Eternally Spiraling into God: Knowledge, Love, and Ecstasy in the Theology of Thomas Gallus (Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology) 9780199601769, 0199601763

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CHANGING PARADIGMS IN HISTORICAL AND SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY General Editors Sarah Coakley Richard Cross This series sets out to reconsider the modern distinction between “historical” and “systematic” theology. The scholarship represented in the series is marked by attention to the way in which historiographic and theological presumptions (“paradigms”) necessarily inform the work of historians of Christian thought, and thus affect their application to contemporary concerns. At certain key junctures such paradigms are recast, causing a reconsideration of the methods, hermeneutics, geographical boundaries, or chronological caesuras which have previously guided the theological narrative. The beginning of the twenty-first century marks a period of such notable reassessment of the Christian doctrinal heritage, and involves a questioning of the paradigms that have sustained the classic “history-ofideas” textbook accounts of the modern era. Each of the volumes in this series brings such contemporary methodological and historiographical concerns to conscious consideration. Each tackles a period or key figure whose significance is ripe for reconsideration, and each analyzes the implicit historiography that has sustained existing scholarship on the topic. A variety of fresh methodological concerns are considered, without reducing the theological to other categories. The emphasis is on an awareness of the history of “reception”: the possibilities for contemporary theology are bound up with a careful rewriting of the historical narrative. In this sense, “historical” and “systematic” theology are necessarily conjoined, yet also closely connected to a discerning interdisciplinary engagement. This monograph series accompanies the project of The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Christian Theology (Oxford University Press, in progress), also edited by Sarah Coakley and Richard Cross.

CHANGING PARADIGMS I N H ISTORICAL A ND SY STE MA TIC T H E OL O G Y General Editors: Sarah Coakley (Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge) and Richard Cross (John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame) RECENT SERIES TITLES

Calvin, Participation, and the Gift The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ J. Todd Billings Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers Shaping Doctrine in Nineteenth-Century England Benjamin J. King Orthodox Readings of Aquinas Marcus Plested Kant and the Creation of Freedom A Theological Problem Christopher J. Insole Blaise Pascal on Duplicity, Sin, and the Fall The Secret Instinct William Wood Theology as Science in Nineteenth-Century Germany From F. C. Baur to Ernst Troeltsch Johannes Zachhuber Georges Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance Paul L. Gavrilyuk

Knowledge, Love, and Ecstasy in the Theology of Thomas Gallus BOYD TAYLOR COOLMAN

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Boyd Taylor Coolman 2017 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2017 Impression: 1 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, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2016946817 ISBN 978–0–19–960176–9 Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

“Hitherto you have experienced truth only with the abstract intellect. I will bring you where you can taste it like honey and be embraced by it as by a bridegroom.” C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

Acknowledgments This book began with an email I received from Sarah Coakley at Harvard Divinity School (whom I did not yet know personally) in the fall of 2006, only a year after I arrived at Boston College. Since I was the only person she could identify who seemed to know something about Thomas Gallus, she said, would I write a chapter on him for her book project, Re-Thinking Dionysius, on the Western traditions of reception and interpretation of the Areopagite? Suppressing the impulse to correct her misperception, I agreed immediately, deciding to embrace what seemed like providential “manna” from Cambridge. At that moment, in fact, I knew only that Gallus was the oft-styled “last of the great medieval Victorines” (after Hugh and Richard) and wrote in difficult, recondite Latin. Nevertheless, I began to study him in earnest, and so entered the lush, but often impenetrably dense thickets of the Gallusian wilds. A year later, Sarah began gathering several of us from the Boston area, including Garth Green, Mark McInroy, Paul Kolbet, and Paul Gavrilyuk (on sabbatical at Harvard Divinity School), monthly in her Cambridge dining room for tea and conversation around yet another of her interests, namely, the spiritual senses tradition. During these rich stimulating exchanges, as I began increasingly to insert Thomas Gallus into the conversation, Sarah seemed intrigued, and soon came another invitation: Would I consider authoring a book on Gallus for the New Paradigms series with Oxford? I was in the middle of a book on Hugh of St. Victor at the time, but again found myself nodding in acceptance, sensing that I was crossing some sort of Rubicon. In retrospect, I was. Inevitably, I suppose, this book took longer to write than expected, but would have taken far longer were it not for numerous expediencies. Over the next several years, I taught four different doctoral seminars (2007, 2009, 2012, and 2015) on the affective tradition of Dionysius reception in the Middle Ages. A veritable host of graduate students, too numerous to be named here, pitched in with the labors of pouring over translations of, and wresting coherent interpretations from, Gallus’ corpus. Members of the most recent seminar offered critical feedback on early chapter drafts. Along the way, two dissertations emerged from

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these seminars, James Arinello’s Boston College (2012) dissertation on the theme of simplification in Gallus, and Craig Tichelkamp’s current Harvard Divinity School dissertation on Gallus, both of which have been quite stimulating for my own thinking. I wish also to thank my undergraduate research fellows, Scott Maloney and Jack Marriott, for their labors with notes and bibliography. This book would also not have been possible without Declan Lawell’s remarkable, prodigious labors on critical editions of several of Gallus’ works, especially of the Explanatio in libri Dionysii, Gallus’ massive final commentary on the Dionysian Corpus, which runs to nearly one thousand pages in Brepols’ Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis edition (2011). Several individuals offered insightful critiques on earlier manuscript drafts, including Richard Cross, Fr. Robert Imbelli, Declan Lawell, Robert Lawrence, Chad Raith, Warren Smith, and Craigh Tichelkamp, and the anonymous Oxford reviewer. No doubt, with a project extending over a long period of time, I have overlooked others who merit mention. Apologies to those I have missed! Finally, as always, I owe an incalculable debt to my wife, Holly Taylor Coolman, for her constant support and seemingly limitless patience, as well as her faithful companionship, in discipleship, in scholarship, and in life.

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Contents List of Abbreviations Note to the Reader Introduction: The Medieval Affective Interpretation of Dionysius

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Part I Foundations and Structures 1. Pleromatic and Ecstatic Trinity

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2. Plethoric Diffusion in Creation

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3. Receptive and Ecstatic Human Nature

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Part II Ascending 4. “Lingering in the Dominions”

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5. “Becoming a Throne for God”

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6. “Every Kind of Knowledge”

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7. “The Wisdom of Christians”

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Part III Descending 8. “As Oil Poured Forth”

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Part IV Remaining 9. “Remaining in Blessed Intoxication” Conclusion: Eternally Spiraling into God Glossary Bibliography Index

215 232 259 261 269

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List of Abbreviations ABBREVIATIONS OF THE WORKS OF THOMAS GALLUS Cmm2-CC Cmm3-CC

Second Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles (1237/38) Third Commentary on the Canticle of Canticles (1243) The two works above are cited as follows: [abbreviation] [chapter][section letter].[page]; e.g. in “Cmm2-CC 1A.222,” “1” is the chapter number, “A” is the section letter, and “222” is the page number of the cited passage. Unfortunately, the critical editions of these two works do not contain line numbers.

Glss-AH Expl-MT Expl-DN Expl-AH Expl-EH

Glose super Angelica Ierarchia (1224) Explanatio in librum De mystica theologia (c.1241) Explanatio in librum De divinis nominibus (1242) Explanatio in librum De angelica ierarchia (1243) Explanatio in librum De ecclesiastica ierarchia (1244) The five works above are cited as follows: [abbreviation] [chapter].[page].[line]; e.g. in “Expl-MT 1.222.33–33,” “1” is the chapter number, “222” is the page number, and “33–33” are the line numbers of the cited passage.

Spec-cont.

Spectacula contemplationis (1244–6) This work is cited as follows: [abbreviation] [section] [paragraph].[page].[line]; e.g. in “Spec-cont 1.2.333.44–44,” “1” is the section number, “2” is the paragraph number, “333” is the page number, and “44–44” are the line numbers of the cited passage.

ABBREVIATIONS OF THE WORKS OF DIONYSIUS CH DN EH MT

The Celestial Hierarchy The Divine Names The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy The Mystical Theology

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List of Abbreviations OTHER ABBREVIATIONS

CD

Vg

Corpus Dionysiacum. See Corpus Dionysiacum, 2 vols., ed. Beate Schula, Gunter Heil, and A. M. Ritter. Patristische Texte und Studien, vols. 33 and 36 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1990–1). Vulgate version of the Christian Bible. See Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatem Versionem, ed. Robert Weber et al. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1983).

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Note to the Reader Note on Gallus’ Works In this volume, the texts of the Dionysian Corpus found in Gallus’ commentaries are all printed in SMALL CAPS letters, following the precedent of Lawell’s criticial editions, in order more clearly to set them apart from Gallus’ own glossings and comments. All the translations of the works of Thomas Gallus are mine, unless otherwise noted. Apart from a few excerpts, there are no English translations of any of the works of Thomas Gallus. Note on Translations For the works of pseudo-Dionysius, two translations were used: (1) Dionysius the Areopagite, Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, tr. Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem (New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1987). (2) Dionysius the Areopagite, The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, tr. John Parker (London: Parker, 1897). Though the former is the most recent and oft-cited translation of the Dionysian Corpus, the latter is often more literal and provides a closer rendering of the text on which Gallus himself is commenting.

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Introduction: The Medieval Affective Interpretation of Dionysius Christian theology has long pondered the relationship between the knowledge and love of God. From its Jewish roots, it knew the ideal human relationship with God to be an act of love that involved the whole person—Deut. 6:5: you shall love the LORD, your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength—implicating all human capacities and acts. Jesus summed up the “Law and the Prophets” by reference to this text, and his version, found in all three synoptic gospels, includes explicit reference to the mind, as well as heart, soul, and strength (cf. Matt. 22:37, Mark 12:30, Luke 10:27). The New Testament writings, generally, attest an intimate interplay between knowing and loving, which is especially present within the Johannine literature: He who does not love does not know God (1 John 4:8) and if anyone says he knows God and does not love, he is a liar (1 John 4:20). At the same time, the New Testament also conveys a preeminence of love in relation to knowledge. Perhaps the Letter to the Ephesians best captures the complex relationship between knowing and loving God found there, as well as the ultimate preeminence placed on love: To know also the love of Christ, which surpasses all knowledge: that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:19).1 Here, apparently and perhaps paradoxically, through love, an act of knowing somehow exceeds all knowing. Love is not only the condition for and correlative to knowledge; it somehow goes further, surpasses what humans can know, exceeds

1 Eph. 3:19 (Vg): “scire etiam supereminentem scientiae caritatem Christi ut impleamini in omnem plenitudinem Dei.”

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what they can understand (like the peace which surpasses all understanding, Phil. 4:7), and precisely in so doing constitutes human fulfillment in relation to God. Early on, though, as Christian thinkers began more robustly to engage and appropriate Greek philosophical traditions, the New Testament insistence on the preeminence of love confronted another worldview. It had to come to terms with an “affirmation that human beings are defined specifically by logos, called ratio in Latin, and accordingly by ‘reason’ and ‘rationality’,”2 or with a conception of the human as, in the well-known words of Aristotle, “by nature desiring to know.”3 Not only that, but this anthropology corresponded to a fundamental assumption about reality itself. Here, all that is real, “the ensemble of the knowable: physis, in Latin, natura,” is “grasped through the logos,” is “given to thought and is given for us to think it.”4 That is, a dominant tradition within classical Greek philosophy insisted on the strict coextension of being and knowing: All that exists is knowable and all that is knowable exists.5 Yet in the tradition stemming from Plato’s Symposium and developed by Plotinus and others, Neoplatonism complicated this account by stressing not only the radical transcendence of the One (beyond being), but also the role of desire or even love, construed erotically (ἔρως, amor), as a yearning to possess the inaccessible One in its beauty, in the soul’s quest for union therewith.6 So in his own way Plotinus could affirm something similar to the author of the Letter to the Ephesians: “For each is what it is by itself; but it becomes desirable 2 Jean-Yves Lacoste, “On Knowing God through Loving Him: Beyond ‘Faith and Reason’,” in Jeffrey Bloechel (ed.), Christianity and Secular Reason: Classical Themes and Modern Developments (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2012), 127–51, at 127. 3 Aristotle, Metaphysics, vol. VIII, Bk. 1,1, trans. W. D. Ross (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1924). 4 Lacoste, “On Knowing God,” 127–8. 5 Perl, Theophany, 13. “[W]e must recognize that for Dionysius, as for Plotinus, God is simply not anything, not ‘there’ at all. If our thought cannot attain to God, this is not because of our weakness, but because there is no ‘there’ there, no being, no thing that is God. Nor can God be ‘infinite being’ since on Neoplatonic terms, that is a contradiction of the principle that to be is to be intelligible and therefore to be finite.” 6 Plotinus, Enneads VI.7 [38] 22 (tr. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1966)): “It is as if it was in the presence of a face which is certainly beautiful, but cannot catch the eye because it has no grace playing upon its beauty. So here below also beauty is what illuminates good proportions rather than the good proportions themselves, and this is what is lovable.”

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when the Good colours it, giving a kind of grace to them and passionate love to the desirers. Then the soul, receiving into itself an outflow from thence, is moved and dances wildly and is all stung with longing and becomes love [ἔρως γίνεται] . . . ”7 When the movement of highest contemplation occurs, “if it is to be something like a touch, has nothing intelligible about it.”8 Here too is a “knowing” beyond all typical knowledge, a knowledge ecstatic with inebriating love: “Intellect in love, when it goes out of its mind ‘drunk with nectar’.”9 At the fertile nexus of these Hellenistic and Christian traditions, two new, interrelated issues were raised, more or less explicitly: On the one hand “that of an act of understanding in which we exceed our definition as ‘rational animal’,” and, on the other hand, as a corollary of the first, “that of an object of understanding that exceeds the field of physis.”10 Put otherwise, a central, double-sided assumption of the Christian intellectual tradition emerged, namely, that of a God who transcends the real and who is only accessible in fullness above or beyond reason. Linking the two is the classically Christian notion of excess—of a God whose nature exceeds the natural and of a creature capable of exceeding its nature in relation to that God.11 Thus was born the Christian category of “supernature,”12 though the term did not emerge immediately, and the subsequent history of theology was burdened with the task of negotiating the boundary between the natural and the supernatural and the attendant “gap” between a created cosmos accessible to reason and a transcendent Creator exceeding the human logos. And even though Christians insist that God has bridged the divide by sending his own logos to reveal himself, to make the invisible God visible and knowable, divine self-revelation does not simply make

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8 Plotinus, Enneads VI.7 [38] 22. Plotinus, Enneads VI.7 [38] 39. Plotinus, Enneads VI.7 [38] 35. 10 Lacoste, “On Knowing God,” 128. 11 This is not to overlook the fact that non-Christian thinkers like Plotinus (d. 270) also developed similar conceptions of radical divine transcendence, as well as a concomitant postulate that humans must transcend “knowing” in order to experience the One. 12 Lacoste, “On Knowing God,” 128: “In the meantime, certainly prepared for a long time, there appears in the work of Scheeben an entity such as the ‘supernature’ (French surnature, German Übernatur). For the unity of the Greek cosmos there will thus have been substituted a theory of two worlds—the world of reason and the world of faith—a frontier will have been traced.” 9

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new “data” available to a new supernatural mode of knowing called faith.13 As indicated above, in both Christian and Neoplatonic traditions, the encounter with a truly transcendent God necessarily and intimately implicates the role of love. Properly speaking, therefore, a central problematic of the Christian intellectual tradition is not simply that of “faith and reason,” but of reason and faith-love, or of faith acting through and perfected by love (Gal. 5:6). The question—Is knowing or loving the more fundamental and essential human capacity that enacts the ideal relationship with God?—thus became perennial for Christian thought. St. Augustine may have summed it up best: Surely, the unknown cannot be loved; but can the unloved truly be known?14 If not, then how precisely are knowledge and love related? What, moreover, does love know?15 The early and medieval periods in particular are littered with paradigms, both explicit and implicit, for navigating and narrating the intricate interplay between knowing and loving God. One such paradigm, virtually unknown outside a small group of scholars, is found in the corpus of the thirteenth-century theologian, Thomas Gallus (d. 1246). An idiosyncratic thinker and enigmatic writer, Gallus’ paradigm is, if nothing else, highly original. The assumption animating the argument that follows, however, is that his view is not merely unique; rather, it harbors a profound intuition about knowledge and love, couched within a highly integrated Neoplatonic worldview, including a metaphysic and an anthropology, which may well offer inspiration, even insight for contemporary reflection on the matter. Reduced to barest essentials, Gallus’ paradigm ultimately prioritizes the soul’s capacity for love (he prefers the term affectus) over merely intellectual knowledge (intellectus). His mystical theology is thus rightly classified as affective rather than intellective. But while for Gallus love exceeds knowledge, his unique theological anthropology allows him to avoid pitting the two starkly against one another and enables him in fact to posit a reciprocal (rather than rival) relationship between them, one that is both complex and dynamic, wherein love both builds upon and subsumes knowledge, as well as fosters and

13 Cf., Vatican I, Dei Filius 4.4: “For the divine mysteries, by their very nature, so far surpass the created understanding that, even when a revelation has been given and accepted by faith, they remain covered by the veil of that same faith and shrouded, as it were, in darkness, as long as in this mortal life we are away from the Lord . . . ” 14 Cf., Augustine, Confessions I.1.1. 15 Cf., Augustine, Confessions VII.10.16: “love knows it” (caritas novit eam).

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fecundates it. Not only that, but in the end Gallus offers a distinctive account of the nature of love itself, what he calls a “cognitio affectiva,” an “affective knowledge,” whereby human persons encounter “Him who is truly known by love alone.”16 * * * * * In the ancient northern Italian town of Vercelli, in the Piedmont region, stands the Gothic Basilica di Sant’Andrea, constructed with remarkable speed between 1219 and 122717—the former being the very year in which a university master and regular canon of the famous Abbey of St. Victor in Paris arrived there.18 Known then variously as Thomas of Paris (Thomas Parisiensis) or Thomas of St. Victor, but more commonly today as Thomas Gallus, he would spend nearly the rest of his life in Vercelli, itself already a millennium old and lying in the shadow of the snow-capped Italian Alps. Today,19 in a transept chapel of the basilica, to the right of the main altar, a large funerary monument depicts Gallus teaching an assembled group of students, marking his death by recalling his life as a revered scholar and teacher of the religious community that he shepherded as abbot until his death in 1246.20 Both basilica and monument bear stately witness to an important but little-known chapter in the history of medieval theology and mysticism.21

16 Thomas Gallus, Cmm2-CC 3A.85: “ . . . eum qui sola dilectione veraciter cognoscitur, iuxta illud: qui diligit me, usque illud: manifestabo ei me ipsum, Io. 14, et 1 Io.: si quis dicit se nosse Deum et non diligit, mendax est.” 17 See Martina Schilling, “Celebrating the Scholar and the Teacher: The Tomb of Thomas Gallus at Sant’ Andrea in Vercelli (mid-14th century),” in A Wider Trecento: Studies in 13th- and 14th-century European Art presented to Julian Gardner, in Louise Bourdua and Julian Gardner (eds), Visualizing the Middle Ages, vol. 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 117–41. 18 As Schilling notes (“Celebrating the Scholar,” 115, n. 10), the exact date of Gallus’ arrival is debated, though it must have been before 1224, when he was named “prior” of the abbey. In 1225, he was named “abbot.” 19 My gratitude to Boston College for a research grant that allowed me to visit Vercelli in 2012. 20 Produced in the mid-fourteenth century, the monument “is lavishly decorated with sculpture and fresco painting and presents us with an elaborative figure programme, thus combining high artistic quality with a conspicuous invitation to remember the man and reflect upon the early history of the abbey” (Schilling, “Celebrating the Scholar,” 117). 21 See Bernard McGinn, “Thomas Gallus and the New Dionysianism,” in The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200–1350), vol. 3: The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: Crossroads, 1998), 78–87.

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Born in the late twelfth century, perhaps in France (as his surname, the “Frenchman,” suggests), Gallus was teaching at St. Victor22 in Paris and active on the university scene there in the first two decades of the thirteenth century.23 Beginning with Hugh of St. Victor (d. 1141), and continuing with Achard (d. 1172), and especially with Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173), the distinctive theological tradition of the “school of St. Victor” had flourished throughout the twelfth century. Often styled the last of the great medieval Victorines, Gallus seems to have become a master of theology between 1210 and 1218, during which time he likely lectured to the Abbey’s students, who ministered in local parishes and priories, especially to the student population.24 Around 1218–19, at the request of the papal legate to England and France, Cardinal Guala Bicchieri,25 he (with two other canons) went to Vercelli to found an abbey and hospital dedicated to Saint Andrew.26 Apparently chosen for his typically Victorine combination of scholarly rigor and spiritual ardor, he became prior of the abbey in 1224, and abbot before 1226, a role which came to define him in the manuscript traditions of his writings as the “Abbot of Vercelli” (Thomas Abbas Vercellensis). After two decades as abbot, interrupted only by a year in England in 1238 and a brief period of exile in 1243,27

22 The abbey of St. Victor was founded in Paris by William of Champeaux in 1108 and housed an Augustinian order of regular canons. 23 See Marshall E. Crossnoe, “Education and the Care of Souls: Pope Gregory IX, the Order of St. Victor and the University of Paris in 1237,” Mediaeval Studies 61 (1999): 137–72, at 165, n. 98. 24 Crossnoe, “Education and the Care of Souls,” 169. 25 See M. Schilling, “Victorine Liturgy and its Architectural Setting at the Church of Sant’Andrea in Vercelli,” Gesta 42:2 (2003): 115–30, at 115. Himself a native of Vercelli, Bicchieri established both a monastery and hospital in his home town. He seems to have been attracted by the sanctity and erudition of the Parisian Victorines and thus sought their presence and leadership in this new foundation. 26 See M. Capellino, Tommaso il Primo Abate di S. Andrea (Vercelli: 1982), 9–13. 27 As abbot, Gallus was on good terms with both the emperor, Frederick II and the popes. Such a precarious situation could not be expected to last, however, in view of the tensions between Church and empire at the time, especially when war broke out between the Guelphs of Vercelli and the Ghibellines of Ivrea, a neighboring town. Unable to maintain neutrality (the Bicchieri family itself was involved with the Ghibelline faction in Ivrea), Gallus was forced to flee Vercelli and take refuge in Ivrea after many serious accusations were lodged against him by the papal supporters. It seems however he did manage to return to Vercelli before his death (see G. Théry, “Thomas Gallus: Aperçu biographique,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 12 (1939): 141–208, at 208).

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Thomas Gallus died and was buried in the Basilica of Sant’Andrea at Vercelli in 1246.28 The artistic features of the eight-hundred-year-old basilica, “one of the earliest examples of Gothic style in Italy,”29 evoke the larger story to be told. In the early twelfth century, as Gothic architecture first emerged in medieval Paris, it did so under the influence, at least in part, of a mysterious corpus of texts of late-antique origin, attributed today to “pseudo-Dionysius.”30 So-called because its sixth-century Greekspeaking Syrian Christian author cloaked himself in the pseudonym of a first-century “Dionysius the Areopagite,” he is described in Acts 17 as a Greek convert to Christianity, under the influence of the apostle Paul’s preaching at the Areopagus in Athens. The Corpus Dionysiacum (CD), with its metaphysical vision of divine light flowing down into and refracted through the “veils” of material realities, provided a theological rationale and inspiration for the aesthetic impulses animating such early sponsors of Gothic architecture as Suger of St. Denis, and the Gothic cathedral Suger produced, bearing the French version of the name of this inspiration (Denis=Dionysius).31 This Dionysian influence on early Gothic architecture is all the more significant because it was likely mediated to Suger by the writings and teachings of Hugh of St. Victor,32 who produced one of the first medieval commentaries on the Dionysian text, The Celestial Hierarchy.33 The fact that modern art historians assume that the Gothic style of

28 For other surveys of Gallus’ life and works, see Declan Lawell, “Affective Excess: Ontology and Knowledge in the Thought of Thomas Gallus,” Dionysius 26 (2008): 139–74; J. Barbet, “Thomas Gallus,” Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, ed. M. Viller and C. Baumgartner (Paris: Beauchesne, 1991), vol. 15, cc. 800–16; K. Ruh, Die Mystik des deutschen Predigerordens und ihre Grundlegung durch die Hochscholastik, vol. 3: Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik (Munich: Beck, 1996), 59–81. 29 Schilling, “Celebrating the Scholar,” 117. 30 See Paul Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to Their Influence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 16. 31 See Patrice Sicard, “L’urbanisme de la Cité de Dieu: constructions et architectures dans la pensée théologique du XIIe siècle,” in L’abbé Suger: le manifeste gothique de Saint-Denis et la pensée victorine (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001) 109–40. 32 See Grover A. Zinn, Jr., “Suger, Theology, and the Pseudo-Dionysian Tradition,” in Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis: A Symposium, ed. Paula Lieber Gerson (New York, 1986), 33–40. 33 In the ninth century, John Scotus Eriugena also wrote a commentary on The Celestial Hierarchy. See Paul Rorem, Eriugena’s Commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005).

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Sant’Andrea was a result of the presence of Gallus and his associates from St. Victor links the basilica directly to this twelfth-century Victorine-Dionysian convergence.34 But what the basilica subtly intimates, the funerary monument vividly illustrates. At the base of the monument, Gallus is seen kneeling before the Virgin, who holds an infant Jesus on her lap. On the opposite side, two unidentified figures stand attentively: The first seems to be St. Catherine of Alexandria, patroness of philosophers; the second is clearly a bishop, and is very likely St. Dionysius.35 While the former is commonly seen in medieval art, the latter is found rather infrequently and his presence at Gallus’ tomb is quite significant, for it illustrates his life-long obsession with the CD on which he wrote commentaries at least twice,36 over the course of twenty years (“with such vigilance! with such labor!”37 as he himself put it), including his mature magnum opus, the Explanatio (1242–5), his final commentary on each of the treatises in the Dionysian Corpus.38 He also wrote at least two commentaries on the Song of Songs,39 which are profoundly Dionysian in character. Gallus was thus in the vanguard of the early thirteenth-century revival of interest in the CD, often described as the “second wave”40 of medieval Dionysius reception, especially See Schilling, “Victorine Liturgy,” 118f. Schilling, “Celebrating the Scholar,” 123. Saint Dionysius was bishop of Paris during mid-third century and seems to have been martyred during the Decian persecution, shortly after AD 250. 36 An inscription once visible on the funery monument, but now effaced, referred to Gallus as “summeque peritus / Cunctis in artibus liberalis, atque magister / In hierarchia” (see Schilling, “Celebrating the Scholar,” 121). The reference to Gallus as “master in hierarchy” clearly reflects his medieval fame as commentator on Dionysius. 37 Cited in Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 218f. 38 Thomas Gallus, Explanatio in Libros Dionysii, ed. Declan Anthony Lawell (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 223. 39 See Jeanne Barbet, Un Commentaire du Cantique attribué à Thomas Gallus (Paris-Louvain: Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1972). The two authentic commentaries have been edited by Barbet (Gallus, Commentaires du Cantique des Cantiques, pp. 65–104 and 105–232). There is a partial English translation of the first authentic commentary in Denys Turner, Eros and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1995), 317–39. 40 The first wave occurred in the ninth century through the work of Eriugena. In addition to Thomas Gallus, Robert Grosseteste and Albert the Great were both part of this second wave (James McEvoy, “Thomas Gallus, (Abbas Vercellensis) and the Commentary on the De Mystica Theologia ascribed to Iohannes Scottus Eriugena. With a Concluding Note on the Second Latin Reception of the Pseudo-Dionysius (1230–1250),” Traditions of Platonism: Essays in Honour of John Dillon, ed. J. J. Cleary (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 389–405, at 403–4). 34 35

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evident at the University of Paris. His lasting impact on medieval theology is a result of roughly a quarter century of engagement with, and assimilation of, Dionysian thought.

A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL LACUNA Gallus’ reception of the CD might have died with him in his Vercellian obscurity (far from the intellectual centers of Europe) had he not enjoyed a close relationship with the nascent Franciscan order there. Around 1228, the Franciscans transferred a studium from Padua to Vercelli, and Gallus seems to have had personal acquaintance with St. Anthony of Padua,41 as well as Robert Grosseteste, the latter of whom he may have met in 1238 when visiting England.42 Gallus and Grosseteste seem to have exchanged some writings through the agency of Grosseteste’s associate, the Franciscan Adam Marsh. Did the Franciscans at their new Vercelli studium avail themselves of this local Parisian master in town?43 It seems likely, since some of Gallus’ most fundamental and distinctive ideas seem to have made their way into the intellectual bloodstream of the medieval Franciscans, especially, as noted below, in the thought of St. Bonaventure. Whatever the case, neither Thomas Gallus himself, nor his era has received sufficient attention. His career spans a period of remarkable intellectual innovation, institutional consolidation, and spiritual ferment in medieval Europe, which set the stage for the better-known 41 The Franciscan John Peckham (1230–92), thirteenth-century archbishop of Canterbury, suggests that Gallus had a supernatural encounter with the soul of the recently deceased Anthony. See his Legendae Sanctii Antonii presbyteri et confessoris benignitas nuncupatae fragmina quae supersunt in Vita del “Dialogus” e “Benignitas”: introduzione, testo critico, versione italiana e note a cura di Vergilio Gamboso (Padova: Edizioni Messagero, 1986), 552–6. 42 See Daniel Callus, “The Date of Grosseteste‘s Commentaries on the PseudoDionysius and the Nichomachean Ethics,” Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale 45 (1947): 194–5; James Walsh, Sapientia Christianorum: The Doctrine of Thomas Gallus Abbot of Vercelli on Contemplation (Rome, 1957), 19–29. 43 See Schilling, “Celebrating the Scholar,” 125. Here again, the funerary monument is intriguingly suggestive. Though not easily seen by the casual observer, close inspection of the image in which Gallus is seen teaching his Victorine students (dressed like him), reveals that on the side panels of the arched frame a figure appearing to be a Franciscan (another appears to be a Cistercian) is shown attending to Gallus’ teaching.

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accomplishments of later generations. Bound and punctuated by four crusades: The Fourth (1198), Fifth (1217), Sixth (1228), and Seventh (1248), this is the period of Innocent III and the pinnacle of medieval papal power (plenitudo potestatis); of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215); of the emergence of St. Dominic de Guzmán (d. 1221) and St. Francis of Assisi (d. 1226) and their mendicant orders; of the formal organization of the universities, especially Paris and Oxford; of the installment of Peter Lombard’s Sentences as the cornerstone of university theology, with such university masters as William of Auxerre, William of Auvergne, Philip the Chancellor, Robert Grosseteste, Alexander of Hales, John of La Rochelle, Odo Rigaud, and Roger Bacon all active during this period. By the time of Gallus’ death, the young Bonaventure and Thomas had begun their studies at Paris. This era also witnessed the emergence of other intellectual currents destined to have a profound impact on the later Middle Ages, namely, the beginning of the encounter with and deeper assimilation of the full Aristotelian corpus. Not only Aristotle, but also his Arabic commentators like Avicenna and Averroes exercised the minds of university theologians during this time, as did new Greek patristic sources in Latin translation, such as John of Damascus and (as noted) pseudo-Dionysius, injecting a distinct form of Neoplatonic, mystical consciousness into the intellectual milieu to form a complex “mélange” of Neoplatonic and Aristotelian thought forms. At the same time, new forms of piety spawned what Bernard McGinn has called “vernacular/mystical” forms of theology, championed in large part by women writers, such as Hadewijch of Brabant and Beatrice of Nazareth, ushering in the great age of “women’s theology.” Within this crucial, but neglected epoch, Thomas Gallus remains an elusive, shadowy figure, his corpus largely unstudied,44 his theology essentially unknown.45 When referred to at all, he is typically

44 In addition to the critical editions already cited, Declan Lawell has also published editions of other works by Gallus: “Qualiter vita prelatorum conformari debet vite angelice: A Sermon (1244–1246?) Attributed to Thomas Gallus,” Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 75:2 (2008), 303–36; and “Spectacula contemplationis. A Treatise (1244–1246) by Thomas Gallus,” Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales, 76:2 (2009), 249–85. 45 On Gallus’ theology, see Mario Capellino, Tommaso di San Vittore: Abate Vercellese (Vercelli: Biblioteca della Società Storica Vercellese, 1978); Robert Javelet, “Thomas Gallus ou les Écritures dans une dialectique mystique.” In L’homme devant Dieu: mélanges offerts au Père Henri de Lubac (Paris: Aubier, 1963), 99–119; Kurt

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noted as the last of the great medieval Victorines, standing in the theological tradition of Hugh (d. 1141) and Richard (d. 1173) of St. Victor. His role in the revival of interest in the Dionysian Corpus among early thirteenth-century scholastics is also noted. The preponderance of the limited Gallus scholarship has tended to stress this last point, depicting him as the primary architect of, and the fundamental inspiration for a medieval trajectory of anti-intellectual “affective Dionysianism.” Yet, his thought as a whole and in its own right has not been studied. He produced a substantial body of written work, which constitutes a highly original, comprehensive theological vision, which may perhaps be fruitfully pondered even today.

THE CORPUS DIONYSIACUM A relatively small body of texts (four extant treatises and a collection of ten letters), the CD has exercised an influence in both eastern and western mystical theology (and in other spheres, such as angelology and political theory) inversely proportional to its size.46 Successfully passing itself off as the secret teaching of one of the Apostle Paul’s closest associates (until its first-century authorship was seriously questioned in the Renaissance and its fifth-/sixth-century provenance definitely established only in the nineteenth), it was granted an authority second only to Scripture itself. But this would not have occurred apart from the compelling sublimity and power of the theological world that it projects,47 which still attracts critics and Ruh, Frauenmystik und franziskanische Mystik der Frühzeit, vol. 2, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik (Munich: Beck, 1990); James Walsh, “Thomas Gallus et l’effort contemplatif,” Revue d’histoire de la spiritualité 51 (1975): 17–42. For recent English-language surveys of Gallus’ theology, see James McEvoy, Mystical Theology: The Glosses by Thomas Gallus and the Commentary of Robert Grosseteste on De mystica theologia (Paris: Peeters, 2003), 3–54; McGinn, “Thomas Gallus and Dionysian Mysticism,” Studies in Spirituality 8 (Louvain: Peeters, 1998): 81–96, which is a slightly expanded version of his discussion of Gallus in The Flowering of Mysticism; and Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 218–19; Declan Lawell, “Ne De Ineffabili Penitus Taceamus: Aspects of the Specialized Vocabulary of the Writings of Thomas Gallus,” Viator 40:1 (2009): 151–84. 46 See Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 3–4. 47 Hans Urs von Balthasar speaks for many when he notes that “such power, such radiance of holiness streams forth from this unity of person and work . . . that he can in no case be regarded as a ‘forger’ . . . ” and that the author’s work was “an original

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admirers alike, scholarly and popular, despite the sober historical facts regarding its authorship.48 Arguably, the most compelling feature of the Dionysian universe is its profound synthesis of Christian theology, scriptural exegesis, and ecclesial liturgy on the one hand, and the late antique Neoplatonism of Plotinus and especially Proclus, on the other. Much modern debate has revolved around the question of which is more fundamental: The Christianity or the Neoplatonism. For present purposes it suffices to refuse the dilemma, as Bernard Blankenhorn has recently done, and to acknowledge simply that the Areopagite is “at once deeply Christian and Neoplatonic.”49 Severely simplified, the central issue in the CD emerges between two apparently incompatible assumptions, namely, that an infinite “distance,” at once ontological and epistemological (on the Neoplatonic assumption that being (ousia) and intellection (noesis) are two sides of the real50) separates the transcendent Source of all from the all of which it is the Source; and that rational creatures (humans and angels) are destined for union with that Source, a union that transcends all being and intellection, yet a union in which God is somehow “known (ginoskon) beyond the mind (nous).”51 The shortest, but arguably most influential of the Dionysian treatises, The Mystical Theology, which tersely encapsulates the teaching of the entire CD, attributes this enigmatic experience to Moses in his ascent of Mt. Sinai. As he proceeds, Moses leaves behind all sense-perception and intellection, and at the apex of this ascent, plunges into the “cloud whole of such character and impact that none of the great theological thinkers of the following ages could avoid him” (Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Styles, vol. 2, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, tr. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1984), 147). 48 See, for example, Re-thinking Dionysius the Areopagite, eds. Sarah Coakley and Charles M. Stang (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) and the 2008 issue of the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly devoted entirely to the significance of the CD. 49 Bernhard Blankenhorn, OP, The Mystery of Union with God: Dionysian Mysticism in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 2015), xv. 50 DN 1.4 (Luibheid, 53): “If all knowledge is of that which is and is limited to the realm of the existent, then whatever transcends being must also transcend knowledge.” 51 MT 1.3 (Luibheid, 137): It may be that the CD intends a consistent distinction between “intellection” (noesis) and “knowing” (gnosis), such that while there is no intellection (noesis) of God, there is the possibility of gnosis of God beyond intellect (nous).

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of unknowing,” united to God through an absolute negating and utter transcending of all intellectual capacities. The problematic, on one hand, is properly theological: How is a God, who radically transcends all being and intellection, accessible? In what sense is God “available” for union? On the other hand, it is anthropological: What in the rational creature is capable of such a union with such a God? The CD’s resolution to these questions is subtle and complex, and so the CD has remained remarkably provocative, often alluring, and frequently controversial over the centuries.52 While both issues are interrelated, much medieval interpretation and reception of the CD focused on the anthropological– epistemological side. As will be seen, Gallus’ unique contribution is his inauguration of a novel interpretation of the CD on just this issue.

THOMAS GALLUS AND THE MEDIEVAL RECEPTION OF THE CD Gallus’ distinctive interpretation of the CD may be introduced helpfully by tracing its medieval influence in reverse chronological order.53 One of the most popular works from the later Middle Ages, the fourteenth-century, Middle English Cloud of Unknowing,54 articulates an account of mystical experience that is strongly influenced by the Dionysian insistence on divine unknowability. In the face of this claim,

52 Cf. two recent summaries of the CD: Eric D. Perl: “The dominant motif running through the thought of Dionysius is the dialectical unity of hiddenness and manifestation” (556), such that “No one could insist more radically on the absolute unknowability, indeed the more-than-unknowability, of God. . . . And no one could affirm more audaciously that all things are nothing but the manifestation and presence of the more-than-unknowable God” (557) in “Announcing the Divine Silence,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 82:4 (2008): 555–60, at 556–7; and Bernard McGinn: “The theological center of Dionysius’ concern is the exploration of how the utterly unknowable God manifests himself in creation in order that all things may attain union with the unmanifest Source” (The Foundations of Mysticism, vol. 1, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: Crossroad (1991)), 161). 53 I am indebted to Paul Rorem for this particular strategy of introducing Gallus’ influence. 54 The Cloud of Unknowing, trans. James Walsh, S. J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1981). Hereafter, Cloud, followed by chapter and page number.

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the anonymous author consistently assumes a rigid dichotomy between knowledge and love as the soul moves toward God, with a pronounced predilection for the latter. Every soul has two powers, “a knowing power” and a “loving power,” and “God is always incomprehensible to the first, the knowing power.”55 But, “our soul . . . is wholly enabled to comprehend by love the whole of him who is incomprehensible to every created knowing power.”56 “Therefore,” the author declares, “it is my wish to leave everything that I can think of, and to choose for my love the thing that I cannot think. Because [God] can certainly be loved, but not thought.”57 When the Cloud author pens a Middle English paraphrase of the Dionysian treatise, The Mystical Theology,58 entitled Denis’s Hidden Theology, he goes even further, interpolating (with no basis in either the original Greek or in the later Latin translation59) the following: “For since all these things are beyond the reach of mind,” they can only be reached “with affection above mind.”60 So, “you shall be carried up in your affection, and above your understanding to the substance beyond all substances, the radiance of the divine darkness” (emphasis added).61 While the Cloud of Unknowing is a well-known medieval classic, less well known is the fact that it follows a novel interpretation of the CD that had emerged only in the preceding century. What is the source of this interpretation of Dionysius, and of the particular conception of mystical experience entailed in it? Two earlier authors, who also interpreted the Dionysian text in this way, and whose writings may have influenced the Cloud author, are the Carthusian, Hugh of Balma (d. c.1300), and the well-known Franciscan, St. Bonaventure (d. 1274). 55

56 Cloud IV, 123. Cloud IV, 122–3. Cloud VI, 130. While the Middle Ages are often thought of in terms of the relation between faith and reason, the love–knowledge question, on display here, is arguably as important, both for the medievals themselves and for moderns after them. Such are often unwittingly influenced by a voluntarist, anti-intellectual conception of the relation between intellect and affect that emerged at the end of the Middle Ages, as exemplified in the Cloud author. See Denys Turner, “How to Read the Pseudo-Denys Today?” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7:4 (2005), 428–40. 58 “Denis’s Hidden Theology,” in The Pursuit of Wisdom and Other Works by the Author of the “Cloud of Unknowing,” trans. James Walsh, S. J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1988). 59 Paul Rorem argues that “the Areopagite’s ascent to union with God through knowing and unknowing dominates The Mystical Theology so completely that there is no reference whatsoever to the role of love in the ascent” (Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 215–16). 60 “Denis’s Hidden Theology,” ch. 1.75. 61 “Denis’s Hidden Theology,” ch. 1.75. 57

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In his The Roads to Zion Mourn,62 Hugh devotes a scholastic “quaestio” to the “very difficult question” of the love–knowledge relationship in the highest reaches of the ascent. In the end, he too sides with affection above understanding, though not without some careful nuance.63 Before him, Bonaventure insisted in one of his earliest works that “the most excellent knowledge which Dionysius teaches . . . consists in ecstatic love, and it transcends the knowledge of faith.”64 At the end of The Soul’s Journey into God,65 the Franciscan describes the soul’s final “passing over” (transitus) out of itself and into God as an affective ecstasy of love over knowledge: “In this passing over, if it is to be perfect, all intellectual activities must be left behind, and the height of our affection (apex affectus totus) must be transferred and transformed into God.”66 This statement is then followed by an extended quotation from the first chapter of Dionysius’ The Mystical Theology, which describes the required abandonment of all sense perception and intellectual activity in the approach to the one “who is above all essence and science (essentiam et scientiam).”67 While the texts of these two authors are certainly precedents for the interpretation of the CD found in the Cloud of Unknowing, the Cloud author himself greatly assists the quest to identify the primary influence on his text. In the Prologue to his “Denis’s Hidden Theology,” noted above, he explicitly cites his source: “In translating [The Mystical Theology], I have given not just the literal meaning of the text, but in order to clarify its difficulties, I have followed to a great extent the renderings of the Abbot of St. Victor, a noted and erudite commentator on this same book.”68 This “abbot of St. Victor” is none other than Thomas Gallus, the first to interpret the Dionysian Mystical Theology thus.69 62 Hugh of Balma, The Roads to Zion Mourn, trans. Dennis Martin (New York: Paulist Press, 1996). 63 Hugh of Balma, Roads to Zion Mourn, 155–70. 64 In III Sent d. 24, a. 3, q. 2, dub. 4, Commentaria in quator libros Sententiarum, in Opera Omnia (Quarrachi 1–4). 65 Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey into God, in Bonaventure: The Soul’s Journey into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of St. Francis, tr. Ewert H. Cousins (New York: Paulist Press, 1978). 66 Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey, 7.4. 67 Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey, 7.5. 68 “Denis’s Hidden Theology,” Prol.1.74. 69 The same affective interpretation of Dionysius is also found in the first dateable Latin commentary on The Mystical Theology (see McEvoy, “Thomas Gallus,” 404), called the Exposicio (1233) or “Gloss,” which has been attributed to Gallus. There the author offered several glossings to this Dionysian text, which in both its original Greek

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Around 1238, Gallus penned a “simplifying paraphrase”70 of The Mystical Theology, called the Extractio,71 in which he explicitly interpolates an affective interpretation directly into this of the Dionysian text. There, Gallus wrote that Moses is “united to the intellectually unknown God through a union of love (dilectionis), which is effective of true cognition (vera cognitio), a much better cognition than intellectual cognition.”72 Here, for the first time, the very text of The Mystical Theology acquired an affective dimension, which it had lacked heretofore.73 Scholars have dubbed this the “affective tradition” of medieval Dionysius reception, inasmuch as what distinguishes it from other medieval strands of Dionysian interpretation is its insistence that in the mind’s ascent to God the problem of divine unknowability is in some fashion negotiated by love. While the text of The Mystical Theology of Dionysius contains no references to charity, love, delight

version and subsequent Latin translation is consistently concerned with the intellectual acts of affirmation and negation, saying nothing specifically of affection or love. Commenting on chapter one, for example, he argues that the “peak of the divine secrets . . . is called beyond height, because the intelligence (intelligencia) fails at it in virtue of the transcendent uniting of the affection (affeccionis unicionem)” (Exposicio I.1, 20/21). He exhorts: “rise up . . . in knowing ignorance . . . by means of the principal affection (principalem affectionem)” to God, who is “incomprehensibly above all knowing” (Exposicio I.2, 22/23). Recently, however, Declan Lawell has argued convincingly that Gallus did not author the Exposicio. (See Lawell, “Thomas Gallus’s Method as Dionysian Commentator: A Study of the Glose super Angelica Ierarchia (1224), Including Some Considerations on the Authorship of the Expositio librorum beati Dionysii,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 76 (2009), 89–117). 70 McEvoy, Mystical Theology, 4. 71 The Extractio is edited in Denys the Areopagite, Dionysiaca: Recueil donnant l’ensemble des traditions latines des ouvrages attribués au Denys l’Aréopage, ed. Philippe Chevalier, 2 vols. (Paris: Desclée, 1937–50). Rorem notes that Gallus’ Extractio “was immediately and immensely popular as an alternative and easier way to extract the Areopagite’s meaning.” The semi-official corpus that circulated in the thirteenth century, which Rorem has felicitously dubbed the “annotated Aereopagite,” consisted of the translations by Eriugena and Sarracenus, the Scholia, the commentaries by Eriugena and Hugh, and the Extractio by Gallus (Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 218–19). McEvoy adds that it was “in constant use from a few years after his death down to the times of Jean Gerson and Vincent of Aggsbach” (McEvoy, “Thomas Gallus,” 404). 72 Extractio on The Mystical Theology 1 in Dionysiaca, ed. Chevalier, 710.578. 73 In both of these texts, Gallus has extended Hugh of St. Victor’s basic intuition— that Dionysius himself had taught the superiority of love over knowledge in the divine–human encounter—by doing what Hugh (nor apparently anyone else) had never done: interpolating love into the very text of The Mystical Theology.

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or to the affections generally,74 in this affective tributary of Dionysius reception inaugurated by Gallus,75 when Moses (as the paradigmatic mystic) finally abandons all intellectual activity, he is united to the unknown God through love.76

THE WISDOM OF CHRISTIANS In the broadest sense, Gallus presents this distinctive teaching on the nature of love and its relation to knowledge in terms of wisdom. The depiction in Sant’Andrea of Gallus kneeling before the Virgin, attended by Sts Catherine and Dionysius, artfully captures this over-arching theme of his entire theological project. Catherine was the patroness of philosophers; Dionysius was a Greek philosopher converted to the foolishness of the cross, a foolishness, however, that was the truest form of wisdom (cf. 1 Cor. 1:25). Gallus may thus be seen as bringing non-Christian wisdom into right relationship to the wisdom of Christ, represented by the Mother of God, through the writings of this apparently first pagan philosopher turned Christian theologian and confidant of the apostle Paul. Explaining and extolling the “wisdom of Christians” was Gallus’ life-long pursuit.77 74 The role of love in the CD as a whole is debated among specialists. For his part, Paul Rorem argues that “the Areopagite’s ascent to union with God through knowing and unknowing dominates The Mystical Theology so completely that there is no reference whatsoever to the role of love in the ascent” (Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 215–16). Others like Blankenhorn, Golitzin, Louth, etc. see a more prominent role for love, on the basis of other texts in the CD. 75 Though Gallus inaugurates this tradition, he likely drew inspiration from Hugh of St. Victor who argued that “love surpasses knowledge and is greater than intelligence” (Super Ierarchiam Dionysii (ed. Poirel, 560; PL 175.1038D)). See Paul Rorem, “The Early Latin Dionysius: Eriugena and Hugh of St. Victor,” in Coakley and Stang, Re-thinking Dionysius, 71–84. 76 Arguably, this medieval interpolation of love over knowledge is produced by the convergence of two theological traditions flowing through the western Middle Ages: an Augustinian assumption that God is fully known and loved in a beatific visio Dei, which is the goal of human existence, and the Dionysian insistence that God is radically and transcendently unknowable. The affective reading of Dionysius is one of several medieval strategies for resolving this contradiction. See Simon Tugwell, O.P., “Introduction,” Albert and Thomas: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 70–3. 77 Hugh of St. Victor too prefaced his Commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy (Super Ierarchiam Dionysii, ed. Dominique Poirel, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 228 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015)) with a discussion regarding the difference

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In his final commentary on The Mystical Theology, his Explanatio in librum De mystica theologia (c.1241), Gallus offers a programmatic formulation on this theme, by distinguishing two forms of wisdom, in terms of two types of knowing, or more precisely, of cognition: “We arrive at cognition of God,” he says, “in two ways.”78 Both modes of cognitio Dei are forms of wisdom, but they are distinct.79 The first mode is “intellectual,” which Gallus intends in the broadest sense of any and all activities of reason or intellect engaged with all that falls under the category of being. It is “practiced chiefly by natural reason” (ratio) or the “by the intellect (intellectus).” It involves the investigation of visible or sensible things, along with their “invisible natures, reasons, causes, etc.” as well as of “invisible natures,” and their “properties, virtues, powers, dispositions, etc.” [e.g. angels]. Both of which “we both experience in our minds and comprehend through common understanding (intelligentiam).” From these it even ascends “up into divine and eternal visions,” to consider intelligible aspects of the divine nature, insofar as they are “consonant with human reason.” It employs, moreover, “human teaching and proper study,” and to it “pertain all the liberal doctrines [arts], not only of the pagan philosophers, but also of the catholic doctors and the holy fathers, which either through intellectual study or teaching are able to be compared by mortals and can be led back into the faculty of the common intelligence.” Gallus calls this the “first and common mode of cognizing God,” by which he seems to mean something accessible to Christian and non-Christian thinkers alike.

between the philosophical wisdom of the world and the true wisdom of Christians, found in the Incarnate Christ and his sacraments. That the above-noted author of the Cloud of Unknowing also named one of his treatises “The Pursuit of Wisdom,” wherein he adopts a similar approach to wisdom, reflects Gallus’ influence. 78 Expl-MT 1.3.3–4. 79 It may be that Gallus’ distinction corresponds to another, oft-noted Dionysian distinction between two types of theology, described in Letter IX. But, since Gallus does not explicitly comment on this letter, it is impossible to be certain: “Besides, we must also consider this, that the teaching, handed down by the Theologians is two-fold—one, secret and mystical—the other, open and better known—one, symbolical and initiative—the other, philosophic and demonstrative;—and the unspoken is intertwined with the spoken. The one persuades, and desiderates the truth of the things expressed, the other acts and implants in Almighty God, by instructions in mysteries not learnt by teaching” (Letter 9, Parker, 170–1).

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Under “catholic doctors and holy fathers,” he unsurprisingly singles out “all the books of blessed Dionysius that are extant, namely, On the Celestial Hierarchy, On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, On the Divine Names.” Under “pagan philosophers,” who “made no little progress” in this domain, he points to Aristotle, “who taught through his theoretical works (the Physics, the book On the Soul, and the Metaphysics) to ascend as if by steps from the visible things of the world to the invisible things of God.”80 From this list of Dionysian texts associated with intellectual wisdom Gallus has excluded the one on which he is about to comment in his Explanatio, “which we now have in our hands,” namely, The Mystical Theology. On his reading of this work, “Dionysius hands down another and incomparably more profound mode of cognizing God, namely, a mode beyond understanding and beyond being.” Behind this lies the Dionysian assumption, embraced by Gallus (and anticipating some post-modern thinkers81) that God is above, beyond, and “without being”: “How can [God] be called ‘He Who Is’ or ‘Being’,” asks Gallus, “who come[s] before all being and [is] in excess above all being?”82 This assumption about the apparently unbridgeable chasm yawning between God and creation leads Gallus to deny that the divine essence can ultimately be understood by any created intellect. But at the same time, he posits the existence of another mode of cognition that is capable of traversing that chasm, namely, an affective mode. Its “faculty” is not the intellect (intellectum), still less, reason (ratio); rather it is “the principal affection” (principalis affectio), also called the “the spark of the soul” (scintilla synderesis), and this alone is capable of

80 Expl-MT 1.3.4–9. Cf. Hugh of St. Victor’s theology, to which Aristotle seems to be assimilated here. The only mention of “theologia” in the Didascalicon is as an Aristotelian sub-discipline of philosophy. 81 See, for example, Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being: Hors-Texte (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012); Don Cupitt, After God: The Future of Religion (New York: Basic Books, 1997); or Richard Kearney, Anatheism: Returning to God After God (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). 82 Expl-DN 1.48.37–8: “Aut quomodo ‘Qui Est’ vel ‘Ens’ diceris, qui omne ens prevenis et superexcedis?” As Lawell notes (“Affective Excess,” Dionysius 26 (2008): 139–74, at 140): “Gallus here is tentatively wondering about the validity of a name (the tetragammaton YHWH) used by God of himself in Exodus 3, 14. This scriptural and theological authority was given its most well-known metaphysical foundation by Thomas Aquinas . . . ”

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union with God. Strikingly, Gallus calls this a “cognitive power” (vis cognitiva), which “exceeds the intellect no less than the intellect exceeds reason (ratio), and reason [exceeds] imagination.” This stress on what might be called “affective excess,”83 a going beyond the normal, intellectual modes of cognition, is significant. Those who attain this “go beyond (excedunt) in contemplation of mind”; rather “they go beyond the mind [itself],” citing Psalms: But I said in the excess of my mind (Ps. 30) and I said in my excess (Ps. 115:2). In a striking image, Gallus speaks of “a great, passionate boiling over of love (aestu dilectionis) into God and a strong reaching out (forti extensione) of the soul” Godward. This affective act, accordingly, is literally “ec-static,” an exceeding of the mind itself. Gallus reminds his readers that Dionysius characterizes “love” (dilectio) as “ecstasycausing” and that “the great Paul” was so filled with its “ecstasycausing power” that he exclaimed: I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me (Gal. 2), while the Song of Songs says this ecstatic love is as strong as death (ch. 8), “separating and alienating” the soul from its normal modes of knowing. The apparent implication is that not only does this ecstatic affectivity exceed the other inferior powers, but it also requires the cessation of their proper activities: It “suspends the activity of the senses, of imagination, of reason, of intellect, both practical and theoretical, and excludes every understanding (intellectum) and every intelligible (intelligibile), and transcends being and one (ens et unum).” This is the elaborated basis for the medieval trajectory of affective Dionysian reception, noted above in relation to the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, where knowledge and love are pitted against one another: In its ascendancy, the activity of love appears not only to surpass, but also to suppress the activity of intellect.84

See Lawell’s “Affective Excess,” 139. Gallus’ affective cognitio Dei may correspond in some way to a Dionysian distinction between “learning” (mathein) and “undergoing” (experiencing or suffering) (pathein) something, found in Letter 9, and also in DN 2.9’s depiction of Hierotheus “suffering (pathōn) divine things,” which itself seems to go back to Plato and Aristotle: “It recalls even more vividly what Aristotle said about the Eleusinian mysteries, that there the initiates do not learn (mathein) anything, rather they experience (pathein, or suffer) something” (Andrew Louth, Denys the Areopagite (Wilton, CT: Morehouse-Barlow, 1989), 25). 83 84

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Gallus celebrates this affective cognition as the “wisdom of Christians,”85 and he often styles it “the best portion of Mary” (Luke 10), far excelling the intellectual wisdom of Martha86 (trading on a 85 According to Torrell (Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 2: Spiritual Master (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press (2003)), 90–9), Thomas Aquinas also seems to make a similar distinction between two kinds of wisdom, as Torrell observes: “[Aquinas] clarifies that there are two types of wisdom: one, theological wisdom, which is obtained through study (per studium); the other, the effect of the gift of wisdom of the Holy Spirit, which is obtained by infusion (per infusionem).” While the terminology differs, a distinction similar to Gallus’ seems implied. The first kind of wisdom involves an intellectual act that judges even divine matters “in a human way; one is more or less wise to the degree that one is more or less learned about divine things.” Again: “one can judge of divine things from the point of view of the inquiries of reason, and this derives from wisdom as intellectual virtue.” By contrast, the second kind of wisdom “is the fruit of a freely-granted divine gift, and the judgment which it procures derives from a knowledge by connaturality.” That is to say, “the one enlightened by the gift of wisdom possesses an intimate familiarity with divine things,” which familiarity Aquinas finds exemplified in the Dionysian figure of Hierotheus, who “became wise not only by studying, but by experiencing the divine (non solum discens, sed patiens divina)” (ST I, q. 1, a. 6 and ad 3). Again, the perception of these things “by connaturality” belongs to that wisdom which is a gift of the Holy Spirit, as in the case of Hierotheus who had perfect knowledge of divine things because he had learned them by lived experience: “This ‘compassion’ or connaturality with divine things is the work of charity which properly unites us to God: ‘he who unites himself to God is one spirit with Him’ (1 Cor. 6:17).” Torrell suggests that in this regard “Thomas is most clearly distinguished from his contemporaries, for whom theological wisdom was in itself a delightful knowledge [connaissance].” This would not seem to be the case, however, in relation to Gallus. Intriguingly, Aquinas also invokes the same scriptural passage used by Gallus to make the distinction. “According to Thomas, it is this wisdom to which St. Paul refers when he affirms that ‘the spiritual man judges all things’ (1 Cor. 2:15); and St. John, in asserting that the ‘anointing [of the Holy Spirit] will teach you all things’ (1 John 2:27).” In his Scriptum on the Lombard’s Sentences, Aquinas “characterizes the knowledge obtained through the gift ‘as an intuitive grasp’ (cognitio simplex) of the realities of the faith which are at the origin of all Christian wisdom [hence knowledge through the supreme cause]. The gift of wisdom thus culminates in a deiform and in a certain sense explicit contemplation (deiformem contemplationem) of the realities which faith holds implicitly in a human manner (Sentences III, d. 35, q. 2, a. 1, qc. 1, ad 1).” Torrell suggests “theological contemplation” in contrast to “mystical contemplation”: the former “remains available to human initiative”; the latter, “without separating itself from faith, is primarily directed by the gift and depends entirely on divine generosity.” Torrell cites one last text to clarify the difference: “[Besides speculative knowledge], there is also an affective or experiential knowledge of the divine goodness or the divine will; one experiences in oneself the taste of the sweetness of God and the lovability of the divine will, according to what Denys says of Hierotheus who learned divine things from having experienced them in himself. We are thus invited to experience the will of God and to taste His sweetness” (ST II-II, q. 97, a. 2, ad 2). See also ST II-II.45.2, ad 2). See the discussion in Longergan’s Verbum, CWL 2, 99–104. 86 Expl-DN 1.54.112–19: “[Adverting to 1 Cor. 2:4, ‘not in the persuasive words of human wisdom, but in showing of the Spirit and power,’ Gallus says] Celestial wisdom

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venerable typology that prefers the contemplative nature of Mary of Bethany over the active disposition of her sister, Martha). Affective wisdom, in contrast to the intellectual kind, “does not know [God] in a mirror or enigmatically (speculum et enigma) (cf. 1 Cor. 13), through the veil of created things. Hence “it will not be taken away” (Luke 10). Rather, it brings about the direct, unmediated “union” (coniunctio) with God that is “often sighed for (suspirita) and sometimes obtained in the Song of Songs,” which book is for Gallus principally concerned with the experience of this form of wisdom. On Gallus’ reading, this is also the central teaching of The Mystical Theology, wherein Dionysius offers a “super-intellectual theology,” teaching that “God is not to be cognized (cogitare) as some speakable or thinkable being, such as life, power, either divinity or goodness, etc., but as inestimably separate and placed beyond comparison (supercollocatum) with everything existing and intelligible.” For God is “only cognized by the discernment of those who are spiritual (spirituali examinatione) (1 Cor. 2:14),” who, through their loving union with the Spirit of God, can “sense (sentit) those things which are of God; who because they are according to the Spirit, can sense (sentiunt) the things that are of the Spirit (Rom. 8:5); who have the mind of Christ (sensum Christi) (1 Cor. 2:16); who are taught by the Spirit (John 16); who have the Spirit of truth (John 14:17) dwelling within.”87

THE ARGUMENT At first blush, this would seem to be Gallus’ consistent teaching.88 As is already evident in the summary above, however, there are good is called power which is obtained immutably in union with omnipotence. Hence it is immortal . . . . For philosophical wisdom, which is cognition from pre-existing and sensible things, is fragile and tottering and the infinitely inferior portion of Martha.” 87 Expl-MT 1.5.48–6.67. 88 A similar distinction seems to be at work in Bonaventure’s Commentary on the Sentences (In 3 Sent., 38.un.2 [III, 776].): “There is a science, which consists in a purely speculative understanding founded on the principles of human reason, acquired from a knowledge of creatures. But there is another, which consists in an understanding inclined by the affections . . . not acquired in any way from creatures; this is the science of Sacred Scripture, which no one can have unless faith is infused within.” Cf. Bonaventure, De donis, 4.2–13 (vol. V, Opuscula varia theological, Edited by the

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reasons to argue that this straightforward account of the relationship between knowledge and love is not only over-simplified, but in fact risks grave distortion if not contextualized within the whole of Gallus’ theological worldview, as it emerges from his entire corpus, including his commentaries on the Song of Songs. When interpreted thus, the following features come into view. First, Gallus’ conception of affective cognition and its relation to its intellectual counterpart is enabled by a unique and creative anthropological appropriation of the Dionysian notion of hierarchia, wherein the soul itself, its powers and their respective acts, is understood to be “hierarchized” and to operate hierarchically. Essentially, a Dionysian hierarchy is a dynamic structure or order (taxis), involving both knowledge (gnosis) and activity (energia), which reflects and imitates God and also conducts and unites to God.89 The purpose of any hierarchy “is assimilation and union, as far as attainable, with God.”90 The dynamism of a Dionysian hierarchy, moreover, is “animated” by the Neoplatonic metaphysics of procession (exitus/proodos), return (reditus/epistrophe), and remaining (residuus/mane). Every hierarchy thus has an ascending, descending, and remaining dimension or “valence” (as in a “vector” or “scalarity”), which simultaneously (not sequentially) constitutes it in a kind of dynamic equilibrium or stasis; or perhaps better: The dynamic simultaneity of procession and return establish an equipoise described as remaining. Two crucial features of the ascending and descending dimensions are noteworthy here: (1) in the ascent, the lower is always subsumed by the higher according to the capacity or nature of the higher; (2) in the descent, the higher communicates with the lower according to the capacity or nature of the lower. When Gallus conceives of the soul hierarchically in a Dionysian fashion, accordingly, the intellect–affect relationship will be fundamentally governed by these principles.91

Fathers of the Collegium of St. Bonaventure. Ad claras Aquas (Quaracchi): Ex typographia Colegii S. Bonaventurae, 1882–1902, 474–6). 89 CH 3.1 (Parker, 14): “Hierarchy is . . . a sacred order and science and operation, assimilated, as far as attainable, to the likeness of God, and conducted to the illuminations granted to it from God, according to capacity, with a view to the Divine imitation.” 90 CH 3.2 (Parker, 15). 91 Despite the negative connotations typically associated with this term today, hierarchia provides Gallus with a surprisingly nimble, dynamic, and ultimately

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A crucial implication of this hierarchical anthropology, second of all, is that, because a hierarchy both imitates the utter simplicity of God and conducts the soul to union with that Simplicity, the soul itself is increasingly “simplified” as it is united to God. This anthropological “simplification” (simplificatio)92 entails the increasing integration, even synthesis, at a higher level, of what is differentiated and discrete at lower levels. More precisely, when Gallus posits a higher, affective cognitio above an intellective cognitio at the apex of the ascending movement, this affective form both builds upon and subsumes the intellective form. Increasingly, intellectus is “affectivized” as it approaches union, just as the affectus, though ultimately transcending the intellectus, subsumes and retains a mode of understanding. Conversely, as a function of the descending movement, the experience of the higher, affective cognition redounds, that is, “flows down,” to and is participated by, the lower, intellective cognition in a manner consistent with its intellective modality. Third, this affective cognition then is indeed a “mode of knowing,” even as it differs from the properly intellective mode. This is already terminologically evident in the fact that he consistently styles both forms as “cognitions” of God (cognitiones Dei).93 Gallusian cognitio (left un-translated or simply transliterated below, since it cannot be well-captured in a single English term) encompasses a wide range of apprehensional and experiential modes. Gallus will evoke the essential modalities of these two forms of cognition by deploying the traditional notion of the “spiritual senses” of the soul.94 Intellectual cognition relates to its divine Object in the modality of spiritual hearing and seeing, while affective cognition operates in the modality of spiritual smell, taste, and touch, a distinction which trades on a precise account of how the physical senses are affected by their proper objects:95

integrative anthropological framework for understanding the soul’s multi-modal relation to God. 92 For a comprehensive analysis of the theme of “simplification” in Gallus’ theology, see James Arinello’s dissertation, “Simplified by the Highest Simplicity: Mystical Ascent According to Thomas Gallus” (Boston College, 2012). 93 Gallus’ use of cognitio here may well run parallel to the CD’s use of gnosis. 94 Cf. Coolman, “Thomas Gallus,” in The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity, ed. Paul Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 140–58. 95 The analogy with physical sensation lends itself nicely to McGinn’s notion of mystical consciousness: the different sense modalities can be seen as diverse forms of

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“Seeing and hearing do not necessarily affect their subject, whereas it is impossible for the subject to apprehend with the other senses [taste, smell, touch] without being intimately affected.”96 “This analogy,” as Fr. James Walsh has noted, is “essential to all that [Gallus] has to say on the knowledge which is unitive contemplation.”97 Affectivity, in the end, is not for Gallus anti-intellectual at all. It is rather the mode of cognition in and by which the soul is most affected by what it knows— the most intimate form of cognition. This may explain why Gallus reaches for the erotic, interpersonal, spousal, or nuptial intimacy of the Song of Songs in order to express this intuition. Fourth, within the context of this hierarchical anthropology, Gallus introduces a Christo-pneumatic “solution” to the problem of Dionysian apophaticism, wherein a mystical union with the crucified Christ (not I but Christ [Gal. 2]), through the power of the Holy Spirit (taught by the Spirit [John 16]), facilitates affective cognition of God. Gallus thus offers a distinct form of Dionysian “Christ-mysticism,” wherein the “Lord Jesus himself, our principal hierarch,”98 is “the fontal cause and producer of every hierarchy,”99 in particular “of the hierarchic movements of emanating from God and returning to God.”100 Strikingly, Gallus identifies this hierarchical Christ with the amorous Bridegroom of the Song of Songs, who comes leaping over the mountains, bounding over the hills (S. of S. 2:8) of divine transcendence and “unknowability,” to meet his soul-bride, thus introducing a very nonDionysian, inter-personal dimension to the nature of affective cognition. Fifth, an implication of this Dionysian anthropology is that the soul always exists hierarchically or as a hierarchy. That is, hierarchy is not a ladder which one ascends to God and then leaves behind; rather, a hierarchy is simply what one is. Ascent and descent are not discrete processes, not sequential steps that cease to occur once completed. All dimensions of the hierarchized soul are always “in play,” always functioning in their proper modality; the soul is always executing its proper acts at each hierarchical “register,” like the angels ascending and descending Jacob’s Ladder. There is thus a dynamic, mutual, and

consciousness or awareness of the presence of God (cf. Bernard McGinn, Foundations of Mysticism, xvii). 96 James Walsh, S. J., Sapientia Christianorum, 93, n. 2. 97 James Walsh, S. J., Sapientia Christianorum, 93, n. 2. 98 99 Expl-EH 1.742.70–1. Expl-EH 1.742.55. 100 Expl-EH 1.742.57–8.

