectual light which descends from above. It would be interesting to analyze the structural fullness – both unitary and organic – with which such a demonstrative desire concretizes itself in all the great speculative works of Anselm. It would show how it is possible to discover in it the gradual selfdefining of the different articulations of a unitary system of truth. His thought, once it establishes a place within the omni-comprehensive sphere of the Christian truth, finds an interesting confirmation e contrario in his rigorous refutation of the heretics, who intentionally and knowingly place themselves outside of it. One sees this in a letter sent to the bishop Fulco of Beauvais, composed a little before the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi, in order to denounce the theological error in which the teacher Roscelin of Compiègne had fallen: he had claimed, in fact, that the three di-

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vine persons are three res, like three angels, and that, if the use were allowed, it would be possible to say even that they are tres dei. In the presence of this clear absurdity,Anselm declares that he does not want to make use of the dialectical argumentations in order to demonstrate the unsustainability of Roscelin’s assertions, and he maintains that it is sufficient to invoke in favour of orthodox doctrine the mere authority of the correct formulae already approved by the conciliar tradition. Roscelin is in fact an insipiens because he is a Christian who believes in something in which the other Christians do not believe and will never believe. It is therefore useless, and would be even dangerous, to apply theological reasoning against such unintelligent men who do not even understand that which they say.They foolishly claim to use against the very system of the truth a form of dialectic which can only be, in consequence, false and deceptive. The utility of rational demonstration is in fact evident, however, only when it emerges in the dialogue between believers in the scope of consolidating the common faith, or even in the debate with the pagans in order to demonstrate to them the rational roots of Revelation. An authentic Christian knows, in fact, that what he believes is true, and that therefore it is rational and reasonably demonstrable. He may also discover a way for demonstrating such reasonableness to other men in order to confirm believers in their faith or to inspire non-believers to convert32.Thus the correct relationship between intelligence and faith is fixed in an unequivocal manner: the one who believes is able to give free rein to the intellect in demonstrating and knowing better the truth of that which he already knows is true. Even if he does not succeed, or if his arguments bear him to conclusions contrary to such a truth, he will, however, respect that which remains nonetheless true, and will 32 Cfr. Epistola ad Fulconem Bellovacensem, in Epistolae, 136, 1193C, pp. 280,32281,26: «Insipientissimum enim et infrunitum est propter unumquemque non intelligentem, quod supra firmam petram solidissime fundatum est, in nutantium quaestionum revocare dubietatem. Fides enim nostra contra impios ratione defendenda est, non contra eos qui se Christiani nominis honore gaudere fatentur». For the controversy between Anselm and Roscelin and the historical-speculative background which allows for a correct evaluation of it, cfr. my study: Anselmo e i teologi «moderni», in Cur Deus homo, Atti del Congresso Anselmiano internazionale (Roma, 21-23 maggio 1998), a c. di P. Gilbert - H. Kohlenberger E. Salmann (Studia Anselmiana, 128), Roma 1999, pp. 87-146.

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contemplate its mystery. He who does not believe cannot presume to subordinate his acceptance or non-acceptance of the contents of the faith to the intellect33. It is clear then to what degree Anselm’s theological method is coherent with the speculative tendency of the other philosophers of the Middle Ages, such as Alcuin, John the Scot, and Lanfranc, and in what way it is innovative and more advanced. From Augustine on, all Christian thinkers are persuaded that the truth of the faith is, even if in an incomprehensible way, absolutely reasonable.Yet, while all these thinkers, from Augustine to Lanfranc, strove to establish the limits of the human capacity for understanding such a sublime reasonableness of the truth in itself, only Anselm considered himself authorized, by this very certainty, to show logically, apart from the faith, all of the rationality which is implicit in each of the articles of the faith. This is for him the highest sense of the nisi credideritis non intelligetis recommended by Augustine34.Theological knowledge is truly a rational illustration of the faith, without ever being a critic of it, that is, without ever presuming to be able to formulate a judgment upon its truthfulness.

4. Ratio fidei: the affirmative way of the Monologion Since the text of the Monologion survived until our time, Lanfranc must have remained satisfied with Anselm’s explanations and justifications and did not order him to destroy it.The archbishop of Canterbury must have recognized in Anselm’s methodology more than just a claim of subjecting the mysteries of the faith to the judgment of reason, but also the sincere intention of guiding the human mind along a path of a logical systemization of knowledge. Such a project should arrive at the theological peak of the explanation of all the reality without depending on the faith, that is, without starting from true premises deducible from Revelation; yet, at the same time, it presupposes the truth of the faith, 33 Cfr. Epistola ad Fulconem Bellovacensem cit., 1193CD, p. 281,38-41: «Nam Christianum per fidem debet ad intellectum proficere, non per intellectum ad fidem accedere, aut, si intelligere non valet, a fide recedere. Sed cum ad intellectum valet pertingere, delectatur, cum vero nequit, quod capere non potest veneratur». 34 Cfr. above, cap. 1, p. 61.

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which acts as a container and a criterion for the constant verification of the entire mental operation autonomously fulfilled by sola ratio. This means, in other words, that Anselm composed his tractate, dedicated to explaining the contents of human thought regarding the truth of Revelation, as an example of an affirmative theology which explores the immensity of God without violating his incommensurability35. In this Anselm was truly, as he himself seems to declare, the most faithful and direct disciple of Augustine, in so far as he proposed to carry out, up until the last possible actualization, the epistemological consequences of the submission of reason to faith, which the Bishop of Hippo had consecrated with his own conversion. Dialectic seeks to individuate and reconstruct the correspondence between the order of the words and that of the things.Thanks to a dialectic which accepts the truth of Christian faith, the theologian feels himself authorized to aspire toward the comprehension of the correspondence subsisting between the name «God» (Deus), which is found in Revelation, and the absolute and transcendent res, which it is called to signify. The rational arguments for ‘demonstrating’ – or better, for ‘declaring’ as true – the existence of God at the beginning of the Monologion, depend upon the ordered and correct applications of the rules which govern the predication of the ten Aristotelian categories: quality in the first proof, since «bonum esse» is the more obvious quality which one may conceive in God, given that all creation is good36; then, quantity, that is, «magnum esse», which is the object of the second argument37; and again, relation, which supports both the third and the fourth proof: all that which is, in so far as it is a determined being – that is in so far as it is a substance – is in relation with a principle of being, which, as principle, can only be in a causal relation with the effects (third proof, based upon relation between substances)38; and, finally, all the things 35 See – according to an explicit note in Proslogion, prooem., 224C-225A, ed. Schmitt, I, p. 94,2-13 –, the original title of the Monologion, then changed at the suggestion of the archbishop Hugh of Lyon, the papal legate: «Exemplum meditandi de ratione fidei». 36 Cfr. Monologion, 1, 145A-146B, pp. 13,12-15,12. 37 Cfr. ibid., 2, 146C-147A, p. 15,15-23. 38 Cfr. ibid., 3, 147B-148B, pp. 15,27-16,28.

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which are, are characterized by the possession of some qualities placing them in relation with the perfect divine qualitative dignity, and it is this very relation which allows them to be such as they are (fourth proof, based upon relation among qualities)39. The four procedures, which make the truth of the divine «summa substantia» appear in the mind, spring forth, thus, from a verification of the theological predication of the first three categories following substance, or predications per aliud: these categories, indeed, make known the properties with which particular things are endowed in an accidental mode, and which always refer to a superior entity, who, in contrast, enjoys them in an absolute form, that is, per seipsum.Thus follows the necessity to always ascribe existence and any other sort of qualitative perfection in an affirmative manner, or per se substantialiter, to this superior entity40.Yet, in the following pages of the Monologion, Anselm continues to develop the analysis of the categorical predication, and goes on by deducing positively, after existence, the truth of other perfect attributes of the Supreme Being. For example, he considers the categories of space and time, since it is necessary to rationally specify the meaning of the presence of the divine substance in every moment of time and every place of space, while also avoiding any limitation of it through spatial-temporal definitions41. Thus, towards the end of the work, he is able to bring to a suitable end his project of explaining the affirmability of the divine attributes through the analysis of the meaning of the word ‘God’ by means of a proof of the theological predication of the same category of substance. This proof was in fact initially left out in order to be retrieved here, at the end of all the other verifications of semantic validity of language and of conceptual human instrumentalization; now he denies any possibility that in God one may find any sort of predication of accidental mutability, and, consequently, must confess that it is possible to say about Him that He is the 39

Cfr. ibid., 4, 148C-150A, pp. 16,31-17,32. Cfr. ibid., 150A, pp. 17,32-18,3: «Quare est quaedam natura vel substantia vel essentia, quae per se est bona et magna, et per se est hoc quod est, et per quam est quidquid vere aut bonum aut magnum aut aliquid est, et quae est summum bonum, summum magnum, summum ens sive subsistens, id est summum omnium quae sunt». 41 Cfr. ibid., 20-24, 170A-178A, pp. 35,7-42,29. 40

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unique, true, and superior substantiality42. It is thus evident how in this work he entrusted above all to dialectic, and more precisely to the logic of the significant term, the fundamental task of teaching the theologian in what way the human mind is able to speak of God and to argue correctly regarding his nature. If pseudo-Dionysius taught the entirety of the early Middle Ages the preference for negation in theological discourse, as opposed to affirmation, of all that which could imply any sort of reduction of significance in God, Anselm – working as a more competent logician than many among his contemporaries – overturned the value, restrictive in itself, of such a doctrine through an attentive semantic analysis of the verb ‘to be’. It is not necessary, according to such observations, to consider always the esse as predicated of something which is particular and limited. The term ‘to be’ can also signify existence as such, stripped of any further determinations. Our mind, just as it perceives its own essence as something superior to corporeal things, is also able to think of esse in itself as something superior to any sort of limited being, even if, without a doubt, it is not possible to describe it or define it.Yet, this is already sufficient for opening the possibility of affirmative theological language.The immediate consequence of such a legitimacy of thinking of the divine being is in fact that, in order to better approach the truth of the idea corresponding to God, it is better to affirm, rather than to deny, in Him all that which our imagination supposes that He is (as opposed to what He is not). Otherwise, we risk falling into those same ontological limitations which negative theology aims to avoid. In the very moment in which all the creaturely and reductive predications are denied in God, affirmative theology is thus authorized to attribute to Him, among all the predicates which affirm being according to the doctrine of the categories, those which express something which is better affirmed, than denied, of the absolute esse, the sole authentic esse. It is therefore correct, for example, to say that God is ‘living’, ‘wise’, ‘powerful’, ‘true’, and ‘eternal’, because the negation of these terms is predicated of non-being, certainly not of the superior and divine being43.Yet now it is also lic42 43

Cfr. ibid., 25-26, 178B-180A, pp. 43,3-44,19. Cfr. ibid., 15, 162A-164A, pp. 28,3-29,33; and esp. 163D-164A, p. 29,23-

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it to say of God that He is rather ‘spirit’, than ‘body’, rather ‘individual and one’, than ‘divided into many parts’44, rather ‘separate from every form of accident’, than ‘subject to change or mutability’45. Each one of the qualities which are to be attributed to God – even the properties which in creatures are considered accidental, such as ‘good’,‘great’,‘just’ – assumes in theological predication a substantial meaning46. First Augustine, and then Alcuin, following the Augustinian model, have clearly taught that the names of God are all predicated either according to substance or, when one speaks of Trinitarian denominations, according to relation (but a relation such that it does not involve any accidentality)47.Anselm understands that, by taking this route, it is possible to avoid the Neoplatonic objection according to which all the predications, including those of substance, are limited in so far as they signify a dependence upon another subject, or a participation in another subject48. And in fact the substance which theology attributes to God is certainly not the same substantia – susceptible of receiving accidents – of which logical texts speak: in theological speech, substance clearly signifies the absolute essence of God, his immutability, eternity, unity and individuality, and his existence, 33: «Mens enim rationalis, quae nullo corporeo sensu quid vel qualis vel quanta sit percipitur, quanto minor esset, si esset aliquid eorum quae corporeis sensibus subiacent, tanto maior est quam quodlibet eorum. Penitus enim ipsa summa essentia tacenda est esse aliquid eorum quibus est aliquid, quod non est, quod ipsa sunt superius; et est omnino, sicut ratio docet, dicenda quodlibet eorum, quibus est omne quod non est quod ipsa sunt inferius. Quare necesse est eam esse viventem, sapientem, potentem et omnipotentem, veram, iustam, beatam, aeternam, et quidquid similiter absolute melius est quam non ipsum. Quid ergo quaeratur amplius quid summa illa sit natura, si manifestum est quid omnium sit aut quid non sit?». 44 Cfr. ibid., 27, 180BD, p. 45,4-22. 45 Cfr. ibid., 25-26, 178B-180A, pp. 43,3-44,19. 46 Cfr. ibid., 16, 164C-165C, pp. 30,5-31,8. 47 Cfr. AURELIUS AUGUSTINUS, De trinitate,V, 4, 5 - 7, 8, PL 42, 913-916, ed. Mountain cit. (above, cap. 1, note 142), I, pp. 209,1-215,66; for Alcuin see above, note 7. 48 Cfr. Monologion, 17, 166AC, pp. 31,13-32,4; esp. 166C, pp. 31,30-32,3: «Illa vero summa essentia nullo modo sic est aliquid, ut illud idem secundum alium modum aut secundum aliam considerationem non sit, quia quidquid aliquo modo essentialiter est, hoc est totum quod ipsa est. Nihil igitur quod de eius essentia vere dicitur, in eo quod qualis vel quanta, sed in eo quod quid sit accipitur».

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which is absolutely free of any sort of imperfection or affection49. In conclusion, it is therefore the very verb to be which is best adapted for speaking about God, for whom it has greater significance than for any other thing.The ‘being’ of God is the only being without any contamination with non-being, which is neither truly being, nor truly non-being, since it does not derive from non-being, and need not strive to remain in being in order not to sink into non-being50. Under the invigorating protection of Augustine’s world of theological thought, Anselm seems capable of extracting himself in this tractate from the apophatic prejudices of pseudo-Dionysius and John the Scot by overturning their valence. No created thing truly exists, since no one possesses existence, as God does, in an absolute mode. If human reason wants to affirm something significant in creation, it must necessarily join itself to the truth of That One who is the only true being. Rather than attempting to push himself in comprehending God by departing from creatures, the theologian must admit, inversely, that he cannot truly understand creatures without first having understood the being of God. All the perfections discovered by the intelligence in creatures, such as ‘to live’,‘to feel’,‘to be rational’,‘to be one’, and above all simply ‘to be’, belong, in the final analysis, truly and appropriately only to the divine substance. Ascending along the steps of this ontological tree of Porfyry in order to find the truth of each inferior predicate in the immediately superior51, the man endowed with reason is able to climb up to the affirmation of pure being, the being of God, even if he is not able, and will never be able, to comprehend it, describe it, or represent it52. If, inversely, he progressively denies these attributes, he is able to push himself up to the possibility of thinking of pure non-being, the ‘nothing’ (certainly not to the point of comprehending it). On the other hand, in a universe so completely ordered by the bounty of the Supreme Being, non-being can only be identified with evil53. 49

Cfr. ibid., 26, 179C-180A, p. 44,6-19. Cfr. ibid., 28, 181A-182A, pp. 45,24-46,31. 51 Cfr. ibid., 31, 184C-185A, p. 49,12-23. 52 Cfr. ibid., 63-64, 208C-210D, pp. 73,5-75,16. 53 Cfr. ibid., 31, 185AC, pp. 49,24-50,13; cfr. also De casu diaboli, 1, 325C328A, ed. Schmitt, I, pp. 233,6-235,16. 50

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5. Cogitari nequit: the negative way of the Proslogion This dialectical analysis of the predication of the logical term introduces into the thought of Anselm a true reform of the pseudo-Dionysian theology, which allows him to reinvent the possibility of saying that which God signifies and that which He is. This certainly does not involve, however, a refusal or a distancing from the anagogical demands which suggested the apophatic approach as the way for the Christian speculative tradition. In the light of the preceding considerations, it is now sufficiently clear how it is possible to interpret the unique proof of the existence of God proposed in the Proslogion not as a procedure that is the inverse of the arguments of the Monologion, but, on the contrary, as the peak of Anselm’s affirmative theology and the highest result of his cognitive aspirations.Yet, on the other hand, one observes how the possibility of speaking of God at such a peak point is reconnected to and reconciled with the pseudo-Dionysian negativity. It is still a matter of a rational proof (as in the Monologion), to be sure; yet, it is a proof which springs forth by actually surpassing any sort of dianoetic relationship with the order of scientific-argumentative knowledge which human reason has of the created world and of its ontological limits. Even the unum argumentum of the Proslogion is in effect derived from the semantic analysis of a vox significativa: this is, in fact, the quo maius cogitari nequit, proposed from the very beginning of the demonstration as the sole meaningful expression in human language which is truly and univocally coextended to the term ‘God’ (Deus) because it has the same definition and the same logical value. In this case, however, because of the natural limits of signifying language, such verbal expressions must inevitably have a negative grammatical form. It doesn’t directly signify a thing; nevertheless, it tends to refer to a mental place, that is, to a signifying extension toward which one may correctly direct human thought.The analysis of the significance of the verb ‘to be’, which led to the highest and purest level of expression in the Monologion, is now even here the key of the demonstration. It is, in fact, in order to reach, through the reasoning process, the correct definition of the pure being of God, that the created intelligence strives to conceive even the impossibility of the negation of its

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existence: negation itself is thus established as one of the essential attributes, composing the semantic space which, in human thought, corresponds to His name. In the introduction of the Proslogion, Anselm states that he has assumed «the role of someone who strives to elevate his own mind up to the contemplation of God and desires to succeed in understanding that which he believes»54.The result of this attempt – of rendering intelligible (even for the non-believer) that which all Christians believe – will be, in practice, equal to verifying whether a truth corresponds directly and essentially to the concept of God.«In effect,the being of something in the intellect (rem esse in intellectu)»,he specifies,«is one thing,the recognition on the part of the intelligence that this something exists (intelligere rem esse) is another»55.When a painter thinks the image which he is about to paint, it subsists in his intellect, but only after having depicted it does he recognize its real existence.The question regarding the concept corresponding to the summa essentia – a concept which the faith enunciates, communicating it to the intellect – leads to the highest and most delicate application of Anselm’s search for the rectitudo which assures the validity of the threefold correspondence between vox, intellectus and res. The particular meaning of this mental operation is unmistakable. In the Monologion Anselm was directing his search for the rectitudo with regard to words of complex significance and determined by multiple references and, therefore, through complicated argumentative elaborations. Here, in the Proslogion, however, the simplicity-unity of the object sought is such that a single act of the intelligence should be sufficient for resolving the problem. By observing that the first tractate was constituted by the concatenations of many arguments, he now asks if it is not possible to find a new, unique argument, which does not need to be connected to further demonstrative elements in order to be proven, since it is sufficient in itself for admitting that God truly exists: 54 Proslogion, prooem., 224BC, pp. 93,21-94,2: «Sub persona conantis erigere mentem suam ad contemplandum Deum et quaerentis intelligere quod credit, subditum scripsi opusculum». Cfr. also the original title of the tractate, later changed together with that of the Monologion (cfr. above, note 35): «Fides quaerens intellectum». 55 Ibid., 2, 227D, p. 101,9-10: «Aliud enim est rem esse in intellectu, aliud intelligere rem esse».

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Considering that the text of this first work had been composed of by means of the concatenation of multiple arguments, I began to ask myself if per chance it were not possible to find a single argument (unum argumentum), which would not necessitate being connected to further demonstrative processes other than itself in order to be proven, and which would be sufficient by itself to lead to the admission that God truly exists; and that He is the Greatest Good, which does not need another, but which all other things need in order to be and to be goods; and to the admission of all the other things which we believe concerning the divine substance56.

To push the intelligence up to the direct encounter with the meaning of the concept corresponding to the word ‘God’ involves asking oneself about the possibility of another rational proof for the existence of God – and, in turn, the proof for the other divine perfections – which is absolutely self-sufficient and therefore unique (unum argumentum). The multiplicity of the demonstrative ways is the proper condition of the intelligence which investigates the variety and the relations of the multiple realities, while the comprehension of the Greatest Good and Highest Truth must be acquired directly, without logical intermediaries. Anselm does not guide the reader towards his new demonstration by preparing him through mediated and indirect ways. He begins, rather, with an inspired prayer, which is almost a poetic exhortation for the mind to prepare itself with all its strength for the great step which it is called to fulfill. This initial page of the Proslogion, which the author himself entitles Excitatio mentis ad contemplandum Deum, offers one of the most effective and successful descriptions of how, in order to favour its entrance into the most subtle complexities of the intellectual reflection upon the mysteries of the faith, the soul must be antecedently exhorted to gather itself into a fecund attitude of prayer. In this way it may in56 Ibid., prooem., 223BC, p. 93,3-10: «Considerans illud esse multorum concatenatione contextum argumentorum, coepi mecum quaerere si forte posset inveniri unum argumentum, quod nullo alio ad se probandum quam se solo indigeret, et solum ad astruendum quia Deus vere est, et quia est summum bonum nullo alio indigens, et quo omnia indigent ut sint et ut bene sint, et quaecumque de divina credimus substantia, sufficeret».

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timately taste a necessary pre-comprehension, both intuitive and affective, of that very God who will be then the unique object of its rational investigations57. For Anselm, the mens – a name which indicates in his language the dominating element of the human psychological complex, from which arises the unitary and continuous force which governs in a homogeneous way all its acts of thinking, of judgment and of memory – is in fact the place of interior recollection toward which the Gospel (Mt 6, 6), echoing a prophetic image (Is 26, 20), invites the believer, in order that he might settle himself into the habitus of interior peace («intra in cubiculum mentis tuae»)58. It is a necessary condition for disposing oneself toward conversation with God, and for manifesting to God one’s own desire to know the secret divine face, along with the confession of the impossibility of grasping it. As a reward for this act of love and humility the intelligence will be allowed to grasp the true teaching of the faith which will bear it – in the rapid development of one of the most subtle and fecund exercises of interior production of the truth which was worked out in the course of the entirety of the Middle Ages – to the conception of the unique possibility that is reserved for it in order to understand God: And now, little man, flee for a moment from your occupations, hide yourself for a moment from your tumultuous thoughts. Distance yourself now from your ponderous preoccupations, and put off your exhausting distractions. Free yourself from everything for a little while in God, and rest a little in him. «Enter into the little cell» of your mind (intra in cubibulum mentis tuae), leave outside every other thing except God and that which can help you to seek him (ad quaerendum eum), and «close the door» (Mt 6, 6), and seek him (quaere eum). Say now, say with all your being, «O my heart», say now to God: «I seek (quaero) your face, O my Lord, it is your face I am searching for (requiro)» (Ps 26, 8).

57

Cfr. Y. CATTIN, La prière de S.Anselme dans le Proslogion, in «Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques», 72 (1988), pp. 373-396. 58 Cfr. G. D’ONOFRIO, In cubiculum mentis. L’intellectus anselmiano e la gnoseologia platonica altomedievale, in Rationality from Saint Augustine to Saint Anselm, Proceeding of the International Anselm Conference (Piliscsaba, Hungary, 20-23 June 2002), edd. C.Viola - J. Kormos, Piliscsaba 2005, pp. 61-88.

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And now therefore, you, O Lord my God, teach my heart (doce cor meum) where and how it may seek you, where and how it may find you (ubi et quomodo te quaerat, ubi et quomodo te inveniat). O Lord, if you are not here, where will I seek you, if you are absent? But if, however, you are everywhere, why do I not see you, if you are present? And certainly «you inhabit an impenetrable light» (cfr. 1 Tm 6, 16). And (…) who will guide me and who will introduce me to it in order that I may be able to see you in it? And again, on the basis of which signs (quibus signis), on which image of your face shall I be able to seek you (qua facie te quaeram)? (…) What will he do, O most exalted Lord, what will the one exiled so far from you do? (…) He desires to enter into your presence, and your dwelling is impenetrable. He yearns to find you, and does not know your place. (…) O Lord, with my face towards the earth I am not able but to look down; raise me up in order that I may turn myself toward the heights. (…) Teach me to seek you and show yourself to me, who searches for you (doce me quaerere te, et ostende te quaerenti), since I am able neither to seek you if you do not teach me how nor to find you if you do not reveal yourself. That I may be able to seek you while desiring you, and desire you while seeking you! That I may find you while loving you, and love you while finding you! I am certain, O Lord, and I give thanks, that you have created in me this image of you, in order that I, having a memory of you, may be able to think of you, that I may be able to love you.Yet, such an image was so erased by the passage of vices, it was so obscured by the smoke of sins, that it became no longer capable of doing that for which it had been made, unless you should renew it and give to it a new form. I do not yearn, O Lord, to penetrate into your depths, since in no way am I able to compare my intelligence with it; but I desire in some way to have understanding of your truth, which my heart believes and loves. And in fact I do not seek to have understanding in order to believe, but I believe in order to have understanding (neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam). In fact, even in this I believe (et hoc credo): that «if I shall not have believed, I will not have understanding (nisi credidero, non intelligam)» (Is 7, 9)59. 59 Ibid., 1, 225B-227C, pp. 97,4-100,19: «Eia nunc, homuncio, fuge paululum occupationes tuas, absconde te modicum a tumultuosis cogitationibus tuis.Abice

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This text merits an attentive analysis. Ambrose, in various texts which significantly anticipate themes and expressions from this passage of Anselm, had already asserted that the invitation to withdraw into the cubiculum of the psychic interior coincided with the exhortation to realize in the mens (or animus, that is, in the Pauline homo interior) the essential conditions for developing the capacity of cognitively approaching the divine60. Following nunc onerosas curas, et postpone laboriosas distensiones tuas.Vaca aliquantulum Deo, et quiesce aliquantulum in eo. ‘Intra in cubiculum’ mentis tuae, exclude omnia praeter Deum et quae te iuvent ad quaerendum eum, et ‘clauso ostio’ (Mt 6, 6) quaere eum. Dic nunc, totum ‘cor meum’, dic nunc Deo: ‘Quaero vultum tuum, vultum tuum, domine, requiro’ (Ps 26,8). Eia nunc ergo tu, Domine Deus meus, doce cor meum ubi et quomodo te quaerat, ubi et quomodo te inveniat. Domine, si hic non es, ubi te quaeram absentem? Si autem ubique es, cur non video praesentem? Sed certe ‘habitas lucem inaccessibilem’ (cfr. 1Tm 6, 16). Et (…) quis me ducet et inducet in illam, ut videam te in illa? Deinde quibus signis, qua facie te quaeram? (…) Quid faciet, altissime Domine, quid faciet iste tuus longinquus exsul? (…) Accedere ad te desiderat, et inaccessibilis est habitatio tua. Invenire te cupit et nescit locum tuum. (…) Domine, incurvatus non possum nisi deorsum aspicere, erige me ut possim sursum intendere. (…) Doce me quaerere te, et ostende te quaerenti, quia nec quaerere te possum nisi tu doceas, nec invenire nisi te ostendas. Quaeram te desiderando, desiderem quaerendo. Inveniam amando, amem inveniendo. Fateor, Domine, et gratias ago, quia creasti in me hanc imaginem tuam, ut tui memor te cogitem, te amem. Sed sic est abolita attritione vitiorum, sic est offuscata fumo peccatorum, ut non possit facere ad quod facta est, nisi tu renoves et reformes eam. Non tento, Domine, penetrare altitudinem tuam, quia nullatenus comparo illi intellectum meum; sed desidero aliquatenus intelligere veritatem tuam, quam credit et amat cor meum. Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam. Nam et hoc credo; quia ‘nisi credidero, non intelligam’ (Is 7, 9)». 60 Cfr., e. g., AMBROSIUS MEDIOLANENSIS, De Cain et Abel, I, 9, PL 14, 352D353A, ed. C. Schenkl, Prague - Wien - Leipzig 1897 (CSEL, 32), pp. 369,24370,8: «‘Tu autem, cum orabis, intra in cubiculum tuum’ (Mt 6, 6). (…) Cubiculum tuum, mentis arcanum animique secretum est. In hoc cubiculum tuum intra, hoc est intra in alta praecordia, totus ingredere de corporis tui exteriori vestibulo, et claude ostium tuum».And ID., De sacramentis,VI, 3, PL 16, 476C, ed. O. Faller,Wien 1955 (CSEL, 73), p. 76,17-21: «Potes ubique orare et in cubiculo tuo semper orare; habes ubique cubiculum tuum. Etsi inter gentes, inter Judaeos positus sis, habes tamen tuum ubique secretum. Cubiculum tuum mens tua est. In populo licet positus, tamen in interiore homine arcanum tuum secretumque conservas». Also in Ambrose one finds a variant of the text of Ct 1, 3 («Introduxit me rex in cubiculum suum», rather than «in cellaria sua», as transmitted in the Vulgate) which recalls the Gospel image and therefore can suggest a further allegorical allusion to the most intimate and elevated possibilities of theologicalmystical knowledge, through which the human soul approaches to the highest reality of the truth, beyond the very intelligibilia of creaturely logic; cfr. ID., De Isaac vel anima, 4, 11, PL 14, 533BC, ed. Schenkl cit. (CSEL, 32), pp. 650,15651,10: «Denique ait ‘Introduxit me rex in cubiculum suum’. Beata anima, quae

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the model of Ambrose – but, without a doubt, also drawing upon the ascending Platonic theology encountered in Augustine and in Gregory the Great – Anselm specifies that the flight-ascent from the sensible is fulfilled by directing a correct orientation of the multiple and insistent mental representations of the external world (the «tumultuosae cogitationes») toward the unitary consideration of the divine. In order to accomplish this act, the soul must recover itself from the distracting variety of objects, desires, and material and sensible cares, in which it is, in a sense, spatially distended and dissipated. Here, truly resting from its interior activities («vaca aliquantulum Deo, quiesce aliquantulum in eo»), and closing itself to every external request, the mind concentrates all the forces of thought upon the single quaestio which merits being investigated («ad quaerendum», «quaere», «quaero», «requiro», «quomodo te quaerat», «qua facie te quaeram»), because this question alone has as its object the Truth in itself. It is the search for the place and the time in which it is possible and necessary to find God («ubi et quomodo te inveniat»). Only by preparing itself through faith in this way, may the soul reach the point of properly formulating the prayer.Thus, in the very act of turning toward the desired object and asking where and when he will be able to approach and grasp it, the believer will, in a partial way, already acquire a first interior recognition of that One with whom he is speaking. He is in fact that very One who has first established the Christian capacity for praying, freely dispensing the revealed knowledge of Himself and of his own mysteries. He is therefore the only true Master who teaches how to seek, when someone seeks him («doce cor meum»). The basic information (i. e., the definability of God as «id quo maius cogitari nequit») and the impulse which inspires the mind to discover the unum argumentum, thus emerge from Revelation and not from any other Verbi ingreditur penetralia. Nam ea insurgens de corpore ab omnibus fit remotior atque intra semet ipsam divinum illud si qua insequi possit scrutatur et quaerit. Quod cum potuerit comprehendere, ea quae sunt intelligibilia supergressa, in illo confirmatur, atque eo pascitur. (…) Anima ergo bona contemnit visibilia et sensibilia nec consistit in eis, nec in despiciendis his immoratur et residet, sed ascendit ad illa aeterna et invisibilia, et plena miraculis, puro sensu se piae mentis attollens». In the Expositio Psalmi CXVIII, I, 16, PL 15, 1271BC, ed. M. Petschenig,Wien - Leipzig 1913 (CSEL, 62), p. 16,5-28, Ambrose also illustrates, in this same perspective, the verse of Matthew and that of the Canticle.

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natural or created source. It is God himself, therefore, who teaches the soul how to find Him, manifesting Himself in the logical conditions which lead reason toward grasping the undeniable necessity of his true existence.The hope for understanding, the tension of the soul towards its end, the manner of pursuit, the paths of the search, the object itself to be found: all these things arise, for Anselm, only from the free self-revelation with which God himself teaches the soul how to approach him. Omnipresent in the universe, but ineffable and invisible among creatures; object of continuous desire, but covered by the veil of an insurmountable ignorance on the part of human intelligence: only God is the One who allows the comprehension of the signa – dispensed first by nature, then by grace – which reveal Him («doce me quaerere te, et ostende te quaerenti»). Thus, with a full and perfect confluence of credere and intelligere, there follows the rapid, direct passage to the formulation of the argumentum, which is as synthetic as it is immediately evident in its formal exposition: O Lord, you who give understanding to the faith (qui das fidei intellectum)61,give me the understanding (da mihi ut intelligam) – in so far as you know that it is useful (quantum scis expedire) – of the fact that you are as we believe, and that you are that which we believe (quia es sicut credimus, et hoc es quod credimus). Indeed, we believe (et quidem credimus) that you are something than which nothing greater can be conceived (aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit). But perhaps such a nature does not exist, because «the insipiens was able to say in his heart: God does not exist» (Ps 13, 1; 53, 11)? But, certainly, even this same insipiens, if he hears the words which I pronounce when I say «something than which nothing greater can be conceived»,has understanding of that which he hears;and that of which he has 61 Concerning the expression «Domine, qui das fidei intellectum», it seems important to me to observe that the parallelism with the second part of the sentence («da mihi») invites one to consider «fidei» as a dative (i. e. «Lord, who give understanding to the faith»), rather than a genitive (i. e. «Lord, who give understanding of the faith»), in confirmation of the fact that the faith must (according to Augustine) precede the intellect. Nevertheless, this interpretation does not involve a diminuition of the efficacy of the syntagma intellectus fidei, when extracted from this context (that is, with the value of understanding of the faith) and frequently used in the modern literature as an expressive mark of the theological method of Anselm.

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understanding is in his intellect, even if he does not have understanding of the fact that this something exists.(…) Even the insipiens must therefore admit that something than which nothing greater can be conceived does exist at least in the intellect, because he has understanding of that which he hears, and all that of which he has understanding exists in the intellect. Indeed, it is certain that something than which nothing greater can be conceived cannot exist only in the intellect.If in fact it were to exist only in the intellect, one would be able to conceive of its existence even in reality, which is something greater in respect to the being conceived only in the intellect. If, therefore, something than which nothing greater can be conceived were to exist only in the intellect, something than which nothing greater can be conceived would be something than which something greater could be conceived. And this is certainly impossible. There exists therefore, without any doubt, something than which nothing greater can be conceived,in the intellect as much as in reality62. Thus, it is so evident that something than which nothing greater can be conceived is something than which nothing greater can be conceived,that it cannot be conceived as something which does not exist. And this is you, O Lord our God. In such a true manner therefore you exist, O Lord my God, that you cannot be conceived as something which does not exist.And rightly so. If in fact any mind were able to conceive something better than you, the creature would then be able to raise itself higher than the creator himself, and would judge you who are its creator,which is absolutely absurd63. 62

Ibid., 2, 227C-228A, pp. 101,3-102,3: «Ergo, Domine, qui das fidei intellectum, da mihi ut quantum scis expedire intelligam, quia es sicut credimus, et hoc es quod credimus. Et quidem credimus te esse aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit. An ergo non est aliqua talis natura, quia ‘dixit insipiens in corde suo: non est Deus’ (Ps 13, 1; 53, 11)? Sed certe ipse idem insipiens, cum audit hoc ipsum quod dico: ‘aliquid quo maius nihil cogitari potest’, intelligit quod audit; et quod intelligit in intellectu eius est, etiam si non intelligat illud esse. (…) Convincitur ergo etiam insipiens esse vel in intellectu aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari potest, quia hoc cum audit intelligit, et quidquid intelligitur in intellectu est. Et certe id quo maius cogitari nequit non potest esse in solo intellectu. Si enim vel in solo intellectu est, potest cogitari esse et in re, quod maius est. Si ergo id quo maius cogitari non potest est in solo intellectu, id ipsum quo maius cogitari non potest est quo maius cogitari potest. Sed certe hoc esse non potest. Existit ergo procul dubio aliquid quo maius cogitari non valet, et in intellectu et in re». 63 Ibid., 3, 228BC, p. 103,1-6: «Sic ergo vere est aliquid quo maius cogitari non potest, ut nec cogitari possit non esse. Et hoc es tu, Domine Deus noster. Sic

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No one, evidently, who understands the meaning of that which God is, is able to conceive that God does not exist, even if he will be able to formulate such words in the heart, either without any meaning, or even with an entirely inadequate meaning. God, in fact, is something than which nothing greater can be conceived. And whoever understands that well, also understands that this something is such a being (id ipsum sic esse) that it cannot even be conceived as not existing (ut nec cogitatione queat non esse). Whoever therefore understands that God is such a being, will not be able to conceive that he does not exist64.

One could say that in the Proslogion Anselm followed the reverse path in respect to the positive theological reflections articulately expressed in the Monologion: in order to affirm the existence of God, it is now sufficient for him to affirm the impossibility of his non-existence. ‘Something’ which possesses – and which above all is – all the conceivable perfections, may be grasped only by a thought which brings the corresponding concept beyond all the imperfections. This immediately establishes, therefore, that this ‘something’ necessarily enjoys even existence, which is the first among the perfections.The highest object of cogitare now appears identical to that of credere. Thus, one may think of (cogitare) ‘something’ which is ‘God’, only in the sense of ‘something’ which the faith declares to exist (existere). His existere, in as far as it is ‘something’ quo maius cogitari non potest, immediately becomes an essential trait of the object of the corresponding intelligere.The form of the prayer allows for the recognition – through the sole act of the pronunciation of his name – of that which God wants man to know («ut quantum scis expedire intelligam»): namely, that the object of this credere-intelligere is God himself.The believer cannot, in fact, cogitare God, without thinking that He truly ergo vere es, Domine Deus meus, ut nec cogitari possis non esse. Et merito. Si enim aliqua mens posset cogitare aliquid melius te, ascenderet creatura super creatorem, et iudicaret de creatore, quod valde est absurdum». 64 Ibid., 4, 229AB, pp. 103,20-104,4: «Nullus quippe intelligens id quod Deus est potest cogitare quia Deus non est, licet haec verba dicat in corde, aut sine ulla aut cum aliqua extranea significatione. Deus enim est id quo maius cogitari non potest. Quod qui bene intelligit, utique intelligit id ipsum sic esse, ut nec cogitatione queat non esse. Qui ergo intelligit sic esse Deum, nequit eum non esse cogitare».

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exists: otherwise, his judgement slides in an unavoidable absurdum, which the human intellect itself can easily recognize as such. As required from the very beginning, nothing determined or limiting is affirmed in the formula «‘something’ than which nothing greater can be conceived». On the contrary, every determination and every limit is negated.The quo maius, a perfect expression of negative theology, is the only conceivable predicate that may be referred to the res which is God without diminishing in any way his possible perfections. Only such an absolute negation allows discursive reason to conceive of the absolute being which locates itself outside of all that which is conceivable through the affirmative way. Suddenly reason itself must recognize, by contemplating the correspondence between God and the quo maius, that, in the same intuition which allows this insight to take place, there is already included the admission of the divine existence.This is so since the mental representation of the greatest perfection possible, if it is received by thought as such – that is, if it has an effective rectitude –, is recognizable only in so far as it exists also in reality. Thus, without a pause, the same prayer, which a moment before was specifying the interior preparation for the reception of the theologian’s argument, transforms itself into thanksgiving. The faith was a gift of God, and the intelligence, now inspired by the illumination of God as ignited by the faith, becomes stronger than the faith itself, since even one who does not want to believe that God exists, will no longer be capable of not conceiving it: Thanks be to you, good Lord, thanks be to you, since that in which I previously believed because you were revealing it to me (credidi te donante), now I have understanding because you illuminate me (intelligo te illuminante), in such a way that, even if I were now to want to believe no longer that you exist (si te esse nolim credere), I would not be able to not understand that you exists (non possim non intelligere)65.

65 Ibid., 229AB, p. 104,5-7: «Gratias tibi, bone Domine, gratias tibi, quia quod prius credidi te donante, iam sic intelligo te illuminante, ut si te esse nolim credere, non possim non intelligere».

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6. Who is the insipiens? The translations into modern languages of the Proslogion, and of the Responsio to the objections formulated by the monk Gaunilo, do not always adequately render the name of the insipiens, who is opposed to the validity of the unum argumentum. Neither the French l’insensé, nor the Italian lo stolto, nor even less the German der Tor or the English the fool (or the foolish man) express the implicit contradictoriness which, even in the vulgate text of the Psalms, characterizes the Latin term insipiens as opposed to the true sapiens. It is true that Anselm does not define his insipiens programmatically.Yet, many details in these pages allow for specifying his role. He is above all, certainly, the impious one who refutes the contents of Revelation66.A Christian sees, already for this reason, that he is not a «sapiens» – all the more true since the insipiens is not capable of giving sense to the word Deus67.Yet, he is nevertheless always a man, endowed with reason. He is not a brute, or a madman, not even in the definition of Erasmus68, – since Anselm always maintains that he is capable of understanding at least the semantic correlate of the term Deus which he proposes, that is «quo maius cogitari nequit»69. Yet, this is only a negative determination. For a mind which proceeds with a natural rational advancement, following the definitory and deductive criteria of logic and common sense, the 66 Cfr. Responsio (Quid ad haec respondeat editor ipsius libelli), 8, 258B, ed. Schmitt, I, p. 137,28-29: «Sic, itaque facile refelli potest insipiens, qui sacram auctoritatem non recipit». 67 Cfr. ibid., 7, 257B, pp. 136,31-137,1: «Quia negat Deum, cuius sensum nullo modo cogitat». 68 Cfr. M. O’R. BOYLE, Fools and Schools: Scholastic Dialectic, Humanist Rhetoric; from Anselm to Erasmus, in «Medievalia et Humanistica», 13 (1983), pp. 173-195, esp. p. 182. 69 Cfr. Proslogion, 2, 227C-228A, p. 101,7-9 and 13-15: «Sed certe ipse idem insipiens, cum audit hoc ipsum quod dico: ‘aliquid quo maius nihil cogitari potest’, intelligit quod audit, et quod intelligit in intellectu eius est, etiam si non intelligat illud esse. (…) Convincitur ergo etiam insipiens esse vel in intellectu aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari potest, quia hoc cum audit intelligit, et quidquid intelligitur in intellectu est». Responsio, 2, 251AB, p. 132,10-13: «Dixi itaque in argumentatione quam reprehendis quia cum insipiens audit proferri ‘quo maius cogitari non potest’, intelligit quod audit. Utique qui non intelligit si nota lingua dicitur, aut nullum aut nimis obrutum habet intellectum».

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simple expression (negative) of «the impossibility of conceiving the existence of anything greater than ‘something’» does not necessarily implicate the conclusion (affirmative) that «this ‘something’ effectively exists».The insipiens, for this reason, refuses, under the guide of Gaunilo, to attribute to Anselm’s quo maius an existential value, even if he correctly understands its semantic content70. Behind such insistence, that is, behind the old monk’s critical resistance to the argumentum, seems to lie a gnoseology inspired by a pragmatic-empiricist model, according to which only direct experience of reality offers certain data regarding the concrete existence of the known res. For such a gnoseology, to conceive something in intellectu, that is, to represent its nature mentally in a universal form, does not necessarily implicate the existence in re of the corresponding individual entity71.This negative reflection is applied with the greatest evidence, according to Gaunilo, in the case of the definition of God.The corresponding mental representation of God, in so far as it has the connotations of the universal concepts – or rather, in so far as it is universal in an absolute mode, since it implicates the entirety of all the conceivable perfections – can only pertain to a dimension of pure intellectual thought. The true and truly existing individual res, which we call God, in so far as he is a res, is not, and is never able to be, present to human intellection72. The position of the insi70 Cfr. GAUNILO (GAUNILO MAIORIS MONASTERII?), Liber pro insipiente (Quid ad haec respondeat quidam pro insipiente), 1, 243B-244A, in ANSELMUS CANTUARIENSIS, Opera Omnia, ed. Schmitt cit. (above, note 2), I, p. 126,1-13; ibid., 5, 246B, p. 128,7-13. 71 Cfr. ibid., 4, 245AB, p. 127,3-14: «Nam si de homine aliquo mihi prorsus ignoto, quem etiam esse nescirem, dici tamen aliquid audirem, per illam specialem generalemve notitiam qua quid sit homo vel homines novi, de illo quoque secundum rem ipsam quae est homo cogitare possem. Et tamen fieri posset ut mentiente illo qui diceret, ipse quem cogitarem homo non esset, cum tamen ego de illo secundum veram nihilominus rem, non quae esset ille homo, sed quae est homo quilibet, cogitarem. Nec sic igitur, ut haberem falsum istud in cogitatione vel in intellectu, habere possum illud cum audio dici ‘Deus’ aut ‘aliquid omnibus maius’, cum quando illud secundum rem veram mihique notam cogitare possem, istud omnino nequeam nisi tantum secundum vocem, secundum quam solam aut vix aut numquam potest ullum cogitari verum». Cfr. M. DAL PRA, Gaunilo e il problema logico del linguaggio, in «Rivista critica di storia della filosofia», 9 (1954), pp. 456-484, esp. pp. 482-483. 72 Cfr. GAUNILO, ibid., 245BC, p. 127,15-24: «Siquidem, cum ita cogitatur, non tam vox ipsa quae res est utique vera, hoc est litterarum sonus vel syllabarum,

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piens, as reinterpreted by Gaunilo, is, in short, similar to a purely natural conception of knowledge, according to which the object of science can only be that which is seized by thought as corresponding to a finite and determined meaning. The Christian thinker is disposed toward allowing himself to be guided beyond the limits of the natural search for the truth by the formulae of the faith, which he receives as an informative presupposition and as the source from which true intelligence arises (even independently from believing, that is, from admitting its veracity). In the eyes of the Christian, therefore, the position of the insipiens seems to reincarnate the limits, the arrogance, and the weakness of the philosophy of the ancients, which, without any qualification, presumed to be capable of determining, with its natural investigations alone, the truth of its own objects.The weak reason of the insipiens is still trapped in the probabilistic prejudices of a knowledge entrusted to autonomous scientific investigations alone: such was the case with the Ciceronian philosophia before the overturning of the theory of knowledge which Augustine accomplished by establishing the roots of human knowledge in the new sphere of the superior information of the truth assured by Christian Revelation. It is according to this feeble line of thinking that the insipiens refuses to admit that ‘something’ which is really existing may be declared as such only through the concept, logically undetermined, of «that which is not able not to exist, since nothing greater than it can be conceived». The resurgence, which lies behind the contrast between Anselm and the insipiens, of the late ancient problematic regarding the sense and possibility of human knowledge assumes a decisive importance for the reconstruction of the authentic meaning – both historical and theoretical – of the Christian vera philosophia. Though Anselm’s theological method finds its fulfillment through investigations conducted with the support of sola ratio, it still grafts quam vocis auditae significatio cogitetur; sed non ita ut ab illo qui novit quid ea soleat voce significari, a quo scilicet cogitatur secundum rem vel in sola cogitatione veram, verum ut ab eo qui illud non novit et solummodo cogitat secundum animi motum illius auditu vocis effectum significationemque perceptae vocis conantem effingere sibi. Quod mirum est, si umquam rei veritate potuerit. Ita ergo nec prorsus aliter adhuc in intellectu meo constat illud haberi, cum audio intelligoque dicentem esse aliquid maius omnibus quae valeant cogitari. Haec de eo, quod summa illa natura iam esse dicitur in intellectu meo».

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itself perfectly onto the extension of the early medieval consideration of dialectica as a useful instrument not so much for widening the horizon of creaturely knowledge, or for discussing and innovating its content, as for specifying their structure, order, and mental succession. Even if the epistemological revolution assured in the West by the recovery of the Aristotelian Analytica will occur only a few generations later, for Anselm human knowledge is still not the cause or the source of the truth, but rather its clarifying and justifying instrument.The unum argumentum is the immediate explanation of the meaning of a definitio, which is not the result of a human invention, but the direct translation into logical terms of the information regarding God offered, for the believing mind, by the faith.Thus the insipiens, who does not grasp the fulfillment of this simple operation of the mind, is one who voluntarily chooses to place himself outside of the confines of the common wisdom of Christianitas. He lacks this foundation of the intellective act of the believer, who recognizes with his arguments the rational truth of something which was communicated as true, but not immediately as intelligible, through the faith («credo ut intelligam»). More than an authentic anti-Christian philosopher, the insipiens corresponds to a man who is ignorant of the true finalities of dialectica – the science of judgment and of verification of the truth, not of its invention.Thus his rational conclusions – in so far as they remain necessarily partial by nature in the very moment in which they demand to be established as absolute and self-sufficient – always turn out to be incorrect and refutable by the same logic which produces them. It is interesting – especially in reference to the epistolary exchange which had accompanied the first draft of the Monologion – to ascertain how, regarding the insipiens,Anselm assumed a position similar to the one which was defended by Lanfranc for combating Berengar, who was using dialectic for ‘verifying’ the doctrine of Revelation and not, as is correct, for clarifying and making comprehensible its message. Once this common ancestry between the insipiens and those who alter the correct relation between reason and the faith is recognized, it becomes clear that the demonstrative impetus of Anselm does not confine itself to a simple correction of the abuses of dialectic. With the explicit intention of shortening the distance between himself

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and the insipiens, and of showing the unsustainability of his negation of the argumentum, Anselm sets out to challenge him on his on turf, renouncing the right of the believer to deduce the truth from scriptural premises or from resorting to the authority of the Fathers. Only formal correctness is the weapon used by the false dialectic, and this formal correctness alone must be attributed to him as defective in its reasoning in order to show its untenability.