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reciprocal relation between intellectual and affective cognition (between knowledge and love), which undermines the starkly binary, oppositional, and ultimately anti-intellectual account often associated with Gallus. He does indeed distinguish, but ultimately integrates (in a uniquely Dionysian way) these two “intentional modalities” in human consciousness:101 The intellective and the affective.102 His is a far more complex paradigm than either his later medieval readers or modern-day scholars have appreciated. Sixth, Dionysian hierarchia lends Gallus’ conception of the soul a uniquely “elastic” quality, a distinctively expandable capaciousness. At the upper reaches of the ascending movement, the soul is drawn “out of itself” in cognizing its divine Spouse, even as in some sense it paradoxically remains within itself. Or put otherwise: Gallus seems to build the capacity for self-exceeding, for ecstasy (ecstasis), paradoxically, into the very nature of the human being itself (enstasis). In fact, it is precisely this capacity for self-transcendence that constitutes the Gallusian self as a self. That is, only in so far as the human exceeds itself, does it return to itself and thus remain itself, within itself (ecstasis results in enstasis); yet, to remain itself within itself, it must (again; continually) exceed itself (enstasis results in ecstasis). One might say that here the ecstatic simply is the enstatic: The self-transcending is precisely the self-constituting. In this sense, the Gallusian soul is continually and in some sense infinitely “extended” (extensio) and “dilated” (dilatatio) Godward. As an expandable hierarchy, the soul is actually “stretched” Godward, propelled by the internal reciprocation of knowledge and love. Ultimately, this is a dynamic circulation of intellectus and affectus, which will continue in the next life, and indeed, eternally—an eternal (epecstatic) spiraling into God. Finally, all this is most fully intelligible within the context of Gallus’ Neoplatonic Christianity, which begins with an affirmation

101 I employ this rather vague, Lonerganian terminology of intentionality, which Lonergan used to avoid the reified conceptuality of faculty psychology (e.g. faculties of intellect and will), in order more accurately to capture the orientation of Gallus’ thought in this regard. 102 As Richard Cross has observed in private correspondence, an intriguing and apparently unnoticed fact is that many high- and late-medieval scholastics, especially those influenced by the CD (e.g. Bonaventure, Albert the Great, Giles of Rome, Adam Wodeham) are inclined to allow for some form of “affective cognition,” a fact that further blurs the stereotypical contrast between scholastics and mystics.

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of self-diffusive divine goodness, and then proffers, accordingly, an account of the Trinitarian divine nature, a metaphysics of procession and return, and a doctrine of creation from that perspective. Despite the fact that Gallus’ massive corpus consists entirely of commentaries on authoritative texts of the Christian tradition, his mystical theology is articulated within a remarkably coherent and well-integrated theological system and is best appreciated in that light. In relation to medieval theology generally, to medieval mystical traditions more narrowly, and to medieval appropriations of Dionysius in particular, Thomas Gallus thus offers a new paradigm. He also spurs contemporary efforts to think anew, not only about “affective cognition” and the relation between love and knowledge (intellect and affect, “head and heart,” theology and spirituality), but also about the nature of the human person and the relationship between nature and grace. At stake in this theological venture is not merely an affective interpretation of Dionysius, but also a conviction regarding how human beings are most basically constituted and how they relate most fundamentally to God.

Part I Foundations and Structures

1 Pleromatic and Ecstatic Trinity

“DIVINE LOVE IS REVEALED to be WITHOUT END IN ITSELF . . . as in a circle there is found neither beginning nor end.” Expl-DN 4.247.1679–82

INTRODUCTION For Thomas Gallus, divine self-revelation in Scripture is the source and foundation of Catholic doctrine (doctrina).1 What Scripture reveals and the church teaches about God, moreover, is principally that God is Trinity,2 a transcendent tri-unity, simultaneously a differentiated unity and manifold simplicity: “nothing more proper is attributed affirmatively to God than that supernatural distinction and origin of persons with unity of essence.”3 The doctrine of the Trinity is the center of Gallus’ theology, around which all else orbits: “the highest doctrine (summa doctrina) of humans and angels: HOLY, HOLY,

1 Expl-DN 2.131.332–51: “ . . . to guard so reverently the teaching concerning God, which is had from the Scriptures . . . that we do not presume to super-add to it or to subtract from it. . . . For they understand to have the authority of Scripture either what the apostles taught viva voce without writing, or what apostolic men sanctioned as being consonant with sacred Scripture. . . . Concerning the teaching of the masters which is not manifestly expressed in Scripture, it is left to scholastic disputation.” 2 Expl-AH 10.640.340–7: “But the philosophical intellect can neither demonstrate nor discover the Trinity of unity, as the Church holds it, but rather it has learned [it].” (“Sed Trinitatem unitatis prout eam tenet ecclesia intellectus philosophicus demonstrare aut inuenire non potuit, sed magis didicit.”) 3 Expl-MT 3.35.14–17.

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HOLY,

to express a trinity of persons, LORD GOD SABBAOTH to express a unity of essence.”4 Typically medieval, Gallus’ theology is profoundly theo-centric; typically Victorine, his conception of God finds a point of departure in Richard of St. Victor’s speculative meditations on God as the fullness of perfect goodness and love; atypical, at least prior to the thirteenth century, is the Dionysian inflection of Gallus’ view of God, which synchronizes Richard’s emphasis on the fullness of goodness with the Dionysian “first principle” that the good is self-diffusive (bonum diffusivum sui est).5 In fact, Gallus’ view of divinity emerges at a fruitful nexus of Ricardian and Dionysian currents in a way that runs parallel to similar developments among early Parisian Franciscans, especially Alexander of Hales, and anticipates (perhaps “precipitates”) the synthesis of Bonaventure. Gallus’ unique contribution to medieval Trinitarian theology, in both scholastic and non-scholastic traditions, is his insight that God, both in se and extra se (the former causing the latter), is a fullness of goodness conceived of in the Dionysian sense of dynamic self-diffusion. While he expresses this intuition variously (reflecting both its centrality and complexity), the recurring term “plenitudo” best captures it: God “is omni-modal fullness (omnimoda plenitudo),”6 “the fount of omni-modal abundance (fontem omnimode plenitudinis).”7 “No word . . . more sublimely attains the meaning of

4

Expl-AH 1.601.557–60. The notion is not wholly original to Dionysius, as McGinn (“The Dynamism of the Trinity in Bonaventure and Eckhart,” Franciscan Studies 65 (2007), 142) notes: “Plato had held that the Demiurge formed the universe out of the formless receptacle because he was good, not jealous like the Olympian gods (Timaeus 29E). Plotinus had taken this a step further when he affirmed that the First Principle, that is, the One, freely establishes all things through its generosity: ‘How then could the most perfect, the first Good, remain in itself as if it grudged to give itself or was impotent, when it is the productive power of all things’ (Plotinus, Enneads V.4.1; see also Enneads V.5.12 and II.9.3). From these Platonic roots the axiom ‘bonum est diffusivum sui’ entered into Christian theology, most notably in the CD (DN 1.4 [592A], DN 4.1–6 [especially 693B, 696B, 697A, 697CD, 700AB, and 701AB], CH 4.1 [177CD], and Letter 8 [1085D]).” On the history of the axiom, see Julien Peghaire, “L’axiome ‘Bonum est diffusivum est’ dans le néoplatonisme et le thomisme,” Revue de l’Université d’Ottawa 2 (1932), pp. 5*–30* and Klaus Kremer, “Das ‘Warum’ der Schöpfung: ‘quia bonus’ vel/et ‘quia voluit’? Ein Beitrag zum Verhältnis von Neuplatonismus und Christentum an Hand des Prinzips ‘bonum est diffusivum sui’,” in Parusia. Studien zur Philosophie Platons und zur Problemgeschichte des Platonismus. Festgabe für Johannes Hirschberger, ed. Kurt Flasch (Frankfurt: Minverva, 1965), 241–64. 6 7 Glss-AI 7.65.442. Glss-AI 4.37.52. 5

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the super-unknown divine infinity than the name ‘fullness’.”8 In an alien yet apt idiom, God for Gallus is pleromatic.9 To be sure, “pleroma” has strong associations with Gnosticism, but its presence in the Greek New Testament, along with the Latin equivalents, is worth recalling, as in: Col. 1:19: “Because in him, it has well pleased the Father that all fullness should dwell” (pan to pleroma/omnem plenitudinem); Col. 2:9–10: “For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead (pan to pleroma tes theotetos/omnis plenitudo divinitatis)”; and Eph. 3:19: “To know also the charity of Christ . . . that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God” (pan to pleroma tou theou/omnem plenitudinem Dei).10 This God, furthermore, is an excessive or superabundant, and thus ecstatic plenitude; that is, an over-flowing and thus self-exceeding, fullness and abundance. For Gallus, moreover, to speak of God as ecstatically pleromatic is simply to affirm with both Richard of St. Victor and the author of the Johannine corpus of the New Testament that God is love—but with a Dionysian twist. More precisely, this is to say with Dionysius and with the tradition of Neoplatonic Christianity which the CD receives and transmits, that God is both agape and eros, both caritas and amor. For Gallus, as for Richard, this is also simply to explain in some way what the doctrine of the Trinity affirms and to offer a genuine, though of course inadequate, understanding of that mysterium fidei. For, as argued below, Gallus develops this Dionysian intuition into a full-scale elaboration of Trinitarian theology, in which God is triune precisely as an eternal, ecstatic rhythm of full self-giving and self-receiving love, of complete and utter self-diffusing goodness within the divine life. Following Dionysius (and again anticipating Bonaventure), the image of a circle aptly captures this notion for Gallus: “DIVINE LOVE IS REVEALED to be WITHOUT END IN ITSELF, that is, the interminability and eternity of its

8 Expl-EH 4.894.875: “Nullum autem vocabulum, ut mihi videtur, sublimius ascendit in divine superignote infinitatis significationem quam nomen plenitudinis.” 9 The terms are from E. Wyschogrod, Saints and Postmodernism: Revisioning Moral Philosophy (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1990), cited in Lawell, Thomas Gallus, Jean-Luc Marion and the Reception of Dionysian Neoplatonism (dissertation, Queen’s University of Belfast, 2008), 237: “At the top of this trio (Gallus, Marion and Derrida) of thinkers stands Gallus with his ‘pleromatic’ and ‘exstatic’ approach to the other.” 10 See also John 1:14: “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth” (plenum gratiae et veritatis); John 1:16: “of his fullness we all have received” (de plenitudine eius nos omnes accepimus).

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divinity, DIFFERING from every other love, NOT HAVING A BEGINNING . . . just as in a circle there is found neither beginning nor end.”11

GALLUS ON THE TRINITY IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT The Trinitarian theology articulated in the medieval schools, especially at Paris between 1250 and 1300, has received significant scholarly attention in recent decades;12 the preceding developments, however, between Lombard’s Sentences of the mid-twelfth century and 1250, remain understudied.13 Broadly speaking, scholarship continues to distinguish two major approaches to the Trinity in the high-scholastic era, both of which draw deeply from the Trinitarian theology of Augustine, yet in different ways and with distinct emphases, in part as a function of other non-Augustinian sources that are incorporated into them: one associated primarily with Aquinas and the Dominican tradition; the other linked to Bonaventure and the early Franciscan tradition.14 This is not to overlook the rich body of twelfth-century Trinitarian thought stemming from Anselm, Abelard, Gilbert of 11 Expl-DN 4.247.1679–82: “OSTENDITVR DIVINVS AMOR esse INTERMINABILE SVI IPSIVS, id est interminabilitas et eternitas ipsius diuinitatis, DIFFERENTER ab omni alio amore, NON HABENS PRINCIPIVM propter dictam reuolutionem, sicut in circulo non est inuenire finem aut principium.” 12 See John Slotemaker, “Pierre D’Ailly and the Development of the Late Medieval Trinitarian Theology” [Boston College dissertation, 2012], who notes that the literature on high medieval Trinitarian theology, “is dominated more by the work of Michael Schmaus than the broader narratives of Adolph von Harnack and Théodore de Régnon. Michael Schmaus’s Der Liber propugnatorius des Thomas Anglicus und die Lehrunterschiede zwischen Thomas von Aquin und Duns Scotus is the starting point for studies on the development of thirteenth-century Trinitarian theology, including most importantly that of Russell Friedman, especially, R. L. Friedman, In Principio Erat Verbum; and Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). The most succinct summary of his thesis can be found in his ‘Divergent Traditions in Later-Medieval Trinitarian Theology: Relations, Emanations, and the Use of Philosophical Psychology, 1250–1325,’ Studia Theologica 53 (1999), 13–25.” 13 Slotemaker (“Pierre D’Ailly,” 49) observes that the period “between Boethius and the end of the twelfth century” needs further study and “begs for a substantial renarration that frees it historiographically from the constraints of either a falsely Augustinian or an overly Augustinianized interpretation.” 14 See Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought, 5–49.

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Poitiers, and especially, Richard of St. Victor (see below). But for the purpose of contextualizing Gallus, it is these two “mendicant” trajectories that are most relevant, particularly the one that finds a certain terminus in Bonaventure. For some time now, scholars have identified Gallus’ confrere, Richard of St. Victor as the instigating source of the early Franciscan tradition in Trinitarian theology, at least that reaching to Bonaventure. Though certainly influenced by Augustine (as well as by Gregory the Great and Boethius), Richard is perhaps best seen as taking the “psychological intuition” of Augustine in a new and original direction, toward “the interpersonal and moral,”15 wherein “the primary orientation seems to be not through the analysis of human cognitional experience, but through an analysis of the nature of [interpersonal] love.”16 As Elizabeth Gössman argued long ago, where Augustine’s focus is on the psychological experience of an individual, Richard seeks trinitarian analogies in the psychological experience of interpersonal love.17 Richard thereby “chose an element which was marginal in Augustine and placed it in the center of his own thought.”18 Since the work of de Regnon in the late nineteenth century and until relatively recently, scholarship had seen this trajectory of medieval trinitarian theology as originating in Richard's appropriation of the CD, and running from Richard into the early Franciscan school of Alexander of Hales (along with his contemporaries, the Williams Auvergne and Auxerre), terminating in the grand synthesis of Bonaventure. In contrast to the dominant medieval tradition, which he labeled Dominican and as stemming from Augustine, and as operating with a static Aristotelian metaphysic of being (esse), de Regnon saw this Victorine-Franciscan trajectory as animated by a dynamic, Dionysian Neoplatonism of the good (bonum). In this account, Richard of St. Victor was “a deserter from the camp of Augustine who drank deeply from Greek streams and thus developed

15 Zachary Hayes, “Introduction,” Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity (Works of Saint Bonaventure) 3 (Saint Bonaventure, 2000), 17. 16 Hayes, “Introduction,” Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, 15. 17 Elizabeth Gössman, “Die Methode der Trinitätslehre in der Summa Halensis,” Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift 6 (1955), 256; cited in Hayes, “Introduction,” 15, n. 6. 18 Hayes, “Introduction,” Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, 15.

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a style that was truly competitive to the Augustinian tradition.” As Hayes points out, this narrative profoundly shaped historiography for nearly a century, including the work of Stohr, Schmaus, Imle-Kaup, Villalmonte, and Szabo,19 “even influencing the Quaracchi-editors of the Summa fratris Alexandri.”20 More recently, however, the work of Olegario Gonzalez and Dumeige drastically revised this narrative,21 arguing that Richard is not in fact significantly influenced by the Dionysian Corpus, and that his predilection for the notion of the good is less central than previously assumed, being subsumed into the more dominating idea of love or charity, analyzed psychologically and experientially, and that whatever the role of the good, its presence is sufficiently explained in relation to his Latin sources, Augustine and Anselm. But this consensus has generated new questions, not least of which is: whence comes the undeniable presence of Dionysian thought in the Trinitarian theology of Bonaventure? For his part, Hayes has suggested Bonaventure’s teacher, Alexander of Hales, as the source, a suggestion which certainly has merit, since both his undisputed works and the Summa Halensis cite Dionysius (and Richard) with some frequency. Many of the Dionysian notions that will figure centrally in Bonaventure, moreover, including fontality, fecundity, the good as self-diffusive (bonum diffusivum sui) and divine love as an eternal circle, are found in these texts. At the same time, though, Hayes also notes that none of these “Halensian” works develops these ideas to any great extent in the way that Bonaventure will eventually develop them. Hayes concludes by surmising Bonaventure’s dependence on

19

Albert Stohr, Die Trinitätslehre des hl. Bonaventura: Eine systematische Darstellung und historische Würdigung. I Teil, Die wissenschaftliche Trinitätslehre (Munster, 1923); Michael Schmaus, Der Liber Propugnatorius des Thomas Anglicus und die Lehrunterschiede zwischen Thomas von Aquin and Duns Scotus. II Teil, Die Trinitarischen Lehrdifferenzen (Munster, 1930); Fanny Imle and Julien Kaup, Die Theologie des hl. Bonaventura. Darstellung seiner dogmatischen Lehren (Werl, 1931); Alejandro de Villalmonte, “Influjo de los Padres griegos en la doctrina trinitaria de San Buenaventura,” in XIII Semana Española de Teología, 14–19 September 1953 (Madrid: 1954), 553–7; Titus Szabo, De ss.Trinitate in Creaturis Refulgente Doctrina S. Bonaventurae (Rome, 1959). 20 Hayes, “Introduction,” Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, 18–19. 21 Olegario Gonzalez, Misterio Trinitario y existencia humana: estudio histórico teológico en torno a san Buenaventura (Madrid, 1966); Gervais Dumeige, “Denys l’Aréopagite: en Occident,” Dictionnaire de Spiritualité ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire (Paris, 1932), col. 327.

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Alexander, while also noting that these Dionysian and Victorine sources “will be exploited in a distinctively personal way” by Bonaventure, and that the latter’s Trinitarian theology “transcends that of the Summa [Halensis] in unity and coherence of thought,” and “bears the mark of a single, keen mind that has appropriated the tradition in a personal way.”22 In short, a certain transformation of the Victorine theology, in the light of the Dionysian metaphysics of the good, has clearly occurred in the transition from Richard to Bonaventure, a transformation that is apparent in Bonaventure’s Trinitarian theology, even as early as his Commentary on the Sentences, where the Victorine terminology takes on a new meaning as it is animated and conditioned by the Dionysian dynamics of fecundity.23 The scholarly consensus, then, is as follows: In the early thirteenth century a distinctive style of Trinitarian theology emerged, whose primary author was Bonaventure, who created a “highly personal synthesis”24 out of a variety of elements, including the theology of St. Augustine, the religious experience of St. Francis, and the philosophy of Aristotle, but especially the Victorine and Dionysian traditions, all assembled and transmitted by Alexander of Hales. Whether this is a fully adequate explanation for the development in Trinitarian theology that occurred between Richard and Bonaventure is difficult to say with certainty. It is highly plausible, however, that this account is incomplete and perhaps incorrect if the Trinitarian theology of Thomas Gallus is omitted.25

Hayes, “Introduction,” Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, 21–3. Hayes, “Introduction,” Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, 23–4, esp., n. 44, which mentions Gallus by name, though with no elaboration. On the dynamic nature of this approach to the Trinity, see Bernard McGinn, “Dynamism of the Trinity.” 24 Hayes, “Introduction,” Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, 24. 25 Zachary Hayes (“Bonaventure’s Trinitarian Theology,” in Jay M. Hammond, Wayne Hellmann, and Jared Goff (eds.), A Companion to Bonaventure, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 189–246, at 196) puts the question with incisive clarity: “This shift in Victorine studies unavoidably raises many new questions about Bonaventure, for it has long been assumed that he was deeply influenced by Richard, and that he imbibed a Dionysian inspiration from the great Victorine. If such an inspiration is lacking in Richard, it is—nonetheless—present in Bonaventure. But from what sources is it derived? And what is the precise nature of the tie between Richard and Bonaventure, if the latter is fundamentally Dionysian while the former is not? These questions raise the further question of Alexander of Hales in relation both to Richard and Dionysius on the one hand, and to Bonaventure on the other.” 22 23

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Gallus is keenly aware that the CD consistently presents God as wholly and utterly “super-omnium,” above and beyond all, even being itself: God “exists” “ALL-EXCEEDINGLY ABOVE EXISTENCE” (SUPERSUBSTANTIATLIER 26 SUPER EXISTENTIA). “Dionysius . . . teaches that God is . . . inestimably separate and placed beyond comparison with everything existing and intelligible (supercollocatum omni existenti et intelligibili) . . . ”27 Following the Areopagite, Gallus stresses that God is thus radically transcendent: “Beyond both one and unity, both being and being-ness” (super unum et unitatem et ens et entitatem);28 “super-eminent over all being” (omni enti supereminet);29 neither a “being” (ens) nor “beingness” (entitas).30 Gallus’ logic is as simple as it is rigorous: If it is affirmed that God is the cause of all being, then God must be other than being: “AND God is THE CAUSE OF ALL BEING. And therefore HE HIMSELF is NOT EXISTING, otherwise he would be the cause of himself” (alioquin esset causa sui).31 Such ontological transcendence entails, as much for Gallus as for Dionysius, what could be called a similarly severe epistemic transcendence. Since “all cognitions concern being or beings (ente vel entibus), whatever then is causally above every being (ens) is surpassingly separated from all cognition, according to Job 36:26: “Behold, God is great, exceeding our knowledge.”32 Because God transcends being itself, is “ALL-EXCEEDING” (SUPERSUBSTANTIALIS),33 and because all

26

27 Expl-MT 1.19.383. Expl-MT 1.5.58–62. 29 Expl-MT 1.26.538. Expl-DN 1.59.228. 30 Expl-DN 1.110.1524–7: “I AM WHO I AM: Exod. 3:14. He first gives an example from the term ‘being’ which is the most common and contains every name or nameable thing. For being is the first thing in the intellect. But existence is before and above intellect, whence it descends to particular names. . . . ” (Primo exemplificat de nomine entis quod communissimum est et omne nomen uel nominabile continet. Ens enim est primum in intellectu. Entitas autem est ante et supra intellectum, deinde descendit ad nomina specialia.) 31 Expl-DN 1.63.338–40. Gallus here explicitly rejects the early modern notion of God as causa sui. 32 Expl-DN 1.101.1316–102.1321: “cognitiones omnes sunt de ente uel entibus. Ens autem terminatum est. Quod ergo causaliter est super omne ens, ab omni cognitione segregatur superando, iuxta illud Iob 36f: Ecce Deus magnus uincens scientiam nostram, 28f: Abscondita est ab oculis omnium uiuentium, uolucres quoque celi latet, id est animos celestes.” 33 Expl-DN 1.59.226–7. 28

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knowing has being as its object34 and limit,35 God transcends all knowing as much as all being: God is “altogether and incomparably above being (ens) and understanding (intellectus)” and is thus “ineffable and unnamable.”36 Yet, when Gallus places God “outside” this all-embracing coextension of being-knowing, this does not mean that God is not; nor does this demand absolute mental darkness, conceptual vacuity, and verbal silence regarding “God” (as perhaps it does for Dionysius, and almost certainly does for Plotinus and Proclus).37 For the “ineffable and unnamable” God “has named himself,”38 revealed himself as “existing,” and has thus bridged the infinite distance between God and being. Gallus unabashedly embraces, accordingly, the paradoxical claim that God’s radical transcendence of reality does not mean that God “does not exist,” but that God “more than exists.”39 Divinity 34 Expl-DN 1.59.230–1: “being itself which is first in the intellect and highest” (ipsum ens quod primum est in intellectu et summum et extra quod nihil querit ut inuestigat philosophia intellectualis et mundana). 35 Expl-DN 1.102.1333–5: “because, ALL COGNITIONS ARE OF EXISTING THINGS, that is, concerning those things which fall under [the category] of being (ente), THEY HAVE THEIR END, that is, they are terminated or terminatable and are contained under [the category] of being (sub ente)” (quia, OMNES COGNITIONS SUNT EXISTENTIUM, id est de hiis que cadunt sub ente, FINEM HABENT, id est terminate uel terminabilia sunt et sub ente contenta). 36 Expl-MT 1.20.387. Cf. Expl-DN 2.170.166–7: “[God is] beyond and above all being and one and understanding” (extra et super omne ens et unum et intellectum); Expl-MT 1.27.562–3: “[God] exceeds every understanding” (omnem superat intellectum); Expl-MT 1.14.257–8: “[God is] untouchable, invisible, incomprehensible, as much to reason as to intellect”; Expl-MT 1.25.529–30: “[having] super-intellectual incomprehensibility”; Expl-MT 2.33.66–8: “For existing things are speakable (vocibilia) and namable (nominabilia) and cogitizable (cogitabilia), [but] God is beyond every word, and name, and cogitation”; and Expl-MT 5.44.8–9: “[God is] untouched intelligibly according to its essence”; Expl-AH 1.602.599: “[for] our intellect does not exceed being” (intellectus noster non excedit ens). 37 Cf. Eric Perl, Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 5–16. 38 Expl-MT 1.19.387–8: “Sed ineffabilis et innominabilis pro mortalium infirmitate se nominauit.” 39 Expl-DN 4.270.2293: “GOD IS SEGREGATED FROM SUBSTANCE through an incomparable and infinite excess (excessum); AND yet GOD is SUPER-SUBSTANTIAL SIMPLICITER, that is, generally . . . , since at the very least the deity subsists eternally without any accidental or substantial habit, but not without goodness. Yet we say that God wholly is and subsists, and yet it must not be understood that a certain essence or substance, cognizable or intelligible to us, is attributed to him, but we say this lest concerning that which is ineffable we remain totally silent.” (ET DEUS SEGREGATUR A SUBSTANTIA per incomparabilem et infinitum excessum; ET tamen est SUPERSUBSTANTIALIS SIMPLICITER, id est generaliter, IN UNIVERSIS ALIIS preter bonum; HABITU ABEUNTE, quantum ad

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transcends “every EXISTING THING AND every NON-EXISTING THING, through excess of being (per excessum essentie). . . . For non-existence is understood as an excess of being (per excessum essentie) . . . ”40 Divine “nonexistence” is not therefore a claim about absolute absence, but about metaphysical excess.41 “God is non-existing, not from a defect of essence but from an excessus,”42 just as “God is not unknown from a lack of light, but from his inaccessible excellence and incomprehensible and un-contemplatable abundance (habundantia).”43 “God . . . incomparably exceeds every existing and cognizable thing and is removed from all things through excess” (Deus omnia existentia et cognoscibilia incomparabiliter excedit et per excessum ab omnibus remouetur).44

accidentalia separabilia, ET NON INGENITO, quantum ad substantialia et inseparabilia accidentalia, OMNINO EXISTENTIA SUNT ET POSSUNT SUBSISTERE, quia ad minus deitas sine omni habitu accidentali et substantiali eternaliter subsistit, sed non sine bonitate. Verumtamen omnino Deum dicimus esse uel subsistere, nec tamen est intelligendum aliquam essentiam uel substantiam nobis cognoscibilem aut intelligibilem ei attribui, sed hoc dicimus ne de ineffabili penitus taceamus). 40 Expl-DN 4.259.2009–13. Cf. Expl-DN 4.191.285–6: Divinity infinitely exceeds being, for in it “THE EXCESS OF REALITY and beyond-beingness (supersubstantialitas) is NON-EXISTING, since it is above all being (ens).” 41 Lawell, “Affective Excess,” 79: “Gallus’s chief goal was to protect the divine as supernatural plenitude and fullness and thus needing no cause for his being and conservation in being.” Lawell elaborates in note 81: “In this regard, note Gallus’ explanation (Explanatio DN, fol. 140ra) of Dionysius’s statement that God does not have being: ‘IPSE NON HABET [sc. ESSE], id est, non participat esse sed continet totum esse et superhabundat’ (italics added).” 42 Expl-DN 1.63.340. 43 Expl-MT 1.9.164–6. Cf. Expl-DN 2.137.522: “WHOLLY INVISIBLE, that is, a plenitude of invisibility . . . ”; Expl-MT 1.12.224–5: “incomprehensible because its splendor inaccessibly exceeds . . . ”; Expl-MT 1.13.252–3: “whose beauty exceeds all estimation (estimatio)”; Expl-MT 1.22.444–5: “neither affirmation or negation attain to that cause of all things, but he incomparably exceeds both”; Expl-MT 1.24.490–1: “The Word of God . . . incomparably exceeds every created thing and being”; Expl-MT 5.46.54–5: “the EXCESSUS OF GOD IS REMOVED FROM ALL THINGS and above all existing things.” 44 Expl-DN 2.133.385. Cf. Expl-DN 2.133.389–94, where Gallus discusses how the Greek word for “being” “ho on” is found in some translations but not translated into Latin: “And in fact I have heard from a certain Greek philosopher that the Greek ‘ho on’ is not rightly translated (transfertur) as ‘ens’ or ‘existens’ or any word that he had found in the Latin language, and its meaning is nearer to ‘entitas’ than to ‘enti’.” On this point, moreover, Gallus criticizes certain un-named thinkers, who “think that being (ens), which is called the subject of metaphysics, contains the created as much as the uncreated” (Expl-MT 1.19.384–20.385), “who think being (ens) is the first and highest in cognition” (Expl-DN 4.193.323–4), beyond which “worldly and intellectual philosophy seeks or investigates nothing” (Expl-DN 1.59.231–2).

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In sum, excessus, in the sense of transcendent abundance or pleromatic transcendence, is crucial to Gallus’ conception of divinity.45 In affirming a pleromatic Trinity, Gallus would seem to falling to one side of a contemporary debate in the interpretation of Dionysius. From the opposing perspective, Dionysius would have found Gallus’ claim that God is a transcendent plenitudo, beyond all being, puzzling, if not absurd. For in the words of Eric Perl, we must recognize that for Dionysius, as for Plotinus, God is simply not anything, not “there” at all. If our thought cannot attain to God, this is not because of our weakness, but because there is no “there” there, no being, no thing that is God. Nor can God be “infinite being” since on Neoplatonic terms, that is a contradiction of the principle that to be is to be intelligible and therefore to be finite.46

Gallus, on the other hand, lines up with a view aptly expressed by Hans urs von Balthasar, which interprets Dionysian transcendence thus: The application of negative names (such as unreason, lack of feeling) to God is possible kath’ hyperochēn, and implies therefore an objective content, viz., the “transcendence of God over everything visible” (DN IV.10, 705C). His lordship is not only “superiority” (hyperochē) over what is subordinated, but simply total possession (DN XII.2, 969B) . . . [hyperochē] means here nothing else than the objective superabundance of God (emphasis added).47

For Gallus, on a point where all agree about Dionysius, God is certainly the transcendent metaphysical Source of all finite being. Aligned with Balthasar against Perl, however, Gallus interprets God’s hyperochē as God’s “preeminent possession” rather than God’s “lack of possession,” as “preeminent-having” rather than “beyond-having.”48 But in affirming the transcendent fullness of God, Gallus is not domesticating divine unknowability. He seeks neither to resolve this 45 See Dionysius, Letter 4: “the ever Superessential, super-full of super-essentiality, disregards the excess (τῇ ταύτης περιουσίᾳ) of this” (Dionysius the Areopagite, The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, tr. John Parker (London: Parker, 1897) [hereafter Parker], 143). Also, Dionysius, Letter 5: “unapproachable on account of the excess of the superessential stream of light” (Parker, 144). 46 Perl, Theophany, 13. 47 Balthasar, Clerical Styles, 206, n. 202. 48 See Timothy D. Knepper, Negating Negation: Against the Apophatic Abandonment of the Dionysian Corpus (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014), 54.

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paradox philosophically, nor to retreat from it theologically.49 In the end, he speaks of the unspeakable because of the exigencies of divine self-revelation, “lest we remain silent about the ineffable.”50 And what has been revealed is that God is Triune. This is strikingly visible in Gallus’ comments on The Mystical Theology. Dionysius begins that treatise with a laconic invocation of the “super-substantial Trinity,” about which nothing more is said (since nothing can nor should be, since the supreme Cause is “neither one nor oneness, divinity nor goodness . . . is not sonship or fatherhood . . . and there is no speaking of it” [MT 5, 1048AB]). Gallus’ Explanatio on that passage, though, is unblushingly prolix, boldly explaining how the subsequent Dionysian superlatives actually refer to the different divine Persons and to their respective appropriations: ALL-EXCEEDING TRINITY

of divine persons, that is, incomparably morethan-exceeding all existence and being (superexcedens substantiam et ens), and this can be especially referred to the Person of the Father, to whom is attributed being and power (esse et posse); MORE-THAN-DIVINE, that is, incomparably exceeding every cognition and science or wisdom (superexcedens cognitionem et scientiam sive sapientiam), which is especially attributed to the Son; AND MORE-THAN-GOOD, that is, incomparably exceeding every existing goodness (excedens existentem bonitatem), which is especially attributed to the Holy Spirit.51

This passage captures well the basic stance and underlying intuition of Gallus’ entire theological endeavor. He insists that God is radically transcendent, more than exceeding—the recurring prefix “super” accentuating the point—all being and knowing; yet God has revealed himself and on that basis is known to be a Trinity of Persons!52 In short, God is an excessive trinitarian plenitude of super-substantial

49 Gallus’ doctrine of divine excessus is clearly not a species of an analogy of being, at least in the later Thomistic senses of the word. It is not that God is being per se or esse ipsum, a fullness of being in relation to which other forms of existence are subsidiary and derivative analogates. 50 51 Expl-DN 1.63.326. Expl-MT 1.8.129–36. 52 In all this Gallus is more explicitly and extensively Trinitarian than Dionysius. Cf. Letter 9’s fairly standard way of describing God, in which Trinity is essentially absent: “a fountain of Life flowing into Itself—viewing It even standing by Itself, and as a kind of single power, simple, self-moved, and self-worked, not abandoning Itself, but a knowledge surpassing every kind of knowledge, and always contemplating Itself, through Itself” (Parker, 168).

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“beingness” (entitas), an excess of being (ens).53 That is to say, however Dionysian transcendence should be understood, Gallus “transcends” him with his Victorine insistence that, as will be shown below, divine love is a three-personed pleroma, a plenitude of divine goodness, eternally given and received.

“PLEROMATIC TRINITY” In light of the foregoing, Gallus’ turn to the notion of the good is readily intelligible. Emboldened by Scripture, inspired by Dionysius and Richard of St. Victor, and anticipating Bonaventure, Gallus meditates speculatively on the divine nature from the perspective of goodness.54 In Divine Names 4, Dionysius famously designated “good” as the most apt and proper name of God. He then added “beauty” as essentially synonymous with “good,” and to these he wedded a third, “love.” Gallus takes up this Dionysian constellation, but with a Victorine accent. Following Richard, Gallus stresses the plenitude of divine goodness, beauty and love.55 When Dionysius writes of THE HIDDEN GOODNESS, the Victorine Gallus adds: “in its plenitude.”56 This Dionysian-Victorine synthesis funds Gallus’ account of the divine nature. Following the Areopagite, to name God “good” (bonum) or “goodness” (bonitas) is for Gallus to name what is most “principal,” what is

53 Lawell, “Affective Excess,” 80: “Situating his thought within the domain of being or within the horizon of goodness is an interesting endeavor that can clearly help understand, for example, postmodern debates in this area, but this must be done without forcing a Thomist interpretation on to Gallus. The name plenitude is sufficiently neutral to employ when considering this chief goal in Gallus’s thought.” 54 Expl-DN 2.120.56–121.67: “ABSOLUTE (PER SE) GOODNESS, that is, the eternal and principal and divine goodness which is not from another source, but true and full goodness is its proper nature, IS PRAISED BY THE sacred ELOQUENCE AS DEFINING AND REVEALING THE WHOLE THEARCHIC ESSENCE WHATEVER IT IS, that is, as specially and properly appropriate to the individuals of the divine persons and declaring the nature of each individual one, which is clear from testimonies of sacred scripture. . . . (Luke 18:19) ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? No one is good but God alone’. Here Scripture shows that only the divine essence is truly and fully good, and consequently, each of the divine persons is truly and fully good . . . ” 55 See Richard of St. Victor, De Trinitate, ed. J. Ribaillier, Textes Philosophiques du Moyen Age (Paris: J. Vrin, 1958), Book III. 56 Expl-DN 4.188.221–2.

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most “prior” even to “being” (esse) in God,57 God’s “proper nature and essence” (naturam propriam et substantiam),58 the least improper name to give to God in order not to lapse into silence. Though “nothing is attributed to [God] properly, lest we remain silent about it, we name it by the most worthy name of the good.”59 For God is “ABSOLUTE (per se) GOODNESS,” namely, “the eternal and principal and divine goodness, which is not from another, but whose proper nature is true and full goodness (vera et plena bonitas).”60 Following Richard, though, this fullness of goodness (plenitudo bonitatis) entails by its very nature the “[fullness] of charity (caritatis),”61 which entailment is all the more evident when Gallus calls it “the good amor,” namely, “the all-exceeding fullness of charity (plenitudo caritatis)”—deliberately fusing, as did both Dionysius62 and Richard before him, divine eros and agape, amor and caritas.63 57 Expl-DN 4.181.35–8: “the divine principal. For ‘to be’ in God does not come before ‘to be good’, but goodness in God is either simultaneous with or, as it were, prior to being . . . ” (diuinam principalem, ESSENTIAM. Esse enim in Deo non preiacet bonum esse, sed bonitas aut simul aut quasi prius est in eo quam esse tamquam profundior theoria). Cf., by contrast, Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles 3.20.5: “though anything is good in so far as it is a being . . . being is a term used absolutely, while good also includes a relation . . . provided it be ordered to the end, it may be called good because of this relation . . . It is apparent in this conclusion that good is, in a way, of wider scope than being. For this reason, Dionysius says, in the fourth chapter of On the Divine Names: ‘the good extends to existent beings and also to non-existent ones.’ ” 58 Expl-DN 4.181.43. 59 Expl-DN 4.181.38–40: “Nihil tamen ei proprie attribuitur, sed ne de ipso sileamus dignissimo nomine boni eum nominamus.” 60 Expl-DN 2.120.56–7. Though not as central as the notion of goodness, the theme of beauty is also present in Gallus’ reflections. Cf. Expl-DN 4.208.690: “For divine beauty (pulcritudo divina) is found through fullness in the divinity alone . . . the fullness of beauty (pulcritudinis plenitudinem)”; Expl-DN 4.209.725: “[God is] the fullness of divine beauty” (plenitudo divine pulcritudinis); Expl-DN 4.210.760–211.773: “in itself and from itself is the most beautiful of all,” “the highest beauty,” “the total most beautiful (totum pulcerrimum),” “the simplex and universal fullness of beauty” (quia totum secundum se totum pulcerrimum; . . . sed respectu omnium et super omnia incomparabiliter pulcerrimum; . . . sed ubique eque et plene pulcrum. Predicte quidem differentie cadunt in particularia pulcra, sed non in simplicem et uniuersalem pulcritudinis plenitudinem). 61 Expl-DN 4.230.1247. 62 See Dionysius, DN 4.11–14. Cf. Charles M. Stang, “Dionysius, Paul, and the Significance of a Pseudonym,” in Coakley and Stang, Rethinking Dionysius, 11–26, at 18, and J. S. Kupperman, “Eros and Agape in Dionysius the Areopagite,” Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition, 25:3 (2013): , no page numbers). 63 On the Christian fusion of eros and agape, beginning with Origen of Alexandria, see Bernard McGinn, Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century

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THE PATERNAL PLENITUDE But how precisely the divine nature is plenitudo of goodness and love is as important as the claim itself. It can appear that Gallus begins with divine goodness generically, as it were, for he can say that “the super-substantial deity fecundates the plurality of the persons and their properties”64 and refer to “the trine unity or the Trinity of eternal persons, any one of which is true God and true and highest good, and their simplex essence is God and is the good.”65 In fact, though,66 his starting point is the divine persons themselves and the relational correlativity that exist between them, beginning with the person of the Father.67 When, in The Mystical Theology, Dionysius rather vaguely refers to LIGHTS OF GOODNESS that HAVE SPRUNG OUT OF THE SIMPLE AND IMMATERIAL GOOD, which lights are yet REMAINING IN THE HEART, Gallus interprets this in terms of the Trinitarian persons, beginning with the Father. The word “lights” refers to “the fullness of the divine nature” (plenitudinem divine nature), which lights, while REMAINING IN THE HEART “of the Father” (my emphasis), HAVE SPRUNG (pullulaverunt) “through the origin of the Son and the Holy Spirit” from the GOOD, “that is, the person of the Father” (my emphasis), who is “the ‘Father of lights’” (Jas. 1:17).68

(New York: Crossroad, 1991), 118–26; see also Bernard McGinn, “The Language of Love in Jewish and Christian Mysticism,” in Mysticism and Language, ed. Steven T. Katz (New York and Oxford, 1992), 202–35. 64 Expl-DN 2.143.691: “ . . . persone quarum pluralite fecunda est supersubstantialis deitas et earum proprietates . . . ” 65 Expl-DN 1.104.1369–72. 66 So too, Bonaventure, as McGinn (“Dynamism of the Trinity,” 144) notes: “Instead of following the Augustinian model of the intramental analogy of the trinitarian processions, Bonaventure begins once again from the ‘agathological’ principle of the good as primal and fecund. The Franciscan does not understand the Good in an abstract way, but rather as personal and ecstatic love . . . ” 67 A long-standing, though recently criticized, commonplace among historians of Trinitarian theology holds that, broadly speaking, Trinitarian theology in the Latin West has tended to privilege the single divine essence as its starting point for reflection on the three divine persons, while in the Greek East, reflection on the divine persons, especially the Father, grounded subsequent understanding of the unity of the divine essence. Gallus’ Trinitarian theology demonstrates just how difficult it is to make this commonplace stick. 68 Expl-MT 3.36.35–7.

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This stress on the Father’s primordial plenitude of goodness is crucial, for it governs Gallus’ understanding of the very person of the Father, who is the abundant “fount, author and origin (fons, auctor, et origo)” of the Son and Spirit;69 the “root” and “shoot” (pullulatio) from whose “paternal plenitude” (paterna plenitudine) they come forth like flowers;70 the primordial “beginning” (principio),71 who possesses absolute “fecundity” (fecunditas), which can thus be called the copious “largess,” (largitio),72 which makes him the “lavish author” (auctor largiens),73 and causes “largess” (largitio) to be a “property of the [divine] nature.”74 God is “the fount of all fullness (fontem omnimode plenitudinis),” because “that fullness is given by the Father to the Son, by the Father and the Son to the Holy Spirit, in order that the highest liberality (liberalitas) might be fulfilled (impleretur).”75 The first Person is thus the “paternal author” (paterna auctoritas)76 as well as “the heart” (cor), for “just as from our heart come forth (procedit) our word and breath, so out of the Father (ex Patre) come the Son and the Holy

69 Expl-DN 2.151.906–7. “THAT THE FATHER IS THE DEITY FOUNTAIN (deitas fontana), that is, the Father is God or divinity, and is the fount, author and source (fons, auctor, et origo) as much of the Son as of the Holy Spirit.” 70 Expl-DN 2.151.913–15: “JUST LIKE . . . FLOWERS as if rising from the root of the Father, AND SUPER-SUBSTANTIAL LIGHTS, radiating from the paternal plenitude (paterna plenitudine) . . . ” 71 Expl-DN 2.150.898–9: “the Son and the Holy Spirit, so to speak, shoot forth (pullulent) from the principle of the Father (ex Patre principio).” 72 Expl-MT 3.36.43–4: “ . . . that largess (largitio) is not from a gift of grace, but from the property of the nature.” 73 Expl-DN 2.143–4.697–700: “ . . . by generating the Son himself and by spirating the Holy Spirit with the Son and by possessing or receiving absolutely nothing from another, the Father is by nature (naturaliter) the lavish author (auctor largiens) for all things.”; Expl-DN 2.150.897–8: “the Father is the auctor of the Son and the Holy Spirit.” 74 Expl-MT 3.36.44–5. 75 Glss-AH 3.37.60–2. 76 Expl-DN 1.85.861–86.873: “ . . . The theologian arranges and praises the thearchy as A TRINITY ON ACCOUNT OF THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE SUPER-SUBSTANTIAL FECUNDITY (fecunditatis) OF THE THREE PERSONS, that is, he points out in the divinity a plurality, sometimes twofold, sometimes threefold, and this for the purpose of declaring the Trinity of divine persons, through which are fecundated (fecundantur) the most glorious speaking forth of the Son eternally begotten (geniti) from the Father, and the common spiration of the Holy Spirit; . . . Therefore this fecundity can be called the paternal source, in as much as the Father is the auctor of the Son and the Holy Spirit and eternally gives to each of them, such that each is what it is and has whatever it has, and can do whatever it can, and for both to be co-equal and con-substantial with the Father, and all of this not a gift of grace but from a natural property.” Cf. Expl-DN 2.127.243–4: “in whom there is auctoritas with respect to the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

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Spirit.”77 The person of the Father, then, is the “God-begetting-divinity (deigenam divinitatem),”78 or more precisely, since “this abstract name ‘divinity’ stands here for the person,” the Father is the “God-generatingGod” (Deus Deum generans).79 All this is captured in the two so-called personal notiones of the Father:80 unbegottenness (innascibilitas) and paternity (paternitas)81 or father-principle (patri-archia82): Since “the Father subsists in his own auctoritas, and alone supplies origin (originem) to the Son, and the Father with the Son supplies origin (originem) to the Holy Spirit. Hence to the Father alone is attributed as much innascibilitas as paternitas or active-generation.”83 Like Bonaventure, Gallus seems to see these two notions as mutually entailing one another. “For the Father alone in the Trinity gives and does not receive”;84 “by possessing or receiving absolutely nothing from another, the Father is [Father] by nature (naturaliter).”85 To the extent that the Father is non-receiving, to that extent is the Father fecund. Though he does not say so explicitly (as Bonaventure will), the Father’s generativity for Gallus seems to be a function of “first-ness” (primitas). 77 Expl-MT 3.36.47–37.49. It is perhaps worth noting that Gallus, like Alexander of Alexandria before him, stresses the mysterious ineffability of this the Father–Son relation: Expl-DN 2.150.899–900: “yet how this is so [that the Father is source and principle of the Son and Spirit], we [the faithful] can neither understand or cogitate.” 78 Expl-DN 2.123.126–7. 79 Expl-DN 2.151.909. Slotemaker (“Pierre D’Ailly,” 108) notes: “In the patristic period it was Augustine and Hilary of Poitiers who explicitly engaged the question of whether or not one can claim that ‘Deus generat Deum’ (God begets God) or ‘essentia generat essentiam’ (the divine essence generates the divine essence). Through substantive engagement with Augustine of Hippo and Hilary of Poitiers, twelfth-century theologians, Peter Lombard (c.1095/1100–1160), Richard of St. Victor (d.1173), and Joachim of Fiore (c.1135–1202) intensely debated the relationship between the divine essence and the Father in the emanations of the Son and the Holy Spirit.” 80 On the notiones, see Expl-MT 3.35.20–36.22: “as received by the intellect, there are in the divinity personal distinctions and properties, paternity, filiation and the other notions (notiones)”; Expl-DN 2.143.680–5: “BUT IT IS ETC. Here he shows that in the divine persons not only is there a differentiated and unconfused Trinity of persons in unity of essence . . . , but the same persons are so distinguished from one another by their individual properties such that no [personal property] can be predicated of the others, even though the divine essentials are predicated indifferently of each of the individual persons.” 81 Expl-DN 2.144.706–7: “to the Father is attributed properly paternity and unbegottenness (paternitas et innascibilitas).” 82 Expl-DN 2.151.923: “ . . . FROM THE PATRIARCHY, that is, from the eternal paternity of the Father, which is the principal source of all paternity . . . ” 83 84 Expl-DN 2.135.464–7. Expl-DN 2.144.700. 85 Expl-DN 2.144.699–700.

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In sum, despite radical divine transcendence and its attendant ineffability, Gallus espies a primordial and fontal fecundity, largess, and generativity in the person of the Father,86 a self-diffusive, paternal plenitude at the heart of the Triune God, which fully expresses its abundance immanently by originating the Son and the Spirit, thus grounding the unity of the Godhead and thus of the divine nature itself. Accordingly, it is because the Father is fecund font, from whose paternal goodness the Son and the Spirit come forth, that the entire Trinity is the fullness of goodness: “[Dionysius] understands the good to be God, who is the fullness of goodness (plenitudo bonitatis), of which Mt. 19:17: ‘There is one that is good, God’.”87

THE PROPR IA OF THE PERSONS This particular understanding of the person of the Father informs, moreover, Gallus’ view of the personal distinctions or properties of the Son and the Spirit. Both are distinguished from the Father in as much as they are constituted personally by their reception of the Father’s fontal fullness: For the Son eternally receives the fullness of the divine nature from the Father, by eternally being born (nascendo) from the Father; and the Holy Spirit eternally receives that same fullness from both, that is, from the Father and the Son, by eternally proceeding (procedendo) from both.88

For Gallus, both the Son’s “generation” and Spirit’s “proceeding” are first and foremost diverse modes of receptivity of the paternal plenitude. The western doctrine of the filioque, though, introduces a distinction that diversifies the Son and the Spirit as follows: “The proprium of the Spirit is eternally to receive existence from another and not to receive existence from Itself.”89 The proper trait (proprium) of the Spirit is its pure receptivity, which plays opposite the pure generativity of the Father, noted above, whose paternal proprium 86 Gallus approaches the Bonaventurian term “fontality” (fontalitas): “TO THE GOOD, that is, to its fontal goodness (fontalem bonitatem)” and Expl-DN 4.247.1678: “the desiring of his fontal fullness (fontalis plenitudinis).” 87 88 Expl-DN 1.67.433–5. Expl-MT 3.36.40–3. 89 Spec-cont. 6.7.281.353.

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is “not receiving existence from another and having existence from Himself.”90 Straddling these polar opposites, as it were, and thus occupying a middle or central role is the Son, whose proprium is both “receiving existence from another and another receiving existence from Him.”91 Following his Victorine mentor, Gallus also puts this in terms of Richard of St. Victor’s signature emphasis, namely, interpersonal love. From the vantage point of “the fullest love” (emphasis added), the Father is characterized by “gratuitous love,” which is freely “giving and not receiving”; to the Spirit, conversely, belongs “owed love,” which is “received from both [of the other] persons [and not given]”; combing both modes, and thus exhausting all other possibilities, is the love of the Son,92 which is both “freely received and freely given.”93 In sum, the divine goodness and love is fully given and fully received amongst the three persons: the same plenitude shared equally by each, shared simultaneously by all, and yet each sharing in a distinct mode, proper to Itself, thus eternally constituting three eternal persons. From these three modes of personal existence, Gallus derives, in scholastic parlance, the five so-called Trinitarian “notions” (notiones), that is, five distinct characteristics associated with each of the three persons: To the Father belong (1) innascibilitas or unbegotteneness, (2) fatherhood (paternitas) or active generation [of the Son], and (3) active-spiration [of the Spirit]. To the Son belong both (3) active spiration [of the Spirit], shared with the Father, and (4) sonship (filiatio) or passive generation (i.e. being generated by or begotten of the Father). To the Spirit, lastly, belongs (5) procession (processio) or passive spiration (i.e. being spirated from the Father and the Son). The following passage succinctly summarizes Gallus’ conception of trinitarian persons, and the five corresponding “notions,” in terms of the Ricardian distinction of the persons (i.e. modes of giving and receiving), all the while respecting the ultimately ineffable divine mystery: so that we may say something concerning the ineffable we use personal and notional terms to distinguish the divine persons . . . in that, namely, the Father has his being and universal plenitude from no other person 90

91 Spec-cont. 6.7.281.352. Spec-cont. 6.7.281.354. Spec-cont. 6.6.281.350: “There is no fourth member found in this distinction of love, and therefore there is no fourth person in the Trinity.” 93 Spec-cont. 6.6.281.347–9. 92

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than his own, hence innascibilitas is attributed to him. Likewise he eternally and naturally generates a Son, giving being and all plenitude to him . . . by the property of his own nature, whence paternitas or generatio-activa is attributed to him. Again, the Father, simultaneously with the Son, eternally spirates the Holy Spirit, giving him all plenitude in the way mentioned; hence to both the Father and the Son is attributed spiratio-activa, by which they are the principle of the Holy Spirit. But the Son is generated by the Father and has [from him] whatever he is or has, hence filiatio or generatio-passio is attributed to him. But to the Holy Spirit is attributed spiratio-passio or processio.94

Evident in all of this is Gallus’ own signature emphasis on divine plenitude, funded by the principle that the fullness of goodness is fully self-diffusive within the Godhead itself, given and received utterly, without remainder. “For no word, as it seems to me, more sublimely attains the meaning of the super-unknown divine infinity than the name ‘fullness’.”95

EXCURSUS: DISTI NCTION BY ORIGIN It is worth noting that Gallus stands as an early witness to an emerging, increasingly self-conscious, thirteenth-century tradition of Trinitarian theology that privileges an account of emanations or origination, over an account of relations, as the primary basis for the distinction of persons in God.96 Rehearsing the five “notions” noted above, Gallus stresses the fact that eternal distinctions of the divine persons arise from differences “in origin” (ex origine):97 the Father has innascibilitas, active-generation, [and] active-spiration because He “neither receives nor has origin, and gives origin both to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.” Likewise, the Son has passive-generation or filiation, because He “receives origin solely and immediately from the Father,” and active-spiration, because together with the Father “he gives origin to the Holy Spirit,” who has passive-spiration or procession 94

Expl-AH 1.488.214. Expl-DN 4.894.875: “Nullum autem vocabulum, ut mihi videtur, sublimius ascendit in divine superignote infinitatis significationem quam nomen plenitudinis.” 96 See Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought, 5–49. 97 See also Gallus, Spec-cont. 6.4.280.330: “The fourth attends to the fact that origin alone distinguishes the divine persons . . . ” 95

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because He “receives origin from the Father and the Son.”98 For Gallus, this distinction of origin is neither incompatible with divine simplicity and unity, nor does it compromise the absolute eternity and equality of all the persons within the Godhead, introducing neither temporal sequence nor ontological gradation: “Therefore origin alone befits (congruit) the distinction of the eternal persons to whom is added neither priority and posterity, nor majority and minority.”99 Accordingly, if also paradoxically, in contrast to all hierarchical relationships among created things, God for Gallus is a “divine hierarchy” in which “there is neither superiority nor inferiority,” nor strictly speaking is there “order” in the Trinity, at least in the sense that pertains to created realities. Gallus insists, for example, that “the Son and his eternal generation exceed all order.”100 Insisting on radical divine transcendence, Gallus allows only that in the Trinity “there is a super-substantial beginning and exemplar”101 of created order and hierarchy.102 For “that super-natural and notional distinction in the Holy Trinity, which consists solely in the origin of persons, super-excels all ordering in [created things].”103

Expl-DN 1.88.926–34; cf. Expl-DN 1.88.935–42: “Likewise, what is common to the Father and the Son, to have procession eternally from themselves, is from the fact that they eternally give origin to the Holy Spirit. Likewise, what is common to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, for a different reason, is from the fact that they both receive origin from the Father. Likewise, what is common to the Father and to the Holy Spirit, not to have both [activity and passivity], is from the fact that the Father, for one reason, is not, and the Spirit, for another reason, does not, that is, the fact that the Spirit does not give origin, [and] the Father does not receive it.” 99 Expl-DN 1.88.943–89.945. 100 Expl-DN 1.89.949–50. 101 Expl-DN 1.88.917–18. 102 In the Breviloquium, the Dionysian influence seems to prompt Bonaventure to call the Trinity a hierarchy, but leaves the claim vague and undeveloped. Breviloquium, Prol. 3.1–2 (Monti, 11–12): “Sacred Scripture . . . also possesses a height, which consists of the description of the hierarchies in their ordered ranks. These hierarchies are the ecclesiastical, the angelic, and the divine—or in other words, the sub-celestial, the celestial, and the super-celestial. The first is described clearly, the second somewhat more indirectly, and the third more obscurely . . . All this is done through that one Hierarch, Jesus Christ, who by reason of the human nature he assumed, is Hierarch in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, but also in the angelic hierarchy, and is the middle person of that supercelestial hierarchy of the Blessed Trinity.” 103 Expl-DN 1.88.921–3. Cf. Expl-DN 1.88.918–21: “from the auctoritas which is in the Father, with respect to the Son and the Holy Spirit, and in the Father and the Son with respect to the Holy Spirit; and a sub-auctoritas which is in the Son and the Holy Spirit with respect to the Father; and likewise in the Holy Spirit with respect to the Son.” 98

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The foregoing sets the stage for a more comprehensive account of the divine nature according to Gallus. Assuming now the centrality of pleromatic goodness in Gallus’ conception of the divine nature, what are its crucial implications? First, “fullness of goodness” (plenitudo bonitatis) entails an essential and eternal dynamism. Out of the fecundity of the Father, the Son is “eternally being born (nascendo)” and from them both the Spirit is “eternally proceeding (procedendo).”104 The paternal generativity originating the Son and the Holy Spirit is “from (ab) eternity and into (in) eternity.”105 Gallus accentuates the ongoing originating activity that constitutes the persons in their relations, rather than on the relations, say of paternity-filiation, conceived of statically, as it were. Second, this dynamism is necessarily two-dimensional since it entails an eternal activity of self-giving and self-receiving—“the divine fullness is equally eternally in receiving as in giving”106—which enacts the fullness of goodness: “the highest and absolutely perfect benevolence (benevolentia) requires that the eternal receives eternal plenitude eternally (ut eternam plenitutinem eternus eternaliter accipiat), namely, the Son from the Father, the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, perpetual things perpetually . . . ”107 Third, these essential and eternal Trinitarian acts are wellcharacterized as, on the one hand, self-exceeding and thus as ecstatic self-giving (e.g. the Father’s eternal act of generation of the Son and the Father and Son’s eternal act of spiration of the Holy Spirit) and, on the other, as self-receiving and thus as enstatic self-reception (e.g. the Son’s total reception of his person from the Father, and the Spirit’s total reception of his person from the Father and the Son together). Precisely in this consists divine plenitude: “Though given to the Son and the Spirit, that plenitude (plenitudo) is nevertheless not withdrawn from the Father”;108 “nothing is lost to the Father which the Son or the Holy Spirit receives from him.”109 Fourth, this eternal dynamic of giving and receiving establishes a kind of perichoretic and mutual indwelling of the Persons. Adopting 104 106 108

Expl-MT 3.36.40–3. Expl-MT 3.37.51–2. Expl-MT 3.36.45–7.

105 107 109

Expl-MT 3.37.49–50. Expl-DN 4.230.1255. Expl-MT 3.37.53–4.

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a term from the Latin Dionysius, Gallus refers to the “INDWELLING” (mansio) of the Son and the Holy Spirit in the Father, and by implication of the “indwelling (mansio) of the Father and the Son and the Spirit IN THEMSELVES (in se ipsis)”; that is: “each one of them remains immutably and eternally in its state,” “dwelling WITHIN ONE 110 Elsewhere he speaks of the divine persons ANOTHER (in se invicem).” being “within themselves mutually (in se mutuo), as the Father is in the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Son in the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit in the Father and the Son.”111 It is because “each of the divine persons remains eternally in the others”112 that a unity of essence exists in God, a unity that is simultaneously “most simple (simplicissimam) and most full (plenissimam).”113 Thus: even though in the divine nature there is a true Trinity of persons eternally co-indwelling one another mutually (in se mutuo eternaliter commanentium), there is yet a true unity of substance in those same persons incomparably and universally super-exceeding every created unity or simplicity, in which those very persons are gathered together immutably, eternally, and consubstantially without any confusion of those persons.114

The Son’s and Spirit’s co-equal, co-eternal sharing in the Father’s plenitude of goodness thus constitutes the co-indwelling or coinherence of the Trinitarian persons, a mutual perichoresis, and thus also the unity of the divine essence. Fifth, as noted at the outset of this chapter, this intra-trinitarian, pleromatic dynamism is also a synthetic expansion—fusing both Dionysius and Richard—on the New Testament claim that God is love. Commenting on the famous passage of Divine Names, Chapter 4, where Dionysius argues for the essential identity in God of both eros and agape, or in the Latin translation, of amor and caritas, Gallus glosses the Dionysian claim as an intra-trinitarian act of the Father’s pleromatic generation of the Son: “And so, the good amor, namely, the all-exceeding fullness of charity (plenitudo caritatis) existing eternally

110

111 Expl-MT 3.37.56–9. Expl-DN 2.137.527–8. Gallus then cinches his point with a battery of scriptural texts: “Hence Jn. 14:11: ‘Believe you not that I am in the Father and the Father in me?’ and Jn. 1:1: ‘In the beginning was the Word: and the Word was with God: and the Word was God.’ And Jn. 17:21: ‘as you, Father, in me, and I in you’ and Jn. 10:38: ‘that you may know and believe that the Father is in me and I in the Father.’ ” 113 114 Expl-MT 3.37.60–1. Expl-DN 2.138.532–7. 112

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in the good Father, DID NOT ALLOW IT TO REMAIN WITHOUT GERMINATION (germine), that is, of the Son.”115 In nearly the same breath, Gallus can also put the same claim in Richard of St. Victor’s terms: since it is necessary that amor tend toward another such that caritas may be able to exist, and the highest and ordered charity could not be had unless [tending] toward that which is to be most highly loved and consequently to the highest good, it is necessary that the consortium (consortio) of the highest good, and consequently of the eternal and divine persons, not lack a certain divine person, namely the Father, who receives something from no one, but subsists in his own auctoritas, [and] namely, the Son, who receives from the Father whatever he has or is.116

Whether in Dionysian or Ricardian terms, the Gallusian insight/ intuition regarding the pleromatic Trinity is the same: As “the most universal fullness of true goodness,”117 the Trinity is a dynamic rhythm of self-giving and self-receiving love. Sixth, and last, Gallus’ preferred image of pleromatic divine love, following Dionysius, is that of a circle: “DIVINE LOVE IS REVEALED to be WITHOUT END IN ITSELF, that is, an interminability and eternity of its divinity, DIFFERING from every other love, NOT HAVING A BEGINNING . . . just as in a circle there is found neither beginning nor end.”118 But, departing from (or, more charitably, going beyond) the Areopagite, Gallus posits an explicitly Trinitarian circle. Again, glossing Divine Names (Chapter 4) and commenting on the Dionysian phrase THE INDIVISIBILITY OF THE ALL-CREATIVE DEITY, Gallus observes: “For all the lines of a circle terminate in the most simple and 115

Expl-DN 4.230.1255. Expl-DN 4.230.1246: “Item cum in prima causa sit plenitudo bonitatis et per consequens caritatis, et necesse sit ut amor in alterum tendat ut caritas esse queat, nec summa et ordinata caritas nisi erga summe diligendum et per consequens summe bonum haberi possit, oportet diuinam aliquam personam, Patris scilicet, qui a nullo aliquid accipit sed propria auctoritate subsistit, summe bone et per consequens eterne et diuine persone consortionon carere, scilicet Filli, qui a Patre accipit quicquid habet uel existit.” 117 Expl-DN 4.245.1637: “the theologians CALL HIM, God, LOVABLE AND DESIRABLE, AS THE GOOD AND BEAUTIFUL, that is, in as much as he himself is the most universal fullness of true goodness and true beauty (vere bonitatis et vere pulcritudinis uinversalissima plenitudo) . . . ” 118 Expl-DN 4.247.1679–82: “OSTENDITUR DIVINUS AMOR esse INTERMINABLE SUI IPSIUS, id est interminabilitas et eternitas ipsius diuinitatis, DIFFERENTER ab omni alio amore, NON HABENS PRINCIPIUM propter dictam reuolutionem, sicut in circulo non est inuenire finem aut principium.” 116

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indivisible center. . . . As if (emphasis added) [Dionysius] had said: I have given an example of the indivisible participation of the divine persons in the center of the circle (emphasis added).”119 In the several prologues to his commentaries on the Song of Songs, Gallus gives a similar interpretation to the famous passage in Divine Names (Chapter 4), where Dionysius refers to divine Love as “a sort of everlasting circle whirling round in unerring combination, by reason of the Good, from the Good, and in the Good, and to the Good, and ever proceeding, and remaining, and returning in the same and throughout the same.”120 To Gallus, it is simply self-evident that Dionysius speaks of the “whirling around (convolutione) of the holy and singular Trinity (emphasis added).”121

CONCLUSION In the light of the foregoing, it seems quite likely that Gallus’ pleromatic Trinity is a crucial moment in the development of the thirteenth-century Franciscan tradition of Trinitarian theology, a vital chapter in the narrative running from Richard of St. Victor to Bonaventure. Regardless of how precisely Gallus figures in that narrative, though, his Trinitarian theology introduces and adumbrates what might best be called a “principle of plenitude” animating his entire corpus, namely, a deep and abiding intuition that God is an aboriginal Abundance, an eternal Fontality, which accounts for the Trinitarian God and, as will be seen in subsequent chapters, everything else. Since the pleromatic Trinity is ultimately an ecstatic plenitudo of self-donation and self-reception, of ecstatic self-exceeding and enstatic self-receiving, all created reality, including the human soul, insofar as reflects its Source, will be characterized similarly.

119 Expl-DN 4.145.755–146.770: “Omnes enim linee circuli in simplicissimo et indiuisibili centro terminantur. . . . EXCEDIT AUTEM etc., quasi dicat: exemplificaui de diuinarum personarum indiuisibili participatione in centro circuli.” 120 DN 4.14. 121 Cmm2-CC Prol.67: “ . . . in divinam monadem, a qua convolutione sancte et unice Trinitatis in seipsam prodierunt, idem: ‘sicut quidam eternus circulus, etc. usque restitutus.’ ”

2 Plethoric Diffusion in Creation INTRODUCTION For Thomas Gallus, ecstatic plenitudo does not merely constitute what the triune God is in se; it also explains why there is anything other than the Trinity and why all that is not-God has the mode of being it has; finally, it explains and governs the relation between God and all that is not God. That is to say: the pleromatic God is not only ecstatic and utterly self-diffusing in se, but for that very reason is also the Source and Goal of all that is not-God, which comes forth from and, as will be explained below, returns to God.

PLETHORIC TRINITY For Gallus, it is because God is the plenitude of goodness and love (see Chapter 1) that there is anything other than God. The notion of intra-divine ecstasis finds a corollary in, or extension to, the God–world relation. “Love is of so great a power,” he says, paraphrasing The Mystical Theology, that “if one is permitted to speak thus, it draws God out of himself ” toward creation, bridging the ontological chasm dividing them.1 The notion is distinctly Dionysian, and Gallus quotes the Areopagite at length:

1 Expl-MT 1.6.83: “Tante autem uirtutis est dilectio ut non tantum hominem extra se ad Deum sed, si fas est dicere, quasi Deum extra se trahit ad hominem ut in infinitum distantes uniat.”

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it must be said that God, the cause of all things, by the beautiful and good love of all things, through the abundance of his loving goodness, comes to be outside of himself in providence for all existing things and is drawn out of himself by goodness, and by affection, and by love, and he is displaced from being that which is above all things and separated from all things, to being that which is in all things, on account of his [7] ecstasy-causing, super-substantial power, yet not departing from itself.2

Because of his goodness, God is self-exceeding—literally “stands” or “goes” outside of himself—in relating to all that is not God. As Gallus puts it elsewhere: “such is the power of the true love of the good and beautiful that it . . . causes God to go beyond his own nature, as it were, in order to condescend to creatures by proceeding below his nature.”3 For “his goodness alone is the cause of all creation.”4 Glossing the Dionysian phrase that notes how God is “drawn out from himself (extrahitur) to creation BY GOODNESS AND DILECTION AND LOVE,” Gallus offers a Ricardian interpretation of this triad, explaining that this “infinity of his goodness . . . naturally wills to communicate itself ” (que vult naturaliter se communicare) and that this is “the DILECTION AND LOVE of [God’s] inmost natural charity (sue intime naturalis caritatis dilectionem et amorem),”5 and that this drawing of God out of Himself “is the temporal effect of God’s eternal dilection.”6 Following Dionysius, the general framework with which Gallus conceives of the God–world relationship is the classical Neoplatonic triad of “remaining” (manens), “procession” (exitus), and “return” (reditus).7 Never ceasing to be radically transcendent, wholly other 2 Expl-MT 1.6.85–1.7.92: “Vnde Dionysius post predicta subiungit: “Audendum autem et hoc pro ueritate dicere quod et ipse,” scilicet Deus, “omnium causa, pulcro et bono omnium amore, per habundantiam amatiue bonitatis extra se ipsum fit ad omnia existentia prouidentiis et sicut bonitate et dilectione et amore trahitur, et ex eo quod est super omnia et ab omnibus segregatum ad id quod est in omnibus disponitur secundum extasim facientem supersubstantialem uirtutem, a se ipso inegressibilem.” 3 Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.D.119: “tanta est virtus veri amoris boni et pulchri quod non facit homines et angelos excedere naturam propriam ut in Deum ascendant, sed etiam Deum quasi natauram propriam egredi ut ad creaturas quasi infra naturam suam procedendo condescendat.” 4 5 Expl-DN 1.83.805–6. See Richard of St. Victor, De Trinitate, 3.16. 6 Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.D.120. 7 For this theme in Dionysius, see Ysabel de Andia, Henosis: L’union à Dieu chez Denys l’Aréopagite (Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1996), 378, 387–8; W. Beierwaltes, Denken des Einen: Studien zur neuplatonischen Philosophie und ihrer Wirkungsgeschichte (Klosterman: Frankfurt, 1985), 150.

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fullness of goodness, God yet processes “out of” himself into all that is not God and returns “back” to himself:8 divine amor, remaining eternally and immobily in the fullness of its goodness, on account of the requirements of its goodness . . . processes from the very font of its goodness (ex ipso bonitatis fonte) into existing things, which are all good on account of the communication of that goodness; and from those very existing things it is turned back (reflectitur) . . . into that very font of goodness (fontem bonitatem).9

While this dynamic, triadic metaphysic precedes Dionysius, stemming from Plotinus and especially Proclus,10 the Areopagite gave it an original (and pregnant) formulation in terms of the good—ON ACCOUNT OF THE GOOD, FROM THE GOOD, IN THE GOOD, TO THE GOOD— which Gallus glosses in this way: ON ACCOUNT OF THE GOOD:

for there is no other cause of this procession except the divine goodness; FROM THE GOOD: that is, from the font of divine goodness; IN THE GOOD: that is, in the whole totality of things, which is totally good through the communication of this font; TO THE 11 GOOD: that is, to its fontal goodness (emphasis added).

As the emphases above indicate, Gallus consistently appropriates and elaborates the Dionysian intuition in terms of divine “fontality.”12 In his earliest engagement with the CD, he calls God “the font of all 8 Expl-DN 4.248.1701–4: “AND ALWAYS PROCESSING into things, AND REMAINING unmoved, AND RETURNING (restitutus), that is, through the desires of things which it moves, turning them back (reflexus) into itself; IN THE SAME, that is, in its super-simple goodness (in ipsa sua supersimplici bonitate), AND ACCORDING TO THE SAME, that is, according to the same goodness.” 9 Expl-DN 4.247.1686–92: “amor diuinus, in plenitudine sue bonitatis eternaliter et immobiliter persistens, id exigente sua bonitate cui proprium est uocare existentia ad sui ipsius communionem, sicut dicitur AI 4a, procedit ex ipso bonitatis fonte in existentia que omnia ipsa bonitatis communicatione sunt bona; et de ipsis existentibus reflectitur, et ea reflectit per appetitum in ipsum fontem bonitatis.” 10 Note that “procession and return” is Plotinian in origin, while the threefold dynamic, with the addition of “remaining,” is Proclean (see Perl, Theophany, 35). 11 Expl-DN 4.248.1697–1701. 12 Perhaps this theme is inspired by the Dionysian image of liquid in Letter 9, 3 (Parker, 175): “liquid is suggestive of the stream, at once flowing through and to all; eager to advance, and further conducting those who are properly nourished as to goodness, through things variegated and many and divided, to the simple and invariable knowledge of God. Wherefore the divine and spiritually perceived Oracles are likened to dew, and water, and to milk, and wine, and honey; on account of their life-producing power, as in water; and growth-giving, as in milk; and reviving, as in wine; and both purifying and preserving, as in honey. For these things, the Divine

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fullness (fontem omnimode plenitudinis),” who “liberally communicates to others those goods which he possesses,” who is thus “the highest liberality (summa liberalitas)” and “generosity (largitas),” to which is proper “to give whatever great things, whatever good things that can be given and received.”13 This terminology is even more pronounced in his last writings: Because he creates “through an excess of goodness (per bonitatis excessum),”14 God is the “fontal divine goodness” (fontali divina bonitate),15 “the fontal deity” (in fontali deitate),16 the “fullness and font (plenitudinem et fontem) of lights,”17 the “first font of lights” (primo fonte luminum),18 the “fullness of the font of wisdom” (plenitudine fontis sapientie),19 the “fullness and causality of being (plenitudo et causalitas essentie),”20 the “most causal fontality and the most fontal causality (causalissime fontalitatis et fontalis causalitatis).”21 In short, for Gallus, if God in se (“internally” and “within”) is well-characterized as “pleromatic” (cf. Chapter 1), then extra se (“externally” and “without”) God is well-styled as “plethoric”— superabundant, overflowing, excessive. In short, the divine ontology of fontal goodness that constitutes the Trinitarian God in se also accounts, not simply for the very existence of creation, but also for its particular ontological characteristics: Because God is goodness, what is not God comes to be and comes to be precisely as self-communicated divine goodness; because God is goodness, what is not God is good, though not absolutely, but only in so far as it exists; and because God is goodness, what exists by virtue of divine self-communication “desires” to return to the fontal Source from which it came. Created reality is thus “suffused” with the dynamism of procession and return, exitus-reditus, common to Neoplatonic metaphysical schemes from Plotinus to Bonaventure22 and Aquinas.23

Wisdom gives to those approaching it, and furnishes and fills to overflowing, a stream of ungrudging and unfailing good cheer.” 13 14 15 Glss-AH 3.37.51–9. Expl-DN 4.180.20. Expl-DN 4.251.1785. 16 17 Expl-DN 2.162.1221. Expl-DN 1.68.445–6. 18 19 Expl-DN 4.187.181. Expl-DN 1.72.545–6. 20 21 Expl-DN 2.144.711. Expl-DN 2.152.952. 22 Bonaventure, Collations on the Six Days, I.17 (trans. José de Vink. Vol. 5 of Works of Saint Bonaventure (Patterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1970)), 332: “haec est tota nostra metaphysica: de emanatione, de exemplaritate, de consummatione.” 23 M.-D. Chenu, “Le plan de la Somme théologique de saint Thomas,” Revue thomiste 47 (1939): 93–107.

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Simply put, by “procession” Gallus signifies the divine act of selfcommunicating to, or self-sharing with, all that is not God. By proceeding, God exceeds himself, “ecstasicizes,” goes out of God into what is not God. While ad intra the Trinity is constituted by a sharing of goodness among the divine Persons, ad extra the Triune God is a single, unified “first cause,”24 the “donatrix of all divine distributions,”25 the “cause and distributor of all . . . beautiful things.”26 “Each of the divine persons is the cause of all things.”27 As noted, procession is a function of divine goodness, which is naturally self-diffusive of its own plenitude:28 “Divine goodness . . . from the inmost property of its nature . . . most generously communicates itself,”29 just like the physical sun, “a type of its most generous communication” (largissime communicationis).30 For “the plenitude of divine light . . . is to a certain extent signified by the general communication of the sun’s light to visible things.”31 Divine goodness shines “the rays of infinity and the incomprehensible splendors of its beauty, as if offering itself (se quasi deponendo).”32 “Although he is infinite, hidden, and invisible by nature” (i.e. “remaining”), God yet “communicates his goodness to every creature.”33 And “through procession . . . from the eternal fullness of his goodness (de plenitudine eterne sue bonitatis),” God is “communicating himself to every individual EXISTING THING . . . ”34 In relation to all that is not God, Gallus often styles this self-communicating goodness “divine generosity” (divina largitas).35

24

25 26 Expl-DN 4.182.54. Expl-DN 2.165.36. Expl-DN 4.209.721–2. Expl-DN 2.128.248: “Quelibet tamen divina persona est causa omnium.” 28 See CH 4.1 and DN 4.1. Cf. Alexander of Hales, Glossa in quatuor libros sententiarum Petri Lombardi, 4 vols., Bibliotheca Franciscana Scholastica Medii Aevi 12–15 (Quaracchi, 1951–7), I.1.36: “For good is the reason because of which things go forth from him. For he is the highest good, which is diffusive of being without any diminishment.” 29 30 Expl-DN 4.182.52–5. Expl-DN 4.183.83. 31 32 Expl-DN 4.209.733–5. Expl-DN 1.91.1031–3. 33 Expl-DN 1.67.436–7. 34 Expl-DN 4.245.1637. Cf. “the principal goodness and principally distributive of true goods” (Expl-DN 2.165.32–3); and “that very goodness sends out copiously from itself” (Expl-DN 1.104.1376). 35 Expl-DN 2.145.731–2. 27

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Seen “from above,” procession describes divine self-communication to creatures; seen “from below,” procession also describes creaturely participation in God: “communications or participations of divinity to creatures . . . ”36 By proceeding, God brings all that is not God into being; conversely, all creaturely existence is a function of its participation in that procession. But because only God is fullness (plenitudo), creaturely participation is always limited, partial, and derivative. As noted in Chapter 1, “divine plenitude . . . is given by the Father to the Son, by the Father and the Son to the Holy Spirit, in order that the highest liberality might be fulfilled (impleretur).” By contrast, “divine goodness . . . communicates itself to creatures and distributes itself according to the capacity of each one” (emphasis added).37 As “fullness of beauty” (pulcritudinis plenitudo), “divine beauty (pulcritudo divina) is found fully in the divinity alone,” while “in any other things made beautiful through participation.”38 Shifting the imagery from the sun to a river, overflowing divine goodness cascades down into various degrees of creaturely participation. For “since they are not able to receive that fullness, creatures partake individually of it, like tributaries and rivulets, according to their own proportion, just like a river, which passing through various wells (puteos) of diverse quantities, fills (implet) all and flows down (influit) from itself into individuals according to their capacity.”39 In this procession, the Trinity grants diverse gifts in varying degrees: “esse, vivere, scire, intelligere, good existence (bonum esse) or blessed existence (beatum esse).”40 Again, “all existing things participate in a manifold variety of ways” in the “life . . . wisdom, beauty, goodness, etc.,” of the divine essence,41 which “causally distributes to all creatures participations in its own beauty, according to the capacity and condition of each individual thing”42 and “with great variation.”43 Following Dionysius, this varied distribution of divine selfcommunication is structured hierarchically. But, as will be seen in Chapter 3, Gallus does not much emphasize either the general hierarchy of angelic and human beings in creation, or even the ecclesiastical hierarchy of orders and offices within the Church.44 Rather, he

36 38 40 42 44

37 Expl-DN 1.84.819. Expl-DN 2.136.497–500. 39 Expl-DN 4.208.690. Glss-AH IIII.37.63–38.67. 41 Expl-DN 2.145.751. Expl-DN 2.159.1125–7. 43 Expl-DN 4.209.727–9. Expl-DN 4.245.1637. Cf. Lawell, “Qualiter vita.”

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boldly and innovatively pursues an interior hierarchy within the rational creature. Understood thus, creaturely participation, the basis of all creaturely existence, is understood as radical ontological receptivity. Put otherwise, an implication of conceiving of God as pleromatic, as superabundant plenitude, is that by definition all that is not God lacks this fullness and must be conceived as varied, gradated participations in divine goodness, which are always ontologically indigent, always dependent, always needing to receive being from that plethoric Goodness, that “true primordial plenitude, from which not only everyone, but all things have received.”45 The Neoplatonic notion of procession, moreover, allows Gallus to emphasize the constant and continual character of this ontological dependence (creatio continua), in ways that the model of an efficient causal agent, creating at a particular delimited point in a single discrete action, to bring creaturely existence out of nothing, captures perhaps less well. In short, in light of his affirmation of pleromatic divinity, of God-ever-overfull, Gallus’ doctrine of creation entails the inverse notion of creation as always receiving, semper implenda, “always-having-to-be-filled.”46

REMAINING “Yet not departing from itself.” Precisely at the “boundary” between God in se and God extra se the crucial notion of “remaining” emerges. Gallus affirms simultaneously both that God genuinely proceeds out into what is not-God, “outside” of Himself and that God is still radically transcendent, utterly separate, and ontologically removed from creation: “segregated by an infinite excess FROM ALL THOSE THINGS THAT PARTICIPATE 47 IN [HIM].” Put simply, “remaining” names this paradox. 45 Expl-DN 4.210.739–41: “sue proprie et vere primordialis plenitudinis, de qua non solum omnes sed omnia accipiunt.” Gallus continues: “And everywhere fount (fons) is understood to be the Word of God, to whom rightly applies what is said here.” 46 See in this regard the suggestive texts of Col. 2:9–10: For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead (inhabitat omnis plenitudo divinitatis) corporeally. And you are filled in him (estis in illo repleti), who is the head of all principality and power, and of Eph. 3:19: “To know also the charity of Christ, which surpasses all knowledge: that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God” (ut impleamini in omnem plenitudinem Dei). 47 Expl-DN 2.140.604–5.

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Glossing the claim in The Divine Names that God IS DIFFERENTIATED Gallus explains:

IN A UNIFIED WAY,

remaining in its most simple unity, [GOD] MOVES INTO PLURALITY through the participation of all existing things, SINGULARLY, that is, by remaining in its singularity; AND IS MULTIPLIED by communicating such various things FROM ITS ONE simple, universal font BY-A-NOT-GOING-OUT (inegressibliter); that is, through its procession to all things it never departs from itself.48

In procession, paradoxically, God acts inegressibiliter, in-a-notgoing-out-manner.49 That is, He does not depart from himself. Gallus’ concern seems to be to protect, as it were, divine unity and simplicity, to insist on the transcendent integrity of the divine nature, which he construes in terms of both undiminished plenitude, amidst the profusion of self-communication, and of divine simplicity and unity, which is neither fragmented nor sundered by its manifold selfdistribution: SINCE GOD EXISTS SUPER-SUBSTANTIALLY, HE GIVES BEING TO EXISTING THINGS out of his super-substantial fullness (de sua supersubstantiali plenitudine) . . . and he is FULL (plenum), that is, because in his fullness to all, AMID THE DIFFERENTIATION . . . no division of existing things is able to divide his simplicity, no participation [by existing things is able] to diminish his fullness. For as he communicates himself to innumerable things, he is able to fill (implere) the whole universe and each individual thing by his distribution without [160] diminution . . . . FOR GOD IS NOT DIMINISHED by the copiously and manifoldly distributed EFFUSION . . . [and] THAT DISTRIBUTION CANNOT BE LESSENED, neither in its fontal source nor in its communicability.50

48

Expl-DN 2.159.1129–33. Cf. Dionysius, CH 1.2 (Parker, 2): “For it never loses its own unique inwardness, but multiplied and going forth . . . remains firmly and solitarily centered within itself in its unmoved sameness.” 50 Expl-DN 2.159.1135–160.1154: “SUPERSUBSTANTIALITER EXISTENS, DAT AUTEM de sua supersubstantiali plenitudine ESSE EXISTENTIBUS . . . . Et est PLENUM, id est cum omni sua plenitudine, IN DISCRETION, . . . nulla existentium diuisio possit eius simplicitatem diuidere, nulla participatio eius plenitudinem diminuere. Dum enim innumerabilibus se communicat, uniuersa et singula potest suis distributionibus implere sine alterius uel aliorum diminutione . . . . ET QUOD NON MINORATUR per copiosam et multiplicem distributionem EFFUSION, id est largitas, DISTRIBUTIONUM IPSIUS NON MINORABILIUM neque in fonte neque in communicabilitate.” 49

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“Remaining” refers to the maintenance of divine simplicity and unity in the very act of ecstatic self-communication of its own excessive plenitude. So conceived, “remaining” is ultimately a description of divine transcendence: God is “in-flowing (influens) being to all things out of [his] own eternity, yet in no way implicated by their temporality” (nihil tamen temporalitatis ab eis contrahens);51 God “is without form among those things that are formed, as transcending form through excess (per excessum).”52 While in general Gallus follows Dionysius in his understanding of “remaining,”53 he appropriates it uniquely by his use of two seemingly incompatible notions, namely, divine exemplarism and divine simplicity. According to the first, the “ideas” of all that God has created (and could have but has not created54) exist eternally in the divine mind, more precisely, in the Word. Noting this notion’s venerable pedigree, Gallus calls these the “intelligible, eternal reasons (intelligibiles rationes eterne) of every creature, which are in the Word, which Plato called ‘ideas,’ and Dionysius [calls] ‘archetypes’ or ‘exemplaria’ (in On the Divine Names, Chapter 5: ‘the rationes of existing things’), and likewise ‘images’ (DN 7).”55 “All things,” he insists, “are written (scripta sunt) eternally, highly, simply in that highest, simple Word, as in the first art.”56 In the imagery of the Song of Songs, “The Word of God is a fountain . . . The vineyards of this fountain are the eternal exemplars of the Word.”57 In the eternal act of generating the Word, the Father thus “speaks” all that he can and will create in time: “the eternal origin of the Son is the proper cause of the procession and creation of all existing things.” So Gallus can say: “[the Father] speaks [the Son], that is, the Father begets his Word, and all things were made through him.”58 In this way, “that all-exceeding eternal generation [of the Word]” is “the archetype or idea or exemplar and cause of the generation and creation and propagation of all the creatures, which are

51

52 Expl-DN 2.156.1060–3. Expl-DN 2.156.1054–60. Cf. DN 5.10. 54 Expl-MT 1.16.306–9: “Existing things [are those things] which came forth (prodierunt) from the Word into being (esse) through creation; those things are called non-existing, which only exist in the super-essential Word, and yet can be contemplated in that Word.” 55 56 Expl-MT 1.26.564–8. Expl-MT 1.10.187–11.189. 57 58 Cmm2-CC 1F.75. Expl-DN 4.230.1255. 53

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created and generated and propagated.”59 Eternal, intra-divine generativity is thus the deep, transcendent basis for temporal, extradivine creativity. Commenting on Eph. 3:14–15: From whom every paternity in heaven and on earth is named, Gallus argues that “whatever has an origin (originem), either temporally or eternally, receives that from the Father; and that the Son and the Holy Spirit are able to provide an origin to creatures, this they have through origin from the Father, which both eternally receive from the Father.”60 This is how Gallus interprets John 1:3, “through him all things were made”: “the Father works all things through the Son”61 through the exemplary ideas, grounded in the very act of the Son’s eternal generation. Strikingly, in a way that seems to anticipate Bonaventure, Gallus suggests that this divine exemplarism of the Word is fully revealed in the Incarnation: The gentile philosophers have investigated this harmony fairly well (non mediocriter), but it was fulfilled (completa est) in the Incarnation of the Word [87] where the highest, the middle, and the lowest were conjoined in one person, who is the fullness of every desirable idea (plenitudo omnis specie desiderabilis), namely, of essence, life, wisdom, goodness, beatitude, etc., and this is a testimony (indicium) of the highest benignity (summe benignitatis).62

By virtue of the eternal exemplars in the divine Word, creation then has a “virtual” (not actual) existence within God. Precisely at this point, Gallus stresses the second aspect of remaining, namely, divine simplicity. Because God is utterly simple—indeed “super-simplex, than which nothing more simple can exist or be conceived”63—the eternal exemplars are not other than the divine nature itself: “in the highest being, living, knowing, goodness and beatitude are all one (unum) and indistinct in that omnipotent wisdom.”64 Strikingly but consistently, Gallus insists that these eternal exemplars or reasons “exist” inegressibiliter in the divine nature. That is, they “do not go out from the hidden divine wisdom to communion 59 Expl-DN 4.230.1261–231.1266: “eterne generationis omnia excedentis, que est archetypia siue idea siue exemplar et causa generationis et creationis et propagationis omnium creaturarum que creantur et generantur et propagantur.” 60 61 Expl-DN 1.86.874–8. Expl-DN 2.127.245. 62 Expl-DN 1.86.888–87.893. 63 Expl-DN 4.253.1850: “supersimplex qua nihil potest esse vel cogitari simplicius.” 64 Expl-DN 2.141.616–18.

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with creatures, but are locked up super-ineffably and super-unknownly in the most secret simplicity of the divine nature . . . ”65 Present in the divine nature thus, they are also known and loved, in the very act by which God knows and loves Godself: “God cognizes created things . . . by cognizing himself to be the cause of all things,”66 and “loving all things in himself (se ipso amans omnia), since in himself there is nothing which is not he himself.”67 Accordingly, the God–World relationship is already virtually “structured” as it were within the divine simplicity, before proceeding into real existence. By “uniting artfully in itself the multiplicity of all things in the highest simplicity of the Word,” the divine nature “pre-contains all temporal things eternally.”68 In God there is already “that single paternal providence, most highly simple (summe simplici), which causes all things.”69 In light of his insistence on both divine exemplarity and simplicity Gallus’ doctrine of “remaining” entails a third notion, namely, “stability”—the immobility or motionlessness of God in relation to what is not God: “Existing fixedly and immobile in his goodness, super-essentially and eternally, God processes out through the communication of his goodness, without any mutation of himself.”70 Not that God is inert; quite the contrary, as noted, Gallus’ conceives of the Trinity as essentially dynamic self-communication. But, paired with the doctrine of divine simplicity,71 divine “movement” is so utterly self-consistent as to render it absolutely stable and immutable: For he himself is the most highly stable mover and movement, hence in Sap. 7:22–23 God is called mobile and stable; and ACTING THROUGH HIMSELF, that is, by himself and his own power, and prior to every

65 Expl-DN 2.136.493–5: “nec de occulto diuine sapientie ad creature communionem egrediuntur, sed superineffabili et superignota diuine nature simplicitate secretissime concluduntur.” 66 67 Expl-DN 1.63.349–64.350. Expl-DN 4.246.1661–2. 68 Expl-DN 1.114.1609–12: “SIMPLICITER in summe simplici Verbo omnium multiplicitates in se arte coadunans; INCIRCUMFINITE, id est eternaliter omnia temporalia preaccepit.” 69 Expl-DN 1.114.1617–18. 70 Expl-DN 4.247.1674–7: “Deus in sua bonitate superessentialiter et eternaliter existens fixe et immobiliter, sine ulla sui mutatione ad existentia per sue bonitatis communicationem procedit.” 71 Expl-DN 4.246.1662–4: “ . . . for that reason the movement is SIMPLEX. For such is the ineffable simplicity of God that it is impossible to conceive of something simpler than that omnipotent wisdom.”

Plethoric Diffusion in Creation procession of goodness, PRE-EXISTING IN substantial and super-natural nature.72

GOODNESS,

67

as in his own super-

Divine movement is entirely self-contained, occurring per se. Pairing Sap. 7:22-24 (wisdom is both mobilis and stabilis) with Boethius (“remaining stable, [wisdom] gives movement to all”73), Gallus notes that “movement (motus) is attributed to God” because “the plenitude of power (plenitudo virtutis) . . . does not move from its pristine state but makes it active with great fervor.”74 In short, the Trinity is at perfect rest, not in the sense of being static, but in the sense of supreme stability. In relation to all else, its own “interior” pleromatic goodness is a motionless dynamism that fecundates all created motion, a fertile simplicity from which issues forth all complexity.75

RETURN Because all things exist by virtue of their participation in the divine procession, they are, for Gallus, following Dionysius, also suffused with a desire to return to their Source. This is the third aspect of this metaphysical scheme, namely, “return” (reditus) or reversion. Defining the relevant Dionysian term, RETURNING (restitutus), Gallus explains that this occurs “through the desires of things which [the Good] stirs, turning them back (reflexus) into itself.”76 But to put it thus, as often happens, risks implying that return is chronologically posterior to procession, in a kind of temporal succession of moments. This is not the case. Rather, “return” is an ontological posture, stance, or orientation of all existing things toward their source: “AND AGAIN through the desire of existing things [for the good] TURNED BACK in Expl-DN 4.246.1664–247.1668: “Ipse est enim motor et motus summe stabilis, unde Sap. 7, dicitur et mobilis et stabilis; et PER SE OPERANS, id est se ipso et propria uirtute, et ante omnem bonitatis processum, PREEXISTENTS IN BONO, tamquam in propria supersubstantiali et supernaturali natura.” 73 Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy III.67. 74 Expl-DN 1.55.138–40. 75 Gallus also applies the same principle to the Incarnation: Expl-DN 2.158.1096–7: “WITH RESPECT TO HIS SUPER-FULLNESS HE SUFFERING NOTHING, that is, he suffered no diminution of his super-substantial fullness (supersubstantialis plenitudinis), FROM THAT INEFFABLE SELF-EMPTYING, that is, from the fact that ineffably he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave (Phil. 2:7) . . . ” 76 Expl-DN 4.248.1702. 72

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those very existing things TOWARD THE GOOD, that is, to that very super-natural goodness.”77 All created things have a built-in, ontological “backward glance” or “upward inclination” toward the Good. Crucially, this is not subsequent to procession, but simultaneous with it, both logically and chronologically. The nature of the good, which for Gallus explains God’s ecstatic act of procession because of the good’s natural self-diffusiveness, also provides the logic of return, but now on the basis of the other classical attribute of the good, namely, its natural and essential attractiveness and desirability:78 God himself is the most universal fullness of true goodness and true beauty (vere bonitatis et vere pulcritudinis uinversalissima plenitudo), naturally attractive in itself to the appetite of all things, since the good and beautiful . . . are naturally desirable and draw to themselves (in se trahit) the appetite and desires of things capable of loving.79

So, all things are “drawn, pulled, dragged” toward the Good, and for rational creatures, this is experienced as the natural attractiveness or beauty of the Good: He shows why the divine light is called “beautiful”: HENCE, IT IS ALSO CALLED “BECKONING” (kallos), and is called beautiful (pulcrum), BECAUSE IT GATHERS, etc., that is, it contains and unites in its selfsame simplex fount of all things, all beautiful things and all the beauties of all beautiful things, however much they differ and are dispersed among themselves.80

Crucially, the movement of return is fundamentally an erotic, desirous activity on the part of all that is not God. In this Neoplatonic schema, all things have a “built-in” desire to return to their source. 77

Expl-DN 4.247.1672–4. Cf. Etienne Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure (Paterson, NJ: Franciscan Press), 1965, 163: “God is good; and the good is essentially defined by two properties, productivity and finality. Good tends naturally of itself to expand itself, to outpour itself, to diffuse itself: bonum dicitur diffusivum sui; and it is at the same time the end to which everything else is ordered: bonum est propter quod omnia.” 79 Expl-DN 4.245.1637: “ipse est uere bonitatis et uere pulcritudinis uniuersalissima plenitudo, omnium appetituum naturaliter in se attractiua, quia bonum et pulcrum, in quantum est tale, naturaliter est amabile et in se trahit appetitus et desideria amantium.” 80 Expl-DN 4.210.752–60: “Deinde ostendit quare diuinum lumen dicatur pulcrum: VNDE ET KALLOS DICITUR, et pulcrum dicitur, SICVT CONGREGANS etc., id est omnia pulcra et omnium pulcrorum omnes pulcritudines, quantumlibet in se ipsis dispergantur et differant, in se simplici fonte omnium unit et continet.” 78

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For rational creatures in particular, this erotic impulse takes the form of self-conscious and intentional love. In effect, this places the entire rational creature and all its capacities and movements, even that of its intellective or rational part, under an overarching affective penumbra, as it were. It is also crucial to point out here that this ontological posture of return or reversion is itself, just as is the case for procession, an act of creaturely participation in the Creator, as Gallus notes in this brief gloss: “CALLING ALL THINGS TO ITSELF, that is, to participation (emphasis added) in itself.”81

ECSTATIC CIRCULARITY AD EXTRA: CREATION FROM, IN, AND BY DIVINE LOVE AS SOURCE AND GOAL At one point, glossing a passage in Divine Names (Chapter 4), Gallus characteristically sums up his reflections on this Dionysian metaphysic of procession, remaining, and return, in terms of the dynamic fontality of the good: THROUGH ITSELF, that is, by its own authorship and power (auctoritate et virtute) MOVED of itself, as was said above; FROM THE GOOD, that is, from the fullness of divine goodness, ALL THE WAY TO THE EXTREME OF EXISTING THINGS, AND AGAIN, conversely, TURNS BACK TO ITSELF FROM ALL THOSE THINGS, that is, from the extreme of all existing things, IN SEQUENCE, that is, one by one, THROUGH EVERYTHING in the middle TO THE first fontal (primum fontem) GOOD . . . 82

Famously, in that same chapter of Divine Names, Dionysius had expressed this metaphysics of the good in terms of love, insisting on the deep unity in God of “agapic” and “erotic” love, viewed as two manifestations or dimensions of a single divine reality. Following the Areopagite, Gallus adopts this singular divine love to be the fontal 81 Expl-DN 4.210.752–60. It is perhaps noteworthy here that return also entails the notion of completion or perfection of the creature: the reditus perfects all things: “It is LEADING THE MULTITUDE to being, AND PERFECTING [IT] through better being (per melius esse), AND CONTAINING [IT] through conservation in being, since it itself is a simple unity (simplex unitas)” (Expl-DN 2.160.1168–70). 82 Expl-DN 4.253.1847.

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center of his account of God’s extra-divine activity: “Then Dionysius shows how both kinds of amor, gathered together, can be reduced to the one and simple and fontal divine amor (unum et simplicem et fontalem divinum amorem) from which all other loves (amores) originate.”83 Those loves not only originate, but also return to that singular divine love: “GATHERING THOSE two INTO ONE super-substantial amor of God” is “the principal amor, to which all other amors are led back as rivers to their font.”84 This metaphysical rhythm of love’s procession and reversion is a function of love’s very nature, as Gallus explains: the nature of amor is to desire the reciprocation of amor (amoris reflexionem). For we desire to be loved by those whom we love: Prov. 8:17: I love them that love me. And this is why God is called amor, because processing out into things, and in processing out according to the natural demand (requisitionem) of amor, moving all things into the act of desiring God, turning (reflectens) AS THE UPLIFTING POWER AND GOOD 85 PROCESSION all things reflexively TO HIMSELF.

Again: “the power of divine amor, processing (procedens) to all things and causing the loves (amores) of all things.”86 And: “a twofold power of amor, namely, its processive [power] (processivam) toward all things, and its reflexive [power] (reflexivam) of all things to their principle.”87 For Gallus, the “agapic” is manifest ad extra as divine benevolence, an eager willingness to share goodness and to self-communicate it to another: “the highest and absolutely perfect benevolence (benevolentia) requires that . . . temporal things [receive eternal plenitude] temporally . . . ”88 The “erotic” on the other hand is the inherent attractiveness and desirability of the divine goodness and beauty, turning all things back to itself. These might be called “benevolent bestowals” and “erotic reversions.” In short, for Gallus, the “circular dynamic” of the fontal Trinity itself is shared with creation. “Therefore divine amor is likened to a circle . . . ”89 and “all the lines [146] of a circle terminate in the most simple and indivisible center.”90 A fine summary of this notion is found in his Third Commentary on the Song of Songs, where Gallus says that God is called . . . 83 85 87 89

Expl-DN 4.250.1754. Expl-DN 4.246.1649–57. Expl-DN 4.252.1830. Expl-DN 4.247.1685.

84 86 88 90

Expl-DN 4.253.1847. Expl-DN 4.253.1837. Expl-DN 4.230.1255. Expl-DN 2.145.755–146.760.

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the good, proceeding simply from the highest love and truly from a unity, remaining separated from all things, and (also) reaching to all things; moving in himself, acting in himself, pre-existing substantially in the good from the good, he emanates to existing things and is converted back to the good; in which the divine love is shown to be like an eternal circle having its own interminability (interminabilitatem) and lacking (carentiam) a beginning point of its circumference on account of the good, from the good and to the good, through a kind of unerring circulation.91

CONCLUSION Famously, St. Bonaventure summed up his entire conception of reality in terms of the Dionysian triad of procession, remaining, and return: “this is the sum total of our metaphysics concerned with emanation, exemplarity, and consummation.”92 The same claim applies equally to our Victorine. Straddling the boundary between God and the world, between Creator and creation, between absolute ontological plenitude and absolute ontological indigence is the plethoric divine act of self-diffusive goodness ad extra, “outside” of God into all that is not God—indeed constituting all that is not God. In this light, the triad of procession, remaining, and return can be viewed from two vantage points, namely, with respect to God and with respect to all that is not God. In terms of the first, “procession” names an ecstatic act of divine self-communication; “return” acknowledges the fact that divine goodness not only self-communicates ad extra, but also draws and attracts all that is ad extra “back” to itself, as the good/beautiful “calls” unto it to return: “God . . . processes out through the communication of his goodness, . . . and moves their appetites through the participation of his goodness to the desiring of his fontal fullness ( fontalis 91 Cmm3-CC 1D.126: “bonus processus summe simpliciter amativus sive vere unitatis ab omnibus segregate et ad omnia proveniens; per se mobilis, per se operans, preexistens supersubstantialiter in bono ex bono, ad existentia emanat et rursum ad bonum convertitur; in quo divinus amor monstratur sicut quidam eternus circulus habens sui interminabilitatem et principii carentiam circumambulantis propter bonum, ex bono, et ad bonum per quamdam circulationem non errantem.” 92 Bonaventure, Collations on the Six Days, 1, 13, 17 (V, 331–2).

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plenitudinis) . . . ”93 Again: “For indeed the ray of the sun is poured over (superfusus) all things, as if it invited all inferior things to communion with itself.”94 For its part, “remaining” describes the maintenance, as it were, of divine transcendence and of a radical distinction between Creator and creation, even as procession and return “imbed” the creating Trinity within the very foundation of creation. Gallus’ doctrine of divine “remaining” is crucial: Precisely as and by “remaining,” God proceeds. There is only fecundity and generativity “outside” of God because within the Triune God these remain. At the same time, “remaining” is the best vantage point for appreciating Gallus’ teaching on exemplarism (in a way that anticipates Bonaventure, as noted above). The exemplars are both present without differentiation in the simplicity of the Creator, specifically in the divine Person of the Word, as well as being present in the diversified multiplicity of created things. It is the exemplars, then, that establish a kind of “bridge” between the transcendent Trinity and creation, a bridge that is fundamentally Christological. Ultimately, “remaining” is a description of God’s relationship to all that is not God. It is because God “remains” transcendent, wholly other, separate, that God can be both fecund Source and Cause as well as desirable Goal and attracting End of all that is not God. Transcendent, divine “remaining” is key, then, to the entire exitus–reditus structure and dynamism of the God–World relationship. If, moreover, “remaining” describes the paradox in which God remains within himself even as he proceeds out of himself, “procession” names the paradox by which in communicating himself ad extra, God does so in such a way that what comes to exist is not in any way God. Paired with “remaining,” then, “procession” facilitates a conception of divine immanence or presence within creation that avoids any form of pantheism or panentheism. God is in all things such that He in no way is any of those things, nor are they him. For “as the Cause of all things it is necessary to attribute to him every form and figure and essence and altogether every creature, but to attribute nothing to him as a subject” (tamquam subiecto).95 In short, divine “remaining” illumines the God–World relationship from the divine

93 95

Expl-DN 4.247.1674–8. Expl-MT 1.22.436–9.

94

Expl-DN 4.210.752–60.

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side by explaining how the world is present in God without in any way being God: since [the Trinity] incomprehensibly fills (impleat) all things . . . BUT IT REMAINS . . . in order to assert that THE TRINITY IS IN ALL EXISTING THINGS beyond our mode of cognition, which cannot see mentally how it exists in something until we see how it exists. Yet [the Trinity] is said to be in existing things FROM AN INFINITY WHICH IS ABOVE ALL THINGS AND COMPREHENDS ALL THINGS, that is, on account of the infinity of its plenitude which exceeds all things and contains and comprehends all things.96

In terms of the second the procession-remaining-reversion triad illumines the Creator–Creation relationship from the world side, by explaining both how the creation comes to exist and how God is present in and to the creation without in any way being the creation. Here, Gallus is concerned to protect the integrity of creation as wholly other than God, even as creation comes to exist as a function of divine self-communication. For its part, “procession” names the relationship of absolute ontological dependence of the creation upon the Creator, the fact that at its core the creature is constituted as a perpetual act of reception of being, that the creature is always and essentially “having to be filled” (implenda); “return” portrays the intimate relationship between God and not-God in which the latter is intrinsically and continually oriented “back” towards its divine Source; and “remaining” captures how, precisely in the twin acts and dynamic parallelism of procession and return, of participation and attraction, the creature is “suspended” over the abyss of non-being. For present purposes, it is the creaturely side of this that now assumes center stage. In light of the foregoing, it can be said that creaturely participation in God is both passive and active, both receptive and initiating; more precisely and paradoxically, creatures are simultaneously both: they are actively passive and passively active; they constantly receive their dynamic activity. The spatial metaphors of descent and ascent evoke this: what “flows down into” creatures is precisely their upward-thrusting dynamism.97

96

Expl-DN 2.167.97–105. The foregoing chapter raises, of course, the question of God’s freedom to create or not to create, which, unfortunately, Gallus does not seem to address directly or explicitly. 97

3 Receptive and Ecstatic Human Nature INTRODUCTION For Thomas Gallus, the metaphysical dynamism that suffuses all of created reality generally and thus provides the basic framework for the relationship between God and all that is not God (see Chapter 2), has a particular manifestation in rational creatures, especially in the human creature. His theological anthropology, that is to say, is shaped by and well-integrated within his account of created reality generally. This chapter treats Gallus’ unique and crucial conception of human nature. No explicit theological anthropology comes down from Dionysius.1 By pursuing the matter at all, Gallus fills a lacuna in the Dionysian system. At the same time, Gallus’ anthropology is distinctly Dionysian— it is in some sense a conception of the human which Dionysius should have held. The central claim of this chapter is that Gallus’ theological anthropology is Dionysian in two ways, though ultimately these coalesce into one. First, for Gallus, human existence is constituted by the same three dimensions of Dionysian metaphysics noted in Chapter 2, namely, procession, return, and remaining. Seen from the perspective of the rational creature, “from below” or from within the rational creature (rather than from “from above” or outside, so to speak), these dimensions acquire a distinct expression. Here, metaphysical procession

1 In the Divine Names, Dionysius claims to have written a treatise called On the Soul, which presumably would have provided his theological anthropology, but this treatise is unknown (perhaps never written), outside of this reference. McGinn, Foundations of Mysticism, 161: “There is little theological anthropology as such in his surviving writings, though one is surely implied.”

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(exitus) takes the form of a descending movement within the soul and a radical receptivity for receiving the divine “inflowing” from above. For Gallus, the creature is constituted as a creature just in so far as it receives “from above” and it is radically “upwardly postured” as it were, opened to receive all that it has, all that it is, ex Deo. Metaphysical return (reditus) for its part finds its anthropological expression in an ascending movement, an upward thrusting, ultimately self-transcending or ecstatic movement of the soul ad Deum and in Deum, that is, toward, to, and into God. Metaphysical remaining (residuus), finally, corresponds to the fact that precisely through these simultaneously receptive and ecstatic modes of being, or by these states of receptivity and ecstasy, the rational creature achieves a state of ontological order, stability and simplicity, which enables it (following a Victorine intuition going back to Hugh of St. Victor)2 to be related ideally and as it were maximally to God, by becoming a place of divine indwelling, a temple for the presence of God.3 Second, Gallus concretely expresses this dynamic, threedimensional anthropology by conceiving of the soul quite literally as a “hierarchy” in the specific Dionysian sense of the term,4 namely, “a sacred order, a state of understanding, and an activity approximating as closely as possible to the divine.”5 Crucially, for Dionysius, hierarchy in the most basic sense (whether angelic or human) mediates the “downward” flow of divine self-communication from God toward creatures and the “upward,” ultimately deifying, movement of creatures back toward God. But here Gallus innovates, as he appropriates in particular Dionysius’ conception of the celestial or angelic hierarchy as a model for understanding the basic nature and structure of the human soul, along with its capacities and activities. Put simply, Gallus “angelizes” the human soul as he conceives of the entire

2 See Boyd Taylor Coolman, The Theology of Hugh of St. Victor: An Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 225–30. 3 This corresponds with McGinn’s overall thesis regarding Christian mysticism (cf. Foundations of Mysticism, 3–8). 4 In fact, the very term “hierarchia” is of Dionysian coinage and “one of the most potent neologisms in the history of Christian thought” (McGinn, Foundations of Mysticism, 164). 5 CH 3.1 (Luibheid, 153–4). Parker’s translation renders the passage thus: “a sacred order and science and operation, assimilated, as far as attainable, to the likeness of God, and conducted to the illuminations granted to it from God, according to capacity, with a view to the Divine imitation” (Parker, 13).

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angelic hierarchy as the macrocosmic model of the individual microcosm, namely, the soul. A parallel relationship thus emerges between the exitus–reditus dynamism of created reality generally (see Chapter 2) and the hierarchical structure of each individual soul. The same ascending– descending dynamism is present in both. Or better, the angelic “hierarchization” of human souls or minds is simply the particular expression in rational creatures of the exitus–reditus paradigm of all creation generally. This conception of the soul as a Dionysian hierarchy is foundational for Gallus’ whole mystical theology.

ANGELIC HUMANITY In one of his earliest works, his Commentary on Isaiah6 (written in 1218 in Paris at St. Victor, before he went to Vercelli), Gallus indulged a typically Victorine architectural metaphor for his anthropology, comparing the soul itself, along with its powers and acts, respectively, to the foundation, the super-structure built upon it, and finally the adorning roof or covering of an entire structure. Soon, though, his attention turned to the Dionysian Corpus and the significance of angels therein. Angels are an immensely important part of the Dionysian universe, and Dionysius wrote an entire treatise, entitled On the Celestial Hierarchy, on the topic. As that title suggests, the angelic world is constituted as a hierarchy, with nine different grades of angelic beings, divided into three distinct triads, each with its own particular name, office, and activity. For Dionysius, the entire angelic hierarchy plays an indispensable role in mediating between God “above” it and the realm of human creatures “below” it, including The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (the title of another Dionysian treatise). While the Dionysian conception of angels and their hierarchical role is foreign enough to modern readers, Gallus’ use of it is prima facie even more bizarre. Taking his cue from a comment at the end of the Celestial Hierarchy,7

6 For a modern critical edition, see G. Théry, “Commentaire sur Isaïe de Thomas de Saint-Victor,” La vie spirituelle 47 (1936): 146–62. 7 Cf. CH 10.3 (Parker, 42): “I might add this not inappropriately, that each heavenly and human mind has within itself its own special first, and middle, and last ranks, and powers, manifested severally in due degree, for the aforesaid particular

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Gallus posits an analogous hierarchical structure within the human soul itself: a “profound mystery (profundum mysterium) . . . namely, that the aforesaid distinction of the hierarchies and orders can be found in every angelic and human mind (mente).”8 Or, as he puts it at the beginning of his commentaries on the Song of Songs, where this anthropology figures centrally: “But for the understanding of this exposition it is necessary to set forth an explanation of this sentence from the Celestial Hierarchy: ‘I will also add this not unsuitably, that each celestial and human mind has specific first, middle, and last orders and added virtues according to each one of the illuminations of the hierarchies, etc’.”9 This “angelization” of the human mind,10 is as follows: The lowest triad of the hierarchy (1-Angels, 2-Archangels, 3-Principalities) corresponds to the basic nature of the soul and its wholly natural capacities and activities. The middle triad of the hierarchy (4-Powers, 5-Virtues, 6-Dominions) relates to the soul’s natural capacities and activities as they are assisted by grace, and involves “effort, which incomparably exceeds nature.” The highest triad of the hierarchy (7-Thrones, 8-Cherubim, 9-Seraphim) is the realm of grace above nature, and involves “ecstasy” in the literal sense of transcending the mind itself (excessus mentis).11 As he put it elsewhere: “In the first, nature works alone; in the highest, only grace; in the middle, grace

mystical meanings of the Hierarchical illuminations, according to which, each one participates, so far as is lawful and attainable to him, in the most spotless purification, the most copious light, the pre-eminent perfection.” In Letter 8, Dionysius instructs one Demophilus to “give the appropriate place to desire, to anger, and to reason” (Luibheid, 276), and in so doing “almost in passing,” he “refers to hierarchical subdivisions within each being” (see the discussion in Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 23). 8 Expl-AH 10.632.90. 9 Cmm2-CC Prol.66: “In order to understand this explanation of the [Song of Songs], it is necessary to set down first the meaning of the statement in the Celestial Hierarchy that: ‘each intelligent being, heavenly or human, has its own set of primary, middle, and lower orders and powers’ . . . ” (Ad huius vero expositionis intelligentiam necessario premittenda est explanatio illius sententie, AH 10: addam et hoc non inconvenienter quod secundum seipsam unaqueque et celestis et humana mens speciales habet et primas et medias et ultimas ordinationes et virtutes . . .). Essentially the same statement is also found in both prologues to the Third Commentary. 10 Gallus here greatly expands an intuition of his Victorine predecessors, especially Richard of St. Victor’s use of angelic modes of being in human contemplation. See Steven Chase, Angelic Wisdom: The Cherubim and the Grace of Contemplation in Richard of St. Victor (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995). 11 Cmm2-CC Prol.67.

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and industry work at the same time.”12 According to Gallus himself, this anthropological insight came to him in Paris at St. Victor, before we went to Vercelli around 1219, and remained with him throughout all his works.13

Lowest Triad Gallus is consistently terse regarding the first triad. Yet, his brief descriptions afford an understanding of his basic sense of the nature of the soul. “The first or lowest storey which is the foundation of the others, has for its pavement the soul’s own nature and ascends on high by the triple operation of nature, just as in the temple of Solomon . . . ”14 The three natural operations are “apprehension (apprehensionem), judgment (dictationem), [and] desire and flight (appetitum et fugam).”15 By the first, Gallus seems to refer here to an immediate perception or awareness of extra-mental reality: “The lowest order of the lowest hierarchy, corresponding to the Dionysian angels, contains the first and simple natural apprehensions, as much of intellect as of affect, without any determination of desirability or undesirability (commodi vel incommodi), which, like the angels, that is, messengers, simply declare something to the soul.”16 The second natural operation involves “the judgments or determinations concerning that which has been apprehended,” “whether they are true or false, desirable or undesirable, which is a more sublime operation of

12 Cmm2-CC Prol.66: “In prima operatur sola natura, in summa sola gratia, in media simul operantur gratia et industria.” This statement is also found in both prologues to the Third Commentary. 13 Cmm2-CC Prol.66. “But how these three hierarchies are distributed in individual hierarchic minds (mentibus hierarchicis) . . . I treated seventeen years ago in the cloister of Saint Victor in Paris commenting on Is 6: I saw the Lord seated above the sun, etc. And for the most part I repeated this in commenting on chapter 10 of The Angelic Hierarchy, at the end. But for the present [commentary on the Song of Songs], I will briefly repeat what seems necessary . . . ” (Qualiter autem in singulis mentibus hierarchicis disponantur tres hierarchie . . . ante annos 17 evidenter tractavi in claustro Sancti Victoris Parisius super illud Isaie 6: vidi Dominum sedentum super solium, etc., et pro magna parte repetii super 10 capitulum Hierarchie Angelice, in fine. Ad presens vero, breviter repeto que huic tractatui videntur necessario premittenda . . . ) Essentially the same statement is also found in both prologues to the Third Commentary. 14 Expl-AH 10.633.126: “Prima siue infima mansio, que aliarum est fundamentum, habet ipsam anime naturam et in altum assurgit super trinam nature operationem, iuxta quod in templo Salomonis . . . ” 15 16 Expl-AH 10.633.133. Cmm3-CC Prol.F.108.

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nature, fuller and greater than announcing,”17 so “the annunciations made by these are more principal (principalior) than that made by the first.”18 Thus they correspond to the Dionysian archangels. The third natural operation involves the inclinations for, or avoidances of what has been apprehended, according to a judgment of desirability or undesirability. Avoidance pertains to evil things; appetition pertains to good things.19 In this way, “it provides leadership for the inferior orders in divine things and so is signified by the name ‘Principalities’.”20 Noteworthy here is the relation between intellect and affect, whose mutual interaction in beginning a movement “leading them to the divine,”21 is already evident. Gallus evokes this idea in the poetry of the Song (in an example that introduces the consistent style of his exegesis): Your two breasts, the two lowest orders of the mind, the archangels and angels, which are the first and most intimate roots of intellectus and affectus, from which originally every apprehension of things and all desire of the good and flight from evil flow abundantly (exuberate) are like two young roes that are twins, on account of the sharpness (acumen) of seeing and discerning, which originate from these [two orders] . . . 22

A pattern emerges that Gallus will consistently replicate in the succeeding triads with increasing nuance: an encounter with an extramental reality, via some kind of perception (an apprehension), provokes an ordered, twofold response, namely, an intellectual act (judgment), followed by an affective act (desire or appetite).

Middle Triad Gallus claims that the first triad “is wholly in nature itself below industry (industriam),”23 signaling thereby that the second or middle triad involves deliberate, rational activity, which exceeds the more primitive, even animal-like operations of the first triad. On the 17 Expl-AH 10.636.200: “Secundus dictationes utriusque continet quibus dictat naturaliter de annuntiatis utrum uera an falsa sint, commoda uel incommoda . . . ” 18 Cmm3-CC Prol.G.108. 19 All this is reminiscent of twelfth-century discussion of aestimatio: a prerational, non-deliberative, “instinctive” perception of good or evil followed by attraction or aversion. 20 21 Cmm3-CC Prol.H.108. Cmm2-CC Prol.66. 22 Cmm3-CC 4C.179. 23 Expl-AH 10.634.151: “ . . . est tota in ipsa natura, citra industriam.”

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architectural model of his early Isaiah commentary, the floor or pavement of the second triad is “the powers of the inferior part of the soul, which is called ratio,” from which rise three proper activities, namely, “meditation, i.e. the testing of experience, the sure specification of intention (certam sententie diffinitionem), and the free and imperative execution of a given intention.”24 In his much later Third Commentary on the Song of Songs, Gallus elaborates on what he there calls the “second hierarchy of the mind,” whose three orders correspond (in ascending order) to the Dionysian angelic ranks of Powers, Virtues, and Dominions. The order of the Powers, the fourth overall, “contains the voluntary movements of the intellect and affect, now taken up by free choice (libero arbitrio), examining with rational deliberation the difference (distantiam) between good and evil, and ordering the mind . . . by a definitive judgment (sententiam) to desire and seek the highest good with the whole strength of the affect and intellect, and to repel every obstacle.”25 In the Isaiah commentary, he orients intellect and affect toward their proper divine manifestations, namely, “the clarity (claritas) of the highest truth and the sweetness (dulcedo) of the highest good.”26 Here also a certain right structuring and orienting of the soul is begun, as it begins to be “ordered through a specifying intention [diffinitivam sententiam] of extending toward God.”27 For Gallus, the term “Powers” connotes “setting in order” (ordinatio).28 The fifth rank overall, the order of the Virtues, perhaps not surprisingly “contains the strength of the natural and gratuitous virtues of a robust mind, in order boldly to pursue what was rightly decreed 24 Expl-AH 10.633.136: “Secunda mansio habet pro tabulato siue pauimento uires inferioris partis anime que dicitur ratio ad distinctionem synderesis. Hec assurgit per trinam operationem industrie: meditationem scilicet et experientie examen; et certam sententie diffinitionem.” 25 Cmm3-CC Prol.I.108: “ . . . per definitivam sententiam ad appetendum et querendum totis viribus affectus et intellectus summum bonum et ad repellendum omnia obstacula.” 26 Expl-AH 10.636.207: “motus uoluntarios affectus et intellectus a libero arbitrio exceptos, infusum lumen per industriam et uoluntarie totis uiribus contrectantes, et in ipso claritatem summe ueritatis et dulcedinem summe bonitatis quasi examinantes, et etiam dissimilitudines. Sed hoc quantum ad intellectum. Affectus enim anime glorificate eas non apprehendit.” 27 Expl-AH 10.636.213: “In hoc ordine proprie incipit anima ordinari per diffinitiuam sententiam tendendi ad Deum, et ibidem incipit peruersorum inordinatio.” 28 Expl-AH 10.636.215: “Unde ordo iste recte potestates dicuntur, quo nomine ordinatio exprimitur.”

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by the Powers.”29 Through these “vigorous forces of minds [valida mentium robora]”30 the soul is “made strong for the reception of the divine lights in its rank [gradu] and for strongly reaching out [tendendum] to the truly beautiful and good (pulcrum et bonum), and for repelling every attack and every dissimilitude.”31 In the sixth rank, the highest of the middle triad, the faculty of free decision (liberum arbitrium) retains its governing role: “The sixth [rank] contains the commands of free decision (liberi arbitrii), and it unyieldingly commands [precipit] all the powers [of the soul] to be extended into that eternal plenitude [eternam plenitudinem].”32 More precisely, here “the apexes of intellect and affect are suspended [suspenduntur] in their whole power to receive the divine visitations from above, in as much as it is possible for free will aided by grace.”33 Evident here is the profoundly ad Deum tendency and orientation of the soul. Here, the whole soul strains and strives Godward. For Gallus, suspension gives this rank its name: “the sublimity of these suspendings (suspendii) of both the command and the freedom is noted by the name ‘Dominions.’”34 To this point, behind the perhaps unwieldy mingling of a Victorine architectural analogy and the Dionysian angelic hierarchy, a fairly typical early thirteenth-century, theological anthropology is apparent: apprehension or perception, judgment, attraction or aversion under the control of liberum arbitrium and reason, which is divided between ratio inferior and ratio superior. The consistent inclusion and explicit pairing of intellect (intellectus) and affect (affectus) in both the lowest and middle hierarchies/triads, oriented to truth (or beauty) and good, respectively, should be noted, signaling Gallus’ abiding interest in their relationship. Under the guidance of the rational, deliberative will (which Gallus calls both the ratio inferior and the liberum arbitrium), the soul’s powers of intellect and affect operate naturally or according

29

30 Cmm3-CC Prol.J.108. Expl-AH 10.636.217. Expl-AH 10.636.219: “ad fortiter transeundum in uere pulcrum et bonum, etad omnem uiolentiam repellendam et omnen dissimilituinem.” 32 Expl-AH 10.636.223: “Sextus continet imperia liberi arbitrii in quibus incessanter et inflexibiliter precipit in illam eternam plenitudinem totis uiribus tendi.” 33 Cmm2-CC Prol.67: “ . . . apices affectus et intellectus tota virtute suspenduntur ad suscipiendum divinos superadventus, quantum possibile est libero arbitrio aduito a gratia . . . ” 34 Cmm3-CC Prol.K.108–9: “ . . . huius suspendii et imperii et libertatis sublimitas notatur nomine dominationum.” 31

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to and within the bounds of nature. At the sixth and high point of the natural soul, though, the powers of intellect and affect are totally oriented ad Deum. Overall, a clear synthesis of traditional, monastic, Augustinian concerns with rightly ordered affections, the ordo caritatis, and the Dionysian-inspired angelic ranks and the pronounced ascent-dynamic of the Dionysian hierarchy is apparent.

Highest Triad Throughout his corpus, Gallus consistently devotes the bulk of his anthropological reflection to the final and highest triad. In the architectural metaphor, the “third and highest storey” has the superior power of the soul for its “pavement” or “floor,” which he calls the “synderesis or powers of the superior part [of the soul].”35 Since this final triad is “stationed above synderesis, above industry, above nature,” the synderesis, as its basic anthropological faculty or power, is the “floor” of the third triad. In terms of the celestial hierarchy, the triadic structure of this part of the soul corresponds to the Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim, each representing a different dimension or capacity of the soul. As just noted, the third and highest triad “is altogether above (supra) nature and industry.”36 This is a crucial point, often neglected in accounts of Gallus’ “angelized” soul: the entire third triad is, paradoxically, both a part of the created structure of the soul, part of what it naturally is, and at the very same time is “above” or “beyond” the soul’s nature and natural operations. The entire third triad is rightly characterized as ecstatic. In this way, Gallus has built self-transcendence into the very structure of the self. This becomes apparent as he introduces the seventh rank, that of the Thrones,37 as Expl-AH 10.634.142: “Tertia et summa mansio pro tabulatu habet superiorem uim anime, id est synderesim siue superioris partis uires, quod infra diligentius tractabitur.” On the term “synderesis” in Gallus, see Lawell, “Ne De Ineffabili Penitus Taceamus”. 36 Expl-AH 10.634.151: “Tertia tota supra naturam et industriam.” 37 Cf. CH 7.1 (Parker, 25–6): “The appellation of the most exalted and pre-eminent Thrones denotes their manifest exaltation above every groveling inferiority, and their supermundane tendency towards higher things; and their unswerving separation from all remoteness; and their invariable and firmly-fixed settlement around the veritable Highest, with the whole force of their powers; and their receptivity of the supremely Divine approach, in the absence of all passion and earthly tendency, and their bearing God; and the ardent expansion of themselves for the Divine receptions.” 35

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follows: “The seventh order is receptive of the divine visitation from above, through ecstasy of the mind (excessum mentis), and is therefore given the name ‘Thrones.’”38 Three aspects of this description are crucial. First, the basic “posture” of the soul here is that of receptivity. Though in one sense the entire soul is constituted as an act of reception in its very existence (cf. Chapter 2), this receptive pose is accentuated here, with respect to the soul’s ascending return to God. Second, this rank is associated with a special act of divine self-communication and manifestation, couched in the language of a divine “visitation” (superadventus). The result, thirdly, is that the soul is enabled or capacitated to receive the divine presence; it becomes, in a word, a “throne” for divine indwelling. Gallus thus seems to suggest that what had been an elevating suspension in the prior sixth rank has now been transformed into a concavity, evoked by the image of a throne which in some sense receives the one enthroned upon it.39 In short, at the Throne rank, a transformation of the synderesis, which had begun at the dominical level, is completed, as the soul transitions from a natural and active receptivity to a supernatural, and thus ecstatic and also more passive receptivity.40 Thus, the transition from the middle to the highest triad, from “Dominions” to “Thrones,” is a self-transcending movement, a movement from being “within oneself,” so to speak, to being “outside oneself,” from enstasis to ecstasis. At the eighth and penultimate level overall, that of the Cherubim,41 Gallus turns explicitly to his two overriding concerns, namely, knowledge and love. Dionysius himself had argued that the word

38 Cmm3-CC Prol.L.109: “Septimus ordo per mentis excessum susceptivus est superadventus divini; unde thronorum nomine censetur . . . ” 39 CH 13.3 (Parker, 49): “the characteristic of Thrones, exhibiting their expansion for the reception of God.” 40 As Joshua M. Robinson has suggested, “synderesis is a receptivity on the frontier of the natural and the ecstatic” (“To Be Affected According To What We Apprehend: Thomas Gallus on the Hierarchic Soul and Its Modes of Knowledge,” presented at the 43rd International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, MI), May 9, 2008, p. 13). 41 CH 7.1 (Parker, 24–5): “ . . . that of Cherubim, a fulness of knowledge or stream of wisdom . . . . But the appellation of the Cherubim denotes their knowledge and their vision of God, and their readiness to receive the highest gift of light, and their power of contemplating the super-Divine comeliness in its first revealed power, and their being filled anew with the impartation which maketh wise, and their ungrudging communication to those next to them, by the stream of the given wisdom.”