7. The topical nature of the argumentum The comprehension of the formal conditions which effectively allowed for such a passage from the defense of the faith to the dialectical demonstration of its contents is essential for adequately locating, in the philosophical history of the eleventh century, the invention of the unum argumentum. Anselm describes, in the introduction of the Proslogion, the intensity of the intellectual effort which he applied in reaching the formulation. Many times, while contemplating how to grasp the intrinsic necessity of the existence of God, he seemed to catch a glimpse of the way out, only to watch it dissolve. Once again he would sense the impossibility of carrying the enterprise to its conclusion. Nevertheless, every time that he was on the point of giving up, the desired object unexpectedly returned to manifest itself «in the conflict of his thoughts» (in ipso cogitationum conflictu), and would press upon him in an irksome way in order to be translated into an adequate formulation. After a long period of suffering, suddenly, the solution appeared in such a clear way as not to be lost from the mind and he was able to put it into writing for the benefit of his readers73. Eadmerus of Saint-Andrews, the first biographer of the saint, tells an anecdote by which he suggests, through the naive style of hagiography, the same ineffable resistance of the project to take flesh: the original draft of the tractate was twice mysteriously stolen from Anselm and recovered in an irretrievable state of destruction – perhaps the work of the demon, who desired out of jealousy to deprive men of such 73

Cfr. Proslogion, prooem., 223C-224B, p. 93,10-19.

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a great gift74. Both the confession of Anselm, and the story from the biography express not only the speculative difficulty of the invention of the argument. One also perceives in the allusions of these two texts – the first personalized, the second fabulous – the fact that the corresponding mental procedure, in its expositive immediacy, is by nature so high and direct, and its perceptibility is so intuitive, that it seems impossible for reason to grasp it and express it with the instruments of clarification and deductive determination. The extraordinary efficacy of the argumentum, enclosed in the extremely simple act of thought consisting of the acceptance of the equivalence of meaning between Deus and the quo maius, is in effect already entirely enclosed in the efficacious meaning – purely direct and intuitive – of the initial premise.The expression itself of the formula «quo maius cogitari non potest» is already, constitutively, the argumentum. In fact, it is true in the very moment in which it is pronounced. For this reason, in only a few lines of text,Anselm invites reason to recognize such force and to make it explicit by translating it into a demonstrative formula. Thus, confronting the insipiens who seeks to investigate the truth only through the evidence of rational mediation, Anselm invites him to test the possibility of scaling toward a truth of an intuitive and immediate type, which is absolute, but comprehensible thanks to the sole capacity of the perception and comprehension of human intelligence75. One must strive to encounter truths of this kind. They are not dialectical, but pre-dialectical, anterior in respect to every formal mediation because they are an object of noetic intuition and recognizable as true by reason through the sole fact of their being thought or enunciated.These truths may then become the principle of correct dialectical deduction even for one who refuses to direct the movement of thought to depart from a reflection upon the information coming from the faith. According to the same line of reasoning – as 74

Cfr. EADMERUS CANTUARIENSIS, Vita Anselmi, I, 3, 26, PL 158, 63A-64A, ed. R.W. Southern, Oxford 19722, pp. 29-31. Cfr. also IOHANNES SARISBERIENSIS, Vita sancti Anselmi, 5, PL 199, 1017BC. 75 Cfr. Proslogion, 3, 228C, p. 103,9-11: «Cur itaque ‘dixit insipiens in corde suo: non est Deus’, cum tam in promptu sit rationali menti te maxime omnium esse? Cur, nisi quia stultus et insipiens?».

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we have already seen –, Augustine led the skeptical Academic to the recognition of the validity of the fundamental laws of dialectic, the principles of non-contradiction and the identity of the truth, in their more original capacity to be intuited directly in the mind of man, and to the admission that they are placed there by God, and are in fact traces of God76. Yet,Anselm is able to maintain in this search an advantageous position in respect to the insipiens, as Augustine himself taught him, without resorting argumentatively to the faith, although always thanks to the fact that he is a believer. Revelation actually offers him a complete, certain, and incontrovertible representation of the absolute truth, which the insipiens, however, renounces from the start. If primordial truths, being absolute and evident, are achievable by the human mind, they will necessarily be identical to the content of the faith and coincide with it. The truth, found in all things which are true, is one and immutable77. For a Christian, it is easier to catch a glimpse of such primal truths, seizing their inevitability by listening to the words with which the faith formulates them and by representing, even apart from the faith, their content78.The knowledge of the faith fulfills, in comparison with intellectual knowledge, the same function which philosophers attribute to experience. It offers cognitive information coming from a source which is external to the knowing subject, who, departing from this given knowledge, works out an intellectual representation of its content in order to submit it to further development and rational verification79. The primal truths are those possessing an absolute rectitudo, which appears as irrefutable from the immediacy of their primal, direct, and interior representation. If the faith communicates some of them, the intelligence is able to recognize 76

Cfr. above, cap.1, pp. 57-58. Cfr. De veritate, 13, 486AB, pp. 198,29-199,11. 78 Cfr. Epistola de incarnatione Verbi, 1, 264BC, ed. Schmitt, II, pp. 8,19-9,1: «Verum enim est quia quanto opulentius nutrimur in sacra Scriptura ex iis quae per oboedientiam pascunt, tanto subtilius provehimur ad ea quae per intellectum satiant». 79 Cfr. ibid., 264C, p. 9,5-8: «Nimirum hoc ipsum quod dico: qui non crediderit, non intelliget. Nam qui non crediderit, non experietur, et qui expertus non fuerit non cognoscet. Quantum enim rei auditum superat experientia, tantum vincit audientis cognitionem experientis scientia». 77

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them as such thanks to the same direct efficacy which is intrinsic to their enunciation. Any intelligence, even that of the nonbeliever, is able to be invited to do the same («certe ipse idem insipiens, cum audit hoc ipsum quod dico…, intelligit quod audit»). If Anselm was capable of formulating the theoretical determination of the divine nature as «id quo maius cogitari nequit», it was because the faith had informed him of how God – in whom he believes – must be conceived («et quidem credimus te esse aliquid quo nihil maius cogitari possit»).Thus, he recognized the correspondence between the revealed data and the mental concept which expresses that which is not able to be surpassed by anything else («ut… intelligam quia es sicut credimus, et hoc es quod credimus»).This is also the mental presupposition of every other truth, placed exactly upon the limit that the faith fixes for rational knowledge: if there is something, there is always something which is the Greatest in respect to everything which is not the greatest. In delineating for himself and for his adversary the logical ascent which leads to the signifying intuition of this concept, Anselm is decisively far from the inspiration at the base of the Aristotelian deductive methodology. Aristotle, in fact, follows a line of descent from the definition to the syllogism, that is, from the mental nucleus of the single significant term to the reasoning process, in order to obtain, in the succeeding steps, the possibilities of widening the horizon of science, the acquisition of new data, and new cognitive assurances80.The dialectic of Anselm offers itself, on the contrary, as the explication of the truth contained in a primordial thought and expressed by the word. Its itinerary ascends from the particularized articulation of the discourse to the absolute immediacy of the meaning of the term and of its definition, to the origin itself of the vox, in so far as it is significant, and to its signifying capacity, which is recovered and assured intuitively beyond the resonant expression81. 80

Cfr. BOETHIUS, In Aristotelis Categorias, I, PL 64, 161BC and 162BC; Introductio ad syllogismos categoricos, 762CD. 81 The necessity of considering Anselm’s demonstration as founded upon the semantic value of the term more than upon the deductive force of the premises is suggested also by R. CAMPBELL, The Systematic Character of Anselm’s Thought, in Les mutations socio-culturelles cit. (above, note 3), pp. 549-560.

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Even in this, the primary teacher to follow is Augustine, who, for example, in his fragmentary Dialectica, dedicates nearly the entire part of the surviving text to the logic of the term and to the determination of meaning.Then, in other works from his youth, above all in the De magistro, he pursues programmatically the process of the formation of loqui, that is, of formulating semantic discourses, to the point of its preverbal and prelogical origins82. We already know how such dialectical research, to the extent that it aspires to a complete and absolute truth and is no longer able to nourish itself with the incomplete and contradictory truths offered by sensible experience, must necessarily resolve itself, according to Augustine, in an ‘over-turning’ of the cognitive investigation, which naturally takes its moves from a principle of the theological order: the Truth is found in the soul because it reflects the creative act of the interior ‘teacher’, Christ, who, by projecting it, has first thought of and then created the world, and has impressed innate traces of his thought in the reasoning of intelligent creatures83. Yet, Anselm, unlike Augustine – and, furthermore, beyond Augustine – has renounced in advance the dependence of his research upon a fideistic-theological starting point. The ascent toward the primordial loci of Truth, that is, toward the noetic sources of thought, comes to reconnect itself more directly – in accordance with the tendency common to other masters of the early middle ages – with the distinction proposed by Cicero, in the introduction to his Topica, between the logic of correct articulation of thought and the logic of the discovery of the truth in the tópoi, or the mental loci which enclose it: that is to say, with the distinction between the ars iudicandi – descriptive science of the deduction departing from premises which are provisionally received as true – and ars inveniendi – the art of the discovery of the truth which the ars iudicandi describes, and, therefore, of the verification of the validity of those same provisional premises84. Only the second of these two disciplines, the ars inveniendi, is able 82 Cfr. AURELIUS AUGUSTINUS, De magistro, 1, 1-2, PL 32, 1193-1196, ed. Daur cit. (above, cap. 1, note 147), pp. 157,3-159,77. 83 Cfr. ibid., 11, 38 - 13, 41, 1216-1218, pp. 195,44-199,13. Cfr. above, cap. 1, pp. 59-63. 84 Cfr. above, cap. 1, pp. 16-18.

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to guarantee the correspondence between the correctly formal aspect of reasoning and the reality in act.Yet, the insipiens knows and uses only the first, and his reasoning remains formally correct, but only probable, and therefore ineffective and inconclusive. By pushing himself beyond the limits of the dialectical method of Lanfranc, who entrusted the solidity of reasoning to the prejudicial certainty of Revelation,Anselm has the courage – in the very moment in which he recognizes its coincidence with the data of the faith – to ascend directly through thought to the original sources of dialectical truth.These sources are immediate representations of the higher and more absolute truth: they are naturally intuitive, precisely because they are absolutely universal and perceptible by the human intelligence only when reduced to their purer and more direct efficacy; they are eternally stable in so far as they are necessarily true; and accessible only thanks to an exhausting effort of ascent toward the noetic sources of every efficacy of human reason.Yet, once known, they are acquirable as inalienable certainties and as the principles of any sort of ulterior and certain affirmation. The true dialectician is therefore the one who gathers the Ciceronian tópoi as the purest and most extended formal structures of thought, and sets them as the principles of the full successive articulation of the signifying discourse and of the reasoning process. For every tópos there is, in fact, a corresponding argumentum – intriguingly defined by Cicero, as we have recalled several times, as «ratio quae rei dubiae facit fidem»85 –, the formulation of which emerges from the simple approach of clear concepts into the mind.This formulation immediately demands an assent produced by an act of association, or by other immediate speculative operations: e. g., the relationship between the parts and the whole, between the genre and the species, between cause and effect, between similitude and difference;the contrariety,the consequentiality and the opposition;the comparison with something greater, or equal,or less in respect to the conceived object,and so on86.The 85 MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO, Topica, 2, 8, ed. Friedrich cit. (above, cap. 1, note 13), p. 426,35-37. Cfr. above, cap. 1, p. 19, note 15; cap. 2, p. 85, note 21; cap. 3, p. 193, note 103. 86 Cfr. my Fons scientiae. La dialettica cit. (above, cap. 1, note 7), pp. 87-98 and 257-274.

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significant power of a term may, or, better, must, always ascend toward one of these sedes argumentorum, so that the complete definition of a concept presents itself to the mind not as a convention or a linguistic habit,but as the result of a direct intuitive acquisition of the more general forms of the truth. The term argumentum, with which Anselm designates the mental procedure for proving the existence of God in the Proslogion, is not therefore a generic synonym for ‘demonstration’. It is not an accident that Anselm proposes it as unum and as synthetically and exhaustively fulfilled by the sole enunciation of the formula with which it begins, «quo maius cogitari nequit». It consists in a simple formulation of the mind, that is, of the immediate expression of a tópos, pregnant with semantic consequences which the philosopher strives to render explicit. It is not a demonstration, but evidence, an explanation of a primordial intuition which is possible for every active form of reason87. This is why, in responding to the question «how (quomodo) could the insipiens formulate the proposition Deus non est?», Anselm explains that this error arises from the fact that his attention rests only on the verbal nature of the logical term Deus and not on the intellectual contemplation of its real meaning. Otherwise, if he had known how to reach the evident mental primitiveness where one finds the res expressed through the vox «quo maius cogitari nequit», he would have understood that to say «Deus non est» is as absurd as to say «Deus non est Deus»: But now in what way (quomodo) was [the insipiens] able to say in his heart that which he was not able to conceive, or in what way was he not able to conceive that which he said in his heart, since it is one and the same thing to say in the heart and to conceive? And if it is true – moreover, from the very fact that it is true – that, on the one hand, he conceived this, because he said it in the heart; and that, on the other hand, he did not really say this in the heart because he was not able to conceive it; it is necessary to say that it is not according to one manner alone that something is said in the heart and 87 Cfr. Responsio, 10, 260A, pp. 138,30-139,3: «Tantam enim vim huius prolationis in se continet significatio, ut hoc ipsum quod dicitur, ex necessitate eo ipso quod intelligitur vel cogitatur, et revera probetur existere, et id ipsum esse quidquid de divina substantia oportet credere».

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conceived. In one manner, in fact, something is conceived when the word which signifies it is conceived; and in a completely different manner it is conceived when one has understanding of that which the thing is. In the first case, one may conceive that God does not exist; in the second, this is absolutely impossible88.

If this is so, even Anselm’s argument (like the first principles of Eriugena’s systematic thought) has all the force of one of the most vigorous forms found among the argumenta coming from the Ciceronian tópoi: the enthymema, that is, the direct passage from one meaning to another, different from the first, but achieved without the necessity of mediation89. It is the synonym for an efficacious and direct inference, resulting from the immediate assent of reason. In the manuals of dialectic such a passage is performed above all in the formulation of the tópos a repugnantibus, which establishes the impossibility of the coexistence of two contradictory predications, and explicates itself in the third mode of the hypothetical syllogism: «non et primum et non secundum; primum autem; igitur et secundum»90. Anselm’s argument could be correctly expressed in this form: «non et Deus est id quo maius cogitari nequit et non est; est autem Deus id quo maius cogitari nequit; est igitur». For this reason, it is clear that the most correct exposition of the argumentum in the following centuries, and the one closest to the original idea of Anselm, was that still more direct and intuitive exposition proposed – in perfect adherence to the spirit of the Proslogion – by Bonaventure: «si Deus est Deus, Deus est», if God is God, He exists91. Even in the 88 Proslogion, 4, 228D-229A, p. 103,14-20: «Verum quomodo dixit in corde quod cogitare non potuit, aut quomodo cogitare non potuit quod dixit in corde, cum idem sit dicere in corde et cogitare? Quod si vere, immo quia vere et cogitavit quia dixit in corde, et non dixit in corde quia cogitare non potuit, non uno tantum modo dicitur aliquid in corde vel cogitatur. Aliter enim cogitatur res cum vox eam significans cogitatur, aliter cum id ipsum quod res est intelligitur. Illo itaque modo potest cogitari Deus non esse, isto vero minime». 89 Cfr. CICERO, ibid., 13, 55 - 14, 56, ed. Friedrich, p. 437,19-36. Cfr. also above, cap. 3, note 64. 90 Ibid., 13, 53, pp. 436,34-437,10; MARTIANUS CAPELLA, De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae, IV, 416, ed.Willis cit. (above, cap. 1, note 145), p. 143,6-12, and 420, p. 144,7-8. 91 Cfr. BONAVENTURA DE BALNEOREGIO, Quaestiones disputatae de Mysterio Trinitatis, q. 1, a. 1, 29, ed. studio et cura PP. Collegii a S. Bonaventura, in Opera,

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«quo maius» of Anselm – as in the «natura» of John the Scot – one may recognize a communis conceptio animi92.Thus, even the insipiens can understand it in its correct meaning with a simple act of mental adherence and without deduction. Just as all the particular geometrical demonstrations emerge from the axioms of geometry, one can depart from the logical comprehension of the «quo maius» to deduce further specifications regarding the divine nature: that is, regarding all the divine attributes that, up to now, only the believer was capable of working out by starting from the acceptance of the revealed data.

8. The new argumentative rationality Anselm responds to Gaunilo – who insistently maintains that the purely intuitive force of the argument be better clarified on the level of demonstration – by highlighting the possibility of simply working out the passage from the unum argumentum to its own formal explanation: this passage corresponds to the formulation of an argumentatio, that is, the articulation in various syllogistic procedures which are all reciprocally connected and directed toward the specific manifestation of the unique mental content of the ‘greatest’ thing conceivable93. This explains for what motive, particularly in the Responsio, Anselm replies to the difficulties posed by the insipiens by weaving a tight series of syllogisms.The syllogism, in fact, in late Roman and early medieval dialectic, is always the dianoetic exteriorization of the content of a tópos; and V, Quaracchi 1891, p. 48a: «Similiter argui potest: si Deus est Deus, Deus est; sed antecedens est adeo verum, quod non potest cogitari non esse; ergo Deum esse est verum indubitabile». 92 Cfr. above, cap. 2, p. 138, and cap. 3, pp. 169-170 and 184-185. 93 Cfr. Responsio, 10, 260A, p. 138,28-30: «Puto quia monstravi me non infirma sed satis necessaria argumentatione probasse in praefato libello re ipsa existere aliquid quo maius cogitari non possit, nec eam alicuius obiectionis infirmari firmitate». Cfr. also ibid., 2, 251A, p. 132,10; GAUNILO, Liber pro insipiente, 8, 248BC, ed. Schmitt cit. (above, note 70), p. 129,23-25. On the difference between argumentum and argumentatio, cfr. BOETHIUS, De topicis differentiis, I, PL 64, 1174C, ed. Nikitas cit. (above, cap. 2, note 21), p. 3,8-13; and II, 1183A, p. 21,11-13. Cfr. G. R. EVANS,Argumentum and argumentatio: the Development of a Technical Terminology up to c. 1150, in «Classical Folia», 30 (1976), pp. 81-93; L. STEIGER, Contexe syllogismos. Über die Kunst und Bedeutung der Topik bei Anselm, in «Analecta Anselmiana», 1 (1969), pp. 107-143.

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every tópos, since it has an inexhaustible semantic content, is able to give rise to the innumerable syllogisms which render it manifest. Since he has found one of the most important noetic roots of the truth, Anselm is able, with his dialectic, to overcome the probabilistic limit of late ancient philosophy, assumed even by Christian science in relation to the superiority of the faith, and to take up from this point on the threads of a purely formal and rational deduction. His consideration of the topical discipline has in fact passed through the filter of the Neoplatonism of Augustine and Boethius, who had demonstrated how the primordial foundations of human thinking (which are for him identical to the highest truths of the faith) coincide in the final analysis with the presupposition of the absolute ontological identity of the truth in itself and of the universal principle which concretizes it in being: the Neoplatonic One, from whom all realities and rational truths are derived94. Pushing his own investigation to this limit, he sought to translate a tópos (that is, one of the general forms of thought) into a content (a res, the most perfect among the res) corresponding to the intuition of the highest possible truth. For this reason, Anselm’s tópos (or argumentum) is not one among others, but it is the unum argumentum, in which the greatest conceivable form of the absolute is simultaneously proposed as the greatest knowledge of it. In fact, only in the case of this thought-limit is the argument valid. It is not a case of, for example, a ‘greater in its genre’, or ‘greater than all existing things’ – like the fortunate islands of Gaunilo95. Therefore, the negative form of the quo maius in no way diminishes its topical value. Furthermore, it is evident that the highest principles of thought, that is, the communes conceptiones animi, enjoy – simply by being such – 94

Cfr. BOETHIUS, In Topica Ciceronis Commentaria, I, PL 64, 1044C-1048A. Cfr. Responsio, 5, 255AC, p. 135,8-23: «Hoc autem non tam facile probari posse videtur de eo quod ‘maius’ dicitur ‘omnibus’. Non enim ita patet quia quod non esse cogitari potest non est ‘maius omnibus quae sunt’, sicut quia non est ‘quo maius cogitari non possit’: (…) illud enim alio indiget argomento quam hoc quod dicitur ‘omnibus maius’; in isto vero non est opus alio quam hoc ipso quod sonat ‘quo maius cogitari non possit’. Ergo si non similiter potest probari de eo quod ‘maius omnibus’ dicitur, quod de se per seipsum probat ‘quo maius nequit cogitari’, iniuste me reprehendisti dixisse quod non dixi, cum tantum differat ab eo quod dixi». 95

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a significant, absolute, and totalizing dignity, into which the highest possible number of particular signifying signs, shared by the same veracity, may enter. Since a negative determination is capable of delineating a semantic field which is much wider than the field of an affirmative determination, it follows that the most comprehensive among the mental fields – and the very one to which the argumentum connects itself – will be more correctly expressed by the negative value of the sign96. For the new rationality, brought to life by the explicative efficacy of the argumentum, ‘to understand’ means to apply the attention of the mind to the meaning of a concept, even if one can indicate it only by negative denotations.The «quo maius» expresses, therefore, the condition of the mind which recognizes the sense of ‘to be something superior to all the other things conceivable’, even if this ‘to be’ does not mean for it, and is not at all able to mean,‘to be something determined’. Anselm finally establishes the limits of reason only in order to surpass them with the very force of rational dialectic. For this reason, while explicating, in the form of argumentationes, the content of the argumentum, he openly invokes the aid of the «dialecticians» against the resistance of Gaunilo, that is, the help of all those who, in the monastic schools and in the scholastic curriculum of the logica vetus, have studied at least the minimum of dialectical rules. «Respondeant pro me», he exclaims, «qui vel parvam scientiam disputandi argumentandique attigerunt». Let them respond to your objections, in my place, those who have known even in the most superficial way the demonstrative force of the true dialectical meaning of words97.The fact that he alludes to dialectic not only as ars or disciplina disputandi – 96

Already the De definitionibus of MARIUS VICTORINUS, PL 64, 905C, ed. T. Stangl, in ID., Tulliana et Mario Victoriniana, München 1888, p. 24,18-25, presented the definition ‘through the privation of the opposite (per privantiam contrarii) of that which is defined’ as the most adequate for theological discourse: «Quo genere definitionis Deus definiri potest. Etenim cum quid sit Deus nullo modo scire possimus, sublatio omnium existentium, quae Greci ónta appellant, cognitionem Dei nobis, circumcisa et ablata notarum rerum cognitione, supponet: ‘Deus est neque corpus, neque ullum elementum, neque anima, neque mens, neque sensus, neque intellectus, neque aliquid quod ex his capi potest’. His talibus sublatis quid sit Deus poterit definiri; magis si addas, quod etiam definiri non potest, id Deum esse». 97 Responsio, 7, 257A, p. 136,24-25.

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as was the case from Augustine on, so it was the custom in the early Middle Ages –, but more precisely as scientia disputandi et argumentandi, is an evident indication of the new reciprocal complementariness which he intends to establish between the discipline of the significant term and the deductive apodictic. Respondeant pro me: it is sufficient to submit to the analysis of dialectic the form of argumentation founded upon the semantic value of the quo maius cogitari nequit in order to taste fully its demonstrative force. Perhaps Anselm can appear in the eyes of some historians of Christian thought as the last representative of a cultural experience that was already aged and exhausted, even though it was still maintaining its unifying ideological force.Yet, no one could deny that he was the first explorer of a new philosophical and theological civilization, where a restored confidence in the capacities of human reason opened the way toward new studies and new forms of research, conducted in an autonomous form without being founded directly upon the authority of the faith, but always respecting the limits which the faith continues to impose upon every form of human research. If it is true that the roots of the cultural rebirth favored by the recovery of Aristotelian thought in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries extend back to the eleventh century, Anselm certainly contributed to sparking and nourishing the interest in the study of the rules of demonstration which his successors would retrace by rediscovering and studying the final tractates, still unknown in the early Middle Ages, of the Organon. Certainly, this proposal of rereading the formulation of the argument of the Proslogion in the light of its direct dependence upon the effective logical and scientific competencies of the early Middle Ages – and, consequently, of considering it as a product of the reductive-probabilistic tendency of the first Christian philosophy, under the influence of late ancient thought – seems to reduce the theoretical efficacy of Anselm’s discovery.The argument which would then become «ontological» or «a-priori», appears in fact, in this fashion, divested of its claim for pure demonstrative validity, as appreciated by so many successive exponents of the history of Western thought. In its original configuration, it seems that the unum argumentum of Anselm can be correctly described neither as authentically ontological, nor as effectively a priori. On

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the one hand, if the connotation of ontological – according to Kant’s critique – expresses the demand for a demonstration of the existence of God that departs only from His definition alone, Anselm in truth does not seek to admit the immediate and necessary reification of the content of a rational theological idea – neither if it is innate, nor if it is autonomously generated by the mind. Rather, he strives to recognize or to admit that it is evident how the reality of the divine being corresponds to the comprehension of the meaning of His name, as communicated by the faith. On the other hand, rather than a priori – that is, coming from an ideal representation of the divine generating itself as an original production of thought and in thought – the argumentum arises from the knowing subject’s reflection upon the experiential acquisition of an external notion, introduced by Revelation. Perhaps the idea, operating at the beginning of the second millennium, that philosophy is obliged to be primarily the clarifying activity of the interior language – and not a doctrine or a founding investigation for a new truth which is set up in opposition to others –, can nevertheless offer interesting suggestions for the philosophical reflection of our days.The wisdom of the early Middle Ages, since it was founded upon the unity – or unanimitas – of the cultural allegiance to a unique conception of the world, common to all adherents of the only vera philosophia of Christianity, did not demand the discovery of new systems or new descriptions of reality. Perhaps, exactly for this reason, it is possible even today to return to an appraisal of its most intimate spirit: that is, to the concept of a speculation which does not want to demonstrate, but to investigate; which does not seek to invent its object, but to clarify the possibilities of mediation and comprehension of a Truth, admitted – by way of principle – as available for every rational subject, and therefore found within everyone’s reach.

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1. The fleeing prey of knowledge In the Fourth Dialogue of the First Part of Gli eroici furori of Giordano Bruno, the poet Tansillo recalls, by reciting one of his own sonnets, the myth of the hunter Actaeon, who was torn to pieces by his dogs. He offers this tale as an allegory for human intelligence, torn to shreds by its own cognitive hopes for transcending its natural limits1. Next, in order to better illustrate the sense of such an image,Tansillo joins it to a hierarchical description of the faculties of the soul, organized in an ascending grada1 Cfr. IORDANUS BRUNUS, De gli eroici furori, First Part, Fourth Dialogue, ed. M. Ciliberto, Dialoghi filosofici italiani, Milano 2000 (I Meridiani, Classici dello Spirito), p. 832: «TANSILLO. Con queste e simili raggioni l’anima prendendo la causa de la parte più inferma, cerca de richiamar gli pensieri alla cura del corpo. Ma quelli (benché al tardi) vegnono a mostrarsegli non già di quella forma con cui si partiro, ma sol per dechiarargli la sua ribellione, e forzarla tutta a seguitarli. La onde in questa forma si lagna la dolente:‘Ahi cani d’Atteon, o fiere ingrate, / che drizzai al ricetto de mia diva, / e vòti di speranza mi tornate; / anzi venendo a la materna riva, / tropp’infelice fio mi riportate: / mi sbranate e volete ch’i non viva. / Lasciami, vita, ch’al mio sol rimonte, / fatta gemino rio senz’il mio fonte. / Quand’il mio pondo greve / converrà che natura mi disciolga? / Quand’avverrà ch’anch’io da qua mi tolga, / e ratt’a l’alt’oggetto mi sulleve; / e insieme col mio core / i communi pulcini ivi dimore?’» Cfr. also ibid., Argomento de’ cinque dialogi de la prima parte, p. 764: «In sette articoli del Quarto dialogo si contempla l’impeto e vigor de l’intelletto, che rapisce l’affetto seco, et il progresso de pensieri del furioso composto, e delle passioni de l’anima che si trova al governo di questa Republica cossì turbulenta. Là non è oscuro chi sia il cacciatore, l’ucellatore, la fiera, gli cagnuoli, gli pulcini, la tana, il nido, la rocca, la preda, il compimento de tante fatiche, la pace, riposo e bramato fine de sì travaglioso conflitto».

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tion from the greater contamination with the material to the greatest likeness to the divine mind. He explicitly leads such a doctrine back to the teaching of the followers of Plato («vogliono gli Platonici», the Platonists want)2. If Bruno, in this famous passage, designates the essentially lifegiving and nourishing principle of the body, moved by the material nature of the inferior drives, by the name «soul» (anima), and the capacity of rising up to the consideration and influence of the «higher things» by the name «intelligence» (intelligenza), it is clear how these contradictory tensions both animate and guide a single unitary «essence» (la medesima essenza). It is like a solar ray, which does not dissolve and does not become divided, neither when, while illuminating and warming the world, it enters into contamination with material things, nor when it is joined to the celestial source from which it emerges. Such a multiplication of the functions carried out by a single psychic substance is also more complex and articulated, if it is true (always according to Platonic teaching) that every faculty directs the subject toward a different kind of knowledge, conforming it step by step to the manner of being of the known object. The soul is always itself, however, when it passes from the contemplation of inferior things to that of superior things, changing and fortifying its own faculties with a progressive assimilation to the nature of the objects through which it passes: it transforms itself from the vegetative soul into sense, then into imagination, then into reason, then into intellect, and finally into mind, when «all converts into God and lives in the intelligible world»; then, the soul remains always the same when it descends in reverse, along the same ladder, and 2 Cfr. ibid., First Part, Fourth Dialogue, p. 833: «TANSILLO. Vogliono gli Platonici che l’anima, quanto alla parte superiore, sempre consista ne l’intelletto, dove ha raggione d’intelligenza più che de anima: atteso che anima è nomata per quanto vivifica il corpo e lo sustenta. Cossì qua la medesima essenza che nodrisce e mantiene li pensieri in alto insieme col magnificato cuore, se induce dalla parte inferiore contristarsi e richiamar quelli come ribelli. CICADA. Sì che non sono due essenze contrarie, ma una suggetta a doi termini di contrarietade? TANSILLO. Cossì è a punto; come il raggio del sole il quale quindi tocca la terra et è gionto a cose inferiori et oscure che illustra, vivifica et accende, indi è gionto a l’elemento del fuoco, cioè a la stella da cui procede, ha principio, è diffuso, et in cui ha propria et originale sussistenza: cossì l’anima ch’è nell’orizzonte della natura corporea et incorporea, ha con che s’innalze alle cose superiori, et inchine a cose inferiori».

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conforms itself to inferior objects, even to the depths of the vegetative level3.The dogs of Actaeon are a symbol of such ascending impulses of knowledge which lacerate the soul, held back by its conjunction with the body and by the desire for terrestrial objects.These impulses drag the soul with vigor toward higher objects, making it die in respect to the sensible condition and assimilating it, as far as possible, to the life of the divine world. The progress of the soul consists, as Tansillo maintained a few pages before, in a gradual re-assumption of each faculty into another, along with its own perception of the object, «in its own way» («secondo il suo modo»). Step by step the known object penetrates into the interior of the knower, who pursues the prey by converting himself into that which he seeks. He drives himself to the point where, «having contracted the prey into himself» («avendola contratta in sé»), he himself becomes the divinity, whom he was pursuing outside of himself. He now lives «the life of the gods» («vita de dèi») in so far as he realizes the manner of living and knowing which is proper to his own superior faculty, that is, to the intellect. By means of a noteworthy theological counterpoint to the philosophical interpretation of the pagan myth, Tansillo’s interlocutor, Cicada, indicates the parallelism of such a doctrine with the Christian theme of the «reign of God», which is in man when the divinity is called to inhabit him through the efficacy «of the reformed intellect and will»4.Yet, al3

Cfr. ibid.: «TANSILLO. E ciò puoi vedere non accadere per raggion et ordine di moto locale, ma solamente per appulso d’una e d’un’altra potenza o facultade. Come quando il senso monta all’immaginazione, l’immaginazione alla raggione, la raggione a l’intelletto, l’intelletto a la mente, all’ora l’anima tutta si converte in Dio, et abita il mondo intelligibile. Onde per il contrario descende per conversion al mondo sensibile per via de l’intelletto, raggione, imaginazione, senso, vegetazione». 4 Cfr. ibid., p. 821: «TANSILLO. Sai bene che l’intelletto apprende le cose intelligibilmente, idest secondo il suo modo; e la voluntà perseguita le cose naturalmente, cioè secondo la raggione con la quale sono in sé. Cossì Atteone con que’ pensieri, que’ cani che cercavano estra di sé il bene, la sapienza, la beltade, la fiera boscareccia, et in quel modo che giunse alla presenza di quella, rapito fuor di sé da tanta bellezza, dovenne preda, veddesi convertito in quel che cercava; e s’accorse che de gli suoi cani, de gli suoi pensieri egli medesimo venea ad essere la bramata preda, perché già avendola contratta in sé, non era necessario di cercare fuor di sé la divinità. CICADA. Però ben si dice il regno de Dio esser in noi, e la divinitate abitar in noi per forza del riformato intelletto e voluntade (cfr. Lc 17, 21). TANSILLO. Cossì è: ecco dumque come l’Atteone, messo in preda de suoi cani, perseguitato da proprii pensieri, corre e drizza i novi passi: è rinnovato a procedere

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ready in the Third Dialogue of the First Part of the work, Giordano Bruno alludes to the suggestive convergence of the ascending process of the soul, taught by the Platonists, with the teaching of Pauline theology: the Apostle in fact opposes the present state of our knowledge – constricted to a deficient perception of God only «as in shadow and in a mirror», that is, «in a certain similitude» –, to the direct contemplation which may be «formed in the mind through the power of the intellect», when the soul itself becomes God in so far as it «contracts (contrae) the divinity into itself by being in God through the intention with which it penetrates the divinity»5. This cognitive ascent of the soul is assured by the successive contribution of multiple faculties which are capable, through a progressive climb, of perceiving ever better the founding presence of the divine in the known object. Bruno could have encountered this theme, rooted in a Platonic speculative base, in various classical texts of late ancient, medieval, or even Renaisdivinamente e più leggiermente. (…) Qua finisce la sua vita secondo il mondo pazzo, sensuale, cieco e fantastico; e comincia a vivere intellettualmente: vive vita de dèi, pascesi d’ambrosia et inebriasi di nettare». 5 Cfr. ibid., First Part,Third Dialogue, pp. 812-814: «Là è oggetto finale, ultimo e perfettissimo; non già in questo stato dove non possemo veder Dio se non come in ombra e specchio, e però non ne può esser oggetto se non in qualche similitudine (cfr. 1Cor 13, 12); non tale qual possa esser abstratta et acquistata da bellezza et eccellenza corporea per virtù del senso: ma qual può esser formata nella mente per virtù de l’intelletto. Nel qual stato ritrovandosi, viene a perder l’amore et affezzion d’ogni altra cosa tanto sensibile quanto intelligibile; perché questa congionta a quel lume dovien lume essa ancora, e per consequenza si fa un Dio: perché contrae la divinità in sé essendo ella in Dio per la intenzione con cui penetra nella divinità, per quanto si può, et essendo Dio in ella, per quanto dopo aver penetrato viene a conciperla e, per quanto si può, a ricettarla e comprenderla nel suo concetto. Or di queste specie e similitudini si pasce l’intelletto umano da questo mondo inferiore, sin tanto che non gli sia lecito de mirar con più puri occhi la bellezza della divinitade (…). Il corpo dumque è ne l’anima, l’anima nella mente, la mente o è Dio, o è in Dio, come disse Plotino: cossì come per essenza è in Dio che è la sua vita, similmente per l’operazione intellettuale e la voluntà conseguente dopo tale operazione, si referisce alla sua luce e beatifico oggetto. (…) Noi in questo stato nel qual ne ritroviamo, non possiamo desiderar né ottener maggior perfezzione, che quella in cui siamo quando il nostro intelletto mediante qualche nobil specie intelligibile s’unisce o alle sustanze seperate, come dicono costoro, o a la divina mente, com’è modo di dir de Platonici». – Regarding the ascending nature of knowledge which, passing from the senses to the intellect through the imagination and reason, tends toward the reunification of multiplicity by contracting the multiplicity of things into the unity of the principle, cfr. also ID., De la causa, principio et uno, Fifth Dialogue, ed. Ciliberto, pp. 285-288.

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sance Platonism.Yet, he repeatedly uses the concept of the contraction in order to express the mediating act through which the subject identifies himself with the object by carrying it within himself and assuming its nature through the imitative work of distinct faculties.This strongly suggests a particular, privileged source for his hierarchical consideration of the human soul: Nicholas of Cusa, who composed numerous and dense pages on this theme. The role – of a clear Platonic ascent – of the theory of contraction («contractio») in the gnoseology and ontology of Nicholas of Cusa has been concisely well formulated by describing it as «a determination, a limitation, an individuation, of the higher order in the lower»6. As opposed to the Aristotelian theory of abstraction, which presumes the subject’s capacity of theoretically elaborating a generalized determination for the multiple known res by assimilating itself to them, the Cusanian theory of successive contractions considers the act of knowing as a series of «limited and circumscribed participations in creatures, which are different by reason of their contractions», into the one reality in itself, which is that of the divine substance7. All creatures, by knowing, participate in the perfection of the divine by contracting it, that is, by receiving God’s gift of light in diverse and particular forms and by recreating His efficacy in themselves, to a greater or lesser degree, according to their particular cognitive capacities. Such diverse participations, with their variety, compose a ladder of hierarchically ordered cognitive perfections which are complicated, that is, limited and ascending towards the simplicity of the principle. Distinct forms of life are concretized in such a gradation, which are diversely capable of «bringing into focus from different angles of vision» the manifestation of reality – unitary and untouchable in itself –, through the description of multiple «complementary pictures». Each one of these particular forms of

6

G. FEDERICI VESCOVINI, La teologia di Niccolò Cusano, in Storia della Teologia, III, Età della Rinascita, dir. di G. d’Onofrio, Casale Monferrato 1995, [pp. 161199], p. 170 (Eng. trans. by M. J. O’Connel, Collegeville 1998, p. 161). On the theme of the contractio in the thought of Nicholas of Cusa cfr. also: R. HAUBST, Zusammenfassende Erwägungen (Zur Interpretation von «De coniecturis»), in «Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft», 8 (1970), pp. 192198; and J. HOPKINS, Nicolas of Cusa’s Metaphysic of Contraction, Minneapolis 1983. 7 FEDERICI VESCOVINI, ibid., p. 177-178 (trans. p. 167).

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the acquisition of the divine manifestation through contraction is, in Cusanian language, a conjecture («coniectura»)8.

2. The ‘conjectures’ of the soul In the philosophical thought of Nicholas of Cusa, the doctrine of ‘contraction’ went through a slow, but coherent, evolution. The De docta ignorantia, the draft of which goes back to 1440, alludes to the range of the contracted participations in the divine through the two grades in which, generically, human knowledge is divided: the sensualis cognitio, which contracts the truth into the appearance of particular data, and the intellectualis cognitio, which contracts into the universal and abstract manifestations.Although limiting himself to this binary scansion between sensus and intellectus – a schema destined to reappear frequently in many pages of his later works –, Cusanus still describes in this work the further distribution of both of these cognitive spheres into successive enlargements which correspond to a complex pyramidal hierarchy of existences: from inferior animals, in whose various species sensible knowledge progresses step by step through enlarging the contraction of the truth into grades of ever greater perfection, up to the intelligence, in which the appropriate knowledge of man, beyond any corruption and temporal mutability, is realized («homo est suus intellectus»); and, still higher, passing through the greatest possible extension for intellect in the human world, which is potentially the knowledge of all things, up to its assimilation into the actual true intellect, that of the divine. Just as polygons, in increasing the number of sides, are inscribed in an ever more perfect way in the circle without ever identifying themselves with its perfection, so also the forms of human knowledge increase the actualization of their identity with the known object, moving toward the unreachable perfection of divine knowledge. Actually, divine knowledge alone is, according the Pauline 8 Ibid., p. 167 (trans. p. 159). Cfr. also: J. HOPKINS, Die ars coniecturalis des Nikolaus von Kues, Colonia 1956; J. STALLMACH, Geist als Einheit und Anderseheit. Die Noologie des Cusanus in De coniecturis und De quaerendo Deum, in «Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft», 11 (1975), pp. 86116; T. VAN VELTHOVEN, Gottesschau und Menschliche Kreativität. Studien zur Erkenntnislehre des Nikolaus von Kues, Leiden 1977.

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expression, «all in all things» – that is to say, it alone comprehends, without contraction, all of the truth of being in an absolute and total vision9.According to the fundamental Platonic rule – assumed by Nicholas of Cusa as the framework for the doctrine of «learned ignorance» –, the limited intellect cannot draw forth the truth of things in themselves by assimilating itself perfectly to them. The final quidditas of things, which is the veritas entium, is untouchable for particular minds, in so far as they strive to pursue their exterior manifestation10. 9

Cfr. NICOLAUS CUSANUS, De docta ignorantia, III, 4 (Quomodo ipsum est Iesus benedictus, Deus et homo), edd. E. Hoffmann - R. Klibansky, in Opera omnia (following: Op.), I, Leipzig 1932, pp. 131,14-132,13; ed. L. Gabriel, Philosophischtheologische Schriften (following: Ph.-th.), Wien 1964, I, pp. 446-448: «Sensualis cognitio est quaedam contracta cognitio, propter quod sensus non attingit nisi particularia. Intellectualis cognitio est universalis, propter quod respectu sensualis absoluta existit atque abstracta a contractione particulari. Contrahitur autem sensatio varie ad varios gradus, per quas quidem contractiones variae animalium species exoriuntur secundum gradus nobilitatis et perfectionis. Et quamvis ad maximum gradum simpliciter non ascendat, ut superius ostendimus, in specie tamen illa, quae actu suprema est in genere animalitatis, puta humana, ibi sensus tale animal efficit, quod ita est animal, ut et sit intellectus. Homo enim est suus intellectus, ubi contractio sensualis quodammodo in intellectuali natura suppositatur, intellectuali natura existente quoddam divinum separatum abstractum esse, sensuali vero remanente temporali et corruptibili secundum suam naturam. (…) Intellectus enim in omnibus hominibus possibiliter est omnia, crescens gradatim de possibilitate in actum, ut quanto sit maior, minor sit in potentia. Maximus autem, cum sit terminus potentiae omnis intellectualis naturae, in actu existens pleniter nequaquam existere potest, quin ita sit intellectus, quod et sit Deus, qui est ‘omnia in omnibus’ (1Cor 15, 28). Quasi ut si polygonia circulo inscripta natura foret humana, et circulus divina: si ipsa polygonia maxima esse debet, qua maior esse non potest, nequaquam in finitis angulis per se subsisteret, sed in circulari figura, ita ut non haberet propriam subsistendi figuram, etiam intellectualiter ab ipsa circulari et aeterna figura separabilem». In the following notes the works of Cusanus will be cited without the name of the author and in reference to the two indicated editions. 10 Cfr. ibid., I, 3 (Quod praecisa veritas sit incomprehensibilis), Op., p. 9,10-28; Ph.-th., p. 202: «Non potest igitur finitus intellectus rerum veritatem per similitudinem praecise attingere.Veritas enim non est nec plus nec minus, in quodam indivisibili consistens, quam omne non ipsum verum existens praecise mensurare non potest; sicut nec circulum, cuius esse in quodam indivisibili consistit, noncirculus. Intellectus igitur, qui non est veritas, numquam veritatem adeo praecise comprehendit, quin per infinitum praecisius comprehendi possit, habens se ad veritatem sicut polygonia ad circulum, quae quanto inscripta plurium angulorum fuerit, tanto similior circulo. Numquam tamen efficitur aequalis, etiam si angulos in infinitum multiplicaverit, nisi in identitatem cum circulo se resolvat. (…) Quidditas ergo rerum, quae est entium veritas, in sua puritate inattingibilis est et per omnes philosophos investigata, sed per neminem, uti est, reperta; et quanto in

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The Apologia doctae ignorantiae, composed in 1449, illustrates the multiplication of creaturely cognitive efforts through the metaphor of a hunting dog absorbed in the pursuit of a fleeing prey – destined to become Cusanus’ theme in the De venatione sapientiae, before giving life to the Actaeon of Bruno.The multiplication is here clearly illustrated through a more articulated distribution of cognitive operations into several regiones corresponding to the diverse capacities of the contraction of the truth.The soul’s hierarchy would now include: sensibility; reason or ratiocinatio, which pursues the truth with the discursive distinction of juxtaposed conceptual elements; and the intellectus, whose purely intuitive view («visus mentis sine discursu») considers the recomposition («complicari») of such single and contradictory elements in the respective superior identities (just as numbers, lines, and circumferences resolve themselves respectively in the unity, in the point, and in the center)11. This terminological and conceptual maturation is explained by the fact that one attributes to this very period, which occurs between the two works on «learned ignorance» (between ’40-’45), the composition of the De coniecturis, a work explicitly aiming, as indicated by the title, to assure the foundation of the metaphysics of unity upon the recomposition of the ontological hierarchy of the multiple.This occurs through successive and limited contractions of the comprehensions of the truth – that is, as noted above, of «conjectures»12. It is here, in fact, hac ignorantia profundius docti fuerimus, tanto magis ipsam accedimus veritatem». 11 Cfr. Apologia doctae ignorantiae, ed. R. Klibansky, in Op., II, Leipzig 1932, pp. 14,25-15,13; Ph.-th., I, pp. 548-550: «Hinc, uti venaticus canis utitur in vestigiis per sensibile experimentum discursu sibi indito, ut demum ea via ad quaesitum attingat: sic quodlibet animal suo modo (…), sic homo logica. (…) Rationabilia vero animalia ratiocinantur. Ratiocinatio quaerit et discurrit. Discursus est necessario terminatus inter terminos a quo et ad quem, et illa adversa sibi dicimus contradictoria. Unde rationi discurrenti termini oppositi et disiuncti sunt. Quare in regione rationis extrema sunt disiuncta, ut in ratione circuli, quae est, quod lineae a centro ad circumferentiam sint aequales, centrum non potest coincidere cum circumferentia. Sed in regione intellectus, qui vidit in unitate numerum complicari et in puncto lineam et in centro circulum, coincidentia unitatis et pluralitatis, puncti et lineae, centri et circuli attingitur visu mentis sine discursu». Cfr. also the text from BOETHIUS’ Consolatio philosophiae cit. above, cap. 2, note 108. 12 Cfr. De coniecturis, I, 11 (De participatione), 57, edd. J. Koch - K. Bormann H. G. Senger, in Op., III, Hamburg 1972, p. 58,10-11; Ph.-th., II, p. 60: «Coniectura igitur est positiva assertio in alteritate veritatem, uti est, participans». On De

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that Cusanus fixes the gradation of creatural cognitive activity in the three superimposed spheres of sense, reason, and intellect or intelligence. While the divine mind is capable of gathering the unity of the truth, the three creaturely faculties can aspire only to the formulation of cognitive hypotheses, which participate in a limited way in the truth, lacking its unreachable perfection13. Three inferior forms of the contraction of unity, ever less adequate than the one accomplished by the divine mind, come to the surface along this gnoseological path, which appears to be descending in its genesis, but ascending in its finalities.Thus, the intelligentia, or intellectus, strives to grasp the truth of things in God, pursuing a still efficacious, but now irredeemably dissipated, unity between thinker and thought.The ratio, or anima in the strict sense, can investigate the contents of the intelligence only by juxtaposing them among themselves, like the angles of a square figure, in order to distinguish them and measure them: yet it reduces itself in this way to a verisimilitude of being, which is obscured by the persistence of multiplicity. Finally, sensible knowledge, sensus or corpus, emerges from the anima, and isolates one by one the objects of rational knowledge, contracting them into single material images, which overwhelm, along with their simplicity, even the verisimilitude, and drive the full comprehension of the One into the greatest degree of contracted confusion14. coniecturis, in general, cfr.: J. KOCH, Der Sinn des zweiten Hauptwerkes des Nicolaus von Kues De coniecturis, in Niccolò da Cusa, Relazioni tenute al convegno interuniversitario di Bressanone nel 1960, Firenze 1962 (Pubblicazioni della Facoltà di Magistero dell’Università di Padova, 4), pp. 101-119, and in ID., Kleine Schriften, 2 voll., Roma 1973 (Storia e Letteratura, 127-128), I, pp. 599-616; C. L. MILLER, Nicholas of Cusa’s On conjectures (De coniecturis), in Nicholas of Cusa in search of God and Wisdom, Essays in honour of M.Watanabe, edd. G. Christianson - T. M. Izbicki, Leiden - New York 1991 (Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 45), pp. 119-140; and the whole issue of «Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft», 11 (1975). 13 Cfr. De coniecturis, ibid., Op., p. 58,11-17, Ph.-th., p. 60: «Quemadmodum vero sensus in unitate rationis suam alteritatem experitur et assertiones sensibiles ab unitate praecisionis absolvendo coniecturas facit, ita ratio in radicali unitate sua, in ipso scilicet intelligentiae lumine, suam alteritatem et casum a praecisione in coniecturam invenit, sic et intelligentia ipsa, ut propinqua potentia, in unitate divina se suo quidem clarissimo modo gaudet coniect[ur]ari». 14 Cfr. ibid., I, 4 (De quattuor unitatibus), 13-14, Op., p. 19,11-16 and 1-6; Ph.-th., p. 16: «Contemplatur itaque mens ipsa universam suam entitatem in his quaterne distinctis unitatibus, ut aliam videat simplicissimam mentem prioriter

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The rational faculty is essential to man and justifies his place at the center of creation, which is composed of visible and invisible realities. The human anima is able to actualize its particular knowledge in two forms: one directed towards bodies, vegetative life and sensuality, which is called anima phantastica or imaginativa; the other, which aims to perfect itself in the superior intelligence, and is the ratio in the strict sense, or anima apprehensiva.Within this division of reason, the three cognitive spheres give rise, in man alone, to four powers, on the basis of which the anima becomes composed (in symmetry with the sensible cosmos) of four elements hierarchically arranged in a process of ascending perfection.The anima is therefore the hinge and mirror of the intelligible world15.The superiority of the intelligentia, the highest creatural faculty, is evident within such a human microcosm, since it is capable of going back to distinct and contradictory notions isolated by apprehensive rationality, and restructuring them into a simplified perception by striving to intuit the coincidence of finite definitions in infinity. For example, by deducing from ratio (obliged to measure and distinguish its own objects) the incompatibility of movement and rest, the intelligentia discovers, by intuiting the divine infinity, the superior coincidence of inexhaustible movement with perfect rest; then, irradiating in a reverse sense the result of its simple intuition, and drawn by the ad cuncta ut creator se habentem, aliam egressam proxime ab illa, aliarum radicem, aliam ab hac radice egressam ad quartam inclinari, quae sua grossiori soliditate ulterius proficisci non sinit. Has mentales unitates vocalibus signis figurat. Primam quidem altissimam simplicissimamque mentem deum nominat, aliam radicalem, nullam priorem sui habens radicem, intelligentiam appellat, tertiam, quadratam intelligentiae contractionem, animam vocat, finalem autem soliditatem grossam explicatam, non amplius complicantem, corpus esse coniecturatur». On the theory of the four unities, cfr. KOCH, Der Sinn cit. (above, note 14), esp. p. 602. 15 Cfr. ibid., II, 16 (De humana anima), 157 and 159, Op., p. 156,4-10 and 159,6-10; Ph.-th., pp. 174-178: «Descendente igitur lumine intelligentiae in umbram sensualem atque ascendente sensu in intellectum per gradus ternos medio loco duo exoriuntur, quae rationis nomen habere suppono. Superior autem huius rationis portio, quae intellectui proprio reperitur, apprehensiva, inferior vero phantastica, seu imaginativa. (…) Haec sunt quasi animae humanae quattuor elementa. (…) Unit enim [scil. intelligentia] alteritates sensatorum in phantasia, varietatem alteritatum phantasmatum unit in ratione, variam alteritatem rationum in sua unit intellectuali simplici unitate. Descendit unitas intellectus in alteritatem rationis, unitas rationis in alteritatem imaginationis, unitas imaginationis in alteritatem sensus».