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“Cherubim” means “fullness of knowledge” or “carriers of wisdom.” In his commentary on The Celestial Hierarchy,42 Gallus’ Victorine predecessor, Hugh of St. Victor, not only noted that the Dionysian Cherubim was associated with the light of intellectual knowledge, but also suggested that the cherubic level was the limit of the soul’s intellectual knowledge of God. Gallus continues these traditions, but signals his own signature preoccupation with the relation between knowledge and love by bringing love into the discussion even here: The eighth order contains every kind of knowledge (cognitionem) of the attracted intellectus (intellectus attracti), drawn by the divine worthiness, to which it is not able to ascend, and of the attracted affectus (affectus attracti), which does not exceed the drawing and the summit of the attracted intellect (intellectus attracti). For the intellect and the affect are drawn at the same time, and walk together (coambulant), so to speak, up to the final failure of the intellect, which has its high point in the order of the Cherubim. The attracted intellect does not pass this, but has here the consummation of its knowledge and light. Because of this, this order is called the “Cherubim.”43

In this alignment of the Cherubim with knowledge, several distinctively Gallusian features should be noted. First, Gallus’ preferred term here is “cognitio” (rather than scientia or intellectus, etc.), a polyvalent term in medieval discussions of intellectual activity, which can encompass a variety of distinguishable though related acts, ranging across the soul’s capacities for sensation, perception, experience, and understanding, as well as the results of those acts. There is no ready English equivalent (it will often be simply transliterated here) and the English cognate “cognition” connotes an overly narrow and restrictive range of meanings.44

42

Hugh of St. Victor, Super Ierarchiam Dionysii, ed. Poirel, 399–717. Cmm3-CC Prol.M.109: “Octavus ordo continet omnimodam cognitionem intellectus attracti divina dignatione, quo non valet ascendere, et affectus attracti, attractionem et summitatem intellectus attracti non excedentis. Simul enim attrahuntur et quasi coambulant affectus et intellectus usque ad novissimum defectum intellectus qui est in summitate huius ordinis cherubim, quem intellectus etiam attractus non excedit, sed ibi habet sue cognitionis et sui luminis consummationem; unde ordo ille cherubim vocatur.” 44 Cf. Timothy C. Potts, Conscience in Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 75–6. 43

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Second, in keeping with his inclination to posit a manifold encounter between the soul and the plethoric self-manifestations of the essentially simple but pleromatic Trinity, Gallus consistently invokes multiplicity here: “every kind of cognition” and “cognitions” and “illuminations,” with apparent emphasis on their plurality; this rank has not merely knowledge, but a “plenitude of knowledge” (plentitudo scientie).45 Third, the dominant image or metaphor for what is received at the cherubic rank is light, hence “rays,” “brilliances,” and “illuminations.” The primary power or faculty of the soul, moreover, is the intellectus and the primary sense-modality is sight or vision. Fourth, while this is the rank of the intellectus, Gallus consistently coordinates the activity of the intellectus with that of the affectus. Strikingly, here, they both receive the “plenitude of cognition”; they both “walk together,” even as they are both drawn (attractus). This has implications for the nature of the affectus, to be treated momentarily. Noteworthy here is that Gallus views them as discrete, parallel powers with differentiated acts: “Those illuminations, which the affect and intellect receive at the same time up to the utmost consummation of the intellect, complete the order of the Cherubim.”46 Fifth and finally, in its act of receiving illuminations and of possessing cognitions, the intellectus here reaches the terminus of its upward movement, the “the consummation of its knowledge and light.” Precisely as a differentiated power with a proper act, the intellect is consummated here by its defection; it is literally “de-fected,” turned back: “the final failure of the intellect.” The overall idea here is that of the intellectus as constantly drawn or pulled Godward, even as it cannot attain the object of its attraction—at least in its proper modality. At the ninth and final rank, Gallus again appropriates the corresponding Victorine tradition regarding the Seraphim.47 Hugh 45 Expl-AH 10.638.255: “Illas ergo cognitiones tam affectus quam intellectus arbitror ordine Cherubim moraliter contineri, in quantum affectus ibi intellectum non excedit, qui recte plenitudo scientie non sapientie dicitur, quia in plenitudine intellectus, secundum quam proprie inest scientia, consummatur.” 46 Expl-AH 10.638.274: “Ille ergo illuminationes quas simul percipiunt affectus et intellectus usque ad nouissimam intellectus consummationem ordinem Cherubim complent.” 47 CH 7.1 (Parker, 24–5): “the holy designation of the Seraphim denotes either that they are kindling or burning . . . . The appellation of Seraphim plainly teaches their ever moving around things Divine, and constancy, and warmth, and keenness, and the seething of that persistent, indomitable, and inflexible perpetual motion, and the vigorous

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of St. Victor had pioneered the way in his commentary on The Celestial Hierarchy by noting that according to Dionysius “Seraphim” means “fire-makers or carries of warmth,” and connotes mobility, warmth, sharpness, etc. For Hugh, most likely drawing on the works of Eriugena and Gregory the Great before him,48 it was self-evident that Dionysius’ seraphic fire is in fact the fire of love, though Dionysius had not explicitly said so. By itself, this identification of seraphic fire with love was not wholly original to Hugh, and neither was his next move. In this context, Hugh made his oftnoted statement that “love surpasses knowledge and is greater than intelligence,”49 and then elaborated: “[God] is loved more than understood; and love enters and approaches where knowledge stays outside.” This claim for the superiority of love over knowledge was not innovative. A long-standing monastic tradition had said as much, expressed in Gregory the Great’s pithy statement: “Love itself is knowledge,”50 implying thereby the possibility of a “loving knowledge” superior to other kinds of knowing. But, as Paul Rorem has noted, when Hugh attributed to the apostolic Dionysius the teaching that seraphic love of God surpasses cherubic knowledge of God, he made a wholly original claim and so inaugurated a fertile and long-standing trajectory of affective medieval Dionysian reception, which Gallus inherits, but also transforms in remarkably creative and profoundly original ways.51 Against this Hugonian backdrop, Gallus’ description of the seraphic rank acquires an initial intelligibility, even as its dense complexity resists tidy explanation and its recondite vocabulary requires subtle parsing. As noted in the Introduction, Gallus construes his entire theological enterprise as the pursuit of wisdom,52 the “wisdom of Christians,” as he assimilation and elevation of the subordinate, as giving new life and rekindling them to the same heat; and purifying through fire and burnt-offering, and the light-like and lightshedding characteristic which can never be concealed or consumed, and remains always the same, which destroys and dispels every kind of obscure darkness.” 48 See Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 74–6. 49 Hugh of St. Victor, Super Ierarchiam Dionysii, ed. Poirel, 560.200–17 (PL 175.1038D). 50 Gregory the Great, Homily in Evanglica 27: amor ipse notitia est. 51 It is intriguing to ponder the possibility that subsequent Franciscan interpretation of Francis of Assisi, as “seraphic” on account of his burning love for Christ is influenced by this Victorine tradition. 52 That the late medieval English author of the Cloud of Unknowing, much influenced by Thomas Gallus, named one of his treatises “The Pursuit of Wisdom,”

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calls it, contrasting it with the wisdom of the philosophers and perhaps even theologians, by which he intimates not a simple binary between true and false wisdom, but rather a hierarchical distinction between two kinds or modes of knowing, lower and higher, inferior and superior. Whatever value those other, lower forms of wisdom and knowledge may have, they pale in relation to the wisdom that for Gallus is here received and experienced at the highest dimension of the soul: “For if ever you compare the intellectual wisdom, which the philosopher of the world has, with the portion of Mary, it will be found to be inferior and less good.”53 The cherubic rank is “rightly called plenitude of knowledge, not of wisdom” (emphasis added), which is the exclusive seraphic prerogative. Gallus’ description of the ninth and seraphic rank in the Prologue to his Third Commentary on the Song of Songs should be quoted in full: The ninth [order] contains the principal sighing (suspira) for God, the super-intellectual stretchings and in-sendings (extensiones et immissiones), burning brilliances and brilliant burnings (furvidos fulgores et fulgidos fervores). The understanding (intellectus) cannot be drawn to the excessive sublimities and sublime excesses (sublimes excessus et excedentes sublimitates) of all these, but only the principal affection (affectio54) can be united to God. In this order the most chaste prayers are offered by which we are present to God (DN 3). This order embraces God and is surrounded by the embraces of the bridegroom. It does not know through a mirror, but gains the portion of Mary which will not be taken away (Luke 10:42). In this order the bridal-bed (lectulus) is arranged for the bridegroom and bride. From this [order], the flood (inundatio) of the divine light flows into the lower orders one by one.55

wherein that author adopts a similar approach to wisdom, is testimony to the importance of this theme in Gallus. 53 Expl-MT 1.5.55–8 54 The interpolated Prologue of the Third Commentary reads “affectus” (Cmm3CC Prol.B.115). 55 Cmm3-CC Prol.N.109: “Nonus continet principalia in Deum suspiria, superintellectuales extensiones et immissiones, fervidos fulgores et fulgidos fervores, ad quorum omnium sublimes excessus et excedentes sublimitates intelligentia trahi non potest, sed sola principalis affectio Deo unibilis. In hoc ordine offeruntur orations castissime quibus Deo assumus, De div. nom. 3a. Iste ordo Deum amplexatur et sponsi amplexibus amicitur, speculum nescit, Marie portionem percipit que non auferetur,

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A helpful starting point for explicating this passage is the now familiar distinction between intellectus and affectus, operative throughout Gallus’ angelic ordering of the soul. Thus far, they have “co-ambulated” together, but into this final rank, as adumbrated above, the affectus alone may enter. Gallus’ apparent severing of the cherubic intellectus and the seraphic affectus at this stage has long been noted, even stressed by both later medieval and modern readers. The “understanding (intellectus) cannot be drawn” to this “superintellectual” seraphic height (where the prefix “super” seems to disqualify rather than to intensify). The seraphic affect “suspends the activity of the senses, of imagination, of reason, of intellect, both practical and theoretical, and excludes every understanding (intellectum) and every intelligible (intelligibile).”56 For this reason, the qualifier “principal,” which Gallus often employs in this context, seems to indicate that while the affectus had also been operative in the lower ranks, here it functions maximally and exclusively, preeminent over all the other lower capacities. In his final glossing of The Mystical Theology, Gallus explicitly identifies this principal affectus with the scintilla synderesis,57 the “spark of synderesis, often translated as the “high point” of the soul.58 If Gallus names the affectus or synderesis as the principal power of the seraphic soul, what precisely does he mean? In the passage above, he clearly indicates that the affectus is the soul’s capacity for union with God; it “alone is unitable to God” (sola principalis affectio Deo unibilis).59 The use of bridal imagery at this stage, moreover, is his Luc. 10. In hoc ordine sponso et sponse lectulus collocatur. De isto in inferiores ordines seriatim fluit divini luminis inundatio.” 56 57 Expl-MT 1.5.45–7. Expl-MT 1.4.42. 58 Robert Javelet, “Thomas Gallus et Richard de Saint-Victor mystiques,” Recherches de Théologie Ancienne et Médiévale 30 (1963): 95: “La syndérèse n’est pas chez les spirituels préscholastiques une mémoire des idées morales (syntéreo: conserver), pas plus qu’elle n’est une synthèse des problèmes moraux (sundiairesis); c’est un état de conscience transcendant, intentionnel, dynamique” [“Synderesis is not a memory of moral ideas (syntēreo: to conserve) among the pre-scholastic spirituals, nor is it a synthesis of moral problems (sundiariresis); it is a transcendent, intentional, dynamic state of consciousness.”] 59 A distinct psychological faculty in Dionysius at MT 1.3, where he writes that union occurs “in the better part” (κατὰ τὸ κρεῖττον ἑνούμενος/secundum melius unitus), which itself rings of the Proclean “flower of the mind.” Medieval translators of the CD struggled to interpret and translate this phrase. Sarracen chose to translate it with the very literal: secundum melius unitus. In the ninth century, Eriugena opted for: secundum id quod melius est intellectus.

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typical strategy for evoking the nature of seraphic union, forming the obvious link, as Gallus himself notes in his late Explanation of The Mystical Theology, to the text of the Song of Songs, on which he commented multiple times: “[seraphic wisdom] unites the apex of the principal affection (apicem affectionis principalis), capable of the divine, with the divine Spirit itself, according to 1 Cor. 6: ‘He who adheres to God is one spirit.’ This is the union (coniunctio) often longed for (suspirita) and sometimes obtained in the Song of Songs.”60 In one sense, seraphic, bridal, Solomonic union is simply an explication of the meaning of the term “affectus.” Union entails direct, and in some sense unmediated, contact between the soul and God. The rejection of an intervening, mediating “mirror” (speculum)— “does not know in a mirror” (nescit speculum)—invokes the Pauline distinction in 1 Cor. 13:12 between the obscure, mediated knowledge of God available in this life (“now we know enigmatically in a mirror” [per speculum in enigmate]) and the direct, unmediated knowledge of God in the next life (“but then face to face” [facie ad faciem]).61 For Gallus, such contact self-evidently affects the soul. By definition, furthermore, there is a clear and crucial receptive and literally passive dimension to this, as is more evident in the use of the passive participle, “affectus,” in contrast to the noun “affectio.” To be affected is to be acted upon, to receive an impact, to undergo, to suffer contact, to be touched. In an important way, the affectus is simply the capacity of the soul to be thus affected by God.62 Finally, as already intimated, the seraphic affectus is the “site” or “point” of union between the soul and God: “In that [seraphic order] indeed the hierarchic intention, is completed . . . that is, assimilation and union with God, and (Col. 3:14): above all things, however, have charity, which is the bond of perfection.”63

60

Expl-MT 1.5.51. In Expl-MT 1.5.48, he says: “it does not know (nescit) a mirror or an enigma (speculum et enigma), hence, it will not be taken away (Luke 10).” 62 Cf. Letter 5 (Parker; adapted): “And into this darkness, invisible indeed, on account of the surpassing brightness, and unapproachable on account of the excess of the superessential stream of light, every one deemed worthy to know and to see God enters, by the very fact of neither seeing nor knowing, really entering into Him, Who is above vision and knowledge.” 63 Expl-AH 10.638.281: “In isto siquidem completur intentio ierarchica, de qua supra 3b, scilicet ‘assimilatio et unitio ad Deum,’ et Col. 3d: Super omnia autem hec caritatem habete, quod est uinculum perfectionis.” 61

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This completes the overview of Gallus’ angelized soul, wherein he anthropologically appropriates and applies the Dionysian celestial hierarchy to individual human souls or minds, aligning each of the angelic ranks with a specific aspect, power, capacity, faculty, or activity of the soul. Gallus was dearly attached to this celestial anthropology, affirming it consistently throughout his writing career, and commending to his readers “a frequent and attentive consideration of these [nine angelic] orders,” as being “altogether useful.”64 To modern readers (perhaps medieval ones too), however, the entire scheme may well seem artificial, contrived, and even bizarre. But it is important—indeed, necessary—to grasp the anthropological forest despite the distracting trees. Toward that end, a few interpretive suggestions are in order. First, as noted above, Gallus found explicit warrant for this move in the Dionysian texts themselves. Second, it should be noted that this may well be a typically medieval exegetical exercise of creatively interpreting and applying an authoritative text (like Scripture) to some extra-textual reality, such as the Trinity, salvation history, or in this case, the soul. While it can appear that Gallus is finding or discovering this anthropology in the Dionysian text (or in the Song of Songs, as will be seen below) or that the Dionysian text is instructing Gallus regarding the soul, it is in fact the other way around. For Gallus the very nature of an authoritative text entails an invitation to perform a creative, endlessly variable and “riffable” exegetical act of synthesizing or correlating his pre-conceived anthropology (derived elsewhere) with the authoritative text itself. Underneath this exegetical tour de force is a sophisticated conception of the soul, which can be detached or extracted from the textual conceit through which it is expressed. Third, Gallus’ angelic anthropology should be seen as another instance of the Victorine theological style, a symbolic style of thought, which theologizes in and through scriptural symbols. Whereas Hugh chooses Noah’s ark, Richard the ark of Moses’ tabernacle, and Achard the “interior cathedral,” Gallus deploys the (nearly) scriptural celestial hierarchy from the (presumedly) apostolic Dionysius.

64 Cmm2-CC Prol.67: “Est autem omnino utilis frequens istorum ordinum et perspicax consideratio . . . ”

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At the same time, fourthly, there is a perhaps surprising utility to Gallus’ scheme, if for no other reason than that it provides a vocabulary (not only terms, but images and symbols too), vivid and memorable, nimble and nuanced, for referring to and describing the various powers, acts, objects and experiences of the soul, which are in fact remarkably complex, importantly diverse, yet intricately interrelated. The more typical medieval Augustinian schemes of “intellect and will,” or “memory, understanding, and will,” often labor to accommodate the complex nature of, and activity implicated in, the soul’s mystical encounter with God. For all these reasons, the modern reader of Gallus is permitted to de-emphasize, to hold lightly the celestial trappings of Gallus’ Dionysian anthropology, and conversely is invited to peer beneath them to appreciate what lies below the surface. By far the most important and fundamental aspect of Gallus’ angelic anthropology is the fact that it is hierarchical. For when he conceives of the soul as a hierarchy, many of the aspects of Neoplatonic metaphysics, which are embedded and expressed in the Dionysian notion of a hierarchy, come to characterize the nature of the soul as well. This is crucial. Typically, medieval hierarchies (Dionysian or otherwise) are conceived of as fixed, static “ladders” to be ascended or sequences of stages to be traversed, step-wise and uni-directionally, so to speak, from lowest to highest until one reaches the top, where the goal is reached and the movement ceases. Central to the interpretation of Gallus pursued here is the claim that such is a profoundly inadequate conception of Dionysian hierarchy and yields, by consequence, a profoundly deficient understanding of Gallus’ hierarchical anthropology, and indeed of his mystical theology as a whole. In Dionysius’ angelology and ecclesiology, by contrast, a hierarchy is a dynamic, ordered, multi-dimensional state of being, constituted by the simultaneity of metaphysical procession and return; so too, in Gallus’ anthropology, is the angelized soul or mens hierarchica.65

65

Cmm2-CC Prol.66: “ . . . mentibus hierarchicis . . . ”

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Foundations and Structures HIERARCHY IN DIONYSIUS

In Dionysius’ theological universe, as oft-noted, the notion of hierarchia (a term he coins66) is as central67 as it was influential;68 it is also complex and easily misunderstood. A brief elaboration of the meaning and function of hierarchia in Dionysius will facilitate a fuller appreciation of Gallus’ anthropological appropriation of it. As noted above, Dionysius defines hierarchia thus: “Hierarchy is . . . a sacred order and science and operation, assimilated, as far as attainable, to the likeness of God, and conducted to the illuminations granted to it from God, according to capacity, with a view to the Divine imitation.”69 The purpose of any hierarchy, moreover, “is the assimilation and union, as far as attainable, with God.”70 So, hierarchia is a structure (taxis), involving knowledge (gnosis) and movement (energia), resulting in union with God.

66 Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 21: “The word consists of hieros (sacred) and arche (source). The latter term is often used to form compound words in the Dionysian vocabulary. The thearchy, to take the example introduced above with regard to Letter 2, is literally the ‘source of divinity.’ The word hier-arch meant the source of the sacred, humanly speaking. While extremely rare in Christian writings, the word was at least known and could be applied to clergy. By creating the abstract noun hierarchy from the cultic title hierarch, Dionysius invented a word for a structure or system for ‘sourcing’ or channeling the sacred, and linked it all inextricably to the single leader. Dionysius claimed that the hierarch is named after the hierarchy, but the opposite is in fact the case: hierarchy was derived from hierarch. He used the existing term for a cultic leader to create the new word hierarchy and to imply that this person (the hierarch) completely dominates the system or arrangement (the hierarchy).” 67 See Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 20: “The entire pattern of triads, including the triple triad of the nine ranks of angels, is entirely characteristic of the author. It probably derives not from any trinitarian model but from the Neoplatonic fascination for the way an intermediary, or mean (or middle) term between extremes, creates a triad. For example, the Platonic ideals form a mean term between the One and the many, and thus attempt to provide some linkage between them. Dionysius borrowed this idea of middle terms to form triads and thus to create a continuum or a hierarchy.” 68 See Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 19: “The Dionysian writings profoundly shaped the idea of hierarchy in the Christian tradition, whether a churchly hierarchy of clerical officers or a heavenly hierarchy of angelic beings. They also influenced the overall picture of reality, as it was transmitted down through a vertical structure, as ‘the order which God himself has established’ (1088C, 272), a concept gladly embraced by Christian monarchs of all kinds. Not only did Dionysius influence the evolution of this concept, but he also created the word hierarchy itself, which, with its cognates (like hierarchical) simply did not exist until the anonymous author invented it to express and to crystallize such thoughts about order.” 69 70 CH 3.1 (Parker, 14). CH 3.2 (Parker, 15).

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A hierarchy, moreover, differentiates and arranges disparate entities into specific relationships and at the same time unites them in a unified totality: “every hierarchy is the complete expression of the sacred elements comprised within it. It is the perfect total of all its sacred constituents.”71 To be sure, there is here higher and lower, superior and inferior; but what distinguishes these is their relative capacity for God: “Now, we affirm that throughout every sacred ordinance the superior ranks possess the illuminations and powers of their subordinates, but the lowest have not the same powers as those who are above them”;72 again, “the last possess those of the superior, not indeed in the same degree, but subordinately.”73 Thus, capacity increases with rank or elevation; whatever the lower can do, the higher can do with greater capacity and intensity.74 But the individual ranks within the hierarchy do not simply have their apportioned capacity individually or in isolation from the others; rather, they relate directly with those above and below them, in what could be called the threefold signature activity of each member of any hierarchy. Each is “receptive of the primal light . . . and devoutly filled with the entrusted radiance, and again, spreading this radiance ungrudgingly to those after it” (emphasis added).75 Thus “every hierarchical function is set apart for the sacred reception and distribution of . . . Divine Light, and perfecting science.”76 So: reception, possession, distribution. In this way, as Rorem notes, a hierarchy is “above all a system of intermediaries that connects all levels of reality”:77 “if you talk of ‘hierarchy’ you are referring in effect to the arrangement of all the sacred realities.”78 It is noteworthy that this produces a situation wherein each hierarchical level is characterized, paradoxically, by simultaneous indigence and abundance: Each level is utterly dependent on its superior for all that it is and has; hence indigence.79 Yet, each level 71

72 EH 1.3 (Luibheid, 197). CH 5.1 (Parker, 22). CH 12.2 (Parker, 45). 74 CH 11.2 (Parker, 44): “the superior Orders possess abundantly the sacred characteristics of the inferior, but the lowest do not possess the superior completeness of the more reverend, since the first-manifested illuminations are revealed to them, through the first Order, in proportion to their capacity.” 75 76 CH 3.2 (Parker, 15). CH 7.2 (Parker, 26). 77 78 Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 22. EH 1.3 (Luibheid, 197). 79 CH 3.3 (Parker, 15): “It is necessary then, as I think, that those who are being purified should be entirely perfected, without stain, and be freed from all dissimilar confusion; that those who are being illuminated should be filled with the Divine 73

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is the abundant source for its inferiors; hence, abundance.80 These moreover are simultaneous, not sequential acts. All members of a Dionysian hierarchy are constituted as so many acts of reception and distribution. Herein is also found the imitation of God, which Dionysius construes as a form of cooperation with God in these very activities: “Thus each rank of the hierarchical order is led, in its own degree, to the divine co-operation, by performing, through grace and God-given power, those things which are naturally and supernaturally in the Godhead, and accomplished by It superessentially, and manifested hierarchically, for the attainable imitation of the God-loving minds.”81 Thereby, all hierarchical members “find their perfection in being carried to the divine imitation in their own proper degree,” and each becomes a “[15] fellow-worker with God . . . showing the divine energy in himself manifested as far as possible.”82 This is so, even though the Deity is not in any way indigent.83 It is crucial here to point out the importance of the highest member of a Dionysian hierarchy, namely, the hierarch himself. For Dionysius, the hierarch is the source of all that flows down to those within the hierarchy. As such, he possesses within himself, in a preeminent fashion, all that those below him possess from him but in a manner appropriate to their station, as it were: “Talk of ‘hierarch’ and

Light, conducted to the habit and faculty of contemplation in all purity of mind; that those who are being initiated should be separated from the imperfect, and become recipients of that perfecting science of the sacred things contemplated.” 80 CH 3.3 (Parker, 15–16): “Further, that those who purify should impart, from their own abundance of purity, their own proper holiness; that those who illuminate, as being more luminous intelligences, whose function it is to receive and to impart light, and who are joyfully filled with holy gladness, that these should overflow, in proportion to their own overflowing light, towards those who are worthy of enlightenment; and that those who make perfect, as being skilled in the impartation of perfection, should perfect those being perfected, through the holy instruction, in the science of the holy things contemplated.” 81 82 CH 3.3 (Parker, 16). CH 3.2 (Parker, 14–15). 83 CH 3.2 (Parker, 15): “The Divine blessedness, to speak after the manner of men, is indeed unstained by any dissimilarity, and is full of invisible light—perfect, and needing no perfection; cleansing, illuminating, and perfecting, yea, rather a holy purification, and illumination, and perfection—above purification, above light, preeminently perfect, self-perfect source and cause of every Hierarchy, and elevated preeminently above every holy thing.”

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one is referring to a holy and inspired man, someone who understands all sacred knowledge, someone in whom an entire hierarchy is completely perfected and known.”84 Finally, as he introduces the notion of hierarchy at the outset of On the Celestial Hierarchy, Dionysius invokes his Neoplatonic metaphysics of the good: “ . . . every procession of illuminating light, proceeding from the Father, whilst visiting us as a gift of goodness, restores us again gradually as an unifying power, and turns us to the oneness of our conducting Father, and to a deifying simplicity. For all things are from Him, and to Him . . . ”85 For Dionysius, hierarchia gives concrete expression to the Neoplatonic metaphysics of procession and return,86 and metaphysical procession and return occur via hierarchy: “hierarchy denotes a certain altogether holy order, an image of the supremely divine freshness, ministering [i.e. procession] the mysteries of its own illumination in hierarchical ranks, and sciences, and assimilated [i.e. return] to its own proper Head as far as lawful.”87 Hierarchia expresses and instantiates this bivalent metaphysic of exitus–reditus. In sum, for Dionysius, hierarchia is a unified, dynamic totality, within which individual entities find their proper place and function in relation to those above and below them, and which totality is suffused and energized by—pulsates with—the metaphysical energia or “motions” of procession and return, of “downward” distributions and “upward” elevations of knowledge of God, the net effect of which is to assimilate and indeed unite the totality to God, all the while maintaining the specific individuality and character of each hierarchic member.88

84

EH 1.3 (Luibheid, 197). CH 1.1 (Parker, 1). 86 The Celestial Hierarchy begins with a discussion of metaphysical remaining, procession, and return. 87 CH 3.2 (Parker, 14–15). 88 CH 3.2 (Parker, 14–15): “The purpose, then, of Hierarchy is the assimilation and union, as far as attainable, with God, having Him Leader of all religious science and operation, by looking unflinchingly to His most Divine comeliness, and copying, as far as possible, and by perfecting its own followers as Divine images, mirrors most luminous and without flaw, receptive of the primal light and the supremely Divine ray, and devoutly filled with the entrusted radiance, and again, spreading this radiance ungrudgingly to those after it, in accordance with the supremely Divine regulations.” 85

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When Gallus executes this anthropological appropriation of the Dionysian celestial hierarchy, accordingly, these fundamental attributes of hierarchia are brought into the very nature of the human person, along with the symbolic descriptions of the soul’s faculties and activities. Put otherwise, in Gallus’ Dionysian anthropology, it is far more significant that the soul is a vir hierarchicus (as Bonaventure will later style it, in relation to St. Francis) than a vir angelicus; that is, it is far more significant that the soul is “hierarchized” than “angelized.” The most crucial implication of Gallus’ hierarchical anthropology is the fact that as a hierarchy, the soul is constituted precisely by the three metaphysical moments of Dionysian Neoplatonic metaphysics (cf. Chapter 2), namely, procession, reversion, and remaining. Commenting on Dionysius’ view of created reality, Eric Perl notes that “the very being of each thing, then, is its possessing, receiving, reverting to God according to its proper mode.”89 Gallus’ hierarchical anthropology is his attempt to explicate this. Each of these moments merits a brief remark at this point.

Anthropological Procession Anthropologically speaking, the moment of procession or exitus refers to the way in which the soul is both receptive to the “inflowing” of divine self-communication “from above” and to the way in which this divine self-communication is passed “down,” distributed, as it were, stepwise, from the highest to the lowest parts or faculties of the soul. For Gallus, the creature is constituted both generally as a creature, and mystically as a deified creature just in so far as it receives “from above” and it is radically “upwardly postured” as it were, opened to receive all that it has, all that it is, ex Deo. It may be helpful to note that this is the anthropological inverse of Gallus’ conception of the Trinity as pleromatic abundance. Whereas God is ever hyperfullness, the creature is hyper-indigence, radically receptive; if the expression be permitted, the creature is semper implenda—“alwayshaving-to-be-filled.” As the writer of the Letter to Colossians put it:

89

Perl, Theophany, 41.

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“For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead (inhabitat omnis plenitudo divinitatis) corporeally. And you are filled in him (estis in illo repleti), who is the head of all . . . ” (Col. 2:9–10).

Anthropological Reversion Conversely, the moment of reversion or reditus refers to the upward thrusting, ultimately self-transcending and thus ecstatic movement, stepwise, from the lowest to the highest parts or faculties of the soul, terminating ultimately in ecstatic union with God. Creatures are constantly reaching Godward for more fullness and asymptotically approaching but never reaching the hyper-full divine fullness.90

Remaining: A Stable Temple of Divine Indwelling Commenting on Dionysius’ metaphysics of created reality, Eric Perl notes that: The proper activity that constitutes each thing as what it is, which is that thing’s distinctive mode of being, is its way of reverting to God. . . . In short each thing simply in being what it is, i.e. in being in its proper way, is desiring or tending toward God, the Good, in its proper way, actively receiving him as its determination. Thus to revert to God is to proceed from him and to proceed from him is to revert to him.91

What Perl notes here about Dionysius’ conception of created reality generally, applies also to Gallus’ Dionysian-inspired anthropology in particular: the soul itself is constituted by the simultaneous motions of procession and return, motions that characterize its particular mode of being and its particular way of relating to its Trinitarian source and goal. As Perl goes on to suggest, the characteristic act or signature or mode of such a being can be described as “active receptivity”: “As in Plotinus and Proclus, [so for Dionysius] the [created] product has an actively receptive role in its production . . . ”92 So too, Gallus conceives of the soul as a stable dynamism of proceeding and reverting, of “downwardly” receiving and “upwardly” exceeding. It passively receives “from above” the active dynamism of returning “from below” to union with the Trinity. These, moreover, should 90 “The reversion of effects to their cause, in turn, forms the basis for Dionysius’ account of the ontological love or desire of all things for God” (Perl, Theophany, 41). 91 92 Perl, Theophany, 42. Perl, Theophany, 42.

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not be thought of, metaphysically at any rate, as sequential moments or stages, though perhaps they are experienced psychologically as such (inevitably for time-bound humans). Rather, for the hierarchized soul ecstatic reception and receptive ecstasy are simultaneous sides of a single act of existing. Precisely this dynamic equilibrium of internal procession and return accounts for the third moment or aspect of Gallus’ anthropology, namely, that of remaining. For both Dionysius and Gallus, but with different emphases, the procession–reversion (enstatic/ecstatic) “motion” is what enables a finite being to exist and also to be related to God. Hierarchy is a kind of ontological “water-treading” by which a being remains or is maintained in being. For Gallus, the crucial significance of this appropriation is not the nine angelic ranks within the soul, but rather the ontological dynamism and capacitation which the Dionysian hierarchy entails. Significantly, in Dionysius, this metaphysical state can be characterized as the “love” of created things for God: “All things come to be, they are, only in at once and identically proceeding from and reverting to, and in that sense loving, God.”93 It is perhaps not surprising, then, and may be utterly fitting, that when Gallus transforms this Dionysian metaphysics into a theological anthropology and even a religious psychology, the culminating climax of the creature as a whole is seraphic union with God through ecstatic love. Expressed in the typically medieval penchant to think symbolically, and in the particularly Victorine tendency to use architectural symbols, Gallus ultimately characterizes the soul’s stability, derived from its dynamic equilibrium of procession and return, as a temple or cathedral in which the divine presence comes to dwell:94 Morally the temple of God is the holy soul, maximally glorified, which nevertheless is not a mobile tabernacle, but is a stable temple. Of this temple there are three storeys: the highest, the middle, and the lowest, which we understand in the words of Dionysius,95 where he says: “ACCORDING TO ITSELF EACH AND EVERY CELESTIAL AND HUMAN MIND HAS SPECIAL FIRST, MIDDLE AND LAST ORDERS AND POWERS ACCORDING TO EACH

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Perl, Theophany, 41 (emphasis added). Dionysius himself had suggested the theme of divine indwelling: CH 7.4 (Parker, 30–1): “the God-receptive minds . . . are . . . the Divine places of the supremely Divine repose.” 95 CH 10.3. 94

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AND EVERY UPWARD ACTION OF THE AFORESAID HIERARCHIC ILLUMINATIONS 96 MANIFEST ACCORDING TO PROPORTION.”

Gallus suggests here that conceived on the model of the Dionysian celestial hierarchy, the soul comes to be, not a physically mobile tabernacle for the divine presence, which the Israelites carried with them in their wilderness wanderings, but rather a spiritually permanent place of dynamic stability, a spiritual temple of Jerusalem, in which God may dwell. For, “since the holy Trinity . . . is never absent . . . let us extend ourselves into the Trinity . . . as throwing ourselves toward One who is ever present . . . ”97

CONCLUSION: SPIRALING As is evident, the most distinctive feature of Gallus’ appropriation of the Dionysian Corpus is his hierarchic “angelization” of the human mind, modeled on Dionysius’ description of the nine angelic orders, subdivided into three triads, each with its own particular name, office, and activity. The interpretation of Gallus’ theological anthropology offered here, however, differs from this standard account. It argues that Gallus has appropriated first and foremost the Dionysian conception of hierarchy in general—namely, a dynamic ascending— descending structure of interrelated entities that mediates revelation from higher to lower and elevates the lower into the higher. Accordingly, Gallus’ angelized mind is most fundamentally and ultimately a dynamic, multivalent, highly structured state of being, in which love and knowledge are related in reciprocal and mutually reinforcing ways. By “internalizing” the Dionysian celestial hierarchy within the soul, Gallus integrates the central aspect of Neoplatonic metaphysics 96 Expl-AH 10.633.118: “Moraliter templum Dei est anima sancta, maxime autem glorificata que iam non est tabernaculum mobile, sed templum stabile. Huius templi tres sunt mansiones: summa, media, infima, quod intelligimus in uerbis Dionysii 10b, ubi dicit: “QUOD SECUNDUM SE IPSAM UNAQUEQUE ET CELESTIS ET HUMANA MENS SPECIALES HABET ET

PRIMAS ET MEDIAS ET ULTIMAS ORDINATIONES ET UIRTUTES ADDICTAS ET SECUNDUM UNUMQUEMQUE IERARCHICARUM ILLUMINATIONUM SURSUMACTIONES IUXTA PROPORTIONEM MANIFESTATAS.” 97

Expl-DN 2.168.106: “cum sancta Trinitas a nobis inuocanda nusquam absit, omnia contineat, nec longe sit ab unoquoque nostrum (Act. 17f), eo modo nos extendamus nos in ipsam spiritualibus orationibus, desideriis et suspiriis, tamquam ad ipsam ubique presentem nos immittentes.”

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within his theological anthropology, as three crucial “moments” or valences: ascending, descending, and, bringing these together, remaining. With respect to rational creatures, the two metaphysical moments of exitus-descent and reditus-ascent acquire a particular expression and manifestation: receptivity and ecstasy. A final observation is necessary for all that follows: In Dionysius, the seraphic order, atop the celestial hierarchy, has a signature kind of movement in relation to God: “This, then . . . is the first rank of the Heavenly Beings which encircle and stand immediately around God; and without symbol, and without interruption, dances round His eternal knowledge in the most exalted ever-moving stability as in Angels.”98 Just as for Dionysius, the seraphim are incessantly circling, dancing around the unknowable divine essence in an ever-moving stability, so too Gallus’ Dionysian soul, marked throughout by its own seraphic apex, is ever spiraling toward and around the Triune God, who Itself is also an eternal circle of love (cf. Chapter 1). Gallus relates these two stable dynamisms thus: it must be understood concerning the hierarchic mind (mente ierarchica) that the nine-fold [hierarchy] (novenarius), proceeding first from the eternal ternary (ternarius), which in itself whirls around in an eternal circle (in se eterno circulo convoluto), is returned [reflectatur], not only into the ternary but also into the monad.99

In short, for Gallus, the soul, precisely through the hierarchic simultaneity of ecstatic reception is eternally spiraling into the eternal Spiral that is the pleromatic Trinity.

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CH 7.4 (Parker, 163). Expl-AH 10.632.87: “quod intelligendum est de mente ierarchica, ut ita nouenarius ex eterno ternario, in se eterno circulo conuoluto, primo egrediens, non solum in ternarium sed et in monadem reflectatur.” 99

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Preface to Parts II–IV As noted in the Introduction, Gallus’ entire theological project is aptly characterized as the pursuit of wisdom, in particular, the “wisdom of Christians,” as he himself puts it repeatedly. This sapientia Christianorum assumes an understanding of the Trinity, a theology of creation, and an anthropology, all of which were treated in Part I. Indeed, his mystical theology emerges at the intersection of a metaphysics of abundance and overflowing plentitude (both uncreated and created, cf. Chapters 1–2), and a dynamic anthropology, presuming ontological indigence, structured as a Dionysian hierarchy of simultaneously receptive and ecstatic postures, modes, and acts. Situated within this created dynamism of Neoplatonic procession and return, the rational creature mirrors and traces the ontological simultaneity of its ascending and descending valences (cf. Chapter 3). For Gallus, this “wisdom of Christians” is that to which the apostle Paul refers in 1 Cor. 1:26, speaking of “wisdom among the mature” and it is the wisdom about which Paul’s intimate associate (and convert to his preaching), Dionysius the Areopagite, wrote in his little treatise, The Mystical Theology.100 Just as patently for Gallus (though not perhaps for the modern reader!), this wisdom is also the true subject matter of Solomon’s Song of Songs. For our Victorine, Solomon and Dionysius complement and supplement one another: the Areopagite provides a theoretical account of this mystical wisdom (scribit theoricam huius . . . sapientie); Solomon illustrates its practice: “in this book, namely the Song of Songs, Solomon hands on the practice of that same mystical theology (tradit practicam eiusdem mystice theologie).”101 A full appreciation of Gallus’ understanding of Christian

100 Cmm3-CC Prol.107: “The Apostle spoke of this among the perfect in 1 Cor. 2:6. And, from the teaching of the Apostle, the great Dionysius the Areopagite wrote a theoretical (theoricam) treatment of this super-intellectual wisdom, in so far as it is possible that this be written, in his little book on the Mystical Theology, which I carefully commented upon (exposui) over ten years ago.” 101 Cmm3-CC Prol.107.

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wisdom, accordingly, requires attention to his commentarial treatment of both texts. In fact, an operative assumption of the present work is that Gallus’ fullest account of mystical theology lies especially in his multiple commentaries on the Song of Songs (which have not figured sufficiently into either medieval or modern interpretations of his theology). This fact, however, presents a manifold challenge to any interpreter of Gallus’ theology, for his exegetical approach to the Song is both unsystematic and idiosyncratic. The former because he comments on the Song text in a sequential way, yet he frequently finds the same underlying meaning in different parts of the text as he comes to them, which means his discussion of any particular theme is dispersed and diffused throughout the commentary and must be culled out and gathered together to be considered fully and adequately. The latter because Gallus’ entire exegetical strategy consists, not only in a typical medieval allegorizing of the Song as a depiction of the mystical relation between God and the soul, but also in a wholly novel strategy of interpreting the soul-bride’s encounter with her divine Bridegroom through the Dionysian-inspired hierarchical anthropology of the “angelized soul” (the vir hierarchicus or vir angelicus). Gallus’ hierarchical anthropology is so fundamental to his account of mystical wisdom that it provides the overall interpretive framework for all that follows here. And, because the most crucial feature of his Dionysian anthropology is hierarchy—that is, a dynamic, hierarchical structure constituted by the three metaphysical “moments” or “valences” of procession, remaining, and return—these three organize the following interpretive exposition. But, since for Gallus, as noted in Chapter 2, the anthropological manifestation of Dionysian metaphysics consists in the valences of ascending and descending, and in their simultaneity, with the resulting integrated “mobile stability” of the soul, what follows treats first “ascending,” then “descending,” and finally “remaining.”

Part II Ascending

Preface to Part II

Put most generally, the ascending valence is the means by which the soul is dynamically oriented toward God; it describes the ways in which it knows and loves God, explains why and how the soul is united to God, and in what that union consists. In the Prologue to his Third Commentary on the Song of Songs, Gallus helpfully orients his presumed medieval reader (and his modern interpreter!) in relation to this upward dynamism: And so, the contemplative mind, having progressed through five steps of contemplation step-by-step, fixing its eye on the height of the sixth in the rank of the Dominions of the mind, reaches out toward theoric ecstasies (excessus theoricos), desiring to be taken up (assumi) into the rank of the Thrones, so as thus to be present in that place to the Deity who is near to all, according to the teaching of Dionysius in On the Divine Names 3.1

This text offers several crucial clues regarding Gallus’ conception of the mystical ascent. It functions well as a point of departure for Part II. First, importantly though not surprisingly, he correlates the ascent with the soul’s angelic structure. So, the ascending valence in the soul presumes a certain conception of the soul itself, its nature and faculties (cf. Chapter 3). Second, he situates the contemplative mind at a crucial juncture in its ascent: the boundary between the sixth angelic rank, the Dominions, the highest point of the middle triad, and the seventh angelic rank, the Thrones, the lowest rank of the highest triad. As noted above, this is also the boundary between the soul’s natural and super-natural capacities and activities; between the sphere of “nature assisted by grace,” the domain of “activity” and the sphere where grace renders the soul more passive (though not completely so). The ascending valence thus traverses the middle and highest triads of the soul. It involves capacities and activities that are both proper and natural to the soul’s created nature and those that are super-natural. Gallus

1

Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.C.117.

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characterizes the former as “sober,” by which he means activity proper and natural to the soul, while the latter are “ecstatic,” where the soul is drawn outside of itself, above its nature. This distinction between what is well termed enstatic and ecstatic, between within the mind (in mente) and above the mind (excessus mentis), between “sober” and “inebriated,” is fundamental to Gallus’ understanding of the ascending valence.

4 “Lingering in the Dominions” INTRODUCTION While Gallus is especially interested in what occurs in the highest triad, his conception of the middle triad is in fact integrally related to what occurs in highest triad, in particular to the relationship between knowledge and love. Thus we begin with the sixth rank, the topmost level of the middle hierarchy.

VIRTUE ASSUMED While he does not dwell on the moral dimension of the mystical life, it should be noted briefly that at various points, especially in his Song commentaries, Gallus indicates that the possession of virtue, especially the cardinal virtues, and the right ordering of charity, are prerequisites, taken for granted in his mystical theory. These pertain to the natural activity and condition of the soul. So, in the middle triad he speaks of the “activity of the virtues in the middle hierarchy,”2 where are found “the strength of the natural and gratuitous virtues of a robust mind.”3 Gallus likens the cardinal virtues to the “beams of cedar,” which are “immortal and exclude the rottenness of vices”4 These virtues protect the contemplative mind from the assaults of vice and temptation by “repelling every attack and every dissimilitude.”5 Cmm2-CC 1C.72: “ . . . virtutum opera in media hierarchia.” Cmm3-CC Prol.J.108: “valida mentis robora virtutum naturalium et gratuitarum.” 4 Cmm2-CC 1G.76: “CEDRINA, quia harum virtutum frucuts sunt immortales et vitiorum putredinem excludunt.” 5 Expl-AH 10.636.221. 2 3

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Allegorizing the word “apples,” Gallus speaks of “the sweet refreshments of the virtues” and then notes that “lest something tempt the bride to the most base things of temporal curiosity, she is surrounded by apples when the bridal-bed of Solomon, that is, the contemplative soul, is encircled by the strong men of Israel and protected by the aromatic protections of the cardinal virtues when approached by all the carnal vices.”6 So “the infantry of the cardinal virtues walks under the bed of Solomon”7 and the “four cardinal virtues circle the bed of Solomon, that is, the tranquil mind of the bride, guarding it . . . ”8 At this stage of the ascent, though, Gallus’ primary concern is the acquisition of knowledge of God. Given the historiographical narrative of Gallus as an anti-intellectual, this fact is of paramount importance. In the broadest terms, the ascending valence entails the pursuit of cognitio Dei. But for Gallus such cognitio is multi-form. Here, it is necessary to recall the fundamental distinction that he consistently draws between the two forms of wisdom or two forms of cognitio Dei. Commenting at the beginning of his third Song commentary on Jer. 9:24: Let him who boasts boast in this: that he knows and understands me, Gallus noted: “Here a twofold knowledge of God is designated,” the first of which is “intellectual (intellectualis).”9 Similarly, the programmatic claim of his Explanation of the Mystical Theology is that “we arrive at cognition of God in two ways. One is intellectual (intellectualis) . . . .”10 What is this intellectual cognitio Dei and how is it acquired?

ENSTATIC KNOWLEDGE OF GOD Simply put, this cognitio is knowledge of the Creator mediated by created effects. It is “acquired through the consideration of creatures” and is “gathered from the prior knowledge of sensible things.” 6 Cmm2-CC 2B.79: “ . . . malorum vero nomine suaves virtutum refectiones designantur . . . et ne quis sponsam ad ima revocet temporalis curiositatis, ecce stipatur malis, quando fortissimis ex Israel lectulus Salmonis, id est anima contemplativa, ambitur et aromaticis virtutum cardinalium custodiis omnium vitiorum carnalium custodiis onium vitiorum carnalium accessus arcetur.” 7 Cmm2-CC 1E.74: “ . . . pedester cardinalium qui inferius ambiunt lectum Salomonis . . . ” For the “bed of Solomon,” see Ws 8:7. 8 Cmm2-CC 3E.88: “ . . . quatuor cardinales virtutes, AMBIUNT custodiendo lectulum Sa[lomonis], id est tranquillem sponse mentem . . . ” 9 10 Cmm3-CC A.112. Expl-MT 1.3.2.

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It “ascends from the sensible to the intellectual.” Often invoking Rom. 1:19–20, Gallus refers to it by the phrase “mirror of creatures” or simply “per speculum.”11 In an apparently straightforward way, on the one hand, it is knowledge of God derived from philosophical speculation based on natural reason. Indeed, Gallus explicitly praises Aristotle as the preeminent practitioner thereof: “In this [way], the philosophers of the world made no little progress, especially Aristotle, who taught through his theoretical works (the Physics, the book On the Soul, and the Metaphysics) to ascend as if by steps from the visible things of the world to the invisible things of God.”12 Strikingly, on the other hand, the notion of ascending per visibilia ad invisiblia, here attributed to the Stagirite, is a Victorine principle going back to Hugh of St. Victor, and Gallus explicitly credits him in describing this knowledge: “provided through consideration of creatures in Ecclesiastes according to the exposition of the venerable doctor master Hugh, formerly of our regular church of Saint Victor in Paris.” And behind Hugh is Dionysius,13 who in his Epistle to Titus,14 as Gallus notes, affirms: “The activity of everything appearing in the world is the evidence of the invisible things of God.”15 It becomes clear, then, that this intellectual cognitio Dei is the proper object and possession, not only of philosophers, but also of theologians as well: Whatever science or wisdom, therefore, obtained in this [intellectual] mode, either arises from the cognition of preexisting visible things or is apprehended by intellect, [and] pertains to the first and common mode of cognizing God; and to this pertain all the liberal doctrines, not only of the pagan philosophers, but also of the catholic doctors and the holy fathers, which either through intellectual study or teaching are able to

11

12 Expl-MT 1.27.570. Expl-MT 1.3.6. Expl-MT 1.4.29ff. “To this [mode] pertain, not indeed in every individual sentence but the principle matter and intention, all the books of blessed Dionysius which are extant, namely, On the Celestial Hierarchy, On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, On the Divine Names, and the two books which are not found, namely, On the Divine Characters/ypotyposibus, and On the Symbolic Theology, with the exception alone of the book which we now have in our hands [The Mystical Theology] and a few letters.” 14 In Philippe Chevalier (ed.), Extractio ex Libris Dionysii: Dionysiaca: Recueil donnant l’ensemble des traductions latines des ouvrages attribués au Denys de l’Aréopage, 2 vols. (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer & Cie, 1937–50), 642. 15 Cmm2-CC Prol.65: “ . . . apparentis omnis mundi operatio est invisibilium Dei propositio . . . ” 13

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be understood by mortals and can be assimilated into the faculty of the common understanding.16

More precisely, then, intellectual cognitio Dei is whatever can be understood or grasped by the natural, “common” intellectual powers and acts.

THE SIX STEPS OF CONTEMPLATION It is also at this point that Gallus invokes his favorite Victorine master, Richard of St. Victor, and Richard’s “mapping” of contemplative knowledge into six steps of contemplation, in his treatise Benjamin Major.17 In a short, late treatise (1244–6), the Spectacula contemplationis, Gallus explicitly adopted (and adapted) Richard’s framework of “the six steps of ascent in Beniamin Maior.” In the passage quoted at the outset of this chapter, mention of six steps of contemplation (“ . . . having progressed through five steps of contemplation step-by-step, fixing its eye on the height of the sixth”) refers, not to the six angelic ranks of the first and middle triads of the hierarchized soul, as it might appear, but rather to Richard’s steps of contemplation. Gallus thus here incorporates those contemplative stages within his overall account of the mystical ascent, correlating them with the sober activity of the soul in its middle triad. As Gallus puts it in the Spectacula contemplationis, they pertain to “intellectual contemplation prior to ecstasy of mind.”18 In his Explanation of the Mystical Theology, Gallus gives the following summary of these steps: As prior Richard [of St. Victor] taught in the distinction of the grades of contemplation, the first, second, and third [steps] are turned toward the 16 Expl-MT 1.4.22–9: “Quecumque ergo scientia uel sapientia predictis modis obtinetur et preexistente uisibilium cognitione ingignitur aut intellectu apprehenditur, ad primum modum et communem cognoscendi Deum pertinet; et ad istum pertinent omnes doctrine liberales non solum gentilium philosophorum sed doctorum catholicorum et etiam sanctorum patrum que uel studio intellectuali uel doctrina possunt a mortalibus comparari et in facultatem communis intelligentie reduci.” 17 Richard of St. Victor, Benjamin Major, ed. Marc-Aeilko Aris, vol. 6, Contemplatio: Philosophische Studien zum Traktat Benjamin Maior des Richard von St. Victor (Frankfurt: Josef Knecht, 1996); PL 196.63–202B. 18 Spec-cont. Prol.270.7–8: “Hec est descriptio contemplationis intellectualis citra mentis excessum.”

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sensible and invisible properties, and the invisible natures, reasons, causes, etc., of visible things. And those three are mixed up with the imagination; and they do not attain pure understanding (intelligentiam). The fourth step, with the office of the imagination removed, reaches out only to those things that the imagination does not attain, that is, to the invisible natures, the properties, virtues, powers, dispositions, etc., of invisible things, qualities that we both experience in our minds and comprehend through common understanding (intelligentiam). And this step is practiced chiefly by natural reason. The fifth [step] rises up into divine and eternal spectacula only apprehensible by the intellect and consonant with human reason. Worldly philosophy does not know the sixth step.19

Both Gallus’ overall appropriation of Richard’s schema and his particular interpretation of it, as reflected in this passage, afford insight into his conception of intellectual cognitio Dei. First, the overall thrust of Richard’s schema is a sapiential mediation on creation, “wondering at the wisdom of the Creator,” which ascends from visible things to their invisible and eventually divine and indeed Trinitarian causes. The first three steps, as Gallus notes above, are all oriented toward the external world,20 where “the wonderful incomprehensibility of providential wisdom appears and is present in all these things.”21 The fourth step is a “hinge,” transitioning from a focus on sensibilia to a focus on those things that are purely conceptual or intellectual, lacking material expression or imagable manifestation, and thus at 19 Expl-MT 1.3.10–4.21: “Vt enim docet prior Richardus in distinctione graduum contemplationis, primus et secundus et tertius uersantur circa uisibilium sensibiles et inuisibiles proprietates et inuisibiles naturas, rationes, causas etc., et illi tres imaginationi immiscentur nec puram intelligentiam contingunt. Quartus gradus semoto imaginationis officio illis solis intendit que imaginatio non attingit, id est inuisibilibus inuisibilium naturis, proprietatibus, uirtutibus, uiribus, dispositionibus etc., qualia et in mentibus nostris experimur et per communem intelligentiam comprehendimus, et iste gradus exercetur potissime in natura rationali. Quintus assurgit in diuina et eterna spectacula tantum intellectu apprehensibilia et humane rationi consona. Sextum philosophia mundana ignorat.” 20 The first step “consists in the imagination and according to the imagination when the pure understanding (intelligentia) turns the eyes to the consideration of any sensible forms . . . ” (Spec-cont. 1.270.16–18). The second step “attends to the invisible causes, reasons (rationes), and orderly arrangements (dispositiones) of visible things, and therefore it consists in imagination according to reason” (Spec-cont. 2.271.50–2). The third step “consists in reason according to imagination, in which by the comparison (collationem) of sensibilia one is raised to the knowledge of the invisibilia of ourselves, of the angels, and of God” (Spec-cont. 3.273.88–90). 21 Spec-cont. 2.4.272.70–1.

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this stage “the use of sense and imagination [is] utterly suspended,” and reason operates without them, “reason according to reason,” so to speak. In the Spectacula contemplationis, Gallus indicates more explicitly that at this step, freed from sense images, the mind begins to reflect upon itself: “the purified mind . . . turns its gaze back onto itself.”22 Up to this point, the primary active faculty has been reason (ratio). At the fifth step, though, the intellectus takes over, turning upward from the interiority of the soul itself and its nature to the superior nature of the Creator above it, in order to contemplate the divine invisibilia, the invisible attributes of the divine essence. Here, Gallus organizes this speculation according to a venerable Victorine triad of divine power, wisdom, and goodness,23 while also noting divine “eternity, immensity, infinity, incomprehensibility, most causal causality, and simple unity.”24 Finally, he concludes with his signature divine attribute: plenitude (see Chapter 1). Contemplating “the superdesirable fullness of the divine whole [divinity],” Gallus subtly introduces the Dionysian metaphysics of procession and return. For the divine plenitude is always “drawing all desires unto itself by its infinite and most universal desirability,25 nevertheless inestimably satisfying and super-overflowing all things fully existing in it in the form of a flood.”26 All of this pertains to “to the divine essence,” which despite this abundant deluge “is simple in itself to the highest degree, to such a degree that nothing can be thought simpler.”27 Importantly, this purely intellectual activity of the fifth step is executed “according to reason” and “in so far as it is possible through a mirror,” indicating that this is essentially an exercise in philosophical speculation on what the divine essence must be like in light of the “mirror” of created things contemplated in the prior steps, even though created things are no longer in view and have been transcended. The sixth step marks a transition beyond philosophical speculation derived from meditation on created beings and governed by natural reason: “worldly philosophy does not know the sixth step.” Here, contemplation occurs “in the intellect above reason” and is focused on “the personal and notional divine invisibilia, that is, on the Trinity itself. Gallus now rehearses the specifically Ricardian theology of the 22 24 26

23 Spec-cont. 4.275.144–5. Spec-cont. 5.1–4.279.257–86. 25 Spec-cont. 5.6.280.296–8. DN 4. 27 DN 8; Pss. 28:10, 45:5; Luke 6:38. Spec-cont. 5.1.279.258–9.

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Trinity (noted in Chapter 1), with its signature focus on divine plenitude (ad intra) (the fullness of goodness, of happiness, of love), as well as the distinction of the Trinitarian persons according to mode of origin, rather than relation.28 Though he does not say so explicitly, this Trinitarian speculation is derived from revelation not reason, and is not available, accordingly, to purely philosophical speculation, but only to the “the catholic doctors and the holy fathers” (see above, n. 15). Nevertheless, though supernaturally revealed, revelation makes these Trinitarian notions and attributes available to the human conceptual apparatus, so to speak, and to be noetically graspable. Whether rationally discovered in the fifth step, or divinely revealed in the sixth, this intellectual speculation nonetheless falls within the purview of the intellect. For, as Gallus puts it in the text cited above, whatever is obtained “through intellectual study [i.e. philosophical metaphysics] or [divine] teaching” [i.e. revealed theology] can be brought into the faculty of the common intelligence.29 These six steps of contemplation, even the last—involving speculation of the Trinity on the basis of divine revelation—are all executed within the sober mind, within the middle triad of the angelic soul. All of them yield what Gallus calls an intellectual cognitio Dei, a knowledge of God “in a mirror” or per speculum.

INTELLECTUAL COGNITIO DEI So, summing up, how might Gallus’ intellectual cognitio Dei best be characterized ultimately? First, the faculties or powers of the soul implicated in this cognition are the normal array of human senses and faculties, including the five physical senses, the imaginatio, ratio, and intellectus. Recall (from Chapter 3) that the middle triad involves deliberate, rational activity, 28 Spec-cont 6.7.281.352–55: “The seventh [consideration] attends to the propria of each Person according to which the proprium of the Father is not being from another and having existence from Himself. The proprium of the Spirit is to have being from another and not eternally having existence from Itself. The proprium of the Son is having being from another and another having existence from Him.” 29 Expl-MT 1.4.22: “que uel studio intellectuali uel doctrina possunt a mortalibus comparari et in facultatem communis intelligentie reduci.”

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involving “meditation,” “judgment,” and voluntary “intentionality.”30 Under the rule of free choice (libero arbitrio), the “voluntary movements of the intellectus and affectus” determine the genuinely highest good and pursue it “with all the powers of the affect and intellect.”31 Intellectus is oriented to the “the clarity (claritas) of the highest truth,” while the affectus is aligned toward “the sweetness (dulcedo) of the highest good.”32 Second, the primary and immediate object of this cognitio is created things (entes); it is obtained “through the gathering together and contemplation of creatures” (per collationem et contemplationem creaturarum).33 Third, accordingly, the method through which the soul arrives at this knowledge is primarily through active and studious engagement with created visibilia, which the mind actively grasps and from which it extracts essential knowledge, which knowledge in turn functions as a kind of mirror (per speculum) through which the nature of God can be deduced and inferred. In this way, the mind begins “downward-facing,” toward creatures, from which the mind “pulls” or “extracts” knowledge—“through human teaching and proper study” (per doctrinam humanam et studium proprium)34—by which the mind can mount upward toward knowledge of God. It is “wine” extracted from grapes.35

30 Expl-AH 10.633.136: “Secunda mansio habet pro tabulato siue pauimento uires inferioris partis anime que dicitur ratio ad distinctionem synderesis. Hec assurgit per trinam operationem industrie: meditationem scilicet et experientie examen; et certam sententie diffinitionem; et liberam et imperiosam date sententie executionem.” 31 Cmm3-CC Prol.I.108: “ . . . per definitivam sententiam ad appetendum et querendum totis viribus affectus et intellectus summum bonum et ad repellendum omnia obstacula.” 32 Expl-AH 10.633.207: “ . . . motus uoluntarios affectus et intellectus a libero arbitrio exceptos, infusum lumen per industriam et uoluntarie totis uiribus contrectantes, et in ipso claritatem summe ueritatis et dulcedinem summe bonitatis quasi examinantes, et etiam dissimilitudines. Sed hoc quantum ad intellectum. Affectus enim anime glorificate eas non apprehendit.” 33 34 Expl-MT 1.3.4. Expl-MT 1.3.5. 35 Cmm2-CC 1A.68: “BECAUSE YOUR BREASTS ARE BETTER THAN WINE. Wine is collected from an estate (possessione); the fruitfulness of the breasts (ubertas uberum) flows from the bosom. Therefore, intellectual knowledge about God is understood by the word wine, which is gathered from the assemblage of created things unto the knowledge of the universal cause, according to Rom. 1:20: For the invisible things of God . . . .” ( . . . QUIA MELIORA SUNT UBERA TUA VINA. Vinum de possessione collilgitur, ubertas uberum de pectore fluit. Nomine ergo vini intelligitur scientia de Deo intellectualis que colligitur ex collectione creaturarum ad universalis cause cognitionem, iuxta illud Rom. 1: invisibilia Dei, etc.).

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For this reason, as did Hugh before him,36 Gallus enlists “all the liberal arts” in its service. Fourth, in its noetic act it is limited to created being (ens): “all cognitions concern being or beings (de ente vel entibus).”37 Again: “all the exercise of our reason and understanding is oriented within the limits of being” (intra terminus entis).38 Whatever is actually known or apprehended by the intellect is being or beings. Fifth, it arrives at knowledge of God indirectly, via inference,39 from what is known of creation: “being (ens), which can be referred back to he who is (Exod. 3:14), signifies the first cause in act (operantem), according to which mode it is cognizable.”40 This intellectual cognitio is thus primarily a form of philosophical speculation on the existence of a first cause on the basis of its visible effects. This speculative knowledge of God is . . . both learned and taught commonly (communiter), as much by meditating as by hearing and reading. The Gentile philosophers learned to achieve only this. Therefore, the Apostle in the Epistle to the Romans wrote: what is known of God is manifest to them (Rom. 1:19). Accordingly, what is known [of God in this way] can be acquired from knowledge (cognitio) already possessed of sensible things.41

And beyond this point, philosophy has neither inclination nor capacity to go: “being itself, which is first in the intellect and highest, and beyond which worldly and intellectual philosophy seeks or investigates nothing.”42 36 See Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon, tr. Jerome Taylor (New York: Columbia University, 1961), Books 1–3. 37 38 Expl-DN 1.101.1317. Expl-DN 7.371.173. 39 Expl-DN 1.56.155–7: “For our intellect, as long as we are viators, is only speculative, not comprehensive of eternal things, and it sees them through a mirror (per speculum), not by direct sight (speciem).” 40 Expl-DN 4.290.2816. 41 Cmm2-CC Prol.65: “Hec Dei cognitio speculativa est . . . communiter et dicitur et docetur, tam meditando quam audiendo, quam legendo. Hanc solam gentiles philosophi attigisse comperiuntur. Unde Apostolus ad Rom. 1 d: quod notum est Dei manifestum est illis. Notum siquidem est quod ex preexistente sensibilium cognitione colligi potest.” 42 Expl-DN 1.59.230–2: “ipsum ens quod primum est in intellectu et summum et extra quod nihil querit aut inuestigat philosophia intellectualis et mundana.” See also Expl-DN 4.192.317–193.324: “But whatever is super-substantial is removed from all existing things. And it is not hidden from us that, to many who are called wise, such things would seem to be absurd, concerning such ones Dionysius said (MT 1) that [193] [they assume that nothing exists super-substantially], where he intends chiefly

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But, in the sixth place, as noted, Gallus also includes here a knowledge of God derived from revelation: “Understanding, gathering through the service (obsequio) of imagination and reason innumerable signs and testimonies of invisible, celestial and divine things from the whole of the Scriptures and from creatures.”43 Seventh, finally, for all these reasons, such speculative knowledge of God is “enigmatic” (enigmaticus),44 mediated through the mirror of created things. In short, it is knowledge that is connatural to the created intellect and is apprehensible by human concepts. It is the realm of what can be thought, which for Gallus is coterminous with what is or exists or with what has being.45 It is whatever can be brought into the “common understanding.” Gallus speaks of “the theoric intellectus”—the speculating intellect—“with which the sober mind is chiefly exercised for the cognition of angelic and divine things, and also of our own invisible things [i.e. the nature of the soul] . . . For our intellect and physical senses are exercised within the limits of creatures, nor does our intellect exceed being or a mirror. I Cor. 13: now we see in a mirror, etc.”46 So, from the consideration of visible things, the “mirror” of creatures, the middle hierarchy is “led back” and “up” to an intellectual understanding of God as the Artisan and Creator of all things. Admittedly, this characterization is complicated by the fact that Gallus clearly allows some knowledge of the Trinity at this stage. This is, nonetheless, still apparently mediated by concepts, as Gallus describes here: The eternal exemplars of all the things that fall under being (sub ente cadunt) are by nature in the Eternal Word, and existing things are causally cognized and comprehended by glorified minds, both angelic and human, in those exemplars. But the images of those same exemplars are naturally present in any mind. Hence contemplative wayfarers, the pagan philosophers and their followers, who think being (ens) to be (esse) the first and highest in cognition.” 43 Cmm2-CC 4A.92: “Intelligentia ex obsequio imaginationis et rationis colligens de universitate scripturarum et creaturarum innumerabilia . . . ” 44 Expl-MT 1.3.4. 45 Behind this lies a central principle of Neoplatonic metaphysics and epistemology that Gallus has clearly appropriated, namely, the coextension of knowing and being. Whatever exists is knowable and whatever is knowable must lie within the realm of being. See Perl, Theophany, 5–17. 46 Expl-DN 7.370.128.

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by turning back the sharp point of the mind (acie mentis) within themselves in the fourth grade of contemplation and above, speculate those exemplars of the Word as the truths of their ideas in those mental images. For those who are in the body are therefore journeying, walking by faith not by sight: 1 Cor. 5:3–5 and 1 Cor. 13:12: ‘Now we see etc.’ And the mind is reformed to the extent that it is purified by such speculation in the intelligence and it is conformed to what it contemplatively speculates, hence, 2 Cor. 3:18: ‘We all with unveiled faces etc.’47

But the Trinity, as noted in Chapter 1, is certainly not a being among beings, nor simply the first cause of beings; nor is the divine Plenitude to be identified with Being itself. Radically transcending both beings and being itself, the Trinity “is called true beingness (entitas)” or better, in a Dionysian idiom, “super-essentialness (superessentialitas) . . . returning back within itself (in se reflexum), not processing out to things” (non ad res procedens).48 For this reason, God in Godself, so to speak, remains for Gallus “above every cognition.”49 For whatever is “causally above every being (causaliter est super omne ens) is surpassingly separated from all cognition, according to Job 36:26: “Behold, God is great, exceeding our knowledge.”50 Accordingly, we cannot “arrive at the most causal cause unless we transcend everything that is caused.”51 For this, moreover, an entirely different modality of cognitio is required, because “in himself God is not cognized intellectively but unitively (intellective sed unitive).”52 The best explanation for this seems to be that the Trinitarian God is neither comprehended nor exhausted by the conceptual “purchase” on divine threeness that is possible at this stage.

Expl-DN 4.185.125–42: “in Verbo eterno per naturam sunt eterna exemplaria omnium que sub ente cadunt, et in illis exemplaribus causaliter cognoscuntur et comprehenduntur existentia a mentibus glorificatis angelicis uel humanis. Eorumdem autem uerorum exemplarium imagines per naturam sunt in qualibet mente. Vnde contemplatiui uiatores reflexa in se mentis acie in quarto gradu contemplationis et supra, illa Verbi exemplaria tamquam suarum idearum ueritates in ipsis mentalibus imaginibus speculantur. Qui enim in hoc corpore sunt, peregrinantur adeo per fidem ambulantes et non per speciem: I Cor. 5b et I Cor. 13g: Videmus nunc etc. Et ex tali speculatione purificate intelligentie utcumque reformatur mens et contemplatiue speculatis conformatur, unde II Cor. 3g: Nos autem omnes etc.” 48 49 Expl-DN 4.290.2816. Expl-DN 4.290.2816. 50 Expl-DN 1.101.1318–102.1312. 51 Expl-DN 7.371.175: “nec in causam causalissimam peruenimus nisi omnes causatum transeamus.” 52 Expl-DN 4.290.2816. 47

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In relation to Gallus’ angelic anthropology, as noted, all of the above occurs in the middle triad of the soul, that of the Virtues, Powers, and Dominions. His emphasis within this dimension is on grace-assisted “industry” or activities—“a multiplicity of meditations, affections, intentions, discernments (discretionum), speculations . . . ,”53 the cultivation of virtue and especially the pursuit of intellectual knowledge of God. As also noted, Gallus construes this activity hierarchically, as part of the ascending valence, a movement Godward through the three ranks of this triad. Consequently, this stage of the ascending valence terminates “in the Dominions,” about which Gallus observes: The order of Dominions, which is the highest in the middle hierarchy, contains the commands of free will (imperia liberi arbitrii), by whose authority all the powers of understanding (intelligentie vires) are commanded to be stretched [extendi] unto the speculations of beautifying beauty (in speculationes pulcrifice pulcritudinis) and all the affectual powers unto the desire and union of the highest good (omnes affectuales in desiderium et unitionem bonifice bonitatis), and it suspends (suspendit) all the possible aforementioned powers up to the last and highest [boundaries] of aided and illuminated nature.54

Having climbed the six steps of contemplation, Gallus’ hierarchized soul arrives at a terminus, a boundary beyond which it seems unable to go. It has acquired a certain kind of cognitio Dei, which is a genuine knowledge, a knowledge of the attributes of the divine essence, derived through philosophical speculation, and even a knowledge of certain Trinitarian notions or concepts, divinely revealed in Scripture and in the Church, which can be grasped by the “common understanding.” This is “the order of the dominions into which is ordained sober and pure speculations of the invisible things of God.”55 Yet the dynamic ascending impulse ad Deum of its hierarchical nature does not allow the mind to rest here. Having extracted this knowledge of God from the mirror of creatures “below” it, and turned above itself Godward, here at the boundary of both its own natural capacities and at the limiting nexus of being and knowing, it

53 Cmm2-CC 1D.72: “ . . . multiplicitas meditationum, affectionum, intentionum, discretionum et speculationem . . . ” 54 55 Spec-cont. 4.6.277.219–25. Cmm3-CC 4A.176.

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continues to reach, to strive, to yearn for more. Yet, it cannot: “it is not by its power [able] to ascend all the way to the transcendentlylocated majesty in infinity,” nor can it “acquire the plenitude of that light.”56 To characterize this posture, Gallus consistently deploys the language of “stretching” and “extending”: “The sixth [rank] contains the commands of free decision (liberi arbitrii), and it unyieldingly commands all the powers [of the soul] to be extended into that eternal plenitude [eternam plenitudinem].”57 Again: “the still-sober-mind is stretched and is exercised toward the ray above, up to the highest limits of its nature.”58 Alongside this language of reaching Godward, Gallus also frequently uses the language of “suspension”: “the high points (apices) of the affect and intellect are suspended (suspenduntur) in all their power for the reception of the divine visitations from above (superadventus), in as much as this is possible for free choice assisted by grace.”59 Indeed, “suspension” gives this rank its name: “the sublimity of these ‘suspendings’ (suspendii) . . . is noted by the name ‘Dominions.’”60 Crucially, suspension here has a double meaning. On the one hand it is nearly a synonym for stretching and reaching; to suspend is to lift up: “Suspension is the stretching of the mind into the super-resplendent theoriae up into the high point of the order of the Dominions of the mind.”61 Importantly, Gallus often characterizes this in the passive voice: “to be raised up (suspendium) is the extension of the mind into the super-bright (extentio mentis in uperfulgentes) theoriae up to the summit of the order of the Dominions of the mind.”62 At the same time, “suspension” has the familiar connation of stoppage, of arrested movement, of cessation. At this stage, the soul’s powers reach their natural limit, and thus their proper activity is now suspended. The “net effect” of this language is to evoke the paradoxical image of simultaneous activity and inactivity,

56 Expl-AH 10.636.226: “Verumtamen non est sue potestatis ad illam in infinitum supercollocatam maiestatem aliquatenus ascendere aut luminis illius plenitudinem acquirere.” 57 Expl-AH 10.636.223: “Sextus continet imperia liberi arbitrii in quibus incessanter et inflexibiliter precipit in illam eternam plenitudinem totis uiribus tendi.” 58 59 Cmm3-CC Prol.K.108–9. Cmm3-CC Prol.K.109. 60 Cmm3-CC Prol.K.109. 61 Cmm2-CC 1B.71: “Suspendium est extensio mentis in superfulgentes theorias usque in summitatem ordinis dominationum mentis . . . ” 62 Cmm3-CC Prol.V.110.

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both of straining, striving, and stretching and of restraint, cessation: “suspension is the extension of the mind into the summit of the order of Dominions of the mind, into the super-shining theoriae, . . . that is, by unmoved intension and by much exertion of the mind, . . . assiduously and . . . continuously” (immobili intentione et multo mentis conatu, . . . assidue . . . continue . . . ).63 In his commentaries on the Song of Songs, Gallus frequently evokes this stage in the ascending valance using the bridal imagery of the Song text, filtered through the framework of his angelic anthropology. The soul is like a bride waiting, longing, reaching hierarchically for an absent Bridegroom. In fact, as noted, it is here that Gallus situates the bride-soul at the opening of the Song of Songs, where she famously says: Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth. Gallus explains: “Sighing for this deifying union, the bride, suspended in the order of the Dominions of the mind and as yet still speculating in a mirror (in speculo constituta), says what follows, as if she were speaking about someone absent: Let him kiss me . . . ”64 Gallus advises: “understand that the bride, as much as she can, always chooses suspension (Job 7:15) for herself, and here, namely in the Dominions, she holds herself (recipit se), . . . neither resigning herself in negligence to the lower orders, nor presuming in pride permission to the higher orders.”65 It as though “the mind (mens), after it surveyed all things, Eccles. 7:26, desiring to be separated from the sum of all existing things and to be united happily to the super-substantial bridegroom, . . . asks for a kiss, that is, the joining or union above the mind.”66 Aptly, Gallus captures the soul-bride’s posture with the language of “lingering”: “Lingering in the Dominions, therefore, contemplating the beauty of the divine as much as she can in a mirror, as in 2 Cor. 3:18: but we all with an open face, she desires to be united to the first beauty above.”67 Since she is “unwilling to rest, the bride suspends 63

64 Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.D.118. Cmm3-CC Prol.Z.111. Cmm2-CC 1A.68: “OSCULETUR ME OSCULO, etc. Ita intellige quod sponsa semper, qunatum in se est, eligit suspendium sibi, ut Iob 7, et ibi se recipit quo per industriam superius ascendat, scilicet in dominationibus, nec per egligentiam ad inferiora se deponens, nec per superbiam supra concessum presumens, De div. nom. 1.” 66 Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.D.118: “Mens itaque, postquam lustravit universa, Eccle. 7, cupiens ab existentium universitate separari et supersubstantiali sponso uniri feliciter . . . . Petit osculum, id est unitionem super mentem . . . ” 67 Cmm2-CC 1A.68: “In dominationibus ergo consistens et, quantum in speculo sufficit, pulchritudinem divine claritatis contemplans, ut 2 Cor. 3: nos autem omnes revelata facie, superpulchro uniri desiderat primo, et inchoatio unitionis generatur.” 65

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herself in the order of the Dominions, calling for a way by which she may reach him and linger with him . . . according to her desire,”68 and “begs to be drawn, for no one comes whom the Father does not draw (John 6:24).”69 “Lingering in the Dominions”70 thus captures the paradoxical poise of striving to be drawn, of “actively waiting,” of “arrestedly striving” for the presence of the Bridegroom. The language of desire, longing, yearning in these passages is significant, not surprisingly, since for Gallus affection and intellection are “mingled together (miscentur) in every order, except in the Seraphim.”71 While he accentuates intellectual activity at this stage, a crucial affective “moment” emerges here, since for him knowledge begets or generates love: “the sobriety of industry . . . generates affection,” and “knowledge precedes and gives birth to love, although in the end is exceeded by love.”72 This pattern will be repeated in the highest triad as well, but the centrality of the intellect–affect relationship is worth noting here: clearly distinct, yet running parallel to one another, so to speak, each reaches its respective natural high point (apex) here in the sixth rank, in the middle triad.

THE LIMITS OF ITS NATURE The soul thus poised in striving and stretching Godward, of intellectual reaching and affective longing for a fuller cognitio Dei, has reached its natural limit. The sixth rank is rightly characterized as liminal, on the border of the soul’s created nature. Still contained within itself (enstatic) and “sober” (sobria), it yet desires that which exceeds its capacities and, indeed, even its nature: “In this order of the mind, moreover, the still sober (sobria) mind is extended and

68 Cmm2-CC 1D.72: “ . . . nec quantum voluit quiescere potuisse, suspendit se in ordine dominationum, modum expostulans quo eum inveniat et cum eo iuxta desiderium.” 69 Cmm2-CC 1B.70: “Sponsa siquidem cum dominationibus suspensa, nec ultra valens conscendere, trahi petit; nemo enim venit quem Pater non traxerit, Io.” 70 Cmm2-CC 1A.68: “ . . . suspendit se in ordine dominationum . . . ” 71 Cmm2-CC 3C.87: “ . . . miscentur in omni ordine, preterquam in solo seraphim . . . ” 72 Cmm2-CC 1C.72: “ . . . sicut cognitio precedit et gignit amorem, quamvis tandem excedatur ab amore.”

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exercised (extenditur et exercetur) toward the superior rays all the way to the highest limits (summos terminos) of nature.”73 That is, “the contemplative mind, having hastened step-by-step up the six contemplative steps,” and “fixing its gaze (aciem) at the height of the sixth in the order of the Dominions of the mind, strives for theoric ecstasies, desiring to be assumed into the order of Thrones of the mind,74 therefore so to be near the deity in the same place, who is near to all.”75 This transition coincides with the movement from enstasis to ecstasis; the soul here is on the threshold of ecstasy: “the order of Dominions from which immediately the excessus mentis is procreated.”76 It entails the overcoming of the absence of Bride and Bridegroom, for now “the beginning of union is begotten.”77 There is a pivotal aspect to this dominical level of the soul: it is the apex of the soul’s nature and natural modes of operation, even it as begins to be drawn and “pulled” beyond these: “the order of the Dominions has the most perfect mental operations; indeed beyond them, the mind is lead and does not lead.”78 In the Isaiah commentary, Gallus says that even though nature is assisted by grace in the second triad, the soul nonetheless remains “wholly in industry, within the bounds of nature”79—but barely and not for long. In terms of the soul and its powers, it could be said that the synderesis (in some sense, perhaps, understood as the highest operation or activity of the liberum arbitrium and the ratio inferior) is the “ceiling of the middle hierarchy” even as the transition from proper activity to active passivity is preparing it to be the “floor” of the highest triad of the hierarchized soul.80

73

Cmm2-CC Prol.67. The order of the Thrones, treated below, is the first rank of the highest triad, which is above nature. 75 Cmm2-CC 1B.70: “ . . . aciem figens in ordine dominationm mentis, nititur in theoricos excessus, cupiens in ordinem thronorum mentis assumi, ut ergo ibidem adsit deitati que omnibus adest, DN 3.” 76 Cmm2-CC 3C.87: “ . . . ordinem dominationum de qua immediate procreatur mentis excessus.” 77 Cmm2-CC 1A.68: “ . . . inchoatio unitionis generator.” 78 Cmm3-CC 6C.209: “Ordo vero dominationum habet perfectissimas mentis operationis; ultra enim illum, mens agitur et non agit.” 79 Expl-AH 10.634.151: “ . . . tota in industria, intra nature metam.” 80 I wish to thank Joshua Robinson, a participant in my Boston College doctoral seminar in 2012, for this formulation (Robinson, “To Be Affected According To What We Apprehend,” 8). 74

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CONCLUSION: THE VALUE OF INTELLECTUAL COGNITION Before leaving this chapter, the positive value that Gallus ascribes to the soul’s natural intellectual activity at this point should be noted. Even though it cannot on its own attain that for which it strives, Gallus nonetheless urges the intellect to constant “exercise”: “by striving (nitenti), that is, by exercising (exercenti) the soul TO A HIGHER RAY of the eternal light, which is to extend the mind frequently, rather, constantly upward intellectually and super-intellectually into the courses of the divine ray . . . Therefore, the best type of study with regard to divine things is to be exercised (exercitari) up to this ray.”81 Even though the wisdom of Christians “incomparably exceeds all the wisdom” of philosophy, yet “what is known of God, became known to a certain extent to certain philosophers of the world” and it “lays the foundation of the wisdom of Christians, incomparably above the wisdom of Gentiles,” who “perceived the lunar ray, not the solar [ray],” in as much as they “stretched into the ray of brightness (radium claritatis), not into the boiling heat of goodness (fervorem bonitatis).”82 For at the “peak of the Dominions . . . understanding (intelligentia), through the service (obsequio) of imagination and reason, gathering innumerable signs and testimonies of invisible, celestial, and divine things from the whole of the Scripture and from creatures, offers and represents [them] to the Thrones, who “are said to ascend from that mountain Galaad, that is, from this accumulation of witnesses [in the Dominions], and that same [dominical order] is the ‘highest begetter’ (summa genitrix).”83 Gallus in fact pursues this maternal language with respect to enstatic cognition in the middle triad: “understand the ‘mother,’ therefore, of the superior hierarchy to be the order of powers that primordially conceives and gives birth to the consideration of all things, [both their] visible and their invisible [aspects] (primordialiter concipit et parit omnium visibilium et suorum invisibilium considerationem), in the first grades of contemplation, for birthing the upward activity of contemplative ascents (ad propagandum contemplativarum ascensionum sursumactionem), in relation to active cognition (in cognitione

81 83

Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.C.117. Cmm2-CC 4A.92.

82

Cmm2-CC 1A.69–70.

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industriali) . . . namely, the order of Dominions.”84 For “the contemplative mind is called the only one of her mother (S. of S. 6:9) because the mind brings forth into the highest hierarchy that whole multitude which the order of powers conceives in sensible things or in the invisible things of sensible things [sensibilium invisibilibus], in nature, in reasons, in causes, etc. . . . ”85 Perhaps clearest of all: She calls the middle hierarchy her mother (matrem), since into her the theoriae are intellectually drawn and prepared, from whose unitive contemplation the highest hierarchy is fed (pascitur) and sustained (fovetur). She is said to have a house, since by her amplitude, as if by a wide palace, she receives the multitude of the universe. For the lower hierarchy is said to be a kind of mother (genitrix), since she gives birth to (gignit) the fundamental movements of the superior orders; her chamber, is the most secret cavity (sinus) of nature. But the divine light flows into the whole [hierarchies], both industry and nature.86

Making the same point again with a different metaphor, Gallus interprets “your teeth,” as “the dominions of the mind, which by offering up most zealously the spoken speculations of the invisible things of God, as if by chewing (masticando) the unitive and solid food of the perfect, to be distributed in the highest hierarchy, like flocks of sheep, as above, that are shorn, through the purgation from every exteriority of imagination and phantasy on account of the purity of the intelligence . . . .”87 Thus, far from rejecting the value of this intellectual cognition of God (as the Cloud author will later do, presuming to imitate Gallus), our Victorine simply relativizes it, granting it a genuine place in the ascent, where it renders real but humble service to its superiors, even in a sense giving birth to what comes after it. He could hardly be clearer about this than here: 84

Cmm3-CC 6D.210–11. Cmm3-CC 6D.211: “Dicitur ergo mens contemplativa, etiam in inferiori hierarchia, UNICA MATRI SUE, quia omnem multitudinem illam quam ordo potestatum in rebus sensibilibus aut sensibilium invisibilibus, naturis, rationibus, causis, etc. concipit in considerationem ducendo, parit mens in summa hierarchia et per contemplationem et unitionem ad primam simplicem causam unificat.” 86 Cmm3-CC 3B.168–9. 87 Cmm3-CC 4B.177: “DENTES TUI, id est dominationes mentis, qui offerendo dictas invisibilium Dei speculationes studiosius, quasi masticando contrectas, unitivum et solidum perfectorum cibum preparant a summa hierarchia dirigendum (with alternative reading of ms. VL), SICUT GREGES, . . . TONSARUM per purgationem ab omni exterioritate imaginationis et phantasie propter puritatem intelligentie . . . ” 85

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The foundation of all our wisdom (sapientia) and knowledge (scientia) is that rational nature (ipsa natura rationalis) and from the cognition of pre-existing natural things (ex preexistenti cognitione naturali), it draws the origin of all teaching (doctrina), even though celestial grace brings about the growth (incrementum) and consummation (consummatio), just as plants and trees receive the power and origin of their shoots, as well as their flower and fruit all from the roots, although without the benefit of heavenly heat and humors they are not strong enough to come to consummation. Therefore, all knowledge (scientia) and the edifice of virtue are established (constituuntur) upon the foundation of this nature, yet they are not consummated (consummantur) without the benefit of divine light and heat (sine divini luminis et caloris beneficio) . . . .88

In the face of these poetic images, of maternity, of mastication, of germination, all of which suggest that the lower modes of knowing, intellectual cognition, are “upwardly” assimilated by and accumulated in the higher parts of the soul, the disjunctive, anti-intellectualist reading of Gallus is difficult to maintain.

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Cmm3-CC 4C.178.

5 “Becoming a Throne for God” INTRODUCTION Upon the soul-bride thus “lingering” (suspended—stretching, straining, striving, yearning, waiting at the highest point of her nature) comes a divine visitation from the Bridegroom, who, “loving more than loved, and most eagerly hearing from afar [her] spiritual and fervent desires, as if intervening by hand, that is, by the operation of his grace alone, elevates her up into the order of thrones.”1 This is the longed-for kiss of which the bride speaks in the Song of Songs: “taken up into the order of Thrones, to the kiss of the Bridegroom . . . ”2 Throughout his corpus, Gallus consistently introduces the rank of the “Thrones” as follows: The seventh order is receptive of the divine visitation from above, through ecstasy of the mind (excessum mentis), and is therefore given the name “Thrones.” And there are as many thrones of that supersubstantial ray, super-simple in essence and multiple in efficacy, as there are interior cavities (sinus) or capacities (capacitates) of the mind.3

Five inter-related themes are central to Gallus’ discussion of this crucial nexus in the ascending valence: ecstasy-causing grace, mystical death of the intellect, intellectual and affective cognitio, Christ, and ecstatic receptivity. 1 Cmm2-CC 1A.68: “Sponsus vero magis amans quam amatus et spiritualia et ferventia desideria promptissime exaudiens, quasi intermissa manu, id est operatione solius gratie sue, Ez. 8 a, elevat eam usque in ordines thronorum.” 2 Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.D.118: “ . . . mens in ordinem thronorum ad osculum sponsi assumitur.” 3 Cmm3-CC Prol.L.109: “Septimus ordo per mentis excessum susceptivus est superadventus divini; unde thronorum nomine censetur, et quot sunt mentis sinus, vel capacitates illius supersubstantialis radii supersimplicis in essentia et multipicis in efficacia, tot sunt throni.”

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ECSTASY-CAUSING GRACE Because the soul is at the limit of its nature, the transition from the middle triad to the highest triad—from the “Dominions” to the “Thrones”—is wholly a function of divine initiative. Indeed, as noted, Gallus often distinguishes the three triads of his angelic anthropology as follows: the lowest is nature alone; the middle is nature assisted by grace, the sphere where nature is active and “industrious”; the highest is grace alone, where nature is seemingly rendered utterly passive, where the soul-bride says “I am acted upon and I do not act.”4 While in fact his view is actually more nuanced and complex than this, he nonetheless consistently stresses the priority of grace, indeed what Augustine and his medieval heirs called “operative” grace, from this point forward. One of the striking features of Gallus’ theological synthesis of both Dionysian and Augustinian traditions, filtered through his angelic hierarchic anthropology applied to the Song of Songs, is the versatility it affords for conceiving of the grace–nature relationship, allowing him to play on both the nuptial reading of the Song of Songs (already traditional in medieval monastic contexts) as well as the Dionysian metaphysics of procession and return (Gallus’ important innovation). This emerges, on the one hand, in the psychological drama of the interpersonal interaction between the Bride and Bridegroom, wherein, as here, the Bride awaits and then receives the gratuitous initiative of the Groom, experienced as a momentary visitation and thus a discrete act of grace. On the other hand, Gallus articulates the work of grace in metaphysico-hierarchical terms as a “drawing” and “attracting” force that “pulls” the soul Godward by the hierarchical motion of metaphysical “return” (reditus).5 This Gallusian fusion of the personal and the metaphysical is strikingly apparent here: To that inaccessible light no one comes unless the father draws him (John 6:44); and the one whom the father draws, the bridegroom draws also, and this signifies what is said in Exod. 8:3: and the like hand has been sent, etc., Dan. 14:35; Hos. 11:11; I shall draw Adam into those ones Cmm2-CC 1B.71: “ . . . agor et non ago . . . ” Cf. Chapters 2 and 3 in this volume. Recall that metaphysical return (reditus) for its part finds its anthropological expression in an ascending movement, an upward thrusting, ultimately self-transcending or ecstatic movement of the soul ad Deum and in Deum, that is, toward, to, and into God. 4 5

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with ropes, that is, in the uniting attraction of the Father, or of paternal delight (in unitivis attractionibus patrie, vel paterne dilectionis).6

In the end, these are not so much two actually different notions of grace as rather complementary ways of describing the effects of a singular grace. By combining them, Gallus can alternate between psychological/interpersonal and metaphysical/hierarchical registers in his descriptions of the soul’s relationship to God. In the description above, Gallus suggests that the soul receives grace through ecstasy, per mentis excessum, and so becomes a “Throne.” So, to be taken from Dominions to the Thrones is to be taken outside or beyond oneself: “dismissing itself by ecstasy, taken up into the Thrones of the spiritual soul.”7 As noted above, Gallus is quite explicit that the third and highest triad is “above nature,” beyond, as seen below, the soul’s natural capacities and normal modes of acting.8 Just like “hair, which springs forth from our highest point and above it,” so is “the order of Thrones, which rises above every peak of sober understanding and grows on high.”9

THE DEATH OF ENSTATIC KNOWLEDGE AND LOVE Precisely at this point come Gallus’ oft-noted statements regarding the limits of intellectual knowledge, and the apparently concomitant rejection and negation of such knowledge of God in favor of an exclusively affective experience of God through love. Here, he seems to be drawing a distinction between the two types of cognitio Dei, between the intellectual wisdom of the philosophers and “another knowledge of God which incomparably exceeds” (incomparabiliter excedit)10 the first. The latter is the wisdom of Christians, which is 6

Cmm3-CC 1D.125. Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.A.113: “dimittens se ipsam per excessum, assumpta in thronos anime spiritualis.” 8 Cf. Chapter 3. 9 Cmm2-CC 4A.91: “ . . . capilli ergo, qui de summo nostro et super summum pullulant, ordinem thronorum significant, qui super omne cacumen sobrie intelligentie eminent et sursum pullulant.” 10 Cmm3-CC Prol.B.107. 7

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descending from above, from the Father of lights (Jas. 1:17).”11 Citing DN 7, Gallus designates this wisdom as THE MOST DIVINE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD, which is THROUGH IGNORANCE. It, Gallus clarifies “is experienced through ignorance, by suspending (suspendendo) every operation and rational or intellectual cognition, according to a union above the mind through the exceeding of one’s own mind.”12 As seen in the discussion of the Dominions, the transition from the soul’s normal and natural capacities in the middle triad, the enstatic sphere, to the ecstatic mode of receptivity in the highest triad entails a “suspension” or cessation of their proper activity: “the consummation (consummatio) of every work either of nature or of industry . . . ”13 But in fact, attention to his various statements about this transition reveals that this suspension of natural activity in the soul applies to both the natural intellect and the natural affect: “when the mind is taken up into the order of Thrones, to the kiss of the bridegroom, every power and operation of the intellect and affect cease.”14 He often construes this as a kind of mystical “death,” citing Job 7:5: my soul chooses hanging, my bones [choose] death. Gallus explains: “Bones are the most robust powers of the mind, namely, the theoric intellectus (intellectus theoricus) and principal affectus (principalis affectus), in which the mind has nothing stronger in divine things. Two things are noted in death, namely, cessation (defectus) and separation (separatio). These last and highest bones have their exercise (exercitia) in the Dominions of the mind.”15 At the Throne rank, therefore, the natural and proper activity of both intellect and affect dies. Gallus’ claim then is that all normal and natural cognitive activities (where cognitive encompasses both kinds of cognition) undergo some kind of mystical death as the soul transitions from the enstatic to the ecstatic register.

11

Cmm3-CC Prol.B.107. Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.A.113: “quam experimur per ignorantium, suspendendo omnem operationem et cognitionem rationalem et intellectualem, secundum unitionem super mentem per excessum mentis proprie.” 13 Expl-AH 10.634.144: “ . . . non tam per operationem quam per susceptionem et operum omnium, sive nature sive industrie . . . ” 14 Cmm3-CC Prol.X.110: “Cum autem mens in ordinem thronorum ad osculum sponsi assumimtur, omnis efficacia et operatio intellectus et affectus deficit.” 15 Cmm2-CC 1B.71: “Ossa sunt robustissime vires mentis, scilicet intellectus theoricus et principalis affectus, quibus nihil fortius in divina. In morte duo notantur: defectus . . . et separatio . . . ” 12

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This notion of mystical death for the natural intellect and affect sets the stage for Gallus’ Christological solution to knowing the unknowable God. Here, he first appropriates the Dionysian notion of ecstasy (from Divine Names 7) as the alienation or separation of the mind from itself, interpreting it as the separation of intellect and affect from the mind itself in ecstasy, which is their above-noted death:16 “In the Thrones, [intellect and affect] are separated from the mind itself by ecstasy.” Yet, the mention of ecstasy in DN 7 prompts Gallus to invoke Dionysius’ discussion of ecstasy in DN 4, wherein ecstasy, significantly, is linked to love—DIVINE LOVE (divinus amor) IS ECSTASY CAUSING, NOT PERMITTING ANY TO BE LOVERS OF THEMSELVES (DN 4). Gallus hones in on how this is true for human love of God (elsewhere he also appropriates the Dionysian application of this principle to divine love of humans too): “that by which God is loved, namely, to be super-intellectually united to the super-desirable divine rays.”17 DN 4 then offers the apostle Paul as the model, in a passage that Gallus quotes in full, with minimal gloss: “THE GREAT PAUL, MADE INCONTINENT BY THE DIVINE LOVE, AND PARTICIPATING IN THE POWER OF THAT ECSTASY-CAUSING DIVINE LOVE, SAID ‘I live, and yet not I, but Christ lives in me,’ LIKE A TRUE LOVER AND SUFFERING ECSTASY, AS HE HIMSELF SAID, AND NOT LIVING HIS OWN LIFE, BUT BY THE LIFE OF THE 18 DN 4 says BELOVED, namely, Christ, WHO IS GREATLY LOVABLE.” nothing further of Christ or of Galatians 2, but for Gallus Paul’s “I, not I, but Christ” provides now a Grund-princip for the mystical life at the highest, ecstatic dimension of the ascending valence: For he is eternal life and wholly desirable. I live, by natural life, yet not I, because of the ecstatic change (mutationem excessivam) to the immensity of eternity, as if absorbed and suspended from its duty, I am guided, moved, taught, and ruled by the super-substantial life to which I am united, by which I am filled, and this is: but Christ lives in me, that is, just as the sober soul naturally rules me and disposes me to every 16

DN 7: WHEN THE MIND HAVING STOOD APART FROM ALL EXISTING THINGS, THEN HAVING which is said as if a kind of DEATH OCCURS IN US, NOT THE WASTING OF SUBSTANCE, ACCORDING TO WHICH IT WOULD SEEM TO OTHERS, BUT A SEPARATION OF THINGS UNITED. 17 Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.D.119: “ . . . quo Deus amatur . . . id est superintellectualiter uniri divinis radiis superdesiderabilibus . . . ” 18 Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.D.119. DISMISSED EVEN ITSELF,

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interior and exterior act, so the power of Christ, to which I am united by grace, vivifies me and disposes me toward all things.19

Here, now, reception of the mystical kiss of the Solomonic Bridegroom and the ecstasy which it effects now becomes a mystical sharing in the death and resurrection of Christ. The natural power of the sober soul, operative in the middle triad, which enabled the proper enstatic activity of intellectus and affectus is now dead and crucified (I have been crucified with Christ . . . ). In its place, though, the supernatural power of the resurrected Christ, now operative in the highest triad, gives life and activation to those same powers (but Christ lives in me), becoming the principle of the soul’s supernatural activity.20 So, the ecstatic soul can truly say: I live, yet not I, but Christ . . . . As Gallus puts it later: “Love (dilectio) is as strong as death. But by this death the life of Christ is induced (vita Christi inducitur), Gal. 2: I live, now I am not, etc., according to which what Dionysius says in DN 4: THE GREAT PAUL . . . etc. is explained. Therefore Job desires this death (Job 7:2).”21 Having united the ecstatic soul to Christ, in the very next breath, Gallus brings in the Holy Spirit: It is called “ecstasy” when the mind is alienated, not by fear, but is taken up by the inspiration of revelation; those who go beyond in the mind are said to undergo ecstasy, because they are acted upon, rather than acting. Rom. 8:14: those who are led (agi) by the Spirit of God, etc.22 19 Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.D.119: “Ipse enim est vita eterna et totus desiderabilis. Vivo ego, vita naturali, iam non ego, propter immutationem excessivam ad eternitatis immensitatem quasi absorpta et suo officio suspensa, dirigor, moveor, doceor, regor vita supersubstantiali cui unior, qua repleor, et host est: vivit autem in me Christus, id est sicut anima sobria me regit naturaliter et disponit ad omnem interiorem et exteriorem actum, sic virtus Christi cui unior gratuito me vivificat et ad omnia disponit.” 20 In his second commentary on the Song of Songs, in the same context, Gallus speaks of the soul being taken up into, even absorbed by, the life of Christ. See Cmm2CC 1B.71: “For then the mind receives Him, or better, is received and absorbed by Him, who properly contains and is not contained. Hence the Lord said to Augustine in Confessions: ‘you will be changed into me,’ not I into you. . . . ” (Dum enim mens ipsum suscipit ab ipso potius suscipitur et absorbetur, qui proprie continet nec continetur. Unde Augustinus in Confessionibus: ‘tu in me mutaberis,’ dicit Dominus ad eum, non ego in te, unde dum comedor comedo.) 21 Cmm3-CC 1N.140. 22 Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.D.119: “Extasis dicitur cum mens non a pavore alienator sed inspiratione revelationis assumitur; qui mente excedunt extasim pati dicuntur, quia aguntur, non agunt. Rom. 8:14: qui Spiritu Dei aguntur etc.”

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The “passivity” of the highest triad is, therefore, neither absolute inactivity nor quietism, nor the complete cessation of all intellective and affective acts, but rather a new modality of life in Christ, of life in the Spirit: “the soul chooses this grace for itself before others, since it is entirely more sublime not to be able to lead (agere) but only to be led (agi) by the Spirit (Rom. 8:14).23 Again: “The vital spirit is in the heart and it signifies the life of the bridegroom (Gal. 2:20: I live . . . ; DN 4) . . . it is the vital spirit which vivifies me only if I am mortified.”24 So, to be mortified, to be dead (suspended, hanging) is not inactivity, but a supernatural mode of existence in Christ; to be passive is to be led, to undergo, to suffer the leading of the Spirit: “in the superior hierarchy where the bride is now constituted, she is led and does not lead, according to Rom. 8:14: whoever is led by the Spirit of God, etc., she asks to be drawn above herself.”25 So, the gratuitous visitation of the Bridegroom, the divine kiss, brings about a pneumatically-activated participation in the living reality of Christ—I live, yet not I, but Christ—which is a crucifixion of the natural soul’s powers, leading to their supernatural, ecstatic elevation into a new modality of the power of Christ.

THE SINUS MENTIS: “ECSTATI C RECEPTIVITY” This for Gallus is the literal meaning of ecstasis: not only to go beyond the mind, to self-exceed, but also to be taken up into life of Christ in the Spirit. But he does not leave the matter there, vaguely. Rather, he specifies a particular anthropological modification of the soul as a result. The soul thus “ecstasized” is “expanded” or “dilated” for reception of the Bridegroom, is made “receptive of the divine

23 Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.D.118: “quia sublimius omnino agere non potest sed tantum agi a Spiritu, Rom. 8.” 24 Cmm3-CC 5C.193: “In corde est spiritus vitalis et significat vitam sponsi, Gal. 2: vivo ego; DN 4: Paulus magnus . . . cor meum, id est spiritus vitalis, qui me vivificat modo mortificatam.” 25 Cmm3-CC 1C.125: “Sed quia in superiori hiearchia ubi nunc sponsa constituitur agi et non agere, secundum illud Rom. 8: qui Spiritu Dei aguntur, etc., trahi se sursum rogat . . . ”

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coming-down-from-above” (superadventus divini) and “open to divine receptions.”26 This is what Gallus describes when he speaks, in a striking image, of the sinuses of the soul (sinus mentis, or less commonly, the sinus synderesis), manifold “cavities” or “hollows” in the soul.27 In his Commentary on Isaiah,28 he seems to suggest that this dilation or expansion begins in the rank of the Dominions, that is, within the realm of the soul’s natural activity: “Those therefore who are so situated in the meantime sigh daily for heaven and with assiduous strivings (conatibus), grace co-operating, expand in all their powers (totis viribus) the cavity of the synderesis (sinum synderesis) for the hungry and thirsty reception of that ray . . . ”29 The soul “extends upward (sursumextendit) every capacity of the mind (omnes mentis sinus) for receiving the divine light.”30 Yet, as he goes on to say: “By the divine ray received in the highest extension and dilation of the affectus and intellectus to which the free will is able to extend the synderesis, I think the mind to be dilated in an inestimably greater way by the ray received—or actually in the receiving—in the cognition of that plenitude, than it can [be] when the same [ray] co-operates through the free will.”31 That is to say: this ecstatic “capacitation” of the soul for God requires the Christological “kiss” if it is to succeed, even though it begins in the natural activity of the soul. Though the

26 Expl-AH 10.637.243: “ . . . multiformis simul et simplicis diuini radii susceptiones in ordine infimo . . . DIUINI SUPERADUENTUS ACCEPTIUUM ET IN DIUINAS SUSCEPTIONES FAMILIARITER APERTUM.” 27 The plurality of such sinuses clearly reflects Gallus’ assumption regarding what has been termed above the plethoric character of the Trinity’s pleromatic abundance, which, while remaining essentially simple and full within itself, yet processes out into manifold variety and is encountered accordingly by rational creatures. See the prior note. 28 Though Gallus wrote his Commentary on Isaiah early in his career (1218), he reproduced its discussion of the angelized soul nearly verbatim in Chapter 10 of his mature Explanatio on the Celestial Hierarchy. Here and below, accordingly, we will cite Lawell’s critical edition of the latter work. 29 Expl-AH 10.637.230: “Qui ergo in terra positi celum cotidie suspirant, assiduis que conatibus cooperante gratia ad illius radii susceptionem famelicum et sitibundum sinum synderesis totis uiribus expandunt . . . ” 30 Cmm3-CC 5.C.194. 31 Expl-AH 10.637.251: “Suscepto autem diuino radio in summa extensione et dilatatione affectus et intellectus, qua possit liberum arbitrium extendere synderesim, puto mentem inestimabiliter latius in suscepto uel etiam in suscipiente radio dilatari in illius plenitudinis cognitione quam posset eodem cooperante per liberum arbitrium.”

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dominical soul has in some sense been capacitated (expanded, stretched, suspended) in preparation for it, its completion nonetheless exceeds its strictly natural capacity and thus remains gratuitous, more a function of divine operation than human cooperation: that the bride is said to run (S. of S. 1:4) into the highest hierarchy of the mind is not contrary to that which is said above, that the mind does not lead there, but is led. For here running is none other than to throw oneself into the ray by some violent fervor of desire, by desiring to be suspended, elevated by grace, into which one cannot ascend naturally (per naturam) by any strength of one’s own.32

Though the soul by nature has these sinus mentis, they remain inert, un-activated, in-capacious apart from the ecstasizing dilation of grace. This upward-opening dilation is a function of the grace of divine visitation, of the kiss.33 The soul-bride is expanded by the ray of divine self-revelation itself: the revelatory kiss “expands and suspends the synderesis in all its power for the reception of it.”34 Both intellect and affect are “malleable”; their suspension entails not only “exercising” but also “stretching.”35 In some sense, then, the soul is by nature, super-naturally capacitated to be activated by grace; or is naturally structured for graced, super-natural, selfexceeding.

32 Cmm3-CC 1D.126: “Quod autem sponsa dicitur currere in summa mentis hiearchia non est contrarium ei quod dictum est supra, quia ibi non agit mens, sed agitur. Hoc enim currere non est aliud quam violento quodam fervor desiderii se in radium ingerere, appetendo per gratiam suspendi quo nulla sui virtute valet ascendere per naturam.” 33 The metaphor of blooming or flowering appears regularly in the commentaries on the Song of Songs: Cmm2-CC 2B.79: “The word ‘flowers’ designates the spiritual brilliances of knowledge, and . . . Therefore, the bride is supported by flowers when the soul is filled with splendors” (Isa. 58:11). Cf. Cmm3-CC 7E.220: “Your stature is like to a palm tree,” commenting on which, Gallus compares the hierarchies of the soul to a tree: the roots are the lowest triad; the trunk the middle triad, and the leaves and flowers the highest triad, which “is stretched generously into the more ample receptions of the divine coming-down-from-above (superadventus) through excess of mind.” (“per mentis excessum in ampliores divini superadventus susceptiones largiter extent”). 34 Expl-AH 10.636.223: “unde etiam ipsam synderesim tota uirtute ad eius susceptionem expandit et suspendit.” 35 Cmm2-CC 3G.90: “The stretchings and operations of the inferior orders uniformly strive to this, that, as much as sublimely possible, the bridegroom is received in the bosom (gremio) of intellect and affect on the day of his espousals.”

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A THRONE FOR GOD It is the resulting “concavity” in the soul that warrants the designation “thrones”: “the order of Thrones is understood . . . according to its ability for containing (continendo).”36 Gallus evokes this with similar images in his commentaries on the Song of Songs: “King Solomon, that is, the bridegroom, by his own operation MADE A LITTER FOR HIMSELF, concerning her, taking her up into the Thrones.”37 Like a rounded bowl (crater tornatilis) or “navel,” “the interior hierarchies are stretched out (porriguntur) to receive the nourishment of divine knowledge (scientie), cognition (cognitionis) and devotion . . . because of their most ample capacity (amplissimam capacitatem).”38 The “soul is called a small upper room, on account of its own [power of] choice (arbitrium proprium), but in the passion [narrative] it is called a large upper room through the love of the indwelling Majesty. In Confessions Augustine says: “The house of my soul is small; let it take hold of you and be enlarged by you” (I.5); similarly 1 Kgs 8:27 says: heaven does not hold you, and: he gave to him the breadth of the heart. Behold both, because within herself [she] is small, but from a gift of God she receives breadth (latitudinem).”39 In his Explanatio of The Celestial Hierarchy, Gallus summarizes the “throne-like” soul by noting “the six qualities of this rank, symbolized by the six qualities of the material throne, namely: (1) elevation (sublimitatem), like that royal throne that is placed in a lofty place; (2) embracing God, just as the throne is placed around (circumplecitur) the king; (3) stability, just as the throne of the king is firmly set; (4) receptivity for God, just as the throne receives the one sitting upon it (suscipit); (5) God-bearing, just as the throne bears the king; (6) continuous undertaking [and] opening toward God (continuam apertionem ad Dei susceptionem), just as the throne is open on high.”40 In these ways, the soul has now become a throne for God. 36 Cmm2-CC 3G.90: “ . . . cuius nomine ordo thronorum intelligitur . . . secundum suam possibilitatem continendo . . . ” 37 Cmm2-CC 3E.90: “ . . . FECIT SIBI FERCULUM, de ipsa, assumens eam in thronis . . . ” 38 Cmm3-CC 7B.216. 39 Cmm2-CC 1E.73: “de cenaculo parvo, propter arbitrium proprium, et magnum cenaculum in Passione dicitur per dilectionem inhabitantis maiestatis. . . . ecce utrumque, quia intra se parvus, sed ex Dei munere accipit latitudinem.” 40 Expl-AH 7.587.191–588.199: “Nota ergo sex proprietates ordinis istius que per sex proprietates throni materialis designantur, scilicet: sublimitatem, iuxta quod thronus regis in loco sublimi collocatur; item circumdationem Dei, sicut thronus circumplectitur regem; item stabilem collocationem, sicut thronus regis firmiter

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It must be stressed here, by way of conclusion, that this ecstatic drawing up into the highest triad implicates both the affectus and the intellectus;41 both are drawn up out of themselves at this point into the ecstatic mode of Christo-pneumatic existence. “Your cheeks are beautiful,” says the Bridegroom to the soul, and Gallus explains: “The beauty of cheeks is based on the harmonious combination of redness and radiance and so, she is drawn into the order of Thrones equally by the radiance of understanding and the redness of fervent affection.”42 In this light, as Gallus proceeds to narrate the next steps of the ascent, the cherubic and the seraphic, it now becomes apparent that both intellectus and affectus have an ecstatic mode of existence. With respect to the intellect, this fact has particular significance. In his actual practice, Gallus distinguishes two forms of intellectual cognitio Dei, rather than just one. The first kind is the “sober” and enstatic intellectual cognitio, described in Chapter 4. But there is also an “ecstatic” form of intellectual cognitio, which emerges in the order of the Cherubim. With respect to the affect, of course, ecstatic, affective cognitio, which is super-intellectual, a “loving and uniting knowledge” (affectualis cognitio et unitiva),43 the milk that flows down from the bosom of wisdom itself,44 emerges in the order of the Seraphim. In turning now to these, it bears remarking that in narrating the divine–human relation in the third triad, Gallus shifts markedly toward the nuptial and bridal metaphor from the Song of Songs, with its attendant direct and immediate and interpersonal characteristics, and away from the more impersonal, strictly hierarchical, graduated language of the celestial anthropology and of the

collocatur; item susceptionem Dei, sicut thronus super uenientem ad sedendum suscipit; item Dei gestationem, sicut thronus regem gestat; item continuam apertionem ad Dei susceptionem, sicut thronus est sursum patulus.” 41 Cmm2-CC 4B.92: “ALL the movements of that order [either Thrones or Cherubim] are WITH TWIN OFFSPRING, that is, they have twin offspring, because of the union of affect and intellect working together in it, and it is the building from the strength of the demonstration of essence (ex vi demonstrationis essentie), AND THERE IS NONE BARREN AMONG THEM. For by their exercises all the movements of that order obtain clearer cognition and more intimate fervor.” 42 43 44 Cmm2-CC 1F.74. Cmm2-CC Prol.65–6. Cmm2-CC 1A.68.

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predominately impersonal, mediated, indirect conception of human cognitio Dei of the middle triad and its quest for knowledge of God. The transition from the middle to the highest hierarchy, from the Dominions to the Thrones, is thus a crucial “hinge” in the ascent. Having reached the limits of its natural capacities, even as aided by grace, the soul must now be raised “above” and “outside” itself (ecstasis). There is also a change in the soul’s posture: it now turns from the active derivation of cognitio Dei from created things, to a more responsive reception of the supra-intellectual wisdom Christological and pneumatically mediated: in short, the soul becomes ecstatically receptive, in the manner of a Throne.

6 “Every Kind of Knowledge” INTRODUCTION Situated now in the highest triad of the mind, already ecstatically drawn beyond and outside its strictly natural capacities and activities, living now in Christ through the Spirit (I live, yet not I, but Christ), opened upward and receptively Godward, “concavely” (via the sinus mentis), the soul is now positioned to receive the divine plenitude, the “wisdom of Christians,” descending from the Father of lights (Jas. 1:17), in the final two ranks of the hierarchized soul, namely, in the Cherubim and the Seraphim, respectively. Describing the rank of the Cherubim in Chapter 7 of his Explanation of the Celestial Hierarchy, Gallus begins with the Dionysian description which associated the Cherubim with vision and intellectual contemplation of the divine light: “The name ‘Cherubim’ signifies a cognitive (cognitiuam) and ‘peering into’ (inspectiuam) power, receptive (susceptiuam) of light and contemplative (contemplatiuam) of divine beauty.”1 Gallus observes that this name signifies the power by which they “clearly know and profoundly look upon (inspiciunt) God as they have cognition [of God] through the deep abundance of wisdom,” and they “receive the first in-flowings of the divine lights (second to the Seraphim)” and they “contemplate the fullness of the divine beauty.”2 Gallus associates this order with “the clear cognition of truth” which “perfects the intellectus” (in contrast to “fiery love of true goodness” (fervido amore vere bonitatis),3 associated with the Seraphim, which “perfects the affectus”4). It is correlated with “the beautiful (pulchro) and the claritas, and is delighted by these and is 1 3

Expl-AH 7.581.9–14. Expl-AH 7.583.62.

2 4

Expl-AH 7.587.167–74. Expl-AH 7.583.65.

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naturally inquisitive (inquisitivus) of the truth.”5 To the Cherubim, moreover, pertains both the theological virtue of faith (just as “charity [pertains] to the Seraphim, and hope to the Thrones”) and “the gift of understanding (donum intellectus),6 which “perfects faith in the intellectual power (vi intectuali),”7 though he does not develop these points, as later scholastics will. In his commentaries on the Song of Songs, Gallus offers further specification: The eighth order contains every kind of knowledge (cognitionem) of the attracted intellectus (intellectus attracti), drawn by the divine worthiness, to which it is not able to ascend, and of the attracted affectus (affectus attracti), not exceeding the drawing and the summit of the attracted intellect (intellectus attracti). For the intellect and the affect are drawn at the same time, and walk together (coambulant), so to speak, up to the final failure of the intellect, which has its high point in the order of the Cherubim. The attracted intellect does not pass this, but has here the consummation of its knowledge and light. Because of this, this order is called the “Cherubim.”8

The cherubic rank thus contains “every kind of cognition,” both of “the intellectus, which is drawn up by the divine worthiness, though not able to reach it,” and “of the affectus, similarly drawn up, without exceeding the heights of the drawn up intellectus.” Here, the “upwardly pulled affect” (affectus attractus) and “upwardly pulled intellect” (intellectus attractus) “walk hand in hand” (coambulant)9 up to the point where at “the consummation of its cognition and light” the intellect fails (defectus intellectus).10 At first blush, that Gallus should posit at this rank the presence of intellectual knowledge, of vision and contemplation of God, is puzzling. 5 Expl-AH 10.635.180: “Primus autem modus precipue consistit in pulcro et claro et hiis delectatur, et naturaliter inquisitiuus est ueritatis.” 6 7 Expl-AH 10.641.354. Expl-DN 2.155.1035. 8 Cmm3-CC Prol.M.109: “Octavus ordo continet omnimodum cognitionem intellectus attracti divina dignatione, quo non vale ascendere, et affectus attracti, attractionem et summitatem intellectus attracti non excedentis. Simul enim attrahuntur et quasi coambulant affectus et intellectus usque ad novissimum defectum intellectus qui est in summitate huius ordinis cherubim, quem intellectus etiam attractus non excedit, sed ibi habet sue cognitionis et sui luminis consummationem; unde ordo ille cherubim vocatur.” 9 This felicitous rendering of Gallus’ Latin is Turner’s (Eros and Allegory, 322). 10 The verbatim description of the cherubic order is found in the Second Commentary on the Song of Songs (Cmm2-CC Prol.67) and in the Interpolated Prologue of the Third Commentary (Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.B.115).

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As noted in Chapter 5, he seems to cut off the activity of intellectual knowledge at the transition from Dominions to Thrones, from the enstatic to ecstatic modality. At that transition, intellectual activity ceases and dies. As noted in the Introduction, furthermore, a standard interpretation of Gallus’ two kinds of cognitio Dei sees a simple binary between intellectual and affective cognitio Dei, between an intellectual cognitio (“in a mirror,” drawn from creatures, “sober,” etc.) and a superintellectual, affective encounter with the unknown, transcendent God. What then is this cherubic cognitio and how is it related both to the cognitio proper to the rank of the Dominions in the middle triad “below it,” and to the subsequent seraphic experience “above it”? The answer to these questions is found in Gallus’ hierarchical anthropology. Cherubic cognition is a higher mode of intellectual knowledge of God, proper to the ecstatic dimension of the hierarchized soul. It is an “ecstatic intellectual cognitio” that both builds upon and subsumes the “sober intellectual cognitio” of the enstatic soul “below it.” More precisely, this higher mode of intellectual knowledge builds upon the ecstatic receptivity established in the Thrones, and intensifies the Christo-pneumatic modality begun there by heightening the nuptial and inter-personal ethos of the Song of Song, while also, as will be seen, inaugurating a process of “simplification” that will ultimately affectivize and hierarchically subsume it into an even higher, seraphic cognitio.

CHERUBIC COGNITIO DEI Gallus hints at this distinction between enstatic and ecstatic modes of intellectual cognitio in his introduction of his Commentary on the Song of Songs in an allegorical interpretation of Exod. 5:3: The God of the Hebrews has called us to on a three-day journey. For him, “the first day” pertains to “the forms of sensible things in the imagination,” the second, to “intellectual speculations,” but the third to the “internal theoriae,” to which Gallus appends the Psalm, blessed is the man whose help is from you (Ps. 83:6).”11 The first two days here clearly correspond to the “sober” knowledge of God proper to the enstatic 11

Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.A.112.

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soul. The third day, though, corresponding to the “internal theoriae” (see the next section, THE DIVINE THEORIAE) and special divine assistance, suggest a different modality. A more extensive treatment of this distinction, in his Explanation on the Divine Names, offers further insight: The [intellectus] ascends from the earth, between the earth and the heaven, for though we cannot comprehensively comprehend eternal things as the angels can, we ought not to be content with the cognition of eternal things which worldly philosophy gathers together from the cognition of pre-existing sensible things, but we should be extended (extenta) in union above mind, to receive the super-expanded solar rays in our intellects (intellectibus) from the Father of lights.12

He then allegorizes Ps. 103:13, You water the hills from your superior places: the earth shall be filled with the fruit of your works, to further stress his point: A “hill” is land elevated above the land, namely, a contemplative man elevated above himself (Jer. 3:28). “Superior places” are the rays of wisdom “which descend from above” (Jas. 3:17) and the “drops of rain” (Jer. 3:3) from the river of fire (Dan. 7:10). “Earth” [stands for] the animal man investigating invisible things from visible things alone, who is satiated with the fruit of the works of God, because he does not seek after a cognition of eternal things higher or fuller (superiorem aut pleniorem) than what is gathered from the visible world.13

In these passages, Gallus locates the intellect “below the heaven” of angelic comprehension of God,14 but also “above the earth” of worldly philosophy, which gathers knowledge of God from visible things and from the works of God. Suspended thus, the intellect reaches and seeks 12 Expl-DN 1.78.699–79.705: “Et ascendunt de terra, inter celum et terram, quia necdum possumus eterna secundum modum celestium animorum comprehensiue cognoscere, nec ea debemus esse contenti cognitione eternorum quam mundi philosophi colligunt ex preexistente sensibilium cognitione, sed unitione super mentem extenta, tamquam solares radios excipere a Patre luminum intellectibus superexpansos.” 13 Expl-DN 1.79.707–13: “ ‘Mons’ est terra super terram eleuata, scilicet uir contemplatiuus eleuans se super se (Thren. 3d). ‘Superiora’ sunt radii sapientie que desursum est (Iac. 3g) et stille pluuiarum (Ier. 3a) de fluuio igneo (Dan. 7c). ‘Terra’: homo animalis solis uisibilibus inuisibilia inuestigans, qui de fructu operum Dei satiatur, quia superiorem aut pleniorem eternorum cognitionem non requirit quam que ex uisibilibus mundi (que Dei sunt opera) colligitur.” 14 Elsewhere he speaks of the “pure intelligence, drawn into the Cherubim of the mind . . . without any consideration and collation of material things” (Expl-DN 7.374.240).

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for a “higher and fuller” cognitio Dei than that mediated through creatures. An even more striking and telling depiction of this distinction is found in the Second Commentary on the Song of Songs. YOUR BREASTS (ubera) ARE MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN WINE, that is, more splendid than wine, namely, than every cognition acquired by the agent or active intellect (per intellectum adquisita sive agentem sive actum). Clearly he calls the breasts beautiful, since he rightly called them better . . . ; and he says this because of the splendor which flows into the Cherubim, which latch on [to the breast] by the mouth of the Seraphim and not by their own mouth.15

This evocative passage clearly distinguishes the “wine” of an inferior form of cognition, derived or acquired by the activity of the agent intellect, from another, superior kind, received from above, flowing down into the cherubic order as “milk” from a breast.16 Nor is it insignificant that this higher form of cognition, this “splendor” (which in Gallus’ lexicon is associated with knowledge) is mediated from above by the seraphic order (see Chapter 7 below). Unequivocally, then, Gallus attributes a distinct form of cognitio Dei to the cherubic order: “the highest and greatest of intellectual knowledge (precipuum et summum habet intellectualis scientie) . . . and . . . splendors are especially attributed to it, on account of the possession of understanding (intelligentie conservationem).”17 Elsewhere he is quite explicit, distinguishing the “ecstatic intellective cognition (intellectiva cognitio extatica) of the “first hierarchy” from the “sober intellective cognition” (intellectiva cognitio sobria) of the lower ones.18

THE DIVINE THEORIAE This claim is further bolstered and clarified in light of Gallus’ unique teaching regarding what he calls the divine theoriae, when he 15 Cmm2-CC 4D.95: “pulchriora sunt ubera tua vino, id est splendidiora vino, id est omni cognitione per intellectum adquisita sive agentem sive actum, et signanter dicit ubera pulchra, cum melius diceret meliora, ut videtur, sed hoc dicit propter splendorem quem influit in cherubim qui capit per os seraphim et non per os proprium.” 16 Without the exact terminology, Gallus here approximates the scholastic distinction between acquired and infused knowledge of God. 17 18 Cmm3-CC 6F.213. Cmm2-CC 5A.101.

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associated the third day of the wilderness journey with the “internal theoriae.” Gallus applies this term to the divine ideas or exemplars, which exist preeminently and in simplicity, without differentiation, in the eternal Word and which are also present in diversified multiplicity in all created things, causing each one to be the kind of thing that it is: “the exemplars of the eternal Word, which are eternal theoriae and are called the invisible things of God in the plural, even though in the highest Word they are one.”19 As in all exemplarist metaphysics, furthermore, for Gallus it is these exemplars that are apprehended by the knowing subject in order to know anything as such.20 In the distinction between enstatic (“sober”) and ecstatic intellectual cognition, the theoriae provide a common type of object and thus the continuity that secures their status as modes of intellectual cognition. In fact, Gallus will characterize the intellect as “theoric” in just this way: “the business of the theoric mind or intellect (mentis seu intellectus theorici) is to intend and to speculate with fixed and quiet sharp point (fixa et quieta acie), either whatever the grace of heaven reveals [i.e. ecstatically, from above] or what reason has found and presented [i.e. enstatically, from below].”21 Either way, the primary faculty of intellectual cognition remains the intellectus, which speculates either what reason presents to it “from below” (enstatic cognition) or what grace offers it “from above.” The intellectus thus appears “hinge-like,” able to turn enstatically to things below or ecstatically to things above.22 What, therefore, distinguishes the two types of intellectual cognition is their source and mode of acquisition. In “sober” intellectual cognition these theoriae are “extracted” from created things “below” the mind (see Chapter 4).23 In ecstatic Cmm3-CC 1E.127: “exemplaria Verbi eterni que sunt eterne theorie et dicuntur invisibilia Dei pluraliter, licet in ipso Verbo summe unum sint.” 20 Theoriae might be Gallus’ synonym for the Boethian intellectibilia: Boethius, In Isagoge Porphyrii I, c.3 (CSEL 48, 8–9): “Noeta, inquam, quoniam Latino sermone numquam dictum repperi, intellectibilia egomet mea verbi compositione vocavi.” See also Richard of St. Victor, in Benjamin Major I, VII, 14.26–31: “Intellectibilia hoc loco dico invisibilia, et humana rationi incomprehensibilia.” 21 Expl-DN 1.70.503: “Mentis autem seu intellectus theorici negotium est intendere et speculari fixa et quieta acie, siue que gratia celestis manifestauerit, siue que ratio inuenerit et presentauerit.” 22 This distinction seems to correspond to the two “faces” of reason in other thirteenth-century thinkers, the ratio inferior, oriented toward things below, and the ratio superior, oriented toward divine things above. 23 Expl-MT 1.16.306: “Existing things [are those things] which came forth (prodierunt) from the Word into being (esse) through creation; those things are called 19

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intellectual cognition, by contrast, the theoriae flow down into the ecstatic intellect from the breast of the Word.

CHRIST THE BRIDEGROOM Here, a crucial feature of the distinct modality of ecstatic intellectual cognition emerges. As noted in Chapter 5, the ecstatic modality of the entire highest triad (Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim) involves a pneumatically-activated union with Christ, construed nuptially as the union of the soul-bride with her divine Spouse. It is precisely from this union that the ecstatic intellectus receives the divine theoriae, interiorly: The Beloved’s “bundle of myrrh” represent the “many theoriae, sweet smelling above the mind” (multarum theoriarum super mentem bene olentem) flowing from the simple unity of the Word (in simplicis Verbi unitate), in whom all treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden (Col. 2).”24 Commenting on the opening line of the Song, your breasts are better than wine, Gallus likens “wine” to “intellectual wisdom, cognized from all existing things” (sapientiam intellectualitem ex omnium existentium cognitione).25 “Breasts,” by contrast, stand for “the most fertile and super-abundant fullness of divine wisdom (uberrimam et superplenam divine sapientie plenitudinem)—the word of God on high is the fountain of wisdom (Eccles. 1.5)—wisdom that flows from . . . the abundance of the heart of the Bridegroom (ubertatibus pectoris sponsi).”26 Again, “in the highest hierarchy of the mind” the soul-bride “is led into (introducitur) these ‘cellars,’ that is, into the exemplars of the eternal Word (exemplaria Verbi eterni), high and deep, by the unitive contemplation (alte et profunde per unitivam contemplationem), just as into the interior of the desert (Exod. 3:1), by the ways of eternity (Hab. 3:6) and by the eternal road (Ps. 138:24).”27 This occurs “through the pure extension of the mind into . . . the eternal exemplars of the Word non-existing which only exist in the super-essential Word, and yet can be contemplated in that Word” (Existentia que de Verbo in esse per creationem prodierunt, non existentia dicuntur que in solo Verbo superessentiali consistunt et tamen in ipso Verbo contemplabilia sunt). 24 25 Cmm3-CC 1M.139. Cmm3-CC 1A.121. 26 27 Cmm3-CC 1A.121–2. Cmm3-CC 1E.127–8.

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(eternis exemplaris Verbi) . . . ”28 In enstatic, intellectual cognition, “the bride drinks the wine of meditation and speculation,” while in ecstasy she “asks for the breasts from the bosom of the Word (petit ubera de pectore Verbi).”29 This mystical encounter with the Word, moreover, is mediated by the Holy Spirit, who is “the anointing (unctio) that teaches all things (John 14.26).”30 Though both enstatic and ecstatic intellectual cognition have the theoriae as their object, Gallus clearly suggests that the soul-bride, united to her Spouse, receives and experiences new and different theoriae: “The bride . . . is taken up (sursumagitur) for the receiving of new interior theoriae and enters in (ingreditur) by searching out the deep things of God (1 Cor. 2:10).”31 The unguents are mentioned in the plural, “on account of the multiple theoriae” (propter multiplices theorias),32 which are “incomparably more worthy, more profound, [and] more true (incomparabiliter dignior profundior veracior) . . . than the intellectual wisdom of the philosophers, and incomparably more sweet and more fruitful (incomparabiliter dulcior et fructuosior) is the practice of the former than the latter.”33 In short, cherubic knowledge is an ecstatic, intellectual cognitio Dei, a cognition of divine attributes (theoriae) flowing into the principal and theoric intellect of the soul-bride from her intimate union with Christ in the Spirit, a pneumatic anointing with the sweet-smelling unguents of the Bridegroom.

AFFECTIVIZATION OF THE INTELLECT? Though Gallus’ focus in the cherubic rank is on the intellectus, he frequently alludes to the coordinated activity of the affectus at this rank as well, as their above-noted “co-ambulation” intimates. Drawn together, they also walk together. Reading in the Gospel that the shepherds said: “let us go up to Bethlehem” (Luke 2:15), Gallus hears “intellect and affect” saying let us ascend “into the first and principal fullness of refreshment (primam et principalem plenitudinem refectionis), . . . so that we might see, that is, . . . contemplate the Word

28 31

Expl-DN 4.184.14. Cmm3-CC 4E.182.

29 32

Cmm3-CC 1A.122. Cmm3-CC 1B.123.

30 33

Cmm3-CC 1B.123. Cmm3-CC 1A.122.

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itself.”34 Allegorizing the “goats” of the Song, which “see acutely and ascend steep places,” Gallus suggests that here “sight refers to the intellectus, more acutely and clearly illuminated from attraction,” while “ascent refers to the affectus made effectively upwardly-active (sursumactivam) from the same attraction.”35 Again: “in fiery love of true goodness and in clear cognition of truth” (in fervido amore vere bonitatis et perspicua cognitione veritatis) there is found the “joy and glory of the elect, whence it was said of John the Baptist (John 5:35) “he was a burning and a shining light,” for “love perfects the affect (affectum) and the truth [perfects] the intellect.”36 An extended passage from the Explanation of the Divine Names puts the matter clearly: For when the contemplative soul, by suspending the corporeal senses, the imagination and reason, extends the synderesis into the eternal spectacula, the apex of the understanding and the principal affection or union (apex intelligentie et principals affectio sive unio) are lifted upward equally, mutually propelling one another into the divine things and equally ascending (mutuo se promoventes in divina et partier ascendentes), the former by speculating, the latter by desiring, the intelligence hastening toward, but not entering into the depths of God, since seeing through a mirror it does not arrive at the [divine] substance.37

While the limits of cherubic cognition will be addressed below, the mutually reinforcing relationship between intellect and affect is patent. Indulging a typos going back at least as far as Eriugena,38 Gallus invokes apostolic examples of these: “In John [the Evangelist] is noted the keenness (acumen) of the intelligence, in Peter [the 34 Cmm2-CC 2A.78: “ . . . intellectus et affectio . . . scilicet primam et principalem plentitudinem refectionis . . . ut videamus, id est contemplemur . . . ipsum Verbum . . . ” 35 Cmm2-CC 4A.91–2: “CAPRARUM. Que acute videt et ardua ascendit; visus refertur ad intelligentiam ex attractione acutius et clarius illuminatam, ascensus, ad affectionem ex eadem attractione efficacius sursumactivam . . . ” 36 Expl-AH 7.583.62. 37 Expl-DN 1.94.1075–81: “Quando animus contemplatiuus sensibus corporeis, imaginatione et ratione suspensis, synderesim in spectacula eterna extendit, apex intelligentie et principalis affectio siue unitio pariter sursum feruntur, mutuo se promouentes in diuina et pariter ascendentes, illa speculando, ista desiderando, percurrente intelligentia nec ingrediente profunda Dei, quia uidens per speculum non peruenit in substantiam.” 38 See Giulio d’Onofrio, History of Theology: The Middle Ages (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008), 1.

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Apostle], the fervor of the affections.”39 Again, the soul-bride is united to the Groom by “the embraces of [her] principal affect and intellect (emphasis added), through which alone [she is] intoxicated by the abundance of the house of God” (amplexibus mei principalis affectus et intellectus, quibuss solis inebrior ab ubertate domus Dei).40 The “principal affect” pertains especially to the Seraphic rank (see Chapter 7), while the “principal intellect” pertains to the Cherubic rank. That these are both, each in their own way, operating here at the cherubic rank is both clear and important. This is apparent elsewhere, where Gallus links their coordinated activity to their union with Christ: “the principal affection and theoric intellect (affectio principalis et intellectus theoricus) are fecundated by the bull that rules the flock, as the ninety-nine sheep in the desert (Matt. 18:12–13).” The bull is Christ, “who is also the leader of every hierarchy (see CH 3), toward whose most divine beauty every hierarchy indeclinably tends and looks.” He “inflames the affection so that it loves goodness and illumines the understanding so that it cognizes the truth.”41 In other places, though, the relation between them becomes more integrated. As intellect and affect walk together, they begin to merge: “intellect and affect join each other” and “are simplified in my contemplation.”42 As noted above, “wine” is the intellectual cognition extracted

39 Expl-DN 1.94.1085: “In Iohanne notatur acumen intelligentie, in Petro feruor affectionis.” On this, see Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, 2487: “Or, another interpretation, in the mystical sense. These two disciples stand for two kinds of people: John represents those who are devoted to the contemplation of truth, and Peter stands for those whose main interest is to carry out the commandments. In fact, ‘Simon’ means ‘obedient.’ Now it very often happens that contemplatives, because they are docile, are the first to become acquainted with a knowledge of the mysteries of Christ, but they do not enter, for sometimes there is knowledge, but little or no love follows. While those in the active life, because of their continuing fervor and earnestness, even though they are slower to understand, enter into them more quickly, so that those who are later to arrive, are the first to penetrate the divine mysteries: So the last will be first, and the first last (Matt. 20:16).” 40 Cmm3-CC 1M.139. 41 Expl-DN 1.71.522–30: “Vacce: affectio principalis et intellectus theoricus fecundati a tauro qui regit gregem tam XCIX ouium in deserto (Matth.) quam ecclesie militantis (de quibus Ioh. 10a). De quo tauro primogenito Deut. 33d, qui et dux dicitur omnis ierarchie (AI 3b), ad cuius diuinissimum decorem omnis ierarchia indeclinabiliter intendit et uidet. Bethsames: ‘domus solis’. Christus est sol iustitie (Mal. 3f), sol intelligentie (Sap. 5b). Ipse enim affectionem inflammat ad amorem bonitatis et intellectum illuminat ad cognitionem ueritatis.” 42 Cmm2-CC 4A.91: “Unde OCULI TUI, ubi se associant intellectus et affectus, in meam contemplationem simplificantur, quod notatur per COLUMBAM et in hoc quod est

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from creatures, but “milk” is the intellectual cognition received from the bosom of the Bridegroom, milk, which is both white and sweet: “white” because “of the experience of splendors in the summit of understanding,” “sweet” because “of the boiling heat of the accompanying affection at the highest peak of understanding.”43 Solomon’s seat of gold (S. of S. 3:10) is the “order of Cherubim,” gold, “because of the redness of fervent affection (affectionis) and the brightness of luminous understanding (intelligentiae).”44 When the Song refers to Solomon’s litter (S. of S. 3:10), the going up of which is purple (ascensum purpureum), Gallus again sees an allegory for the Cherubim in the color itself: “Purple has various colors; one is white, another red, another black; but these colors are fitting to the order of the Cherubim of the mind. White, on account of the height of the splendor of attracted understanding (intelligentie); red, on account of the flame of charity; black signifies the super-luminous darkness, as above.”45 When the Bridegroom says of the soul: “Your cheeks are beautiful,” He speaks of “the Cherubim in which brightness from the divine light that takes possession of the attracted intellect is blended with the fervor of affection, like a red fire,” which is “the most beautiful mixing, like the cheeks of the turtledove.”46 Commenting on The Lord buildeth up Jerusalem: he will gather together the dispersed of Israel (Ps. 146:2) and the children of Judah, and the children of Israel, shall be gathered together (Hos. 1:11), Gallus clarifies: “namely, the movements of the affectus and the intellectus.”47 Despite the exegetical liberties, these poetic images suggest a drawing together, even mixing of intellect and affect in the cherubic rank: “Therefore those illuminations, which the affectus and intellectus perceive (percipiunt) at the same

avis lasciva, fervor amoris; in eo quod simplicem habet intuitum, intellige summam simplicitatem, id est in cherubim . . . ” 43 Cmm2-CC 1B.71: “ . . . id est propter experientiam splendorum in vertice intelligentie que sunt cando lactis et fervor collateralis affectionis vertici intelligentie, et hoc est dulcedo lactis . . . ” 44 Cmm2-CC 3F.90: “ . . . id est ordinem cherubim, aureum propter ruborem fervide affectionis et fulgorem luminose intelligentie.” 45 Cmm3-CC 4E.174: “Purpura varios habet colores; alia est alba, alia rubea, alia nigra; hii autem colores congruent ordini cherubim mentis. Albedo propter summitatem splendoris attracte intelligentie . . . Rubor propter flammam caritatis . . . Nigredo significat superlucentem caliginem, ut supra.” 46 Cmm3-CC 1K.136: “Gene tue, id est cherubim in quibus precipuus candor quem ex lumine divino percipit intellectus attractus miscetur fervor affectionis, quasi igneo rubore, sunt pulchre, hac ipsa venustissima permixtione, sicut gene turturis.” 47 Expl-DN 1.78.695–9.