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absolute simplicity of the One-Truth in itself, intelligentia also bears ratio toward higher things, inducing it to surpass its own limits16.The De coniecturis shows how it is precisely the intelligentia which may fulfill Cusanus’ speculative project – described in De docta ignorantia –, by carrying out its own cognitive method («intellectualiter»), which surpasses, by assuming it into itself, the method of rational discursive logic. The tripartite division of the cognitive faculties then returns, with greater or lesser precision, even in the successive pages of the De coniecturis, always with the purpose of describing the natural path which leads the soul from the consideration of things to the consideration of the Creator. It reemerges, above all, in the theological works written prior to his elevation to Cardinal in 1448: in the Dialogus de Genesi, where the division of the faculties of knowledge, reflecting the universal order, allows for the ascent from the comprehension of distinct created individuals to the intellectual recognition of the true quidditas of every thing in the universal cause17; in the De quaerendo Deum, where the ascending 16

Cfr. ibid., I, 6 (De secunda unitate), 23-26, Op., pp. 29,3-30,15, 31,17-18, 32,8-9, 33,1-2; Ph.-th., pp. 24-28: «Omne enim de intelligentia qualitercumque affirmabile incompatibile non habet oppositum.Altius enim atque simplicius est intellectuale esse eo essendi modo, quod cum non esse est incompatibile. Unde intellectualis illa unitas radix quaedam complicativa oppositorum in eius explicatione incompatibilium exsistit. Ea enim opposita, quae in explicata eius rationalis unitatis quadratura incompatibilia sunt, in ipsa complicantur. Motus enim rationabiliter quieti incompatibiliter opponitur. Sed sicut infinitus motus coincidit cum quiete in primo, ita et in proxima eius similitudine non se exterminant, sed compatiuntur. Nam motui intelligentiae non ita opponitur quies quod, dum movetur, pariter non quiescat; simplicior enim est hic motus intellectualis quam ratio mensurare queat. Similiter et de quiete et ceteris omnibus. (…) Habet se igitur intelligentia ad rationem, quasi Deus ipse ad intelligentiam. (…) Sicut enim intellectus radix est rationis, ita quidem termini intellectuales radices sunt rationalium. (…) Intelligentia igitur nihil horum est, quae dici aut nominari possunt, sed est principium rationis omnium, sicut Deus intelligentiae». Cfr. also ibid., 12 (Explicatio), 52, Op., pp. 53,1-54,13; Ph.-th., p. 54: «Tanta est igitur vis simplicis intellectualis naturae, ut ambiat ea, quae ratio ut opposita disiungit. Ratio enim, quae numerum absque proportione non attingit atque maximum actu admittit, ex noto ad ignota se viam habere coniecturatur. Intellectus autem debilitatem rationis advertens, has abicit coniecturas, affirmans eos numeros proportionaliter pariter et improportionales, ut omnium pariter et singulorum lateat praecisio, quae est Deus benedictus. Ratio vero praecisio quidem sensus existit (…). Rationalium vero praecisio intellectus est, qui est vera mensura. Summa autem praecisio intellectus est veritas ipsa, quae Deus est». 17 Cfr. Dialogus de Genesi, IV, 168-170, ed. P.Wilpert, in Op., IV (Opuscula I),

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scale of faculties is resolved in the theological-apophatic satisfaction (in the pseudo-Dionysian sense) of every cognitive hope, thanks to a progressive stripping away of all contracted limitations of the truth, with the actualization of a real ascending methodology for the mystical annulment of subjectivity18;and again in the De filiatione Dei, where the point of arrival of this gradation of cognitive perfections is identified with the achievement of the deificatio or théosis promised by Christ to those who believe in his name. Thus, while the sublimation of reason into the intellect draws the creation of man in the likeness of God toward completion, the intellect, illuminated by the faith, will be able to reach the promised perfection by actualizing in itself such a divine seed through the intuitive adhesion to the vision-truth of the divine Word19. Hamburg 1959, pp. 120,12-16, 120,1-121,7 and 121,1-2; Ph.-th., II, pp. 420-422: «Nam magna facilitate hoc compendio similitudinis eo ductus sum, ut rerum ordinem pulcherrimum intuear, scilicet quomodo corporalia sint ob sensibilem discretionem et sensibilis discretio ob rationalem, rationalis ob intellectualem, intellectualis ob veram causam, quae est universorum creatrix.Video enim apertissime in praemisso paradigmate omnem naturam servire intellectuali sicut eius assimilationes, ut ipsa sit signaculum verae et absolutae causae atque ut sic omne ens eius medio attingat fontem sui esse. Nam quid quaerit omnis sensibilis inquietatio nisi discretionem seu rationem? Quid quaerit omnis ratiocinatio nisi intellectum? Quid quaerit omnis intellectus nisi veram absolutam causam? (…) Solus igitur intellectus habet oculum ad intuendum quiditatem, quam intueri nequit nisi in causa vera, quae est fons omnis desiderii». 18 Cfr. De quaerendo Deum, 5, 49-50, ed.Wilpert, in Op., ibid., pp. 34,7,24 and 35,1-5; Ph.-th., II, pp. 604-606: «Dum igitur Deum concipis esse melius quam concipi possit, omnia abicis, quae terminantur et contracta sunt.Abicis corpus dicens Deum non esse corpus, scilicet terminatum quantitate, loco, figura, situ.Abicis sensus, qui terminati sunt: non vides per montem, non in terra abscondita, non in solarem claritatem, et ita de auditu et ceteris sensibus. Omnes enim illi terminati sunt in potentia et virtute. Non sunt igitur Deus. Abicis sensum communem, phantasiam et imaginationem, nam non excedunt naturam corporalem. Non enim imaginatio attingit non-corporeum. Abicis rationem, nam ipsa saepe deficit, non omnia attingit. (…) Abicis intellectum, nam et ipse intellectus terminatus est in virtute, licet omnia ambiat. Quiditatem tamen in sua puritate rei cuiuscumque non potest perfecte attingere et, quidquid attingit, videt perfectiori modo attingibile. Non est igitur Deus intellectus. Sed dum quaeris ultra, non reperis in te quidquam Deo simile, sed affirmas Deum supra haec omnia ut causam, principium atque lumen vitae animae tuae intellectivae. Gaudebis cum repperisse ultra omnem tui intimitatem tamquam fontem boni, a quo tibi effluit omne id, quod habes.Ad ipsum te convertis intra te dietim profundius intrando, linquendo omnia, quae sunt ad extra, ut inveniaris in via illa, qua reperitur Deus, ut eum post haec in veritate apprehendere queas». 19 Cfr. De filiatione Dei, 1, 52-53, ed.Wilpert, in Op., ibid., pp. 39,2-40,8 and 40,1-8; Ph.-th., II, pp. 610-614: «Theosim vero tu ipse nosti ultimitatem perfec-

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Yet, even in the writings which document the final developments of Cusanus’ thought, the ascending articulation of the faculties of the soul appears once again, this time with particularly incisive specifications regarding the methodological aspect. Plato’s gnoseological hierarchy, in both the trifold and fourfold variant (sensibility, imagination, reason, intellect), recurs in the first series, the De Sapientia, of the Idiota dialogues (composed in 1450) as a supporting structure for the formation process of wisdom in its successive actualizations20. It is then newly introduced as one of the foundations of Cusanus’ anthropology in the second series, De Mente. As a complex and unitary expression of the nature of the human subject, which divides and organizes in itself all the psychological activities, the mens, in so far as it is ordered to give life to the body, is called anima, the principle of vegetative life and sensible life; yet, considered in itself, it is the forma substantialis, that is the living substance which includes in itself («complicans»), by ranging them in a hierarchy, all the grades of knowledge: the sensitiva, the ratiocinativa, the intellectualis, up to the inteltionis exsistere, quae et notitia Dei et Verbi seu visio intuitiva vocitatur. Hanc enim ego theologi Iohannis sententiam esse arbitror quomodo logos seu ratio aeterna quae fuit ‘in principio’ Deus ‘apud Deum’, lumen homini dedit rationale, cum ei spiritum tradidit ad sui similitudinem. (…) Haec est superadmiranda divinae virtutis participatio, ut rationalis noster spiritus in sua vi intellectuali hanc habeat potestatem, quasi semen divinum sit intellectus ipse, cuius virtus in credente in tantum ascendere possit, ut pertingat ad theosim ipsam, ad ultimam scilicet intellectus perfectionem, hoc est ad ipsam apprehensionem veritatis, non uti ipsa veritas est obumbrata in figura et in aenigmate et varia alteritate in hoc sensibili mundo, sed ut in se ipsa intellectualiter visibilis». Even here at the base of the ascent of reason toward the intellect, one finds the sensus as the initial grade: cfr. ibid., 2 and 3. 20 Cfr. Idiota de Sapientia, I, ed. L. Baur, in Op.,V, Leipzig 1937, p. 11,3-9; Ph.th., III, p. 430: «Sapientia est, quae sapit, qua nihil dulcius intellectui. (…) Ipsa autem, quia in altissimis habitat, non est omni sapore gustabilis. Ingustabiliter ergo gustatur, cum sit altior omni gustabili: sensibili, rationali et intellectuali». Cfr. also ibid., Op., pp. 22,10-18; Ph.-th., pp. 446-448: «Ex quo evenit, ut sapientia in variis formis varie recepta hoc efficiat, ut quaelibet ad identitatem vocata modo quo potest sapientiam participet, ut quaedam eandem participent in quodam spiritu valde distanti a prima forma, quae vix esse elementale tribuit, alia in magis formato, quae esse minerale tribuit, alia adhuc in nobiliori gradu, quae vitam praebet vegetabilem, adhuc alia in altiori, quae sensibilem, post hoc quae imaginabilem, deinde quae rationalem, post quae intellectualem. Et hic gradus est altissimus: proxima scilicet sapientiae imago».The fourfold division of the psychic faculties, present also in the De quaerendo Deum (cfr. above, note 18), returns in Gli eroici furori of Bruno (cfr. above, note 3).

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lectibilis (the final term indicating the highest theological capacity possible for creatures)21.As vis (i. e., efficacy in act), the mens realizes in itself all the virtutes (potentialities) of the particular cognitive operations: therefore it merits, in its entirety, the name of vis intelligendi ratiocinandi imaginandi et sentiendi, being endowed, in its superior unity, with the capacity for summarizing every form of knowledge of created things22. The hierarchy of the modi cognoscitivi reappears for the last time in the De beryllo (written in 1458) in its triadic version, though it occurs with a terminological correction probably emerging from a reconsideration of the differences of nomenclature between Cusanus’ early and more recent writings. Intellectus indicates here, in fact, the highest form of activity of ratio, a term which appears to be used as a generic name for the anima in as far as it knows separately from the soul.The sphere which is superior to natural reason – that which was first indicated as the specific intellectual activity – becomes here, however, the faculty intelligentialis or (as in the De Mente) intellectibilis.Thus anima sensitiva or sensus, anima intellectiva or rationalis, and anima intelligentialis or intelligentia, basically correspond here to the three grades previously designated as 21

Cfr. Idiota de Mente, 5 (Quomodo mens est viva substantia […] et quomodo mens viva sit descriptio aeternae sapientiae), ed. L. Baur, in Op., ibid., pp. 62,15-63,5; Ph.-th., III, p. 512: «Mens est viva substantia, quam in nobis interne loqui et iudicare experimur, et quae omni vi alia, ex omnibus viribus spiritualibus, quas in nobis experimur, infinitae substantiae et absolutae formae plus assimilatur. Cuius officium in hoc corpore est corpus vivificare; et ex hoc anima dicitur. Unde mens est forma substantialis sive vis in se omnia suo modo complicans, et vim animativam, per quam corpus animat vivificando vita vegetativa et sensitiva, et vim ratiocinativam et intellectualem et intellectibilem complicans». For the use of the notion of mens, as expressive of the complex of cognitive activities of the human subject, cfr. already the text from De coniecturiis cited above in the note 14. Cusanus probably draws the use of the intellectibilis in the sense here from the logical writings of Boethius: cfr. D’ONOFRIO, La scala ricamata cit. (above, cap. 1, note 7), esp. pp. 36-44. 22 Cfr. Idiota de Mente, 11 (Quomodo […] mens nostra est ex comprehendendi modis composita), Op., p. 100,10-21; Ph.-th., pp. 580-582: «Est autem mens nostra vis comprehendendi et totum virtuale ex omnibus comprehendendi virtutibus compositum. Quilibet igitur modus, cum pars eius sit substantialis, de tota mente verificatur. Quemadmodum autem modi comprehendendi sint substantiales partes virtutis, quae mens dicitur, difficulter dici posse arbitror. Nam cum mens sic vel sic intelligat, tunc virtutes eius intelligendi, quae sunt partes eius, accidentia esse nequeunt. (…) Mens virtualiter constat ex virtute intelligendi, ratiocinandi, imaginandi et sentiendi, ita quod ipsa tota dicatur vis intelligendi, vis ratiocinandi, vis imaginandi et vis sentiendi». Cfr. also ibid., 7, Op., pp. 74,13-75,11; Ph.-th., pp. 532-534.

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sensus, ratio, and intellectus23. Nevertheless, even if the name intelligentia indicates the level – a form of knowledge accessible to man, though particular to angelic essences – in which the definitive assimilation of the soul to the identity with the divine is achieved, intellectualis remains even here for Nicholas of Cusa the name of the superior activity of the natural cognitive human capacity: it indicates, in fact, the operation that, in the manner of a lens (beryllus) which corrects and empowers the limited and imperfect view of the corporeal eye, allows for the perfecting of the vigor rationis by leading it toward the comprehension of the coincidentia oppositorum and, by this means, toward the consideration of the indivisible principle of all things24.

3. The polypartite soul in late ancient, medieval, and Renaissance Platonism As clearly demonstrated in the preceding chapters on Boethius and John the Scot, Giordano Bruno’s reference to the «Platonists» as supporters of the psychological conception described up to this point is well founded.The doctrine according to which the diverse human cognitive functions are carried out by distinct fac23

Cfr. De beryllo, 5, ed. L. Baur, in Op., XI, Leipzig 1940, pp. 7,5-8,13; Ph.-th., III, p. 6: «Sunt autem tres modi cognoscitivi, scilicet sensibilis, intellectualis et intelligentialis, qui dicuntur caeli secundum Augustinum. Sensibile in sensu est per suam sensibilem speciem sive similitudinem, et sensus in sensibili per suam sensitivam speciem. Sic intelligibile in intellectu per suam intelligibilem similitudinem, et intellectus in intelligibili per suam intellectivam similitudinem. Ita intelligentiale in intelligentia et e converso. Illi termini te non turbent, quia aliquando intelligentiale nominatur intellectibile. Ego autem nomino sic propter intelligentias» (for the reference to Augustine, cfr. below, note 83). Cfr. also ibid., 24, Op., p. 27,2-3; Ph.-th., p. 28: «In homine est intellectus supremitas rationis, cuius esse est a corpore separatum et per se verum». 24 Cfr. ibid., 1, Op., p. 3,2-5; Ph.-th., p. 2: «Qui legerit ea, quae in variis scripsi libelli, videbit me in oppositorum coincidentia crebrius versatum, quodque nisus sum frequenter iuxta intellectualem visionem, quae excedit rationis vigorem, concludere»; and ibid., 3, Op., pp. 5,1-6; Ph.-th., p. 4: «Beryllus lapis est lucidus, albus et transparens, cui datur forma concava pariter et convexa, et per ipsum videns attingit prius invisibile. Intellectualibus oculis si intellectualis beryllus, qui formam habeat maximam pariter et minimam, adaptatur, per eius medium attingitur indivisibile omnium principium. Quomodo autem hoc fiat, propono quanto clarius possum enodare». Regarding Cusanus’ use of intelligentia, one can find a possible influence in the language of pseudo-Dionsyius, who used it as the name for angelic cognitive activity: cfr. below, note 69.

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ulties of the soul which approach the known object with various, and, moreover, juxtaposed perspectives, «on the basis of a reciprocal rapport of clarity and obscurity» (safhneiva/ kai; ajsafeiva/ pro;" a[llhla), is derived from a fundamental theme of Platonic thought. It is explained in the concluding part of the sixth book of the Republic by the so-called ‘theory of the line’ divided into four segments, which describes the four diverse parts of knowledge; the segments are paired into two groups corresponding to the superior division of the sensible world and the intelligible world: corporeal images and sensible things, which are the sources of knowledge, and intelligible hypotheses and absolute principles (that is, ideas), which are their archetypal models25. Departing from this image, Plato distinguishes the functions put into act by the cognitive soul in the four distinct fields: pure conjecture (eijkasiva) worked out by the senses (aijsqhvsei") in reference to the shadows or images of bodies; the assent (pivsti") which they concede to a corporeal conception perceived in a clearer and more direct way: these two levels constitute together the field of comprehension through opinion (dovxa); then reflection (diavnoia) and intellect (nou`'"), which follow one another in the improvement of an ever more perfect scientific comprehension (ejpisthvmh)26. It is well-known how, in the seventh book, Plato had worked out, in the myth of the cave, a more organic and persuasive presentation of the fourfold division of the grades of knowledge, and of the diverse and particular instrumentalizations through which the soul advances into each of them27. With a decisive deepening of the theological order, Plotinus accentuated in the gnoseological theory of Plato the role of the highest grade, the nou`", which became a quality proper to the divine mind – the only mind capable of considering, with a unitary and totalizing view, the true mode of being for the whole of multiple things, comprehending it within a unique, living, persistent, and indivisible eternity28.Yet, in order to reserve for the divine 25

Cfr. PLATO, Respublica,VI, 509d-510b. Cfr. ibid., 511de. 27 Cfr. ibid.,VII, 514a-518c; cfr. also ibid., 533d.About the polypartition of the soul in PLATO, see also Symposium, 210ad, and Timaeus, 29a. 28 Cfr. PLOTINUS, Enneades, III, 7, 3, edd. Henry - Schwyzer cit. (above, cap. 1, note 92), t. I, pp. 370-372. 26

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mind this absolute capacity of gathering the truth in itself, and to justify the appearance of the multiplicity – not only in the sensible, but also in the intelligible world –, the third Ennead attributes to the Soul a «restless power» (dunavmi" ti" oujc h{suco"), which, incapable of knowing all things at once and desirous of the passage from one object to another, introduces first into itself, and then into its objects of knowledge, the temporal division, the pale image of the perfect omni-comprehensibility of eternity29. For Plotinus, the true nou`'" is therefore the pure and authentic capacity of ‘thinking itself ’ as the knowledge of all (to; pa'n), and not according to divided successions, which are typical both of sensible perception (ai[sqhsi"), and of the mediated and discursive reflection (diavnoia): mediated thinking is in fact constrained to operate always on the multiple and imperfect data suggested by the senses, even when, as in the knowledge of the ‘good’, it is illuminated from above (that is, from the nou`'" itself).Thus, one can say that men, elevating their discursive thought (to; logizovmenon) to the greatest precision possible, and then surpassing it, are able to participate effectively, but only in an imperfect and inauthentic form, in the superior intelligence, in itself the exclusive prerogative of the Divine30.Thus Neoplatonism demonstrates the theo29

Cfr. ibid., 11, pp. 386-389. Cfr. also ibid.,V, 1, 4, edd. Henry - Schwyzer cit., t. II, pp. 266-270. 30 Cfr. ibid.,V, 3, 1 and 3, pp. 298-302 (Eng. trans. in Neoplatonic Philosophy: Introductory Readings, by J. Dillon and L. Gerson, Cambridge 2004, pp. 86-89): «In fact, that which is said to think itself for the reason that it is a composite, just because some one part of itself thinks the others, as if we were to grasp in senseperception our own shape and the rest of our bodily nature, would not be able truly to think itself. For in this case, it will not be the whole that is known, since that part which thinks the other parts which are with it has also not been thinking itself. And then this will not be the sought for case of ‘self [thinking] itself ’, but a case of one thing thinking another. (…) So, then, sense-perception saw a human being and gave the impression to discursive.What does discursive thinking say? In fact, it says nothing yet, but rather just became aware and stopped at that. Unless, that is, it were to converse with itself and say, ‘Who is this?’ assuming it had met this human being before and would then say, relying on its memory, that this is Socrates. And if it analyzes the shape, it is dividing up what the imagination has give it. And if it should say whether he is good [or not], it has said this based on what it has become aware of through sense-perception, but what it has said about these things it would already have in itself, having a rule about the Good in itself. How does it have the Good in itself? In fact, it is Goodlike, and is fortified for the sense-perception of this sort of thing by Intellect illuminating it. (…) In fact, it (the Intellect) is ours and not ours. For this reason

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logical matrix of the Platonic theory of knowledge, attributing to the divine Intellect alone the perfect, absolute, and totalizing knowledge of the entire reality produced from the One; and to the human soul a series of forms in succession, ever partial and imperfect, of a subjective representation of the truth, with which it adapts its own limited capacities to the diverse manifestations of the same object. It is to Proclus’ credit to have proposed, on the basis of these Plotinian texts, a complete and organic scalar systematization of the cognitive powers, from the weakest – directed to the recognition of the single sensible datum – to the highest – intuitive, immediate and omni-comprehensive. He designates man as the only being capable of participating in all levels, including the highest, that is, the divine – though, in this case, only in an imperfect form, which is subjected to the tyranny of diversifying temporality. Thus in the De decem dubitationibus, by investigating the manner in which divine providence is able to know all things, even particular and corruptible things, he distributes the forms of knowledge corresponding to the various genres of existence into a graduated hierarchy. He shows how, in the cognitive capacity of higher grades, even the objects and the forms of the inferior grades are acquired and unified in a superior order of comprehensibility. He superimposes reason over sense and fantasy, and the intellect over reason.Then he divides the intellect, which is capable of comprehending all things, into two grades: imperfect intellect, which is still limited and to which men arrive with their natural powers; and the perfect intellect, which is celestial and unifies the totality of the multiple. Beyond this level there is the sole absolute identity and super-intellectual inalterability of providence31. Synthetically, in the tractate De providentia, Proclus sumwe use it and do not use it, though we always make use of discursive reasoning. It is ours when we use it and not ours when we do not». 31 Cfr. PROCLUS PHILOSOPHUS, De decem dubitationibus, q. 1, 2-4, in Tria opuscula (De providentia, libertate, malo), Lat. trans. of William of Moerbeke, ed. Boese cit. (ch. 2, note 97), I, pp. 4,1-6,4: «Et ante alia queramus, si providentia est omnium, totorum, partium et usque ad individuissima (…), quomodo cognoscit omnia, et tota et partes et corruptibilia et eterna, et quis modus cognitionis? (…) Dicamus quod cognitio alia quidem utique esse intelligetur irrationabilitati complantata, sensus aut fantasia vocata, existens rerum partialium utraque omnino et non extra corpora, quod et partialium ipsas entes cognitiones manifestat. Alia

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marizes the Platonic doctrine of the knowledge of ‘the similar’ through ‘the similar’ by means of a rapid formulation of the cognitive hierarchy in four grades: «omnia enim simili cognoscuntur: sensible sensu, scibile scientia, intelligible intellectu, unum uniali», as one finds it in the Latin translation of William of Moerbeke32. Nicholas of Cusa displayed great interest in the writings of Proclus. He read the commentary on the Parmenides. He also brought from Constantinople a copy of the original Greek text of the Platonic Theology, and asked Ambrose Traversari to translate it into Latin33. It is not improbable therefore that he was able to read, in the version of Moerbeke, even these theological tractates and their references to the Platonic gnoseological doctrines34. Certainly he was not ignorant of the writings of Boethius, who, as we have been able to ascertain35, was – after concise allusions autem rationali vite secundum substantiam inexistens, opinio quedam haec et scientia appellata, ab irrationabilibus quidem differens cognitionibus eo quod universalia cognoscat (…). Alia autem ante has intellectualis dicta cognitio, hec quidem simul omnium et simpliciter, hec autem secundum unum omnium, quibus utique et differunt que omnimode perfecti intellectus cognitio et que est partialium intellectuum (…). Ultra autem has omnes est providentiae cognitio, super intellectuum existens et uno solo, secundum quod et est unusquisque Deus et providere omnium dicere, in ea que ante intelligere operatione sistens se ipsum». 32 ID., De providentia, c. 8, 31, ibid., II, p. 140,7-9. See above, ch. 2, note 97. 33 Cfr. K. BORMANN - H. G. SENGER, Cusanus-texte, III, Marginalien. 2. Proclus latinus, Heidelberg 1986 (Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse);W. BEIERWALTES, Das seiende Eine. Zur neuplatonischen Interpretation der zweiten Hypothesis des platonischen Parmenides: das Beispiel Cusanus, in Proclus et son influence, Actes du colloque de Neuchâtel (Juin 1985), éd. par G. Boss - G. Seel, Paris 1987, pp. 287-297; ID., Centrum tocius vite. Zur bedeutung von Proklos’ Theologia Platonis im Denken des Cusanus, in Proclus et la Théologie Platonicienne, Actes du Colloque International (Louvain, 13-16 mai 1998), éd. par A. Ph. Segonds - C. Steel, Louvain - Paris 2000 (Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, De Wulf - Mansion Centre, Ser. 1, 26), pp. 629-651. 34 In general, on the diffusion of the texts of Proclus in the late medieval German environment, cfr. L. STURLESE, Proclo ed Ermete in Germania da Alberto Magno a Bertoldo di Moosburg. Per una prospettiva di ricerca sulla cultura filosofica tedesca nel secolo delle sue origini (1250-1350), in Von Meister Dietrich zu Meister Eckhart, hrsg. von K. Flasch, Hamburg 1984 (Corpus Philosophorum Teutonicorum Medii Aevi, Beihefte, 2), pp. 22-33; ID., Il dibattito sul Proclo latino nel medioevo fra l’università di Parigi e lo studium di Colonia, in Proclus et son influence cit. (preceding note), pp. 261-285. 35 Cfr. above, cap. 2, pp. 116-124. On Boethius as a source for Cusanus regarding the use of the term «intellectibilis», cfr. above, note 21.

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on the part of a few authors of the patristic age36 – the most efficacious transmitter to the West of the Platonic polydivision of the faculties of the soul. We have also already seen the manner in which the transmission of the Platonic gnoseology to early medieval monastic culture made use of, in the second half or the ninth century, the mediation of the Periphyseon of John Scotus Eriugena37. It is well-known how the Periphyseon was among the early-medieval sources most widely read and studied by Nicholas of Cusa, who recognized in it suggestive anticipations of fundamental aspects of his own thought. One example, among others, would be the consideration of the contemplative result of an intuitive and unmediated intellectus, capable of elevating itself above the paths of the discursive ratio by realizing at the same time an inversion and a surpassing of it38. Boethius and John the Scot are, however, only the main threads of a long line of authors who, in the subsequent decades of the pre-Aristotelian Middle Ages, and, particularly, during the twelfth century, were witnesses to a great 36

Cfr. AMBROSIUS MEDIOLANENSIS, Expositio Psalmi CXVIII, X, 11, PL 15, 1403B, ed. Petschenig cit. (above, cap. 4, note 60), p. 209,16-17: «Vivacis animae vigor sensus, rationis et intellectus capax, atque judicii». 37 Cfr. above, cap. 3, pp. 183-186. 38 Cfr. C. RICCATI, Processio et Explicatio. La doctrine de la création chez Jean Scot et Nicolas de Cues, Napoli 1983 (Istituto Italiano per gli studi Filosofici, Serie Studi, 6), and the review of W. BEIERWALTES in this volume in «Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft», 17 (1986), pp. 272-277 (in particular, on p. 273, among the terms which connect Eriugena and Cusanus, Beierwaltes highlights in particular the emergence of a «kontemplative Ideal…, das auf einem die ‘ratio’ übersteigenden, durch reflektiertes Nicht-Wissen bestimmten ‘intellectus’ gründet»). Cfr. also BEIERWALTES’ essay Eriugena und Cusanus, in Eriugena redivivus, Zur Wirkungsgeschichte seines Denkens im Mittelalter und im Übergang zur Neuzeit,Vorträge des V. Internationalen Eriugena-Colloquiums (Bad Homburg, 26.-30.August 1985), hrsg. von W. Beierwaltes, Heidelberg 1987 (Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophischhistorische Klasse, Jahrg. 1987, 1. Abh.), pp. 311-343. Except for some explicit citations in his writings, a series of marginal glosses, published by J. KOCH, in «Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft», 3 (1963), pp. 86-100, demonstrates that Cusanus had direct knowledge at least of the first book of the Periphyseon. Other extent documents of Eriugena’s masterwork then arrived through the reading of the Clavis Physicae of Honorius Augustodunensis, who reproduced substantial excerpts from it. Even the Clavis was marginally commented upon by Cusanus, and among these glosses, published by LUCENTINI, Platonismo Medievale cit. (ch. 3, note 2), pp. 77-103, one piece of evidence in particular is his attention to a passage in which Honorius transcribes the pages of the second book of the Periphyseon dedicated to the cognitive tripartite division: «quomodo gignit intellectus rationem» (ibid., p. 94).

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number of variations regarding the multiplication of the faculties of the soul. This doctrine was especially appreciated among the mystical currents of the monastic environment: the monks had perceived in it the possibility of founding a fecund hierarchization of the cognitive motions, which would be useful for describing the ascending stages of the human spirit from the sphere of corporeity to the contemplation of invisible realities, and, furthermore, up to the direct intuition of the divine, reachable by means of the highest cognitive grade, that of the non-discursive intellectual-noetic39. The previous chapter clearly illustrates how, despite the absence of explicit references to the polypartite gnoseology, a hierarchization of the cognitive activities already emerges from the theological thought of Anselm. The truth and the existential reality of the quo maius, in the Proslogion, are the immediate consequence of a primordial certainty, emerging from the intuitive fecundity of a topical argumentum, which belongs to a superior order in respect to the demonstrations of the discursive ratio40. The theological efficacy of the intuitive, pre-rational act (i. e., intellectual-noetic) emerges, on the other hand, from other pages of the theological writings of Anselm. This is the case even if, from the terminological point of view in his language, it is demonstrable that for the most part there is a non-specific use of terms, such as intellectus or animus, which do not correspond to a part, or to a faculty, of the soul different from ratio, but either identify with reason and with its cognitive motions, that is, with the intelligentia41; or indicate the effect of reason, that is, the acqui39

About the meaning and the use of ‘noetic’, cfr. above, cap. 2, note 100. Cfr. above, cap. 4, pp. 252-260. 41 Cfr. ANSELMUS CANTUARIENSIS, Epistola de incarnatione Verbi, 4, 270CD, ed. Schmitt cit. (above, cap. 4, note 2), II, p. 17,14-16: «Sed si simplicem habet intellectum et non multiplicitate phantasmatum obrutum, intelligit simplicia praestare compositis». Monologion, 23, 177A, ed. Schmitt, I, pp. 41,26-42,2: «Solemus namque saepe localia verba irreprehensibiliter attribuere rebus, quae nec loca sunt nec circumscriptione locali continentur.Velut si dicam ibi esse intellectum in anima ubi est rationalitas. Nam cum ‘ibi’ et ‘ubi’ localia verba sint, non tamen locali circumscriptione aut anima continet aliquid aut intellectus vel rationalitas continentur». Cfr. also: De conceptu virginali et de originali peccato, 15, 449A, ed. Schmitt, II, p. 157,8-12; Proslogion, 16, 235CD, ed. Schmitt, I, pp. 112,20-24; 24, 239C, p. 117,25-26; Responsio, 2, 251B, ed. Schmitt, I, p. 132,11-13. Anselm did not contemplate explicitly a distinction between reason and the sensus interior. He did, 40

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sition of the intellegere (i. e., the verb, the past participle of which is: intellectus)42. In the part of the Monologion dedicated to the argumentative apprehension of the mystery of the One-Trinity of God, it is evident, for example, how the human mind is capable of arriving at the perception of this truth in an intuitive and direct form, although not being capable of explaining its contents formally with the instruments, and with the defining and demonstrative structures of rational logic43. In the Epistola de incarnatione Verbi, Roscelin is strongly invited to seize the simple and indivisible nature of the divine Trinity by reflecting upon the intuitive – and evidently ‘super-rational’ – nature of the concept of «eternity». This concept is predicable of all three persons and one may compare it, in order to reach a reasonable knowledge of its meaning, to the nature of the geometric point: even this is intuitively perceptible as identical to itself and not multiple, though being the unique source of all multiplicity44.Again, in the De prohowever, accentuate the difference between all the cognitive actions which reenter into the sphere of operation of the soul, and those of the body, which is capable of producing only imagines, even these of the material order.The mind (that is, ratio) must not allow itself to be enmeshed in this material web; cfr. Epistola de incarnatione Verbi, 1, 265B, p. 10,1-4. 42 Cfr., for instance: ID., Proslogion, 1, 227BC, p. 100,15-18: «Non tento, domine, penetrare altitudinem tuam, quia nullatenus comparo illi intellectum meum, sed desidero aliquatenus intelligere veritatem tuam quam credit et amat cor meum». Epistola de incarnatione Verbi, 1, 264CD, p. 9,9-11: «Et non solum ad intelligendum altiora prohibetur mens ascendere sine fide et mandatorum Dei oboedientia, sed etiam aliquando datus intellectus subtrahitur et fides ipsa subvertitur neglecta bona conscientia». In the Cur Deus homo – where Anselm prefers in general to use the term ratio in order to express the judicial and demonstrative activity of the human soul – the intellectus, the result of such activity, is presented as an intermediate state, possible during the earthly life, between the knowledge for the truth by means of fides alone and the direct contemplation or species, promised in eternal life; cfr. Cur Deus homo, Commend. operis, 261A, ed. Schmitt, II, p. 40,7-12; ibid., II, 15, 416B, p. 116,9-12. Cfr. A. GHISALBERTI, Il compito dell’intelligere e la figura dell’intelletto nel Cur Deus homo, in Cur Deus homo,Atti del Congresso cit. (above, cap. 4, note 32), pp. 311-331. 43 Cfr. ANSELMUS CANTUARIENSIS, Monologion, 64, 210BC, pp. 74,30-75, 6: «Videtur mihi huius tam sublimis rei secretum transcendere omnem intellectus aciem humani, et idcirco conatum explicandi qualiter hoc sit continendum puto. Sufficere namque debere existimo rem incomprehensibilem indaganti, si ad hoc ratiocinando pervenerit ut eam certissime esse cognoscat, etiamsi penetrare nequeat intellectu quomodo ita sit; nec idcirco minus iis adhibendam fidei certitudinem, quae probationibus necessariis nulla alia repugnante ratione asseruntur, si suae naturalis altitudinis incomprehensibilitate explicari non patiantur». 44 Cfr. ID., Epistola de incarnatione Verbi, 15, 282B-283B, pp. 33,10-34,10: «Sed

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cessione Spiritus sancti, the concepts of «identity» and «eternity» are proposed as something which human thought must recognize as true, without presuming to formulate, based upon their customary meaning, logical definitions or argumentative definitions45. It is now not surprising that in the third part of the De concordia, confronting the theme of the synergy between divine grace and the free-will of man, Anselm had then apparently introduced, even if in an episodic form, a description of the multiple functions of the will within a more general division of the anima into two vires: the practical sphere (or voluntas) and the cognitive (which Anselm calls here ratio). Each one of these two vires is «aliquid in anima», and each one is also divisible into a trinity of constitutive elements46.This text even hints at the fact that the diquoniam ista terrena valde longe sunt a summa natura, levemus ad illam ipsa opitulante mentem, et in ea contemplemur aliquatenus et breviter quod dicimus. Deus non est aliud quam ipsa simplex aeternitas. Aeternitates autem plures intelligi nequeunt. (…) Quapropter, quotienscumque repetatur aeternitas in aeternitate, semper una eademque et sola aeternitas est. (…) Et ut unum de iis quae divinam non habent naturam, in quo similiter est ponam, punctum in puncto non est nisi unum punctum. Habet enim punctum velut medium punctum mundi et punctum temporis, id est praesens tempus, ad aeternitatem nonnullam similitudinem (…), quia punctum simplex, id est sine partibus, est indivisibile velut aeternitas; et ideo punctum cum puncto sine intervallo non est nisi unum puntum, sicut aeternitas cum aeternitate non est nisi una aeternitas. Ergo quoniam Deus aeternitas est, non sunt plures dii, quia nec Deus est extra Deum, nec Deus in Deo addit numerum Deo». 45 Cfr. ID., De processione Spiritus sancti, 14, 320C, ed. Schmitt, II, p. 214,20-22: «Sicut igitur intellectus noster non potest transire ultra aeternitatem, ut quasi de principio eius iudicet, sic non potest de hac nativitate vel processione nec debet ad similitudinem creaturae sentire vel iudicare» (Anselm returns in this text to the distinction of the dialectical meaning of iudicare from that of invenire, on which cfr. above, pp. 17-19). Cfr. also ibid., 16, 324AB, p. 218,9-21. 46 Cfr. ID., De concordia praescientiae et praedestinationis et gratiae Dei cum libero arbitrio, 3, 11, 534AC, ed. Schmitt, II, pp. 278,28-279,14: «Sicut habemus in corpore membra et quinque sensus singula ad suos usus apta, quibus quasi instrumentis utimur (…), ita et anima habet in se quasdam vires, quibus utitur velut instrumentis ad usus congruos. Est namque ratio in anima, qua sicut suo instrumento utitur ad ratiocinandum, et voluntas, qua utitur ad volendum. Non enim est ratio vel voluntas tota anima, sed est unaquaeque aliquid in anima. Quoniam ergo singula instrumenta habent et hoc quod sunt et aptitudines suas, et suos usus, discernamus in voluntate, propter quam ista dicimus, instrumentum et aptitudines eius, et usus eius. (…) Voluntas utique dici videtur aequivoce tripliciter: aliud est enim instrumentum volendi, aliud affectio instrumenti, aliud usus eiusdem instrumenti».The attention of Anselm rests specifically, on this page, upon the articulation of the volitional power («propter quam ista dicimus»): it is, however, evident how the tripartite division into instrumenta, aptitudines (applications of the instru-

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verse components of this division are often predicated in an equivocal manner («aequivoce»), as if each one of them were to identify itself with the higher vis in its totality: this is perhaps sufficient for justifying Anselm’s habit of presenting the mens rationalis or ratio as a unitary and continuous force, not hierarchically divided into distinct functions. It is probable that the exigency – found, among other places, especially in the course of the polemic against Roscelin – of avoiding any form of phenomenological relativization of knowledge held Anselm back from formalizing in his own writings an explicit adhesion to the polypartite gnoseology which was typical of early medieval Platonism.This did not prevent him, however, – once the coherence of truth (known by the subject) and reality (objective) had been assured on the theoretical level – from occasionally giving space to the psychological nomenclature found within the Christian Neoplatonic sources. Such terminology was useful for working out adequate classifications of the acts of created cognitive and practical powers, in harmony with the appreciation for the higher functions of the soul from which some of his most important theological ideas arise. It is interesting to observe a certain tendency to complicate the web of psychological functions in some of the surviving evidence of his «unwritten» doctrines. For example, the so-called Liber de similitudinibus – an organized overview of doctrines regarding practical psychology, worked out in Cantebury within the first three decades of the twelfth century, which drew from discourses or oral teachings of the archbishop47 – offers sporadic indications of the distribution of the activities of the soul in a hierarchy of faculties48. Another example is to be found in the so called Dicta ments) and usus (results of such applications) extends itself to both vires, i. e., not only to the pratical, but also to the cognitive («singula… habent»). 47 Cfr. R. W. SOUTHERN - F. S. SCHMITT, Memorials of St. Anselm, Oxford 1969 (19912), pp. 4-18, with the edition of the text on pp. 39-104; cfr. also A. STACPOOLE, St.Anselm’s Memorials, in «Downside Review», 1970, pp. 160-180. 48 Cfr. Liber Anselmi archiepiscopi de humanis moribus per similitudines, 3, PL 159, 605C-606A, edd. Southern - Schmitt cit. (preceding note), p. 39,23-28: «De sensibus animae. Ipsa namque [voluntas] aperitur ad virtutum affectionem et ad volendum optanda. Memoria vero ad memorandum memoranda. Cogitatio ad cogitandum cogitanda. Intellectus ad discernendum quid sit volendum, vel memorandum sive cogitandum. Animus quoque ad charitatem erigitur, ad humilitatem disponitur, ad patientiam roboratur, et ad alias virtutes generandas aperitur».

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Anselmi – relations or summaries of discourses going back to the last years of the archbishop’s life, gathered probably by the monk Alexander of Canterbury, and included later within a more amplified version of the Liber de similitudinibus, which was destined for a large diffusion in the following centuries49. One also finds, once again in this work, the observation of the equivocal use of names which properly indicate the diverse properties or faculties of the soul50. Even more interesting is an indirect testimony coming from the autobiography of Guibert of Nogent, who recalls having personally learned from the teaching of Anselm an exegetical method founded upon a division of hermeneutical levels of the sacred text, which correspond to diverse modalities of the unfolding of the appropriate operations of the mens: that is, to the modes of the affectus, of the voluntas, of the ratio, and of the intellectus51. Another writer directly connected to Anselm’s doctrinal influence, Odo of Tournai, documents in his De peccato originali a classification of the vires or affectiones animae which is even more marked: he distinguishes the vis vegetalis, the vis sensibilis, and the vis rationalis; and then divides the last into the sensus, the imaginatio and the ratio (in the strict sense), which form the rational power as the «partes» of a «totum», without compromising the ontological unity of the whole52. Sharing the same doctrine, 49 Cfr. SOUTHERN - SCHMITT, Memorials cit., pp. 19-29, and (ed. of the text) pp. 107-195.Alexander was among the collaborators and companions of Anselm during the second exile, and his second secretary after Eadmerus. 50 Cfr. Dicta Anselmi (Liber ex dictis beati Anselmi), 17, edd. Southern - Schmitt cit. (above, note 47), pp. 175,22-176,7: «Sciendum quoque quod plura sunt animae nomina, quorum quaedam, licet quasdam proprietates videantur habere, tamen diversis in locis pro ipsa anima posita esse reperiuntur.Vocatur enim spiritus, mens, animus, ratio, intellectus, interior homo. (…) Est ergo ratio sive spiritus quasi vir, voluntas ut sponsa, appetitus interdum quasi adulter». 51 Cfr. GUIBERTUS NOVINGENTENSIS, De vita sua, I, 17, PL 156, 874D: «Is [scil. Anselm] itaque tripartito aut quadripartito mentem modo distinguere docens, sub affectu, sub voluntate, sub ratione, sub intellectu commercia totius interni mysterii tractare, et quae una a plerisque et a me ipso putabantur certis divisionibus resoluta, non idem duo prima fore monstrabat, quae tamen accedentibus quarto vel tertio eadem mox esse promptis assertionibus constat». 52 Cfr. ODO SANCTI MARTINI TORNACENSIS (sive CAMERACENSIS), De peccato originali, III, PL 160, 1093BD, 1100B and 1100CD: « Habet enim anima quaeque vires, et efficacias quasdam quibus constat et efficit multa pro suo posse (…). Unde humana anima vim habet rationalem, qua utitur interius ad invisibilem cognitionem et rerum omnium discretionem, et operatur exterius in suo corpore multos actus, et locutionem maxime. Habet et unum nomine sensibile, qua corpus af-

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Hildebert of Lavardin, in a sermon for Palm Sunday, completes the tripartite list of the vires animae by adding the intellectus as the fourth and highest grade, devoted to the perception of invisible things53.This fecund series of witnesses seems overall to authorize the individuation of a doctrinal thread, a sort of unwritten reflection by Anselm, which was not consecrated in the texts entrusted for publication and for distribution: nonetheless, these examples do not lack reliability, in so far as they come more or less directly from his own oral teachings. In the course of the succeeding decades – while the authority of Anselm’s theological thought grew unopposed among the teachers and scholars of the various schools and currents of thought in the first half of the twelfth century – the developments in the tripartite psychology documented in this tradition multiplied, merged, widened, and became more complicated. The theological reflection of Peter Abelard survived underground through the speculative principle upon which such gnoseological doctrine was founded: it is not the knowing subject who adapts his own capacities of learning to the nature in itself of the object, but, on the contrary, it is the manifestation of the res which diversifies and produces different forms of repreficit sensibus quinque (…). Habet etiam vim vegetabilem qua suum corpus vegetat. (…) Hoc [scil. totum] autem habet ab aliis totis istud proprium, quod cum plures habet vires, in unaquaque est totum. (…) Anima enim humana natura simplex est et incomposita. (…) Cum ergo partes audis animae omnem quantitatem vel compositionem aufer a mente, et emundans eam a phantasiis corporum, sensus et imaginationem postpone erigens te ad rationem, ut ratione cogites rationem: partes enim rationalis animae, non corpora sunt sed potentiae, non materiei, sed efficientiae, non eam ut membra componunt, sed ab ea velut radii prodeunt». 53 Cfr. HILDEBERTUS CENOMANENSIS (sive TURONENSIS), Sermones, XXIX, In dominica palmarum sermo primus, PL 171, 478C: «Intellectus enim est vis animae, qua ipsa percipit invisibilia. Non enim sensus, non imaginatio, non ratio percipit quomodo libera mater nostra, quae sursum est, genuit nos ad supplementum ruinae angelicae». The testimony of Hildebert was rendered particularly interesting by the fact that he connects it to the idea – of a noted Anselmian ancestry – according to which the creation of men came about to complete the gap in the created order left by the fallen angels. In a poem of mystical-analogical inspiration, entitled De conflictu carnis et animae, the same Hildebert proposes a diverse scalar distribution of the activities of the soul into seven operations, which go from the unfolding of the vegetative function to the beatific contemplation of the divinity; cfr. ID., De conflictu carnis et animae, PL 171, 1001AB: «Vis animae humanae septem tibi vindicat actus. / Vivificat, sentit, varias amplectitur artes, / corrigit excessus, virtutibus instat, in ipsam / dirigit intuitum deitatem, gaudet in illa».

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sentation, according to the various faculties of the soul or cognitive powers that, time after time, the creature capable of knowledge puts into action. It is a principle which makes itself explicit above all in a passage of the Collationes, or the Dialogus among a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian, where the question arises regarding the possibility for the blessed to acquire a complete vision of the divine: Abelard replies that, as for any other object of knowledge – spiritual or corporeal –, the diverse capacities of the knowing subject produce a different cognitive representation even of the incommensurable nature of God: «the same thing is not always known (intellecta) in the same manner», and it does not involve an alteration of the nature of the res, since «this diversification is never absolutely in the thing, but in the manner in which it is grasped (in modo conspiciendi)».Thus, the more that the vision reserved to the blessed approaches the impenetrability of the divine, the higher is the degree of blessedness that they achieve, which corresponds to the merits of each one54. The Magister Palatinus situates Christian theology in the intermediate position between natural knowledge and the beatific vision, since it realizes the highest form of the approach to the truth in itself which is possible for man and for his natural faculties during this life. Abelard is therefore still the direct witness of a culture which is fully rooted in the speculative foundations of the Platonic-Christian thought of the Fathers of the Church and of the early Middle Ages. This culture is much different from that which will dominate from the first decades of the thirteenth cen54 Cfr. PETRUS ABAELARDUS, Collationes (vel Dialogus inter Philosophum, Iudaeum et Christianum), II, PL 178, 1662C, ed. R.Thomas, Stuttgart - Bad Cannstat 1970, pp. 135-136, 2510-2524; ed. G. Orlandi (with Eng. trans. of J. Marenbon), Oxford 2001 (Oxford Medieval Texts, 154), pp. 162-164: «CHRISTIANUS. Non utique in re conspecta, sed in modo conspiciendi est diversitas, ut, quo melius intelligitur Deus, beatitudo nostra in eius visione augeatur. Nam et animam vel spiritum quemlibet intelligendo non aequaliter omnes intelligimus, quamvis tales incorporeae naturae partes in suae essentiae quantitate non habere dicantur; et cum corpus quodlibet vel aliqua pars eius ab aliquibus simul conspicitur [aspicitur, ed.Thomas], melius tamen ab uno quam ab alio videtur, et iuxta naturam aliquam corporis illius melius ab isto quam ab alio homine ipsum cognoscitur et perfectius intelligitur; et cum eadem res sit intellecta, non tamen aequaliter est intellecta. Sic et divinam essentiam, quae omnino indivisibilis est, licet omnes intelligendo videant, non tamen aequaliter eius naturam percipiunt, sed [Sic Deus, ed. Thomas] huic melius ac perfectius quam illi sui notitiam pro meritis impertit, ac se amplius manifestat».

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tury, arising from the massive influx of Aristotelian gnoseological realism into the Christian West. It is noteworthy that John of Salisbury, in the Metalogicon, when dwelling in detail upon the triadic distinctions among sensus, ratio and intellectus, explicitly leads the discussion toward the teaching of the Platonic Republic, probably drawing such information from Chalcidius55. Despite a lack of uniformity, the multiplication of the faculties of the soul is widespread in the writings of numerous authors of the twelfth century. Honorius Augustodunenis proposes more than one variant in his own writings56. Later, Alan of Lille introduces many variations of the psychological division in his own works, the most explicit case being a reconsideration of the fourfold scheme of Boethius, in the Sermo de sphere intelligibili and in 55 Cfr. IOHANNES SARISBERIENSIS, Metalogicon, IV, 18, PL 199, 926D-927A, edd. J. B. Hall - K. S. B. Keats-Rohan,Turnhout 1991 (CCCM, 98), p. 156,2-8: «Qua vero proportione ratio transcendit sensum, ea sicut Plato in Politia auctor est, excedit intellectus rationem. Nam intellectus assequitur quod ratio investigat. Siquidem in labores rationis intrat intellectus, et sibi ad sapientiam thesaurizat quod ratio praeparans adquisivit. Est itaque intellectus suprema vis spiritualis naturae, quae humana contuens et divina penes se causas habet omnium rationum, naturaliter sibi perceptibilium». For the testimony of CHALCIDIUS, cfr. Commentarius in Platonis Timaeum, 231, ed. J.Wrobel, Leipzig 1876, pp. 267-268; ed. J. H.Waszink, London - Leiden 1962, p. 265. Even the De septem septeni, attributed to the same John of Salisbury, distinguishes (in accordance with the numerological inspiration which characterizes this text) seven different animae vires in homine, but listed according to a particular order: first animus and mens (which assume here the role respectively of the vegetative function and of the internal sense, which discerns and reacts to the stimuli coming from the external senses), then imaginatio (distinct from sense because it is capable of depicting not only the things which are, but also those which are not), opinio, ratio (which arises from the true opinion), intellectus (which is produced from the operations of reason, when it succeeds in freeing itself from matter and rising up to the truthful purity of the forms), and, finally, memoria; cfr. [IOHANNES SARISBERIENSIS (?)], De septem septenis, sect. IV, Quarta septena de septem viribus animae, PL 199, 951B-952A. 56 Cfr. HONORIUS AUGUSTODUNENSIS, De philosophia mundi, IV, 34, PL 172, 98D, where they are described as animae potentiae, in the order: intelligentia («qua percipit homo incorporalia»), ratio («qua percipit homo quid sit, in quo res conveniant cum aliis, in quo differant») and memoria («qua firme retinet homo ante cognita»). See also the first treatise of HONORIUS’ Expositio in Cantica canticorum, 1, PL 172, 362CD (and in a still more synthetic form in ID., Elucidarium, II, 13, PL 172, 1144A), where the Platonic gnoseology is joined to the Pauline anthropology, which consists of homo exterior (body, vegetative function and external senses) and homo interior (constructed, according to the model of Eriugena, from sensus interior, ratio, and intellectus or vis animae superior). One must also note, in Honorius, the nearly complete reproduction of the pages from Eriugena dedicated to the argument, in the text of his Clavis physicae.

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the ninety-ninth of the Regulae coelestis iuris57. Yet, it is especially in the Victorine School – and in particular thanks to the impulse of Hugh of Saint-Victor – that the distinction of the psychic powers becomes once again a constitutive element of the process of interior ascent toward the knowledge of the divine, according to which each faculty constitutes one of the grades of ascending purification of the interior life toward the rediscovery on the part of the believer of the original likeness with God. Thus, in the tractate De unione spiritus et corporis, Hugh describes a progression from the body to the spirit through multiple grades, which rise up to the capacity of recognizing in the universe the manifestations of the divine58. Elsewhere, drawing directly upon the tradition of Boethius and Eriugena, he proposes a tripartite division of senses, reason and intellect, which he then completes by explicitly placing, at the peak of the cognitive grades, the level corresponding to Deus himself59. Departing from Hugh of Saint-Vic57 Cfr. ALANUS DE INSULIS, Sermo de sphaera intelligibili, ed. in M.T. D’ALVERNY, Alain de Lille,Textes inédits, Paris 1965, [pp. 295-306], p. 302: «Quatuor vero potentiae animae ancillantur, quibus quasi quibusdam gradibus ad praedictarum spherarum contubernia patet accessus, scilicet sensus, imaginatio, ratio, intellectualitas. Hae sunt quatuor rotae ex quibus quadriga humanae animae fabricatur, qua ascendens nobilis auriga philosophus recte aurigationis ductu ad aeterna deducitur». ID., Regulae caelestis iuris, XCIX, 2-3, ed. N. M. Häring, in «Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge», 48 (1981), [pp. 97-226], pp. 204205. Cfr. also the anonymous tractate Quinque sunt digressiones cogitationis, edited by D’ALVERNY, ibid., pp. 313-317. 58 Cfr. HUGO DE SANCTO VICTORE, De unione spiritus et corporis, PL 177, 285A289A, ed. A. Piazzoni, in «Studi Medievali», Ser. 3a, 21.2 (1980), [pp. 883-888], esp. 285BC, p. 883, and 288D, p. 888: the scalar nature of the psychic grades begins here with the sensus and the imaginatio, which constitute together the spiritus corporeus; it then continues, in the soul itself or spiritus incorporeus, with the affectio imaginativa, produced by the corporeal affections; with ratio, in its turn divided into ratio in imaginationem agens and ratio pura, which produce the scientia beyond the imagination and every form of corporeity; then with the intelligentia, capable of working out the highest form of natural contemplatio or sapientia, which is however still always a form of interior knowledge, arising from the results of the inferior faculties; and it concludes with the revelatio which, descending into the soul through the work of grace, realizes the direct manifestation of the divine (or theophania) in the human mind («a praesentia divina sursum informata»). 59 ID., De arca Noe morali, I, 4, PL 176, 632D-633A: «Quintam mansionem homo tenet et volatilia. Per hominem designatur vivacitas rationis et intelligentiae in volatili exprimitur agilitas incorruptibilis naturae. Quando ergo ‘mortale hoc induerit immortalitatem, et corruptibile hoc’ vestierit ‘incorruptionem’ (1Cor 15,53-54), tunc mente pariter et corpore spiritales effecti, secundum modulum

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tor, the development in an anagogical key of the platonic gnoseology becomes more and more evident in the works of the most important advocates of mystical spirituality in the second half of the twelfth century. Richard of Saint-Victor lists sex contemplationum genera united two by two under the categories of the imagination, reason, and intelligence60. Isaac of Stella proposes five grades, from the senses to the intelligence, which lead ad sapientiam61. The author of the De spiritu et anima explicitly names nostrum, et per mentis illuminationem omnia sciemus, et per corporis incorruptibilis levitatem ubique esse poterimus.Volabimus mente per contemplationem, volabimus corpore per incorruptionem. Discernemus mente et, ut ita dicam, discernemus et corpore, quando ipsi sensus nostri corporei vertentur in rationem, ratio in intellectum, intellectus transibit in Deum, cui nos conjungemur per unum mediatorem Dei et hominum, Dominum Jesum Christum».The last part of this text, in particular, draws directly from IOHANNES SCOTUS ERIUGENA, Periphyseon, I, PL 122, 450C-451A, ed. Jeauneau cit (above, cap. 2, note 73), p. 15,358-375: «Per corpora ergo in corporibus, non per se ipsum [Deus] videbitur. Similiter per intellectum in intellectibus, per rationem in rationibus, non per se ipsam divina essentia apparebit. (...) Praesertim cum, ut ait magnus Gregorius theologus, corpora sanctorum in rationem, ratio in intellectum, intellectus in Deum, ac per hoc tota illorum natura in ipsum Deum mutabitur».The Gregory mentioned here is Gregory of Nazianzus, from whose writings Maximus the Confessor drew – according to his own testimony – his own theological doctrines, even if this citation is not easily identifiable. Cfr. also ibid., V, 876AB, p. 24,685-695: «Prima igitur humanae naturae reversio est, quando corpus solvitur et in quattuor elementa sensibilibus mundi, ex quibus compositum est revocatur. Secunda in resurrectione implebitur, quando unusquisque suum proprium corpus ex communione quattuor elementorum recipiet. Tertia quando corpus in spiritum mutabitur. Quarta quando spiritus et, ut apertius dicam, tota hominis natura in primordiales causas revertetur, quae sunt semper et incommutabiliter in Deo. Quinta quando ipsa natura cum suis causis movebitur in Deum, sicut aer movetur in lucem. Erit enim Deus omnia in omnibus quando nihil erit nisi solus Deus. (…) Si enim omne, quod pure intelligit efficitur unum cum eo quod intelligitur, quid mirum si nostra natura quando Deum facie ad faciem contemplatura sit in his qui digni sunt quantum ei datur contemplari in nubibus theoriae ascensura unum cum ipso et in ipso fieri possit?». 60 Cfr. RICHARDUS DE SANCTO VICTORE, De gratia contemplationis libri quinque (…) seu Benjamin major, I, 6-9, PL 196, 70B-75A: the sex contemplationum genera include duo in imaginatione (which consider visible created things, respectively in imaginatione et secundum imaginationem and in imaginatione secundum rationem), duo in ratione (which understand the created and intelligible realities, respectively in ratione secundum imaginationem and in ratione et secundum rationem), and duo in intelligentia (directed toward res increatae et divinae, respectively supra sed non praeter rationem and supra et praeter rationem). 61 Cfr. ISAAC DE STELLA, Epistola de anima to Alcher of Clairvaux (dated 1162), PL 194, [1875-1890], 1879D-1880C: the five gradus ad sapientiam are, from lowest to highest, sensus corporeus, imaginatio, ratio, intellectus, intelligentia; this final grade « immediate supponitur Deo».

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Plato (and also, with an interesting and original addition, the medici) as the classical source of the tripartite division of the vires animae62. These texts influenced in a direct way the successive generations of university teachers, with particular resonance in the Franciscan environment63. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio himself establishes one of the principles of his own conception of the soul upon this ideal line of development when he determines, in the concise, but dense, prose of the Itinerarium, a direct correspondence between the sex gradus ascensionis in Deum and the sex gradus potentiarum animae, which mark the steps of the cognitive ascent from the order of temporal mutability into the true stability of eternity: Therefore, according to the six grades of ascent toward God, six are the grades of the powers of the soul by means of which we ascend from the lowest to the highest things, from the more exterior to the more interior, from the temporal realities to the eternal realities; and these are sense (sensus), imagination (imaginatio), reason (ratio), intellect (intellectus), intelligence (intelligentia), and the highest peak of the mind (apex mentis) or the spark of synderesis64.

62 Cfr. De spiritu et anima, 37, PL 40, 807-808, where within the anima, presented as the civitas Dei, there are distinguished tres vires animae secundum Platonem et medicos, that is, sensualitas, ratio and intellectus. Cfr. also more complex divisions ibid., 10, 785-786; 12, 787-788 (in which one sees the return of the division proposed by Hugh of Saint-Victor, with the addition, beyond the intellect, even of the intelligentia); and ibid., 38, 808-809. – The De spiritu et anima – which also circulated under false Augustinian paternity – is an annotated collection of texts from Augustine and Isaac of Stella (the text quoted in the preceding note is here reproduced in 11, 786-787). Its composition therefore cannot go back beyond the sixties of the XII century. Cfr. G. RACITI, L’autore del «De spiritu et anima», in «Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica», 53 (1961), 385-401; J. M. CANIVEZ, s.v. Alcher, in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, I, Paris 1937, coll. 294-295; the proposal to identify the author of the text with Alcher of Clairvaux († 1178 ca.) goes back to the first editor, D. Coustant. A critical edition, with historical introduction and a reconstruction of the sources, was announced by Jaqueline Hamesse. 63 Cfr. L. SILEO, Università e teologia, in Storia della Teologia nel Medioevo cit. (above, cap. 2, note 100), II, [pp. 471-550], esp. pp. 508-512. 64 BONAVENTURA DE BALNEOREGIO, Itinerarium mentis in Deum, I, 6, ed. studio et cura PP. Collegii a S. Bonaventura, in Opera,V, Quaracchi 1891, p. 297b: «Iuxta igitur sex gradus ascensionis in Deum, sex sunt gradus potentiarum animae per quos ascendimus ab imis ad summa, ab exterioribus ad intima, a temporalibus conscendimus ad aeterna, scilicet sensus, imaginatio, ratio, intellectus, intelligentia et

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The amplification of the number of the highest faculties is of particular interest in this development of the appropriation of the Neoplatonic gnoseology on the part of medieval mystical literature: it seems, in fact, that numerous names of powers of the soul are introduced there in order to reassume and intentionally develop the double nature of the nou`"' , the imperfect and the celestial (an ambiguity which originally comes from Proclus, but is already latent in the first Latin tradition, beginning with Boethius), in a precise arc of cognitive functions corresponding to the more elevated forms of intelligence: the super-rational, immediate, and intuitive form, which is particular to man and functions as an opening of the consciousness to that which is above common reason (that is, intellectus); the angelic form (or intelligentia, on the basis of a more or less direct mutation of the pseudo-Dionysian vocabulary); and the divine form, which is the peak of a complex itinerary of purification of the human soul through forms of participation, though always imperfect, in cognitive grades superior to the limits of its own nature. It is rather significant that Bonaventure uses – usually as synonyms – the terms apex mentis (attested to in a poem of Prudentius)65 and synderesis, for indicating the final, highest and unsurpassable result of the ascent. According to Jerome, followed by several medieval magistri, the ancient «philosophers» named synderesis the hegemonic part of the soul – according to the Platonic myth of the winged chariot, connected to the scriptural image of the «four living ones» in Ezekiel. For Christians, synderesis corresponds, says Jerome, to the «scintilla apex mentis seu synderesis scintilla». Bonaventura also deepens the rigorous schematization of the steps of the anagogical ascent by clarifying it in the following way (ibidem): «Hos gradus in nobis habemus plantatos per naturam, deformatos per culpam, reformatos per gratiam; purgandos per iustitiam, exercendos per scientiam, perficiendos per sapientiam». 65 Cfr. AURELIUS CLEMENS PRUDENTIUS († 410 ca.), Contra Symmachum, 626633, PL 60, 229AB, ed. J. Bergman, Wien - Leipzig 1926 (CSEL, 61), pp. 269270: «Sic incompositos humano in pectore sensus, / Disjunctasque animi turbato foedere partes / nec liquida invisit sapientia, nec Deus intrat. / At si mentis apex, regnandi jure potitus, / pugnacis stomachi pulsus, fibrasque rebelles / frenet, et omne jecur ratione coerceat una, / fit stabilis vitae status, et sententia certa / haurit corde Deum, domino et subjungitur uni». But cfr. also THEODULPHUS AURELIANENSIS, Carmina, I, Paraenesis ad Iudices, PL 105, 288D, ed. E. Dümmler, in MGH, Poetae Latini Medii Aevi, 1, Berlin 1881, 28, p. 501,295-296: «Nec sit avara lues, nec amor zelusque timorque / quae turbent, firmus stet tibi mentis apex».

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conscientiae», that is, to the original intuition of first principles of knowledge and morality, which is irrepressible and indistinguishable even in the souls farthest from the truth and the good66. Actually, in the first decades of the thirteenth century, following the diffusion in the West of the new anthropological and gnoseological doctrines coming from Arab wisdom – in particular from Avicennism –, the first attempts to work out a synthesis between the two psychological nomenclatures – of Platonic and of Aristotelian origin, respectively – took life. On the one hand, the name intellectus comes gradually to designate, as a whole, the intellective part of the human soul, which is superior both to the irascible and to the concupiscible parts; on the other hand, there is a continuous demand to justify and harmonize the various aspects of the individual act of intelligence described by the new sources (the various intellects: possibilis, abstractus, adeptus, accommodatus, etc.) with an adequate appreciation of the hierarchical structure of the faculties of the soul: this is the case despite the evident difficulties of composition among the profoundly diverse conceptions of the origin and the nature of human knowledge, such as those respectively sustained by the Platonic-Augustinian and the Peripatetic perspectives.

66 Cfr. HIERONYMUS STRIDONIUS, Commentaria in Ezechielem, 1, 7, PL 25, 22AB: «Plerique, juxta Platonem, rationale animae, et irascitivum, et concupiscitivum, quod ille logikovn et qumikovn et ejpiqumhtikovn vocat, ad hominem, et leonem, ac vitulum referuntur (…). Quartamque ponunt quae super haec et extra haec tria est, quam Graeci vocant sunthvrhsin, quae scintilla conscientiae in Cain quoque pectore, postquam ejectus est de paradiso, non extinguitur, et qua victi voluptatibus vel furore ipsaque interdum rationis decepti similitudine nos peccare sentimus. Quam proprie aquilae deputant non se miscentem tribus, sed tria errantia corrigentem».This text of Jerome is reproduced to the letter and popularized by HRABANUS MAURUS, In Ezechielem, PL 110, 508BD; then it synthetically flows into PETRUS LOMBARDUS, Sententiae, II, d. 39, c. 3, 3, ed. I. Brady, 2 voll., Grottaferrata 1971-1981 (Spicilegium Bonaventurianum, cura PP. Collegii S. Bonaventurae Ad Claras Aquas, 4-5), I, p. 556,7-9: «Superior enim scintilla rationis, quae etiam, ut ait Hieronymus, in Cain non potuit exstingui, bonum semper vult et malum odit»; and in PETRUS PICTAVIENSIS, Sententiae, II, 21, PL 211, 1030AB: «Nullus enim adeo malus est quin ratio ejus conscientiam remordeat dictans hoc esse malum et illud. Haec est enim illa scintillula rationis quae etiam in Cain non potest exstingui, quae a Graecis dicitur synderesis». – On the medieval fate of the notion of synderesis, cfr. the celebrated study of O. LOTTIN, Syndérèse et conscience au XIIe et XIIIe siècle, in ID., Psychologie et morale au XIIe et XIIIe siècle, II, Louvain Gembloux 1948, pp. 103-349.

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*** In a passage of the De beryllo, Nicholas of Cusa recalls a text from Albert the Great regarding the correct application of the rule («regula») of the «beryllus»: in order to reach the first divine principle of every participation in being and of every form of knowledge, it is necessary, according to Albert’s authoritative words, that the intelligence, the anima rationalis, and the anima sensitiva join («communicent») in a single consideration of the truth, which is possible only if they unanimously agree to direct themselves toward receiving it from the source itself, that is, from God67. It is not easy to identify in Albert’s writings a text to which this citation directly refers68.Yet, Cusanus offers even further suggestions on the possibility of retracing in his teaching the presence of the Platonic division of the faculties of the soul. In particular, in some interesting marginal annotations to Albert’s commentaries on the Corpus Dionysianum, he repeatedly invites one to recognize the succession of cognitive creaturely grades, from the sensus, to the ratio, to the intelligentia69. He highlights, in particular, on the one 67 Cfr. De beryllo, 29, ed. Baur (above, note 23), in Op., p. 31,1-6; Ph.-th., p. 3234: «Sic Albertus illa regula [scil. berylli] utens quaerit primum, in quo est ratio fontalis entis omnium entitatem participantium, sic et principium cognoscendi, ubi ita dicit: cum intelligentia, anima rationalis et sensitiva communicent in veritate cognoscendi, oportet quod recipiant hanc naturam ab aliquo in quo est primo sicut in fonte, et hic est Deus». Cusanus comments by specifying that in such a link between the faculties of the soul it is obviously necessary that each cognitive grade, although being correctly influenced and directed by the superior grade, maintains its particular capacities and specificities for comprehending the object. 68 Cfr. R. HAUBST, Albertus, wie Cusanus ihn sah, in Albertus Magnus, doctor universalis 1280-1980, hrsg. von G. Meyer - A. Zimmermann, Mainz 1980, pp. 167194. 69 Cfr. L. BAUR, Cusanus-Texte. III. Marginalien, 1. Nicolaus Cusanus und Ps. Dionysius im Lichte der Zitate und Randbemerkungen des Cusanus, Heidelberg 1941 (Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophischhistorische Klasse), as well as ibid., pp. 93-113, the edition of the glosses, from the ms. Kues, Bibliothek des Hospitals, Cusanus 96, ff. 1v-78v. In particular, from the annotations to the commentary of Albert on De divinis nominibus, n. 333 (p. 104): «Nota bene: Deus, intellectus, ratio, sensus»; n. 334 (ibid.): «Totum pulchrum»; n. 335 (ibid.): «Rationalis non potest dici intelligibilis». Cf. also, on De caelesti hierarchia: n. 64 (p. 95): «Ratio non est intellectus»; on De divinis nominibus: n. 114 (p. 97): «Actus rationis est inquirere et unum alteri conferre et ultimum eius est intellectus»; n. 313 (p. 103): «Quomodo intellectus, ratio et sensu dici (possint) accidentia et quomodo substantiae»; on the Epistola 5: n. 610 (p. 113): «Ratio corporum, intellectus spirituum creatorum, intelligentia spiritus increati».

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hand, the subordination of the efficacy of the inferior grades to the superior grades70; and, on the other hand – and inversely –, the necessity for the first grades to draw the nourishment which sustains them from the second grades, and to find in this way the occasion for actuating themselves71. It has been well noted that Albert provided Nicholas of Cusa with the possibility of taking advantage of the Peripatetic-Averroist conception of the intellect72, which is intimately joined in his writings, and, in particular, in the Summa theologiae, with the structural foundations of the Platonic doctrine of knowledge. In his doctrinal synthesis, however, with the intention of respecting the specificity of the Aristotelian psychology, the gnoseological terminology is subjected to a series of particular nuances. First Albert widens the scope of ratio, which becomes a general container for the multiple mental activities which distinguish the human soul as the created divine image. Next, he specifies the various parts of the intellect, which, in so far as it realizes the capacity for operating discursively upon intelligible objects, is divided into agens, possiblis, and adeptus73. Through his glosses upon Al70 Cfr. ibid., on De calesti hierarchia: n. 35 (p. 94): «Quomodo ratio oritur in umbra intelligentiae et sensus in umbra rationis»; n. 36 (ibid.): «Ratio angeli excedit nostram sicut ratio sensum»; on De divinis nominibus: n. 115 (p. 97): «Virtus intellectus est summitas virtutis rationis»; n. 177 (ibid.): «Mens est intellectus, cuius infimum est supremum rationis, et infimum rationis est supremum sensus»; n. 336 (p. 104): «Quod sensus nihil influit in rationem»; n. 337 (ibid.): «Intellectus non abstrahit proprie a sensu». 71 Cfr. ibid., on De caelesti hierarchia, n. 4 (p. 94): «Intellectus indiget lumine rationis sicut oculus lumine visibili». 72 Cfr. M. L. FÜHRER, The Theory of Intellect in Albert the Great and its Influence on Nicholas of Cusa, in Nicholas of Cusa in search of God and Wisdom cit. (alla nota 14), pp. 45-56. On the influence of Albert upon Cusanus, working also through the mediation of Heimeric de Campo, and on the marginalia of Cusanus on the commentary on pseudo-Dionysius by Albert, cfr. R. HAUBST, Zum Fortleben Alberts des Grosses, bei Heymeric von Kamp und Nikolaus von Kues, in Studia albertina, Münster in Westfalen 1952 (BGPTMA, Supplementband 4), pp. 420-477, esp. pp. 444-447. 73 Cfr. ALBERTUS MAGNUS, Summa theologiae, II, tr. XV, q. 93, m. 1 (Quid sit ratio?), ed. S. Borgnet, Opera Omnia, XXXIII, Paris 1895, p. 200b: «Dicendum quod ratio bene definita est ab Isaac: eo quod virtus collativa est, per quam homo de faciendis et agendis et appetendis regitur et instruitur lumine vultus Dei, quod in creatione impressum est nobis quantum ad prima principia universalia scibilium et operabilium»; ibid., m. 2 (In quo differat ratio ab intellectu agente, possibili, adepto et speculativo?), p. 202ab: «Dicendum quod absque dubio ratio et intellectus componens et dividens et conferens intellecta, sunt una potentia animae, quae inest

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bert’s commentary on pseudo-Dionysius, Cusanus interprets, in a rather personal way, such variations upon the nomenclature of the cognitive powers, and attempts to establish a parallelism, which is perhaps pushed too far, between the Aristotelian and his own basically Platonic gnoseology.Yet, it is probable that in this manner, with a personal touch, he intended to highlight and deepen Albert’s concordistic anthropology, which he appreciated as an intriguing resonance of the ascending conception of created knowledge: that is, of the gnoseological ideas distributed in some significant works of the mystical-speculative tradition, first during the early Middle Ages and scholastic period, and then echoed, toward the end of the Middle Ages, by more recent theological sources, which were not far from his cultural milieu. Among the direct and more recent sources, one probably ought to include the writings of John Gerson. In his De mystica theologia, for example, the recourse to the division of the faculties of the soul is received as the key which fulfills a demand – not very different, indeed, from Cusanus’ endeavor – for harmonization between, on the one hand, the Aristotelian-Scholastic conception of the human subject, intended in its organic whole (that is, as anima rationalis) as the abstracting, mediating, and deductive cognitive activity; and, on the other hand, the theological-mystical, traditional model, inspired by Jerome and the other monastic sources, which does not abandon a complete involvement of the soul – theoretical and practical together – in cognitive activity. Even in the title of the second part of the first Tractatus (De natura animae rationalis et sex potentiis eius), Gerson proposes a division of the psychic powers into two triadic series, distinct in their cognitive and affective activities.This series joins the triadic Platonic plan of cognitive powers to a symmetrical ascending tripartite division of the practical-affective activities: sensualitas (or animalitas), ratio and intelligentia simplex are the potentiae cognitivae; appetitus animalis, voluntas (or appetitus rationalis) and synderesis (or mentis apex), the affectivae74. One adds, at the peak of such a complex animae secundum sui superiorem partem, quae mens dicitur. Sunt tamen in anima, sicut dictum est, intellectus agens qui est lux (…). Est etiam in anima intellectus possibilis (…). Est etiam in anima intellectus adeptus (…)». 74 Cfr. IOHANNES CHARLERIUS GERSONUS, De mystica theologia, I, pars II, consid. 9, ed. P. Glorieux, Oeuvres Complètes, III, Paris 1962, pp. 256-258: «Expedit ad

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ladder, a contemplation to which the intellect accedes when, filled by a superior illumination, it is drawn into a mystical ecstasy which is, at the same time, a direct participation in the divine Wisdom and all-embracing love for it75.Thus, the articulate conjugation of the cognitive and practical faculties is an instrument of irreplaceable usefulness for the accomplishment of a new, ambitious program for the regeneration of the traditional theological wisdom, led back from the dispersion of the formal scholastic distinctions into the intimacy of the schola affectus76.

4. The new ‘overturning’ of the relationship between subject and object of knowledge Nicholas of Cusa develops a four-fold convergence of late ancient and early medieval sources with the speculative scholastic and mystical models closer to his own time. He seems intentionally, therefore, to have pursued the achievement of a complex reform of late medieval knowledge, conducted, in the name of the repair and defense of a «single and unified» truth77, on the basis of ipsius theologiae mysticae cognitionem speculativam, naturam animae rationalis et ejus potentias, tam cognitivas quam affectivas cognoscere. (…) Attamen sic utamur in proposito quasi vires animae essent penitus in natura distinctae, dividentes primo animam rationalem in intelligentiam simplicem, secundo in rationem, tertio in sensualitatem vel animalitatem vel potentiam cognitivam sensualem, et hoc quoad vires cognitivas; sed quoad affectivas proportionaliter dividitur, primo in synderesim seu mentis apicem, secundo in voluntatem vel appetitum rationalem, tertio in appetitum animalem». 75 Cfr. ibid., consid. 10, p. 258: «Intelligentia simplex est vis animae cognitiva suscipiens immediate a Deo naturalem quamdam lucem, in qua et per quam principa prima cognoscuntur esse vera et certissima, terminis apprehensis». 76 Cfr. ibid., pars IV, consid. 30, p. 276: «Mystica vero theologia sicut non versatur in tali cognitione litteratoria, sic non habet necessariam talem scholam, quae schola intellectus dici potest; sed acquiritur per scholam affectus et per exercitium vehemens in virtutibus moralibus disponentibus animam ad purgationem, et in theologicis illuminantibus eam, et in beatificis virtutibus perficientibus eam, proportionaliter ad tres actus hierarchicos qui sunt purgare, illuminare, perficere. Et haec quidem schola dici potest schola religionis vel amoris sicut schola intellectus dicenda est schola scientiae vel cognitionis». Cfr. also ID., Contra curiositatem studentium, pars II, consid. 4, ed. Glorieux, ibid., pp. 239-240. On the reform of theology according to John Gerson, cfr. O. GRASSI, La riforma della teologia in Francia in Storia della teologia nel Medioevo cit. (above, cap. 2, note 100), III, [pp. 685-720], esp. pp. 702-717. 77 FEDERICI VESCOVINI, La teologia di Niccolò Cusano cit. (above, note 6), pp. 164-165 (trans. p. 158).

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a reconsideration of the conditions in which the theoreticalpractical activity is carried out in the human subject. He accomplishes this task precisely by means of a divided and hierarchical conception of the faculties of the soul. It is striking that in this doctrinal choice he is allied with a group of thinkers – some active in the centuries which preceded the diffusion of the Peripatetic-Averroist speculation in the universities, others involved later in the critical reaction against it – who all appear as witnesses to a (although not continuous) demand for a ‘correction’, or, more explicitly, for an ‘overturning’ of the ontological realism which is typical of philosophical Aristotelianism. He didn’t ignore, in effect, how much the reintroduction of a polypartite gnoseology into the Platonic system was strictly tied – beyond a simple correction of the classification of the peripatetic psychological nomenclature – to an intentional adhesion to a precise ontological position: a new perspective which brought into discussion the objectivity of scientific knowledge, which was the very basis of the Aristotelian-Scholastic philosophy in all its actualizations and variations. The late pagan Neoplatonists had already founded a systematic explanation of the various modes of the appearance of being and their properties upon the hierarchization of the cognitive faculties. This was a clear indicator of their hope to resolve the philosophical disagreement between Platonism and Aristotelianism by introducing an implicit, but decisive, phenomenological orientation of knowledge by means of a radical overturning of the relations between subject and object. They reconnected themselves to the latent skeptical tendency which was emblematic of Platonic speculation – foreshadowed in the critical reason of Socrates and then brought to light by the New Academy, thereby anticipating the refusal of ontological realism radicalized in the second century b. C. by Sextus Empiricus78. The Neoplatonists of the Late Empire had in fact identified, in the complex ladder of cognitive potencies of finite beings, a consequence of and, at the same 78 Cfr. SEXTUS EMPIRICUS, Pyrrhoneion hypotyposeon libri tres, II, 26, ed. Mutschmann cit. (above, cap. 1, note 17), I, p. 70,16-21; ID., Adversus Mathematicos,VII [= Adversus dogmaticos, I (Adversus logicos)], 269-280, ibid., II, pp. 63,1365,20. On ancient phenomenalism cfr. G. REALE, Storia della filosofia antica, Milano 19918, IV, Le scuole dell’età imperiale, pp. 196-202.

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time, a justification for, the imperfect participation of finite beings in the divine intellect. By reflecting, in different modes and in an ordered hierarchical succession, the splinters of the unity of truth found in the descent of the real from the One into the fragmentation of multiplicity, the various forms of created knowledge, although differentiated and contradictory among themselves, lead the knowing subject toward partial acquisitions of the truth: all of these acquisitions are worthy of being considered (each one in its specific environment and as an explicit expression of a limited point of view) as constitutive moments of the common cognitive progress of the cosmos towards the universal cause. Every finite faculty enjoys, therefore, a particular potentiality of approach to the object of knowledge (the truth of the One), which one may consider to be true, even though its own capacity for knowing is always marked by a representative inadequacy. Knowledge is not the result of an adaptation of the subject to the manner of being of the object, but is the result of the variability of its appearance according to the specific vis which is applied in each cognitive act, and in the terms of representations which are particular to it. Thus, above all, the senses must know the res in the only mode consonant with and possible for them: that of corporeality. This particular situation does not compel the sensitive part of the soul to renounce the truth: senses must only seize the appearance of the One through the imperfection of the corporeal images. Corporeal images, in fact, are true as such, that is, in so far as they are received by the intelligence as partial and limited; yet, they become deceptive or false if they attempt to impose themselves as absolute representations of the reality of the corresponding objects. In the same way, the form of knowledge which is proper to reason also produces an imperfect image, more similar to the truth than that of the senses, but nevertheless always inadequate for reproducing in the soul the effective reality of being. This reality will, therefore, remain unreachable even for the intellective faculty or for any other particular form of superior intelligence, in so far as only the absoluteness of the divine mind is capable of seizing reality in itself with a unitary and perfectly reflexive view of the ultimate nature of the known object.

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This perspective had, in effect, allowed the Neoplatonists to draw fruit – by working (as it is inevitable for man) upon the dianoetic plane – from all the cognitive instruments which were examined and perfected by the most important and credible philosophical schools of Antiquity.Thus it was possible for them to realize a complete synthesis of the best logical-gnoseological norms which had been devised by various speculative currents – from the Peripatetics to the Stoics –, with the goal of regulating, even in the smallest details, the scientific representation of the particular truth of reason.Aristotelianism, in particular, represents – on the basis of the phenomenological orientation of Platonic gnoseology – the philosophy which illustrates in the most correct and complete manner a form of knowledge and representation of the truth: the form belonging to defining and discursive reason.Yet, no human attempt of reproducing the ontological reality, in so far as it is coherently structured and organized, can avoid offering itself as a merely subjective and limited representation of the ungraspable truth of being in itself.The Neoplatonists therefore stripped Aristotelian thought of the realism that seems to characterize it by principle, and received the peripatetic doctrine as a suitable container for formal instrumentalizations which were adequate for supporting the dianoetic activity of the human soul, without entailing, as a result of this approach, any dismissal of the fundamental Platonic belief in the unreachable truth of the higher world. Unlike Skepticism, the Neoplatonic phenomenalism did not include a radical renunciation of the comprehension of being, but resolved the complementary imperfections of all forms of particular knowledge through the constant hope for a higher and totalizing contemplation of the truth, which is the final and irrefutable goal of cognitive asceticism for the true sage. In the course of this book, it has been shown how the efficacious overturning of the terms in the relationship between subject and object in knowledge establishes itself upon the basis of the attempt to regenerate classical philosophical thought.Augustine initiated this attempt, departing from a radical ‘conversion’ of the relations between human thought and the divinity of the truth. He finds a solution to the Ciceronian skeptical negativity through the Neoplatonic surpassing of the limits of the knowing

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subject, who is attracted by the totality of the divine One who manifests himself79. It has also been shown how Boethius – establishing, in this way, his own work as the very basis for medieval Latin speculation –, had made this lesson of Greek Neoplatonism his own: he proposed this as the key for resolving the complex contradictions which arise from the tragic existential conflict between the finite point of view of the human subject and the absolute view of the mind of God80.The Neoplatonic overturning of the peripatetic gnoseological perspective is also at the base of the speculative system of the Periphyseon of John the Scot, nourished by the principle according to which every knowing subject – and therefore every faculty of the human soul taken separately – assimilates itself to the known object: moreover, the subject «becomes» (fit) such an object, uniting himself fully with it81.The capillary diffusion of the Neoplatonic gnoseological vision therefore describes the manner in which the thinkers during the entirety of the early Middle Ages allowed themselves to be guided, above all in the theological applications of their thought, by the idea that knowledge is always the result of the subject’s progressive ‘appropriation’ of the truth of the object. The object manifests itself only gradually and in diverse forms, always in relation to the variety of faculties put into act at different times by the knowing subject. For the entirety of philosophical-theological Latin speculation up until the twelfth century, the reigning conviction was that the truth is known in an absolute and perfect mode only by God. Human faculties are only able to initiate their specific subjective reconstruction of such a truth in different and necessarily limited ways, absorbing in diverse forms the nature of the object – corporeal for the senses, conceptual and defined for reason, intuitive and absolute for the intellect. Only in the final mystical opening to the identity with the divine knowledge does a true comprehension of the final, original nature of the res in themselves appear definitively possible.The better speculative acquisitions reached by early medieval thought would turn out to be deprived of sense and philosophical depth, if they were not es79

Cfr. above, cap. 1, esp. pp. 58-63. Cfr. above, cap. 2, esp. pp. 116-124. 81 Cfr. above, cap. 3, pp. 186-194, esp. p. 190, note 98. 80

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tablished upon such a perspective.This is the case not only for the speculative consolation for humanity in Boethius, but also for the systematic division of natura in John the Scot, and, last but not least, for the very development of the unum argumentum and the rational system of theological truth in Anselm, whose rationes necessariae are nothing less than human intelligence’s recognition of the manner in which God contemplates in himself the truth of himself and of his creative work. The first decades of the thirteenth century witnessed the introduction to the West of the Aristotelian-Avicennian idea regarding the subordination of knowledge to the direct acquisition of objective data, always coming from outside of the subject – whether it is operated by the senses, which put the soul into contact with the inferior reality of bodies, or by an illumination, resulting from the activity of a superior mediating intelligence, which joins the soul to the formal representation of the truth descending from on high. A massive return of Latin intellectuals to a new inversion of the relations between subject and object in the act of knowledge then takes place. According to such an ancient, but, for that time, innovative, vision, the true form of knowledge is not the result of diverse modes of the perception of objective data on the part of each one of the faculties of the subject, but consists in allowing the soul to acquire, in the most direct form possible, the real manner of being of the thing.Truth emerges from a ‘conforming’ of the knowing subject to the manner of being of the known object, so that knowledge becomes truer and more correct in so far as the soul can passively reflect the forms of things like a mirror, without any active elaboration on its part. The technical formula veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus appears in this new phase of medieval thought as the best expression of this new conception of the relationships between the subject and object of knowledge. It probably goes back to the Avicennian sources, but was attributed by many Latin authors of the thirteenth century – among whom one finds Thomas Aquinas – to Isaac Israeli (from his De definitionibus). In fact, the principle of the truthful ‘conforming’ of the intellect to the manner of being of the thing presupposes that such a manner of being is objectively true in itself, in so far as the created res really subsists in the mode in which it is known.The truth of the thing is neither in the

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idea by which God knows it, nor in the effort applied by each one of the faculties of the soul to adapt themselves to such an idea, but it is in the thing itself, considered in itself as real and existing. From the theological realism of universals of the early Middle Ages one comes to a new objective realism, typical, in its original matrix, of the Peripatetic-Islamic thought. According to the words of Thomas’ commentary upon the formula attributed to Isaac, it is now necessary to distinguish the productive operation of the divine intellect – the «cause» of the being of things which are, itself being the «rule and measure» of their truth –, from the cognitive capacity of the created intellect, which must adapt itself to the mode of being of things (intellectus adaequatur rei) and find the «rule and measure» of its own truthfulness in them82. For the majority of the university teachers during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the adherence to the re-definition of the cognitive parameters in an Aristotelian perspective, consolidated by the reading of the paraphrases and comments of Averroes, brought significant effects not only for psychological doctrines, but also changed the epistemological point of view. This took place in as far as the new ideas allowed for a definition of the new stability and autonomy of each single scientific discipline, from the liberal arts to theology itself. All disciplines could now claim the right to exercise their own investigations upon a particular object, considered as one of the real modes of being of the res, of their properties, and of their operations. The striking return of speculative phenomenalism in the writings of Nicholas of Cusa assumes, therefore, the symptomatic 82 Cfr. THOMAS AQUINAS, Summa theologiae, Ia, q. 21, a. 2 (Utrum iustitia Dei sit veritas), resp., ed. cura et studio Fratrum Ordinis Praedicatorum, in Opera omnia cit. (above, cap. 2, note 79), IV, pp. 259b-260b: «Respondeo dicendum quod veritas consistit in adaequatione intellectus et rei (…). Intellectus autem qui est causa rei, comparatur ad ipsam sicut regula et mensura; e converso autem est de intellectu qui accipit scientiam a rebus. Quando igitur res sunt mensura et regula intellectus, veritas consistit in hoc, quod intellectus adaequatur rei, ut in nobis accidit: ex eo enim quod res est vel non est, opinio nostra et oratio vera vel falsa est. Sed quando intellectus est regula vel mensura rerum, veritas consistit in hoc, quod res adaequantur intellectui (…). Iustitia igitur Dei, quae constituit ordinem in rebus conformem rationi sapientiae suae, quae est lex eius, convenienter veritas nominatur». Cfr. also ibid., q. 16, a. 1 (Utrum veritas sit tantum in intellectu), resp., ibid., p. 207a; and ibid., a. 2 (Utrum veritas sit in intellectu componente et dividente), arg. 2, p. 208a: «Praeterea, Isaac dicit in libro De definitionibus quod veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus».

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value of a critique and a separation from peripatetic realism – now wounded and staggering, two centuries after its triumphant diffusion in the Latin West, under the blows of the Ockhamist epistemological revolution. One finds in his work the new overturning of the parameters of knowledge set between the final late ancient testimonies of Platonic gnoseology, in the writings of Gerson, and its systematic perfecting in Ficino, Pico, and then Giordano Bruno. This was accompanied by an explicit consciousness, even of the methodological order, of its speculative import. Phenomenalism substitutes itself for the peripateticscholastic principle of the subject’s adaequatio to the mode of being in itself of the known thing; it then yields to the Platonic polydivision of the faculties of the soul, allowing, in fact, for the consideration of created knowledge as the reversed adaptation – never complete and always perfectible – of the representative manifestation of the known thing to the modalities of the acquisition of the truth, which are proper to the particular cognitive power put into act from time to time by the subject.