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time . . . constitute the order of the Cherubim,”48 where “the intellectus is mingled (immiscetur) with the affectus,”49 where “the contemplative movements [of intellect and affect] unite and simplify in ascending into the spectacles of divine simplicity” (motus contemplativi coadunantur et simplificantur, ascendendo in spectacula divine simplicitatis).50 Increasingly, intellectus seems to become affective, to acquire an affective penumbra, an experiential, joyful, sensuous character: “I, simple indeed in essence and manifold in the hierarchies of the mind and in the hierarchic orders and movements, increase in spiritual and super-intellectual joy, from the twofold cognition of affect and intellect beyond and above the [natural] power of free choice . . . ”51 Returning to the opening lines of the Song, where the bride refers to the Bridegroom smelling sweet of the best ointments (S. of S. 1:1), Gallus notes: “The best ointments (unguents) are the super-intellectual theoriae which sooth the minds united to them and they restore and are rich in abundance for all with a kind of sweetness, beauty, clarity, suavity, and every kind of desirable outpouring (effusione), as from the breast (ubertate) of the Word.”52 As is apparent, there is increasingly sensuous, experiential, affective character to this knowledge. This mystical, bridal union, moreover, accounts for the new “posture” and orientation of ecstatic intellectual cognition. Rather than “pulling” knowledge from existing things, the intellectus is here “attracted,” drawn ever deeper to union with and thus knowledge of her divine Spouse. A subtle but significant relation between activity and passivity now emerges. Gallus stresses, on the one hand, the priority of divine action, by which the intellectus is “drawn” or “attracted” Godward, “upwardly acted upon” by the divine selfmanifestation.53 In this sense, in that the soul is here led (agi) by the

48

49 Expl-AH 10.638.255. Expl-AH 1.640.336. Cmm2-CC 4A.91. 51 Cmm3-CC 1E.128: “Ego, simplex quidem in essential et multiplex in hierarchiis mentis et hierarchicis ordinibus et motibus, ex duplici cognitione affectus et intellectus extra et supra vires liberi arbitrii . . . ” 52 Cmm3-CC 1B.122: “Unguenta optima sunt superintellectuales theorie que unitas sibi mentes deliniunt et universali quamdam dulcedinis, pulchritudinis, claritatis, suavitatis et omnimode specie desiderabilis effusione pollent et reficiunt, tanquam ex ubertate Verbi.” 53 The characterization of both intellectus and affectus as “attracted” in the Commentary on the Song of Songs has no exact parallel in the Isaiah commentary. 50

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Spirit and lives in the mode of not I, but Christ, the soul is passive— acted upon, but not acting. Elsewhere, in this regard, he invokes a strikingly apt phrase from Ezekiel: And the likeness of a hand was put forth and took me by a lock of my head: and the spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven (Ezek. 8:3).54 This reflects the predominately, though not exclusively passive modality of the entire third triad, as noted above. Yet, in the very next breath, Gallus describes the intellectus as walking (coambulant), indeed, walking together with the affectus, even as they are being drawn. So, passivity is best rendered as docility to the Spirit, not absolute inactivity or quietism. Commenting on the Dionysian phrase THOSE BEING UPLIFTED Gallus first observes that divine action is “not only illuminating the intellectus, but also provoking the affectus to rise up,” and then approvingly quotes three biblical texts that exhort humans to act in response: “Isa. 60:1: ‘rise up etc.’, Isa. 52:1: ‘Arise’; and Gen. 35:1: ‘Rise up and ascend etc.’,” concluding that “those rising up thus are led by an un-wearying hand.”55 While intellect and affect are primarily passive (drawn, attracted, pulled upward), they are secondarily and responsively active, genuinely responding to the “tractor” effect of divine revelation.

SIMPLIFICATION One of the striking and unique features of Gallus’ hierarchic anthropology is that at the upper reaches of the ascending valence the powers of the soul are simplified, as they are drawn to the simple, indeed, super-simple Spouse: “the subtle movements of the mind, extending toward supernal things, [are] simplified in the contemplation of the super-simple Word.”56 The Word is said “to simplify (simplificare) by assimilating to itself minds reaching out to its own

54

Expl-DN 1.78.690. Expl-DN 1.79.713: “ ‘Suscitatiua’: non solum intellectum illuminans, sed affectionem prouocans ad ignote consurgendum (MT 1b) ‘ad eius unitionem qui est super omnem substantiam et cognitionem’; Is. 60a: Surge etc., et 52c: Consurge; Gen. 35a: Surge et ascende etc.” 56 Expl-DN 1.78.693: “subtiles mentis motus in superna tendentes, in contemplatione supersimplicis Verbi simplificatos.” 55

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super-simplicity.”57 At present, this nuptial “drawing” has a simplifying effect on the intellectus: “Drawn into the Cherubim of the mind,” the intellect approaches “the super-simple Word, in whom every multitude and contrariety is united and simplified.”58 Again: “your intelligence (intelligentia), attracted and simplified in the order of the Cherubim . . . is taken up into the contemplation of beauty.”59 And: “the bride, in relation to pure understanding, after broad dispersion, is simplified (secundum intelligentiam puram, post latam dispersionem, simplificatur)—the Lord builds up Jerusalem, he gathers together the dispersed of Israel (Ps. 146:2)—and this simplification is finally completed in the order of the Cherubim” (hec simplificatio finaliter completur in ordine cherubim).60 What does Gallus mean by “simplification”? To begin, it should be noted that it is coterminous with ecstasy: “This is that which lifted up Ezekiel by a lock of hair (Ezek. 8:3), that is, he was taken up in excess of mind (in mentis excessum rapitur) to unity and simplification in the movements of the mind (mentis motibus).”61 In the most basic sense, not surprisingly, it is a movement away from composition. More precisely, it is a “narrowing” of the objects known: “eyes that are simplified, carried off in contemplation of the simple bridegroom, are simplified from the multitude of existing things.”62 It is also a “contraction” of the capacities of the knower, in the sense of a narrowing and intensifying focus: “it befits the mind rising to this cognition to unite all its multiple capacities and BE 63 The result is an “intellectus CONVERTED TO THE DEIFYING SIMPLICITY.” 64 contractus” and an “intellectual vision (visus) most greatly simplified” (visus intellectualis maxime simplificatur).65 The “movements . . . of the affect and intellect” are “simplified (simplificantur),” contracted or drawn together.66 57 Expl-DN 4.207.661: “extentas in se supersimplicem mentes sibi assimilando simplificare.” 58 Expl-DN 7.374.244: “in Verbo supersimplici, in quo omnis multitudo et contrarietas unitur et simplificatur.” 59 Cmm3-CC 4E.182: “intelligentia tua attracta et simplificata in ordine cherubim que assumitur in contemplatione pulchritudinis.” 60 61 Cmm3-CC 5D.210. Expl-MT 1.12.213. 62 Cmm3-CC 1O.141–2: “ . . . oculi a multitudine existentium subtracti in contemplatione supersimplicis sponsi simplificantur.” 63 Cmm3-CC 1M.139: “ . . . oportet omnes suas capacitatem multiplicates adunare et CONVERTI AD DEIFICAM SIMPLICITATEM, AI 1).” 64 Cmm2-CC 4A.91: “ . . . non pervenit intellectus, nec etiam contractus . . . ” 65 66 Cmm3-CC 5H.201. Cmm2-CC 4A.91.

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At least part of what Gallus understands by intellectual simplification is a transition in the intellectual subject from discursive reasoning to a more direct and immediate intellectual “intuition” or “gazing” into the higher theoriae. For “reason palpates (ratio palpat), as it were, what it manually considers (contrectat) by breaking down (discutiendo) and by examining (examinando),” while “the intellect (intellectus) considers and sees by contemplating directly (contemplando).”67 It has a “simple gaze (intuitum).”68 Corresponding to this is a transition in the objects known, which are here experienced more directly and more simplified in the Spouse: “whatever doctrine we teach clearly (clare) through words, or through writings, or through creatures is composed (composita est); but it is simplified in the simple Word” (in simplici Verbo simplificatur).69 The “simple gaze” of the dove “signifies the pure understanding, as it is essentially simplified by the contemplation of the divine unity, after the broad circuit of the innumerable multitude of creatures.”70 At points, Gallus goes further to suggest that the simplified intellectus is capable, not only of seeing directly what ratio analyzes discursively, but also of seeing more deeply the deeper things of God: “simplification of the subtle movements in contemplation of the sublime and simple theoriae.”71 They are, moreover, “simplified in order to be extended (ad extendum) into the super-simple ray.”72 Putting both together, Gallus observes: “This drawing together [constriction] is a compacted [coarctata] simplification of the mind, when, the whole multitude of sensible and intelligible things having been excluded, . . . it penetrates sharply into the superior and more subtle theoriae.”73 In his later commentary on the Song, Gallus evokes this intellectual simplification with the Bridegroom’s praise of the soul-bride’s eyes: 67

Expl-MT 1.13.254. Cmm2-CC 4A.91: “ . . . simplicem habet intuitem . . . ” 69 Expl-MT 1.11.209–12.212. 70 Cmm3-CC 5D.210. “Columba, que simplicem habet intuitum, significat puram intelligentiam, ut divine unitatis contemplatione simplificatum essentiam post innumerabilis multitudinis creaturarum latum circuitum.” 71 Cmm2-CC 4E.95: “ . . . simplificatio in contemplationem sublimium et simplicium theoriarum . . . ” 72 Cmm3-CC 4A.177. 73 Cmm3-CC 4H.188: “Ista constrictio est coarctata mentis simplificatio, quando, exclusa omni multitudine sensibilium et intelligibilium et non existentium . . . acute penetrat in superiors et subtiliores theorias.” 68

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Your eyes, i.e. the Cherubim, are doves’ eyes. In the dove is noted the highest simplicity . . . In this order is the highest simplification of the intellect, except for what is hid within, which cannot be written or said, since it is the participation of that name, that is, of the divine knowledge (notitie divine), which no one knows except the one who has received it (Rev. 2).74

So simplified, the attracted intellectus gazes up at the high things of God as far as possible. Gallus also correlates the intellectus contractus with the simplicity and unity of its divine object: “These eyes of the bride are called of doves, because, just as a dove has a simple stare, so these eyes are simplified, carried off in contemplation of the simple bridegroom [and] are simplified from the multitude of existing things.” As noted in Chapter 2, he privileges the notion of plenitude to characterize the divine essence. Strikingly, for Gallus this divine plenitude coincides with divine simplicity: “the most simple (simplicissimam) and most full (plenissimam) unity of essence.”75 Precisely as most simple, the divine essence is most pleromatic (anticipating Bonaventure’s insight about the fecundity of primacy). As a kind of anthropological inverse of this, for Gallus, simplification coincides with an intellectual expansion or capacitation: the soul “is dilated in or expanded by simplicity (simplicitate dilatatur),” after saying which, he cites 2 Cor. 3:18: “But we all with unveiled faces . . . ”; EH 1), suggesting clearly that divine glory “in the face of Christ” (as the Corinthian text claims) is revealed to the simplified intellect.76 Paradoxically, anthropological narrowing coincides with epistemological expansion. Simply put, the more simplified, the more capacious. Gallus makes the point in the language of the Song commentary: The spouse calls the inmost [space] of her mind a bed, where the bridegroom desires to recline with her. Whence she adds: our, common to you and to me, not a [large] bed, but a small bed, on account of the excellent simplification of the inmost concavity (sinus) and the incomparable immensity of the bridegroom, as though she said

74 Cmm3-CC 4A.176: “Oculi tui, id est cherubim, sicut oculi columbarum. In columba notatur precipua simplicitas . . . . In ipso autem ordine est summa intelligentie simplificatio absque eo quod intrinsecus latet, quod dici vel scribi non potest, quia participatio est illius nominis, id est notitie divine, quod nemo scit nisi qui accipit (Rev. 2).” 75 76 Expl-MT 3.37.56. Expl-MT 1.12.212.

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[paraphrasing Augustine]: the house of my soul is small; let it take hold of you and be expanded by you.77

This nicely captures the seemingly paradoxically notion that the soul becomes small, so as to be large; is constrictively simplified in order to become receptively capacious. The goal of simplification, finally, is assimilation to and union with the divine Simplicity: “drawn together (recollecti) by his grace to that highest [point], the more we inhere in him more closely (vicinius), the more narrowly we are simplified, until he unites us to himself in the highest simplicity . . . ”78 So, “by this excluding of other things, the mind, extending into the simplex ray, may be simplified intellectually and super-intellectually by the same [ray] and assimilated to it, according to 2 Cor. 3:18: But we all, beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord”; thus “conforming us to the simple God.”79

THE FINAL FAILURE OF THE INTELLECT For all that, though, cherubic cognition remains intellectual cognition, and thus in some sense bound and limited by finitude, by the limits of created reality: “For all the exercise of our reason and understanding is oriented within the limits of being, nor can we arrive at the most causal cause unless we transcend everything that is caused: Song 3:4: When I had a little passed by them, [I found him

77 Cmm3-CC 1P.142: “Intima sue mentis sponsa lectulum vocat, ubi sponsum secum cubare desiderat. Unde addit: noster, tibi et mihi communis, nec latum, sed lectulum diminutive, propter excellentem intimi sinus simplificationem et incomparabilem sponsi immensitatem, quasi dicat: parva est domus anime mee, ut capiat te, dilatetur a te.” 78 Expl-DN 1.85.840: “Ad ipsum uero summe per gratiam ipsius recollecti, quanto ei uicinius inheremus, tanto constrictius simplificamur, dum nos sibi summe simplici unit.” 79 Expl-DN 1.85.853–59: “illis exclusis mens intellectualiter et superintellectualiter in simplicem radium extenta ab eadem simplificetur et illi assimiletur, iuxta illud II Cor. 3g: Nos uero omnes reuelata facie gloriam speculantes, in eamdem imaginem transformamur a claritate in claritatem; CONGREGAMVR, mente simplificamur, AD MONADEM DEIFORMEM, id est unitatem nos Deo simplici conformantem.”

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whom my soul loves.]”80 Intellectual cognition, mediated by the divine theoriae (spectacula/species/rationes), thus remains in some way conceptual or tied to concepts: “WE ARE EXTENDED mentally TO the contemplation of THE TRUTH OF THE INTELLIGIBLE MARVELS, that is, to the intelligible spectacula of wisdom and reasons of the Word . . . ”81 The hidden depths of the pleromatic Trinity remain, accordingly, not fully accessible to it. Commenting on Moses’ ascent into Saini’s dark cloud of unknowing, as Dionysius depicts it, where God remains hidden, Gallus observes: HIDDEN, I say, BY THE CLOUD, that is, incomprehensible, not deficient in light, but SUPER-SPLENDENT, that is, incomprehensible for this reason: because its splendor inaccessibly exceeds, WITH SILENT WORDS, that is, by the eternal Word, which the Father eternally speaks (Job 33:14: “God spoke once” etc.). But our intellect, which is the ear and eye of the mind, only sees and hears [that Word], as one who goes beyond/exceeds (cum quis excedit) (hence Job 33:16: “then,” that is, in dreaming excess, “he opens the ears of men,” etc.; Job 42:5: “With the hearing of the ear, [I have heard you, but now my eye sees you”].82

As the “eyes and ears” of the soul, with respect to God in Godself, that is, to the divine essence, the intellect, even as drawn above itself ecstatically and simplified and contracted, remains outside and on the surface, with respect to God: “it does not arrive at the [divine] substance” (non pervenit in substantiam).83 For “the summit of the attracted understanding is, in a sense, exterior . . . ” (exterior est in summitate intelligentie tracte quoad affectionem);84 “the intellective eye is more externally circumspective and does not penetrate as taste does . . . , but only sees exterior color” (oculus intellectivus exterius circumspectivus est et non penetrat ut gustus, sed tantum videt exteriorem colorem);85 80 Expl-DN 7.371.154: “Omnis enim exercitatio nostre rationis uel intelligentie intra terminos entis uersatur, nec in causam causalissimam peruenimus nisi omne causatum transeamus: Cant. 3b: Paululum cum pertransissem etc.” 81 Expl-DN 1.93.1046: “EXTENDIMUR mente AD contemplandam VERITATEM MIRACULORUM INTELLIGIBILIUM, id est intelligibilia sapientie spectacula et Verbi rationes.” 82 Expl-MT 1.12.222: “COOPERTA, dico, SECUNDUM CALIGINEM, id est incomprehensibilem, non deficientem lumine, sed SUPERSPLENDENTEM, id est per hoc incomprehensibilem quod splendor eius inaccessibiliter excedit (Ad Gaium I; Dorotheo a: ‘oculum intellectualem etc.’), SILENTII DICTI, id est Verbi eterni quod Pater eternaliter loquitur (Iob 34c: Semel loquitur Deus etc.). Sed ipsum noster intellectus, qui auris et oculus est mentis, non uidet nec audit nisi cum quis excedit (unde Iob 33d: tunc, id est in sompno excessus, aperit aures etc.; 42a: Auditu auris etc.).” 83 84 85 Expl-DN 1.94.1081. Cmm2-CC 1B.71. Cmm2-CC 1D.72.

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“however much at this rank intelligence and affection are united, still . . . understanding is more exterior and weaker than affection” (exterior et tenuior est intelligentia quam affectio).86 In the imagery of the Song, Gallus puts it thus: Like a necklace (S. of S. 4:9): A necklace properly encircles the neck cavity of the bride and in this order there is so great a constriction that the high point of the understanding cannot be drawn further. And note that a hand can reach up to the necklace, but cannot pass beyond into the neck cavity. So understanding, which knows the worker by the works, reaches up into the [Cherubim], but cannot pass into the secret bosom of the Seraphim.87

At this point, accordingly, it comes to its final end, its consummation: “in this order of the Cherubim . . . every splendor of even the attracted intelligence is consummated” (ibi consummatur omnis splendor intelligentie etiam attracte).88 For “that super-essential and superintellectual goodness . . . draws [the affection] into itself more deeply than the intelligence is able to be led. Hence it is necessary from that point for intellectual activities to be, as it were, cut short as they are not capable of progressing further.”89 This is its death: “Hence Exod. 33:20 says: man shall not see me, and live. . . . since God is totally desirable but not totally intelligible (totus desiderabilis et totus non intelligibilis).”90 In this way, the Gallusian account of the visio Dei is relativized to a penultimate experience of seeing the divine “surface,” but not penetrating to its depths. All this sets the stage for seraphic union. For, “by contemplating [the Bridegroom] on the day of his espousals . . . the bride, in the order of Cherubim” makes “as it were, a final preparation so that she is lead to the inmost bed of the bridegroom” (ut ad intimum sponsi 86

Cmm2-CC 1F.74. Cmm2-CC 1F.74: “Sicut monilia. Monile proprie ardat sinum sponse et in isto ordine tanta est coarctatio ut ipsum cacumen intelligentie ulterius trahi non possit. Et nota quod usque ad monile potest mitti manus, sed ultra in sinum non transire; sic intelligentia, que per opera cognoscit opificem, usque in hunc ordinem pervenit, sed in secretum sinum seraphim transire non potest.” 88 Cmm3-CC 6E.212. 89 Expl-DN 1.94.1086: “Superessentialis uero et superintellectualis bonitas unitam sibi ineffabiliter affectionem et superferuide ipsam desiderantem et se sursum impingentem hilariter excipit, et in se profundius trahit quo intelligentia induci non ualet. Vnde necesse est ex tunc quasi resecari operationes eius tamquam progredi non ualentes.” 90 Expl-DN 2.155.1020. 87

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lectum deducatur).91 In this way, for Gallus, cherubic, intellectual cognition leads to seraphic affection: “first we are to be illumined by those splendors, which pertains to the perfection of the intelligence, then [we are to be] formed, which pertains to the perfection of the principal affection, according to Heb. 1:3, where [Christ] is first called splendor of glory, then form of the substance of the Father, because knowing (nosse) is naturally prior to praising (laudare), admiring, desiring (desiderare), [and] loving (diligere).”92

CONCLUSION At the penultimate rank of the ascending valence, the soul relates to her Spouse through a mode of intellectual cognition, above and beyond the “sober,” enstatic, intellectual cognition of which she is naturally capable. Gallus associates this with the eyes of the Cherubim: “‘Eyeishness’ is rightly attributed to this order, on account of the highest perspicacity of the attracted intellect.”93 The two forms of intellectual cognition share a common object, namely, the divine theoriae, which accounts for a continuity between them.94 But these theoriae come to the soul in different ways, the first from extraction from created things from below, the second from an interior reception of graced revelation from above, from the Bridegroom, who here is especially the Word in whom are present all the eternal exemplars, all the theoriae. In the latter mode, the intellect is divinely drawn or pulled up to the Word and receives knowledge of God in a higher mode, more directly, interiorly, nuptually, through the union of the soul with Christ in the Spirit. Thus, this higher form of intellectual cognitio Dei is an ecstatic knowledge, occurring here in the highest triad, the whole of which is outside and beyond the soul’s

91

92 Cmm2-CC 3G.91. Expl-DN 1.76.647. Cmm3-CC 4A.176: “Recte autem huic ordini attribuitur oculositas, propter precipuam attracte perspicacitatem.” Cf. Expl-AH 6.579.58: “quantum ad ordinem Cherubim cui attribuitur oculositas, quia interpretatur Cherubim multitudo cognitionis, ut infra 7a. Et specialiter illi ordini attribuitur uirtus cognitiua et inspectiua et contemplatiua . . . ” 94 Because the theoriae reside in the divine Word, the continuity between the two modes of intellectual cognition has a Christological dimension to it. 93

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natural enstatic state. That is, Gallus posits a form of intellectual transcendence, not just an affective one.95 Gallus is clearly concerned to correlate knowledge and love, intellectus and affectus here. The cherubic is not an exclusively intellectual moment, though he emphasizes the intellectual at this stage. Yet, this intellectual cognitio is also increasingly mixed together with affection; it is affectivized cognition. That is to say, the process of simplification, a signature feature of Gallus’ mystical theology, intensifies at his rank. Thus, finally, cherubic cognition is preparatory for seraphic affection. Gallus’ account of cherubic cognitio must be understood according to the hierarchic principle of ascending appropriation: the higher always subsumes and contains the lower, but in a higher modality. Again, as one ascends, the lower is always both exceeded and thus transcended, but also appropriated, “rolled up” into the higher rank in a new modality, proper to that rank. The natural, enstatic, “sober” cognitio Dei is neither inimical nor merely irrelevant to the higher, ecstatic kind; nor is the former abandoned by the latter. Rather, the lower is assimilated by the higher.

95 Denys Turner’s claim that “there is no excessus of intellect in Gallus, as there is in Pseudo-Denys” (Eros and Allegory, 337, n. 24) is somewhat misleading, since at this level the intellectus has already been ecstatically drawn out of itself, albeit along with the affectus and as ultimately outstripped by the affectus at the highest point of ecstatic union.

7 “The Wisdom of Christians” “Contemplatives truly feel more than they know.” Bonaventure, Commentary on John 1.43 (VI, 256)

INTRODUCTION The entire theology of Thomas Gallus is well-characterized as the pursuit of a particular form of knowledge of God, which he calls the “wisdom of Christians” (cf. the Introduction): But there is another knowledge (cognitio) of God which incomparably exceeds [intellectual cognition], which the great Dionysius describes thus in On the Divine Names: “IT IS THE MOST DIVINE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD WHICH IS THROUGH IGNORANCE, KNOWN ACCORDING TO A UNION ABOVE THE MIND, WHEN THE MIND, RECEDING FROM OTHER THINGS, AND AFTER DISMISSING EVEN ITSELF, IS THEN UNITED TO THE SUPER-SPLENDANT RAYS AND IS THERE ILLUMINATED BY THE INSCRUTABLE DEPTHS OF WISDOM.” As St. James says, This is the wisdom of Christians which is from above (3:15), descending from the Father of lights (3:17) . . . . The Apostle spoke of this among the perfect in 1 Cor. 2:6. And, from the teaching of the Apostle, the great Dionysius the Areopagite wrote a theoretical treatment of this super-intellectual wisdom, in so far as it is possible that this be written, in his little book On the Mystical Theology.1 1 Cmm3-CC Prol.B.107: “Alia autem est Dei cognitio qu istam incomparabiliter excedit quam sic describit magnus Dionsysius, DN 7: est divinissima Dei cognitio que est per ignorantiam cognita secundum unitionem super mentem, quando mens ab aliis omnibus recedens, postea et seipsam dimittens, unita est supersplendentibus radiis, inde et ibi inscrutabili profundo sapientie illuminata; hec est sapientia christianorum que desursum est, Iac. 3: descendens a Patre luminum, Iac 1 . . . . Hanc

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For our Victorine, this wisdom, to which Paul referred (“among the mature”) and which Dionysius explained, is “super-intellectual,” in contrast to the intellectual forms of cognitio (cf. Chapter 6): “for that knowledge is experienced through ignorance, by suspending (suspendendo) every operation and rational or intellectual cognition, according to a union above the mind by the ecstasy of one’s own mind.”2 That is to say: this is an affective wisdom, an ecstatic, experiential, “loving and unitive cognition” (affectualis cognitio et unitiva),3 which descends from the Father of lights (Jas. 3:17)4 into the soul. In Gallus’ angelic anthropology, this affective wisdom is seraphic, received at the apex of the soul’s hierarchical structure and, more precisely, at the zenith of its ascending valence. Gallus’ description of the ninth and seraphic rank in the Prologue to his Third Commentary on the Song of Songs merits quotation in full: The ninth [order] contains the principal sighings (suspira) for God, the super-intellectual stretchings and in-sendings (extensiones et immissiones), burning brilliances and brilliant burnings (furvidos fulgores et fulgidos fervores). The understanding (intellectus) cannot be drawn to the excessive sublimities and sublime excesses (sublimes excessus et excedentes sublimitates) of all these, but only the principal affection (affectio)5 can be united to God. In this order the most chaste prayers are offered by which we are present to God.6 This order embraces God and

loquebatur Apostolus inter perfectos, I Cor. 2. Et, ex doctrina Apostoli, magnus Dionysius Areopagita theoricam huius superintellectualis scribit, sicut possibile est eam scribi, in libello suo De Mystica theologica.” 2 Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.A.113: “[cognitio] enim quam experimur per ignorantiam, suspendendo omnem operationem et cognitionem rationalem et intellectualem, secundum unitionem super mentem per excessum mentis proprie.” 3 4 Cmm2-CC 1A.68. Cmm2-CC Prol.65–6. 5 The interpolated Prologue of the Third Commentary reads “affectus” (Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.B.115). 6 DN 3, 123. In the Introduction to his later commentary on the Song, Gallus alludes to three different forms of prayer, correlated to increasing degrees of spiritual chastity: “Chaste prayer asks only that temporal things be obtained and unsuitable things be removed. More chaste prayer is for spiritual things, as in Ps. 50:11–12: take away my iniquity, create a pure heart in me, o God. Most chaste is that which no longer asks for the gifts of the bridegroom, but the bridegroom himself. Such prayers are in this book the most frequently, such as: let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth, and: draw me after you, and: he will abide between my breasts, and: my beloved to me, who shall give you to me for my brother, and return, my beloved, and many others of this sort” (Cmm3-CC Int-Prol). For Gallus, the soul-bride’s desire, not simply for the gifts but for the generous Bridegroom himself, comes to full and final fruition here at the Seraphic rank. On prayer in Gallus, see James Arinello, “Simplified by the

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is surrounded by the embraces of the bridegroom. It does not know through a mirror, but receives the portion of Mary which will not be taken away.7 In this order the bridal-bed (lectulus) is arranged for the bridegroom and bride.8

So, to the ninth and seraphic rank, only the “principal affection” (principalis affectio) is able to proceed, which alone is able to be united to God.9 Here, finally, are the “embraces of the Bridegroom” (sponsi amplexibus) and “Mary’s portion” (Marie portionem), which “will not be taken away” (que non auferetur, Lk. 10:42).10 Only now does Gallus separate intellectus and affectus, barring the former from proceeding further into the final darkness of union with the Word: “here is the cutting off of knowledge,” after which only the “scintilla synderesis,” the “spark of the soul,” remains.11 This is Gallus’ unique and influential teaching regarding the “high point of affection” (apex affectionis), which alone is capable of the fullest and deepest ecstatic, loving union.12 This is the climax of the entire ascent: the merging of the love-sick night of Solomon’s bride and the apophatic darkness of Dionysius’ Moses.13 At the seraphic rank, the soul-bride is united to the divine-Spouse in loving embrace, and “cognizes God above every intellection and cognition of existing things.”14 As noted in the Introduction, the above descriptions suggest a relatively straightforward distinction between intellect and affect, in which the latter proceeds to union, while the former is barred at the door, thus inaugurating the medieval tradition of affective Dionysius interpretation and reception, for which Gallus is most known. In fact, Highest Simplicity: Mystical Account According to Thomas Gallus,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Boston College, MA, 2012. 7 Luke 10: 42 8 Cmm3-CC Prol.N. “Nonus continet principalia in Deum suspiria, superintellectuales extensiones et immissiones, fervidos fulgores et fulgidos fervores, ad quorum omnium sublimes excessus et excedentes sublimitates intelligentia trahi non potest, sed sola principalis affectio Deo unibilis. In hoc ordine offeruntur orationes castissime quibus Deo assumus, De div. nom. 3a. Iste ordo Deum amplexatur et sponsi amplexibus amicitur, speculum nescit, Marie portionem percipit que non auferetur, Luc. 10.” 9 10 Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.B.115. Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.B.115–16. 11 Cmm3-CC 7D.219. 12 McGinn notes that Gallus was the first to use this term in the mystical sense and that his role in its subsequent medieval deployment is insufficiently investigated (See McGinn, “Thomas Gallus,” 88–9, n. 26). 13 Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 218. 14 Cmm3-CC 1O.141: “cognoscit eum super omnem existentem intellectum et cognitionem.”

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however, “Christian wisdom” is more complex and profound than might be suspected at first glance. For Gallus, affective, seraphic cognitio Dei is the highest of the several hierarchical modes by which the human person relates to God. It presumes a unique power or capacity in the soul for this relationship that is most intimate, most personal, and ultimately most “capable” of God, namely, the affectus, whose proper act, so to speak, is ecstatic love, which unites the soul to God. Fundamentally, the affectus for Gallus is a capacity for a mode of cognitio Dei in which the soul is most intimately affected by and thus most profoundly experiences the triune Pleroma. As a hierarchical mode of cognition, though, it bears a complex relationship with the lower cognitional modes. As higher, it ecstatically transcends them; as hierarchical it ecstatically subsumes them into its own proper modality. More precisely, seraphic cognitio is the mode by which the soul experiences in a super-intellectual, meta-conceptual mode that which it also understands and conceptualizes in its lower modalities. This modality is the fulfillment of Christological and pneumatic union.

Affectus Some preliminary observations regarding the affectus will set the stage for what follows. As is clear from the passages above, the affectus is a distinct power of the soul for Gallus: “our mind has another power [in addition to the theoric intellectus].”15 In his Explanation of The Mystical Theology, he criticizes “the pagan philosopher” (apparently Aristotle) for assuming that “the highest cognitive power (vis cognitiva) is the intellect (intellectum),” and for failing to notice that “there is another [cognitive power] which exceeds the intellect no less than the intellect exceeds reason (ratio), and reason [exceeds] imagination, namely, the principal affection (principalis affectio)” or “spark of synderesis” (scintilla synderesis).”16 Other variations on these terms appear as well: “the apex of the affection” (apicem affectionis)17 or “the apex of the principal affection” (apicem affectionis principalis),18 or “the spark of the affectual apex” (scintilla apices affectualis).19 15 17 19

16 Expl-DN 7.370.129. Expl-MT 1.4.35–44. 18 Expl-DN 2.155.1015. Expl-MT 1.5.49. Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.D.120.

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As a discrete power, the affectio or affectus has its own proper act, namely, to love, along with its proper objects. Gallus correlates it with “the sweet (dulci) and the pleasant (suavi),” and it “generates a desire for goodness (bonitas).” It is this power of the soul, moreover, “which charity properly perfects.”20 In turn, “the gift of wisdom (donum sapientie) perfects charity.”21 This affectus/affectio, moreover, is: “capable of the divine”;22 the “principal and pure participation of the divine goodness”;23 the soul’s “capacity for union”;24 that “by which we are joined (coniungimur) to God, according to I Cor. 6:17: ‘whoever adheres to God’ etc.”25 At times, he simply calls it “union.”26 Of upmost significance at present, though, is that for Gallus the affectus is a cognitive power distinct from the intellectus. He believes he has a Dionysian warrant in Divine Names 7 for his claim: But note which power of the soul it is by which the super-intellectual wisdom is perceived (percipiatur) from these words in Divine Names 7: IT IS NECESSARY TO SEE THAT OUR MIND HAS INDEED A POWER FOR UNDERSTANDING THROUGH WHICH IT SEES (INSPICIT) INTELLIGIBLE THINGS (INTELLIGIBILIA), BUT [ALSO A POWER FOR] UNION EXCEEDING THE NATURE OF THE MIND THROUGH WHICH IT IS JOINED TO THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE ABOVE ITSELF. ACCORDING TO THIS MODE, IT IS NECESSARY TO UNDERSTAND (intelligere), that is, to cognize (cognoscere) DIVINE THINGS.27

For our Victorine, it is patent that Dionysius here refers to a power of the soul distinct from the intellectual power (which sees intelligible things). This is the affectus or “principal affection” (affectio), a “cognitive power” or “faculty” (vis cognitiva) of the soul, by which superintellectual wisdom is perceived and by which the soul is genuinely able to cognize divine realities, as his gloss of intelligere

20

21 Expl-DN 7.371.165. Expl-DN 2.155.1036. 23 Expl-MT 1.5.49. Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.D.120. 24 Expl-MT 1.4.39: “scintilla sinderesis que sola unibilis est spiritui diuino.” 25 26 Expl-DN 2.126.229. Expl-DN 7.370.135. 27 Expl-DN 2.126.208–17: “Secundum uero quam uim anime ista superintellectualis sapientia percipiatur, collige ex ipsius uerbis, eodem capitulo 7b: ‘Oportet autem uidere mentem nostram habere quidem uirtutem ad intelligendum per quam intelligibilia inspicit, unitionem uero excedentem mentis naturam per quam coniungitur ad ea que sunt supra ipsam. Secundum hanc ergo oportet diuina intelligere,’ id est cognoscere.” Here is another instance where Gallus gives an affective interpretation to the Areopagite, who in fact says nothing about love or affection in this passage. 22

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as cognoscere suggests. Not only Dionysius,28 though, but Scripture too, for Gallus, warrants this claim about love: Eccles. 1:14: The love of God is honorable wisdom; Eccl. 2:10: You that fear the Lord, love him, and your hearts shall be enlightened; John 14:21: he that loves me shall be loved of my Father: and I will love him and will manifest myself to him; Eph. 3:19: To know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ; Col. 3:14: above all things have charity, which is the bond of perfection.29 For “the word ‘love’ designates him who is truly known by love alone, according to which Jesus says in John 14:21: And he who loves me, shall be loved of my Father: and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him and 1 John 4:20: If anyone says he knows God and does not love, he is a liar.”30 On the basis of all this, lastly, like the Apostle Paul, Gallus grants a perduring preeminence to love above all: “For union does not know a mirror (nescit speculum), and therefore charity never ceases (1 Cor. 13:8) and the portion of Mary will not be taken away from her (Luke 10:42) . . . ”31

THE ECSTATIC POWER OF LOVE Following Dionysius, love is by definition ecstasy-causing, both in God (cf. Chapters 1 and 2) and, by extension, in human persons, which Gallus compares (following Hugh of St. Victor) to a kind of “boiling over” of the soul Godward: “But that [affective] wisdom is obtained by a great, passionate boiling over of love (estu dilectionis)

28 Note the possible Dionysian warrant for this as well: CH 2.4 (Parker, 151): “But when we attribute ‘lust’ to spiritual beings . . . we must think that it is a Divine love of the immaterial, above expression and thought (emphasis added) and the inflexible and determined longing for the supernally pure and passionless contemplation, and for the really perpetual and intelligible fellowship in that pure and most exalted splendour, and in the abiding and beautifying comeliness. And ‘incontinence’ we may take for the persistent and inflexible, which nothing can repulse, on account of the pure and changeless love for the Divine beauty, and the whole tendency towards the really desired.” 29 See Expl-DN 2.126.218–127.226. 30 Cmm2-CC 3A.85: “Nomine dilectionis designat eum qui sola dilectione veraciter cognoscitur, iuxta illud: qui diligit me, usque illud: manifestabo ei me ipsum, Io. 14, et 1 Io.: si quis dicit se nosse Deum et non diligit, mendax est.” 31 Expl-DN 2.156.1039.

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into God and a strong extension (forti extensione) of the soul into the eternal spectacula of wisdom.”32 Glossing the Dionysian claim that love is an ECSTASY-CAUSING POWER, Gallus says: “that is, by the operation of the excess of the mind, just as the abundant boiling fervor of a pot pushes water upward, contrary to and above, as it were, the nature of water.”33 Gallus also follows Dionysius in seeing both the mysterious Hierotheus and the apostle Paul as paradigmatic, ecstatic lovers. With respect to the former, Gallus explains Dionysius’ characterization, UNDERGOING ECSTASY OUTSIDE OF HIMSELF, as by “excessus mentis, wholly beyond and above himself through a union exceeding the natural constitution of the mind.”34 Regarding the latter, Dionysius had said: FOR THIS REASON ALSO THAT THE GREAT PAUL, MADE TO BE A CONTAINER OF DIVINE LOVE AND PARTICIPATING IN ITS ECSTASY-CAUSING 35 POWER . . . Gallus explains that “[Paul] said this AS A TRUE LOVER,” for “true amor is one that super-intellectually extends (tendit) to that sole highest and truly loveable and to [that which is] desirable immediately and for-its-own-sake,” and “those who are united to God by this amor are true lovers.”36 He then elaborates at length: On account of the power of that ecstasy-inducing amor, PAUL the apostle, WAS MADE GREAT, that is, greatly exalted in excess of mind . . . [and] adhered to God singularly and sublimely through ecstatic love, united according to what he himself said in 2 Cor. 6:17: Whoever adheres to God is one spirit; . . . AND HE was made great BY POWER, that is, by the strong and abundant fervor (habundanti fervore) of that very divine amor.37

32

Expl-MT 1.6.70. Expl-DN 4 239.1488. See Cmm3-CC 1F.128: “minds (mentes), which desire to love (diligere) God and to be united (uniri) to God, are raised up on high (sursumerigantur) vertically and perpendicularly (recte et perpendiculariter),” such that the “love (dilectio) of God is a bond of fulfillment (perfectionis) (Col. 3:14), since it perfects the soul by uniting it to the fullness (uniendo plenitudini perficit).” 34 Expl-DN 2.174.297–175.312. 35 Expl-MT 1.6.77: “Propter quod et Paulus magnus, in continentia factus diuini amoris et uirtute ipsius extasim faciente participans.” 36 Expl-DN 4.240.1517: “Hoc autem dicit SICUT VERUS AMATOR. Verus amor est qui in solum summe et uere diligibile et desiderabile immediate et propter ipsum solum superintellectualiter tendit . . . . Vnde qui hoc amore Deo uniuntur, ueri amatores sunt.” 37 Expl-DN 4 239.1488–240.1497: “PROPTER QUOD etc., id est propter uirtutem istius amoris extasim facientis, PAULUS apostolus FACTUS MAGNUS, id est magnifice exaltatus in mentis excessu, . . . Deo per amorem extaticum sublimiter et singulariter inhesit unitus, iuxta quod ipse dicit I Cor. 6f: Qui adheret Deo unus spiritus est . . . ; ET magnus factus VIRTUTE, id est forti et habundanti feruore, IPSIUS diuini amoris.” 33

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In these descriptions, Gallus brings the preeminence of love to bear on his interpretation of Dionysian ecstasy, as exemplified in Hierotheus and Paul. For, “through this love (emphasis added), the perfect go beyond themselves (perfecti excedunt) and are said to be taken up in excess of mind (rapi in excessum mentis).”38

AFFECTIVE SUSPENSION AND MORTIFICATION OF THE INTELLECT The ecstatic nature of love causes affective, seraphic cognitio Dei to transcend its lower, intellective, cherubic counterpart: ECSTASY,

etc., as if he said: Even though all the righteous love (diligant) God, there is yet a spiritual and preeminent amor of God in spiritual and perfect ones, which by its excellence exceeds reason and understanding (rationem et intelligentiam excedit): Eph. 3:19: To know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ.39 Hence, this love is called ecstatic (extaticus) or ecstasy-inducing (extasim faciens), since it elevates the apex of the affection above all intellectual cognition (apicem affectionis super omnem intellectualem cognitionem).40

As noted in Chapter 6, the transition from the cherubic to the seraphic rank is a barrier that the intellectus, properly speaking, cannot breach: it “excludes every intellectual operation” (omnem excludit intellectualem opertionem).41 That is, it “suspends the activity of the senses, of imagination, of reason, of intellect, both practical and theoretical, and excludes every understanding (intellectum) and every intelligible (intelligibile), and transcends being and one (ens et unum).”42 The “eye-ishness” (oculositas) of the cherubic rank is

38 Expl-DN 4.238.1458. Here, Gallus finds biblical warrant in the following texts: 2 Cor. 5:13: For whether we be transported in mind, it is to God (sive mente excedimus Deo); Ps. 30:23: But I said in the excess of my mind (in excess mentis), and Ps. 115:2: I said in my excess (in excessu meo): Every man is a liar; Acts 22:17: And it came to pass, when I was come again to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, that I was in a trance (fieri me in stupore mentis). 39 The verse continues: that you may be filled with the all-plenitude of God (scire etiam supereminentem scientiae caritatem Christi ut impleamini in omnem plenitudinem Dei.) 40 41 42 Expl-DN 4.238.1458. Expl-DN 7.371.156. Expl-MT 1.5.45–8.

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blinded in the amorous darkness of seraphic union, where the soul lacks “mental eyes” (oculos mentes), namely, “reason and intellect” (carentes ratione et intellectu).43 For “in the Seraphim there is no understanding (intelligentia), but [only] growing desire” and so one must be like Daniel, “a man of desires (Dan 10:11; a verse that will be important for Bonaventure).”44 Again: “that super-essential and super-intellectual goodness . . . draws [the affection] into itself more deeply than the intelligence is able to be led (intelligentia induci non valet). So it is necessary from that point for intellectual activities to be, as it were, cut short (resecari) as they are not capable of progressing further.”45 This ecstatic transcending of the intellect, moreover, is a kind of death:46 The soul is called forth “to ecstasy, as if to spiritual death.”47 Citing both the Song of Songs, love is as strong as death (8:6), and the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (2q): “DEATH IS NOT THE WASTING AWAY OF SUBSTANCE, BUT THE SEPARATION (discretio) OF WHAT HAD BEEN UNITED,” Gallus notes: “ecstatic love (extatica dilectio) not only separates the soul from carnal concupiscence, but also [separates] the high point of the affection (affectionis apicem) from the theoric intellect (intellectu theorico).48 The bride, says Gallus, “languishes with love . . . until she is dead . . . , until she is separated from everything and from herself in order to be united more tightly to the bridegroom, as it says later: love is as strong as death (S. of S. 8:7)”49 For “languor leads all the way to 43 Cmm2-CC 1A.68: “ . . . non habentes oculos mentes, id est cecatos, carentes ratione et intellectu . . . ” 44 Cmm2-CC 3A.85: “ . . . qui proprie est seraphim; ibi enim non est intelligentia, sed desiderium crescens . . . ut Dan. 10 . . . vir desideriorum . . . ” 45 Expl-DN 1.94.1086. 46 The transition from Cherubim to Seraphim is a kind of “second ecstasy,” another “going beyond” or act of transcending, like the move from the enstatic to the ecstatic dimensions of the soul, this time from the correlated and integrated activities of the attracted intellect and attracted affect to the strictly affective experience of seraphic love. 47 Cmm2-CC 1C.72: “ . . . ad excessum, quasi ad mortem spiritualem . . . ” 48 Expl-DN 4.239.1488. 49 Cmm2-CC 2B.79: “ . . . amore igitur languet sponsa que ab hac intentione non cessat donec omnibus et sibi moriatur et ab omnibus et a seipsa separetur, ut sponso constrictius uniatur, infra, 8: fortis ut mors dilectio . . . ” Cf. Cmm2-CC 1B.71: “In death two things are noted: weakness, and so Dan. 10:16 says: O Lord, at the sight of you my joints are loosened, and no strength has remained in me, and separation: “WHEN THE MIND RECEDING FROM OTHER THINGS, AND AFTER DISMISSING EVEN ITSELF (DN 7).” (“In morte duo notantur: defectus, unde Dan. 10: Domine in visione . . . , et separatio, De div. nom. 7: quando mens, etc . . . ”)

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death . . . and signifies the full separation of the principle affection through the excessum mentis and of all things and union to God.”50 The bride “sleeps [i.e. dies] when she undergoes actual and affective ecstasy.”51 This is the oft-noted place where Gallus’ supposed antiintellectualism seems to appear. It is the place of the Dionysian “unknowing,” of knowing “through ignorance,” of “not knowing” the “unknowable” God. This suspension, separation, and mortification of intellectual activity, even in its cherubic and simplified form, is a real and genuine moment of noetic ascesis. Gallus respects, in one sense, the Neoplatonic principle that being and knowing are coextensive. Since God transcends being, God is ultimately unreachable by intellectual knowing or cognition.52 At one point, Gallus puts this in terms of both extension and intension: “by no cognition, human or angelic, is God contained or penetrated.”53 It is worth noting, however, that Gallus nowhere repudiates intellectual activity at the lower ranks or registers of the soul. What he calls intellectual cognition has a genuine and significant place, as noted above; but it does reach a limit—it can neither comprehend nor plumb the divine depths.

50

Cmm3-CC 5H.199 Cmm2-CC 3A.85: “Dormit quando actualem et affectualem extasim patitur . . . ” 52 Expl-DN 1.101.1316–102.1328: “He proves that the divine loftiness (celsitudo) exceeds all human and angelic cognition thus: all cognitions concern being or beings (ente vel entibus). Therefore, whatever is causally above every being (ens) is surpassingly separated from all cognition, according to Job 36:26: ‘Behold, God is great, exceeding our knowledge’; Job 28:21: ‘It is hid from the eyes of all living, and the fowls of the air know it not, that is, celestial souls.’ Nevertheless both angelic and human souls that have received the first stole (primam stolam) contemplate God in his proper species and comprehend [God] face to face, but only omnipotent wisdom penetrates the infinity of the divine depths and heights, just as we see the corporeal sun in its proper species, but are not sufficient to penetrate [it], though the vision of that [corporeal sun] is not worthy to be compared to that [vision of God].” 53 Expl-DN 1.102.1333–7: “IF, rather since, ALL COGNITIONS ARE OF EXISTING THINGS, that is, concerning those things which fall under [the category] of being (ente), THEY HAVE THEIR END, that is, they are terminated or terminatable and are contained under [the category] of being (sub ente), God, WHO IS ABOVE EVERY SUBSTANCE, consequently, IS ALSO SEGREGATED FROM ALL COGNITION, such that by no cognition, human or angelic, is God contained or penetrated.” 51

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I live, not I, but Christ the Bridegroom— through the Holy Spirit Significantly, though, this moment of mystical death via ecstatic love is also the moment of union with Christ the Bridegroom, who now “appears,”54 and “embraces”55 the soul-bride,56 who in turn receives Him in a nuptial embrace, between her breasts,57 like a litter.58 This union is of course an affective union, a union of loves. The Bridegroom is summoned forth, as it were, by the soul-bride’s ardor: “That most chaste love [of the bride] is of such strength that it 54 Cmm2-CC 3B.86: “But, sometimes the bridegroom himself appears, as in John 20:15, where the gardener appears to Mary, who signifies the contemplative soul.” (Quandoque vero ipse sponsus per se ingerit seipsum, ut Io. 20 de hortolano apparente Marie, scilicet anime contemplative.) 55 Cmm2-CC 1C.71: “Grasped by the embraces of the bridegroom and entering the super-resplendent darkness . . . ” (Adstricta sponsi amplexibus et ingrediens supersplendentem caliginem . . . ). Cmm2-CC 3G.91: “in the super-intellectual light of the Seraphim, where pure and special joy is enjoyed in the inmost place of the heart in the embraces of the Bridegroom, forever inseparable” ( . . . id est superintellectuali lumine seraphim, ubi pura et precipua fruitur intima cordis letitia in sponsi amplexibus in futuro inseparabilis). Cmm2-CC 2E.82: “She is embraced most chastely by the bridegroom and pours out to him most chaste prayers, and more than all the other powers of the mind, she imitates angelic love” (Ista castissime sponsum amplexatur et fundit ei castissimas orationes, DN 3, et pre cunctis mentis viribus amorem angelicum imitatur, de quo AH. 2). 56 Cmm2-CC 2D.80: “BEHOLD, HE STANDS BEHIND OUR WALL. The wall is the division which the first sin established between our mind and the divine face, excluding us from clear and pure contemplation of it. As 1 Cor. 14:12 states: We see now through a mirror in a dark manner, that is, enigmatically and obscurely. It is as if the beloved stands behind this wall when, in so far as this division permits, he approaches us courteously (dignanter), because to contemplative minds, he grants certain openings, bearers of his internal light, mentally dispensed through the middle of that obscure wall.” (EN IPSE STAT POST PARIETEM NOSTRUM. Paries est divisio quam primum peccatum statuit inter mentem nostram et faciem divnam, excludens nos a clara et pura eius contemplatione, Isa. 59; Exod. 33; 1 Cor. 14: per speculum; Num. 24: videbo eum sed non proprie; Iob 36: intuetur procul, scilicet enigmatice et obscure. Post istum parietem quasi stat dilectu quando, prout permittit divisio ista, ad nos dignanter accedit, quia mentibus contemplativis, quasi per medium istius parietis obscuri . . . ). 57 Cmm2-CC 1F.75: “And therefore, he shall abide between my breasts, that is, as it were united breast-to-breast, that is, with the word to the Word, myself to himself, he will rest more lingeringly with me as much as the stumbling blocks of separation are more effectively mortified.” ( . . . et ideo INTER UBERA MEA COMMORABITUR, id est quasi pectore ad pectus coniunctus, id est verbo ad verbum, se ad me, tanto morosius mecum requiescat quanto separationis offendicula efficacius mortificantur). 58 Cmm2-CC 3E.90: “HE MADE A LITTER, as if to say: after the bride diligently trains herself in industry by cooperating with the bridegroom.” ( . . . FERCULUM FECIT quasi dicerent: postquam sponsa diligenter se exercuit in industria, cooperante sponso . . . ).

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calls forth God to ecstatic love.”59 Yet more profound is the role of divine love for the soul. Commenting on the bride’s words, My beloved is a bundle of Myrrh to me, Gallus says: “that is, a certain abundance of mortifications, in order that by his most fervent love for me . . . I might die, so that also I live, now not I (Gal. 2:20), NOT THE LIFE 60 This marks a crucial OF MY LOVING BUT OF BEING LOVED (DN 4).” “moment” in Gallus’ appropriation of Dionysius, namely, his synthesis of Dionysius with the Song of Songs, precisely at this point of ecstatic, mystical union. In DN 4, Dionysius had already associated ecstatic union with the Apostle Paul’s claim in Gal. 2:20: I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me, but Gallus goes further, consistently assimilating Dionysius’ ecstatic Paul with Solomon’s ecstatic bride: Therefore the bride is said to languish in love, because she so burningly and fixedly rises up into the embrace of the bridegroom that she in no way ceases in this intension until she is united to the Bridegroom by exceeding herself and all things. On the Divine Names 4: ‘THE GREAT PAUL, WHEN POSSESSED BY DIVINE LOVE AND PARTICIPATING IN ITS ECSTASYCAUSING POWER, WITH A DIVINE MOUTH: I live, he says, yet not I but Christ lives in me (Gal. 2:20) . . . True languor is the exercise of ecstatic love to the divine rays persevering all the way up to this death.61

In his mature explanation of the Mystical Theology, Gallus forges the same link: “Dionysius spoke of this love (dilectionis) in On the Divine Names 4: “THE GREAT PAUL, WHEN POSSESSED BY DIVINE LOVE AND PARTICIPATING IN ITS ECSTASY-CAUSING POWER, WITH A DIVINE MOUTH SAID: I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me (Gal. 2:20); Song of Songs 8: [love] is as strong as death, separating and alienating.”62 But a most illuminating Cmm2-CC 2E.82: “Iste castissimus amor tante virtutis est quod Deum provocat ad amorem extaticum . . . ” 60 Cmm2-CC 1F.75: “ . . . id est quedam copia mortificationum, adeo ut ferventissimo amore suo me ipsam mihi et omnibus morticer ut et vivam ego, iam non ego, non vita mei amantis sed amati, De div. nom. 4 . . . ” 61 Cmm3-CC 5G.199: “Ait ergo sponsa se languere ex amore, quia tam ferventer et fixe in sponsi insurgit amplexus, ut abe hac intentione nullatenus cesset donec per excessum sui et omnium sponso unitatur. De div. nom. 4: PAULUS MAGNUS IN CONTINENTIA FACTUS DIVINI AMORIS ET VIRTUTE IPSIUS EXTASIM FACIENTE PARTICIPANS, DIVINO ORE: vivo ego, dicit, iam non ego vivit autem in me, Christus, Gal. 2. Vel mors est separatio a speculo ad speciem, Iob 3: separantur. Languor vero est exercitatio extactici amoris ad divinum radium usque ad hanc mortem perseverans.” 62 Expl-MT 1.6.74–81: “De ista dilectione Dionysius in libro De diuinis nominibus, cap. 4p: ‘EST AUTEM EXTASIM FACIENS DIUINUS AMOR, NON DIMITTENS SUI IPSORUM ESSE AMATORES, SED AMANDORUM’; et paulo post: ‘PROPTER QUOD ET PAULUS MAGNUS, IN 59

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instance comes from his mature comment on this very passage from Divine Names 4: PAUL SAID (Gal. 2:20) WITH A DIVINE MOUTH, that is, by the movement of the divine Spirit (Matt. 10:20: ‘for it is not you etc.’): I live, yet not I etc., that is, with the natural life, as it were, absorbed and its own office suspended through ecstatic union (per unitionem excessivam) with the immensity of eternity, I am directed, moved, taught, ruled by the supersubstantial life to which I am united, by which I am filled up (repleor). And this: but Christ lives in me, that is, just as the sober soul naturally governs me and disposes [me] to every exterior and interior act, so the eternal power of Christ, to which I have been united by grace, vivifies and disposes me toward all things.63

Here, Gallus adopts and adapts the Dionysian version of Paul’s mystical ecstasy in the direction of nuptial union, resulting in a new and distinct mode of hierarchical existence and operation: “in Christ”—I live, not I, but Christ lives . . . .64 Where Dionysius wrote of Paul that HE WAS NOT LIVING THE LIFE OF HIMSELF, BUT THE LIFE OF THE BELOVED, Gallus adds: “that is, of Christ.”65 As bride, the soul is now “animated” by Christ, in the same way that she had formerly existed through her natural soul; she is made alive—in a sense resurrected— and capable of new a relationship, of new objects. Above, Gallus cited Eph. 3:19—To know the knowledge-surpassing love of Christ—in his description of affective ecstasy, further confirming the intimate link between affective ecstasy and bridal union with Christ. Thus, the ecstatic mode of existence in Christ, begun in the Thrones and intensified in the Cherubim (as noted in Chapters 5 and 6), here reaches its seraphic fullness. CONTINENTIA FACTUS DIUINI AMORIS ET UIRTUTE IPSIUS EXTASIMFACIENTE PARTICIPANS, DIUINO ORE: (Gal. 2e) Viuo ego, dicit, non iam ego, uiuit autem in me Christus etc.’; Cant. 8d: fortis est ut mors, separans et alienans.” 63 Expl-DN 4.240.1506–14: “DICIT (Gal. 2g) DIVINO ORE, id est ex motu diuini spiritus (Matt. 10d: non enim uos estis etc.): VIVO EGO, IAM NON EGO etc., id est uita naturali per unitionem excessiuam ad eternitatis immensitatem quasi absorta et suo officio suspensa,dirigor, moueor, doceor, regor uita supersubstantiali cui unior, qua repleor.” 64 Gallus’ distinctive move is to wed the Dionysian metaphysics of cosmic eros with the interpersonal love of the Song of Songs. This merging of the Song’s spousal imagery with the Dionysian ascent allows the Victorine to introduce a Christological dimension precisely where it seems absent in the Mystical Theology (MT 1.3)—at the very highest point of the ascent, where the soul is united to God. 65 Expl-DN 4.239.1488.

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At the same time, Gallus does not neglect the role of the Holy Spirit in this new Christological mode of affective existence.66 In the same comment on DN 4, Gallus observes that “those who exceed in mind are said to suffer ecstasy because they are acted upon rather than acting,” citing a litany of scriptural texts as proof, including Rom. 8:14: For whoever is led by the Spirit etc. and Matt. 10:20: For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaks in you.”67 This new mode of ecstatic existence is thus “life in the Spirit,” because “it unites the apex of the principal affection (apicem affectionis principalis), capable of the divine, with the divine Spirit itself (ipsi diuino spiritui), according to 1 Cor. 6: He who adheres to God is one spirit.”68 It is this union with the Holy Spirit that now grants affective access to the otherwise unfathomable divine depths: “union, which does not know in a mirror, is united to the Spirit (unitur Spiritui) ‘who searches the deep things of God’ (1 Cor. 2:10) [and] it is thrust (immittitur) into that wholly desirable (S. of S. 5:16: ‘he is all desirable: such is my beloved’) (totus desiderabilis talis est dilectus meus), but wholly not intelligible (totum desiderabile et totum non intelligibilem).”69 Again, Gallus goes out of his way to link this to the ecstasy of the Solomonic bride: “This is the union (coniunctio) often longed for (suspirita) and sometimes obtained in the Song of Songs. For they obtain this, who go beyond (excedunt) in contemplation of mind, rather, [who go beyond] the mind (mentem excedunt), as Ps. 30: But I said in the excess of my mind, and Ps. 115:2: I said in my excess [and] 2 Cor. 5:13: For whether we be transported in mind (mente excedimus), etc.”70 Elsewhere, he brings the Christological and pneumatic together with a portentous gesture at what kind of experience this mode of existence will enable: for [Christ] is only cognized by the investigation of those who are spiritual (spirituali examinatione), concerning which I Cor. 2:14

66 Gallus’ integration of the roles of Christ and the Spirit in mystical union would seem to address the concern recently raised by Bernard Blankenhorn, OP. Cf. Blankenhorn, Mystery of Union, 74: “By implication Gallus’s notion of union occurring without the intellect’s proper act or in utter noetic passivity may leave behind the Son’s mission and center exclusively on the Spirit’s mission. 67 68 Expl-DN 4.241.1524f. Expl-MT 1.5.45. 69 70 Expl-DN 1.94.1081–4. Expl-MT 1.5.51–5.

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[speaks], namely, when our spirit, united with the divine Spirit, senses (sentit) those things which are of God. Hence Rom. 8:5: but they that are according to the Spirit sense (sentiunt) the things that are of the Spirit; I Cor. 2:10: but we have the mind of Christ, etc.; John 16: When the Spirit of truth comes, he will teach you [6] all truth, and John 14:17: The Spirit of truth which the world cannot receive: but you will know (cognoscetis) him because he will be in you.71

United to Christ in the Spirit, the soul-bride has now “the mind of Christ” (sensus Christi), by which she can now perceive divine things. Elsewhere Gallus observes that “the Bridegroom himself, giver of the Spirit and spiritual gifts (dator Spiritus et spiritualium charismatum), pours all the theoriae (omnes theorias) into our hierarchy.”72 Affective, seraphic union with the Bridegroom enables a pneumatically actualized encounter with the divine theoriae, in which the Spirit teaches the bride.

DIVINE SELF-REVELATION IN THE SERAPH: THEORIAE The foregoing establishes the “condition for the possibility” of seraphic, affective cognitio Dei. This new mode of existence enables the soul to receive a new mode of divine disclosure, which Gallus often expresses in the poetry of the Song: “With the aforementioned preparation of mortification, the same BELOVED produces a cluster of cypress for me. For as a cluster of cypress yields the strongest, sweetest, and greatly alienating (alienatum) wine, so in this reclining He inflows the most boiling hot and sweetest love into me, alienating me from all other things.”73 What this flowing wine is, Gallus

71 Expl-MT 1.5.62–6.69: “quoniam non cognoscitur nisi spirituali examinatione, de qua I Cor. 2g, quando scilicet spiritus noster spiritui diuino unitus sentit que sunt eius. Vnde Rom. 8a: qui secundum spiritum sunt, que sunt spiritus sentiunt; I Cor. 2e: Spiritus omnia scrutatur etc., et g: nos autem sensum Christi habemus etc.; Ioh. 16c: Cum uenerit Spiritus ille ueritatis, docebit uos omnem ueritatem, et 14f: Spiritum ueritatis quem mundus non potest accipere: uos autem cognoscetis eum quia apud uos erit etc.” 72 Cmm3-CC 5H.201–2. 73 Cmm2-CC 1G.75: “Premissa mortificationis preparatione. DILECTUS efficitur mihi botrus cypri. Sicut enim botrus cypri effundit fortissimum et dulcissimum vinum et

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explains: “lest that wine be thought [to be] her own possession, therefore she adds: from the vineyards of Engaddi.” These “vineyards are the heavenly theoriae, which by pleasant sweetness and by every desirable thing of the highest kind, effectively withdraw souls united to the spouse away from everything else, and alienate [them], and draw [those souls] into themselves, and sprinkle [them] with the sweetest, super-intellectual fragrances, such that they are rightly described as by wine.”74 Or again, speaking of the beams of the house, Gallus allegorizes: “The house: in my Father’s house there are many mansions (John 14:2), for there are as many theoriae as there are houses, like eternity and immensity, power, wisdom, goodness, and any other invisible things of God, and in each of these the Bridegroom reclines with the bride when she pleasantly abides united to him in theoriae of this kind.”75 Here with the seraph, as above in relation to the cherubic cognitio Dei, Gallus has recourse to his original teaching on what he calls the divine theoriae. As noted earlier, though the term theoria is a crucial part of the Christian mystical vocabulary nearly from the beginning,76 and is often a synonym for contemplation itself, Gallus gives the term an apparently distinct meaning, unique in the Christian mystical tradition.77 These divine “ideas” or “exemplars,” which exist eternally in the divine Word (cf. Chapters 2 and 5), flow “down” into the seraphic maxime alienatum, sic ipse in hob accubitu ferventissimum et dulcissimum in me ab omnibus aliis maxime alienantem influit amorem.” 74 Cmm2-CC 1G.76: “ . . . et sunt vinee iste superne theorie que suavi dulcedine et omnimoda specie summe desiderabili mentes sponso unitas efficaciter a cunctis abstrahunt, et alientant, et in se trahunt, et suavissime superintellectualibus fragrantiis respergunt, ut merito tam balsamo quam vino designentur.” 75 Cmm2-CC 1G.76: “Domus; sunt multe mansiones in domo Patris mei; quot enim theorie, tot domus, sicut eternitas et immensitas, potentia, sapientia, bonitas et quelibet alia Dei invisibilia, in quibus singulis sponsus cum sponsa cubat, quando ei unita in huiusmodi theoriis iocunde commoratur.” 76 On theoria in its classical Greek context, see A. Wilson Nightingale, Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy: Theoria in its Cultural Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 77 Gallus’ notion of theoriae might be derived from certain Dionysian descriptions of divine revelation, e.g. CH 7.1 (Parker, 24–5): “Naturally, then, the first (order) of the Heavenly Hierarchies is ministered by the most exalted Beings, holding, as it does, a rank which is higher than all, from the fact, that it is established immediately around God, and that the first-wrought Divine manifestations and perfections pass earlier to it [25], as being nearest” (emphasis added). And here: CH 7.4 (Parker, 29–30): “viewing purely many and blessed contemplations, and illuminated with simple [30] and immediate splendours, and filled with Divine nourishment,—many indeed by the

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mind as so many manifestations of the divine nature.78 While these are also the objects of the lower forms of intellectual cognitio Dei, they also strikingly figure into Gallus’ account of affective cognitio as well. In this respect, Gallus seems to distinguish between “cherubic theoriae” on the one hand, and more profound, more intimate seraphic theoriae, on the other, as here, where the latter flow into the soul-bride from the bosom of her divine Spouse: Affectual and unitive knowledge is understood by the word breasts (uberum), flowing down (exuberans) from the fountain itself and, as it were, from the chest of wisdom . . . Regarding the difference between these types of knowledge (cognitionum), Ps. 103:13 says: watering the mountains from your high places, the earth shall be filled with the fruit of your work. For a mountain is from the earth, and exceeds the earth, and signifies the mind which, exceeding its own nature, depends on the divine theoriae . . . . God waters this from the higher theoriae of eternal wisdom, which, of course, do not ascend into the heart of man (as does that intellectual knowledge that begins from the senses), but descends from the Father of lights (Jas. 1:17) unto the human heart.79 first-given profusion, but one by the unvariegated and unifying oneness of the supremely Divine banquet . . . ” 78 Expl-DN 1.101.1297–1315: “AND IT IS ESTABLISHED stably excelling in incommunicable eternity . . . ABOVE ALL CELESTIAL MINDS etc.: . . . For such is the excellence of his majesty and of all his invisibilia, namely, essence, power, wisdom, goodness, beauty, sweetness, etc., [that they are] above the essence and cognition of even the celestial souls. For even if omnipotent wisdom had created the best and most wise intelligences that it was able to create, as numerous as the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, nevertheless the cognition of all those intelligences would fall incomparably more short of the full comprehension of whichever one of those [invisibilia] than the smallest particle or most minute speck of dust, in relation to and equality with the whole sensible world, in as much as all the invisibilia of God are of the highest unity and of his omnipotent wisdom it is not possible to cognize or investigate anything more profound, higher or greater.” 79 Cmm2-CC 1A.68–9: “Nomine uberum est affectualis cognitio et unitiva, exuberans de ipso fonte et quasi de pectore sapientie, de qua DN: EST RURSUM DIVINISSIMA DEI COGNITIO PER IGNORANTIAM COGNITA SECUNDUM UNITIONEM SUPER MENTEM, etc. De differentia istarum cognitionum, Ps. 103: rigans montes de superioribus tuis, de fructu operum tuorum satiabitur terra. Mons enim terra est et terram excedit et significat mentem que, naturam propriam excedens, theoriis divinis innititur, iuxta illud DN., id est: MENS AB OMNIBUS RECEDENS ET TANDEM SEIPSAM DIMITTENS UNITUR SUPERSPLENDENTIBUS RADIIS; MT 1: excessu enim sui ipsius, etc.; 2 Cor. 5: sive mente excedimus Deo; Thren. 3: levavit se, etc. Istam rigat Deus de superioribus theoriis eterne sapientie, scilicet que non ascendit in cor hominis, ut intellectualis que incipit a sensu, sed descendit a Patre luminum in cor hominis, Iac. 1: MT 1: SUPERPULCHRIS CLARITATIBUS SUPERINSPLENDENTEM non habentes oculos mentes, id est cecatos, carentes ratione et intellectu, ut sol radios iacit super montes et oculos excecat, Eccli. 43.” The same distinction is here, in more

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Here, the “higher theoriae” flow down into the seraphic affectus from the Bridegroom. The same distinction seems present when Gallus allegorizes the difference between windows and lattices in the Song verse: Gazing at me through the windows, looking through the lattices (2:9). By windows, Gallus understands “the manifestations (apparitiones) of the divine lights, cognizable by my many mortal minds,” while lattices “indicate more secretly the more subtle things, which are [cognizable] by the few, wiser ones, through profound, incessant, and unitive contemplations, and not by those which are able to be brought into the common sense (communem sensum), but they are known (noscunt) only by those who experience (experiuntur) them.”80 Similarly, the Song verse, smelling sweet of the best ointments (1:3), prompts Gallus to note: “The best ointments are the super-intellectual theoriae which sooth the minds united to them and they restore and are rich in abundance for all with a kind of sweetness, beauty, clarity, suavity, and every kind of desirable outpouring, as from the breast of the Word.”81 Consistently, then, Gallus describes the bride’s affective, seraphic encounter with the Groom as mediated by these theoriae. United in love with the Groom, the soul-bride now receives the in-

poetic language: Cmm2-CC 2D.80: “Looking, that is, radiating from his high place unto me, THROUGH THE WINDOWS, that is, the more universal (communiores), therefore the more simple in him, contemplations, and SEEING FAR OFF, that is, from a more remote profundity through the lattices, as if having received both more subtle and privileged rays through deeper openings. The distinction between this more universal inflowing, which is through the windows, and the more subtle, which is through the lattices, is noted in the distinction between rain and dew (Deut. 32:2; Job 38:28; Dan. 3:64: bless the rain and dew; 1 Kgs. 17:1 neither the dew nor rain). For not only the dew but also the more common rain is denied to sinful land. Dew is mystical theology.” (Respiciens, id est de sua altitudine in me radians per fenestras, id est communiores, eo ergo simpliciores, contemplationes, et prospiciens, id est a profunditate remotiori per cancellos tamquam per altiora foramina et subtiliores et privilegiatos radios excipientia. Distinctio istius communioris influitionis, [que] per fenestras, et subtilioris, que per cancellos, notatur in distinctione pluvie et roris, Deut. 32: Iob 38: pluvie; Dan. 3: benedicite imber et ros; contraria via: nec ros nec pluvia; 3 Reg. 17. Negatur enim terre peccatrici non solum ros sed et pluvia que communior est. Ros est mystica theologia). 80 Cmm3-CC 2F.153. 81 Cmm3-CC 1B.122: “Unguenta optima sunt superintellectuales theorie que unitas sibi mentes deliniunt et universali quadam dulcedinis, pulchritudinis, claritatis, suavitatis et omnimode speciei desiderabilis effusione pollent et reficiunt, tanquam ex ubertate Verbi.”

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flowings of these theoriae. She says to her Spouse: “you shall teach me, namely, by the constant inflow of new theoriae . . . ”82

AFFECTIVE COGNITIO All the foregoing provides the foundation for the central claim of this chapter, namely, that the seraphic affectus enjoys a genuine form of cognition of God (cognitio Dei), albeit a super-intellectual one. This is already strongly implied by the remarkably telling fact that Gallus orients the ecstatic affectus toward the theoriae, affording a warrant for the claim that the affectus in some way cognizes and apprehends God. At one point, he is quite explicit about this seraphic cognition: Your eyes: Even though eyes seem to be excluded from the seraphic order . . . nevertheless the Groom . . . attributes the eyes of the inferior order [i.e. the Cherubim] to [the seraphic order]. Now, from one consideration this [seraphic] order is said to be blinded or lack eyes, since the intelligence is not able to reach up into this order nor is it drawn [there] on account of this order’s lofty eminence . . . But for another reason the Groom does attribute eyes to this order, since the eyes have an incomparably fuller cognition than all the other senses, and hence the other senses are sometimes designated by the name of vision, as when it is said: “see that it smells and tastes”; thus this [seraphic] order exceeds the other orders inestimably by the excellence of a cognition of divine things.83

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Cmm3-CC 8A.224. Cmm3-CC 7C.217: “Oculi tui, cum videantur ab ordine seraphim oculi prorsus exclusi, MT 1: NON HABENTES OCULOS MENTES; Eccli 43: obcecat oculos, nihilminus, sponsus qui in omnibus his prioribus locutus est, commendationi ordinis seraphim diligenter insistens, tanquam fontali nutritivo ordinum inferiorum oculos ei attribuit. Alia vero consideratione dicitur ordo iste oculis cecari ac privari, quia scilicet intelligentia usque in illum non pervenit nec trahitur propter eminentem celestitudinem, Eph 3: supereminentem scientie caritatem Christi. Alia vero ratione attribuit eidem oculos quia, sicut oculos pre ceteris sensibus ampliorem incomparabiliter habet cognitionem, adeo ut visus nomine ceteri sensus designentur, ut cum dicitur: vide quid oleat et sapiat, ita ordo iste ceteros ordines inestimabili quadam cognitionis excellentia divinorum excedit. Pluraliter dicit oculi, propter multiplicitatem et capacitatem influitionum.” 83

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Though Gallus here clearly excludes an intellectual mode of cognition from the seraphic experience, he just as clearly allows an affective mode of cognition. A similar warrant is found in other comments: “it is necessary, therefore, to understand (intelligere) divine things through this [affective] power of the soul,”84 or when the soul-bride says of the Groom: “whom I cognize (cognosco) only by the most intimate experience of love (dilectionis).”85 Remarkably, Gallus seems to indicate here that the affectus is able “to understand” (intelligere) divine things in this way. Clearly, this affective cognitio, which “apprehends” the divine theoriae—ideational in their very nature—cannot be utterly devoid of cognitive content. As the justnoted text suggests, it seems also to consummate the lower form of intellectual cognition, which is further intimated, when Gallus says that “union . . . draws the intellect in further than it could go before by its own efforts.”86 A remarkable text nicely captures Gallus’ resolution of the problem of Dionysian “knowing by unknowing” through this mystic-nuptial Christology. When the bride says that “My beloved is white and ruddy, Gallus says that white refers to the beauty of eternal wisdom . . . , while ruddy [refers] to burning love of eternal goodness . . . ,” such that the Bridegroom “is a fount of goodness and beauty, in relation to proper PARTICIPATIONS which the bride receives from Him, BY WHICH ALONE ARE DIVINE THINGS COGNIZED (cognoscuntur) (DN 2); thus “the bridegroom holds entirely the fullness (plenitudo) from which angels and humans receive . . . ”87 For Gallus, Dionysius’ unknown God is cognized affectively (uniting wisdom and goodness) through the fullness of the Bridegroom. The bride says: Show me, which reflects a desire to learn “by a most intimate and special revelation, where, in which theoriae of revelation or in what kind of contemplation, you feed, [that is,

84 Expl-DN 2.26.208: “Ecce duplicem assignat Dei cognitionem, unam ex collatione creaturarum que est intellectiva, aliam . . . experientia radiorum eterne sapientie que est super intellectum et omne ens. Secundum vero quam vim anime ista superintellectualis sapientia percipiatur, collige ex ipsius [sc. Dionysii] verbis, eodem capitulo 7h: OPORTET AUTEM VIDERE MENTEM NOSTRAM HABERE QUIDEM VIRTUTEM AD INTELLIGENDUM PER QUAM INTELLIGIBILIA INSPICIT, UNITIONEM VERO EXCEDENTEM MENTIS NATURAM PER QUAM CONIUNGITUR AD EA QUE SUNT SUPRA IPSAM. Secundum hanc vim ergo oportet divina intelligere. Unitionem autem intelligimus principalem affectum anime quo Deo coniungimur . . . .” 85 Cmm3-CC 1H.132: “quem sola intime dilectionis experientia cognosco . . . ” 86 87 Expl-DN 1.94.1086. Cmm3-CC 5G.200.

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where] you restore minds by the sweetness of a more gracious cognition.”88

Totus Desiderabilis et Totus non Intelligibilis Gallus thus consistently insists that affective cognitio is superintellectual in the sense of super-conceptual, i.e. beyond physical sensation, imagination, reason, and even understanding, in so far as all these involve knowing as “grasping,” abstracting, and comprehending, and as such inexorably bound up with created things and intellectual concepts. He is just as insistent, though, that affective cognitio is a genuine perception that is received and experienced: “But no one knows that true and excellent wisdom of Christians except the one who receives it (Rev. 2:17). . . . For no one is able to understand (intelligere), that is, to cognize it intellectually (per intellectuum cognoscere), nonetheless, “it is spiritually discerned (1 Cor. 2:14: spiritualiter examinatur),” that is, “discerned above mind (super mentem examinat).”89 What the affect cognizes “can neither be spoken, nor thought, but lies hidden in super-splendent darkness,”90 yet it is known “experientially” (experientialiter);91 it “cannot be expressed worthily in writing, in speech, or in cogitation,”92 and is thus “superintellectual and only cognizable by experience” (super-intellectualis et sola experientia cognoscibilis).93 It is “neither [physically] perceived (sentitur), nor understood (intelligitur), or cogitated (cogitatur), but is most rightly impressed upon the highest apex of the principle affection (summo apici affectionis principalis rectissime imprimitur) . . . The light of thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us (Ps. 4:7), which no one knows except the one who receives it (Rev. 2.17).94 This is what Hierotheus “suffered” through “manifold, direct encounters and experiences” (confricationis et experientie) . . . though “it cannot be said how the mind experiences such things which no one knows

88 Cmm3-CC 1H.132: “Indica mihi, intima et speciali revelatio, ubi, in cuius theorie revelatio, vel in quo contemplandi genere, pascas, a tue cognitionis dulcedine gratius mentes reficias.” 89 Expl-DN 2.25.183–5. 90 Cmm2-CC 4A.91: “ . . . nec dici, nec cogitari potest, sed in supersplendenti caligine latet.” 91 92 Cmm2-CC 1C.71. Expl-DN 4.239.1488. 93 94 Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.D.120 Cmm3-CC 1B.123.

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except the one who receives it (Rev. 2:17).”95 Again, Hierotheus, “experiencing super-intellectual COMMUNION WITH DIVINE THINGS . . . participated most copiously in the divine rays,” and thus “cognized more fully (plenius).”96 Meanwhile, in “the desired bedchamber of the bridegroom, the bride speaks experientially, saying: while the king was in my highest and inmost place . . . I was filled with sweetness from union with him.”97 In short, in affective union, there is a knowledge of God that “only experience teaches (sola docet experientia), which more sublimely exceeds the theoric intellect than the intellect [exceeds] the imagination and senses,” uniting the soul “to the divine substance so sublimely that neither a mental nor a bodily word suffices to speak that union. Nevertheless the experiencing mind knows (mens experiens novit) . . . ”98 So, the soul-bride genuinely cognizes and experiences the Beloved as present to her through union, but nonetheless as unnamable: “the bride . . . designates the Bridegroom as unnamable,” as only “the one whom my soul loves (S. of S. 1.6),” since “by no words can that ineffable and incommunicable name be expressed more intimately (familiarius),” than by this “most profound name, which is above all names (Philem. 2); and incommunicable (Sap. 14), and which is cognized by love alone.”99 For “He is unnameable, but also wholly desirable (totus desiderabilis), thus in my present state I can describe Him only in his desirability” (sola desiderabilitate).100 Variants on this latter phrase litter Gallus’ corpus, suggesting a preferred way of indicating the nature of affective cognitio Dei: “God is wholly desirable but wholly not intelligible” (totus desiderabilis et totus non

Expl-DN 2.155.1023: “EX huiusmodi COMPASSIONE multiplicis confricationis et experientie . . . cum edici non possit qualia mens talis experitur que nemo scit nisi qui accipit (Apoc. 2e).” 96 Expl-DN 2.174.297–175.312. 97 Cmm2-CC 1F.75: “ . . . deducta ad optatum sponsi cubiculum, intrat cubiculum, ut 4 Reg., experientialiter loquitur; CUM ESSET REX IN summo et intimo meo . . . id est amor fervidus suavissime fragrans . . . ” 98 Expl-DN 7.370.128. 99 Cmm3-CC 1B.123. See Cmm2-CC 1D.72: “[the bride] says: show me, whom my soul desires, that is, who is unnamable and is named above every name, either in heaven, or on the earth, but is known to me by love alone.” (unde dicit: indica mihi quem diligit anima mea, id est qui innominabilis est et super omne nomen quod nominatur, sive in celo, sive in terra, sed sola dilectione mihi cognitus est.) 100 Cmm2-CC 2A.78: “ . . . innominabilis enim est, sed et totus desiderabilis, ideo sola desiderabilitate possum eum designare in statu meo presenti.” 95

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intelligibilis);101 the affectus is “embracing (capiente) the divine, higher than the mind, since it unites the soul to that wholly desirable and by no proportion intelligible plenitude” (plenitudini toti desiderabili et nulla proportione intelligibili);102 “the inmost desire incomparably transcends the intellect, ascending to and drawn (tractus) by God, who is wholly desirable (totus desiderabilis), but wholly not intelligible” (totus non intelligibilis);103 “he is unnameable, but also wholly desirable” (totus desiderabilis);104 “the Bridegroom is wholly not intelligible (totus intelligibilis), but is wholly desirable” (totus desiderabilis);105 “he himself is eternal life and he himself is wholly desirable” (totus desiderabilis) (Cant. 5:16);106 “[Christ] is eternal life and wholly desirable (totus desiderabilis) . . . .”107 In sum, God is indeed unknowable, that is, “not thought (cogitare) as some sayable or thinkable being” (sicut aliquid ens aut dicible aut cogitabile),108 but is knowable through love, for the affectus has a capacity for God that exceeds that of the intellectus. All this raises the question of just how radical and thoroughgoing the apparent disjunction between cherubic intellection and seraphic affection is for Thomas Gallus. It suggests something more complex in affective, seraphic cognitio than absolute unknowing, in utter passivity by the bride’s affective ecstasy “above mind.” The poetic and sensory language above suggests some form of genuine cognitio, where cognitio means not “knowing that one does not know” (as it seems to mean for Dionysius),109 but rather a form of knowing distinct from the intellectual kind. For Gallus, the intellectually unavailable and unknowable God is here, somehow, available to the soul through “another and incomparably more profound mode of 101

102 Expl-DN 2.155.1021. Expl-DN 1.92.1023. Expl-DN 1.109.1498. 104 Cmm2-CC 2A.78: “ . . . innominabilis enim est, sed et totus desiderabilis . . . ” 105 Cmm2-CC 4B.92: “ . . . eo quod sponsus totus sit non intelligibilis, sed totus desiderabilis.” 106 107 Expl-DN 4.239.1488. Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.D.119. 108 Expl-MT 1.5.59. 109 Letter 1(Parker, 141): “But He Himself, highly established above mind, and above essence, by the very fact of His being wholly unknown, and not being, both is super-essentially, and is known above mind. And the all-perfect Agnosia, in its superior sense, is a knowledge of Him, Who is above all known things.” (Dionysius the Areopagite, Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, tr. Colm Luibheid (New York: Paulist, 1987), 1065AB, 263: “He is completely unknown and nonexistent. He exists beyond being and is known beyond the mind. And this quite positively complete unknowing is knowledge of him who is above everything that is known.”) 103

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cognizing God (modum cognoscendi Deum),”110 a most sublime mode of knowing (innotescere) the divine plenitude.111 The distinction here between forms of cognition hinges less on content than on source. Precisely what this “cognitio” entails remains to be clarified,112 though clearly the term has a far wider connotation for him than the modern English cognate “cognition.”

SERAPHIC SENSATION It is at this juncture that Gallus has recourse to a particular doctrine of the spiritual senses of the soul in order to explain and characterize the nature of affective cognitio Dei. Calling the theoriae “exemplars of the eternal Word,” Gallus describes them as “sweet-smelling above the mind”113 and “agreeable, sweet, and of every variety” and “most pleasing” (gratissimam) after the manner of myrrh.”114 He frequently mingles the language of tasting and smelling to evoke this affective experience. Like mandrakes, these theoriae “give a smell.”115 Like a cup of spiced wine, they yield the “most pleasing theoric tastings” (suavissimas theoricas degustationes).116 Texts such as these and others to be considered below reflect the importance of sensory language for Gallus’ mystical theology. Beyond a general analogy— “the exterior senses are images (idolas) of the interior and mental senses”117—however, he does not offer a clear anthropology of the spiritual senses, as some of his contemporaries, such as William of Auxerre118

110

Expl-MT 1.4.35–7. Expl-AH 10.638.276: “ordinem Seraphim constituunt, nec se possunt angelici ordines ultra istum extendere quia non potest diuina plenitudo aliquo sublimiori modo hominibus uel angelis innotescere.” 112 Perhaps Bertrand Russell’s notion of “knowledge by acquaintance” is relevant here. See his “Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (New Series), Vol. XI, (1910–11), pp. 108–28, . 113 114 Cmm3-CC 4G.186. Cmm3-CC 1M.139. 115 116 Cmm3-CC 7F.222. Cmm3-CC 2L.160. 117 Cmm2-CC 1A.69: “ . . . quod sensus exteriores idola sunt interiorum et mentalium . . . ” 118 See Boyd Taylor Coolman, Knowing God by Experience: The Spiritual Senses in the Theology of William of Auxerre (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004). 111

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or Bonaventure119 did. It remains unclear whether they are powers, gifts, habits, etc., whether they are present naturally or given by grace, or precisely how the spiritual senses relate to the powers of the soul, as well as the virtues and gifts of the Spirit. Yet, the “spiritual sensorium” is the key to Gallus’ conception of affective cognitio Dei, as Fr. Walsh noted more than half a century ago.120 What this language suggests is that superintellectual, affective cognitio is best understood as a form of spiritual sense perception. In Gallus’ words: “this union is sensed (sentitur) by the experience of the principal affection above the intellect.”121 In his latter commentary on the Song, Gallus offers a fitting description with which to begin. The bride’s address to the Bridegroom, your name is oil poured forth (S. of S. 1:3), prompts Gallus to note that, among other things, oil connotes “sweet refreshment” and then to say: There is nothing that offers so agreeable refreshment to minds as the substantial bread (Matt. 7:9); the invisible food (Tobit 12:19); the bread of angels (Ps. 77:25); the bread of heaven, having every delight and every flavor of sweetness (Sap. 16:20); the DIVINE NUTRITION AND VIVIFYING UNITY OF THEARCHIC FEASTING (CH 7). This refreshment does not occur through a mirror, but through the experience of divine sweetness, because taste and touch do not occur through a mirror . . . , but vision does, now we see through a mirror (Cor. 13:12). Therefore No one ever sees God (Job 1:18) and man will not see me and live (Exod. 33:20). But it does not say, “he will not taste or we will not taste.” And Scripture frequently invites us to taste God. In this participation of God, the portion of Mary is poured out, which is not taken away from her.”122

Among many others, see Gregory LaNave, “Bonaventure,” in The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity, ed. Paul Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 159–73. 120 Walsh, Sapientia Christianorum, p. 93, n. 2. 121 Expl-DN 1.85.844: “Hec autem unitio experientia principalis affectionis super intellectum sentitur.” 122 Cmm3-CC 1C.124: “Nihil est quod ita gratam mentibus prestet refectionem sicut panis substantialis, Matth. 7; hic est cibus invisibilis, Tob. 12; panis angelorum, Ps. 77; panis de celo habens omne delectamentum et omnem saporem suavitatis, Sap. 16; divinum nutrimentum et vivifica thearchice epulationis unitas, CH 7. Hec refectio non fit per speculum, sed per divine dulcedinis experientiam, iuxta quod gustus et tactus non exercetur per speculum, sed visus, Cor. 13: videmus nunc per speculum. Ideo Io. 1: Deum nemo vidit, et non dicit: non gustabit, vel non gustabimus. Frequenter autem in Scripturis invitamur ad gustum Dei. In hac Dei participatione fundatur portio Marie que non abe ea aufertur.” 119

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Here, Thomas uses the language of spiritual sensation to suggest two related points. First, the difference between intellectual and affectual cognition is correlated to a distinction between sight (and hearing), on the one hand, and taste, touch (and smell), on the other. Second, affective cognition is analogous to the experience of physical taste, touch, and smell. That Gallus distinguishes between intellective and affective cognitio Dei in terms of two modes of sense perception is apparent in many places, in addition to the one quoted above: “But the soul’s taste, touch, smell correspond to this [union], just as hearing and sight correspond to the intellect.”123 That he consistently characterizes affective cognition as analogous to the former triad of senses is also widely apparent. Elsewhere, he expands this “seraphic sensorium” to include an olfactory dimension: “the taste, touch, and smell of the soul.”124 The “sweetest, super-intellectual fragrance” is “scattered”125 in the soul through the experience of nuptial union. The odor of spikenard describes the soul’s experience of the “affectual inflowings” from the divine Spouse which are redolent and warming to the affect.126 The Canticle’s “cup of spiced wine” prompts the observation that “wine” pertains to spiritual taste, while “spiced” refers to the “confection of spiritual aromas.”127 123

Expl-DN 7.370.128. Expl-DN 7.370.150: “anime gustus, tactus, olfactus . . . ” Cf. Expl-DN 2.154.1002: “PATIENS DIVINA per apicem affectionis, scilicet unitionem experientem diuinam dulcedinem, suauitatem, flammam per gustum, olfactum et tactum, de quibus AI 15d.”; Expl-AH 1.486.186: “Mens autem rationalis in intellectu habet oculum, aurem et uerbum siue linguam ad loquendum, in affectu tactum, gustum et olfactum, per quos experientialiter examinat profunda Dei (I Cor. 2e, g; DN 7i) sicut gustus et olfactus examinant corporum interioritates”; Expl-EH 4.882.555: “Hanc etiam suauitatem non percipit nisi qui sanum et bene dispositum habet mentis olfactum.” 125 Cmm2-CC 1G.76: “ . . . et suavissime superintellectualibus fragrantiis respergunt . . . ” 126 Cmm2-CC 4G.99: “Nardus redolens et calens significat puras et affectuales influitiones que ex affectuali virtute proprie calent et redolent.” 127 Cmm3-CC 8.A.224: “It is the same thing to give the bride a cup of spiced wine, as when the bride was said to suck the breast of the groom; this then is the meaning: liquefied and made fit for union with me by devotion, I am made to taste (sapidam factam), which is noted by ‘wine,’ as from the confection of spiritual aromas, what is noted in ‘spiced,’ you will incorporate me into you by absorbing [me], and lead me to the more interior things and, taken up more interiorly anew, ‘I will give to you the new wine of my pomegranates,’ that is, having drawn you to me more intimately, liquefied by new fervors, I will manifest [to you]; by ‘new wine,’ understand new things (novitas), by ‘pomegranates,’ [understand] fervor.” 124

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Before proceeding further, this activity of the spiritual senses must be seen within the nuptial relationship between the soul-bride and Christ, her Spouse, already noted above. In the text just quoted, it is the spiritual “bread” that is Christ (perhaps even the Eucharistic Christ) that is sensed. When the Song refers to the powders of the perfumer, this “perfumer is the Bridegroom who is the author, lover, maker, and bountiful giver of every spiritual aroma. The multitude of his sweetness is called powder . . . ”128 When the Song says: the king led me into the wine cellar, Gallus’ bride says: “He led me into the plenitude of sweetness (plenitudinem dulcedinis), and greatest alienating (alienantis), because wine is sweet and alienating, and it is called the wine cellar in the singular . . . because of the special taste of divine sweetness.”129 Again, the bride resting in the embraces of the Groom, “speaks experientially, [saying], like the apple tree, that is, a tree bearing sweetly refreshing and fragrant apples, so is my beloved, the fullness of sweetness and refreshment (plenitudo suavitas et refectionis).”130 Commenting on the Song verse: My beloved put [his hand] through the key-hole, and my bowels are moved by his touch,” Gallus says that bowels here signify “the fervent affection that loves most tenderly.” When “moved by the touch of the [Spouse’s] hand,” this tender affection is “stirred” (consternatur) to rise up in ignorance (ignote) to experience and receive the overshadowing Beloved (superadventus divini) intimately within her, just as the blessed Virgin was troubled (turbata) by the angelic visitation.131 Consistently, Christ is the general object of the spiritual senses, whose embrace enables such a sensuous experience. Gallus’ claim that affective cognitio involves the experience of Christological theoriae in the manner of taste, touch, and smell entails the following: it is direct, immediate, participatory, and thus “affecting”; it is supra-conceptual; and finally, more penetrating and intimate.

128 Cmm2-CC 3D.88: “Pigmentarius est sponsus qui omnium spiritualium aromatum est auctor, amor, confector et largitor. Pulvis eius dicitur multitudo dulcedinis . . . ” 129 Cmm2-CC 2B.78: “Introduxit in plenitudinem dulcedinis, De div. nom. 4 et maxime alienantis, quia vinum dulce est et alienans, et dicitur singulariter cellam vinariam . . . propter speciale[m] divine dulcedinis gustum . . . ” 130 Cmm2-CC 2A.77: “ . . . experientialiter loquitur: sicut malus, id est arbor ferens poma dulciter reficiencia et fragrantia, inter ligna silvarum infructuosa, sic dilectus meus, plenitudo suavitatis et refectionis . . . ” 131 Cmm2-CC 5C.103.

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First, as is true in physical sensation, the smell–taste–touch triad entails a more direct contact with its object than the sight-hearing dyad: “it is necessary for us to cognize divine things not by seeing or hearing intellectually. For those three senses [i.e. smell, taste, and touch] . . . are not exercised through a mirror (per speculum), but directly (per speciem).132 In the Isaiah commentary, Gallus differentiates the mediated distance of the dyad from the immediate contact of the triad thus: “One can see and hear torment without [feeling] torment or see and hear delight without [feeling] delight; indeed, one can see and hear torment with delight and [see and hear] delight with torment.” By contrast, one cannot smell, taste, or touch without being “affected by that which we apprehend” (afficimur secundum id quod apprehendimus).133 For Gallus, the former is the proper modality of the intellectus; the latter, that of the affectus. “For that Seraphic order . . . learns immediately of God, as in Ps. 50:8: the uncertain and hidden things of your wisdom are manifested to me (see also 1 Cor. 2:10, the spirit searches the depths, and Job 12:22).”134 Clearly then, the “distance” between subject and object is a crucial factor distinguishing these apprehensional modes. The affectus apprehends in some sense through direct contact, through participation in what is cognized, which is why Gallus ultimately identifies this power with union itself. The bride experiences the Bridegroom “according to the participation which the bride receives from him, for divine things ARE 135 KNOWN ONLY BY PARTICIPATION.” FOR EVERYTHING DIVINE AND WHATEVER THINGS ARE REVEALED TO US by sublime and unitive cognition, ARE COGNIZED ONLY BY THOSE WHO ARE PARTICIPATING, just as someone who tastes the sweetness of a sip of wine from a full vase cognizes from tasting, not what is tasted. Similarly, one touching fire from the touch of a particle cognizes the residue, and one smelling a flower or anything aromatic cognizes connatural things from

132 Expl-AH 1.483.105: “Isti enim tres sensus siue in corpore siue in mente non exercentur per speculum, sed per speciem, et quantum Deum sic gustamus, tangimus uel amplexamur, et olfacimus, tantum ipsum cognoscimus participando ineffabiliter ipsius dulcedinem et suauitatem.” 133 Expl-AH 10.634.168. 134 Cmm2-CC 1A.69: “Ille enim ordo quod ignotum est Dei per experientiam discit immediate, iuxta illud Ps.: incerta et occulta sapientie tue manifestasti mihi et 1 Cor. 2: spiritus scrutatur profunda; Iob. 12 . . . ” 135 Cmm2-CC 2D.80: “ . . . secundum participationem quam a sponso percipit, ipsum sponsum describit; divina enim solis participationibus cognoscuntur, DN 2 . . . ”

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smelling, not the things smelled. But it is otherwise with sight or hearing.136

Recalling that for Gallus, both the dyad and the triad have the theoriae as their objects, it seems arguable that Gallus is gesturing at a distinct mode of knowing, not at an absolute non-knowing. It is a mode of knowing that profoundly affects the knower; it is “affecting” in that more literal and basic sense of the term. Second, with his deployment of the affective sense-triad, Gallus seems to gesture at a notion of “cognition” that is broader than conceptual, ideational, or “quidditive” knowing. For Gallus, that affective cognition is “super-intellectual,” does not imply that it is beyond all experience or description, that it is absolutely “contentless,” or ineffable. A gustatory example, namely, the taste of honey, affords an analogy: “the word of the mind (verbum mentis) is not able to express in writing or in words those super-intellectual experiences (experientias illas superintellectuales), nor to be spoken of within themselves, just as the taste of honey or the odor of aroma cannot be perceived by sight or by hearing, nor does anyone know those things, except the one who receives it (Rev. 2:17).”137 Again, though this experience “cannot be spoken by any mental word, much less a corporeal word . . . those experienced in such matters (experti) can instruct and inflame those who are experiencing (experientes) (1 Cor. 2:13: ‘comparing spiritual things with spiritual etc . . . .’), just as someone who has tasted many sweet things can infer concerning a sweetness or a sweet thing in comparison with something else that he tasted similarly. But with [mere] words he cannot teach someone, who has never tasted sweetness, about sweetness.”138 Gallus’ point seems to be that, to put it in a scholastic idiom, there is no abstractable essence or quiddity that corresponds to sweetness. What does it means to know

136 Expl-DN 2.149.866–72: “sicut aliquis gustans dulcedinem modici uini de pleno uase, ex gustato cognoscit non gustatum. Similiter tanges ignem ex tactu particule, cognoscit residuum, et olfaciens unum florem vel aliud aromaticum, ex olfactu cognoscit connaturalia non olfacta. Aliter enim est de uisu et auditu.” 137 Expl-DN 4.234.1337. 138 Expl-DN 2.155.1027–34: “Unde nec verbo mentis multo minus verbo corporis dici potest. Experti tamen experientes possunt instruere et inflammare (I Cor. 2f: spiritualibus spiritualia comparantes etc.; EI 7x: ‘CONFIDO ENIM QUOD PER DICTA etc.’), sicut qui multa dulcia gustauit potest conferre de dulcedine uel dulci cum alio qui similiter gustauit. Eum uero, qui numquam gustauit dulce, non potest uerbis instruere de dulcedine.”

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honey? To know how it tastes? In the end, there is no word or concept that suffices to capture or grasp it. The only way to answer it is to give the questioner a taste of honey. Only then does one really know honey. One might then be able compare it to something else, similarly experienced. But it remains in some sense beyond conceptual comprehension.139 Third, in a way reminiscent of Hugh of St. Victor’s account of love going further than knowledge, affective cognitio, by virtue of its greater immediacy and intimacy, goes further than its intellectual counterpart; it penetrates beyond the surface, into the depths of the Beloved: “love penetrates . . . by touching, smelling, and tasting.”140 It is “affective knowledge (cognitio) that alone wounds and penetrates . . . ”141 Commenting on the best ointments of the Groom, Gallus says that these “are the inestimable and innumerable charms of the divine sweetness in the highest simple substance,142 from which [the Spouse] sends forth every taste” (a poetic reference to the divine theoriae already noted). He then observes: “Note here that the intellect sees and hears and perceives what is more outward,” while “the affect penetrates those sorts of things by touching, smelling, and tasting” . . . and because “it is the simplest, affection alone smells the sweetness of these oils.”143 In an extended allegory of the “rock” and a “wall” in the Song, Gallus puts it thus: By the words OF THE steep and difficult ROCK are understood the penetrable theoriae, which are penetrated only by the most acute, strengthened minds and by much exercise, as by a hard and sharp iron tool (cf. Sir. 48:19: he dug out a rock with iron). The clefts are thus the

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Worth pondering is the notion that in Neoplatonic philosophy, sensibles, physical sensation, lies somewhere “in-between knowledge, whose proper and sole object is being, on the one hand, and absolute non-being on the other, which cannot in any way be thought or known (i.e. is absolutely unintelligible)” (see Perl, Theophany, p. 7). Sensation then is in some sense a knowing of that which is not perfectly knowable, but which is neither absolute ignorance of the absolutely non-existent. In this light, perhaps there is something intuitively right in Gallus resorting to spiritual sensation to describe a kind of knowing that is beyond what is perfectly intelligible, namely, beyond being. Hence, the shift to spiritual sensation: meta-conceptual, supra-intellectual cognition. 140 Cmm2-CC 1A.69: “ . . . affectus qui penetrat tangendo, olfaciendo, gustando.” 141 Cmm2-CC 1D.72: “ . . . affectiva cognitio que sola vulnerat et penetrat . . . ” 142 See Wisd. 16:21. 143 Cmm2-CC 1A.69: “ . . . affectus qui penetrat tangendo, olfaciendo, gustando . . . sit summe simplex, istorum unguentorum suavitatem sola olfacit affectio.”

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contemplative penetrations of these theoriae . . . . The apex of affection (affectionis apex) alone ascends into those. OF THE WALL, that is, the previous wall. Therefore, the sharpened point digs out the rock and carves the wall. By rock, understand the secret profundity of theoriae impenetrable by rational investigations and intellectual contemplations; by wall, [understand] the contemplation of theoriae.”144

Still oriented toward the divine theoriae, the unique power of love penetrates further into these than reason or intellect can, like a sharp carving utensil.145 Incontestably, then, Gallus deploys a doctrine of the spiritual senses to navigate the soul’s experience of affective union with God. He invokes a “spiritually sensuous” experience, couched in the language of smell, taste, and touch, in contrast to intellectual or rational knowing analogous to physical sight and hearing, which fosters a form of experiential perception: “The affectus tastes, touches, and smells spiritually, [while] the intellectus sees and hears.”146 By “sensing, tasting and smelling,” the “principal affection ascends into divine things infinitely above the intellect.”147 In this way, for Gallus, affective union is a genuine form of cognitio: “in so far as we thus taste, touch and embrace, and smell God, so, to that extent do we cognize him, by unspeakably participating in his sweetness and suavity (dulcedinem et suavitatem).”148 In the end, it is this spiritually sensuous experience that Gallus deploys to negotiate the unknowable God of Exodus and Saini, as he observes in relation to Hierotheus, a

144 Cmm2-CC 2F.83: “Nomine PETRE ardue et difficile penetrabiles theorie intelliguntur et a solis acutissimis et multa exercitatione roboratis mentibus penetratur, tanquam ferramento robusto et acuto; Eccli. 48: fodit ferro rupem. Foramina ergo sunt dictarum theoriarum contemplative penetrationes . . . Solius affectionis apex in ista conscendit. MACERIE, quod prius paries. Acumen ergo, quod petram forat et maceriam cavat. Per petram accipe secretam profunditatem theoriarum rationabilibus investigationibus et intellectualibus contemplationibus impenetrabilium, Myst. theol. 1, per maceriam, contemplationem theoria[ru]m.” 145 Cmm2-CC 3A.85: “because the wholly desirable always and everywhere penetrates desire.” ( . . . quia enim totus desiderabilis semper et ubique penetrat desiderium.) 146 Expl-EH 4.869.227: “Affectio siquidem gustat, tangit et olfacit spiritualiter, intellectus videt et audit.” 147 Glss-AH 3.34.264: “ . . . per aliam experiendo, sentiendo, gustando et olfaciendo summa vi anime que est principalis affectio ascendens in divina in infinitum super intellectum . . . .” 148 Expl-AH 1.483.105: “quantum Deum sic gustamus, tangimus uel amplexamur, et olfacimus, tantum ipsum cognoscimus participando ineffabiliter ipsius dulcedinem et suauitatem.”

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text already quoted above: “ . . . BY SUFFERING DIVINE THINGS,” Hierotheus was “experiencing divine sweetness, suavity, and flame, through [the senses of] taste, smell and touch . . . Hence Exod. 33:20 says: man shall not see me, and live. It does not say ‘he shall not taste,’ ‘he shall not smell,’ ‘he shall not touch,’ . . . ”149 For “the Bridegroom is called LEAPING UPON THE MOUNTAINS, SKIPPING OVER THE HILLS because . . . through unitive conjoining and experiential cognition (experimentalem cognitionem), he impresses vestiges [of himself], as it were, upon those who are suffering divine things.”150 As noted, a distinction between conceptual understanding and cognitional experience seems to be operative here. Perhaps the most compelling confirmation of this claim, the feature which most mitigates against an anti-intellectual reading, is that he consistently orients these spiritual senses toward the divine theoriae (as Bonaventure will do151): “so the divine substance is only penetrated by . . . human or angelic minds . . . to the extent that divine mercy, by drawing the desire of minds (mentium desidera attrahendo), admits them to the more secret experiences of the theoriae (ad secretiores theoriarum experientias), through superintellectual union, as above, he brought me in . . . .”152

SERAPHIC SIMPLIFICATION In the text quoted above, Gallus refers to the affectus as the “simplest,” (see n. 144) reflecting a final feature, quite crucial, of Gallus’ mystical theology, namely, the notion of simplification (already introduced in

149 Expl-DN 2.154.1002: “PATIENS DIVINA per apicem affectionis, scilicet unitionem experientem diuinam dulcedinem, suauitatem, flammam per gustum, olfactum et tactum . . . .Unde dictum est Ex. 33: non videbit me homo et vivet. Non dicit ‘non gustabit,’ ‘non olfacet,’ ‘non tanget,’ . . . ” 150 Cmm3-CC 3E.150. 151 Bonaventure, Collations on the Six Days XVII.3: “It should be noted that as a fruit delights both sight and taste, it delights the sense of taste mostly by its beauty and decorum, but the sense of taste, by its sweetness and suavity. Likewise, these theoria sustain the intellect by their beauty, and the affective dispositions by their suavity” (Notandum, quod sicut fructus oblectat visum et gustum, tamen principalius visum oblectat sua pulchritudine et decore, gustum vero dulcore et suavitate; sic et istae theoriae reficiunt intellectum suo decore et affectum sua suavitate.) 152 Cmm3-CC 3A.167.

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Chapter 6). It is here, moreover, that Gallus’ hierarchical anthropology comes to the fore. Already, the transition from the enstatic to the ecstatic dimension of the soul, from the Dominions to the Thrones, entails the beginning of a process of simplification.153 At the cherubic rank, that simplification began, not only to “contract” the intellectus into a higher form of intellectual cognition,154 but also to draw the intellectus together with the affectus, as they “coambulated” or walked together there, so that in some way the intellectus began to be “affectivized.” Here, at the seraphic rank, this process comes to its completion, with the complete simplification of the soul and all its powers: “When [seraphic] affection alone pushes to the inner parts of the desert (Exod. 3:1), then there is one flock singularly, for Moses, taken up in the darkness, leads a single flock, that is, the simple and uniform movements of affection.”155 Again: the Bridegroom says to the bride “your lips are like scarlet lace, that is, red with the fervor of special love (amor), for just as lace binds the head and hair lest they flow down, so that most chaste love encircles the mind, and contracts and narrows all its movements into the desire of the one simple highest Good.”156 After noting how the lower orders have pairs of everything, signifying the duality of affect and intellect at those levels, Gallus observes: “But there is only one palate of the affectus; a single intellectus, going out to exterior things; also a single affectus sensing and uniting to the whole in the manner of touch.”157 The single “mouth” of the bride (S. of S. 4:3) is “the seraph of our mind,” which alone tastes, as in O taste, and see that the Lord is sweet (Ps. 33:9).158 153 See Cmm3-CC 2G.153: In the ascent through the middle hierarchy (Powers, Virtues, Dominions), Gallus says that “the eyes of the mind,” namely, the “movements and extensions of the affect and intellect” (motus et extensiones affectus et intellectus) are “made simple” (simplificantur) in order to ascend further into the highest hierarchy (Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim). 154 Cmm3-CC 5H.201: “In the order of the cherubim,” the “intellectual vision (visus intellectualis) is most greatly simplified” (maxime simplificatur)—not simply blinded or truncated. 155 Cmm2-CC 4A.91: “ . . . quando affectio sola minat ad interiora deserti, tunc est grex singulariter. Moyses enim, assumptus in caligine, ducit solum gregem, id est simplices et uniformes motus affectionis . . . ” 156 Cmm2-CC 4B.92: . . . LABIA TUA sunt SICUT VITTA COCCINEA, id est rubea per precipui amoris fervorem, quia sicut vitta constringit capit et capillos ne defluant, sic amor iste castissimus mentem circumcingit, et omnes motus eius constringit et coarctat in unius summe simplicis boni desiderium . . . 157 Expl-AH 10.635.193–5: “Sed unicum est affectus palatum, unicus exitus ad exterior, intellectus; unicus etiam affectus, totum, quasi ad modum tactus, sensificans et unificans.” 158 Expl-DN 4.203.571.

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A particularly arresting image of this simplifying process is Gallus’ frequent reference to the soul’s “liquefaction”:159 “Those unsuited for union are hard, [but those] suited [for union] are softened and liquefied, and thus those minds are suitably united to God, which are softened (emolliuntur) through a special mildness (precipuam mansuetudinem) and liquefied through a special devotion (precipuam devotionem).”160 Again, “at the utterance of the Bridegroom, the solid mind . . . liquefies and is readied for union.”161 And “aptitude for union, moreover, is obtained by overflowing (affluentem) devotion and looseness (resolutionem) of the mind, because fluids are easily united, as the bride says my soul is liquefied (S. of S. 5:6).”162 Elsewhere, Gallus intimates that the soul’s simplification is a function of its increasing intimacy with its utterly simple Spouse: “he collects like a fountain the multitude of those theoriae and brings them together in himself in the simple Word, just as if infinite lines flowed from a simple point around the center.”163 It is, moreover, correlated with an increasingly simplified experience of its spiritually sensed objects. At one point Gallus gestures at this drawing together toward simplicity with the language of spiritual smell: “Spikenard is a spicosa plant . . . and is especially odiferous,” signifying the “new super-infused plenitude, sweet-smelling above the mind.”164 This “spicositas of spikenard,” he continues, indicates that “the multiple cognitions of invisible divine things are contained under that simplicity of participation,” which “is perceived in inmost contemplation of sublime theoriae.”165 Again: “This drawing together [constriction] is a compacted [coarctata] simplification of the mind, when, the whole multitude of sensible and intelligible things having been excluded . . . , it penetrates acutely into the superior and more subtle theoriae.”166

159 The deep background for Gallus’ thinking here regarding “simplification” may well be Hugh of St. Victor’s reflections on the “liquefying” power of soul’s love, which he develops in his Super Ierarchiam Dionysii, ed. Dominique Poirel, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 228 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), VI.1 (555–62) (PL 175.1036A–1040C). 160 Expl-DN 3.166.82–5. 161 Cmm2-CC 3D.89: “ . . . mens solidata . . . que ad loquelam sponsi liquescit et aptatur unitioni . . . ” 162 163 Cmm3-CC Prol.T.110. Cmm3-CC 5H.202. 164 Cmm3-CC 1M.138. 165 Cmm3-CC 1M.138: “ . . . significat multiplicem divinorum invisibilium cognitionem sub illius participationis simplicitate contineri . . . . Quod in sublimium theoriarum intima contemplatione percipitur.” 166 Cmm3-CC 4H.188.

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In a striking description of this seraphic experience of the these theoriae, appearing both in his early Commentary on Isaiah (1218) and in his late Third Commentary on the Song of Songs (1243), Gallus refers to “brilliant burnings or burning brilliances” (fervores fulgidi seu fulgores fervidi),167 as well as “the excessive sublimities and sublime excesses” (sublimes excessus et excedentes sublimitates),168 which “the principal affect” experiences. This rhetorical strategy of alternating and reciprocally blending the signature metaphors of brilliant cherubic light and burning seraphic fire subtly signals the kind of simplifying integration the soul’s cognitional modes in seraphic ecstasy. As Joshua Robinson puts it: “Brilliant burnings or burning brilliances suggests the transcendent resolution of the two modes of knowledge, hitherto represented by intellectus and affectus.”169 By suggesting that the experience of burning seraphic affectivity retains a dimension of brilliance, of the illumination associated with intellectual knowledge, Gallus implies that in some way cherubic cognition has been hierarchically assimilated into seraphic cognition, resulting in the highest form of cognition, namely, an affective cognition, since love or affection is the proper modality of the seraphic apex. The alternating pairing suggests the simplified integration of knowledge and love, in which it is no longer possible to clearly distinguish what at lower mode of operation were heretofore parallel powers and acts. Burning touch and brilliant vision are now united in love’s bond of perfection. Elsewhere similar blendings seem to make the same point. When the Bridegroom says to the bride: your voice is sweet and your face comely, Gallus suggests that “the voice pertains to the word of the mind, and the face to affection. The voice, then, is sweet because of the admixture of affectual sweetness, the face comely on account of the admixture of the clarity of wisdom.”170 Similarly, when the bride says to the Groom: your speech is sweet to me, Gallus calls this “an affective word (sermo),” which “is not called clear (clarus) like an intellectual word . . . but sweet (dulcis) (S. of S. 2:14: your sweet voice), and it is called not only a word, but eloquence (eloquium), because the more fervent the affection, the more eloquent Expl-AH 10.638.276: “Illi uero feruores fulgidi seu fulgores feruidi, quos experitur affectus, nec potest comprehendere uel estimare intellectus.” 168 Cmm3-CC Prol.N.109. 169 Robinson, “To Be Affected According To What We Apprehend,” 15. 170 Cmm2-CC 2F.83: “Vel pertinet vox ad verbum mentis, facies ad affectionem; vox igitur dulcis propter admixtionem affectualis dulcedinis, facies decora, propter admixtionem claritatis sapientie.” 167

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with God.”171 This seems to account for Gallus’ willingness to speak of both cognition and love in the highest point of affective union: “the order of the Seraphim, in which is the reward of wayfarers, cognition of truth and love of the good.”172 Again: “FOR THE UPLIFTING OF THOSE with respect to cognition AND THE TAKING UP with respect to the elevation of the affection, since through those two one arrives at the experiential cognition of true amore (ad experimentalem cognitionem veri amoris).”173 The overall impact of these passages suggests some form of contraction of the soul’s diverse powers, intellectus and affectus, active in discreet modes at the lower parts of the soul, but increasingly simplified into a single affective modality, in which the power of affectus comes to dominate, in some sense sublimating and absorbing the power of intellectus. As noted, all this occurs “hierarchically,” which is to say that it occurs in an “upwardly transumptive” fashion, the lower subsumed into the higher, the intellectus taken up into the affectus, intellectual cognitio transformed into affective cognitio, the two powers contracted or simplified into a single cognitive modality.174 In all this Gallus does not abandon, indeed, he quite explicitly retains 171 Cmm2-CC 4B.92: “Nota affectualem sermonem qui non dicitur clarus, sicut sermo intellectualis . . . sed dulcis, ut supra 2: vox tua dulcis, et dicitur non tantum sermo, sed eloquium, quia quanto affectio ferventior tanto apud Deum eloquentior.” 172 Cmm2-CC 4C.93: “ . . . ordinem serapim in quo est precipua viatorum et veritatis cognitio et bonitatis amor.” 173 Expl-DN 237.1421. See also perhaps: Cmm2-CC 1D.72: “And note that she says ‘you feed’ and not ‘you are fed’ ” in midday, that is, in the plenitude of splendor and fervor, regarding the knowledge of truth and the fervor of the love of goodness under the ray of the sun of understanding (Wisd. 5:6), and the sun of righteousness (Mal. 4:2). The first refers to the splendor of understanding and the latter to the fervor of righteousness, or to the love of goodness, and these are the fiery rays in the midday and in the furnace of fire (Sir. 43:3), and the heat (fervor) of the day in which Abraham sat (Gen. 18:1).” 174 See DN I.1.588B. In this light, it is of no little interest that such a view emerges in another commentary emanating from Gallus’ community at Vercelli, Deiformis anime gemitus, once attributed to Gallus himself (See J. Barbet and F. Ruello, Un commentaire Vercellien du Cantique des Cantiques: “Deiformis anime gemitus.” Étude d’authenticité par Jeanne Barbet et Francis Ruello. Édition critique par Jeanne Barbet. Traduction française par Francis Ruello. Sous la Règle de Saint Augustin, vol. 10 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005). As Endro von Ivánka argued, for this anonymous Vercellensis, the highest mystical experience is “noch motus intelligentiae deiformis, die Seele egreditur ad latitudinem intellectualis regionis . . . ” (Plato Christianus: La réception critique du platonisme chez les Pères de l’Eglise (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1990), 341) and that “intelligentia” is equated (gleichbedeutend) with the “affectio principalis” and the “scintilla synderesis” (Plato Christianus, 355).

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the framework and idiom of the spiritual senses: the audio-visual modality of the intellective dyad is taken up into the affective triad of smell, taste, and touch.

CONCLUSION: AFFECTIVE WISDOM What then is the “wisdom of Christians,” this seraphic, affective cognitio Dei? Put simply, it is an experience of divine self-disclosure (in Christ, through the Spirit), wherein the soul is affected by what it experiences, in a way analogous to how certain kinds of physical sense experiences affect the one sensing. It is super-intellectual in the sense that it is beyond concept, meta-conceptual; but it is not super-cognitional, where cognition is understood as a mode of perception or experience. It is cognition in an affective mode, in the sense that one “undergoes” or “suffers” it in the way that one suffers the experience of taste, smell, or touch. For Gallus, such cognition is higher and superior, because it penetrates the furthest, is the most intimate and direct. It is less a difference in what is known than how it is known. As such, it requires a simplification by the knower, an integration of its diverse capacities for knowing, such that ultimately, the lower modes of knowing are assimilated to this highest mode. In this way, the intellectual cognitio Dei is subsumed into the seraphic modality where it emerges again as “spiritual sensation.” In the end, it is aptly described as “wisdom” (sapientia), whose Latin etymology for medieval authors generally contained this notion of a “tasted knowledge”175 born of love. “Therefore, true affectual wisdom breathes such super-intellectual and super-substantial fragrances into the contemplative mind. As Sir. 1:14 states: The love of God is honorable wisdom. Behold the love of God that is wisdom.”176

175 Cmm2-CC 1A.69: “ . . . unde certum est quod veram sapientiam non gustaverunt . . . ” 176 Cmm2-CC 1A.69: “Tales ergo superintellectuales et supersubstantiales fragrantias spirat in mentem contemplativam vera sapientia affectualis, Eccli. 1: dilectio Dei honorabilis sapientia; ecce quod dilectio Dei sapientia.”

Part III Descending

8 “As Oil Poured Forth” “Flow into us, therefore, O sweet and pleasant charity. Enlarge our heart, expand our desire, unfold the inmost part of our mind, amplify the dwelling place of our heart so that it can receive God as its guest and inhabitant.” Hugh St. Victor, De laude caritatis, 16.167

INTRODUCTION Most medieval mystical itineraries terminate at the apexes of their ascents, at the point of union; and, if union cannot be maintained, due to human limitations or shortcomings, the resulting “fall” away from union is understood precisely as that, as a kind of failing, understandable, even expected perhaps, but certainly not ideal and eventually, in the next life at least, to be overcome. For this reason, it is often assumed that in a straightforward manner this affective seraphic union above intellective cherubic knowledge is the stopping point of Gallus’ mystical theology. In fact, however, it is not. In the Prologue to his Song commentary, after narrating the soul’s ascent to seraphic union, he observes: “It is from this order [the Seraphim] that the torrent of divine light pours down in stages to the lower orders.”1 Elsewhere, the “sweet-smelling participations of the light beyond the mind” flow “into [the] second and lowest hierarchy.” Again, there is an “inflowing of his light from the first order all the way to the last.” From seraphic union, the sweet odors waft down “into the middle and 1

Cmm2-CC Prol.67.

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lowest hierarchy,” which are “moistened” by the highest one. “The words ‘honey flowing from the honeycomb’ are understood as the ‘affectual inflowings’ (affectuales influitiones) emanating from the first hierarchy into the lower ones.”2 This introduces a conspicuous feature of Gallus’ mystical theology, which is consistently present in his writings, namely, the theme of descent. As part of its very nature as a Dionysian hierarchy, Gallus’ anthropology entails a descending valence, a downward movement, in which what is received and experienced at the highest, seraphic point of the soul, flows down into the lower orders and is received by them in the manner appropriate to the diverse ranks, and in this way, each individual order is nourished by the soul’s affective union with her divine Spouse. For present concerns, this aspect of Gallus’ mystical theology has particular implications for the “lower” intellectual forms of cognition previously examined, and indeed for the very nature of the theological enterprise, in so far as its intellectual dimensions are concerned. For Gallus, the condition for the possibility of success in the pursuit of a deeper and fuller intellectus fidei is super-intellectual, affective cognition, which for him fecundates the intellectual and theological life. In this respect, Gallus looks back to various biblical and non-biblical exemplars of this: Moses, John the Baptist, Hierotheus, and especially his own medieval confrere, Richard of St. Victor.3 On Gallus’ reading all these arrived at profound intellectual insight as a result of their affective union with God. Such is made possible by Gallus’ hierarchical anthropology. 2

Cmm2-CC 4G.100. The impulse to valorize a moment of descent from contemplation of and union with the Trinity is deeply Victorine. Gallus may well have taken inspiration from Hugh of St. Victor’s Hugonis de Sancto Victore: De tribus diebus, ed. Dominique Poirel, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 227 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002): Having glimpsed God in that “interior, secret place of divine contemplation” in which we learned of Father, Son, and Love, we must ask: “what good is it to us if we know in God the height of his majesty, but glean from it nothing useful to us?” Instead, as we descend from the heights of our personal encounter with the Trinity, “it is fitting and necessary that if we come from the region of light, we carry with us light to put to flight our darkness” (ibid.). Hugh details what we bring back from the Trinity, viewed as it were “in itself,” which is important for our salvation: “If we saw power there, let us bring back the light of the fear of God. If we saw wisdom there, let us bring back the light of truth. If we saw kindness there, let us bring the light of love” (ibid. 3.26.1). These three things—the fear of power, the light of wisdom, the warmth of love—constitute the “three days” after which the book itself is named. 3

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FECUNDITY OF SIMPLICITY: METAPHYSICAL PROCESSION (EXITUS) AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL DESCENDING This descending valence must be briefly situated in the larger framework of Gallus’ theology as a whole. As noted in previous chapters, Gallus adopts the Dionysian Neoplatonic metaphysics of procession, return, remaining, in order to describe, not only the divine nature itself, but also to explain why and how created reality exists. Here, in particular, the moment of divine procession is significant, wherein God “ecstatically” goes out of Godself to create and to constitute all that is not God (see Chapter 2). This descent is not only metaphysical; it is also theophanic, manifesting, expressing, revealing God in what is not God. As noted in Chapter 3, Gallus’ anthropology is “keyed” to this Dionysian hierarchical metaphysics, such that within the soul itself, there are ascending and descending “valences,” coordinated with the metaphysical moments of procession and return: the ascending valence corresponds to metaphysical return (reditus), traced in the preceding chapters; the descending valence corresponds to the metaphysical procession (exitus), to be treated here. The descending valence reflects the “principle of plenitude” that is a kind of first-principle of Gallus’ entire theology (see Chapters 1–2). The super-abundance of the pleromatic and plethoric Trinity is a function of both the self-diffusive dynamism of the Good, as well as the utter simplicity of the divine nature. In this, Gallus subscribes to an intuition, which Bonaventure will also affirm,4 namely, that the more simple a reality is the more fecund it is. Divine simplicity is a fecund fullness, and as such it is most abundant, overflowing, spilling over and down. Citing Ps. 30:20, how great is the multitude of your sweetness, Gallus says: That sweetness, although supremely simple in essence and indivisible in that omnipotent wisdom, is nevertheless called his multitude and so great, that is, inestimably great, because it fills and refreshes with his innumerable communications every concavity (sinus) of every celestial and mortal mind extended into it. I am inflamed with desire

4 For the Franciscan, it is primitas, “firstness,” that is most fecund, by virtue of its “firstness” and simplicity.

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from the multiplicity of that simplicity and from the taste of divine sweetness.5

Thus while the ascent valence moves from multiplicity to simplicity— indeed, simplifies as it approaches its utterly Simple object—the descent valence follows the fecund and abundant flow of multiplicity out of and down from simplicity.

CHRIST THE FONTAL SOURCE The descending valence finds its point of departure in the seraphic union of love between the soul and her divine Spouse. Thus, though with Dionysius Gallus affirms that divine revelation comes down from the Father of lights (Jas. 1:17) and that “God waters this mind from the higher theoriae of eternal wisdom,”6 yet he insists on and accentuates the mediation of Christ: “every true refreshment of the mind (refectio mentis) is transmitted unto the lower orders from the Bridegroom, Christ the Head”7 and “all spiritual nutriments are received from God through the Head, which ‘contains all the senses (omnes sensus),’ and are administered to the lower orders.”8 In a now familiar text, he claims that “the principal affection and theoric intellect (affectio principalis et intellectus theoricus) are fecundated (fecundati) by the bull that rules the flock (Matt. 18:12–13),” namely, “Christ.”9 Perhaps the clearest affirmation is this: “But the wisdom of Christians . . . which is from above (Jas. 3:17), irradiates from the fullness of the fount of wisdom (de plenitudine fontis sapientie), about which: the word of God is the fount of wisdom (Eccles. 1:5) and . . . . [In whom are hid] all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3).”10 In Dionysius, of course, procession, as both metaphysical and epistemological, is understood cosmologically and ecclesially-liturgically; all of reality is a kind of cosmic liturgy. Anthropologically appropriated by Gallus, the descending valence is reconceived psychologically and interpersonally. Where for Dionysius, God “appears” in the cosmos, revealing himself impersonally in all that exists, for Gallus the Spouse 5 8 10

Cmm2-CC 2A.78. Cmm3-CC 7D.218–19. Expl-DN 1.72.544–9.

6

7 Cmm2-CC 1A.68. Cmm2-CC 2A.78. 9 Expl-DN 1.71.522–30.

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“appears” to the soul-bride, revealing himself personally in her loving embrace. In short, the descending valence finds its fontal source in the person of Christ, who moreover freely and graciously (not by an “indifferent” metaphysical necessity) reveals the divine Plenitude to his bride, and it is this personal self-disclosure that then “flows down,” hierarchically, to the lower parts of the soul, and is received by them in their proper modalities: “HIS STOREROOMS, by which is understood the plenitude of divine invisible graces from which we receive all things and all things are received, just as from a storeroom supplies are administered for all other services, for the refectory and the like.”11

“UPON HER WHOLE SOUL” Not only is the divine Spouse a divine Plenitude, but the soul united to Him receives of his abundance, is filled, and overflows downward into every part of the soul: from affective union, as from breasts (ubera), come “inflowings (influitiones) . . . into the inferior orders.”12 The seraphic bride says: “I distributed to my inferior orders from my plenitude . . . ”13 Gallus returns to this theme frequently and evocatively, reflecting its vital place and function in his mystical theology. Several features of this descending valence should be noted immediately. There is a clear sense of hierarchical “cascading,” first of all, in which the seraphic abundance flows downward into each successive rank, one by one: “the order of the seraphim first flows into (influat) the [orders of] the cherubim and thrones, and then into the inferior orders.”14 Again: “I am so filled with sweetness from the union of him,” says the bride, “that from my very abundance, my spikenard, that is, fervent love sweetly emitting a fragrance, gave, that is, distributed to my lower orders.”15 Each succeeding rank, moreover, receives it “in the mode of the receiver” so to speak, in its own proper way or 11

12 13 Cmm2-CC 1B.71. Cmm2-CC 4E.95. Cmm2-CC 1F.75. Cmm2-CC 3C.87. 15 Cmm2-CC 1F.75. Again: Having received the King in her inmost part, where He now feeds and reclines, the bride says that she “was so filled with suavity from that union,” that her “spikenard, that is, the fervent love most suavely fragrant, gave off, that is, distributed to my inferior orders, the odor of its suavity, or the odor of itself, that is, the participations of its perceived suavities according to the capacity of the individual orders” (Cmm2-CC 1F.75.) 14

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modality:16 “Out of the abundance of such a drink (abundantia haustus), the Bridegroom . . . distributed one-by-one into each of my inferior orders, according to the capacity of each.”17 This diversity of modes of reception is not only quantitative but also qualitative: “in diverse modes, namely, more by the [higher orders], less by the lower orders.”18 Third, this grace born of affective union is a manifold refection, nourishing the soul: “just as all nourishment, both food and drink, is carried into the lower body by the neck, so all intellectual, spiritual, or affective nourishment, by which the contemplative mind is nourished, is transmitted from the head of the hierarchy, that is, the Seraphim, through the Cherubim, to the lower orders.”19 For the Seraphim is like the bride’s “palate, through which all refreshment moves from the head into the body.”20 From seraphic union, “every true refreshment of the mind (vera mentis refectio) is transmitted into the inferior orders,”21 and as a nourishing “light rain,” this influx “refills (replete) and refreshes (reficit) every capacity (sinus)” of the mind that has been extended to receive it.22 Thus “the highest of the orders . . . feeds [the lower] with celestial food.”23 Fourth, it is also a remedy for the effects of sin:24 “the oil of loving union—your name is oil poured out—is now poured out upon her whole soul, “purging, illuminating, and healing” her “whole hierarchy.”25 Not surprisingly, this brings about a state of ordered love: “This is to order charity in me, that is, to distribute one-by-one into my orders,”26 such that “a great abundance of ordered charity and clear understanding inflow from the order of Seraphim into [the order of the Cherubim], by 16 See Cmm2-CC 1F.75: “spikenard . . . the most sweetly fragrant fervent love (amor fervidus suavissime fragrans), is distributed to the lower orders, according to their capacities”; Cmm2-CC 1A: “For [order of the Seraphim] drinks and inflows into and pours out to the lower orders step-by-step according to the capacity of each”; Cmm2CC 2C.86: “And what I drink from the same fountain, I pour more copiously into my lower orders . . . according to the capacity of each order.” 17 Cmm2-CC 2B.78. Again, Cmm3-CC 6A.206: When the Groom descends into the garden of the bride, “that is, into the order of my seraphim,” He strews “her inferior orders with sweetness (suavitate), like the smell of a plentiful field (Gen. 27:27).” 18 19 20 Cmm3-CC 4C.179. Cmm2-CC 4B.93. Cmm2-CC 2A.78. 21 22 23 Cmm2-CC 2.A.78. Cmm2-CC 2.A.78. Cmm2-CC 1E.73. 24 Cmm3-CC 1C.124: “This is the principle refreshment of our nature for the reparation of ancient ruin, when in the first Adam we were stripped of grace and wounded in natural things; he, who heals your every infirmity (Ps. 102:3).” 25 Cmm2-CC 1A.69. cf. Dionysius, CH 7.3 (Parker, 29): “the reception of the supremely Divine Science is both purification, and enlightenment, and perfecting . . . ” 26 Cmm2-CC 2B.78–9.

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which it powerfully builds these in the lower orders.”27 Again: “he set in order charity in me (S. of S. 2:4), namely, [charity] surpassing knowledge (scientiae) (Eph. 3:19), that is: he arranged my love (dilectionem), by which I inhere to God as a bond of perfection, in the seraphic order of the hierarchy of my mind . . . , for through the seraphic order, every inferior order participates in the divine light and is arranged in the hierarchy.” This descending inflow of ordering love fecundates all the virtues, both natural and theological: “The young maidens are called the new movements of natural virtues, purified and made fecund, having been excited by the taste of divine sweetness”;28 and “spiritually [understood], those sixty men are called strong in the contemplative man because by the inflowing of contemplative and theological virtues they are constantly strengthened.”29 In short, this descending valence is integral to the spiritual health of the entire soul. In all of this, lastly, the generous bestowals flowing from the Trinity to the soul, reverberate within the soul as well: “by plentiful inflowings to inferiors, superiors imitate the plenitude of divine largesse (largitatis).”30

INFLOWING LOVE AND KNOWLEDGE By far, the most significant aspect of this descending valence is its implication for intellectual cognition. Although seraphic union is preeminently affective, the grace of that union nonetheless flows down and fecundates both the affectus and especially the intellectus at the lower ranks of the soul. Characteristically, Gallus multiplies poetic images for this: “lingering on that bridal-bed and inflowing the more fertile fervors and splendors of lights, the Bridegroom expands (dilatat) that very bed, . . . as if he said ‘I, expanding you copiously from myself with a capacity for my magnitude, . . . fill you again with the manifold fragrance of sweetness,’ . . . splendor and odor . . . on

27

Cmm2-CC 4B.93; see Cmm2-CC 3F.90. Cmm3-CC 1C.124: “virtutum naturalium motus novi, mundi et fecundi, gustu divine dulcedinis excitati.” 29 Cmm2-CC 3D.88: “spiritualiter, in viro contemplativo fortes dicuntur, quia influitione contemplativarum et theologicarum virtutum assidue roborantur.” 30 Cmm3-CC 4F.183. 28

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account of the filling of intellect and affect.”31 Seraphic union is like a “higher garden,” that is “made into a fountain by the water flowing down from above, from its abundance, and it pours affectual and intellectual abundance (copias affectuales et intellectuals) into the lower orders.”32 “Like the burning sun,” it “opens the seeds (poros) of the soil for germination . . . and causes [the soil] to open itself wide (hiare) from the abundance of its fervor (Ps. 142:6: ‘my soul is like the earth,’ and Ps. 80:11: ‘Open your mouth and I will fill it’).”33 Leaving the garden for the nursery, both “clarity” (claritatem) and “sweetness” (dulcedinem) flow down from the chest (pectore) of the Groom into the breasts (ubera) of the bride, and from the seraphim of the bride into the lower orders.34 Gallus’ typical alignment of terms makes manifest his concern with both the affectual and intellectual aspects of this descending valence: Fervors and splendors, sweetness and clarity, odor and splendor—these pairs correspond, respectively, to the inflowing of affectual and intellectual abundance (copias affectuales et intellectuals). Already apparent in the references to the Bridegroom above, this downflowing is Christologically sourced and mediated. For Gallus, the affective darkness of seraphic union is downwardly rent by the ray of Christological self-revelation. Speaking of Christ, “who is the way (John 14:6; Job 38:24: ‘through which way is the light spread?’),” Gallus likens Him to the sun, which “with its own rays opens the way of seeing itself and it heats the same, ‘breathing out fiery vapors’ (Eccles. 43:4) warming and illuminating.”35 Into the sublime movements of [seraphic] contemplation, Christ “is received and carried, and from [whom flows] an abundance of this light and radiance.”36 Gallus is especially attentive to the descending relationship that emerges between the seraphic and cherubic orders, with their respective association with love and knowledge. It is the order of the Seraphim, “which by an inmost anointing . . . drinks a great abundance of the love of true goodness and knowledge of eternal truth from her union with the Bridegroom in the principal hierarchy, from 31 Cmm2-CC 2A.77: “Sponsus vero in eodem lectulo quietius commmorans et uberiores luminum fervores et splendores influens, ipsum lectum dilatat quasi in campum et ipso effectu loquitur: Ego sum flos campi, id est ego te capacitate mee magnitudinis dilatans copiose ex me, flore personaliter singulari, multiplici odore suavitatis te repleo.” 32 33 Cmm2-CC 4F.98 (emphasis added). Expl-DN 4.203.571. 34 35 36 Cmm2-CC 4E.95. Expl-DN 1.71.536–9. Cmm2-CC 3E.90.