5. The ‘filiations’ of the truth The intentional substitution of the scientific-mental scholastic paradigm with the new Platonizing paradigm emerges in a clear way from an analytic reading of all the scientific works of Nicholas of Cusa.Yet, in an open and intentional way, the return to the Platonic doctrine of knowledge is proposed and consolidated by him, as we have been able to ascertain, above all in the De coniecturis. In this very text it is possible, therefore, to verify fully even the efficacy of this new conversion in the relations between subject and object of knowing. Recovering the original Platonic-Christian basis of this thinking, Cusanus gave new life to the ancient phenomenological character of the theory of Truth, which had dominated in the centuries of the early Middle Ages, from the «conversion» of Augustine on. In the conjectural effort carried out by each one of the different cognitive powers, the entire universe reveals itself to the subject in diverse modes, though remaining in itself a unique res – the only truly existing res.Yet, while the senses remain intrinsically incapable of raising themselves up from the level of the partic-

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ular, reason and intellect assure two different orders of diversified and hierarchical manifestations of the one in the many, which, according to the terminology of pseudo-Dionysius, are both able to be considered theophaniae. Drawing inspiration from the theological nomenclature of Saint Paul (2Cor 12, 2: «scio hominem in Christo… raptum huiusmodi usque ad tertium caelum»), Cusanus distinguishes three distinct worlds, that is, three authentic forms of comprehending the divine, each one of which is ‘true’ in reference to the potentiality of the knower.The first world, the highest, corresponds to the Pauline «third heaven» and has God as the center, toward whom, through the power of grace, the created intelligence is attracted through its desire for the vision of the unique truth. The second has its center in the intelligence and lives in the cognitive activity of the soul, which, with the faculty of reason, passes through the verisimilitudes found in opposites in order to produce their reconciliation.The third has its center in reason, around which, as the outer cortex of the entire cognitive cosmos, the senses turn.Yet, the three worlds are not three distinct realities, since all things are entirely in each one of them («omnia sunt in primo mundo, omnia in secundo, omnia in tertio»), but according to a manner of being, that is, of appearance, which differs according to the respective grades of the approach to the truth («in quolibet modo suo»).The true essence of all reality is in the absoluteness of unity («entitas omnis rei est centrum seu unitas illa absolutissima»).This unity then brings forth either the immediate, uncontaminated, and simple truth of all things in the third heaven; or their distant verisimilitudes in the second world; or the confusion of the shadow of the single semantic signs – though not totally lacking the participation in the truth – in the third world. As a father is in the sons, in the nephews, and in the most distant of his descendants, so God is the beginning from whom arise the successive filiations of the truth, which remains identical to itself while being diversely perceived and represented in the inferior spheres: that is, it remains shining and splendid, just as it is, in the intellectual heaven; it is clothed in reasons and opinionated distinctions in the heaven of rationality; and it is confused by the crassness of the material images in the inferior world83. 83

Cfr. De coniecturis, I, 12 (De tribus mundis), 61-63, edd. Koch - Bormann -

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In each of the three worlds, that is, in relation to each level of the appearance of the truth, different manners of administering knowledge develop. All human sciences, that is the arts of the quadrivium and those of the trivium, develop in three grades: the intellectual, which is more abstract and penetrating; the sensible, which is image-filled and corporeal; and, between these, the rational. If the more noted and applied divisions of human science seem to lead themselves back to this intermediate development, it is because the theorizing and the practice of the disciplines are normally achieved for man as a form of investigation and expression particular to the discursive ratio84. Thus, again, in the descripSenger cit. (above, note 12), in Op., pp. 61,3-62,6 and 62,1-15; Ph.-th., p. 66: «Post haec taliter, quamvis ineptius, tradita mundum quendam supremum ex theophanico descensu divinae primae unitatis in denariam atque ex denariae unitatis regressione in primam constitui concipe, qui et tertium caelum, si libet, vocitetur. Alium pari descensu ex secundae unitatis in tertiam et ipsius tertiae ascensu in secundam constituas, qui et secundum caelum dici poterit. Tertium vero mundum per descensum tertiae unitatis in quartam et quartae reascensum in tertiam coniectura. Universum igitur sic erit ex centraliori spiritualissimo mundo atque ex circumferentialiori grossissimo et ex medio. Centrum primi Deus, secundi intelligentia, centrum tertii ratio. Sensibilitas est quasi grossissima cortex tertii atque circumferentialis tantum. Primum centrum indivisibilis entitatis omnia in omnibus tenentis ubique centralis, sensibilitas semper extremitatem tenet. Omnia sunt in primo mundo, omnia in secundo, omnia in tertio, in quolibet modo suo. Entitas omnis rei est centrum seu unitas illa absolutissima. Cum igitur haec sit ipsa veritas omnium et cuiuslibet, est omnis res vera in tertio caelo, ut a veritate sua immediatius impermixteque fluit quasi pater in filiis. Est in secundo caelo, ut in veri similitudine remotiori, quasi pater in nepotibus. Est in infimo caelo, ut in remotissima adumbratione, ubi in ultimis tantum signis occultatur ut pater in distantissimis consanguineis ab eo descendentibus. Deus autem pater atque principium nostrum est, cuius verae filiationis imaginem in tertio tantum caelo tenemus, cuius centralis unitas est ipsa veritas. Ibi tantum ut filii veri veritatis regnum possidere poterimus. Unde illud est intellectuale caelum, ubi lucet veritas clare, uti est. Cuius quidem veritatis lumen in secundo rationali caelo, adumbratum rationibus, varietatem induit opinativam, in inferiori vero densissima grossitie confunditur». Cfr. also in the passage from De beryllo, 4, cit. above (in note 23), the attribution of the doctrine of the three heavens to Augustine, in reference probably to De Genesi ad litteram, XII, 34, 67, PL 32, 483, ed. Zycha cit. (above, cap. 1, note 142), p. 430,5-17. 84 Cfr. De coniecturis, II, 2 (De eodem), 86, Op., p. 83,1-18; Ph.-th., p. 94: «Si tibi per ea coniecturarum ante dicta principia libuerit explicatiores tractatus componere, ad universorum figuram recurrito et ipsum maximum circulum rationem facito et artes rationales lucidissimas et clariores abstractioresque atque infimas magis adumbratas atque medias elicito. Si de mathematica inquiris, idem facito, ut aliam quandam intellectualem, aliam quasi sensibilem et mediam quasi rationalem constituas, ita de arithmetica, ita de geometria, ita de musica. (…) Ita quidem de logica sensibili, rationali et intellectuali, ita de rhetorica, ita de gram-

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tion of the composition of the cosmos, sense, reason and intellect alternate in perfecting the human capacity to penetrate the apparent surface of bodies in their ultimate constitutive nature, from the greater complexity of the compounds to the simplicity of the elements85. In harmony with such presuppositions, other parallel triads develop in the cognitive order of the universe: three forms of life, from the most complex to the more simple86; three levels of natural productivity, from that of the vegetable to that of the animal life, up to the immediate and non-contracted generation of the intelligible essences87; and three kinds of natural movement, in a complex, though linear, system of attractions from the heights to the depths, and the finalistic tensions in the inverse direction88. matica, si libet, agas. Mira quidem videbis, quoniam etsi rationalis vis in omnibus artibus participetur, tamen si altiorem rationis partem applicueris, arti rationali cuicumque, ipsa erit quasi intellectualis respectu eiusdem artis, quando inferiori rationis virtute animatur». 85 Cfr. ibid., 4 (De elementis), 91, Op., p. 88,2-10; Ph.-th., p. 100: «Universitas enim elementorum est trina: ‹radicaliter›, quadrate, cubice. Alia enim sunt elementa magis intellectualia, alia magis rationalia, alia vero sensibilia. Ea enim, quae sensus primo iudicat elementa, ratio elementata convincit, atque illa, quae rationi videntur simplicia, intelligentia composita apprehendit. Refert igitur inter elementorum gradus quasi inter puncta, lineas atque superficies. Sensibilis hic mundus nihil superficiei simplicius attingit, rationalis vero simplicem lineam superficie anteponit, intellectualis autem indivisibilem punctum lineae praefert». Cfr. also ibid., 5 (Quomodo elementum in elementato). 86 Cfr. ibid., 11 (De vita), 130, Op., pp. 125,9-126,15; Ph.-th., p. 144: «Vita igitur irresolubilis est ipsa intellectualis vita; resolubilis vero est ipsa sensibilis; media vero, quae intellectuali propinquior est rationalis nobilis atque intellectualis est, quae et sensus intellectualis dici potest; sensui vero accedens rationalis ignobilis seu imaginativa aut intellectus sensualis poterit appellari. Ratio igitur superior intellectum participans cum ratione inferiori sensualis naturae connectitur in specie ipsa humana». 87 Cfr. ibid., 12 (De natura et arte), 132, Op., p. 129,8-14; Ph.-th., p. 146: «Natura vero in intelligentiis intellectualem parit fructum, in animalibus animalem, in vegetalibus vegetabilem. Oboedit natura sensibilis rationali, rationalis intellectuali, intellectualis divinae. Oboedit sensibiliter factibile arti rationali, rationalis intellectuali, intellectuali divinae. Sicut omnis natura in sensibili sensibiliter est contracta, ita et factibilitas in sensibili est sensibiliter contracta, in rationali rationabiliter». 88 Cfr. ibid., 13 (De natura intellectuali), 134, Op., pp. 130,6-131,18; Ph.-th., p. 148: «Intellectualis vero in se tenebrositates alterabiles absorbens natura mascula, subtilis, unissima atque nobilissima est. Nec est intelligentiae natura quanta nec motus intellectualis generis quanti nisi intellectualiter seu virtualiter, cui non obsistit simplicitas, indivisibilitas et cetera, quae intellectualis sunt unitatis. Non enim est motus eius in alteritatem aliter, quam ut alteritas in unitatem absolutius

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It is now justifiable to admit in a single knowing subject the possibility of further diversifying the cognitive areas (regiones), which are included and are comprehensible within one another, all being found in the elevated simplicity of the primordial reality89.The human anima, in particular, characterized by the possibility of exercising more cognitive faculties, may occasionally – according to the practical conditions or virtuous desires which motivate its choices – consider reality in reference to diverse perspectival evaluations, without identifying itself in a limited way with any of the corresponding phenomenological spheres. It may, in fact, exercise itself either according to the sensible manifestation and the material conditions, which allow it to administer the life of the body and the functions connected to it;or according to the rules of conceptualizing and discursive reason;or,finally,according to the intellectual capacity for reunifying and transcending the arguments and the conceptual definitions in order to apply itself to the primordial light of the divine principle90.Though the rational capacity is the specific pergat. Descendit enim unitas eius in rationale intelligibile, ut intelligibile ipsum in unitatem ascendat intellectus. Est enim principium atque finis rationabilis intelligibilis, sicut eius principium finisque eius unitas est absoluta. Ad cuius unionem pergere est secundum naturam suam intellectualem sursum agere atque in hoc motu quiescere, uti ratio in ipsa quiescit intelligentia, ad quam non nisi per intelligentiae descensum et luminis sui participatam immissionem ascendere potest». 89 Cfr. ibid., Op., p. 130,2-5; Ph.-th., p. 148: «Natura autem universalis, ut universi circulus, in se primo tres regionum atque naturarum intellectualium, rationalium atque sensitivarum, complicat orbes». Cfr. KOCH, Der Sinn cit. (above, note 14), p. 608. On the theme of the three areas in other writings of Cusanus, cfr. also the text cited above, in note 11. 90 Cfr. De coniecturis, ibid., 134-136, Op., pp. 131,26-132,33, 132,8-10 and 133,1-7; Ph.-th., p. 150: «Ita et anima nostra ubique atque nullibi est secundum contractionem corporis. Nam est in qualibet parte illius suae regionis et nullibi, in nulla enim parte corporis ut in loco est potius quam in alio. Sicut enim universalia sunt in intellectu atque eorum locus intellectus dicitur, ita quidem hoc intelligi necesse est secundum saepe resumptas regulas, intellectum scilicet esse in universalibus ita quod ipsa in eo, quasi ut praesidens in regno est ita quod regnum in ipso. Non igitur est mobilis natura intelligentia de loco ad locum nisi eo modo, quo in loco esse potest. Intellectualiter igitur movetur ipsa natura intelligentialis in suo determinato sibi regno. Et hoc quidem movere est, cum quo quiescere concurrit, cum sit veritati obtemperare. (…) Iudex est enim rationum intelligentia et moveri dicitur, dum ob verius unam eligit aliamque abicit ac dum ratiocinantes illuminat aut inducit. Intelligentiae igitur ut virtutes universales rectricesque contractionum rationalium concipi debent, ac si in ipsis suis regionibus solis vices gerant; ut uti in hoc sensibili mundo ex solis sensibilis vigore oculi sensibiliter ad pulchri aut turpis iudicium pergunt, ita in rationali mundo

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prerogative of the human species,it is at the same time variously distributed and actuated in less perfect forms in all the other vegetable and animal species91. Inversely, one finds in man all the creaturely cognitive capacities, which he may variously apply toward all the possible objects of knowledge by putting into motion the faculty which is, according to the particular situation, more similar to the object,from the senses to theological intuition.Over and over man, by knowing the object, becomes identical to the known object in so far as he becomes the subject of a conscious reflection of it. He passes in such a way through the entirety of creation, up to the creative Principle himself, the final object of his desires92.

intelligentia vigorem cognitionis veri apportat. Deus autem ipse infinitus sol intelligentiarum est, intelligentiae vero ut varia contractiora lumina rationum». 91 Cfr. ibid., 136, Op., p. 133,7-10; Ph.-th., pp. 150-152: «Varie vero rationem inspicimus contractam in vegetalibus et animalibus secundum diversa genera atque species, et ex hinc coniecturamus diversas rectrices intelligentias». 92 Cfr. ibid., 14 (De homine), 140-143, Op., pp. 140,17-20, 141,1-142,17, 142,1-143,7; Ph.-th., pp. 156-158: «Corporalis autem natura gradatim sursum in sensitivam pergit, ita quidem quod ultimus eius ordo propinque cum ipsa coincidat sensitiva. Ita quidem ipsa sensitiva in discretivam nobilitatur. Omnis autem sensatio obviatione exoritur. Unde ut quaedam sensationes obviatione contingentium causantur, ita gradatim quaedam ex distantioribus incitantur obiectis. (…) Pergit autem imaginatio absolutiori libertate ultra ipsam contractionem sensuum in quantitate molis, temporum, figurae et loci et minus atque plus, quam sensitive apprehenditur, propinquius et remotius atque absens ambit, genus sensibilium non exiens. Ratio autem imaginationem supergreditur, ut videat antipodes cadere non posse potius quam nos, cum grave ad centrum moveatur, quod inter eos et nos mediat. Haec autem imaginatio non attingit. Ita quidem patet rationem supervehi imaginationi, verius irrestrictiusque ad cuncta pergere. Intellectus autem ad rationem se habet ut virtus unitatis ad finitum numerum, ut nihil eius virtutem penitus aufugere possit. Mirabile est hoc Dei opificium, in quo gradatim discretiva ipsa virtus a centro sensuum usque in supremam intellectualem naturam supervehitur per gradus quosdam organicosque rivulos, ubi continue ligamenta tenuissimi spiritus corporalis lucidificantur atque simplificantur propter victoriam virtutis animae, quousque in rationalis virtutis cellam pertingatur. Post quam quidem in supremum ipsum intellectualis virtutis ordinem, quasi per rivum in mare interminum, pervenitur, ubi chori quidem esse coniecturantur disciplinae, intelligentiae atque intellectualitatis simplicissimae. Humanitas igitur unitas cum humanaliter contracta exsistat, omnia secundum hanc contractionis naturam complicare videtur. Ambit enim virtus unitatis eius universa atque ipsa intra suae regionis terminos adeo coercet, ut nihil omnium eius aufugiat potentiam. Quoniam omnia sensu aut ratione aut intellectu coniecturatur attingi atque has virtutes in sua unitate complicari dum conspicit, se ad omnia humaniter progredi posse supponit». On the identity of knower and known cfr. the coherence of Cusanus’ thought with that of John Scotus Eriugena’s (cfr. above, note 81).

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Yet, all comprehensibility, and therefore the very reality of the universe, is essentially reflected in God. It is now correct to say that man, in so far as he knows, is the entire world.This does not mean that he, like God, contracts all things into himself, but rather that he bears the world within himself in order to know it («humanus mundus», or «microcosmos»). Furthermore, since man’s final object is God, man, as the subject of the manifestation of the truth, is also God.Yet, since he does not know God in an absolute manner, but rather in the manner in which God manifests himself in his becoming man, man is God borne within man («humanus Deus»). According to Nicholas of Cusa, the human being is able ‘to be humanly God’, or ‘to be humanly an angel’,‘a beast’, or any other sort of knowable thing. Just as God unifies in himself all minds, so man unifies in himself all the cognitive capacities which, in a certain way, coexist in his humanity93.This is true to the degree in which, on the theoretical side, he succeeds in being more contemplative and capable of living in contact with eternal things, thanks to an actualization of the intellectual intuition of the truth, which should be as constant as possible; otherwise, he may be dominated more by reason, or by the senses, thus assimilating himself to the various inferior species94.This 93

Cfr. ibid., 143-144, Op., pp. 143,7-144,15 and 144,1-9; Ph.-th., pp. 158160: «Homo enim Deus est, sed non absolute, quoniam homo; humanus est igitur Deus. Homo etiam mundus est, sed non contracte omnia, quoniam homo. Est igitur homo microcosmos aut humanus quidem mundus. Regio igitur ipsa humanitatis Deum atque universum mundum humanali sua potentia ambit. Potest igitur homo esse humanus Deus atque, ut Deus, humaniter potest esse humanus angelus, humana bestia, humanus leo aut ursus aut aliud quodcumque. Intra enim humanitatis potentiam omnia suo exsistunt modo. In humanitate igitur omnia humaniter, uti in ipso universo universaliter, explicata sunt, quoniam humanus exsistit mundus. Omnia denique in ipsa complicata sunt humaniter, quoniam humanus est Deus. Nam humanitas unitas est, quae est et infinitas humaniter contracta. Quoniam autem unitatis condicio est ex se explicare entia, cum sit entitas sua simplicitate entia complicans, hinc humanitatis extat virtus omnia ex se explicare intra regionis suae circulum, omnia de potentia centri exserere. Est autem unitatis condicio, ut se finem explicationum constituat, cum sit infinitas». 94 Cfr. ibid., 15 (De hominum concordantia et differentia), 146, Op., p. 147,6-15; Ph.-th., pp. 162-164: «Tunc enim in ipsa humanitatis specie quosdam vides abstractiores contemplativos homines in quadam conversatione intellectualium et aeternorum principaliter quasi in supremo humanitatis caelo versari, et hi sunt ut ipsius speciei intellectus circa veri speculationem vacantes. Sunt et alii, ut speciei ipsius ratio, qui inferioribus quasi sensibilibus praesunt. Primi sapientes sunt quasi lumina clarissima atque castissima spiritualis incorruptibilis mundi effigiem

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also takes place on the practical side, to the degree in which man knows how to orient his appetite for the good toward different ends: toward God himself, toward the objects of rational knowledge, or finally toward sensual pleasure95. It is therefore clear how the truth, coinciding in itself with the perfection of unity, manifests itself to men only in multiple and diversified forms: these are all the phenomenological modes of appearance of the object in the subject, in diverse gradations, which are more or less close to the reality of the truth, but none of which is identical to the truth in an absolute way. Only in God are all things God, while in the intellect all things are intellect, in reason rationality, and in sense sensuality and corporeity96. The truest knowledge – that which approaches more to the nature of the object – is therefore that knowledge through which the human subject knows himself, that is, his own cognitive virtutes: in fact, these powers allow him to understand and to love, as such, the true phenomenical appearance of the diverse regiones of being and their final coinciding with the absolute unity of the divine principle97. ferentia, ultimi sensibiles quasi brutales, concupiscentiam atque voluptatem sequentes, medii a superioribus influentiam claritatis participant et inferioribus praesunt». 95 Cfr. ibid., 147, Op., p. 148,8-13; Ph.-th., p. 164: «Hinc primi abstractiores intellectualius ipsam religionem supra omnem rationem et sensum participantes vitam exspectant sua excellentia omnem rationis et sensus capacitatem supergredientem, alii vero ipsam felicitatem infra rationis metam redigentes in rerum cognitione et fruitione finem ponunt, tertii absurdissime in sensibilibus delectationibus». 96 Cfr. ibid., I, 4 (De quattuor unitatibus), 15-16, Op., pp. 20,1-21,9; Ph.-th., p. 16: «Omnia autem in Deo Deus, in intelligentia intellectus, in anima anima, in corpore corpus. Quod aliud non est quam mentem omnia complecti vel divine vel intellectualiter vel animaliter aut corporaliter: divine quidem, hoc est prout res est veritas; intellectualiter, hoc est ut res non est veritas ipsa, sed vere; animaliter, hoc est ut res est verisimiliter; corporaliter vero etiam veri similitudinem exit et confusionem subintrat. Prima unitas penitus existit absoluta; ultima vero, quantum possibile est, omnem absolutionem exiens, contracta est; secunda multum absoluta, parum contracta; tertia parum absoluta multumque contracta. Quapropter, sicut intelligentia non est penitus divina seu absoluta, ita nec rationalis anima penitus divinitatis exit participationem, ut admiranda in invicem progressione divina atque absoluta unitate gradatim in intelligentia et ratione descendente et contracta sensibili per rationem in intelligentiam ascendente mens omnia distinguat pariterque conectat». Cfr. the conceptual parallelism with the texts of Eriugena cited above, in note 59. 97 Cfr. De coniecturis, II, 17 (De sui cognitione), 176, Op., pp. 176,1-177,14; Ph.-th., p. 200: «Vides nunc, Iuliane, quomodo unitas tua in contracta humanitate

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By reconnecting this phenomenalism to its genuine Neoplatonic roots, Cusanus then clarifies, in the De mente, the contribution which the adhesion to Neoplatonic gnoseology is able to give to the discovery and justification of the doctrinal concord between the Platonists and the Aristotelians. On the one hand, the Peripatetics are in the right when they maintain that the cognitive contents of every superior grade must be nourished by those of the respective inferior grade (thus, no form of knowledge is in the intellect without having first passed through reason, and no form of knowledge is in reason without having passed through the senses).Yet, on the other hand, it is also true that each faculty enjoys partial autonomy from the others in so far as it has objects (that is, forms of manifestation of the truth), which are particularly its own and directly known by it alone98. This implies that the abstracting activity with which the ratio, according to the Aristotelian gnoseology, works out universal concepts (entia rationis) is not a pure production of illusory images, but the recognition of a specific manner of appearance of reality. Each manifestation of reality in itself therefore is endowed with an appropriate objective subsistence and truth, which prescinds from the multiplication of cognitive manifestations («manet in se unitrinum lumen in tribus ipsis regionibus varie participat atque quomodo in ipsa suprema tuae naturae nobilitate unitatem seu entitatem supremam, quae est virtus intellectiva, atque aequalitatem supremam, quae est virtus aequalificandi seu iustificandi, atque etiam conexionem supremam, quae virtus est conectendi seu amandi, supreme participas, hoc est intellectualiter. Ita quidem hanc unitrinam virtutem mediocriter etiam in regione media participas. Quapropter virtutem rationabiliter essendi seu decernendi rationabiliterque aequalificandi seu iustificandi atque conectendi seu amandi te participare contracte conspicis, sic etiam secundum infimam ipsam regionem sensibiliter essendi seu sentiendi, sensibiliter aequalificandi seu iustificandi, sensibiliter connectendi seu amandi. Hae quidem participatae virtutes in tuae humanitatis virtute complicantur». 98 Cfr. Idiota de Mente, 2, ed. Baur cit. (above, note 21), in Op., p. 53,5-16; Ph.th., pp. 494-496: «IDIOTA. Quicumque igitur putat nihil in intellectum cadere posse, quod non cadat in ratione, ille etiam putat nihil posse esse in intellectu, quod prius non fuit in sensu; et hic necessario dicere habet rem nihil esse, nisi ut sub vocabulo cadit, et huius studium est in omni inquisitione quid nominis profundare, et haec inquisitio grata est homini, quia motu rationis discurrit; hic negaret formas in se et in sua veritate separatas esse aliter, quam ut sunt entia rationis, et exemplaria ac ideas nihili faceret. Qui vero in mentis intelligentia aliquid esse admittunt, quod non fuit in sensu nec in ratione, puta exemplarem et incommunicabilem veritatem formarum, quae in sensibilibus relucent, hii dicunt exemplaria natura praecedere sensibilia, sicut veritas imaginem».

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veritas»). When, however, the soul, going beyond the logical-rational production of concepts and their signifying force, drives itself to seize with the intellect the theological perfection of the same res, one sees that Plato is correct in locating the cognitive mediator in the superior subsistence of the exemplaria or ideae99. The rediscovery of the doctrinal concord in the teaching of the Platonists and Aristotelians reflects the harmony which must subsist among the possible modes of knowing reality, which all resolve themselves in a unity when the soul (mens), by ascending toward the incomprehensible splendor of the pure divine form, perceives the existence of the unique, perfect, and absolutely exemplary truth of all things100. 99

Cfr. ibid., Op., pp. 53,16-54,12; Ph.-th., pp. 496-498: «IDIOTA. Et ordinem dant talem, ut primo ordine naturae sit humanitas in se et ex se, scilicet absque praeiacenti materia; deinde homo per humanitatem, et quod ibi cadat sub vocabulo; deinde species in ratione. Unde destructis omnibus hominibus humanitas, ut est species, quae sub vocabulo cadit, et est ens rationis, quod ratio venata est ex similitudine hominum, subsistere nequit; nam ab hominibus dependebat, qui non sunt. Sed propter hoc non desinit esse humanitas, per quam fuerunt homines, quae quidem humanitas non cadit sub vocabulo speciei, prout vocabula motu rationis sunt imposita; sed est veritas speciei illius sub vocabulo cadentis. Unde imagine destructa manet in se veritas. Et hii omnes negant rem non aliud esse, quam ut cadit sub vocabulo: eo enim modo, ut sub vocabulo cadit, de rebus fit logica et rationalis consideratio. Quare illam logice inquirunt, profundant et laudant, sed ibi non quiescunt, quia ratio seu logica circa imagines formarum tantum versatur. Sed res ultra vim vocabuli theologice intueri conantur et ad exemplaria et ideas se convertunt.Arbitror non posse plures inquisitionum modos dari. Si tu, qui es philosophus, alias legisti, scire potes. Ego sic conicio. PHILOSOPHUS. Mirabiliber omnium tangis philosophorum sectas, Peripateticorum et Academicorum». 100 Cfr. ibid., Op., pp. 54,13-55,7; Ph.-th., p. 498: «IDIOTA. Hae omnes et quotquot cogitari possent modorum differentiae facillime resolvuntur et concordantur, quando mens se ad infinitatem elevat. Nam (…) tunc infinita forma est solum una et simplicissima, quae in omnibus rebus resplendet tamquam omnium et singulorum formabilium adeaquatissimum exemplar. Unde verissimum erit non esse multa separata exemplaria ac multas rerum ideas. Quam quidem infinitam formam nulla ratio attingere potest. Hinc per omnia vocabula rationis motu imposita ineffabili non comprehenditur. Unde res, ut sub vocabulo cadit, imago est ineffabilis exempli sui proprii et adaequati. Unum est igitur verbum ineffabile, quod est praecisum nomen omnium rerum, ut motu rationis sub vocabulo cadunt. Quod quidem ineffabile nomen in omnibus nominibus suo modo relucet, quia infinita nominabilitas omnium nominum, et infinita vocabilitas omnium voce expressibilium, ut sic omne nomen sit imago praeccisi nominis. Et nihil aliud omnes conati sunt dicere, licet forte id, quod dixerunt, melius et clarius dici posset. Omnes enim necessario concordarunt unam esse infinitam virtutem, quam Deum dicimus, in qua necessario omnia complicantur». Cfr. also IOHANNES

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6. The humanistic ‘reform’ of theology Under the entry «Baldus de Ubaldis» in his Dictionnaire, Pierre Bayle recalls that the famous Italian jurist of the fourteenth century would, during an argument, often fall into contradictions, thereby justifying the fact that «our intellect changes, and it reasons in one manner today, and in another tomorrow»101. Bayle comments by observing that sometimes such a principle was considered extremely useful in theology: a proposition which can be applied today in confuting Pelagius will in fact be less valid one year later when confuting Calvin.Without neglecting an explicit indication regarding the Ciceronian roots of this speculative attitude, he adds that he had read that «some controversialists of the past» were constrained to admit that sometimes the Magisterium of the Church adapts, with surprising elasticity, the interpretation of the Scriptures to the exigencies of the time: these controversialists then maintained that such an approach is absolutely coherent with the nature of human intelligence, which, in order to assure for believers their common identity in a single religion, must, on every occasion, find different words for expressing the profundity of the mysteries of the faith. In the marginal notes, Bayle reveals the person to whom such an allusion refers by citing some propositions drawn from a letter of Nicholas of Cusa to clerical representatives in Bohemia: the Scriptures, he says, are «ad tempus adaptatae et varie intellectae». In fact «intellectus currit cum praxi»102. SCOTUS ERIUGENA, Periphyseon, IV, 855BC, ed. Jeauneau cit (above, cap. 2, note 73), IV, p. 161,4957-4960: «Ordo siquidem naturalis esset, si animus sui creatoris potestati subditus atque oboediens adhaereret, deinde sensus potestatum nutumque animi libenter sequeretur, corpus autem sensui succumberet. Sic nanque pax et armonia ipsius creaturae et in se ipsa et cum creatore suo fieret». 101 Cfr. PIERRE BAYLE, s.v. Balde, in Dictionnaire historique et critique (Paris 1697/16981, 17022), ed.A. J. Q. Beuchot, 16 voll., Paris 1820, III, pp. 49b-53b. In the text of this entry (p. 50b) Bayle observes: «Les excuses dont il», i. e., Baldus, «colorait ses contradictions méritent d’être considérées». In correspondence with these words, he observes in a note (p. 53a): «Il disait que notre entendement change, et qu’ainsi il raisonne un jour d’une façon, un jour d’une autre».The information referred to by Bayle regarding Baldus de Ubaldis comes from GUIDUS PANCIROLUS (PANCIROLI), De claris legum interpretibus, II, 70, 87, ed. Ch. G. Hoffmann, Leipzig 1721, pp. 166-167. 102 Cfr. ibid., p. 53b: «Je me souviens d’avoir lu que certains controversistes, ne pouvant nier que l’Église ne commandât certaines choses qui ne paraissent con-

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It is significant that, in confirming the moderately probabilistic criticism of the presumptions of the theology of the schools,Pierre Bayle has invoked,as an example for a «controversialist» of the past, the voice of one of the more enlightened humanists of the fifteenth century. Nicholas of Cusa composed these words in order to encourage the Hussites to participate in dialogue and in reconciliation.His further invitation to consider,with moderation and a pragmatic spirit, the magisterial interventions of the Church had the goal of not so much demolishing – as perhaps it seemed to Bayle –, as rather restructuring, and reestablishing to a proper degree,the claims of objectivity and absolutism advanced in their discipline by the theologians of his age.At this time Cusanus was taking significant steps in opening the dialogue with the dissidents:his own contribution to the dramatic problem of religious unity, which had become dangerously fragmented during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by the crisis of the ecclesiastical institutions, was then inspired by the project – already widespread among the humanists of his time – of initiating a concrete reform of the disorganized appeal to orientations and teachings which characterized the main cultivators of the regina scientiarum in the university centers of the West.An empty and useless juxtaposition of particular theses and dialectical confutations seemed to be the only result of the teaching of the magistri theologiae in these years.It was an alarming sign of the irreversibility of a crisis in which the very doctrinal uniformity of the Christianitas was collapsing.The supporting spiritual architecture of a civilization founded, since the time of Charlemagne, upon the principle of co-participation among believers in a universal truth seemed no longer to hold sway.Thus, just as the denouncement of the dissensio philosophorum formes ni à l’Écriture, ni à la primitive Église, ont soutenu qu’elles ne laissent pas d’être justes et véritables, parce que le Saint-Esprit, qui conduit l’Église, lui inspire dans chaque siècle l’interprétation la plus propre au salut des âmes: ‘Scripturas esse ad tempus adaptatas et varie intellectas, ita ut uno tempore secundum currentem universalem ritum exponerentur, mutato ritu iterum sententia mutaretur’ (Nicolaus Cusanus, Epist. II ad Bohemos).‘Non est mirum si praxis ecclesiae uno tempore interpretatur Scripturam uno modo, alio tempore alio; nam intellectus currit cum praxi’ (Idem, Epist. VII). J’aime cette bonne foi». Cfr. NICHOLAS CUSANUS, Contra Bohemos, 7, 25, ed. P. Wilpert, Werke, 2 voll., Berlin 1967, II, [pp. 674-697], p. 692.The same concluding comment («Que j’aime cette bonne foi!») is introduced by BAYLE in the entry Antoine (Marc), l’orateur, ibid., I, p. 136a, regarding the intentional contradictions of the lawyers.

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in the first centuries of the Christian era had contributed to the unmasking of the vanity of ancient thinkers’hope to formulate incontrovertible truths,so now – in the same tormented years which saw the gradual failure of the irenic promises of the councils of Constance, Basle, and Ferrara-Florence-Rome – the dangerous echo of unjustifiable dissensiones theologorum had arisen.These divisions in the dialogues among the learned Christians were demonstrating a chronic incapacity to find the minimum theoretical accord regarding fundamental themes of the revealed message. Facing such a desolate picture, Nicholas of Cusa was denouncing the principal cause of error in all the human investigations in general, but above all in those more complex theological investigations which aimed at the knowledge of a perfect, and at the same time ungraspable, object: theology had become caught up in the vain goal of subordinating the knowledge of the truth to the gnoseological principle of the adaequatio intellectus et rei. Cusanus was pointing out, as we have seen, that the appropriate solution for such error lies in the methodological recourse to the Neoplatonists’ polypartite gnoseology, and to a corresponding restoration of the correct relations between the knowing subject and the known object103.The inauthenticity of the objectivist and systematic ambitions, which had characterized the final two centuries of theological research in the schools,appeared,with its striking evidence, simply to establish the impossibility of investigating God through the mediated comparison – which is the natural instrument of dianoetic reason – with something known and defined:knowledge of the first cause cannot, in fact, be compared with the effects which arise from it104. 103 On the new change in speculative parameters between medieval and renaissance thought – besides the classic E. CASSIRER, Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance, Leipzig 1927 –, cfr. also: H. B. GERL, Abstraktion und Gemeinsinn, zur Frage des Paradigmenweksel von der Scholastik zum Humanismus in der Argumentationstheorie Lorenzo Vallas, in «Tijdschrift voor Filosofie», 44 (1982), pp. 269-289; C. KNOX, Changing Christians Paradigms and Their Implications for Modern Thought, Leiden 1993. 104 Cfr. De docta ignorantia, I, 1 (Quomodo scire est ignorare), edd. Hoffmann Klibansky cit. (above, note 9), in Op., pp. 5,14-6,2; Ph.-th., p. 194: «Omnes autem investigantes in comparatione praesuppositi certi proportionabiliter incertum iudicant: comparativa igitur est omnis inquisitio medio proportionis utens. Ut dum haec, quae inquiruntur, propinqua proportionali reductione praesupposito possint comparari, facile est apprehensionis iudicium; dum multis mediis opus

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Nicholas of Cusa reaffirmed in this way, with a rich methodological apparatus and with speculative rigor, the widespread hope of the fifteenth century intellectual world for a reform of theological knowledge, perceived as an undeniable duty for the believing thinker who was confronting the desolate spectacle of the empty subtleties of the arid teachers of the schools.This is the «empty chatter of the dialecticians», according to the words of Petrarch’s famous invective, «which will never end», because «they boast of always finding new arguments for their inexhaustible (immortalia) verbal quarrels, even if, in truth, they do not even know what they are talking about»105. Petrarch himself evidently recognized the demand to stabilize the correct relationships between subject and object of the Christian wisdom even in the first pages of the Secretum. In a scene clearly inspired by the apparition of Philosophy in Boethius’ Consolatio, he insists above all upon the heavenly nature of the personified Truth and upon the impossibility of grasping her image, which men are not capable of seizing in a definitive way106. «Eager to see her», the poet habemus, difficultas et labor exoritur (…). Omnis igitur inquisitio in comparativa proportione facili vel difficili existit: propter quod infinitum ut infinitum, cum omnem proportionem aufugiat, ignotum est». The principle of knowledge through comparison is formally connected to the Aristotelian doctrine of the deduction, developed at the beginning of the Analytica posteriora, I, 1, 71a: «Each doctrine and each notion which is formed by way of discursive thought develops from a pre-existent knowledge»; cfr. also above, in the note 82,Thomas’ version of this discipline of rational knowledge. 105 Cfr. FRANCISCUS PETRARCHA, Secretum, I, ed. E. Carrara (in Prose, Milano - Napoli 1955), p. 52; ed. E. Fenzi, Milano 1992, p. 124: «AUGUSTINUS. Ista quidem dyalecticorum garrulitas nullum finem habitura, et diffinitionum huiuscemodi compendiis scatet et immortalium litigiorum materia gloriatur: plerunque autem, quid ipsum vere sit quod loquuntur, ignorant». Cfr. even ID., Familiares (Rerum familiarum libri septem), I, 7 (Contra senes dyalecticos), 3, edd. V. Rossi U. Bosco, 4 voll., Firenze 1923-24 (Edizione Nazionale delle Opere di Francesco Petrarca, 10-13), I, p. 35; ibid., I, 12, 18, ivi, I, p. 18. Cfr. also the polemical annotations against the scholastics afixed by Petrarch in the margins of his codex of Quintilian, in P. DE NOLHAC, Pétrarque et l’humanisme, Paris 1907, II, p. 89; and in M. ACCAME LANZILLOTTA, Le postille del Petrarca a Quintiliano (cod. Parigino lat. 7720), in «Quaderni Petrarcheschi», 5 (1988), [pp. 1-201], p. 19, n. 6: «Notate hoc, scolastici de nihilo tumescentes»; cfr. also ibid., p. 97, n. 825: «Notate, qui de quolibet disputatis, apparentes aliquid, nichil existentes». Cfr. C. VASOLI, Intorno al Petrarca ed ai logici «moderni», in Antiqui und Moderni. Traditionsbewußtsein und Fortschrittsbewußtsein im späten Mittelalter, hrsg. von A. Zimmermann, Berlin New York 1974 (Miscellanea Medievalia, 9), pp. 142-154. 106 Cfr. FRANCISCUS PETRARCHA, Secretum, prohemium, ed. Carrara, p. 22; ed.

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turns his eyes toward the Truth, but «the human vision does not succeed in standing before the heavenly light». Only with small and measured glances in succession, by responding gradually to the small questions («interrogatiunculae») posed by the Truth herself, can created reason become capable of directing itself through the dianoetic dialogue which will slowly bear it to the point of tolerating the vision of that face which, in its first appearance, confounds and disorients107. Yet, it is in the Greek cultural sphere, in the years of the formation of young Petrarch in Italy, that one encounters in the writings of the Basilian monk Barlaam of Calabria († 1350) one of the first examples of open criticism of the conceit of theology, which scholars presumed to transform into a definitory form of knowledge: a science capable, through rigorous formulae, of giving information about the nature of the divine object by means of a supposed adequatio of the cognitive aptitude of the subject to God’s mystery. Born in southern Italy, Barlaam was master of Philosophy and Theology at the so-called University of Constantinople.The emperor Andronicus III put him in charge of defending the Greek doctrine regarding the procession of the Holy Spirit against the teachings of the two Dominican Thomists, Francesco da Camerino and Richard of England, who had been missioned to the East by pope John XXII in 1334 in order to convince the Greeks to accept the Filioque108. In his tractate On the procession of the Holy Spirit against the Latins, Barlaam observes – and he expresses surFenzi, p. 94: «Mulier quedam inenarrabilis etatis et luminis, formaque non satis ab hominibus intellecta». 107 Cfr. ibid., ed. Carrara p. 24; ed. Fenzi, pp. 94-96: «Itaque videndi avidus respicio, et ecce lumen ethereum acies humana non pertulit. Rursus igitur in terram oculos deicio; quod illa cognoscens, brevis spatii interveniente silentio, iterumque et iterum in verba prorumpens, minutis interrogatiunculis me quoque ut secum multa colloquerer coegit. Duplex hinc mihi bonum provenisse cognovi: nam, et aliquantulum doctior factus sum, aliquantoque ex ipsa conversatione securior spectare coram posse cepi vultum illum, qui nimio primum me splendore terruerat». 108 Cfr. G. SCHIRÒ, Rapporti di Barlaam Calabro con le due chiese di Roma e Bisanzio, in «Archivio storico per la Calabria e la Lucania», 1 (1931), pp. 325-357; A. FYRIGOS, La produzione letteraria antilatina di Barlaam il Calabro, in «Orientalia Christiana Periodica», 45 (1979), pp. 114-144; ID., Barlaam Calabro tra l’aristotelismo scolastico e il neoplatonismo bizantino, in «Il Veltro», 27 (1983), pp. 185-195.

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prise that no one had seen this before him – that, in the course of the secular debate between the two separated Churches, all the arguments carried out both by the Latins and the Greeks in favor of the respective positions were founded upon rigorous syllogistic demonstrations which were apparently solid and irrefutable: something which is evidently impossible on the basis of the principle of non-contradiction of the truth109. It is clear how such syllogisms – and therefore, in general, all syllogisms related to theological arguments – can never be considered apodictic, but always and only dialectical, that is, according to the Aristotelian theory110, founded upon only probable premises which are not universally recognized as necessary and acceptable.This fact is confirmed by the evidence that no theological argument ever succeeds in convincing all controversialists. The truth of the first premises of the apodictic demonstration must be evident, that is, directly perceptible as such by the mind, and it must necessarily precede the truth of the conclusions which are derived from it. Theological arguments, however, are always related to objects which are never directly perceptible by man (neither through intuitive knowledge, nor through abstract knowledge); and the truth of their premises is recognized by all as antecedent to any other truth. It will therefore be healthy, according to Barlaam, to renounce definitively the use of such dialectical syllogisms, which are always probable and pragmatic. Instead, one must admit that the only correct procedure in theology which allows one to find agreement among the divergent positions is that which exhausts itself in the recourse to the teachings of the Fathers of the Church, whose only true sources of knowledge were Revelation and illumination.Thus, since the Fathers are not explicit, in their writings, regarding the procession of the Holy Spirit, it only remains to assign a place for the divergent Trinitarian doctrines of the Latins and the Greeks among the «particular opinions», which are not able to be imposed as absolutely true. In short, Barlaam responds to the legates’Thomistic method with the recov109 The tractate (see PG 151, 1251A) is the fifth of the anti-latin tractates of Barlaam, according to the inventory edited by R. E. SINKEWICZ, The «Solutions» addressed to Georges Lapithes by Barlaam the Calabrian and their philosophical context, in «Medieval Studies», 43 (1981), [pp. 151-217], esp. pp. 187-189. 110 Cfr. ARISTOTELES, Topica, I, 1, 100ab; Analytica priora, I, 1, 24ab.

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ery of the mystical-negative orientation recommended by the Greek Fathers. In the following years, Barlaam became involved, as a result of these affirmations, in the intricate development of the interminable controversy regarding Hesychasm, against Gregory Palamas and the monks of Mount Athos111. In these circumstances, he was finally led to specify his own position, affirming in particular that, in the knowledge of that which is supernatural, one can only advance through a direct intuition of the spiritual order. He gave this intuition – which, according to him, is openly proclaimed in the books of the Fathers – the revelatory name of nou§~. Such a term does not in fact indicate, in his language, the Aristotelian intellective soul, but it is connected to the Platonizing gnoseological tripartite division of the faculties: senses, reason (diavnoia, which perceives universals), and superior intuitive knowledge (the nou§~, which perceives indivisible concepts)112. The ungraspable truth of divine things is never known, but only perceived in the intuitive mode of the nou§~, and then communicated, in ever inadequate forms, to the diavnoia, which strives to conceptualize it and define it in order to render it comprehensible and communicable according to the capacities of human language.Theological knowledge, therefore, is not and will never be scientific, because science is impossible when the subject has no direct perception of the known object113.The hierarchization of the three cognitive faculties, according to Barlaam, allow for the understanding of why there are multiple conclusiones worked out by the teachers of speculative theology; and of why they are not able to impose their theses as necessary, since they are condemned to remain always and only probable, and, consequently, contradictory. Entangled in the multiple knots of complex political problems, the polemic over Hesychasm had alternating fates and con111 Cfr. a summary treatment of the controversy, with the essential bibliografical data, in Y. SPITERIS, La teologia bizantina nei secoli XIII e XIV, in Storia della teologia nel Medioevo cit. (above, cap. 2, note 100), III, [pp. 773-840], esp. pp. 811-817. 112 Cfr. G. SCHIRÒ, Barlaam il Calabro, Epistole greche. I primordi episodici e dottrinari delle lotte esicaste. Studio introduttivo e testi, Palermo 1954. 113 Cfr. R. E. SINKEWICZ, The doctrine of the knowledge of God in the early writings of Barlaam the Calabrian, in «Medieval Studies», 44 (1982), pp. 181-242.

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cluded only toward the end of the forties, with the victory of the Palamite party. Yet, already in 1341, Barlaam had been condemned by the emperor John V Palaeologus and forced into exile in Italy. He converted to Catholicism and was named bishop of Gerace. It is not yet clear what sort of influence he had upon Italian and French intellectuals in the fourteenth century, and, in particular, upon Petrarch, to whom he gave elementary Greek lessons. The theoretical positions which he defended in the course of his Constantinopolitan experience – and which he openly joined to the realization of a grandiose project of overcoming confessional differences, founded upon his recognition of the pseudo-scientific rigidity of professional theologians114 – anticipated a trend which became dominant in the writings of many Western intellectuals, beginning from the first decades after his death: a trend first clearly recognizable in the theological reform projected by Jean Gerson, and later culminating in the thought of Nicholas of Cusa. Not by chance did Gerson, in his Consolatio theologiae – which, from the very title, gives evidence of the direct dependence upon the Boethian model –, openly connect the degeneration of university teaching to an inadequate evaluation of the diversification of the cognitive contributions of the distinct powers of the soul. The presumptions of dialectic drove not only philosophers and rhetors of the past into contradictions, but they also confused many among the more recent theologians. Yet, these contradictions are resolved through a recognition of the limits and relativity of the defining acts of ratio.True wisdom, guided by the superior light of noetic intuition, can only be that wisdom which, «by first accepting from all those who have spoken in the past only that which is probable, and by refusing anything improbable, puts together such truths and forms a unity from them, offering to man, as much as possible, knowledge within the conditions of earthly life and a nature corrupted by sin»115. 114

Cfr. G. GIANNELLI, Un progetto di Barlaam Calabro per l’unione delle chiese, in Miscellanea G. Mercati, 5 voll., Città del Vaticano 1946, III, pp. 157-208. 115 IOHANNES CHARLERIUS GERSONUS, De consolatione theologiae, II, pr. 3, ed. P. Glorieux, Oeuvres Complètes, IX, Paris 1973, p. 209: «Theologia vero recipiens ex omnibus priorum dictis id quod probabilis est, et improbabilia reiiciens, conflat et colligit, pro statu viae et naturae destitutae, causam talem».

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It is extremely interesting, therefore, to observe how even many of the most intriguing speculative writers of the succeeding generations followed this line of thought in their works regarding ‘philosophical concordism’ – from Gemistus Pletho and Bessarion, to the great speculative systems of Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Aegidius of Viterbo and Agostino Steuco. The search for hidden uniformity in the continuous manifestation of the truth to human intelligences, against any sectarianism and ideological particularism, is often openly embedded in the critical distinction of the different grades of the human comprehension of the truth116.The prisci theologi of the pre-Christian ancient world succeeded in gathering elements of the truth which the Sacred Scriptures then would reveal to humanity in a discursive and explicit form: it appears, however, that the ancients’ gathering of the truth was necessarily the result of acts of knowledge which could be neither categorized as rational, nor regulated by the rules of the ordinary logic of human discourse.In particular,in the first book of the Theologia platonica of Marsilio Ficino, the Platonic hierarchization of the faculties explicitly emerges as the supporting structure of the entire presentation of the liberation of the mens from the corporeal prison, progressively highlighted by the resolution of inferior cognitive grades into superior grades.Thus, one sees in human history that alternating and imperfect philosophical considerations of reality were step by step entirely overcome and reformed in the superior truth of Platonism. From the inert moles corporum – to which the materialistic consideration of the universe shared by the Atomists, the Cyrenaics and Epicureans was limited – emerges the consideration of the first organized qualitas atque virtus of the universe.This conception – still divisible and mutable, since it was connected to the materiality of the universe – was the object of the cosmological and psychological investigations of the Cynics and Stoics. Beyond this animal soul, the ancient «theologians» – such as Heraclitus,Varro, Manilius – dis116 Cfr. C.VASOLI, La prisca theologia e il neoplatonismo religioso, in Il neoplatonismo nel Rinascimento, Atti del Convegno internazionale (Roma - Firenze, 12-15 dicembre 1990), a c. di P. Prini, Roma 1993, pp. 83-101; ID., Dalla pace religiosa alla prisca theologia, in Firenze e il Concilio del 1439, Convegno di Studi (Firenze, 29 novembre - 2 dicembre 1989), a c. di P. Viti, 2 voll., Firenze 1994 (Biblioteca storica toscana. Serie I, 29), I, pp. 3-25.

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covered a better formal principle, the seat of the anima rationalis, which is indivisible, though linked to the body and therefore subject to becoming. Still higher is the mens angelica – revealed by Anaxagoras and Hermotimus –, which was free of division and mutation, in so far as it was separated from the body. Only Plato, however, by placing himself at the highest level of contemplation, taught how to perceive with the acies mentis, purified from every stain of materiality and accidentality, the Sun, the highest divine principle upon which the light of every inferior truth depends. According to Ficino, the different levels of being and knowledge appear as degrees of a harmonic unity only from above such an ultimate perspective, in so far as they bear the diverse representations of a single, though differentiated, comprehension of the truth.The rational anima, which is particular to man, receives the task of mediating, as the vinculum naturae, among all the other forms of existence and knowledge, in as far as it is capable of cognitively passing through the entire cosmic machine, from the corporeal prison up to the beatific vision of the divine117.With differ117 Cfr. MARSILIUS FICINUS, Theologia platonica de immortalitate animorum, I, 1, ed. R. Marcel, Paris 1964, I, pp. 38-39; ed. M. Schiavone, Bologna 1965, I, pp. 7678: «Caeterum, ut evidenter appareat qua ratione potissimum mentes hominum mortalia claustra resolvere, immortalitatem suam cernere, beatitudinem attingere valeant, conabimur sequenti disputatione pro viribus demonstrare, praeter pigram hanc molem corporum, qua Democritiorum, Cyrenaicorum, Epicureorum consideratio finiebatur, esse efficacem qualitatem aliquam atque virtutem ad quam Stoicorum Cynicorumque investigatio sese contulit. Supra qualitatem vero, quae cum materiae dimensione dividitur et mutatur omnino, formam quamdam praestantiorem existere, quae, licet mutetur quodammodo, divisionem tamen in corpore non admittit. In ea forma rationalis animae sedem veteres Theologi posuere. Hucusque Heraclitus, Marcus Varro, Marcusque Manilius ascenderunt. Super animam rationalem extare mentem angelicam, non individuam modo, sed etiam immutabilem, in qua videntur Anaxagoras et Hermotimus quievisse. Huius denique mentis oculo, cui cupit veritatis lumen et capit, solem ipsum praeesse divinum, in quem Plato noster purgatam mentis aciem dirigere iussit, docuit et contendit. Proinde, cum huc ascenderimus, hos quinque rerum omnium gradus, corporis videlicet molem, qualitatem, animam, angelum, Deum, invicem comparabimus. Quoniam autem ipsum rationalis animae genus, inter gradus huiusmodi medium obtinens, vinculum naturae totius apparet, regit qualitates et corpora, angelo se iungit et Deo, ostendemus id esse prorsus indissolubile, dum gradus naturae connectit; praestantissimum, dum mundi machinae praesidet; beatissimum, dum se divinis insinuat». – Hermotimus of Clazomenae, according to a legend told by Diogenes Laertius (Vitae philosophorum,VIII, 4), would be one of the many preincarnations of the soul of Pythagoras (cfr. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, edd. H. Diels - W. Kranz, 3 voll., Berlin 1951-1952, I, 14, 8, p. 100,20-22): Ficino may

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ent modulations, but with the same inspiration, even Pico della Mirandola describes – in his Oratio de hominis dignitate – the capacity of man to determine with a free choice his own condition of life, corresponding to various conditions of knowledge: he can be similar to the plants, if he decides to develop in himself only the vegetative potentialities; to the brutes, if he holds himself to the level of sensible knowledge; or to the essences endowed with a spiritual soul, if he develops his reason; to angels and to the sons of God, if he draws fruit from the seeds of the intellectual power. But he may even reach the possibility of spiritually joining the Divine, if he will learn how to interiorly recompose the absolute unity of knowledge118. In their return to the wisdom of the ancient sages and of the Fathers of the Church, the principal representatives of philosophical Humanism had therefore known how to develop, in their inversion of the gnoseological prospective which dominated scholastic speculation, an appropriate instrument for opening new and better possibilities for the correct approach to the truth on the part of the theological intelligence.The dianoetic ratio, in fact, appears incapable of directly drawing forth the perfection of have drawn such an idea from ARISTOTELES, Metaphysica, A, 3, 984b, who presents Hermotimus as anticipating the theory of the nou§~ of Anaxagoras (cfr. ibid., 59, 58, II, pp. 20,40-21,3); or from IAMBLICHUS, Protreptikos, 8, ed. E. Pistelli, Leipzig 1888, p. 48,16-21, who cites the Metaphysica, in a passage which, because of further information, is received among the witnesses of the Aristotelian Protreptikos: cfr. ARISTOTELES, Fragmenta selecta, ed. Ross cit. (above, cap. 2, note 89), 10c. 118 Cfr. IOHANNES PICUS E MIRANDOLA, Oratio de hominis dignitate, ed. E. Garin, Firenze 1942 (Edizione Nazionale dei Classici del Pensiero Italiano, 1), p. 106; ed. G. Tognon, Brescia 1987, p. 6: «O summam Dei Patris liberalitatem, summam et admirandam hominis foelicitatem! Cui datum id habere quod optat, id esse quod velit. (…) Nascenti homini omnifaria semina et omnigenae vitae germina indidit Pater. Quae quisque excoluerit illa adolescent, et fructus suos ferent in illo. Si vegetalia planta fiet, si sensualia obrutescet, si rationalia caeleste evadet animal, si intellectualia angelus erit et Dei filius. Et si nulla creaturarum sorte contentus in unitatis centrum suae se receperit, unus cum Deo spiritus factus, in solitaria Patris caligine qui est super omnia constitutus omnibus antestabit». Cfr. also ibid., pp. 24-26, pp. 124-126: «Consulamus et Pythagoram sapientissimum (…). Precipiet primo ne super modium sedeamus, idest rationalem partem, qua anima omnia metitur, iudicat et examinat, ociosa desidia ne remi‹t›tentes amittamus, sed dyaletica exercitatione ac regula et dirigamus assidue et excitemus. (…) Postremo ut gallum nutriamus nos admonebit, idest ut divinam animae nostrae partem divinarum rerum cognitione quasi solido cibo et caelesti ambrosia pascamus». Cfr. the parallelism with the passage of Cusanus cited above in note 93.

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the divine.Yet, it does reveal its utility if it is applied to the explanation and clarification of the immediate and ineffable contents of the unitary intuition of the noetic intellectus, which could otherwise neither be known in a distinct way, nor communicated in comprehensible language. As a result, reason is invited to recognize its own inferiority and subordination to the nou`'", and to put itself in the same relationship with noetic intuition, which scholastic theology has called it to perform in its encounters with the faith: to explain and clarify the contents of a form of knowledge which it was not, and never will be, capable of grasping with its own forces.Thus, all the conclusiones worked out by the masters of speculative theology are only ‘probable’ or ‘verisimilar’: they are all imperfect attempts at clarification and dianoetic-rational organization of dogma; none of them is ‘true’, unless they allow themselves to be led back by the noetic-intellectual intuition on a higher level, up to their identification with the contents of the true comprehension of the faith, where all the dissensiones can be resolved. The ‘concordistic’ synthesis which nourishes Renaissance thought has, therefore, the sense of a ceaseless effort carried out by Christian sages in order to lead the results of human wisdom – philosophical and theological – toward the reconstruction, as far as possible, of the higher unity of truth, which is the particular object either of noetic intuition, or of faith. The humanists, therefore, restore theology to its authentic nature as a fecund and constant pursuit of a knowledge which will never be fully reduced to the doctrinal fulfillment of earthly science.This theological method aspires, in fact, to a radical reform both of its original theoretical and practical ends, and of the adequate means for realizing these ends. On the one hand, the Renaissance theologian claims to be appreciated as an authoritative guide for the regulation of the techniques which are helpful for a measured treatment of the most profound questions posed by the natural thirst for the Truth; and, on the other hand, he presents himself as the bearer, for a humanity redeemed by Christ, of the rediscovery of a more authentic and productive style of life. The refusal of every argumentative rigidity, the cause of contradictions among opposing perceptions of the supernatural, is here consolidated by the certainty of the superiority of the absolute truth of theology and of its consequent irreducibility to the

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terms of the empirical sciences. The humanists don’t refuse unconditionally the dialectical debate over the contents of the faith, but they translate it into a useable dianoetic instrument, with the consciousness of the limits which define it, in order to lead theological intelligence intuitively toward the purity of the contents of the faith. Nevertheless, it is evident how the intellectual deepening of religious doctrines tends naturally to incline toward a more definite instrumental and practical orientation for theological research, which – while ceasing to mask itself behind the nebulous and abstract curtains of the theoretical dissertations of the schools – is oriented toward responding to the exigencies of a concrete and practical discipline in the cosmic frame of the divine plan for the redemption of human kind.

7. The peace of the faith The idea of the reunification of all the philosophies – and of all the philosophical theologies – within the higher unity of noetic knowledge develops, in the thought of many Renaissance theologians, into the recognition that even the various historical religions were attempts of approaching the divine on the part of natural human intelligence. Each religion may therefore be considered as a form of evidence for at least partial manifestations of the truth. A precious consequence of the acceptance of the human incapacity for achieving – in such a difficult field of inquiry – a single and univocal form of knowledge, is therefore found in the new world of thought disclosed by the Platonizing ‘overturning’ of Aristotle’s theory of knowledge: the possibility of a significant opening to inter-religious concordism. Nicholas of Cusa was an outstanding and tireless advocate for the search for universal concord among human minds – the concordantia catholica, which he chose as the title of one of his more significant theological tractates. Once again he is the principal bearer of the mature Renaissance thought toward the hope of actuating, among the diverse and rigid religious consciences of men, the same harmonious dynamic which reigns everywhere in creation thanks to the cosmic coincidentia oppositorum119. This ec119

Cfr. De concordantia catholica, I, 1, ed. G. Kallen, in Op., XIV, Hamburg 1944,

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umenical message is entrusted above all to the pages of the brief, but effective, tractate De pace fidei. This work is inspired by the idea that the diversity of cults not only does not conflict with the universality and uniformity which appear to be proper to the practice of religion, but also that it represents the most fulfilled expression of it, once one has recognized the limits and restrictions of the human knowledge of the truth. With a splendid combination of speculative wisdom and poetic imagination, the author introduces, in the dialogical form of this intense little work, the account of a vision which arrived in a particular cognitive condition, that he calls intellectualis altitudo. A great number of sages, coming from all the various cultural, philosophical and confessional traditions, are united before God in eternal peace for a heavenly council – as if this were the response of the true theology to the failures of the earthly ecclesiastical assemblies in the search for unity. One after the other they dialogue with the divine Word-Intellect and are led to recognize how much partial truth their respective doctrinal positions possess. In turn, they see how far it is possible for their minds, still immersed in multiplicity and contradiction, to return to unity by modeling themselves upon the exemplar of the divine super-rationality.Thus, both the Greek and the old Italic, introduced as the ambassadors of the philosophical knowledge of antiquity, admit that each one of them participates only in a partial and diversified way in the true wisdom, which is indivisible and immutable in itself.The Indian, the cultivator of mathematical-geometrical research, is invited to contemplate the perfect harmony which the intellect discovers in the coincidence of unity and trinity of the divine persons; and the Jewish and Muslim monotheists recognize the greater fecundity of such a dynamic coincidence in respect to the immobility of a unity which cannot produce another from itself.To acquire unity, one first overcomes particular solutions which are nothing else but manifestations of the absolute, adapted from time to time pp. 33,19-34,4: «Et quia manifestissimum est omne esse et vivere per concordantiam constitui, tunc in illa divina essentia, ubi vita et esse unum sunt summa aequalitate, est summa et infinita concordantia. Quoniam ibi nulla contrarietas locum habere potest, ubi aeternitas vita est. Omnis autem concordantia differentiarum est. Et quanto minor contrarietas in differentiis, tanto fortior concordantia et longior vita. Et ibi aeterna tunc est, ubi nulla contrarietas».

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to diverse traditions and historical situations.Then one finds the corresponding recognition, on the spiritual level, of the underlying homogeneity which rules among all the authentic and sincere forms of the approach of the intelligences to the divine, beyond the fragmented multiplication of the positive manifestations of religious representation. The various points of view, only apparently contradictory, characterize the complication of the variegated network, extended in space and time, of confessions and cults, of traditions and doctrinal opinions: yet, surpassing any prejudicial or subjective standpoint, the human mind discovers how such an intricate web of divisions is governed overall by the universal relation to a common truth, in which all, in their essence, participate. Thus every religious community – more, every individual soul! – appears to concretize a particular form of appreciation for the divine, which constitutes, in its complementarity with all the other possible spiritual perspectives, a specific and unrepeatable value: a single contribution to mankind’s dialogue with God, which would be nullified through any authoritative leveling of historical and pragmatic differences. When it becomes clear that all religions and particular religious opinions are attempts at representing in some way the impossibility of conceiving the essence of the One, one may then understand that each one of these religions is, by itself, a coniectura, an attempt – limited and imperfect as such – to express the truth. Thus, each religion is one of the innumerable spiritual hearts that beat in order to give life to the unceasing longing which pushes the entire human community toward the unique divinity. Toward the end of the work, the Bohemian Hussite is in agreement with the substance of the Pauline doctrine regarding the Eucharist, and the English Lollard accepts the truth of the other sacraments. From on high, the maintenance of the diversity in ceremonies is conceded to all, since pure conformitas is rendered impossible by the plurality of cultures and traditions. In the heaven of the super-rational, the harmony of all the religions is thus consecrated in a single faith, and in this faith the harmony of all the theologies is in a single truth120. 120 Cfr. De pace fidei, XIX, 68, edd. R. Klibansky - H. Bascour, in Op.,VII, Hamburg 1959, p. 62,19; Ph.-th., III, p. 796: «Conclusa est igitur in caelo rationis

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Nicholas of Cusa composed this ideal celebration of unity and religious peace when the sad memory of the recent fall of Constantinople was still strong. A few years later he was engaged by the humanist Enea Silvio Piccolomini – the tireless promoter of the Catholic peace who had recently been elected Pope with the name of Pius II – to confront the Turkish oppression. In nearly open contradiction with the religious harmony of the De pace fidei, Cusanus set out a theological refutation of Islam, which culminates in the draft of the Cribratio Alcorani, and, on the practical side, he initiated the preaching on and the preparation for the crusade. A little later, however, in 1461, it was precisely Cusanus’ ideal for a universal harmony that inspired the Pope – moved by a political realism that seems difficult to evaluate today121 – to compose a famous letter to the Sultan Mohammed II. Unlike other similar documents edited in the West in this epoch, which were always animated by the condemnation and demonization of the adversary, this exceptional work of Piccolomini (perhaps never sent to the recipient), proposed once again the attempt at dialogue with the Muslims – already outlined for some time, even if with little historical success, by Lullism. He in fact invites the Sultan to convert to the Christian religion with all his people in order to bring peace to the world by taking possession of the entire Mediterranean continent in the name of Christ122. concordia religionum». In general, on the De pace fidei, cfr. M. DE GANDILLAC, Coexistence pacifique et véritable paix: Nicolai de Cusa De pace fidei, in «Recherches de philosophie», 3-4 (1959), pp. 405-407; C. VASOLI, Il De pace fidei di Niccolò Cusano, in ID., Studi sulla cultura del Rinascimento, Manduria 1968, pp. 122-179; M. L. ARDUINI,Ad hanc superadmirandam harmonicam pacem. Riforma della Chiesa ed ecumenismo religioso nel pensiero di Nicolò Cusano: il De pace fidei, in «Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica», 72 (1980), pp. 224-242; J. PELIKAN, Negative theology and positive religion. A study of Nichlas Cusanus’ De pace fidei, in «Prudentia», supplementum 1981, pp. 65-77; J. STALLMACH, Einheit der Religion – Friede unter den Religionen, in «Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft», 16 (1984), pp. 61-81; J. E. PEDERSEN, The unity of religion and universal peace. Nicholas of Cusa and his De pace fidei (1453), in War and Peace in the Middle Ages, ed. by B. P. McGuire, Copenhagen 1987, pp. 195-215. 121 Cfr. L. VALCKE, Il De pace fidei: Niccolò di Cusa ed Enea Silvio Piccolomini, in Pio II e la cultura del suo tempo, Atti del I Convegno internazionale (1989), a c. di L. Rotondi Secchi Tarugi, Milano 1991, pp. 301-311. 122 PIUS II PAPA (AENEAS SYLVIUS PICCOLOMINEUS), Epistola ad Mahumehtem, edd. R. F. Glei - M. Köhler, Trier 2001 (Bochumer altertumswissenschaftliches Colloquium, 50); cfr. esp. the conclusion, 148, pp. 324,14-326,9: «Ante omnia

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The life and political activity of Piccolomini, like his theological program, were constantly inspired by the passion to restore the fragile unity of the whole Christian ecumene. He even explicitly attributed the responsibility for the opposition to ecumenism to the presumptuous and factious theology of the schools: «Which among the errors against the faith does not come from theologians? Who introduced the Arian madness? Who separated the Greeks from the Church? Who seduced the Bohemians, if not the theologians?»123. He deemed it necessary to search for the guarantee of peace in the possibility of a doctrinal authority which would be above any partiality and ideology. In his youth, he had embraced the conciliarist theories of Basle, convincing himself that only a theocratic republic was able to make itself the guarantee of peace among the peoples, and, in particular, of the theological-religious peace.Yet, once he had ascended to the Pontifical chair, he became certain that the safeguard for religion and Christian ethical principles must be entrusted to the unitary power of an absolute monarchy which exercises the necessary control over the interpretation of the faith. In turn, it would allow theologians to rediscover, in the restored

vero monstratum est, non posse te assequi inter Christianos gloriam et potentatum quem videris optare, maxime apud Europeos et Occidentales populos, dum tua in secta perseveraveris. Quodsi velles Christianis imitari sacris, magnam tibi spem fecimus et potentiae et gloriae. Memento igitur verborum nostrorum et accipe fidele consilium: sume baptismum Christi et lavacrum Spiritus sancti! Amplectere sacrosanctum evangelium et illi te totum committe. Sic tuam animam lucrifacies, sic Turcorum populo bene consules, sic tuae cogitationes adimpleri poterunt, sic tuum nomen in saecula celebrabitur, sic te omnis Graecia, omnis Italia, omnis Europa demirabitur, sic Latinae te litterae, sic Graecae, sic Hebraicae, sic Arabicae, sic omnes barbarae celebrabunt, sic nulla aetas de tuis laudibus conticescet, sic pacis auctor et fundator quietis appellaberis, sic te Turci animarum suarum repertorem et sic Christiani suae vitae conservatorem vocabunt. Syrii, Aegyptii, Libyci, Arabes et quaecunque sunt aliae gentes extra Christi caulas, aut his auditis tuam viam sequentur, aut tuis, Christianis armis parvo negotio domabuntur et, si noluerint in nostra lege te socium habere, experientur dominum in sua. Nos te iuvabimus et omnium eorum assistente divina gratia legitimum principem consistuemus». For the history of the text, cfr. now M. KÖHLER, Einleitung, ibid., pp. 11 seqq. 123 PIUS II PAPA, De liberorum educatione, ed. J. S. Nelson, Washington 1940 (Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Latin Language and Literature, 12), p. 174,25-27: «Quis error in fidem non ab theologis profectus? quis Arrianam induxit vesaniam, quis Graecos ab ecclesia separavit, quis Boehemos seduxit nisi theologi?».

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purity of dogma, the reasons for that spiritual reunification which the teachers of theology and the councils were not capable of assuring124. By obeying this fundamental inspiration, in his role as head of the recently reunified Roman Church, Piccolomini sought once again to reestablish the role and identity of the Empire, which was the second universal authority, established by God for the support and defense of the political and cultural unity of the Middle Ages.The unusual invitation addressed to the Sultan suggesting the pacific occupation and unification of civilization through the arms of Christ – as opposed to the ongoing bloodstained conquest – was yet another form of fulfilling the hope for lost unity: «All Christians will venerate you and make you the judge of their arguments (…). Universal peace would thus be realized, the Christian people would exult throughout the entire World, the times of Augustus would return, as well as those times which the poets call the Golden Ages»125. The concerns of the state and political unity are not the true motivations of the Pope for the conversion of the Sultan: rather, Mohammed II will be persuaded to implement this enterprise – which would culminate in the accomplishment of the universal unity – by the theological rationality, following the path indicated by the Cusanian ecumenical dialogue. As soon as he freely makes his decisive act of faith, the Christian theologians will be capable of indicating, to him and to his numerous subjects, the ultimately rational foundation of the truth of Christ, the true Sapientia, which every man has desired and sought through the ages.The examples of Constantine, Clovis, Charlemagne, and Stephen of Hungary, are invoked as models for the Sultan, in such a way that he too will become the founder of a renovated civitas Dei, in so far as he will be able to assume the role of the restorer of theological unity126: 124 On the philosophical-theological bearing of ecumenical ideas of Pius II, cfr. G. RADETTI, Profilo di Enea Silvio Piccolomini, in «La Cultura», 9 (1971), pp. 289-313. 125 PIUS II PAPA, Epistola ad Maumehtem, 9, edd. Glei - Köhler, p. 144,1 and 10, pp. 146,17-148,1: «Christiani te omnes venerabuntur et suarum litium iudicem facient. (…) O quanta esset abundantia pacis, quanta Christianae plebis exultatio, quanta iubilatio in omni terra! Redirent Augusti tempora et quae poetae vocant aurea saecula renovarentur». 126 Cfr. ibid., 21-25, pp. 156-164.

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«Like those rulers, even you will surely be very famous, if you, as a sage, will adore the one Christ with us»127.

8. The return of philosophical probabilism and the truths of tolerance We do not know whether Mohammed II actually received, and in any way evaluated, the message and invitation of Piccolomini. Yet, about sixty years later, in the suggestive scenery of the Palatine chapel of Aachen, Charles V had himself crowned emperor in an atmosphere laden with symbolic recollections of the first Charles, founder of the medieval empire: it is opportune to recall that this attempt to subordinate the political and ideological peace of the Christianitas to the hegemony of power under a single absolute sovereign has more the appearance of an extreme effort of survival, instrumentalized by political exigencies, than that of a vital affirmation of the common participation in a unique theological truth. In the same year, 1520, the bull Exurge Domine of Leo X initiated the irreversible fracture of the Reformation, and Luther published his first writings against the Church of Rome.The theology of the humanists was constrained to reconsider further, in a still more radical and programmatic way, the theoretical demands of the late Middle Ages, with the result that some among them entrusted the pursuit of spiritual unity to a rebirth of the critical instrument of methodical doubt. The year 1520 also marked the publication of the first edition, in Mirandola, of the Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium of Giovanfrancesco Pico, nephew of Giovanni Pico: a monumental critique, in six books, of the ambitions of human wisdom and a solemn condemnation of the vain demand on the part of Christian intellectuals to contemplate useless abstractions of the truth, rather than to commit themselves to the now irrevocable moral and religious renewal of humanity128. 127

Ibid., 26, p. 164,1-6: «Eadem procul dubio eventura tibi esse confidimus, si nobiscum sapiens Christum colas. (…) Eritque tuum regnum super omnia quae sunt in orbe, et nomen tuum nulla silebit aetas, (…) nemo inter mortales erit, qui te potentia aut gloria praecedat». 128 IOHANNES FRANCISCUS PICUS E MIRANDOLA, Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium et veritatis Christianae disciplinae, Mirandolae 1520, Iohannes Maciochius

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Taking his cue from the oft repeated, detailed denunciation of the vanity of the perpetual and «truculent» controversies of the philosophers129, Giovanfrancesco twists, in a negative sense, the same idea of the continuity of the wisdom celebrated in the preceding years by his uncle and by Marsilio Ficino.The intellectuals of the past were always in disagreement over the very nature of philosophy, on that of the disciplines which constitute it, on the manner of being of things, and on the origin and the ends of man. Above all, although having always demanded that they be called theologians, they had never known how to say anything definitive or credible regarding invisible realities130. Radically overturning the harmonizing hope of Renaissance Platonism131, and proposing the very opposite demonstration of «how much all the dogmata philosophorum are untenable and irreconcilable»132, Bundenius (and in ID., Opera omnia, 2 voll., Basileae 1573, ex Officina Henricpetrina [repr. Hildesheim 1969], II, pp. 710-1264). Cfr. F. STROWSKI, Une source italienne des «Essais» de Montaigne. L’Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium de François Pic de la Mirandole, in «Bulletin italien», 5 (1905), pp. 309-313; C. B. SCHMITT, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469-1533) and his critique of Aristotle, Den Haag 1969; ID., Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola and the Fifth Lateran Council, in «Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte», 61 (1970), pp. 161-178; E. GARIN, Gian Francesco Pico della Mirandola. Savonarolan apologetics and the critique of ancient thought, in Christianity and the Renaissance. Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento, edd.T.Verdon - J. Henderson, Syracuse (N.Y.), 1990, pp. 523-532; C. MORESCHINI, Aspetti della difesa del Cristianesimo nell’attività letteraria di Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, in Giovanni e Gianfrancesco Pico: l’opera e la fortuna di due studenti ferraresi, a c. di P. Castelli, Firenze 1999, pp. 261-290. 129 Cfr. IOHANNES FRANCISCUS PICUS E MIRANDOLA, ibid., I, Prooem., f. IIr; ed. Basileae, p. 719: «Namque de veritate quam omnes quaerebant et de qua maxime certabant monstrabo philosophos ipsos et cum praeceptoribus perpetuis eisdemque truculentis dimicasse proeliis, et inter sese adusque interniciem decertavisse, nec demum quod ea sit, nec ubi sit decretum fuisse concorditer ab ipsa tam variae philosophiae turba». 130 Cfr. ibid., I, 1, f. IIIr; p. 723: «Decepti autem isti omnes, ut opinor, fuere, falsa nominis ostentatione, quoniam quidem prisci illi etsi compotes minime essent eius rei quam quaerebant, nomen sibi tamen ab ea tanquam et compraehensa et possessa desumebant: quo factum ut, in quibus fuissent studia doctrinae apud illos, theologi, sapientis, philosophi nomen oriretur. Nam Deum alii se invenisse iactabant, theologorum cognomento donati; alii et divina simul et humana cognovisse perperam autumantes, sapientiae sibi vendicabant nomen; modestius aliquando qui philosophiae nomenclatura fuerunt contenti». 131 Cfr. ibid., I, 2, f .Vrv; pp. 738-739. 132 Ibid., f.VIIIr; p. 738: «Mihi autem venit in mentem consentaneum magis esse et utile magis incerta reddere philosophorum dogmata quam conciliare, ut patruus [i. e. Iohannes Picus] volebat. Sequi enim hac in re malo antiquos illos ex

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Giovanfrancesco declares that he is persuaded that such a thesis is identical to the teaching of the Fathers of the Church. In particular, this is the very same position of Augustine, who, whenever he found something correct in the ancient philosophers, would assume it as his own, and, considering them unjust possessors of the truth, would claim the right of possession for his doctrina Christiana133. Then, going through Augustine to his principal teacher, Cicero, and to Sextus Empiricus, Gianfrancesco dedicates the entire second book of the work to an exposition of his own conviction that it is not possible for man, with his own strength, to assure a univocal criterion of the truth.The only solution for the errors of human thought is found in the programmatic and definitive assumption of a moderately skeptical attitude, explicitly inspired by the model of Nicholas of Cusa and of his «learned ignorance»: one can know all, but nothing is able to be known for certain («praecise»)134. Still following Augustine – but recalling Lactantius, as well –, he then demonstrates how the authentic roots of ancient Skepticism penetrated even into the foundations of the Platonic doctrine itself, which was the most admired philosophy among his contemporaries: Plato, in fact, after having recognized the spiritual and perfect nature of divine realities, justified man’s renunciation of any form of success in knowing them135. On this basis, in the final three books of the work, Gianfrancesco subjects the thought of Aristotle to a ruthless negative analysis. Modern theologians had believed themselves capable of constructing a coherent theological science upon Aristotelian epistemological principles, without taking into account that such a purpose was contradictory in itself: how can

nostra fide theologos, qui in gentium philosophos potius agendum duxere et eorum excindenda dogmata, quam ipsorum ex dogmatis philosophari». 133 Cfr. ibid., f.VIIIr; pp. 738-739. 134 Cfr. ibid., I, 4, f. IXr; pp. 741-742: «Sed cui nam sectae philosophorum, si priscis illis temporibus vixisset, Nicolaum Cusam addixissemus, sciri posse asserentem, negantemque nihilominus quicquid sciri posse praecise. Quae omnia ille persequitur latissime et in libris de docta ignorantia et de coniecturis et de venatione sapientiae, quibus in libris supra rationem elevatus coincidere (ut eius utar verbis) opposita existimavit et nihil perfecte cognosci procul omni dubio sanxit». 135 Cfr. ibid., ff. IXv-Xr; pp. 743-744. On the Augustinian interpretation of the Academic probabilism as the masking of a radical theological Platonism, cfr. above, cap. 1, pp. 65-66.

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one entrust the comprehension of the transcendent Christian truth to a philosophy which reduces every form of human knowledge to the untrustworthy evidence of the senses? A single remaining certainty, however, emerges from these observations: in the acceptance of Revelation, and only in this acceptance, do men find assurance of the possession of the Truth. If it is true that in each one of the philosophical schools it is possible to find at least an umbra veritatis, a tenuous trace of the ungraspable truth, this confirms how only the Sacred Scriptures offer in a perfect, exhaustive, and convincing manner, the sole truth necessary for mankind – that is, the truth concerning the origins and ends of creation136. By proposing, with a definitive tone, to use the title of theologi exclusively to define the Fathers of the Church, Giovanfrancesco suggests the reduction of all theology to a pure contemplation of the moral truth contained in Revelation137. In perfect harmony with all the writers engaged in the planning of the moral reform of the Catholic faith during the first decades of the sixteenth century, he thus proposes, through this conclusion, a conscious return to the original project for the realization of the vera philosophia – the same project which had characterized, right from the beginning, the early developments of Christian thought.

136

Cfr. ibid., III, Epilogus, f. CVIIIr-v; p. 1006: «Qui vero nihil sciri volunt Academici, quatenus suis in disputationibus multa quae vera existimabantur et falsa erant detexerunt, et ferendi quidem et probandi, Salomone praecipiente respondendum esse ‘stulto iuxta stultitiam suam, ne sibi sapiens esse videatur’ (Pv 26, 5). Quia vero hoc solum se scire quod nihil scirent asserebant, eatenus non imitandi, sed cum eis non habenda amarulenta contentio, eodem Solomonis praecepto, quo iubemur ‘non respondendum stulto iuxta stultitiam suam ne ei similes videamur’ (ibid.). In universum haec diximus de studio captandae veritatis apud diversas philosophorum sectas: quarum aliae se illam tenere, aliae minime posse teneri, aliae non magis hoc quam illud asseruere. Caeterum, si et alia quoque examinentur, fiet utique manifestum ea si quid veri in se habent aut verisimilis, id totum a sacris pendere litteris: in quibus illa omnia eminentissime et multa alia praeterea de quibus tanquam de ignotis omnino et ab humana cognitione seiunctis philosophi gentium non praeceperunt. In principiis itaque praebent praecepta fidei, quae nullus nostrorum abnuit, certa: et sunt, qui annuant, evidentia multoque magis quam quae dicantur humanitus evidenter spectari». 137 Cfr. ibid., f. CIXv; p. 1009: «Apud nostros theologos et eloquentiam insignem et rerum notitiam exactiorem invenies, maiori et clariori lumine patefactam. Fuit autem in priscis illis viris theologi et nostrae Christianae legis promulgatoribus, pura et nuda veritas, signis supra naturam confirmata, qua gentes caruerunt».

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Only at first glance does the organic defense of human knowledge advanced by Jacopo Sadoleto – after 1530, in his De laudibus philosophiae – appear to oppose the critique of philosophical reason outlined by Giovanfancesco Pico. Even if, in fact, this work presents itself as an attack against the «new Academics», who weaken human ratio by negating any possibility of assuring a comprehension of the truth, nonetheless the fundamental thesis of the author reveals a substantial dependence, in the contents and in the form, upon the Augustinian fusion of Ciceronian probabilism and the theological construction of knowledge.The renewal of human philosophy proposed by Sadoleto liberates it from the theoretical complexities of abstractive knowledge and leads it back to its original and authentic nature: the nature of a wisdom that guarantees for men a practical guide for the fulfillment of the good allowed to them on earth. Jacopo declares, in the dedication letter to Mario da Volterra, that he is convinced that the useless controversialism of the ancient and medieval teachers has its roots only in the ignorance of the «vera philosophia», and not in the correct practice of its precious instruments 138. 138 Cfr. IACOBUS SADOLETUS, De laudibus philosophiae, I (Phaedrus), in ID., Opera omnia, 4 voll., III,Verona 1737 (repr. London - Ridgewood 1964), pp. 128b-130a: «Atque hoc ita agere, id studiosius etiam sumus meditati, quod in hoc tempus Latinis quidem litteris desiderari videtur philosophia: non quin et apud veteres, et nostra etiam ac patrum avorumque memoria, exsisterint docti viri qui eam velut incertis sedibus peregrinantem et vagam, et maxime quidem posteaquam eiecta e Graecia est, in hanc urbem adsciscere et potuerint et partim etiam conati sint, sed ita ferente casu quodam bonis artibus infesto, et qui voluerunt variis plerumque rationibus impediti, in medio spatio restiterunt, et qui potuerunt non fere sunt ad eam voluntatem adducti. Ita illa necessario penes barbaros morata, tamquam iuris nostri morisque expers, caruit honore et nomine civitatis.Ac, ut illum omnis doctrinae et eloquentiae parentem potissimum nominemus, Marcus Tullius Cicero etiam professus fuit hoc se populo exhibiturum, ut Graece tum loquentem philosophiam ad Latinam sermonis consuetudinem adduceret. (…) Verum, sive infinitis novae Academiae (…) disputationibus impeditus, quarum illa contra omnia dicendo numquam terminavit modum, sive quod propinquo et celeri cum suo tum reipublicae fato, illius per vim nefariam fuit interrupta industria, minus aliquanto nobis praebuit quam aut optaremus, aut ab illa divina mente potuit exspectari. (…) Etenim quid est quod aequo minus quaeat animo ferre quisquam institutus liberaliter, quam caput artium optimarum, ornatricem universae vitae philosophiam possideri ab iis, qui ut acute forsitan aliquando moneri videantur ad disserendum de ea, inaniter tamen et id agunt et orationem adferunt ineptam, et horridam, turbantem cogitata tum deblaterantium ipsorum, tum eorum qui audiunt nihil ut ex ea proprium, nihil ut dilucide significans percipi possit? Ex quo factum est non ut in exquirenda veritate, quod est unum munus philosophiae

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The De laudibus is a dialogue divided into two books. In the first book, entitled Phedrus, Sadoleto – drawing upon the model of Cicero’s Hortensius, which he knows only indirectly – exposes the arguments formed against the usefulness of philosophy by the poet and rhetorician Thomas Inghirami. Nicknamed «Phedra» (or «Phedrus») for the part he played in a presentation of the Hyppolitus of Seneca in the school of Pomponius Leto, Sadoleto presents him as an implacable adversary of the infecundity of scholastic abstraction.All the philosophers, in his opinion, are incapable of teaching anything truly necessary and universal, especially virtue.They have nitpicked vainly over nothing, claiming in this way to lead man toward God139. Just as the Titans overturned three mountains in order to scale Olympus, so the philosophers have poured out their false teachings in each one of the three disciplines into which philosophy is classically divided, that is, physics, ethics, and logic. Each philosophical science, in fact, claims to teach with words something which will be acquired only by the single human individual applying direct personal effort to the reality of concrete life140. On account of their arrogance, the philosophers have merited the same punishment inflicted upon the Biblical king Nimrod, who brought about, maxime proprium, sed ut in verborum et inanium quaestionum utilibus controversiis omnis iam pridem ab his suscipiatur contentio». Cfr. S. RITTER, Un umanista teologo: Iacopo Sadoleto, Roma 1912; R. M. DOUGLAS, Jacopo Sadoleto, 14771547, Humanist and Reformer, Cambridge 1959; U. PISCOPO, Cristianesimo e cultura nel Cardinale Sadoleto, in «Delta», Ser. 3a, 1 (1962), pp. 45-64; R. MONTANO, One of the greatest Documents of Ecumenism of all Time: Letter to the Senate and People of Geneva by Cardinal Sadoleto, in «Umanesimo», 1 (1966), pp. 46-66. 139 Cfr. IACOBUS SADOLETUS, ibid., p. 152a, where the testimony of XENOPHON ATHENIENSIS (Memorabilia, IV, 7, 6, ed. C. Hude, Leipzig 1934, p. 188,11-14), is recalled, regarding the Socratic criticism of Anaxagoras, for his pretension of knowing «how to explain the wonderful works of the gods», which the gods themselves had forbidden men to understand: «Neque adeo levius ille Anaxagoram accusabat (…) quod (sic enim eum loquentem inducit Xenophon) altum quiddam et supra se sapiens, deorum opera patefascere tentasset, quae illi operta esse voluissent». 140 Cfr. ibid., p. 150a: «Quod est aliud bellum indicere diis, more gigantium, quam illuc niti adscendere quo nobis aditus omnis penitus est interclusus? Atqui mihi videntur veteres illi haud illepide de gigantibus fabulati, quo horum insolentiam temeritatemque arguerent: quod ea re firmius adducor, ut credam, quod ut illi montibus tribus tamquam gradibus, sic philosophi trinis, antea a nobis memoratis, philosophiae partibus in altissima loca moliuntur adscensum». On the tripartite division of philosophy, cfr. above, cap. 1, p. 21 and note 21, p. 39 and pp. 57-58.

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through foolish ambition, the multiplication of the languages and the differentiation of the meanings of words. More out of pity than anger, the just organizer of the universe allowed that «among them there would arise such bitter disagreements regarding the greatest problems», in order to make them «give up», in a chorus of violent contrasts, «their useless search»141. Finally, according to Phedrus, the least foolish among the false sages appears to have been Empedocles, who, in order not to lose time with useless research, preferred to throw himself into the lava of Etna with all of his philosophy142. The reply of Sadoleto to these critiques of Phedrus is entrusted to the second book of the De laudibus, which is significantly entitled Hortensius, and takes its cue from the presupposition – for him indisputable – of the divine nature of true philosophy, characterized by an intimate and inalterable substantial unity, and therefore immune to any error or contradiction.The multiplication of the opinions and dissensions among the teachers, both past and present, does not depend upon a substantial defect of philosophy in itself, but upon the varied and inadequate mode in which, in the course of history, men believed themselves capable of approaching it143. It is therefore necessary to unmask the false philosophers, to resolve their disagreements, and to bring about the emergence of the unity of the vera philosophia: to accomplish this they must separate philosophy from the opinions of the crowd, purify it from the ambiguities of language, and rediscover its authentic nature as truly practical wisdom, since it is devoted to the search for the universal Good as the common end of all 141 Cfr. ibid., pp. 151b-152a: «Etenim, quod sacrae testantur litterae, a rege superbissimo exstructam turrim, cuius apex et celsitas in caelum finienda esset, tum Deum ad disturbandum opus varietates linguarum et versivocales sonos discrepantiasque verborum immisisse, ut aliud petentibus, aliud accipientibus iis qui fabricae instabant, ab opere desisteretur, idem mihi optime quadrare in philosophos videtur, quorum Deum, cum misereret potius quam iratus esset (nescit enim divina bonitas irasci), de summis rebus acerrimis illos dissensionibus inter se concitavisse, ut, alius aliud redarguendo, omnes ineptam curam deponerent». 142 Cfr. ibid., pp. 152b-153a. 143 Cfr. ibid., II (Hortensius), pp 186b-187a: «Namque, Hercule!, inquit ille, hoc etiam restat, ut plures iam pro una philosophias habeamus. Non ita res sese habet, inquam; nec tu istam multitudinem artibus ipsis attribueris, sed facultatibus potius eorum, qui dissimiliter illas tractant atque suscipiunt: omnis enim ars una in sese simplexque semper et eiusdem modi, non eodem tamen modo adhibetur ab omnibus».

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things144. Even for Sadoleto, it is fundamental, within the scope of healing bewildered minds, to identify the principle cause of the incoherence of human opinions as the confusion of information which comes from the disordered activity of the diverse functions of the soul. In order to catalogue these functions, however, he does not turn to the nomenclature of the Platonic tradition, but assumes the tripartite division of peripatetic psychology into the vegetative, sensitive, and rational faculties: such diverse levels of the soul are, in his opinion, reciprocally communicative and inclined towards suffering deviant contaminations, which in turn give rise to a complex phenomenology of diversified and unreliable acts of knowledge.The true ratio, located at the peak of such an inverse pyramid of faculties, must therefore be subjected to an intense formative exercise in order to learn how to distinguish itself and free itself from the lower levels. It might then return to the pursuit of its own authentic end: the true knowledge of that which is real145.Yet, since the truth in itself is by nature absolute and divine, such a cathartic exercise of the mind is inevitably subordinated to the recognition of the cognitive contribution of the faith in Christian Revelation, without which the entire soul would remain confused under the oppression of the chaotic impressions left by its inferior operations. In order to give a final concreteness to such a project of the theological reform of knowledge, Sadoleto recollects the distinction, widespread in late Scholasticism, between the truth in us and the truth of things in themselves146.The latter is the only one which is absolutely true. It is innate in man in so far as he was created in the image of God.Yet, in regard to the actual effective capacities of 144 Cfr. ibid., p. 187ab: «Quod cum similiter in principe artium philosophia eveniat, quid obstat, quin tollatur omnis controversia, et cum ego philosophiam veris laudibus extulero, tu malos philosophos iure redarguendos ducas?». 145 Cfr. ibid., pp. 211b-214b. 146 On the Scotistic distinction of theologia in se, the true knoweldge of God and the blessed, from the theologia in nobis, the apprehension in progress of the supernatural reality allowed to men during their life from the gift of Revelation, cfr.A. GHISALBERTI, Metodologia del sapere teologico nel Prologo alla Ordinatio di Giovanni Duns Scoto, in Via Scoti. Methodologica ad mentem Joannis Duns Scoti, Atti del Congresso Scotistico Internaz. (Roma, 3-11 marzo 1993), a c. di L. Sileo, Roma 1995, I, 275-290; ID., Giovanni Duns Scoto e la scuola scotista, in Storia della Teologia nel Medioevo cit. (above, cap. 2, note 100), III, [pp. 325-374], esp. pp. 326-328.

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mankind, it is never immediately or perfectly knowable. Rather, it emerges only gradually with the growth of the individual intellect, upon the basis of the consensus which he succeeds in stabilizing – through research and study – between the things known and the definition which he works out for them in thought. In this way his intelligence conforms itself and adapts itself to things (according to the norms of Aristotelian gnoseology), but only to the degree in which it is possible for him as a creature through a constant and inexhaustible effort to imitate the perfection of the divine147.Yet, since the divine is the only authentic object of philosophy, the soul is truly philosophical only if it turns from the perception of passing things to the contemplation of eternal things148. One must therefore investigate the existence and essence of God by rescaling the ladder from the bottom up, as many theologians of the more recent centuries had intuited, departing from the consideration of creatures and climbing from the truth in them, to the truth in itself. Thus, one understands how the world genuinely is the image of man and how at the same time man is the image of the divine. To truly ‘know God’ will mean discovering the true model of all that which is and which is true, and learning which divine virtues man and the world must imitate in order to realize in themselves such a supreme truth149. It is now evident how this entire cognitive process is opened, initiat147 Cfr. IACOBUS SADOLETUS, ibid., pp. 222b-223a: «Est enim duplex rerum cognitio: altera quae in partibus explicat se, atque dispertit; altera quae in genere summo atque universo est collecta. Primam illam artes et opificia et circumscriptae terminis limitibusque scientiae, secundam vero cognitionem philosophia sola complectitur: atque, ut dicebamus, talem praestare hominem aut talem, huius esse vel illius artis; ipsum autem hominem praestare quidquid ipse est, proprium esse philosophiae. Idem dicimus nunc in cognitione: talem esse rem, aut tantam, aut huiusmodi, ad scientias artesque peculiares, id autem ipsum simpliciter, quod res quaeque est, ad philosophiam unam ut cognoscat pertinere». 148 Cfr. ibid., p. 225b: «Est igitur rationis, cuius nomen a ‘rato’ deductum est, discernere ea quae rata esse debeant: hoc est vera, firma, constantia; quam facultatem profecto in his mortalibus et fluxis reperire ipsa nequit. Quocirca convertat se et conferat oportet quae sunt perpetua et immortalia, quodsi etiam in his quae gignuntur passim et intereunt aliqua imago exsisteret perpetuitatis, qualis fortasse in ipsis generibus inest, quorum universum semper permanet, individua cotidie dilabuntur: in optima tamen et constantissima parte naturae illa quaerenda est, ut ubi maxime lucet, ibi potissimum veritas exquiratur». 149 Cfr. ibid., p. 227b: «Porro autem, cum motus omnis aliquid quaerat quod non habet in se, idque cupiat adsequi, ex quo omne quicquid moveatur haud

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ed, and consolidated only by an acceptance – free and without reserve – of the knowledge of the truth allowed by Christianity, the revealed true religion which alone teaches man what is the authentic divine image in the truth of things, and how it is possible to conform the truth in us to this image. Only in so far as he becomes Christian, therefore, can the philosopher be the perfect man, who must authentically become the subject both of redemption,and of the cognitive and moral illumination which is associated with redemption, by participating in the perfect human and divine nature of Christ150. Only a truly Christian philosophy will be capable of forming, in the defective wisdom of men, the cognitive adaequatio to the truth of things in God. It is impossible, in fact, for them to achieve this equality with divine truth by departing from the limited apprehension which they have of their own being itself in the appearance of the sensible world151. Giovanfrancesco Pico and Jacopo Sadoleto seem to have delineated for philosophical research two possible distinct out-

plane perfectum nec cumulatum omni bono esse intelligatur, ipsum auctorem et principem universi, unde omnis ista tantarum rerum motuumque descriptio ortum atque ordinem suum obtinet, unum et sempiternum eumdemque praepotentem et prorsus immutabilem necessario esse cognovit. Ad quem intelligendum riteque comprehendendum, quandoquidem sine eo nec veritatis, nec ordinis, nec convenientiae ullius, ipsiusque decori notio ulla firma et stabilis haberi potest, cum in primis vocet nos et acuat philosophia, utinam eo tam facile aspirare possent mentes nostras, quam nos id amamus et cum ardore maximo expetimus». 150 Cfr. ibid., pp. 242b-243a: «Quocirca homo praeceptis philosophiae eductus ac semetipso in omnem partem recte utens, similem sese (quoad fas est) efficiet Deo: tum in vitae ratione, dum quo ille modo omnia agit eodem iste modo cuncta et aget et exequetur, ut deceat sibi, semper prosit aliis; tum in perpetua animi laetitia ac voluptate. Qui, si praeter has communes philosophiae rationes quae similitudinem et imitationem praepotentis Dei insinuant nobis atque proponuntur, illa quoque praeterea maxima atque amplissima eiusdem Dei beneficia in genus humanum cognoverit, quae uni tantum generi nominique nostro, qui Christum filium unigenitum Dei colimus et profitemur, proprie ac singulariter data sunt, quod in hac una religione et salus hominibus est et verae beatae vitae in terris ratio, in caelo immortalitatis adeptio, nedum per philosophiam a pura et integra religione non deflexerit – quemadmodum tu, Phaedre, dudum calumniabare – sed magis in ea etiam statueretur et confirmabitur: ad eos enim amores, qui communibus beneficiis Dei summi debentur, accedunt alii magis peculiares et proprii per quos fortissime cum Deo erit colligatus». 151 Cfr. ibid., II, p. 243ab: «Quo ingenio hominis atque doctrina perveniri non potest, de eo patiuntur Dei immortalis numine et veterum auctoritate sanctissimorum hominum facile sibi persuaderi».

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comes, both animated by the spirit of reform which dominated in the first thirty years of the sixteenth century.Though in different ways, they proposed in fact the same rediscovery of the Augustinian project of recovering, in a theological perspective, the truth of human science, indispensable for filling, on the cognitive side, and orienting correctly, on the practical side, the imperfect tensions of natural being. Little by little, however, if the historian of Western theological thought advances towards the second half of the sixteenth century, and passes over the profound fissure opened in the heart of Christianity by the Lutheran protest, he will finish by running into a significant number of Catholic theologians who were openly persuaded that a conciliating attitude – moderate on the ethical level, and probabilistic on the cognitive level – ends by weakening, rather than strengthening, the defense of Church’s magisterium by exposing the faith to the destructive criticism of the enemies of the truth. Nicholas of Cusa, as the first promoter of this approach, and later Giovanfrancesco Pico and Sadoleto, proclaimed, on the contrary, the necessity of accomplishing this reformation of theology – calling it the work of vera philosophia – by subjecting it to a moderate probabilistic attitude. It is not by chance then that, after the thirties of the fifteenth century, the better fruits of this tendency sprouted within the sermons and writings of those extreme and radical advocates for religious reform, who were, with all probability, the last authentic exponents of the most genuine tradition of Renaissance theological research.They were the so-called «Italian heretics», those first «Christians without a Church», such as Sebastian Castellio, William Postel, Francesco Pucci, Jacopo Aconcio, who, in the name of a strenuous defense of religious tolerance, decisively distanced themselves from all doctrinal rigidity, both Catholic and Protestant152. 152 Cfr. the study of D. CANTIMORI, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento. Ricerche storiche, Firenze 1939 (first ed.), which remains fundamental even today.The concept of «Christians without a Church» derives from the title of the volume by L. KOLAKOWSKI, Chrétiens sans Église. La Conscience religieuse et le lien confessionel au XVIIe siècle, Paris 1969 (French trans. of the original ed.,Warszawa 1965), in which the sixteenth century defenders of the idea of religious tolerance, among whom Aconcio and Castellio are explicitly noted, are considered anticipators of the forms which non-confessional Christianity would assume in the course of the succeeding century (cfr. pp. 166-168).

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The most significant and interesting witness – and probably the latest one – of the late humanistic renewal of the patristic and medieval idea of vera philosophia is the first among the authors mentioned above, Sebastian Castellio (also Castellion, or Châtellion). Born in Savoia in 1515,he was of Erasmian formation,and was first a collaborator, and then a victim, of the persecutions of Calvin, who accused him of supporting doctrinal errors on particular aspects of the scriptural lectio153. In reality, the true fault of Castellio in the eyes of his adversaries, and in particular of Theodore Beza, the most dogged among the critics of his message of theological tolerance, was to have supported the superiority of the natural law over that of the written law – and therefore even over the revealed law – and to have consequently denied the license to persecute and condemn dissent in the practice of religious debate154. For the history of the speculative method, his most interesting work is an energetic and detailed demand for the complementary value of doubt and rational research in order to acquire the truth, which bears the title De arte dubitandi et confidendi,ignorandi et sciendi155. Even Castellio, allying himself to Sadoleto for the recovery of this wide-spread humanistic theme, begins with the certainty that the true image of God must be recognized in natural human 153 After the fundamental study of F. BUISSON, Sébastien Castellion. Sa vie et son oeuvre. Étude sur les origines du protestantisme liberal français, 2 voll., Paris 1892, see: É. GIRAN, Sébastien Châtellion, Les deux Réformes, Haarlem - Paris 1914; G. RADETTI, Riformatori ed eretici italiani del secolo XVI. II. Sebastiano Castellione e il trattato «De arte dubitandi», in «Giornale critico della filosofia italiana», 21 (1940), pp. 240-267; R. H. BAINTON - B. BECKER - M. VALKHOFF - S. VAN DER WOUDE, Castellioniana. Quatre études sur Sébastien Châtellion et l’idée de la tolérance, Leiden, 1951;the miscellaneous volume Autour de Michel Servet et de Sébastien Châtellion,ed. by B. Becker, Haarlem 1953; H. R. GUGGISBERG, Sebastian Castellio im Urteil seiner Nachwelt vom Späthumanismus bis zur Aufklärung, Basle - Stuttgart 1956; and the fourth chapter of R.H.BAINTON,The Travail of Religious Liberty,Westminster 1951. 154 THEODORUS BEZA (1519-1605) wrote in 1554, after the execution of Michael Servetus in Geneva, an apology for Calvin’s conduct entitled De haereticis a civili magistratu puniendis, Genevae 1554, Oliva Roberti Stephani. In the same year there appeared in Basle (or in Magdeburg?), anonymously, the De haereticis an sint persequendi of CASTELLIO (repr. Genève 1954; Eng. trans. with comm. by R. H. Bainton, New York 1935). 155 Like the majority of theological-philosophical and polemical writings of Castellio, even this work remained unedited at his death (taking place in Basle in 1563). Critical edition by E. Feist Hirsch, Leiden 1981 (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 29). Italian trans. of selected passages in the booklet of G. RADETTI, Fede, dubbio e tolleranza, Firenze 1960.

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ratio. Reason is, moreover, a sign of the very presence of God in man. It is the created mark that makes man truly a son of God. In fact, as the Fathers of the Church taught, and as the better sages of Christianity understood and recommended, the eternal divine Wisdom itself – Dei filia, who speaks of herself in the book of Proverbs – is a supernatural ratio, that is, the second Person of the Trinity, the Logos or divine Word, who pronounces the primary truth of God’s every temporal and earthly manifestation, even before the existence of written Revelation, theological assertions, and the religious cults of men.The true natural ratio, which God bestowed upon Adam from the moment of his creation, is therefore the primary instrument with which man is directed to gather the true manifestation of the divine: Reason, in fact, in order to say it better, is the daughter of God, and was always so, before all the Scriptures and all the cultic traditions – even before the creation of the world – and it will always be so, when there will no longer be either Scriptures or cultic traditions, even when the actual state of the world will be changed and completely renewed, and will, like God himself, never be destroyed. Reason, I repeat, is like an eternal word of God, of a more ancient duration and of more certain truth than the Scriptures or the cultic traditions.And according to this very word or reason God has instructed his elect, either before the Scriptures and cultic traditions or after them, and instructed them in such a manner that they might be truly divinely wise through it. According to such a word or reason they lived in a truly pious manner – first Abel, then Enoch, then Noah, and then Abraham, and still many others before the Scriptures of Moses, but they were then surpassed in piety by many from ancient times, and many even today surpass them, and many still in the future will surpass them. And in the end, even Jesus Christ himself lived according to this word or reason of God, he who is the Son of the living God, who is in the Greek language called by the name Logos, which means reason or word. He himself, therefore is such a divine reason or word (and, in fact, divine reason is like a certain interior, eternal, and perpetually pronounced discourse and word of truth): according to such a word or reason he himself lived; and according to it he instructed others; and he repudiated the Scriptures and the cul-

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tic traditions to which the Hebrews were attributing more importance than to reason156.

Before the gift of Revelation, before liturgical practice, before abstraction and theological reflection, man is invited by Castellio to make use of philosophy, which joins natural things to supernatural things: that is, to promote the application of the coelestis et a Christo nobis tradita philosophia, which bears the human mind to eternal things, beginning with the divine likeness found in natural things157. The philosophical realism of the modern centuries seems in this text to reconnect itself, with very deep and penetrating roots, to the ancient doctrine of the eternal parallelism between the ordo rerum and ordo idearum, which was sanctioned by the exercise of the liberal arts, since the Carolingian age on, among the exponents of the Augustinian-Platonizing theological tradition of the high Middle Ages. The rational search for the truth, the final goal of the believer, appears on these grounds not only licit, but necessary and salutary. It acts as an instrument for investigation, for discovery, or for the correction of knowledge; but also for caution and the methodical exercise of the dubium in the presence of the more uncertain manifestations of the truth158. Human science is neither

156

SEBASTIANUS CASTELLIO, De arte dubitandi et confidendi, ignoranti et sciendi, I, Hirsch cit., pp. 65,39-66,54: «Nam ratio est ipsa, ut ita loquar, Dei filia, quae et ante literas et ceremonias omnes atque adeo ante orbem conditum fuit et post literas et ceremonias omnes atque adeo post mutatum novatumque hunc mundi statum semper futura est neque magis quam ipsemet Deus aboleri potest. Ratio, inquam, est aeternus quidam sermo Dei longe tum literis tum ceremoniis et antiquior et certior, secundum quam Deus suos et ante ceremonias et literas docuit et post easdem ita docebit ut sint vere divinitus docti. Secundum hanc et Abel et Henocus et Noha et Abrahamus caeterique multi ante Mosis literas pie vixerunt et iisdem antiquitatis multi et hactenus et deinceps victuri sunt. Denique secundum hanc ipse Iesus Christus, viventis Dei filius, qui Graeco sermone Logos dicitur, hoc est ratio aut sermo, quod idem est (nam ratio est quasi quaedam interior et aeterna semperque loquens veritatis oratio atque sermo) et vixit ipse et alios docuit et literas ceremoniasque, quibus plus quam rationi tribuebant Iudaei, refutavit». 157 Cfr. ibid., II, XXVI, p. 149,54-57: «Nos vero philosophamur, sed coelesti et a Christo tradita nobis philosophia, qui coelestia rerum terrenarum similitudinibus explicare solitus nobis ad eadem viam aperuit». 158 Cfr. ibid., I, XXV, p. 67,87-90: «Denique haec ratio illa est veritatis indagatrix, inventrix, interpres, quae, si quid in literis tum profanis tum sacris vel obscurum vel XXV, ed. Feist

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able to demand the complete self-assimilation to the divine science, nor is it able to compete with it. Natural ratio produces truly credible results only if it converts from its own initial orientation toward finite and imperfect things, and comes to adhere, in a complete way – interiorly and unconditionally – to a manifestation of the truth which directly flows from the free generosity of God.This, however, does not mean for Castellio, in principle, an abdication of the natural paths of knowledge in favor of the one faith. He is above all convinced, indeed, that God placed at the disposal of the human reason, in order to aid its weakness, an absolutely certain, natural, and foundational criterion of true knowledge. Its true fecundity is openly documented in the irreplaceable model of the life of Christ: the universal, persuasive, and irrefutable norm of charitas. Only Charity, the divine rule capable of healing every dissension among men, is the first foundation of theological knowledge, beyond the doctrinal differences and the social, economic, and linguistic customs159. That which is not guaranteed by the principle of Charity must not be imposed upon the conscience of any man as truth. In a century in which prophets were no longer rising up to heal the dissidia among the doctrines and religious confessions, and to indicate with assurance to believers the way of truth, one sees more than ever the aptness of the recourse to a true «art», appropriate for teaching not only how to believe that which one must believe, but also how to doubt that which it is not necessary to believe. Only such an art as this may offer those who are disoriented among the waves of the confessional storms a solid rock of tempore vitiatum est, aut corrigit aut in dubium tantisper vocat, donec tandem vel veritas elucescat vel saltem de re incerta amplius pronuncietur». 159 Cfr. ibid., I, XVII, p. 48,22-34: «Restat nunc totius operis nostri pars longe et difficillima et plurimorum invidiae obnoxia, videlicet ut, postquam sacras literas optimas esse iusticiae magistras demonstravimus, in iis ipsis quidnam sequendum sit, ostendamus. Cum enim, qui se sacrarum literarum doctores et populorum magistros profitentur, tot et tam diversis, saepe etiam pugnantibus opinionibus et sectis inter sese tam acriter vel, ut verius dicam, capitaliter et inexpiabiliter dissideant, difficile est ex tantis opinionum quasi fluctibus veritatem in tranquillum eruere et, ubi erueris, non eos, a quibus dissideas (a multis autem dissidendum omnino est), graviter offendere. Quippe ita comparatum est et ii sunt hodie mores hominum, ut opinionum dissensionem comitetur plerumque animorum quoque offensio paucique sint ea aequitate praediti, ut eos ament, qui non cum ipsis sentiunt, quod tamen fieri iubet Christiana charitas».

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truth, which one may seize in order not to succumb to the temptation of error160. Despite the naturalness of ratio, the «art» of exercising it «in doubting and in believing, in knowing and in not knowing» is not a natural truth, but a technical truth, which arises from exercise and competence, and which is then able – and must be able! – to be taught.Those who simply believe and obey Christ, with no vain curiosity, might as well live without this art. Yet, for those who seek to clarify, deepen, and demonstrate Revelation (that is, the theologians), it offers one of the most important opportunities they could ask for161. Thanks to this art, they may learn to distinguish, in the examination of the contents of the faith, between directly perceptible truths as such, in which one is not able but to believe – such as God’s existence and justice, which are evident to all, even to those who do not accept the authority of Scripture –, and the truths of an historical and particular character, which can suffer accidental variations in their formulation and then become the objects of contradictory readings and theoretical disputes162.Yet, an ‘interpretation’ is necessary for all the doctrines belonging to this second category. No problem arises within the revealed teachings, which may be read and consolidated in the light of the principle of charitas: that is, within all the moral norms of Christianity, which assure to those who respect them harmony and felicity in this life, and, in the future, eternal happiness.All the rest – that is, all the theoretical determinations worked out by reason regarding divine nature and the relationship between God and creatures, starting from imperfect scriptural information – are, however, less certain and less essential: they cannot, and must not, presume to be the object of 160 Cfr. ibid., praef., p. 14,58-61: «Aggredior artem scribere, qua quis possit in mediis dissensionum fluctibus, quibus hodie Ecclesia verberatur, ita consistere itaque veritatem cognitam exploratamque habere, ut in fidei officiique sui gradu tanquam scopulus permaneat immotus». 161 Cfr. ibid., p. 15,77-83: «Illud addam, quam ego artem trado, eam esse huiusmodi, ut ea facile carere possint qui Christo simpliciter credunt eiusque praeceptis minime curiosi obediunt. Sed quia non omnes tales sunt et cupimus etiam paulo duriores ad veritatem, si fieri potest, pertrahi (…), dabimus operam, ut veritatem quam fieri poterit evidentissime demonstremus». 162 Cfr. ibid., I, XVIII, p. 49,1-4: «Primum sciendum est quaedam esse, de quibus sit dubitandum; alia quae sint citra ullam dubitationem credenda. Item quaedam esse, non dicam quae sint ignoranda, sed quae ignorari liceat et nonnumquam necesse sit; alia quae sciri et possint et debent».

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immediate and univocal interpretations, but must always be filtered through a critical suspension of judgement – that is, with a methodical dubitatio. At most, the believers will be able to accept them as criteria for the orientation toward the Good.Yet, it will never be correct or opportune for ecclesiastical or political authority to impose such doctrines upon reason as certain and necessary dogmas; nor will it ever be correct or opportune for the believers to receive and retain them without any critical intervention on the part of their own intelligence. The entire system of theological dogma is, for Castellio, only a complementary and non-essential appendix for Charity.This is confirmed, in an impressive way, by an imaginary dialogue, at the beginning of the second book of the work, between the author and Saint Athanasius, the promoter of the formulation of the Nicene faith. Athanasius’ Creed is presented as the first explicit theorization regarding the Trinity, abounding with inessential determinations which go beyond the simple expression of dogma and have nothing to do with the principle of love, since they were merely imposed by the ecclesial authority. The dialogue provides a rapid examination of the sustainability of the statements of the Creed, which discloses the fruitfulness of the project of guarding the most profound meaning of the articles of faith by means of the constant exercise of analytical doubt. Doubt – without denying, but, on the other hand, without any formal constriction – now employs the ratio of the believer in order to comprehend and represent, to the greatest degree possible, and with the correctness of moderation, the contents of belief163. Restored to its role as the regulative criterion for the human approach to the truth, doubt is not, for Castellio, the cause of a desecrating destruction of the faith, but, on the contrary, it is the reason for the consolidation of the souls of single believers in the perfect adhesion to the substance of the teaching of Christ. Moreover, true theological science must originate from a correct exercise of doubt, from which arises the passionate and decisive acceptance of the only authentically revelatory notions for pondering the mystery of God. Paraphrasing Ecclesiastes, «there is a time for doubting and a time for believing, a time for ignoring 163

Cfr. ibid., II, II (De trinitate), pp. 85-89.

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and a time for knowing»164. According to the variability of the representative efficacy of theological notions submitted to examination, the intervention of doubt does not annul their contents, but it translates them into a particular, imperfect, limited form – in a certain sense ‘contracted’, but nevertheless effective – of the acquisition of the truth regarding the divine on the part of the created subject. In such a perspective, it is not by chance that Castellio, in the very moment in which he formulates a definition of that which is rendered the object of knowledge through doubt, turns toward the notion of coniectura: «dubia sunt ea quae in coniecturis posita sunt»165. Even in these decades one hears the decisive echo of Nicholas of Cusa. *** The methodical dubitandum esse doceo of Castellio166 appeared as one of the final results of the «theological revolution» of the Renaissance humanists.Thus one understands why the hope for harmony, reawakened at the end of the Middle Ages by Nicholas of Cusa’s theological Platonism, was judged by many as a way without a future. In the sinister light of the irreversible historical fracturing of Christianity, Cusanus’ program seemed to offer only skeptical and fallible results.The Catholic Church, however, soon repelled this menace through its counter-efforts, based upon a systematic return to Aristotelianism and to its epistemological foundation – the only system of thought which seemed to assure the scientific incontrovertibility for knowledge founded upon Revelation. It is clear how the late sixteenth century restoration of scholastic systematics had, above all, the sense of an extreme attempt to salvage the Aristotelian principle of the univocality of truth, as opposed to the vain search for other ways for a critical refoundation of knowledge. It included an invitation to assure its defense through the arms of a rigorous, logical construction of 164 Ibid., I, XVIII, p. 49,18-22: «Docet Salomo in Ecclesiaste suum cuiusque rei tempus esse.‘Est nascendi tempus’, inquit,‘est et moriendi; est serendi tempus, est et sata evellendi’ (Ec 3, 2), et caetera quae ibi habentur. Eadem ego ratione dico: est dubitandi tempus, est et credendi; est ignorandi tempus, est et sciendi». 165 Ibid., I, XIX, p. 51,3-4. 166 Ibid., I, XVIII, p. 50,55.

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definitions and deductions, applied in a radical manner to any sort of cognitive, empirical, metaphysical, or theological datum whatsoever. In the closing sessions of the fifth Lateran Council, in 1517, Giovanfancesco Pico himself, the apostle of moderate late Renaissance probabilism, was complaining out loud of the betrayal of the initial hopes for ecclesiastical reform167.Three years before, in the canons of the same Council, the dogmatic imposition of the demonstrability of the immortality of the soul was sanctioned, by a revealing formula: «since the truth is never able to contradict the truth, we define that every assertion contrary to the illuminated truth of the faith is always necessarily false»168. The model of thought re-proposed by Nicholas of Cusa, however, left – in at least a few, final heirs – significant signs of his hope to frame a proposal for a universal and tolerant theological harmony within the ancient phenomenological paradigm of the Platonic theory of knowledge. Thus, in the same pages of Gli eroici furori, to which we have referred in the opening of this chapter, Giordano Bruno once again establishes, for the doctrine of the ascent of the soul toward the truth through the diverse faculties in the scalar order, an intimate relation with the phenomenalistic conception of knowledge. According to this doctrine, thoughts are neither produced, nor are they organized, by the intelligence according to the laws of its natural logic. On the contrary, thoughts actively work in the human mind with the goal of clarifying the intelligence’s likeness and common nature with the known objects, by transfiguring it in order «to pull it upward», rather than to allow themselves to be absorbed by it («per tirarla su, più tosto che a farsi ricettar da lei»). Even Bruno, as Nicholas of Cusa before him, associates the ascent of the mind toward the object (when the object, by filling the mind up with itself, finally dissolves its natural limits) with the image of the vision of the third heaven recounted by Saint Paul. He courageously interprets, in a phenomenological key, even the 167

Cfr. C.B. SCHMITT, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola and the Fifth Lateran Council cit. (above, note 128), pp. 161-178. 168 In G. D. MANSI, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, t. IX, Paris 1714, col. 1719E (repr. Paris 1902, t. XXXII, col. 842CD): «Cumque verum vero minime contradicat, omnem assertionem veritati illuminatae fidei contrariam omnino falsam esse definimus».

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lacerating «cupio dissolvi» of the Apostle, which he confessed upon his return into the heavy confines of the carnal dimension (Phil 1, 23). According to Bruno, this is the cry of the soul which, after having tasted the purity of the truth, is torn to shreds by the disrupting voracity of thoughts (the dogs of Actaeon).The ravenous beasts would even like to drag it once again from the sphere of the senses toward the final goal of knowledge169.The contingency of man and the absoluteness of divinity are once more resolved in a final unity, in this text, by consecrating the assumption of finite reason into the original and eternal divine rationality which had produced and governed the world. Thus, between the late medieval mysticism and the beginnings of modern thought, one of the final apparitions of the speculative foundation of the late ancient vera philosophia is newly proclaimed by the sounds of a persuasive invitation to tolerance in thought170. It is an invitation, I believe, no less significant 169 Cfr. IORDANUS BRUNUS, De gli eroici furori, Parte prima, Dialogo quarto, ed. Ciliberto, pp. 834-835: «TANSILLO. Qua dumque quando l’anima si lagna dicendo ‘O cani d’Atteon’, viene introdotta come cosa che consta di potenze inferiori solamente, e da cui la mente è ribellata con aver menato seco il core, cioè gli intieri affetti, con tutto l’exercito de pensieri: là onde per apprension del stato presente et ignoranza d’ogni altro stato, il quale non più lo stima essere, che da lei possa esser conosciuto, si lamenta dei pensieri li quali al tardi convertendosi a lei vegnono per tirarla su più tosto che a farsi ricettar da lei. E qua per la distrazzione che patisce dal commune amore della materia e di cose intelligibili, si sente lacerare e sbranare di sorte che bisogna al fine di cedere a l’appulso più vigoroso e forte. Qua se per virtù di contemplazione ascende o è rapita sopra l’orizonte de gli affetti naturali, onde con più puro occhio apprenda la differenza de l’una e l’altra vita, all’ora vinta a gli alti pensieri, come morta al corpo, aspira ad alto: e benché viva nel corpo, vi vegeta come mota, e vi è presente in atto de animazione et absente in atto d’operazioni; non perché non vi operi mentre il corpo è vivo, ma perché l’operazioni del composto sono rimesse, fiacche e come dispenserate. CICADA. Cossì un certo Teologo, che si disse rapito sin al terzo cielo, invaghito da la vista di quello, disse che desiderava la dissoluzione dal suo corpo». On the Pauline image of the three heavens in De coniecturis di Cusano, cfr. above, p. 309 and note 83. 170 Cfr. G. RADETTI, s.v. La Scolastica, in La cultura magistrale. Enciclopedia dei maestri, dir. da N. Padellaro e L.Volpicelli, I, Milano 1942, [pp. 99-104], pp. 102103: «[Il misticismo scolastico, in particolare nella tradizione francescana], finisce coll’ammettere, ad un certo punto, l’assoluta identificazione del credente e di Dio, col portare il contingente umano nel seno stesso dell’assolutezza divina. Niente separazione e subordinazione della filosofia di fronte alla teologia: ma, negata in pieno la filosofia, l’esigenza della ricerca razionale viene immessa nella teologia stessa. Donde l’apparente paradosso storico del misticismo come origine speculativa della filosofia moderna (si pensi al Cusano), e del razionalismo ari-

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today, at the beginning of the third millennium, for a humanity which finds itself once again impotent before a new and difficult struggle – the results of which appear to be dangerously uncertain – among radical and opposing extremes regarding the conception of the truth, mute skepticisms, and blind fundamentalisms.

stotelico-tomistico ben presto esaurito in un’ortodossia rimasta in seguito filosoficamente poco feconda». Cfr. also ID., rec. H. W. RÜSSEL, Profilo di un umanesimo cristiano (Italian trans., Roma 1945), in «Archivio di Filosofia», 15 (1946), [pp. 220-222], p. 222: «L’auspicata rinascita dello spirito tollerante dell’universalismo umanistico come ideale di vita cristiana (…) in questo particolare momento della cultura e della spiritualità europee, non può non destare l’attenzione più viva di chiunque abbia un senso dei problemi religiosi e degli interessi spirituali del nostro tempo».

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This volume includes a collection of reworked and revised articles and studies, which the author, during the last twenty years, has dedicated to the origins and constitutive conditions of Christian philosophical-theological thought in Late Antiquity, the early Middle Ages, and the Renaissance.The following is the list of the essays on which (or on portions of which) every chapter is based. Chapter One: Il parricidio di Cicerone. Le metamorfosi della verità tra gli Academica ciceroniani e il Contra Academicos di Agostino (lettura di testi), in ENWSIS KAI FILIA. Unione e amicizia. Omaggio a Francesco Romano, a c. di M. Barbanti - G. R. Giardina - P. Manganaro, Catania 2002, pp. 207-236; Boezio filosofo, in Boèce, ou la chaîne des savoirs,Actes du colloque international de la Fondation Singer-Polignac (Paris, 8-12 juin 1999), éd. par A. Galonnier, Louvain-La-Neuve - Louvain - Paris - Dudley (Mass.) 2003 (Philosophes Médiévaux, 44), pp. 381-419; Notio fidei. La concordia di filosofia e religione. Lettura di «Fides et ratio», IV, 36-48, in «Aquinas», 44.1 (2001), pp. 47-78; Storia della Teologia, II, Età medievale, Casale Monferrato 2003 (Eng. trans. by M. J. O’Connell, Collegeville 2008); Il pensiero ‘convertito’: il giovane Agostino, in «Archivio di filosofia», 59 (1991), pp. 323-337; La dialettica in Agostino e il metodo della teologia nell’alto medioevo, in Congresso internazionale su S. Agostino nel XVI centenario della conversione (Roma, 15-20 settembre 1986), Atti, 3 voll., Roma 1987, I (Studia ephemeridis «Augustinianum», 24), pp. 251-282. Chapter Two: Boezio filosofo cit. (above); Cernens omnia notio (Cons., V, IV, 17). Boezio e il mutamento dei modelli epistemologico-

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conoscitivi fra tarda antichità e alto medioevo, in Mutatio rerum. Letteratura Filosofia Scienza tra tardo antico e altomedievo, Atti del Convegno di Studi (Napoli, 25-26 novembre 1996), a c. di M. L. Silvestre - M. Squillante, Napoli 1997 (Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici. Il pensiero e la storia, 37), pp. 185-218; Boezio e l’essenza del tempo, in Il tempo in questione. Paradigmi della temporalità nel pensiero occidentale, a c. di L. Ruggiu, Milano 1997, pp. 119129; L’errore dei vecchi filosofi (Boezio, Cons. phil.,V, m. IV). Essere e conoscenza nel Medioevo pre-aristotelico, in «Studi Chieresi. Rivista annuale dell’Istituto di Filosofia San Tommaso d’Aquino in Chieri», Chieri 1997, pp. 13-50. Chapter Three: I fondatori di Parigi. Giovanni Scoto e la teologia del suo tempo, in Giovanni Scoto nel suo tempo. L’organizzazione del sapere in età carolingia, Atti del XXIV Convegno storico internazionale dell’Accademia Tudertina e Centro di Studi sulla Spiritualità Medievale (Todi, 11-14 ottobre 1987), Spoleto 1989, pp. 413-456; Theological Ideas and the Idea of Theology in the Early Middle Ages (9th-11th Centuries), in «Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie», 38/3 (1991), pp. 273-297; Disputandi disciplina. Procédés dialectiques et logica vetus dans le langage philosophique de Jean Scot, in Jean Scot Écrivain, Actes du IVe colloque international (Montréal, 28 août - 2 septembre 1983), éd. par G.-H.Allard, Montréal - Paris 1986, pp. 229-263; Über die Natur der Einteilung. Die dialektische Entfaltung von Eriugenas Denken, in Begriff und Metapher. Sprachform des Denkens bei Eriugena,Vorträge des VII. Internationalen Eriugena-Colloquiums (Bad Homburg, 26.-29. Juli 1989), hrsg. von W. Beierwaltes, Heidelberg 1990 (Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-histhorische Klasse, Jahrg. 1990, 3. Abhandl.), pp. 17-38; Cuius esse est non posse esse. La quarta species della natura eriugeniana, tra logica, metafisica e gnoseologia, in History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time, Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies (Maynooth and Dublin, August 16-20, 2000), ed. by J. McEvoy - M. Dunne, Leuven 2002 (Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, De Wulf - Mansion Centre, Series 1, 30), pp. 367-412. Chapter Four: Lanfranco teologo e la storia della filosofia, in Lanfranco di Pavia e l’Europa del secolo XI, nel IX centenario della morte

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(1089-1989), Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi (Pavia, Almo Collegio Borromeo, 21/24 settembre 1989), a c. di G. d’Onofrio, Roma 1993 (Italia Sacra, 51), pp. 189-228; Respondeant pro me. La dialectique anselmienne et les dialecticiens du Haut Moyen âge, in Saint Anselm – A Thinker for Yesterday and Today. Anselm’s Thought Viewed by our Contemporaries, Proceedings of the International Anselm Conference, Centre National de Recherce Scientifique Paris, ed. by C.Viola - F. Van Fleteren, Lewiston Queenston - Lampeter 2002, pp. 29-49; Chi è l’insipiens? L’argomento di Anselmo e la dialettica dell’Alto Medioevo, in L’argomento ontologico, a c. di M. M. Olivetti, Padova 1990 (Biblioteca dell’«Archivio di filosofia», 5) [= «Archivio di filosofia», 58 (1990)], pp. 95-109; Storia della Teologia, II, Età medievale cit. (above); Oris ratio. La preghiera filosofica altomedievale, dialogo della ragione con la verità, in Forme e figure del pensiero, a c. di C. Cantillo, Napoli 2006 (Il pensiero e l’immagine, 1), pp. 163-223 [french translation, Prière, philosophie et théologie durant l’Antiquité chrétienne et le haut Moyen Âge, in La prière en latin de l’Antiquité au XVIe siècle. Formes, évolutions, significations, Études réunies par J.-F. Cottier, Turnhout 2006 (Collection d’Études Médiévales de Nice, 6), pp. 317-350]. Chapter Five: L’anima dei platonici. Per una storia del paradigma gnoseologico platonico-cristiano fra Rinascimento, tarda-Antichità e alto Medioevo, in Ratio et superstitio. Essays in Honor of Graziella Federici Vescovini, ed. by G. Marchetti - O. Rignani - V. Sorge, Louvain-La-Neuve 2003 (Textes et études du Moyen-Âge, 24), pp. 421-482; In cubiculum mentis. L’intellectus anselmiano e la gnoseologia platonica altomedievale, in Rationality from Saint Augustine to Saint Anselm, Proceeding of the International Anselm Conference (Piliscsaba, Hungary, 20-23 June 2002), ed. by C.Viola - J. Kormos, Piliscsaba 2005, pp. 61-88; Storia della Teologia, II, Età medievale cit. (above); Introduzione, in Storia della Teologia, III, Età della Rinascita, direzione di G. d’Onofrio, Casale Monferrato 1995; La riforma umanistica della teologia, conference held to the VI Congress of the Società Italiana per lo Studio del Pensiero Medievale (S.I.S.P.M.), Pensiero medievale e modernità (Roma, 12-14 sett. 1996), unpublished. It is my pleasure to thank all the editors and publishers of the volumes and periodicals cited in the previous list for permitting

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me to reuse part of the materials contained in these essays. I also express my thanks to the editorial board of Brepols Publishers, and in particular to Roland Demeulenaere and Paolo Sartori, for their precious collaboration in the realization of this volume that opens the series Nutrix. In particular, I owe a special debt of gratitude to dr. John Gavin S.J., for his generous, professional and careful work in preparing the english version of this text. Along with John, finally, I also would like to thank the followings for their assistance in reading and improving the English text: Mr. Brian Dunkle S.J., Mrs.Audry Gavin, Mr. John V. Gavin, Fr. John Moriarty S.J., Mrs. Ellen Parkinson.

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C.VASOLI, La prisca theologia e il neoplatonismo religioso, in Il neoplatonismo nel Rinascimento, Atti del Convegno internazionale (Roma Firenze 12-15 dicembre 1990), a c. di P. Prini, Roma, 1993, pp. 83101. — Dalla pace religiosa alla prisca theologia, in Firenze e il Concilio del 1439, Convegno di Studi (Firenze, 29 novembre - 2 dicembre 1989), a c. di P.Viti, 2 voll., Firenze 1994 (Biblioteca storica toscana. Serie I, 29), I, pp. 3-25. G. FEDERICI VESCOVINI, La teologia di Niccolò Cusano, in Storia della Teologia, III, Età della Rinascita, dir. di G. d’Onofrio, Casale Monferrato 1995, pp. 161-199 (Eng. trans. by M. J. O’Connel, Collegeville 1998, pp. 155-187). A. GHISALBERTI, Metodologia del sapere teologico nel Prologo alla Ordinatio di Giovanni Duns Scoto, in Via Scoti. Methodologica ad mentem Joannis Duns Scoto, Atti del Congresso Scotistico Internaz. (Roma, 3-11 marzo 1993), a c. di L. Sileo, Roma 1995, I, 275-290. L. FLADERER, Antiochos von Askalon: Hellenist und Humanist, Horn 1996. G. PIEMONTE, Recherches sur les Tractatus in Matheum attribués à Jean Scot, in Iohannes Scottus Eriugena. The Bible and Hermeneutics, Proceedings of the Ninth International Colloquium of the Society for the Promotion of Eriugenian Studies (Leuven - Louvain-laNeuve, June 7-10, 1995), ed. by G. van Riel - C. Steel - J. McEvoy, Leuven 1996 (Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Ser. 1, 20), pp. 321-350. A. GHISALBERTI, Giovanni Duns Scoto e la scuola scotista, in Storia della Teologia nel Medioevo, 3 voll., dir. G. d’Onofrio, Casale Monferrato 1996, III, La teologia delle scuole, pp. 325-374. O. GRASSI, La riforma della teologia in Francia, in Storia della Teologia nel Medioevo cit., III, pp. 685-720. P. PORRO, Forme e modelli di durata nel pensiero medievale, Leuven 1996 (Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, De Wulf - Mansion Centre, Ser. I, 16). L. SILEO, L’esordio della teologia universitaria: I maestri secolari della prima metà del Duecento, in Storia della Teologia nel Medioevo cit., II, La grande fioritura, pp. 603-644. — Università e teologia, in Storia della Teologia nel Medioevo cit., II, pp. 471-550. Y. SPITERIS, La teologia bizantina nei secoli XIII e XIV, in Storia della teologia nel Medioevo cit., III, pp. 773-840. C. MORESCHINI, Aspetti della difesa del Cristianesimo nell’attività letteraria di Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, in Giovanni e Gianfrancesco Pico:

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l’opera e la fortuna di due studenti ferraresi, a c. di P. Castelli, Firenze 1999, pp. 261-290. W. BEIERWALTES, Centrum tocius vite. Zur bedeutung von Proklos’ Theologia Platonis im Denken des Cusanus, in Proclus et la Théologie Platonicienne, Actes du Colloque International (Louvain, 13-16 mai 1998), éd. par A. Ph. Segonds - C. Steel, Louvain - Paris 2000 (Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, De Wulf - Mansion Centre, Ser. 1, 26), pp. 629-651. G. D’ONOFRIO, La scala ricamata. La philosophiae divisio di Severino Boezio tra essere e conoscere, in La Divisione della Filosofia e le sue Ragioni. Lettura di testi medievali (VI-XIII secolo), Atti del VII Convegno della Società Italiana per lo Studio del Pensiero Medievale (S.I.S.P.M) (Assisi, 14-15 novembre 1997), a c. di G. d’Onofrio, Cava dei Tirreni 2001 (Schola Salernitana. Studi e Testi, 5), pp. 11-63. — Anselmo e i teologi «moderni», in Cur Deus homo, Atti del Congresso Anselmiano internazionale (Roma, 21-23 maggio 1998), a c. di P. Gilbert - H. Kohlenberger - E. Salmann (Studia Anselmiana, 128), Roma 1999, pp. 87-146. A. GHISALBERTI, Il compito dell’intelligere e la figura dell’intelletto nel Cur Deus homo, in Cur Deus homo, Atti del Congresso cit., pp. 311331. É. JEAUNEAU, Nisifortinus: le disciple qui corrige le maître, in Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages. A Festschrift for Peter Dronke, Leiden 2001, pp. 113-129. G. PIEMONTE, Some Distinctive Theses of Eriugena’s Eschatology in his Exegesis of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, in History and Eschatology in John Scottus Eriugena and His Time, Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference of the Society for the Propotion of Eriugenian Studies (Maynooth - Dublin, August 16-20, 2000), ed. by J. McEvoy - M. Dunne, Leuven 2002 (Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, Ser. 1, 30), pp. 227-242. G. D’ONOFRIO, In cubiculum mentis. L’intellectus anselmiano e la gnoseologia platonica altomedievale, in Rationality from Saint Augustine to Saint Anselm, Proceeding of the International Anselm Conference (Piliscsaba, Hungary, 20-23 June 2002), edd. C.Viola - J. Kormos, Piliscsaba 2005, pp. 61-88. — Le fatiche di Eva. Il senso interno tra aisthesis e dianoia secondo Giovanni Scoto Eriugena, in Corpo e anima, sensi interni e intelletto dai secoli XIII-XIV ai post-cartesiani e spinoziani,Atti del Convegno Internazionale (Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Educazione e dei Processi Culturali e Formativi, 18-20 settembre 2003), a c. di G. Federici Vescovini - V. Sorge - C.Vinti,Turnhout 2005 (Textes et études du Moyen-Âge, 30), pp. 21-53.

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References are given to the page numbers.An ‘n’ after a page number refers back to a footnote on that page. Numbers in italics indicate a substantial treatment of the item. Variant forms of names and original Latin names are given between parentheses. Surnames of modern authors are written according to the most commonly found spelling.

Abbagnano, N. 181n Abel (bib.) 348, 349n Abelard, Peter (Abaelardus, Petrus) 210, 217, 290-291, 361; Collationes (Dialogus) 291n, 361 Abraham (bib.) 348, 349n Academics, Academy (New Academy), Academicism 15-31, 38-42, 44-63, 65-66, 67, 69, 71-72, 82, 82n, 94, 157, 254, 302, 317n, 338-339, 340 Accame Lanzillotta, M. 321n, 384 Acciaiuoli, Donato (Acciaiuolus Donatus) 145n, 361; Vita Caroli Magni 145n, 361 Aconcio, Jacopo (Giacomo; Jacobus Acontius) 346, 346n Actaeon (myth.) 265, 267, 267n, 272, 355 Adam (bib.) 171, 195n, 197, 348 Adam of Bremen (Adam Bremensis) 219, 219n, 361; Gesta Hammaburg. ecclesiae pontificum 219n, 361

Adeodatus, son of Augustine 61 Adoptionists, Adoptionism 160, 215 Adriaen, M. 86n, 159n, 366 Aegidius of Viterbo (Aegidius Viterbiensis) 326 Agobard of Lyon (Agobardus Lugdunensis) 160-161, 161n, 361; Contra obiectiones Fredegisi 160, 161n, 361 Alan of Lille (Alanus de Insulis) 292-293, 361; Regulae caelestis iuris 293, 293n, 361; Sermo de sphaera intelligibili 292, 293n, 361; [attr.] Quinque sunt digressiones cogitationis 293n, 361 Albert the Great (of Cologne; Albertus Magnus) 283n, 298-300, 298n, 299n, 361, 372; Summa theologiae 299n, 361; Super Dionysium 298, 298n, 299n, 372 Alcher of Clairvaux (Alcherus Clarevallensis) 294n, 295n, 361, 370; vide: De spiritu et anima

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Alcuin of York (Alcuinus Eboracensis) 143-145, 147n, 148n, 150, 151-162, 163, 167n, 175n, 195, 207, 207n, 210, 212, 215, 215n, 220n, 231, 235, 235n, 361-362; Adversus Elipandum Toletanum 155n, 157n, 160n, 361; Adversus haeresin Felicis 155n, 156n, 362; Commentaria in Iohannis Evangelium 156n, 161n, 362; Commentaria super Ecclesiasten 155n, 362; Contra Felicem Urgellitanum 153n, 156n, 157n, 160n, 175n, 215n, 362; De animae ratione 215n, 362; De dialectica 220n, 362; De fide sanctae et individuae Trinitatis 215n, 362; De rhetorica et virtutibus 220n, 362; De Trinitate ad Fridugisum quaestiones 215, 362; Epistolae 148, 152n, 153n, 154n, 155n, 156n-157n, 158n, 159n, 160n, 161n, 167n, 175n, 215n, 220n, 362; Expositio in Epistolam Pauli ad Hebraeos 159n, 160n, 362; Interrogationes et responsiones in Genesim 161n, 362; vide: Vita Alcuini Aldric of Sens (Aldricus Senonensis) 144m Alexander the Great 148n Alexander Neckham, vide: Neckham,Alexander Alexander of Canterbury (Alexander Cantuariensis) 289, 289n, 366; vide: Dicta Anselmi Allard, G.-H. 203n, 358, 383 Amalarius of Metz (Amalarius Mettensis, Amalarius Symphosius Treverensis) 144n Ambrose of Milan (Ambrosius Mediolanensis) 198n, 242-243, 284n, 362; De Cain et Abel 242n, 362; De Isaac vel anima 242n, 362; De sacramentis 242n, 362; Expositio Psalmi CXVIII 243n, 284n, 362

Ammonius 180n, 362; In Aristotelis De interpretatione commentarius 180n, 362 Anaxagoras of Clazomenae 327, 327n, 328n, 341n Andronicus III Palaeologus, Byzantine Emperor 322 Annalista Saxo 219n, 362; vide: Arnold of Berge Anselm of Aosta (of Bec, of Canterbury; Anselmus Cantuariensis) 155, 193n, 209-264, 285290, 306, 362-363, 367; Cur Deus homo 286n, 362; De casu diaboli 236n, 362; De conceptu virginali 285n, 362; De concordia 287-288, 287n, 362; De processione Spiritus sancti 286-287, 287n, 362; De veritate 211, 211n, 254n, 362; Epistola de incarnatione Verbi 229, 254n, 285n, 286, 286n, 363; Epistolae 209-210, 210n, 218n, 227n, 230n, 231n, 251, 363; Monologion 217n, 218, 226, 227-228, 227n, 231-236, 237, 238, 238n, 246, 251, 285n, 286, 286n, 363; Proslogion 193, 232n, 237-260, 263-264, 285, 286n, 363; Responsio 248, 248n, 258, 260263, 285, 363; vide: Vita Anselmi Anselm (pseudo), vide: Dicta Anselmi; De similitudinibus Antiochus of Ascalon 20, 20n, 21, 23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 42, 50, 51, 67 Antipater of Tyrus 24 Antonines, Roman imperial dynasty 32, 35 Antoninus Florentinus, vide: Pierozzi,Antonino Antoninus Pius, Roman Emperor 35n, 370 Apologists, Apologetics 34, 36, 42, 44 Apuleius of Madaura (Apuleius Madaurensis) 33, 60n, 212, 363; Periermeneias 60n, 212, 363

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Arcesilaus of Pitane 19, 23n, 38n, 50 Arduini, M. L. 333n, 380 Aristides, Aelius 33, 33n, 36, 363; Romae enkomion 33n, 363 Aristotle (Aristoteles) of Stagira, Aristotelianism 17, 17n, 19, 21, 21n, 41, 41n, 45n, 73, 73n, 79, 80n, 87, 87n, 91, 92, 93, 96, 98, 98n, 102, 103, 104, 108, 109, 109n, 113, 115-117, 124, 125, 125n, 136, 168, 169, 169n, 180, 190n, 209, 209n, 212, 213, 217, 220n, 226n, 232, 251, 255, 263, 269, 284, 292, 297, 299, 300, 302, 304, 306, 307, 316, 317, 321n, 323, 323n, 324, 328n, 330, 338, 344, 353, 365; Analytica priora 212, 251, 323n; Analytica posteriora 212, 251, 321n; Categoriae 209, 209n, 212, 365; De interpretatione 212, 365; De anima 115-116, 124n, 125n, 190n; Ethica Nicomachea 45n; Fragmenta 41n, 328n; Metaphysica 169n, 328n; Organon 90, 91, 213, 263; Physica 103; Protreptikos 328n; Topica 124n, 212, 323n; vide etiam: Peripatetics, Peripateticism Arius of Alexandria, Arianism 334, 334n Arnauld,Antoine 181n, 375 Arnim, J. von 24n, 374 Arnobius (Arnobius Maior Afer sive Arnobius Siccae) 36n, 363; Adversus nationes 36n, 363 Arnold of Berge 219n Athanasius of Alexandria 352 Atomists 326 Aubriana, officina, vide:Aubry Aubry, Johann (Iohannes Aubrius), printer 145n, 147n, 361, 368 Augustine of Hippo (Aurelius Augustinus, Augustinus Hipponensis), Augustinianism 44-76, 77, 77n, 79, 83-84, 109, 110n,

129, 135, 139, 141, 151-153, 158, 161n, 162-163, 162n, 163n, 164n, 167, 167n, 168n, 198n, 207, 207n, 208, 211, 212, 214, 220n, 221, 223, 227, 227n, 229, 231, 232, 235-236, 235n, 243, 244n, 250, 254, 256, 256n, 261, 263, 279n, 295n, 297, 304, 308, 310n, 338, 338n, 340, 346, 349, 363-364; Adnotationes in Job 75-76, 76n, 363; Confessiones 46n, 48, 48n, 59n, 64n, 75n, 151, 198n, 363; Contra Academicos 45n, 46n, 48-59, 63n, 64n, 66n, 67n, 69n, 70, 72, 73n, 220n, 363; Contra Gaudentium 73n, 363; De beata vita 45n, 62, 62n, 363; De civitate Dei 45n, 69n, 363; De dialectica 110n, 256, 363; De doctrina christiana 71n, 75, 75n, 110n, 164n, 167n, 338, 363; De Genesi ad litteram 59n, 72n, 310n, 363; De magistro 61, 61n, 62n, 63n, 110n, 256, 256n, 363; De moribus 47n, 72, 363; De musica 167n, 363; De ordine 60n, 63n, 64n, 66n, 70n, 75n, 168n, 364; De quantitate animae 72n, 364; De Trinitate 59n, 66n, 227n, 235n, 364; De utilitate credendi 47n, 364; De vera religione 71n, 72-73, 73n, 167n, 364; Enarrationes in Psalmos 73n, 364; Epistolae 63n, 70n, 76n, 364; Quaestiones in Eptateuchum 73n, 364; Retractationes 46n, 64n, 70n, 72n, 364; Sermones 60n, 63n, 73n, 76n, 364; Soliloquia 46n, 61n, 70n, 71, 71n, 364 Augustine (pseudo), vide: Categoriae decem Augustus, Octavian, first Emperor of Rome 335, 335n Aulus Gellius 33 Averroes (Averroës, Ibn Rushd), Averroism 299, 302, 307

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Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Avicennism 297, 306 Bainton, R. H. 347n, 366, 377 Baldo degli Ubaldi (Baldus de Ubaldis) 318, 318n Bale, John (Iohannes Baleus) 147n, 364; Scriptorum illustrium 147n, 364 Barbanti, M. 357 Barbet, J. 166n, 369 Bark,W. 137n, 138n, 377 Barlaam of Calabria (sive of Seminara; Barlaamus de Seminaria) 322-325, 364; De primatu Ecclesiae Romanae et de processione Spiritus sancti 322-324, 364 Bascour, H. 332n, 371 Bastgen, H. 156n, 159n, 160n, 161n, 207n, 215n Bauer, J. B. 47n, 363 Baur, L. 277n, 278n, 279n, 298n, 316n, 371, 372, 376 Bayle, Pierre 318-319, 375 Beatus of Libana (Beatus Liebanensis) 155n, 215, 215n, 364; In Apocalipsin 155n, 364; Adversus Elipandum 215n, 364 Becker, B. 347n, 377 Bede, the Venerable (Beda Venerabilis) 144, 144n, 147n, 161n Behr, Ch.A. 34n Beierwaltes, W. 117n, 201n, 283n, 284n, 358, 380, 382, 383, 384, 386 Bell, D. N. 207n, 379 Bellère, Balthazar (Bellerus), printer 144n, 374 Berengar of Tours (Berengarius Turonensis) 224-226, 251 Bergman, J. 296n, 373 Bernard, B. 20n, 384 Bessarion, Basilius 326 Bethmann, L. C. 220n, 373 Beuchot,A. J. Q. 318n, 375 Beza, Theodore (Bez; Theodorus Beza) 347, 347n, 364; De haere-

ticis a civili magistratu puniendis 347n, 364 Bianchi, E. 372 Blumenshine, C. B. 155n, 156n, 362 Blumenthal, U.-R. 152n, 382 Boese, H. 124n, 125n, 282n Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus 60n, 77-142, 148n, 151, 169, 169n, 170, 170n, 180n, 183, 188n, 190, 209n, 212, 217, 255n, 260n, 261, 261n, 272n, 278n, 279, 283, 283n, 284, 292, 293, 296, 305, 306, 321, 325, 364-365; Consolatio Philosophiae 78, 79, 80n, 82, 82n, 90, 90n, 101n, 102, 104-116, 117-124, 125-130, 131-135, 148n, 272n, 306, 321, 364; Contra Eutychen et Nestorium 102n, 139-141, 364; De divisione 180n, 364; De fide catholica 137, 137n, 364; De hypotheticis syllogismis 82n, 364; De institutione arithmetica 84-85, 86-89, 93, 116, 365; De institutione musica 87n, 123n, 365; De syllogismis categoricis 60n, 102n, 365; De topicis differentiis 86n, 101n, 180n, 260n, 365; De Trinitate 135n, 138-139, 141n, 365; In Aristotelis Categorias 91n, 92n, 94-95, 101n, 188n, 209n, 255n, 365; In Aristotelis Periermeneias editio prima 82n, 365; In Aristotelis Periermeneias editio secunda 79, 79n, 82n, 102n, 108n, 365; In Isagogen Porphyrii editio prima 85-86, 86n, 92n, 96n, 110n, 124n, 365; In Isagogen Porphyrii editio secunda 90-92, 93-94, 97-98, 108n, 116, 125n, 180n, 365; In Topica Ciceronis 81, 81n, 82n, 85n, 86n, 89, 89n,101n, 102n, 103, 103n, 109n, 180n, 261n, 365; Introductio ad syllogismos categoricos 95n, 100n, 255n, 365; Opuscula sacra

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(gener.) 78, 135-141, 170n; Quomodo substantiae (sive De hebdomadibus) 138, 138n, 169n, 170n, 365; Utrum Pater et Filius et Spiritus sanctus 136, 136n, 137n, 365; Lat. trans. of Aristotelis Categoriae 209n, 365; of Aristotelis De interpretatione 109n, 365 Boethius (pseudo), vide: De disciplina scholarium; Marius Victorinus, De definitionibus Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (Bonaventura de Balneoregio) 259, 259n, 295-296, 365; Itinerarium 295, 295n, 365; Quaestiones disputatae de Mysterio Trinitatis 259n, 365 Boretius,A. 158n, 370, 374 Borgnet, S. 299n Bormann, K. 272n, 283n, 309n, 371, 383 Bosco, U. 321n, 372 Boss, G. 283n, 383 Boston of Bury, John (Iohannes Bostonus Buriensis) 145n, 365; Catalogus scriptorum ecclesiae 145n, 365 Boyle, M. O’R. 248n, 381 Brady, I. 297n, 373 Brandt, S. 37n, 86n, 90n, 92n, 96n, 97n, 108n, 110n, 124n, 125n, 180n, 365, 370 Brennan, M. 144n-148n, 382 Brugger,W. 181n Bruno of Würzburg (Bruno Herbipolensis) 222n Bruno, Giordano (Iordanus Brunus) 265-269, 272, 277n, 289, 308, 354-355, 365-366; De gli eroici furori 265-268, 277n, 354355, 366; De la causa, principio et uno 268n Buchheit,V. 39n, 384 Buisson, F. 347n, 375 Bullough, D. 152n, 382 Busse,A. 180n, 362

Caesar, Gaius Julius 148n Cain (bib.) 297n Calvin, John (Iohannes Calvinus), Calvinism 318, 347, 347n Campbell, R. 255n, 382 Canivet, R. P. 34n, 374 Canivez, J. M. 295n, 376 Cantillo, C. 359 Cantimori, D. 346n, 376 Capitulare de imaginibus, vide: Libri Carolini Cappuyns, M. 144n, 376 Carneades of Cyrene 19, 20, 21, 30, 48, 49, 52, 55, 65, 67 Carrara, E. 321n, 322n, 372 Cassiodore (Cassiodorus Senator) 21n, 138n, 151, 159, 159n, 160n, 168n, 220n, 366; Expositio Psalmorum 86n, 159n, 160n, 366; Institutiones 168n, 220n, 366; Anecdoton Holderii 138n Cassirer, E. 320n, 376 Castelli, P. 337n, 386 Castellio, Sebastian (Castellion, Châtellion; Sebastianus Castellio) 346, 346n, 347-353, 366; De arte dubitandi et confidendi, ignorandi et sciendi 347-353, 366; De haereticis an sint persequendi 347n, 366 Catalogus Abbatum Fuldensium 147n Categoriae decem 212 Cattin,Y. 240n, 384 Chadwick, H. 137n, 380 Chalcidius 292, 292n, 366; Commentarius in Platonis Timaeum 292n, 366 Charlemagne (Karolus I Magnus), King and Emperor 143-144, 145n, 146, 146n, 147n, 148n, 149n, 152n, 153, 153n, 154, 158n, 160n, 161n, 167n, 207, 215n, 220n, 319, 335, 336, 370, 372; Epistola de litteris colendis 158n, 370; vide: Libri Carolini Charles the Bald, King of France and Emperor 144n, 164

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Charles V, Emperor 336 Chenu, M. D. 143n, 377 Chibnall, M. 220n, 372 Christianson, G. 273n, 384 Chrysippus of Soli 30, 66 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 11-31, 32, 33, 34, 36-40, 41, 44-45, 45n, 48-53, 56-57, 65-67, 69, 73, 80, 81, 81n, 82n, 84, 85n-86n, 103, 106, 109, 109n, 110, 110n, 112, 112n, 135, 139n, 140n, 141, 168n, 179, 179n, 180, 180n, 212, 219, 220n, 250, 256, 257, 257n, 259, 259n, 304, 318, 338, 340, 340n, 341, 366; De divinatione 12, 12n, 13, 13n, 15, 15n, 366; De finibus 12, 12n, 13n, 14n, 17, 17n, 19n, 366; De natura deorum 30-31, 31n, 112n, 366; De officiis 13n, 14, 14n, 110n, 112n, 366; De oratore 13n, 366; Hortensius 12, 12n, 49, 341; Laelius (De amicitia) 57n, 82n, 366; Lucullus (Academica priora) 12n, 13n, 15, 15n, 16n, 19-20, 21, 21n, 23-29, 29, 30-31, 4950, 53, 56, 65, 110, 110n, 112n, 366; Pro Sexto Roscio Amerino 40n, 366; Topica 17-19, 81, 109, 109n, 179, 179n, 180n, 212, 256, 257n, 366; Tusculanae disputationes 11, 11n, 12, 12n, 13n, 19n, 22n, 39n, 40n, 41, 103, 139, 139n, 366; Varro (Academica posteriora) 13n, 15, 15n, 19, 20-23, 29, 30-31, 39, 40n, 45n, 49-50, 53, 56, 65, 110, 366; Lat. trans. of Platonis Timaeus 40n, 366 Ciliberto, M. 265n, 268n, 355n, 366 Clair, P. 181n, 375 Claude of Turin (Claudius Taurinensis) 143-145, 147n-148n Claudianus Mamertus 201n Claudius Altissidorensis 147n

Clemens Scotus (sive Claudius Clemens) 144n, 145, 145n, 147n Clovis I, King of the Franks 335 Cocci (Coccius), Marcantonio, vide: Sabellicus Colish, M. L. 158n, 161n, 382 Constable,A. 147n, 370 Constantine I, Roman emperor 36, 43, 83, 335 Constantine the African (Constantinus Africanus) 152n, 366; Epistola ad Desiderium 152n, 366 Contreni, J. J. 159n, 382 Cottier, J.-F. 359 Coustant, D. 295n Crévier, J. B. L. 144n, 375 Cristiani, M. 153n, 201n, 380 Cupaiolo, F. 20n, 384 Cusanus, vide: Nicholas of Cusa Cynics 32, 326, 327n Cyrenaics 326, 327n d’Alverny, M.-Th. 293n, 361 d’Onofrio, G. 13n, 14n, 17n, 20n, 60n, 70n, 85n, 87n, 110n, 125n, 136n, 140n, 141n, 164n, 199n, 200n, 220n, 240n, 269n, 278n, 374, 380-381, 383, 384, 385, 386 Dal Pra, M. 249n, 377 Daur, K.-D. 61n, 63n, 71n, 73n, 110n, 167n, 256n, 363, 364 De Bruyne, D. 73n, 364 De disciplina scholarium 144n De Gandillac, M. 333n, 377 de Nolhac, P. 321n, 375 De similitudinibus (Liber de similitudinibus) 288, 288n, 363, 370 De spiritu et anima 294-295, 295n, 361, 366 de Vogüé,A. 207n, 368 Dekkers, E. 73n, 364 Democritus of Abdera 327n Dempster,Thomas (Thomas Dempsterus) 145n, 147n-148n, 375

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Dicta Anselmi (Liber ex dictis beati Anselmi) 288-289, 289n, 363, 366; vide: Alexander of Canterbury Diels, H. 34n, 327n, 367 Dietrich, P.A. 203n, 383 Dillon, J. 281n Dindorf, G. 33n, 363 Diogenes Laertius 21n, 327n, 367; Vitae philosophorum 21n, 327n, 367 Dionysius the Areopagite (Dionysius Areopagita, pseudo) 143, 146n, 149, 149n, 150-151, 166n, 172, 173n, 187, 189-190, 190n, 198n, 234, 236-237, 276, 296, 298, 298n, 299n, 300, 309, 367; De caelesti hierarchia 298n, 299n, 367; De divinis nominibus 172, 173n, 298n, 299n, 367; De ecclesiastica hierarchia 166n, 190n, 367; De mystica theologia 173n, 367; Epistolae 298n, 367; Lat. trans., vide: John the Scot Eriugena Dombart, B. 45n, 69n, 363 Dondaine,A. 115n, 374 Douglas, R. M. 341n, 378 Du Boulay, César Égasse (Caesar Egassius Bulaeus) 144n-145n, 375 Duclow, D. F. 203n, 383 Dümmler, E. 148n, 152n, 153n, 154n, 155n, 156n, 158n, 159n, 160n, 167n, 215n, 220n, 296n, 362, 367, 372, 374 Dungal of Saint-Denys (Dungalus Scotus sive Sancti Dionysii) 158, 158n, 367; Epistolae 158n, 367 Dunne, M. 147n, 358, 386 Duns Scot, John (Iohannes Duns Scotus), Scotism 343n; De primo rerum principio 147n Eadmerus of St. Andrews (sive of Canterbury; Eadmerus Cantua-

riensis) 219, 219n, 252-253, 289n, 367, 370; Historia novorum 219n, 367; Vita Anselmi 253n, 367 Echard, J. 143n, 375 Eisler, R. 181n, 376 Eleatics, Eleaticism 82, 82n Emden,A. B. 145n, 375 Empedocles of Agrigento 242 Enoch (bib.) 348, 349n Epictetus of Hierapolis 32 Epicurus of Samos, Epicureanism 28, 73, 91, 91n, 104, 104n, 326, 327n Eriugena, vide: John the Scot Erasmus of Rotterdam (Erasmus Roterodamus) 248, 347 Estienne, Robert (Oliva Roberti Stephani), printer 347n Euclid 138, 169 Eurydice (myth.) 176-177 Eutyches of Constantinople, Eutychianism 141n Evans, G. R. 260n, 379 Eve (bib.) 171n Faller, O. 242n, 362 Fathers (Patres) of the Church 78, 78n, 84, 135, 137n, 152, 154, 155-157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 161n, 163, 164, 175n, 181, 183n, 195, 205n, 208, 222, 224n, 227, 227n, 228, 252, 284, 291, 323-324, 328, 338, 339, 347, 348 Federici Vescovini, G. 172n, 269n, 301n, 385, 386 Feist Hirsch, E. 347n, 349n, 366 Felix of Urgel (Felix Urgellitanus) 157n Fenzi, E. 321n, 322n, 372 Féret, P. 144n, 375 Ficino, Marsilio (Marsilius Ficinus) 308, 326-327, 337, 367; Theologia platonica 326-327, 327n, 367 Fladerer, L. 20n, 385 Flasch, K. 283n, 382

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Florence of Worcester (Florentius Wigorniensis) 220n, 367; Chronicon ex chronicis 220n, 367 Floss, H. J. 145n, 186n Fontaine, J. 161n, 382 Foreville, R. 211n, 382 Foussard, J. C. 201n, 380 Fraipont, J. 73n, 364, 364 Francesco da Camerino (Franciscus de Camerino) 322 Franck, M.A. 181n, 375 Freculf of Lisieux (Freculfus Lexoviensis) 155n; Epistola ad Hrabanum 155n Fridugisus of Tours (Fridugisus sive Fredegisus Turonensis) 157158, 158n, 160, 175n, 367; Epistola de substantia nihili 158n, 175n , 367 Friedlein, G. 84n, 86n, 87n, 123n, 365 Friedrich, G. 13n, 17n, 109n, 179n, 257n, 259n, 366 Fronto, Marcus Cornelius 32, 32n, 367; Ad Marcum Antoninum de eloquentia 32, 32n, 367 Führer, M. L. 299n, 384 Fulco of Beauvais (Fulco Bellovacensis) 229-230 Fyrigos,A. 322n, 380, 382 Gabriel,A. 149n, 384 Gabriel, L. 271n, 371-372 Gaguin, Robert (Robertus Gaguinus) 147n, 367; Compendium super origine et gestis Francorum 147n, 367 Galonnier,A. 211n, 357, 383 Garin, E. 328n, 337n, 373, 384 Gaunilo (Gaunilo Maioris Monasterii?) 248-250, 260, 260n, 261, 262, 367; Liber pro insipiente 249n, 260n, 367 Gerl, H. B. 320n, 381 Gerson, John (Jean Le Charlier; Iohannes Charlerius Gersonus) 300, 300n, 301n, 308, 325,

325n, 369; Contra curiositatem studentium 301n, 369; De consolatione theologiae 325, 325n, 369; De mystica theologia 300, 300n, 369 Gerson, L. 281n Ghisalberti,A. 286n, 343n, 385 Giannelli, G. 325, 377 Giardina, G. R. 357 Gibson, M. 220n, 374 Gilbert, P. 230n, 386 Gilson, É. 194n, 376 Giraldi, Giglio Gregorio (Giraldus, Lilius Gregorius) 145n, 147n, 367; Historiae poetarum dialogi 145n, 147n, 367 Giraldus of Cambrai (Giraldus Cambrensis) 148n, 368; De principis instructione 148n, 368 Giran, É. 347n, 376 Girbal, F. 181n, 375 Glei, R. F. 333n, 373 Glorieux, P. 300n, 301n, 325n, 369 Gnosticism 43 Goldbacher,A. 63n, 70n, 76n, 364 Gottschalk of Orbais (Godeschalcus Saxonicus sive Orbacensis) 164-165, 368; Responsa de diversis 164n, 368 Grabmann, M. 77, 77n, 78n, 376 Grassi, O. 301n, 385 Green, W. M. 45n, , 49n, 60n, 62n, 63n, 64n, 66n, 69n, 70n, 73n, 75n, 168, 220n, 363, 364 Gregory I the Great, Pope (Gregorius Magnus) 207, 207n, 243, 368; Dialogi 207, 207n, 368 Gregory of Nazianzus (Gregorius Nazianzenus) 187n, 294n Grundmann, H. 152n, 377 Gruter, Jan (Iohannes Gualterius sive Gruterus) 147, 368; Chronicon chronicorum 147n, 368 Guggisberg, H. R. 347n, 377 Guibert of Nogent (Guibertus Novingentensis) 289, 289n, 368; De vita sua 289n, 368

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Hadot, P. 371 Häfele, H. F. 146n, 372 Hall, J. B. 292n , 369 Hamesse, J. 295n Hamilton,W. 181n, 375 Häring, N. M. 293n, 361 Hasenohr, G. 163n, 381 Haubst, R. 269n, 298n, 299n, 377, 379, 380 Hauréau, B. 143n, 375 Heimeric de Campo (Heimericus de Campo) 299n Helinand of Froidmont (Helinandus de Persenia sive Frigidi Montis) 144n-145n, 368; Chronicon 144n-145n, 368 Henderson, J. 337n, 384 Henricpetrina, officina, vide: Petri, Heinric Henry, D. P. 210n-211n, 378, 379, 381, 382 Henry, P. 43n, 45n, 68n, 117n, 124n, 280n, 281n, 373 Heraclitus of Ephesus 326, 327n Hermias 34n, 367; [attr.] Irrisio philosophorum 34n, 367 Hermotimus of Clazomenae 327, 327n-328n Hesychasm 324 Hildebert of Lavardin (Hildebertus Cenomanensis sive Turonensis) 289-290, 368; De conflictu carnis et animae 290n, 368; Sermones 290n, 368 Hilduin of Saint-Denys (Hilduinus Sancti Dionysii) 149, 149n, 150-151, 155n, 368; Passio Dionysii 149, 149n, 150n, 151n, 368 Hincmar of Rheims (Hincmarus Rhemensis) 164 Hoche, R. 87n, 372 Hoffmann, Ch. G. 318n, 372 Hoffmann, E. 271n, 320, 371 Hoffmeister, J. 181n, 377 Homer (Homerus) 53, 53n; Odyssea 53n

Honorius Augustodunensis 284n, 292, 292n, 368; Clavis Physicae 284n, 292n, 368; De philosophia mundi 292n, 368; Elucidarium 292n, 368; Expositio in Cantica canticorum 292n, 368 Hopkins, J. 269n, 270n, 377, 382 Hörmann, W. 46n, 61n, 70n, 71n, 72n, 364 Hortensius, Quintus (Hortalus) 24 Hude, C. 341n, 375 Hugh of Lyon (Hugo Lugdunensis) 232n Hugh of Saint-Victor (Hugo de Sancto Victore) 143, 143n, 293, 293n, 295n, 369; De arca Noe morali 293n, 369; De unione spiritus et corporis 293, 293n, 369 Hunt,T. 149n, 380 Hus, Jan (Iohannes Hus), Hussitism 319, 332, 334, 334n Iacobitz, K. 35n, 370 Iamblicus of Chalcis (Iamblichus Chalcidensis) 328n, 369; Protreptikos 328n, 369 Inghirami, Thomas (Phedra sive Phedrus) 341 Irenaeus of Lyon (Irenaeus Lugdunensis) 36, 370; Contra haereses 36n, 370 Isaac Israeli 299n, 306-307; De definitionibus 306, 307n Isaac of Stella (Isaac de Stella) 294, 295n, 370; Epistola de anima 294n, 370 Isidore of Sevilla (Isidorus Hispalensis) 157, 157n, 161, 220n, 370; Etymologiae 157n, 220n, 370 Isingrin, Michael (Isingrinus), printer 145n, 367 Izbicki,T. M. 273n, 384 Jackson, B. D. 110n, 363 Jeauneau, É. 111n, 159n, 166n, 171n, 174n, 186n, 187n, 189n,

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190n, 193n, 198n, 199n, 204n, 206n, 294n, 318n, 369, 370, 386 Jerome of Stridon (Hieronymus Stridonius) 220n, 296-297, 300, 368; Commentaria in Ezechielem 297n, 368 Jevons,W. S. 181n, 375 John V Palaeologus, Byzantine Emperor 325 John XXII, Pope (Jacques Duèse) 322 John Chrysostom (Iohannes Chrysostomus) 154n; Homiliae 154n; Lat. trans., vide: Mutianus John the Deacon, Boethius’ friend 136 John Duns Scot, vide: Duns Scot John the Evangelist (bib.) 199-200, 204, 207 John of Melrose (Iohannes Mailrosius) [?] 147n John of Salisbury (Iohannes Sarisberiensis) 253n, 292, 292n, 369; Metalogicon 292, 292n, 369; Vita Anselmi 253n, 369; [attr.] De septem septenis 292n, 369 John Saracenus (Iohannes Saracenus) 143, 143n John the Scot Eriugena (Iohannes Scotus Eriugena) 111n, 143208, 210, 211, 215-217, 231, 236, 259, 260, 279, 284, 284n, 292n, 293, 294n, 305, 306, 313n, 315n, 317n-318n, 369; Annotationes in Marcianum 166n, 170n, 172n, 176-177, 177n, 369;Carmina 369;Commentarius in Iohannis Evangelium 159n, 174n,193n,198n,204n,369;De praedestinatione 162, 162n, 163166, 168, 170n, 216, 369; Expositiones super Hierarchiam caelestem 143, 166n, 369; Omelia super Prologum Iohannis 193n, 199n, 200n, 204n, 369; Periphyseon 111n, 147n, 150, 166-206, 284, 284n, 294n, 305, 317n-

318n, 369; Lat. trans. of ps.Dionysii De divinis nominibus 173n, 369; of ps.-Dionysii De ecclesiastica hierarchia 190n, 370; of Maximi Conf. Quaestiones ad Thalassium 170n, 175n, 206n, 370; of Maximi Conf. Ambigua ad Iohannem 171n, 174n, 187n, 189n, 198n, 206n, 370 John the Scot (pseudo), vide: Remigius of Auxerre Jolivet, J. 164n, 378, 380 Jongkees,A. G. 149n, 378 Jourdain, C. 181n, 375 Justin Martyr (Justin of Cesarea; Justinus Martyr) 35, 42, 370; Apologia prima 35n, 370; Apologia secunda 35n, 370 Kalb,A. 45n, 69n, 363 Kallen, G. 330n, 371 Keats-Rohan, K. S. B. 292n, 369 Kenney, J. F. 147n, 376 Kenny,A. 211n, 381 Kesler (sive Kessler), Nikolaus, printer 145n, 363 Klibansky, R. 271n, 272n, 320n, 332n, 371 Knöpfler,A. 154n Knox, C. 320n, 384 Koch, J. 272n, 273n, 274n, 284n, 309n, 312n, 371, 372, 378, 379 Kohlenberger, H. 230n, 386 Köhler, M. 333n, 373 Kolakowski, L. 346n, 378 Kormos, J. 240n, 359, 386 Kranz,W. 327n Krause,V. 158n, 375 Kretzmann, N. 211n, 381 Lactantius, Firmianus (Lucius Caelius Firmianus Lactantius) 3642, 44, 67, 338, 370; Divinae institutiones 37-42, 370 Laga, C. 170n, 175n, 206n Lambot, C. 164n, 368

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Lanfranc of Pavia (of Bec, of Canterbury; Lanfrancus Cantuariensis) 209-210, 210n, 218, 218n, 219-226, 227, 227n, 228, 231, 251, 257, 370; Commentarius in Epistolas Pauli 219, 219n, 221n-224n, 370; De corpore et sanguine Domini 224n, 226n, 370; vide: Vita Lanfranci Lang, H. 211n, 382 Langère, J. 163n, 381 Lehmann, P. 145n Lelong, J. 148n, 375 Leo X, Pope (Giovanni de’ Medici) 336 Leonardi, C. 152n, 381 Leto, Giulio Pomponio (Iulius Pomponius Laetus) 341 Libri Carolini 156n, 159, 159n, 160n, 161n, 207n, 215, 215n, 370 Liebeschütz, H. 164n, 377 Lindsay,W. M. 370 Löfstedt, B. 215n Lollards, Lollardism 332 Lombard, L. 359 Lorenz, R. 152n, 377 Lottin, O. 297n, 377 Lucentini, P. 144n, 284n, 368, 372, 380 Lucian of Samosata (Lucianus Samosatensis) 32, 35, 35n, 370; Dialogi 32, 35n, 370 Llull, Raymond (Raymundus Lullus), Lullism 333 Louis IX, King of France 148n Luther, Martin (Martinus Lutherus), Lutheranism 336, 346 Lutz, C. E. 166n, 170n, 172n, 177n, 369 Madec, G. 162n, 163n, 164n, 165n, 170n, 369, 381 Maierù,A. 110n, 381 Mainoldi, E. S. 162n, 164n, 165n, 170n, 369

Major, John (John Mair; Iohannes Maior) 147n, 370; De historia gentis Scotorum 147n, 370 Manganaro, P. 357 Manichees, Manicheism 46-47, 48, 69, 71, 72 Manilius, Marcus 326, 327n Mansi, G. D. 354n Manuscripts: Kues, Bibliothek des Hospitals, Cusanus 96: 298n Oxford, Magdalen College, Lat 172: 146n, 368 Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat 15966:143n,148n-150n, 374 Marcel, R. 327n, 367 Marchetti, G. 359 Marcovich, M. 21n, 367 Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Roman Emperor 32, 32n Marenbon, J. 161n, 291n, 381 Mario da Volterra 340 Marius Victorinus (Caius Marius Victorinus Afer) 212, 262n, 370; De definitionibus (pseudoBoethius) 212, 262n, 370 Marquard Freher (Marquardus Freherus) 145n, 361, 373 Marrou, H.-I. 161n, 376 Martellotti, G. 372 Martianus Capella, 60n, 64, 176, 180n, 212, 213, 259n, 371; De nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae 60n, 176, 180n, 212, 213, 259n, 371 Martin of Troppau (Martinus Polonus sive Oppaviensis) 144n, 371; Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum 144n, 371 Martin, J. 71n, , 75n, 110n, 164n, 167n, 363 Maximus the Confessor (Maximus Confessor) 111n, 143, 143n, 170n-171n, 174n, 175n, 187n, 189n, 190n, 198n, 206n, 294n, 371; Ambigua ad Iohannem

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171n, 174n, 187n, 189n, 190n, 198n, 206n, 371; Quaestiones ad Thalassium 170n, 175n, 206n; Lat. trans., vide: John the Scot Eriugena Mazzocchi dal Bondeno, Giovanni (Iohannes Maciochius Bundenius), printer 336n, 373 McEvoy, J. 146n, 147n, 358, 385, 386 McGuire, B. P. 333n, 383 Meiser, C. 80n, 82n, 102n, 108n, 365 Menelaus (myth.) 53 Merlin (the Magician) 148, 148n Meyer, G 298, 380 Micaelli, C. 137n, 384 Miller, C. L. 273n, 384 Minio-Paluello, L. 109n, 109n Mohammed II, Sultan of Turkey 333-336 Montano, R. 341n, 378 Moreschini, C. 80n, 82n, 90n, 104n, 106n, 111n, 118n, 125n, 135n, 136n, 137n, 138n, 139n, 140n, 148n, 169n, 337n, 364, 365, 385 Moses (bib.) 137n, 348, 349n Mountain,W. J. 59n, 66n, 235n, 364 Müller, C. F. W. 11n, 12n, 13n, 21n, 22n, 29n, 40n, 45n, 57n, 82n, 110n, 112n, 139n, 366 Müller, K. 32n, 372 Mutianus (Mutianus Scholasticus) 154n, 371; Lat. trans. of Chrysostomy Homiliae 154n, 371 Mutschmann, H. 19n, 21n, 302n, 374 Mutzenbecher, A. 46n, 64n, 70n, 72n, 364 Mynors, R.A. B. 168n, 220n, 366 Neckham (Nequam), Alexander 148n, 362; De naturis rerum 148n, 362 Nelson, J. St. 334n, 373

Neoplatonism 42-44, 46, 63-69, 79, 83-84, 91, 96, 97, 99, 102, 116-124, 125n, 128, 135, 141, 171n, 180n, 183, 190, 190n, 213, 235, 261, 279-301, 302, 304-305, 316, 320; vide etiam: Plato Neopythagorianism 79, 86, 123n Nestorius of Costantinople, Nestorianism 157n Nicholas I, Pope 144n Nicholas of Cusa (of Kues; Nicolaus Cusanus sive de Cusa) 269279, 283-284, 298-300, 301, 301n, 307, 308-317, 318-321, 325, 328n, 330-332, 333, 335, 338, 338n, 346, 353-354, 355n, 371-372; Apologia doctae ignorantiae 272, 371; Contra Bohemos 318-319, 319n, 371; De beryllo 278-279, 298, 298n, 310n, 371; De concordantia catholica 330n, 371; De coniecturis 272-275, 308-315, 338n, 355n, 371; De docta ignorantia 270-271, 275, 320n, 338n, 371; De filiatione Dei 276, 371; De pace fidei 331332, 333, 333n, 371; De quaerendo Deum 275-276, 277n, 371; Dialogus de Genesi 275276, 371; Idiota de Mente 277278, 316, 316n, 371; Idiota de Sapientia 277, 372; Marg. in Alberti Super Dionysium 298-299, 372; Marg. in Iohanni Scoti Periphyseon 284n, 372; Marg. in Honorii Augustodunensis Clavis Physicae 284n, 372 Nicole, Pierre 181n, 375 Nicomachus of Gerasa (Nicomachus Gerasenus) 86, 87n, 123n, 372; Introductio arithmetica 87n, 372 Nikitas, D. Z. 86n, 101n, 180n, 260n, 365 Nimrod (bib.) 341, 342n Noah (bib.) 348, 349n

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INDEX OF NAMES

Norberg, D. 160n, 175n, 215n, 372 Notker Balbulus (Notker Balbulus Sangallensis I) 145-146, 146n, 147n, 372; Gesta Karoli 145146, 146n, 372 O’Connel, M. J. 269n, 385 Obertello, L. 82n, 115n, 137n, 364, 384 Ockham, vide:William of Ockham Odo of Tournai (Odo Sancti Martini Tornacensis sive Odo Cameracensis) 289, 289n, 372; De peccato originali 289, 289n, 372 Olivetti, M. M. 359 Oporin, Johann (Iohannes Oporinus), printer 147n, 364 Opus Caroli regis contra Synodum, vide: Libri carolini Orderic Vitalis (Ordericus Vitalis) 220n, 372; Historia Ecclesiastica 220n, 372 Orlandi, G. 291n, 361 Orpheus (myth.) 176-177 Padellaro, N. 355n Palamas, Gregory (Gregorius Palamas), Palamism 324-325 Panciroli, Guido (Guidus Pancirolus) 318n, 372; De claris legum interpretibus 318n, 372 Parmenides of Elea 40, 40n, 128 Paul of Tarsos (Paul the Apostle; bib.) 35, 36, 73, 148n, 172, 196, 201n, 219, 221, 222, 223n, 224, 224n, 225, 242, 268, 270, 292n, 309, 332, 354-355 Paulinus of Aquileia (Paulinus Aquileiensis) 160, 160n, 161, 161n, 175n, 215, 372; Contra Felicem Urgellitanum 160n, 175n, 215n, 372; Epistola ad Karolum 161n, 372; Liber Sacrosyllabus contra Elipandum 160n, 161n, 215n, 372 Pedersen, J. E. 333n, 383 Peiper, R. 139n

Pelagius 222n, 318, 372; Expositiones XIII Epistolarum Pauli 222n, 372 Pelikan, J. 333n, 381 Penelope (myth.) 27, 28n Pépin, J. 70n, 379 Peripatetics (Peripatetici), Peripateticism 17, 17n, 21, 116, 297, 299, 302, 304, 305, 307, 308, 316, 317n, 343; vide etiam: Aristotle Perrin, M. 161n Pesselière, Pierre de la (Petrus Pesseliaerius) 148n Peter Damiani (Petrus Damianus) 216, 217, 217n, 372; De divina omnipotentia 217n, 372 Peter Lombard (Petrus Lombardus) 297n, 373; Sententiae 297n, 373 Peter of Poitiers (Petrus Pictaviensis) 279n, 373; Sententiae 279n, 373 Petit, Jehan (Iohannes Parvus), printer 145n, 147n, 367, 374 Petrarch (Petrarca), Francesco (Franciscus Petrarcha), 321322, 325, 372; Familiares 321n, 372; Secretum 321, 321n, 372 Petri, Heinric, printer 337n, 373 Petronius Arbiter 32n, 372; Satyricon 32n, 372 Petrus de Bresche, printer 144n, 375 Petschenig, M. 73n, 243n, 284n, 362, 363 Philip II Augustus, King of France 145n Philo of Larissa 20-21, 23, 24n, 67 Piazzoni,A. 293n, 369 Piccolomini, Enea Silvio (Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomineus; Pius II, Pope)333-336, 373; De liberorum educatione 334n, 373; Epistola ad Mahumehtem 333-336, 373 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanfrancesco (Picus e Mirandola,

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Iohannes Franciscus) 336-339, 340, 345, 346, 354, 373; Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium 336339, 373 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni (Picus e Mirandola, Iohannes) 308, 326, 328, 328n, 336, 337n, 373; Oratio de hominis dignitate 328n, 373 Piemonte, G. 146n, 385, 386 Pierozzi, Antonino (Antoninus Florentinus) 145n, 363; Chronicon 145n, 363 Pinborg, J. 110n, 211n, 363, 381 Piscopo, U. 341n, 378 Pistelli, E. 328n, 369 Pius II, Pope, vide: Piccolomini, Enea Silvio Pizzani, U. 64n, 383 Plato, Platonism 14, 19, 20, 21, 21n, 22, 22n, 23, 39, 40, 40n, 44, 44n, 45, 45n, 50, 56, 58n, 59, 59n, 63-67, 69, 70n, 72n, 73, 73n, 74, 79, 80n, 81, 87n, 91, 97, 98, 98n, 102, 104, 112, 117, 124, 125, 125n, 129, 134, 134n, 142, 148, 148n, 165, 170, 188, 221n, 243, 266, 266n, 268-269, 271, 277, 279-301, 302, 304305, 308, 316, 317, 324, 326, 327, 327n, 330, 337, 338, 338n, 343, 349, 353, 354, 366; Gorgias 59n; Phaedo 65n; Respublica 44, 44n, 45n, 125n, 148n, 280, 280n, 292, 292n; Sophista 40n; Symposium 280n; Timaeus 40n, 280n, 366; Lat. trans., vide: Chalcidius, Cicero Pletho, Georgius Gemistus 326 Plotinus (of Lycopolis) 43-44, 45n, 67-68, 73, 117n, 124n, 268n, 280-281, 282, 373; Enneades 43n, 45n, 68n, 117n, 124n, 280281, 373 Plutarch of Chaeronea 33 Pohlenz, M. 108n, 378

Polydoro (Polidoro),Virgilio (Vergilius Polydorus) 147n, 373; Anglica historia 147n, 373 Porphyry of Tyrus (Porphyrius Tyrius) 64n, 86, 96n, 98, 116, 180, 181, 182, 183, 212; Isagoge 180, 212 Porro, P. 129n, 385 Postel, William (Guillelmus Postel) 346 Powicke, F. M. 145n, 375 Prini, P. 326n, 385 Probabilism 15, 16, 19, 20-31, 4854, 55-59, 66, 69, 75, 110n, 140n, 250, 261, 263, 319, 336353 Proclus of Athen (Proclus Philosophus sive Diadochus sive Atheniensis) 124-125, 141, 282-283, 296; De decem dubitationibus 125n, 282, 282n, 368; De providentia et fato 124n, 282283, 368; In Platonis Parmenidem 283; Theologia Platonica 283; Lat. trans., vide: William of Moerbeke Proteus (myth.) 53, 55, 55n Prudentius (Aurelius Clemens Prudentius) 296, 296n, 373; Contra Symmachum 296n, 373 Pucci, Francesco (Franciscus Puccius) 346 Pythagoras of Samos, Pythagorianism (sive Pythagoreanism) 85n, 87, 87n, 132, 327n, 328n Quétif, J. 143n, 375 Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus) 180n, 321, 373; Institutio oratoria 180n, 373 Rabanus Maurus (Hrabanus Maurus) 143-145, 154n, 155n, 157, 157n, 159n, 161n, 168n, 222, 222n, 297n, 368-369; De benedictionibus Dei 159n, 368; De institutione clericorum 154n,

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INDEX OF NAMES

168n, 368; De laudibus sanctae Crucis 161n, 368; De rerum naturis 156n, 157, 157n, 368; Epistolae 155n, 369; In Ezechielem 297n, 369 Raciti, G. 295n, 378 Radermacher, L. 180n, 373 Radetti, G. 335n, 347n, 355n356n, 376, 377, 378, 379 Rand, E. K. 77, 77n, 139n, 170n, 373, 376 Rashdall, H. 145n, 375 Ratramnus of Corbie (Ratramnus Corbeiensis) 140n Rauschen, G. 35n, 370 Reale, G. 58n, 65n, 302n, 383, 384 Reifferscheid,A. 36n, 363 Reindel, K. 217n, 372 Rembolt, Berthold (Bertholdus) 147n, 374 Remigius of Auxerre (Remigius Autissidorensis) 170n, 373; Commentarius in Boethii Opuscula sacra (pseudo-John the Scot) 170n, 373 Riccati, C. 284n, 382 Ricci, P. G. 372 Riccio, Michele (Michael Ritius) 145n, 373; De regibus francorum 145n, 373 Richard of England (Richardus Anglicus) 322 Richard of Saint-Victor (Richardus de Sancto Victore) 294, 294n, 373; Benjamin major 294n, 373 Riché, P. 161n, 378 Rignani, O. 359 Ritter, S. 341n, 376 Rizzo, S. 108n, 382 Robert of Bridlington (Robertus Bridlington) 222n Robert of Torigny (Robertus de Torigniaco sive de Monte) 220n, 373; Chronica 220n, 373 Roques, R. 164n, 380

Roscelin of Compiègne (Roscelinus Compendiensis) 229-230, 286, 288 Rossi,V. 321n, 372 Rotondi Secchi Tarugi, L. 333n, 384 Rousseau,A. 36n, 370 Ruggiu, L. 358 Rule, M. 219n, 367 Rüssel, H.W. 356n, 377 Russell, B. 210 Sabellicus, Marcus Antonius (Cocci,Marcantonio;Coccius) 145n, 374; Rapsodiae historiarum Enneades 145n,374 Sadoleto, Jacopo (Iacobus Sadoletus) 340-345, 346, 347, 374; De laudibus philosophiae 340-345, 374 Salmann, E. 230n, 386 Samstag, K. 166n, 376 Sanders, H.A. 155n Santeller, J. 181n, 378 Schenkl, C. 242n, 362 Schiavone, M. 327n, 367 Schirò, G. 322n, 324n, 376, 377 Schischkoff, G. 181n, 378 Schmeidler, B. 219n, 361 Schmidt, H. 181n, 378 Schmitt, Ch. B. 337n, 354n, 379 Schmitt, F. S. 210n, 211n, 217n, 218n, 227n, 232n, 236n, 248n, 249n, 254n, 260n, 285n, 286n, 287n, 288n, 289n, 362-363, 367, 370, 379 Schrimpf, G. 163n, 381 Schwyzer, H.-R. 43n, 45n, 68n, 117n, 124n, 280n, 281n, 373 Scotus, vide: Dungal of SaintDenys; Duns Scot; John the Scot; Sedulius Scotus Sedulius Scotus 159, 159n, 374; Collectaneum in Epistolam ad Romanos 159, 159n, 374 Seel, G. 283n, 383 Segonds,A. Ph. 283n, 386

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VERA PHILOSOPHIA

Seneca, Lucius Annaeus 341; Hyppolitus 341 Senger, H. G. 272n, 283n, 310n, 371, 383 Sextus Empiricus 19-20, 302, 302n, 338, 374; Adversus mathematicos 21n, 302n, 374; Pyrrhoneion hypotyposeon libri 19n, 302n, 374 Sheldon-Williams, I. P. 190n Sigebert of Gembloux (Sigebertus Gemblacensis) 146n, 219, 219n, 374; De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis 146n, 219n, 374 Sileo, L. 125n, 295n, 343n, 385 Silvestre, M. L. 358 Sinkewicz, R. E. 323n, 324n, 381 Skepticism 15, 20, 45, 46, 48, 51, 58, 65, 67, 72, 254, 302, 304, 338, 353, 356 Socrates of Athens 21, 23, 35, 55, 91, 104, 281n, 302, 341n Solomon (bib.) 339n, 353n Sophists 32, 164, 165, 225 Sorge,V. 172n, 359, 386 Souter,A. 222n, 372 Southern, R.W. 253n, 288n, 289n, 367, 370, 379 Spiteris,Y. 324n, 385 Squillante, M. 358 Stacpoole,A. 288n, 379 Stallmach, J. 270n, 333n, 379, 382 Stangl,T. 262n, 370 Steel, C. 146n, 170n, 175n, 206n, 283n, 385, 386 Stegmüller, F. 148n, 222n, 377 Steiger, L. 260n, 379 Stephen I, King of Hungary 335 Steuco, Agostino (Augustinus Steuchus sive Eugubinus) 326 Stoics, Stoicism 17, 17n, 18, 19n, 20-25, 27, 28-29, 42, 48, 50, 55, 56-58, 65, 66, 67, 73, 79, 102, 104-116, 119, 129, 213, 304, 326, 327n Strowski, F. 337n, 375 Sturlese, L. 283, 382, 383

Symmachus, Boethius’ father-inlaw 85 Tanner,T. 145n, 147n, 365 Tebaldini, Nicolò (Nicolaus Thebaldinus), printer 145n, 375 Theodoret of Cyrus (Theodoretus Cyrensis sive Cyropolitanus) 34n, 374; Graecarum affectionum curatio 34n, 374 Theodoric, King of the Ostroghots 78, 83, 142 Theodulph of Orléans (Theodulphus Aurelianensis) 296n, 374; Carmina 296n, 374 Théry, G. 143n, 376 Thiaucourt, C. 49n, 375 Thomas Aquinas, Thomism 115n, 306-307, 307n, 321n, 323, 356n, 374; Quaestiones disputatae de veritate 115n, 374; Summa theologiae 307n, 374 Thomas of Ireland (Thomas Hybernicus sive Palmeranus sive Palmerstonensis) 143, 143n, 147-148, 148n, 149-150, 149n, 150n, 374; De tribus sensibus sacrae Scripturae 143, 143n, 148n150n, 374 Thomas, P. 60n, 363 Thomas, R. 291n, 361 Thorndike, L. 152n, 378 Thorpe, B. 220n, 367 Titans (myth.) 341, 341n Tognon, G. 328n, 373 Traube, L. 144n, 369 Traversari,Ambrose 283 Trithème, Jean (Iohannes Trithemius) 147n, 374; De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis 147n, 374 Troncarelli, F. 137n, 384 Valcke, L. 333n, 384 Valkhoff, M. 347n, 377 van Acker, L. 161 Van den Hout, M. P. J. 32n, 367 van der Woude, S. 347n, 377

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Pagina 403

INDEX OF NAMES

van Fleteren, F. 359 van Riel, G. 146n, 385 van Velthoven,T. 270n, 380 Varro, Marcus Terentius 64, 64n, 80, 213, 326, 327n Vasoli, C. 321n, 326n, 333n, 378, 379, 385 Verdon,T. 337n, 384 Verheijen, L. 46n, 48n, 59n, 64n, 75n, 198n, 363 Victorines,Victorine School 293 Vinay, G. 146n, 380 Vincent of Beauvais (Vincentius Bellovacensis) 144, 144n-145n, 146n, 374; Speculum maius 144n-145n, 374 Vinti, C. 172n, 386 Viola, C. 211n, 240n, 359, 382, 386 Vita Alcuini 207, 207n, 374 Vita Lanfranci 220, 220n, 374 Viti, P. 326n, 385 Volpicelli, L. 355n

William I the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy and King of England 219 William of Malmesbury (Guillelmus Malmesberiensis) 146n, 368; De gestis pontificum Anglorum 146n, 368 William of Moerbeke (Guillelmus de Moerbeka) 124n, 282n, 283, 368; Lat. trans. of Procli De decem dubitationibus 125n, 282n, 368; of Procli De providentia et fato 124n, 283n, 368 William of Ockham (Guillelmus de Ockham), Ockhamism 308 Willis, J. 60n, 180n, 259n, 371 Wilpert, P. 275n, 276n, 319n, 371 Witte, R. 146n, 219n, 374 Worstbrock, F. J. 149n, 378 Wright,T. 148n, 362 Wrobel, J. 292n, 366

Waitz, G. 147n, 219n, 362 Walafridus Strabo (Walahfridus Strabo sive Augiensis) 158n, 374; De rebus ecclesiasticis 158n, 374 Warner, C. F. 148n, 368 Waszink, J. H. 292n, 366 Wechel, Andreas Erven, printer 145n, 361 Wecheliana, officina, vide:Wechel Weiland, L. 144n, 371 Whitehead,A. 210

Xenocrates of Chalcedonia 21n Xenophon of Athens (Xeno-phon Atheniensis) 341n, 375; Memorabilia 341n, 375 Ysaak Sebastocrator 124n Zeno of Citium 22, 108 Zimmermann, A. 298, 321n, 379, 380 Zycha, J. 47n, 59n, 72n, 76n, 310n, 363, 364

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Pagina 405

BIBLICAL INDEX

References to the Bible Bible sive Sacred Scripture sive Scriptures 42, 63, 63n, 69n, 71, 135, 137, 137n, 139n, 146n, 152, 154-156, 158, 159, 159n, 160, 163, 171n, 172, 175n, 185, 195n, 197, 214, 218, 222, 223, 223n, 227, 227n, 228, 252, 254n, 296, 318, 319n, 326, 339, 341 347,348,351 Antiqua 197n Septuagint (LXX) 61 Vulgate 242n

Ecclesiastes 352-353, 353n Proverbs 339n, 348 Isaias 61, 61n Job 76 John 193n, 199-200, 204, 207, 277n Matthew 146n Paul 147n, 148, 159, 219, 219n, 222, 222n; Epistola ad Corinthios. prima 220n; Epistola ad Galatas 148n Proverbs 148n, 149

Quotations from the Bible Gn 2, 19 195n Ps 13, 1 244, 245n Ps 26, 8 240, 242n Ps 53, 11 244, 245n Ps 109, 3 190n Ps 115, 18-19 201n Pv 8, 15 148n Pv 9, 1 149, 149n Pr 26, 5 339n Qo (Ec) 3, 2 353n Ct 1, 3 242n-243n Sap 11, 21 203n Is 7, 9 61, 61n, 231, 241, 242n

Is 26, 20 Mt 6, 6 Mt 25, 1-13 Lc 17, 21 Jo 1, 1 Jo 1, 9 Jo 1, 14 Jo 12, 26 Jo 14, 2 Jo 14, 6 Act 17, 28 Rm 1, 32 Rm 2, 20

405

240 240, 242n-243n 202-206 267n 76, 200n, 277n 202n 193n 199n 201n 62n 187n, 190n, 196n 221n 221n

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VERA PHILOSOPHIA

Rm 16, 25 1Cor 1, 24 1Cor 2, 1-8 1Cor 2, 9 1Cor 2, 13 1Cor 2, 15 1Cor 13, 12 1Cor 15, 28 1Cor 15, 44 1Cor 15, 53-54 1Cor 15, 61 2Cor 12, 2

197n 62n 221n 205n 223n 196n 268n 271, 271n 222n 293n 198n 309, 355n

Eph 1, 10 Eph 3, 16-17 Phil 1, 23 Phil 3, 20 Col 2, 2 Col 2, 4 Col 2, 8 Col 3, 10 1Tm 6, 16 2Tm 6, 20-21 Tt 1, 2

36 62n 355 197n 221n 224n 69n, 224n 223n 173n, 241, 242n 225 197n

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NUTRI X

STUDIES IN LATE ANTIQUE MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE THOUGHT STUDI SUL PENSIERO TARDOANTICO MEDIEVALE E UMANISTICO

Nutrix is a series directed by Giulio d’Onofrio which aims at deepening critical knowledge of the history of philosophical, theological and scientific thought in the Late Ancient, Medieval, and Humanistic ages. Its scope embraces studies, monographs, editions and translations of texts with commentary, collections of articles (anthologies of collective or personal works, acts of conferences, etc.) on themes and problems connected with speculation in Europe and the Mediterranean – Latin, Greek, Arabic and Hebrew – during the chronological sweep between the works of the Council of Nicea (325) and those of the Council of Trent (1545-1563). La collana Nutrix, diretta da Giulio d’Onofrio, ha lo scopo di approfondire la conoscenza critica della storia del pensiero filosofico, teologico e scientifico nell’età tardoantica, medievale e umanistica. È concepita per abbracciare saggi, monografie, edizioni e traduzioni di testi con commento, raccolte di articoli (antologie di studi personali o collettivi, atti di convegni, etc.) su argomenti e problemi collegati alla speculazione in area europea e nel bacino del Mediterraneo, con riferimento alle culture latina, greca, araba ed ebraica, nell’arco temporale che va dal Concilio di Nicea (325) a quello di Trento (1545-1563).

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TITLES IN SERIES TITOLI DELLA COLLANA

1. Giulio d’Onofrio, Vera philosophia. Studies in Late Antique, Early Medieval and Renaissance Christian Thought (English text by John Gavin) 2. Luigi Catalani, I Porretani. Una scuola di pensiero tra alto e basso Medioevo 3.Armando Bisogno, Il metodo carolingio. Identità culturale e dibattito teologico nel secolo nono 4. The Medieval Paradigm, Papers of the Congress (Rome, LUMSA, 31 oct. - 3 nov. 2005), ed. G. d’Onofrio

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