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which abundance it copiously pours affectual fervors into the Cherubim.”37 Even though the cherubic rank is associated with intellectual cognition—“the name ‘CHERUBIM’ signifies the MULTITUDE 38 OF COGNITIONS that it receives” —it is worth noting that it receives both intellectual and affective inflowings. For “the order of Cherubim is constantly filled from this double abundance . . . : he will satisfy your soul with splendors (Isa. 58:11).”39 Yet Gallus hones in on the specifically intellective aspect. He explicitly affirms that, precisely in its proper intellectual modality and activity, the intellectus benefits intellectually from the grace of affective union: “the Groom commends this fountain from the principal inflowing, namely, the affectual inflowing (affectual influitio), which is like a fountain of intellectual things (intellectualium; emphasis added), by which there is an inflowing from the higher watering.”40 So the bride receives “the special, experienced inflowings of the Groom,” “incorporating [them] intimately within herself as the inflowings of understanding (intelligentie influitiones).”41 For “enclosed (conclusi) in this [seraphic] darkness, our eyes, are said to be opened when the superior ray . . . illumines our intelligences (intelligentias) for speculation, by rending the veil of that darkness (according to 2 Cor. 3:18: We all with unveiled faces etc. . . . ).”42 In his descriptions of this, Gallus makes striking use of sense language to narrate the descent from affective cognition (associated with smell, touch, and especially taste) to cherubic cognition (associated with hearing and especially sight). “After the long-lasting embrace of the bridegroom, the bride is illuminated by means of the aforementioned taste, with a special privilege of more ample knowledge (amplior cognitionis).”43 Commenting on the Dionysian phrase, AFTERWARDS, TO THOSE WHO HAVE TASTED, Gallus says “the taste of it is prior to intellectual cognition . . . for our Seraph flows down into (influit) our Cherub, hence Ps. 33:9: O taste, and see etc. . . . ” 44 Remarkably then, even paradoxically, from the darkness of affective union (where the Groom can only be tasted, smelled, and touched) comes a torrent of intellectual understandings, which Gallus consistently evokes in the language of 37

38 Cmm2-CC 4C.93. Expl-AH 7.582.59–583.60. 40 Cmm3-CC 7B.216. Cmm2-CC 4F.98 (emphasis added). 41 42 Cmm3-CC 7F.221. Expl-DN 4.203.571. 43 Cmm2-CC 2B.78. Cmm3-CC 7F.221: “Your throat, the top of which, that is, the palate, tasting my sweetness, is like the best wine, it draws (haurit) the chief sweetness of contemplation, from the fullness of which the inferior orders are saturated.” 44 Expl-DN 4.203.588. 39

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illumination. He thus speaks of the “abundance of inflowings of lights (ex abundantia influitionis luminis) descending from the Father,”45 as “light emptied from a super-luminous heat (MT 2), first poured [from] the Seraphim, one by one, into the inferior orders,”46 and as a “flood (inundatio) of the divine light flows into the lower orders one by one.”47 But Gallus does not neglect the lower parts of the soul with respect to the reception and generation of intellectual cognition from above. So, in the imagery of the Song, the cherubic order is called “teeth because teeth, like pincers, tear off a selected portion from the whole of seraphic light, as if apportioning it, by biting and coming together like teeth, in order to incorporate [that light] into her, for the nourishment and growth of her inferior orders.”48 Indeed, for Gallus another meaning of the word “CHERUBIM” is THE OUTPOURING OF 49 For their part, WISDOM that is distributed to the inferior orders.” the order of the Thrones is likened to “pieces of pomegranate because that order, so to speak, breaks open, divides, and multiplies to the lower and more manifest orders from the abundance of the fervors of affection, with which it is filled.”50 With regard to the order of the Dominions, Gallus interprets the Song phrase, cypress [sprinkled] with spikenard, to mean that the “sober understanding, sprinkled with affectual sweetness, is excellently exercised.”51 So in the Song’s language of milk and honey, Gallus describes a cascading descent: honey refers to “the affectual inflowings (affectuales influitiones) pouring down from the first hierarchy [i.e. Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones] into the lower ones,” while the milk that “flows out from the breasts” is the “sober intellectual cognition (intellectiva cognitio sobria) flowing down from the breast of the first hierarchy

45

46 Cmm2-CC 1C.71. Cmm3-CC 1C.124. Cmm3-CC Prol.N.109: “De isto in inferiores ordines seriatim fluit divini luminis inundatio.” See Cmm2-CC 3E.90, where Gallus interprets the wood of Lebanon (S. of S. 3:9) as “brightness,” because Libanus is a mountain, signifying the contemplative mind flooded copiously with the radiance of eternal light (Wisd. 7:26).” 48 49 Cmm2-CC 4B.92. Expl-AH 7.582.49–583.181. 50 Cmm2-CC 4B.92–3. Note Gallus’ frequent references to ubera as exuberans. 51 Cmm2-CC 4G. See also Cmm2-CC 3F.90. “HE MADE THE PILLARS THEREOF, that is, her Dominions which are immediately underneath the Thrones, FROM SILVER, which is splendid and sonorous, through teaching, which is to pour forth (transfundere) the splendor of learning. For, out of the abundance of the heart (note the splendor), the mouth speaks (note the eloquence and sonority).” 47

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[i.e. Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones] into the second [i.e. Dominions, Virtues, Powers].”52 In Gallus’ mystical theology, therefore, there is an intimate relationship between affective and intellective cognition, wherein the former not only transcends and exceeds the latter, but also redounds upon and fecundates it.

AFFECTIVE THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE Gallus interprets significant figures from the biblical and post-biblical past in light of this conviction that seraphic affectivity is intellectually generative. Claiming that God named himself doubly to Moses in his encounter with the burning bush, Gallus says: This united name is only cognized by those who are united. Whence [God] said to Moses, united to him, who was asking his name: I am who I am; that is, existence turned back on itself (esse in se reflexum), or being (entitas), which name Moses did not perceive, except by the apex of principle affection which is united for eternity (ab apice principalis affectionis que unitur eternitati). But to the people of Israel was entrusted the intelligible name, namely, he who is, or being (ens), which is the first emanation of existence from the most causal cause (emanatio prima existentie causa causalissima). In this manner are drawn the names of the book The Divine Names, which are goodness, light, beauty, existence, life, wisdom, etc.53

For Gallus, Moses received the name I am who I am through affective union; what flowed down to the people, i.e. to the intellect, was “he who is.” The same emerges in relation to John the Baptist: “yet . . . the affectus brought to union, engenders incomparably brighter lights in the intellect, as the order of the Seraphim is related to the order of the Cherubim . . . Whence, John the Baptist, wonderfully uniting these [two], is first called burning, but after his baptism, shining (John 5:35),”54 the first pertaining to love, the second to knowledge. So too, 52

53 Cmm2-CC 5A.101. Cmm3-CC 1B.123. Expl-DN 1.76.652–7: “affectio ad unitionem perducta incomparabiliter clariores fulgores ingignat intellectui, tamquam ordo Seraphim ordini Cherubim, sicut ante XVI annos diligenter tractaui in expositione sublimis uisionis Is. 6a. Vnde Iohannes Baptista magnifice unitus dicitur primo ardens, post baptismam lucens (Ioh. 5f).” 54

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Hierotheus, though he was perfected by an unspeakable union . . . above mind . . . was yet able to “instruct and inflame” (instruere et inflammare) others regarding his experience.55 More than these, though, it appears that for Gallus it was his own Victorine predecessor, Richard of St. Victor, who exemplified this principle, as Gallus explains in a remarkably explicit passage. Commenting on the Seraphic thrice-holy exclamation from Isa. 6:3, Gallus interprets this as an act of teaching. He then notes: “In the Seraphim’s act of teaching understand the highest order; in the act of listening [understand] the next order after it [i.e. the Cherubim], in which the intellectus is mingled (immiscetur) with the affectus . . . which [cherubic] order is rightly said to be taught (discere) and not to discover (invenire) the mystery of the Trinity . . . ”56 Here the cherubic order is taught intellectually concerning the mystery of the Trinity from the affective encounter of the seraphic order, since “the philosophical intellect is not able to demonstrate or discover (demonstrare aut invenire) the Trinity of unity, as the church understands it; rather more does [the intellect] learn it [from the affectus].”57 Gallus then adduces Richard as his prime witness: “But recently someone was found, namely, prior Richard, who in his book which is called ‘Iustus meus’ [On the Trinity], faithfully multiplying the talent of his intellectus, established a new art upon the experience of the affectus, and with sufficient necessary reasons cried, HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, through the seraph of his own mind.”58 Here, Gallus depicts Richard as arriving at profound intellectual insight into the mystery of the Trinity on the basis of his own affective, seraphic experience of Christ: Often by the experience of burning charity (experientia estuantis caritatis) the mind is illuminated and strengthened in no small way as to how the apprehended articles of the Trinity, already held by faith, are

55

Expl-DN 2.155.1029. Expl-AH 10.640.337–641.341: “Per Seraphim docentem intellige summum ordinem; per audientem, proximum post eum, in quo intellectus immiscetur affectui (uel superior clamat Seraph inferiori), qui ordo merito dicitur discere et non inuenire mysterium Trinitatis . . . ” 57 Expl-AH 10.641.341: “Sed Trinitatem unitatis prout eam tenet ecclesia intellectus philosophicus demonstrare aut inuenire non potuit, sed magis didicit.” 58 Expl-AH 10.641.347–51: “Tandem uero inuentus est aliquis qui talentum intellectus fideliter multiplicans nouam artem super experimentum affectus fundauit et necessariis satis rationibus, SANCTVS, SANCTVS, SANCTVS per Seraph suum clamauit, scilicet prior Richardus in libro suo qui dicitur Iustus meus.” 56

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understood to be thus and ought not nor cannot be otherwise, though [it does not understand them] fully.59

Thus, for Gallus, his Victorine confrere is the paradigmatic practitioner of a new form of theological science, founded upon the intellectually fecund experience of love. Gallus is not advocating a sort of quasi-Gnostic form of secret revelation, some new knowledge that departs from or adds to Scripture and ecclesial tradition. Rather, he affirms two things: a more personal relationship to the truths of revelation and the possibility of deeper insight into their intelligibility. It is this dimension that is mediated and fecundated by the soul’s super-intellectual cognitio Dei, as its necessary pre-condition. For Gallus, affectivity is intellectually fruitful; mirroring the Trinity’s relationship with creation, the seraphic plenitude is diffusively plethoric, producing an abundance of speculative insight within the soul.

CONCLUSION In sum, Gallus posits within the hierarchized soul, not only an ascent through knowledge to love, but also a descent from love to knowledge. Seraphic, affective union flows “back down” into and fecundates the lower orders according to their capacities—“made fecund, stirred up by the taste of divine sweetness.”60 This reflects in his consistent application of the principles of Dionysian hierarchy to the nature of the soul. Two such principles are apparent here: First, the descending valence is just as significant and integral to the nature and activity of the soul as the ascending one. It could be said that, just 59 Expl-AH 1.641.355–8: “Sepe experientia estuantis caritatis non mediocriter illuminatur et roboratur mens quatinus articuli Trinitatis prius tenui fide apprehensi intelligantur ita esse et aliter esse non debere uel posse, licet non plene.” Gallus may be indicating something similar here, Cmm3-CC 3A.167: “In the streets and the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loves. By broad ways we understand all theoriae, whether the divine invisible things, which can be apprehended by anyone through the investigation of reason or through intellectual speculations, or the [divine] essentialia, personalia, or notionalia which Richard of St. Victor brought into consideration and common understanding. But the streets we call the super-intellectual unitive experiences, which no one knows except the one who has received it (Rev. 2:17).” 60 Cmm3-CC 1C.124: “ . . . fecundi, gustu divine dulcedinis excitati.”

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as the ascending valence is ultimately ecstatic, propelling the soul beyond itself toward union with its Spouse, so, conversely, the descending valence is enstatic, flowing into the soul and enabling the soul to be itself more fully at its various levels or dimensions, whether intellectual or moral. It nourishes the intellect, heals desire, orders love, fecundates the virtues—in short, it flourishes the soul. Second, what flows down is received “in the mode of the receiver,” that is, in the manner and mode and to the capacity of whatever rank receives it. Each receives the “fullness . . . through the outpouring OF THE WISDOM GIVEN to them TO THOSE BELOW, that is, to their inferiors . . . ABUNDANTLY, to the extent that the lower ones are able to grasp (quantumcumque inferiores sufficiunt capere).”61 The intellectual dimensions of the soul in particular receive the affective grace of union as intellectualium, as intellectual things. What the affectus experiences can in some way be passed down to and received by the intellectus in its proper modality. In terms of the spiritual senses, the affective cognitio received by seraphic gustation is received as intellectual cognitio through cherubic illumination.

61

Expl-AH 7.587.167–588.201.

Part IV Remaining

9 “Remaining in Blessed Intoxication” “Longing always ought to grow in us on account of knowledge and also knowledge on account of longing; and by mutual increases they ought to minister for mutual increases, and by mutual enlargement they are able to grow with mutual enlargement.” Richard, De arca IV.10 (PL 196.145C-D; Zinn: 274)

INTRODUCTION A fundamental assumption undergirding this interpretation of the theology of Thomas Gallus, structuring the entire work, is that Gallus understands the soul to be an instance or expression of a Dionysian hierarchy. A related assumption is that Dionysian hierarchy expresses the three constitutive elements of Dionysian metaphysics, namely, procession, return, and remaining, which Gallus adapts in his understanding of how the plethoric Trinity relates to creation generally (see Chapter 2). The Gallusian soul in particular is hierarchically constituted by three corresponding dimensions (see Chapter 3), the first two of which, the descending and ascending “valences,” corresponding respectively to procession and return, were treated in the previous chapters (5–8). The final dimension, “remaining,” will be considered here. As noted in the foundational chapters above, in articulating his Dionysian inspired conceptions of the Trinity and of creation, Gallus adopted the Dionysian symbol of a circle in order to evoke the cumulative effect of these three moments. After introducing the hierarchies of the soul in the Prologue to his Song commentaries,

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he observed that through them the soul is led back up (reducitur) into God, who (citing DN 4) is an ETERNAL CIRCLE, MOVING THROUGH THE GOOD, FROM THE GOOD, IN THE GOOD, AND TO THE GOOD, in (now adding his own emphasis) “the holy and unified convolution of the Trinity” (convolutione sancta et unice Trinitatis).”1 Later in the Third Commentary on the Song, referring to the bride’s plea to the Groom, draw me after you (S. of S. 1:4), Gallus simply quoted at length the abovequoted passage from DN 4, in order to interpret the bride’s words: MOVEMENT, SIMPLEX, SELF-MOVED, GOOD, AND FROM THE GOOD BUBBLING EXISTING, AND AGAIN RETURNING TO THE GOOD, IN WHICH LOVE INDICATES DISTINCTLY ITS OWN UNENDING AND UN-

THE THEOLOGIANS CALL

HIM . . . A

LOVING

SELF-OPERATING, PRE-EXISTING IN THE FORTH TO THINGS ALSO THE

DIVINE

BEGINNING, AS IT WERE A SORT OF EVERLASTING CIRCLE WHIRLING ROUND IN UNERRING COMBINATION, BY REASON OF THE

GOOD,

AND TO THE

GOOD,

FROM THE

GOOD,

AND IN

GOOD,

AND EVER ADVANCING AND REMAINING AND 2 RETURNING IN THE SAME AND THROUGH THE SAME. THE

Here, procession, remaining, and return describe an eternal, divine “circulation” of love and goodness, which Gallus appropriates in order to describe both the trinitarian Pleroma itself, ad intra (Chapter 1), as well as its plethoric self-communication in creation, ad extra (Chapter 2). It is this very circulation that draws the soul Godward, and as it does so, it generates an analogous circulation in the soul as well: “The divine light descends through the higher orders step by step all the way to the lowest, and . . . filling and reviving both the lowest and all the other orders one by one, it leads them back up (reducit) into the divine.”3 Gallus’ conception of the soul’s relationship to God thus mirrors the Trinity itself as well as the overarching metaphysical framework of procession, remaining, and return.

REMAINING AS SERAPHIC POSTURE/ACT Simply put, anthropological “remaining” is a seraphic act and posture. That is to say, super-intellectual, affective union with her divine Spouse is, for Gallus, an ongoing, continual state of the soul (ideally

1

Cmm2-CC Prol.67.

2

DN 4.9.

3

Cmm2-CC 3C.87.

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speaking4). The bride is to be like Abraham who “remains within the entrance of his tent” (Gen. 18:1),5 namely, at the place where she encounters the triune visitation. “Suspended (suspense) in the order of the holy seraphim . . . persevering in that suspending” (perseverante illo suspendio),6 she “now perseveres by being expanded to the divine ray in the Seraphim and does not descend” (modo perseverat expansa ad radium divvinum in seraphim et non descendit),7 striving always to be there “where it is permissible to remain in blessed intoxication” (ubi licet perseverare in beata ebrietate).8 In this posture, where “the apex of the affection alone is exercised super-intellectually toward union” (solus affectionis apex ad unitionem superintellectualiter exercetur) the soul-bride says: I sleep and the heart remains awake, that is, my inmost and highest self remains awake” (intimum meum et summum vigilat).9 This state of seraphic remaining generates the descending and ascending valences in the soul, even as it maintains its place, undiminished.

SERAPHIC REMAINING GENERATES DESCENDING VALENCE First, the descending valence: “I distribute to my inferior orders from my plenitude, but nonetheless I firmly cling to the bridegroom to drink more copiously.”10 Gallus multiplies images to repeat this point: So the bride says to her Spouse: “I will take hold of you, that is, by adhering avidly and firmly and remaining with you, and bring you, that is, I will transmit your in-flowings (influitiones tuas), your cognition (tuam cognitionem) and praise, into my mother’s house: that is, into all the inferior orders.”11 Again: “The light of wisdom itself, which you inflow wholly to inferiors through your superior order, remains (manet) more interior and profound as it flows than 4 Cmm2-CC 5B.102: “The bride, drawn up to the high peak of wisdom, desires to remain with the bridegroom on that peak and always to be drawn to the interior, but lest he exalts her by the greatness of the revelations, she is released and sent back to sobriety, in as much as he prevents her from standing at the highest points for very long.” 5 6 7 Cmm3-CC 1H.132. Cmm3-CC 1F.129. Cmm2-CC 1C.71. 8 9 10 Cmm3-CC 1E.128. Cmm2-CC 5B.103. Cmm2-CC 1F.75. 11 Cmm3-CC 8A.224.

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that which is distributed to inferiors.”12 “You will be made a fountain of inferior gardens, by your union irrigating the [lower] orders and making enclosed and fruitful gardens, and nonetheless you remain (permanes) a deep well,”13 and “retaining (retinendo) a well for itself—Eccles. 48:19: made a well for water—she becomes a fount (fons) for others, communicating (communicando), inflowing (influendo), irrigating (irrigando), Eccles. 24:42: I will water my garden.”14 “That which is called a breast (mamma) can refer to the plenitude which the order of Seraphim retains in itself; that which is called breasts (ubera) can refer to the inflowing of the same unto the lower orders.”15 The seraphic rank, “without detriment to its contemplation and its progress, persevering in sublime things, nonetheless teaches the inferior orders, and governs and disposes their exterior acts.”16 Perhaps the most elaborate expression of this idea is here: The bride, filled with copious lights, and flowing into the lower orders in abundance from her plenitude . . . speaks effectively and experientially: my hands, the hierarchical operations, dripped, they flowed into the lower orders through the divisions of graces, myrrh, . . . and still my fingers, that is, the seraphic motions, by which I distribute this myrrh to others, were full with this choicest myrrh; for it is more perfect in the higher orders than in the lower, and in the highest it is most perfect, and it loses nothing by inflowing to the others . . . 17

Unsurprisingly, but not insignificantly, Gallus notes the corresponding act of remaining on the part of the divine Spouse, who, the bride observes, “always remains (commoraretur) with me through the bond of charity that is the bond of perfection (Col. 3:14).”18 Again, “He shall abide, by feeding and by resting . . . by remaining with me . . . between my breasts, i.e. the embraces of my principal affect and intellect, by which alone I am intoxicated with the richness [ubertate] of the house of God . . . from which the mind is copiously enflamed and inebriated in the inferior orders.”19 What Gallus accentuates in all these texts is the simultaneity of seraphic “remaining” in loving union with her

12

13 14 Cmm3-CC 4F.183. Cmm3-CC 4H.187. Cmm3-CC 4H.187. 16 Cmm2-CC 4E.95. Cmm3-CC 8D.228. 17 Cmm3-CC 5E.197: “Sponsa ergo, copiosis luminibus repleta, et de sua plenitudine largiter influens inferioribus ordinibus, . . . effective loquitur et experientialiter: manus mee, operationes hierarchice, distillaverunt, per divisiones gratiarum influxerunt ordinibus inferioribus, myrrham . . . ” 18 19 Cmm3-CC 2E.150. Cmm3-CC 1M.139. 15

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Spouse, with its undiminished fullness on the one hand, with, on the other hand, the abundant outpouring and generous inflowing that this remaining enables and generates in the lower parts of the soul.

SERAPHIC REMAINING GENERATES ASCENDING VALENCE Remaining, then, in seraphic union, the descending valence flows down into the soul, each order receiving the inflow from “above” and pouring it down further to those “below.” But each successive rank is, as it were, nourished, stimulated, and fecundated by what it receives and thus is renewed in its proper activity, which is to participate anew in the ascending valence in its proper way. The down-flow engenders a resurgence: The “ascent of the mind, is produced . . . from the inflowing (inundatione) of super-substantial wisdom.”20 The bride “rouses and urges (suscitat et sursumagit) the inferior orders on high, inflowing copiously to them from either of her breasts” (copiose inluenseisdem de utraque sua ubertate).21 Again: “Young women [i.e. the lower orders] . . . weakly, but aptly, according to fecundity . . . have loved you very much, having tasted the inflowing, sighing with constant suspension (suspendio) for a fuller drink.”22 What this means is that “by the communication of these highest and manifold graces, poured forth through the seraph of the mind into the inferior orders, the natural affectus and intellectus are powerfully incited to rise up and stretch out constantly toward the perceptions of the good and the participations in the beautiful.”23 The “bridegroom . . . is a lily by the constant growth of the splendors of the understanding (per assiduum incrementum splendorum intelligentie), which is signified by the shining leaves

20

21 Cmm3-CC 3C.170. Cmm3-CC 7B.217. Cmm2-CC 1A.69: “ . . . motus dominationum, infirme, sed ad fecunditatem apte . . . DILEXERUNT TE nimis, gustata influitione, assiduo suspendio ad pleniorem hautum supsirantes.” 23 Cmm3-CC 1C.124: “Ex huius igitur precipue et multiplicis gracie communicatione, per seraphim mentis in ordines inferiores transfuse, fortiter incitantur affectus et intellectus naturales, in perceptas boni et pulchri participationes semper assurgere et extendi.” 22

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of the lily whenever it blooms . . . again in the order of the Cherubim in the highest ascent.”24 Elsewhere Gallus resorts to hydro-physics: “the divine light, descending one-by-one through those orders unto the lowest order, by its power, filling and rousing the lowest and all the others one-by-one, leads [them] back to the divine.25 For the water of saving wisdom spouting unto eternal life can ascend in as much as it descends, just as material water descends as much as it can ascend through spouts.”26 He also deploys the language of the spiritual sensorium: Having tasted of the divine, the soul mounts up again for more; having caught the scent of the divine Groom, the soul longs for new, richer, more intense experiences and thus surges back upward with greater intensity: “The experienced bride,” says Gallus, “always desires the sweetness and uplifting activity (sursumactionem) of the new in-flowings and always to make progress in the taste of sweetness and in being uplifted (sursumactionem).”27 Tellingly, Gallus observes that “the order of the Seraphim ends its return (reductionem) in the chamber of the Cherubim and not in itself, because the order of the Seraphim itself does not lead itself back to God, but rather the Bridegroom himself [does].”28 The implication is that seraphic remaining functions within the soul in a manner analogous to metaphysical remaining: in both, “remaining” is the necessary condition for, as well as the counterpoint to, the hierarchical valences of descending and ascending and of the metaphysical movements of procession and return. That is, anthropological remaining in the seraphim of the mind corresponds strikingly to the metaphysical remaining of the Trinitarian plenitude. For, as noted in Chapter 2, even as there is procession and return ad extra, God remains within himself: “granted that it proceeds out to existing things, yet it remains wholly within itself, fixed immovably”;29 and the divine love “proceeding in the same and according to the same, remains in itself and is reinstated to itself.”30

24 27 29

fixa.”

25 26 Cmm2-CC 2A.77. See CH 1.1. Cmm2-CC 3C.87. 28 Cmm3-CC 7F.221. Cmm2-CC 3C.87. Expl-DN 4.242.1560: “Licet ad existentia procedat, tota in se manet immobiliter

Expl-DN 4.248.1699: “ET SEMPER PROCEDENS in res, ET MANENS immotus, ET RESid est per rerum appetitus quos mouet, in se ipsum reflexus; IN EODEM, id est in ipsa sua supersimplici bonitate, ET SECVNDVM IDEM, id est secundum eamdem bonitatem.” 30

TITVTVS,

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HIERARCHICAL EXERCISE With anthropological “remaining” now in view, along with the descending and ascending valences, a more complete account of the Gallusian soul is now possible. What emerges with greater intelligibility at this point is a leitmotif running throughout Gallus’ theology, namely, the theme of constant hierarchical activity or, better, exercise. In the preceding chapters, the ascending and descending valences were treated discretely and separately, for the sake of clarity of exposition. Now, however, it becomes clear that in Gallus’ hierarchical anthropology, these are simultaneous dimensions of the soul, copresent and coterminous with each other and with “remaining.” This hierarchical simultaneity appears clearly in the passage which concludes his extended Prologue to the Third Commentary on the Song, and thus frames his interpretation of the entire book: I will follow the course of the theoriae (occursus theoriarum), which constantly flow into intellects, extending the soul to the superior rays . . . that is, by exercising (exercenti) the soul toward the superior rays of the eternal lights, which is to stretch (extendere) the mind intellectually and super-intellectually upward, frequently, or rather, constantly, into the course of the divine rays, which are continuously super-extended31 to every intellect, just as the sun cheerfully (hilariter) falls upon our gaze and on each mind piously seeking it, and shows itself to, rather it preoccupies (preoccupat), its lovers. . . . Thus the best type of study in divine things is to be exercised toward this ray.32

Here Gallus describes what is rightly characterized as the proper exercise of the hierarchized soul: namely, simultaneously to receive and to extend; that is, simultaneous “downward” reception and “upward” extension. Just as there is continual inflowing from above, so the soul is continually receiving and constantly extending. This is the proper hierarchical exercise and the best form of “study” in 31

Reading superextenditur with L, rather than superexpanditur. Cmm3-CC Int-Prol.C.116: “ . . . sequor . . . theoriarum occursus que intellectibus semper fulgent, animum extendens ad radium superiorem; . . . id est animum exercenti ad superiorem radium eterni luminis quod est frequenter, immo assidue, mentem intellectualiter et superintellectualiter sursum extendere in occursum divini radii qui continue superexpanditur omnibus intelligentiis, sicut sol iste nostris obtutibus, et singulis mentibus se pie querentibus hilariter occurrit et se ostendit, immo amatores suos preoccupat . . . . Optimum ergo studii genus in divinus est ad hunc radium exercitari.” 32

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relation to God. Such is the “one who contemplates through hierarchical exercise (exercitia hierarchia).”33 This simultaneity of descending and ascending, of inflowing and upsurging within the soul is apparent when Gallus refers to “minds (mentes) constantly extended upward super-intellectually (superintellectualiter sursumextensas), whence fiery rays pour forth, which the sun of understanding (Wisd. 5:6) and of justice (Mal. 4:2)34 insufflates into them mightily and abundantly (fortiter et copiose in eas insufflat) (Eccles. 43:4).”35 For “although that inflowing is designated in many ways, such as by rays, eatings and drinkings, yet it is nothing other than the drawing (attractio) of the bride into the intimate place of the Bridegroom (in intima sponsi), and by the very touching (attrectationem), there occurs an inflowing (influitio) . . . ”36 Lastly: “the lilies signify the orders of the highest hierarchy of the mind, which, drenched in the brightness of eternal light, pour forth (transfundunt) those splendors to the inferior orders, and through its own highest seraphic fervor, as much as is possible for each one, the lower orders are lifted upwards (sursumextenduntur) into the divine.”37 All this, moreover, reflects and indeed “enacts” the hierarchical nature of the soul, which (as noted in Chapter 3) has two simultaneous “postures” or modes, namely, of upward-facing receptivity and downward-facing generativity; incessant receiving and giving; constant infusion and profusion, now “anchored in,” as it were, and enabled by the ongoing activity of affective seraphic remaining. In this hierarchic dynamism, remaining, descending, and ascending are best seen not as sequential acts or movements, one following the other chronologically, as it were, but rather as constantly occurring, each always presuming the presence of the other, as in some sense prior to itself, while simultaneously functioning as the prior movement for the other. All are always “in play.” Just as in Dionysian metaphysics, “to revert to God is to proceed from him and to proceed from him is to revert to him,”38 so in Gallusian anthropology, to ascend is to descend and vice versa. In this way, ultimately, Gallus conceives of the soul as a stable dynamism of descending and ascending, of “downwardly” receiving and “upwardly” exceeding. The same point can be made in terms of the ecstatic and enstatic dialectic: The 33 35 38

Cmm3-CC 2A.145. Cmm3-CC 1G.129. Perl, Theophany, 42.

34 36

A Christological allusion for Gallus. 37 Cmm2-CC 5A.101. Cmm3-CC 2O.164.

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Gallusian soul is constantly exceeding itself, ascending ecstatically and super-naturally to seraphic union above mind; it is also constantly returning to itself, descending from seraphic remaining to its enstatic, sober, and natural self. Precisely in and by these simultaneous movements, it remains itself, or perhaps better, is itself. This is what it means for the soul to be a Dionysian hierarchy.

CONTINUAL CIRCULATION What emerges ultimately, especially from Gallus’ Song commentaries, is the sense of continual “circulation” within the soul, inspired by Dionysius,39 but distinctly appropriated by Gallus. The bride says that she will not cease to go after him—I will seek his face always (Ps. 104)—by rising up in unknowing in imitation of God to circle around the city (S. of S. 3:2).”40 The city, Gallus explains, is: the super-infinite fullness of the deity, around which [human and angelic minds] are said to circle (circuire) . . . by contemplating the invisible divine things with the highest loving, yet not penetrating intimately the divine depths; therefore, [such minds] are said to circle God (circuire Deum) or to be in the circle of God.41

For “however much any angelic or human mind is taken up into the interior experience and contemplation of the theoriae, yet that one is always circling those intimate things.”42 The bride pursues “excessive contemplation of the eternal Trinity, as if circling: LIKE A KIND OF 43 ETERNAL CIRCLING (DN 4),” and she “goes forth to see King Solomon, that is, to new and excessive contemplation of her reigning and pacifying Groom, in the diadem, that is, in circling (circuitiva) and enfolding (amplexativa) contemplation.”44 And: “By the word, murenulas,45 is thus understood the inmost contemplations of the true, 39

40 See DN 4 and CH 7. Cmm2-CC 3A.85. Cmm3-CC 3A.166: “Civitas intelligitur superinfinita plenitudo deitatis quam circuire dicuntur . . . contemplando, non tamen divine profunditatis intima penetrantes.” 42 Cmm3-CC 3A.167. 43 Cmm3-CC 1K.135: “ . . . excessiva contemplatione Trinitatis eterne et quasi circularis; DN 4: SICUT QUIDAM CIRCULUS ETERNUS.” 44 Cmm3-CC 3F.175. 45 Gallus is commenting on the Song verse: we will make you chains of gold, noting that “the murena is a kind of fish . . . having on each side single circles like eyes . . . ” 41

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the good, and the beautiful, and as it were circular turnings round the true, the good, and the beautiful, because a circle is free from beginning and end.”46 Fittingly, the Victorine compares this circulation to the angels descending and ascending Jacob’s ladder: There is an “inflowing (influitio) of his light from the first order all the way to the last and a flowing back (refluitio) all the way back to the highest, according to that verse where Jacob saw the angels ascending and descending (Gen. 28:12).”47 In sum, for Gallus, “circular motions” (motus circulares)48 are the signature activity of hierarchized souls.

NOVELTIES Because, however, the divine Plenitude has infinite depths, the circling soul is ever experiencing new things. Gallus puts the point well, in an extended comment on: The vines in flower yield their sweet smell (S. of S. 2:12): Vines are the superior theoriae, which carry and pour the wine of the aforesaid wine cellar (S. of S. 2:3) into contemplative minds. They are said to flower, when into the same mind new and as yet unexperienced suavities flow, and this is: Flourishing vines produce perfume, and they are always flowering because novelties (nova) are always flowing in; for nature always longs [appetit] for novelties, because it draws the natural appetites to the desire for the highest good, in which they are always novelties. Through constant (assiduous) ascensions of contemplation [assiduos ascensus contemplationum] of the lights novelties are constantly (assidue) succeeding themselves unto infinity, though those lights are ancient and eternal. Whence Augustine [said] in the Confessions: ‘O beauty, so old and yet so new, late have I known you, late have I loved you.’49 46 Cmm3-CC 1L.137: “Nomine ergo murenularum, intime contemplationes veri, boni, et pulchri et quasi circulares convultiones circa verum, bonum, et pulchrum intelliguntur, quia circulus caret principio et fine.” 47 Cmm2-CC 5A.101. See Cmm3-CC 7F.220. 48 Cmm3-CC 1L.137. 49 Cmm2-CC 2E.82: “Vinee sunt theorie superiores que menti contemplative ingerunt et influent vinum celle vinarie predicte supra eodem. Iste florere dicuntur quando eidem menti novas et nondum expertas influent suavitates, et hoc est: vinee florentes oderem dederunt, et semper florent quia semper nova influent; semper enim natura appetite nova, quia appetitus naturalis trahit ad appetitum summi boni, in quo

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Here, new things are constantly flowing down into the soul from above, because of the constant contemplative ascents upward into the Good; the vines are always sprouting new flowers because they are always being watered from above—“flowers, namely, the celestial splendors of wisdom sprouting new splendors and scents.”50 Elsewhere, Gallus says that the bride “experiences incessant innovations” (assiduas innovationes) and, speaking “experientially” (experimentaliter) she says: “he brought me to the interior theoriae, more profound (profundiores) than the previous ones.”51 The bride says to her Spouse: “And there, persevering with you, you shall teach me, that is, by the constant inflow of new theoriae (novas influes theorias),”52 and, “taken up more interiorly anew, I will give you the new wine of my pomegranates, that is, drawing me more intimately to yourself, liquefied by new fervors (novis fervoribus), I will produce [new wine]; by new wine, understand new things (novitas).”53 Or again: “The attendants therefore continue, [saying]: O daughters of Jerusalem, strengthened with the inflowings of this charity through new theoric ecstasies (istius caritatis influitionibus confortate per novos excessus theoricos), go forth, extend yourself with every effort for going forth . . . For to go forth is to receive new in-flowings daily (est quotiens novas recipiunt influtiones), and they go forth to an ampler draught from that inflowing” (ad ampliorem haustum ex influitione ipsa).54 And “behold he, the Bridegroom, . . . he comes to me as if anew (quasi de novo), through a new (novam) and more profound than usual revelation and manifestation of himself . . . ”55 The soul turns ever anew to receive more fully from her Spouse: “Having accomplished this distribution in the lower orders, the bride soon turns again to the drinking of superior theoriae, saying: O my beloved, turn back to new and superior in-flowings of theoriae, and be like . . . a roe or a young stag, assimilating me to yourself in this way, upon the mountains of Bethel, that is, in the high theoriae, which are as yet intangibly above me” (inattingibiliter supereminent).56 “And then she adds: BEHOLD HE COMES, as if [to say]: although he is conjoined to me unitively and is

semper sunt novitates; per assiduous ascensus contemplationum ex parte luminum novitates assidue sibi succedunt in infinitum, quamvis ipsa lumina sint antiquissima et eterna. Unde Augustinus in Confessionibus: “o pulchritudo tam antiqua, tam nova, sero te cognovi, sero te amavi.” 50 51 52 Cmm2-CC 2D.81. Cmm3-CC 2C.147. Cmm3-CC 8A.224. 53 54 55 Cmm3-CC 8A.224. Cmm2-CC 3G.90. Cmm3-CC 2E.150. 56 Cmm2-CC 2G.84.

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present by unitive conjoining, nevertheless drawing me to what is higher by new theoriae, it is as if he comes to me anew.”57

CONTINUAL PROGRESS Not surprisingly, the notion of incessant novelties implies a notion of continual progress, “as Jer. 3:19 says: you will not cease to walk after me.”58 The Groom says to the bride: “COME to the higher places, because you have not yet reached them.”59 “The whole course of love consists in the constant and continual [divine] invitation of this kind.”60 For “as long as she perseveres with the Bridegroom, she always ascends,”61 and “the more the bride is fed by the new theoriae, the more she extends herself always to further theoriae, as if the earlier theoriae were forgotten.”62 When the Groom says to the bride, arise (S. of S. 2:11), it means “make me RISE BY UNKNOWING higher than before by fervent affection,” which means that “she approaches constantly by those ascents to [his] more familiar presence . . . .” and when He says “I COME always unto the anterior things,” it means that “however far you come you still will not reach the end.”63 The very last scene of Gallus’ final commentary on the Song ends with the bride petitioning the Groom that she be made like the roe and the young hart upon the mountains of aromatical spices. Gallus observes: The aromatical mountains are the more sublime theoriae, as yet inaccessible to the bride, having multiple and infinitely suave fragrances, upon which she asks of the groom to be made like a roe and a hart running with agility, so that the groom, remaining in the abovementioned theoriae and quickly running to the bride and drawing her to himself as from his sublimity, pours forth (infundat) through his rays as much perspicacity of contemplation as agility of desires made more effective. And with this word, the bride completes the course of her petitions in which she perseveres perpetually.64 57

58 59 Cmm2-CC 2C.79-80. Cmm3-CC 2C.147. Cmm2-CC 2F.82. 61 62 Cmm3-CC 5A.190. Cmm2-CC 2D.80. Cmm3-CC 8A.223. 63 Cmm2-CC 2D.81. 64 Cmm3-CC 8G.232: “Montes aromatum sunt theorie sublimiores sponse adhuc inaccessibiles, multiplici et infinita suavitate fragrantes, super quas petit sponsum assimilari capree et hinnulo cervorum currendi agilitate, ut videlicet sponsus in dictis theoriis consistens et sponsam illinc ad se trahens tanquam de sublimitate sua ei 60

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This well captures the hierarchical posture and exercise of the contemplative soul in the mystical theology of Thomas Gallus, wherein the bride is continually running, effectively (not “in vain”) into the infinite, and thus ever-new suavities of her Beloved. In this, she “perseveres perpetually” (perpetuo perseverat), for these ever-new theoriae are “of such sweetness that they never generate fullness, but are always desired: whoever eats me . . . [will yet hunger] . . . (Eccles. 24:29).”65

SPIRALING KNOWLEDGE AND LOVE As may well be anticipated, the foregoing has particular implications for the relationship between knowledge and love, for continual hierarchic exercise makes progress in both: “LET US EXTEND with many and inmost strivings OURSELVES by constant, most chaste PRAYERS TO THE MORE LOFTY SIGHT OF THE RAYS OF DIVINE GOODNESS than we had previously experienced, so that by this exercise we might always make progress toward more sublime knowledge and love of God (notitiam et amorem Dei).”66 In this continual circulation affectus and intellectus are always interrelated. So, once again, “through its sober industry, intellection (intelligentia) gives birth to affection (generat affectionem), in the same way that cognitio precedes and begets love (precedit et gignit amorem), although the former is excelled (excedatur) by the latter.”67 Accordingly, the above-noted “circling (circuitiva) and embracing (amplexativa) contemplation” of the Groom in the highest hierarchy of the bride “produces (ingignit) cognition and love in the inferior orders,

velociter occurens, et per radium suum tam contemplationis perspicacitatem quam desideriorum agilitatem solito efficaciorem infundat. Et in hoc verbo petitionum suarum cursum sponsa consummat, in qua perpetuo perseverat.” 65 Cmm3-CC 2B.147. 66 Expl-DN 3.168.112: “EXTENDAMUS multo et intimo conatu NOS IPSOS ORATIONIBUS castissimis assidue AD ALTIOREM RESPECTUM DIVINORUM BONORUM RADIORUM quam prius percepimus, ut hoc exercitio semper ad sublimiorem Dei notitiam et amorem proficiamus.” 67 Cmm2-CC 1C.72.

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that is, it circles around him anew (de novo circuivit eam).”68 Gallus puts it thus: For this light is wholly and highly desirable to such a universal extent, that neither its taste nor its most copious draught generates that surfeited disgust (fastidium), which occurs in bodily things, but rather [generates] an incessant (assiduum) appetite: Eccles. 24:29: ‘They that eat me, shall yet hunger: and they that drink me, shall yet thirst’; . . . But just as it is more fully received the more fervently it is desired, so the more it is desired, the more abundantly it is quaffed (habundantius hauritur).69

This is the dynamic recurrence of descent and ascent. The experience of loving union flows down to fecundate the lower orders of the mind with new love and knowledge, which only intensifies the movement of ascent again to loving union. For “as much as spiritual light is acquired in the intellect, to that extent the affection is more frequently and more fervently exercised thus.”70

STABLE TEMPLE OF DIVINE INDWELLING As noted in Chapter 3, Gallus conceives of the soul as a stable dynamism of hierarchical proceeding and reverting, of “downwardly” receiving and “upwardly” exceeding—a “stable mind made solid by contemplation.”71 In typical Victorine architectural symbolism, Gallus evokes this state as a cathedral in which the divine presence comes to dwell: “ . . . the temple of God is the holy soul, maximally glorified, which nevertheless is not a mobile tabernacle, but a stable temple.”72 68

Cmm3-CC 3F.175. Expl-DN 4.204.595: “Hoc enim lumen adeo uniuersaliter est totum et summe desiderabile ut nec gustus eius nec copiosissimus haustus ullum generet fastidium, sicut accidit in corporalibus, sed assiduum appetitum: Eccli. 24e: Qui edunt me etc.; Sap. 16c: panem de celo etc. usque conuertebatur. Sicut autem quanto amplius percipitur tanto feruentius appetitur, ita quanto magis desideratur tanto habundantius hauritur.” 70 Expl-DN 1.94.1091: “Tanto tamen plus intellectui spiritualis luminis acquiritur quanto affectio frequentius et feruentius sic exercetur.” Again, Expl-DN 1.72.544–9: “the wisdom of Christians . . . precedes knowledge and understanding engenders it (eam intelligentia ingignit).” 71 Cmm2-CC 2D.81. 72 Expl-AH 10.633.118: “Moraliter, templum Dei est sancta anima, maxime glorificata: que tamen non est tabernaculum mobile, set templum stabile.” 69

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For Gallus, inspired by, but going beyond Dionysius, this would seem to be a result of the soul’s hierarchical nature, for “a hierarchia is a structure (taxis), involving knowledge (gnosis) and movement (energia), resulting in union with God,” and the purpose of any hierarchy “is the assimilation and union, as far as attainable, with God.”73 With respect to the three anthropological dimensions of the soul, this would seem to leave the last word, fittingly, with remaining. Gallus put this point in terms of the soul’s rest. For “to rest is to be moved unto eternal stability, and the more swiftly and fervently one is moved into it, the more fixedly and stably one rests, and so in Wisd. 7:23 the spirit is called both mobile and stable.”74 Or, as “the bride says, experientially: I sat, that is, heeding the exhortation of the beckoning Bridegroom that I should not be moved, I rest lingeringly (morose) under the shade, that is, in his incomprehensibility, which I desire.”75 Gallusian rest, however, is by no means utter passivity or mystical quietism, as the deliberate pairing of mobility and stability indicates. Rather, the stable dynamism of her hierarchical exercise means that rest involves the most powerful activity of which the Gallusian soul is capable, namely, perpetually ascending and penetrating passionate love: With the Bridegroom providing for the tranquil and long-lasting repose of the bride—seeking rest in all things, like Naomi said to Ruth: I will provide rest for you, . . . 76—the bride, exercising her tranquility most actively (otium suum negotiosissime exercens), is wholly set on fire, like burning frankincense (Sir. 50:9) and she blazes with fragrant desires just as pure incense burns, and she is made entirely a sacrifice full of marrow (Ps. 65:15). And in these desires, just as in burning and sharpened arrows (Ps. 119:4) that penetrate very violently, she strongly, acutely, and marvelously (fortiter et acute et mirabiliter) ascends into

73

CH 3.2 (Parker, 15). Cmm2-CC 2E.81: “Quies siquidem est in eternam moveri stabilitatem et quod velocius in ipsam moveture et ferventius, ipsum quiescit fixius et stabilius. Unde Sap. 7: spiritus dicitur et mobilis et stabilis.” 75 Cmm2-CC 2A.78. See Cmm2-CC 1D.72: “WHERE YOU FEED IN MIDDAY, that is, direct me to yourself by that way which I can be nourished by the sweetness of your refreshment, and into the same undisturbed places to rest more lingeringly and more intimately, and this is: where you feed.” 76 Ruth 3:1; see also Isa. 66:12: I will bring upon her, and: sabbath after sabbath; John 14:27 my peace I give to you; Philem. 4:7: peace which surpasses every sense. 74

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the sublime theoriae and carries force and violence into the kingdom of heaven (et regno celorum vim et violentiam ingerit) (Matt. 11:12).77

Here, the bride’s “seeking rest” and “exercising tranquility” is expressed, paradoxically perhaps, in desire’s fiery, violent assault on the kingdom of heaven.

CONCLUSION For Gallus, as argued in this chapter, anthropological “remaining” anchors and sources the soul’s ascending and descending valences. Yet, from another, ultimately complementary perspective, “remaining” emerges as the “net effect” of the simultaneous descending and ascending; or better, precisely as ascending and descending simultaneously, the soul comes to be and remains at rest, is a stable temple of divine indwelling. As argued above, all this has no little significance for the ultimate relationship between knowledge and love. For in Gallus’ hierarchized soul, the intellect–affect relationship is fundamentally governed by these hierarchic principles. That is, when Gallus posits a higher, affective cognitio above an intellective cognitio at the highest point in the ascending valence, this affective form both builds upon and subsumes the intellective form. This means then that affectivity is indeed a form of cognition, even as it differs from intellective cognition, and that the quality (i.e. intensity and profundity) of this higher, affective cognition is, to some extent, a function of the character of the lower, intellective cognition. Conversely, the quality of the higher, affective cognition redounds to, that is, “flows down” to and is participated by, the lower, intellective cognition in a manner consistent with its intellective modality. That is, the soul’s capacity for intellection is increased by the intensity of affection. 77 Cmm2-CC 3D.87: “Providente sponso tranquillam requiem et diuturnam sponse in omnibus requiem querenti, ut Noemi ad Ruth: providebo tibi requiem, . . . sponsa, otium suum negotiosissime exercens, tota incenditur, sicut Eccl. 50: thus ardens, et flagrat desideriis odoriferis, thymiama purum incendit et tota fit holocaustum medullatum, Ps. 65:15, et in his desideriis tanquam sagitiis ardentibus et acutis, Ps. 119:4, que multum violentius penetrant. Que in sublimes theorias fortiter et acute et mirabiliter conscendit et regno celorum vim et violentiam ingerit, Matth. 11 . . . ”

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Ultimately, for Gallus, eternal rest is an act of perpetually spiraling into God, since the continual circulation of knowledge and love is a “spiraling” movement around God, a never-ending, constantly renewed circulation around God—“circular turnings” (circulares convolutiones) lacking “beginning and end.”78 And though the spiral image suggests a “distance” between the soul and God, the corresponding temple image suggests that precisely in this fully hierarchized way, and throughout all the levels of the soul, the soul is maximally related to, indeed, indwelt by God. In Dionysian terms, hierarchy enables assimilation and union as much as possible. The soul knows and loves God hierarchically, in this dynamic spiraling of love and knowledge.79

78

Cmm3-CC 1L.137. “The love of the Redeemer . . . can activate also in us that wonderful circle in which love and knowledge reciprocally nourish one another” (Pope Benedict XVI, “How Can We Remain Indifferent to Such Love,” address given to the Pontifical Theological Faculty, Teresianum, on May 19, 2011). 79

Conclusion: Eternally Spiraling into God “For the love of God is broader than the measure of our mind . . . ” Frederick William Faber, “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy,” The United Methodist Hymnal, 121 “To know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge, so that you may be filled with the all-fullness of God.” Eph. 3:19

INTRODUCTION Reviewing the preceding account, three principal intuitions or fundamental principles emerge prominently in the theology of Thomas Gallus: metaphysical plenitude, hierarchic anthropology, and the finality of love. Each merits a concluding discussion.

PLENITUDE Recently, Khaled Anatolios has argued that the achievement of Nicene theology was a Christologically driven “reconfiguration of divine Transcendence.” It affirmed that the perfection of the Trinitarian God consisted not in the wholly negative characteristic of unbegottenness,1 but rather in the eternal activity of intra-divine generativity, in 1 Arian thinkers tended to locate divine perfection exclusively in the Father’s unbegottenness. See Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 115.

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the eternal fullness and plenitude of three-personed goodness, internally fecund in the begetting of the Son and the processing of the Spirit. For Athanasius, for example, “divine perfection is dynamic simplicity, a source that communicates itself perfectly, such that its ‘product’ is equal to it, priority and posterity in perfect eternal simultaneity . . . ,” whereas “the monad god” of his Arian opponents “is a dry and barren fountain without outpouring, a light without radiance . . . ” And so, “as a consequence of this christological reconception of divine perfection, Athanasius presents fecundity and generativity as integral to the perfection of divine being.”2 Roughly nine hundred years later, a similar view is typically associated with the Trinitarian theology of St. Bonaventure. For him, in the words of Zachary Hayes, “God is the infinitely rich and fecund mystery whose eternal being is a dynamic ecstasy of goodness and love,” which “produces a plurality without multiplying the nature.”3 It is typically assumed that the Franciscan’s stress on ecstatic divine goodness is a function of his highly original and groundbreaking appropriation of Neoplatonic metaphysics for conceiving of the inner life of the Trinitarian God: “The Franciscan doctor’s teaching on the Trinity, and therefore his entire theology, can be seen as an original adaptation of the Neoplatonic paradigm of emanatio and reductio, both on the intra-divine and the extra-divine levels.”4 Without denying the “true genius” of Bonaventure’s “use of the rich veins of tradition,”5 we must respectfully demur regarding the claim of utter originality and insist on the presence of a prior synthesis of these same traditions in the theology of Thomas Gallus, while also raising the question of his quite plausible influence on the Seraphic Doctor. As shown above, Gallus’ strategy in this regard is, like Bonaventure’s, to capitalize on the Dionysian notion of self-diffusive goodness. He combines this with a Ricardian emphasis on the divine plenitude of love, in order to develop a fully-orbed Trinitarian theology, beginning with the Father’s fontal fullness, which issues forth ad intra in the Persons of the Son and Spirit.6 This original synthesis of Dionysius and 2

Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea, 41–78. Hayes, Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, 26. 4 McGinn, “Dynamism of the Trinity,” 142. 5 McGinn, “Dynamism of the Trinity,” 154. 6 A move that St. Bonaventure will follow. See Breviloquium (Works of St. Bonaventure, Vol. 9), trans. Dominic Monti, OFM, (St. Bonaventure University: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2005), 1.3.7 (Monti, 35), and note 21. 3

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Richard emerges as Gallus gives a Dionysian dynamism to the Ricardian definitions of the Persons as diverse modes of giving and receiving: the Father as the One who gives but does not receive; the Spirit as the One who receives but does not give; the Son as the One who both receives and gives. For Gallus, this is what Dionysius meant in speaking of the divine life as an eternal circulation of the Good and of Love. It seems then that it is with Gallus that the three-part Neoplatonic metaphysic of remaining, procession, and return is first enfolded “back” into the eternal rhythm of the divine life itself.7 Gallus thus re-deploys the Dionysian notion of divine ecstasy, which for the Areopagite explains why there is something other than God,8 as the explanatory principle of the Trinitarian divine nature itself. His deep intuition is that the Trinity is best conceived of as “super-abundant abundance,” as fontal fullness, as plenitude itself, as an eternal Circle of ecstatic self-giving and enstatic self-receiving. Strikingly, finally, Gallus links fullness with simplicity. Anticipating Bonaventure’s doctrine of primitas, Gallus sees this divine abundance as not only compatible with divine simplicity, but also as directly correlative with it. That is, simplicity and fecundity run together metaphysically: the more simple, the more fertile.9 7 See McGinn, “Dynamism of the Trinity,” 137: “The master paradigm of exitus and reditus, the procession out and return to God, is perhaps natural to the religious mind as it reflects upon the nature of the universe. In Western thought the evolution of this dynamic paradigm was shaped by the way in which Neoplatonic thinkers, both pagan and Christian, sought to express how the First Principle overflows into the universe while at the same time drawing all things back to Itself. What was unique to Christian theologians was how they brought this dynamic process into God’s very self as a way for expressing the Church’s faith in God as Trinity. From this perspective, the extra-divine dynamism of creation is rooted in the intra-divine flow of life found in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Again: “Christian Neoplatonists, however, brought a transcendental form of proodos and epistrophê into the monê taken in itself, that is, into the depths of the divine mystery, not just God conceived of as the source of the universe” (139). 8 McGinn, “Dynamism of the Trinity,” 143: “But Dionysius restricted his ‘Agathology’ to the relation between God and the production of the universe—self-diffusive Goodness is the primary name of God as the efficient cause of creation.” 9 See Bonaventure, Doctoris seraphici S. Bonaventurae opera omnia. Vols. I–IV, Commentaria in quatuor libros sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi [In I Sent.] d. 2, a. un., q. 2 (Opera 1:54): “The more prior a thing is, the more fecund it is and the principle of other things [see Liber de causis, props. I and XVII]. Therefore, just as the divine essence because it is first is the principle of other essences, so too the person of the Father, because he is first in being from no other person, is the principle and possesses fecundity in relation to the other persons” (see also In I Sent. d. 27, p.1, a. un., q. 2 (Opera 1:468–74).

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The notion of plenitude also informs Gallus’ conception of divine activity ad extra, in that creation comes to exist as the result of selfdiffusive goodness “outside” of the Trinitarian pleroma. Here, the Dionysian notion of divine ecstasy functions as it does in the CD, as the explanatory principle for the very existence of creation; that is, it accounts for what we have called the plethoric character of “economic” divine activity. Gallus stresses the extravagant overflow and lavish exuberance, the “flowing” and “fluid” character of Trinitarian action vis-à-vis creation. The divine Fullness expresses itself ad extra in a manifold and multi-modal differentiation of its essential simplicity. The various divine attributes—especially goodness, truth, beauty, wisdom, power, etc.—are undifferentiated in the simplicity of the divine nature but are distinguishable ad extra in the outpouring manifestation of the divine nature in the diverse theoriae, the exemplary “ideas” through which God creates all things. Here, again anticipating Bonaventure, Gallus deploys a doctrine of exemplarity to narrate the relationship between the creating Trinity and creation. Thus, what has been called a “dynamic view of God as Trinity,”10 funded by an appropriation of Neoplatonic metaphysics (inaugurated by such thinkers as Marius Victorinus and John Scotus Eriugena), emerges clearly in the pleromatic Trinitarian theology of Thomas Gallus, a generation earlier than has heretofore been assumed by scholars who credit Bonaventure with this achievement.11 Perhaps the most distinctive utilization of plenitude in Gallus’ thought, though, is the work it does anthropologically and mystically. For Gallus, the soul is constituted as a creature by its constant reception of the divine fullness; it is always-having-to-be-filled. Its creaturely telos, moreover, is to be filled with the all-fullness of God (Eph. 3), to receive the “inflowing” of the Trinity. This conception of the self establishes the framework for Gallus’ mystical theology, the goal of which is the fullest possible reception of and participation in the triune Plenitude. Thus we turn to Gallus’ theological anthropology.

McGinn, “Dynamism of the Trinity,” 138. McGinn, “Dynamism of the Trinity,” 142: “The Franciscan doctor’s teaching on the Trinity, and therefore his entire theology, can be seen as an original adaptation of the Neoplatonic paradigm of emanatio and reductio, both on the intra-divine and the extra-divine levels.” 10 11

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A second foundational principle in Gallus’ thought is his distinctive theological anthropology, more precisely, his view of the human soul as hierarchical in its very nature. As argued above, when Gallus anthropologically appropriates the Dionysian celestial hierarchy,12 the hierarchical aspect is far more significant than the celestial.13 Most generally stated, a Dionysian hierarchy is a dynamic, multidimensional state of unified being; that is, it is a set of relationships between aspects of, or elements within, a single, unified reality in which movement is structured and arranged (ordered, orchestrated, coordinated) into an harmonious equilibrium. It is a stable dynamism. It is also conceptualized and schematized spatially on a vertical axis, so to speak, such that its dynamism is movement upward and downward, ascending and descending. A Dionysian hierarchy, moreover, is constituted as the dynamic movement of its elements. The elements do not exist prior to and independently of their hierarchical relationships; rather, they exist only as hierarchical movement and relatedness. Hierarchy simply is vertically ordered activity and coordinated movement of the constituent elements of a single entity. For Dionysius, hierarchy is the means by which created reality encounters and receives divine self-revelation, which comes from without, and which finds its proximate source in a sacred source, a “hier-arche,” “above” the hierarchy itself. This revelation is received at each hierarchic level in the mode proper to that level and is passed down into the succeeding level in a manner accommodated to that lower level. Conversely, ascending up the hierarchy, each succeeding level executes the same act of receiving the divine light as the previous level, but in a higher, more intense, more capacious manner. The ascending–descending dynamic of interrelated elements thus mediates the light of divine revelation from the higher, “downward,” to the lower, and elevates the lower, “upward,” toward assimilation to and eventual union with the divine. That is, in the ascending valence, the lower is subsumed by and into the higher; in the descending valence,

12 Perhaps a typically Victorine move, reminiscent of Hugh’s use of Noah’s Ark and Richard’s use of the Ark of Moses. 13 This commitment to hierarchy does not, however, manifest itself in relation to ecclesiology. Despite Gallus’ deep involvement with various ecclesiastical affairs and controversies, his writings are remarkably unaffected by these matters.

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the higher communicates with the lower according to the capacity or nature of the lower. These ascending and descending valances, moreover, are simultaneous, not sequential; perpetual rather than punctiliar; parallel rather than alternating. Precisely speaking, ascent does not precede descent or vice versa; both are contemporaneous. Like a circle, there is no absolute starting or ending point: ascent always presupposes descent, and vice versa—hence, the predilection of Dionysius and Gallus for metaphors of circularity and circulation. When Gallus adopts Dionysian hierarchy,14 accordingly, the resulting soul is a dynamic, vertically stratified, multi-dimensional, and highly-integrated structure of perpetual activity and movement by which it is related to the divine Plenitude “above” it. The result is also an anthropology that fits seamlessly into the framework of Neoplatonic metaphysics, for this vertical dynamism is keyed to, and thus participates in, and instantiates, the metaphysics of procession, return, and remaining. Hierarchized human nature is a microcosmic expression of created reality as a whole, a “micro-climate” of its cosmic rhythm: ascending, descending, and circling. More precisely, its descending valence, corresponding to procession, reflects its radical ontological indigence and thus its “posture” of utter receptivity, its “always-having-to-be-filled” stance in relation to God. Its ascending valence, corresponding to metaphysical return, reflects the fact that plenitude, whether possessed essentially (by God) or gratuitously (by the soul), always tends toward self-diffusion and thus toward ecstatic overflowing. In Gallus’ anthropology, this takes the form of a self-exceeding, self-transcending movement Godward. In their metaphysical simultaneity, lastly, ascending and descending remain. The soul simply is a perpetual cycle of receptive descension and ecstatic ascension. For Gallus, then, the soul is not “hierarchized” by saving grace (as Bonaventure will later insist, perhaps in reaction to Gallus);15 grace does not “overlay” a hierarchic structure upon a 14 For a discussion of the emerging importance of Dionysian hierarchy in the twelfth century, see M.-D. Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century, ed. and trans. Jerome Taylor and L. K. Little (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 81ff. 15 Bonaventure, Collations on the Six Days, 22.24, 353: “The Abbot of Vercelles indicated three levels, those of nature, of diligence, and of grace. But it does not seem that the soul could be hierarchized by nature in any way. Therefore we should attribute [the three levels] to industry/diligence combined with nature, diligence/industry combined with grace, and grace superior to both nature and diligence/industry.” See

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naturally un-hierarchized soul. Rather, the soul itself is created as a hierarchy. With the single stroke of this “interiorized” Dionysian hierarchy, Gallus has executed a remarkable integration of his Dionysian and Augustinian patrimony, solving a perennial problem plaguing each. By internalizing the Dionysian celestial hierarchy, on the one hand, he has removed Dionysius’ created angelic intermediaries of divine revelation. Through its hierarchical structure, the soul as a whole relates directly to God, even as the different elements within it experience that revelation in an internally mediated and diversified way. By internalizing the Dionysian celestial hierarchy, on the other hand, Gallus has given the soul’s Augustinian interiority an objective, vertically structured dynamism by which to relate to God, or inversely has given the “objective” Dionysian structure a kind of Augustinian interiority and subjectivity. In a sense, Gallus executes an Augustinian “inward turn” to find a Dionysian hierarchy awaiting him. In this way, hierarchy provides a fundamentally mystical anthropology. This anthropology also has a Trinitarian correlate that could be seen as analogous to the Augustinian imago Trinitatis, though Gallus does not explicitly say so: the descending valence, as an act of creaturely reception, is a pneumatic dimension, for the Spirit’s proprium is utter receptivity. It is also enstatic, constituting one aspect of the creaturely act of existence. The ascending valence, as an act of creaturely self-giving and active self-extending, is a paternal dimension, for the Father’s proprium is utter generativity. It is also ecstatic, self-exceeding, constituting a second aspect of creaturely existence. The remaining dimension, as in some sense the simultaneity and resulting stability of ascent and descent, is a filial dimension, for the Son’s proprium is simultaneous receiving and giving the third aspect or dimension, which leads to the centrality of Christ; literally, Christ in the center place. Gallus’ hierarchic anthropology also facilitates a uniquely dynamic notion of the soul and its activities. This occurs through the dialectical rhythm of ecstatic and enstatic, of ascending and descending, movements. There is, on one hand, the affective moment of ecstasis: the soul is drawn out of itself. But this “rebounds” or “redounds” back into the soul enstatically. Like the angels in Jacob’s dream, the also Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, rev. edn., WSB 2 (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2002) [Itin.] 4.4, where Bonaventure explicitly mentions the “hierarchized soul,” but without allusion to Gallus.

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Gallusian soul is always ascending and descending. The soul relates to God hierarchically, that is, always in and through its hierarchical structure, and each “level”—dimension or aspect—of the soul relates to God in its own proper modality. The different levels of the hierarchically stratified soul are best understood as diverse modes of activity and capacity, different ways of relating to the divine Plenitude. For this reason, the lower parts of the soul are always “in play.” Admittedly, some of Gallus’ locutions, perhaps unavoidably, render the hierarchic dynamism in schematic and sequential ways—first ascent, then descent; ascent to mystical union, including the cessation of lower activities, then the fecundating inflow to the lower orders. But ultimately, to be consistent with the simultaneity of Dionysian hierarchy—even if Gallus himself does not consistently or fully exploit it—all of these activities should be conceived of as coterminous. Though Gallus does not pursue the matter, moreover, this anthropology allows for a rich integration of the moral and the mystical, the active and the contemplative, of the venerable Martha–Mary typology. In the dynamic simultaneity of the hierarchized soul, the activities of the lower orders are not ultimately abandoned or arrested in their proper acts. While he sometimes seems to suggest precisely this with language like the “cutting off” and “death” of the intellect in affective union, Gallus’ consistent attention to the “downflow” of union into the lower dimensions of the soul, for example, to the activities of the cardinal virtues, of natural knowledge of God, and to the ordering of all the soul’s affections, reveals at the very least a potentially profound connection between the mystical and the moral. The hierarchized soul is thus a stable dynamism, a steady enstatic–ecstatic equilibrium, in which the various dimensions of human nature are retained, not abandoned, wherein even at its lowest levels, the whole soul is implicated in its relation to God. Gallus’ conception of hierarchic ecstasy deserves elaboration here, for it is a crucial aspect of his anthropology. As noted above, he deploys the Dionysian notion of divine ecstasy in his conception of the Trinity’s inner life and of its self-diffusing relation to creation. For both Dionysius and for Gallus, there is also a corresponding notion of creaturely ecstasy as well:16 “Love is of so great a power that . . . it draws men out of 16 Cf. von Balthasar, Clerical Styles, 205. “Certainly it is true that according to Denys the essence of each being is itself ecstatic towards God (something that so little threatens its individuality that this movement itself determines it as its deepest level);

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themselves Godward.”17 But Gallus appropriates this notion anthropologically in a unique manner. Even though the soul’s created nature is hierarchic, the highest register of its hierarchy—Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim (as described in previous chapters)—is “above nature,” is the domain of “grace alone.” This highest triad is literally ecstatic—above and beyond the natural capacities and acts of the soul. Nonetheless, crucially if also paradoxically, this highest triad is still in some sense part of the soul, in some way an aspect of the soul’s very nature. The highest triad is thus the part of the soul that exceeds the soul; the super-natural part of its nature: “Therefore the desires of holy men for tasting God and of those enflamed by divine grace are nevertheless said to be natural or according to nature (naturalia vel secundum naturam), since that nature for desiring the highest good is prior to [natural] effort and new grace, and it aids them in as much as it is able, and extends itself and desires beyond its ability (supra posse).”18 The highest triad, accordingly, is a kind of hierarchic potentia, a naturally latent potential for an ecstatic mode of activity enabled and elicited by grace. It might also be called an “immanent transcendence,” a transcendence that paradoxically occurs in some sense “within” the dynamic hierarchy of the soul. In this way, it mirrors the “immanent transcendence” that Gallus posits within God, who is constituted as Trinity by an eternal act of immanent ecstasy. In this ecstatic register, “above nature,” grace exercises a clear priority and predominance over nature and natural acts, and the soul is absolutely responsive (though not inactive), utterly controlled by grace (though not uncooperative), wholly elicited in its acts (but not “quietistically” passive); here it is “attracted (attractus) upward,” even as, and so that it may also “walk”; where it is “passively active,” so to speak. A characteristically subtle interplay of activity and passivity thus emerges here. In Gallus’ careful use of language, he refers to the soul as “exercised,” which might best be characterized as “acted upon, so as to act at a higher level” or “affected in order to be supernaturally and ecstatically effective.” Altogether, the highest triad is especially characterized by the paradoxical posture of “active passivity” or “eager receptivity.” What emerges in his commentaries is a indeed, that this ecstasy of creaturely eros is itself an imitation of the ecstatic divine eros which out of love goes out of itself into the multiplicity of the world; that therefore mystical experience represents a philosophical and theological realization of that which is . . . ” 17 18 Expl-MT 1.6.82. Expl-DN 2.178.391.

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mode of human activity that is more profoundly responsive and receptive, more elicited than initiated, indeed, more literally “affective” as the soul moves through the ranks of the final triad, in that the soul is increasingly acted upon or more profoundly affected by the divine presence, not so that she becomes inactive or quiet, but so that the character of her activity changes: “if you shall draw my desire . . . we will run, that is, we will be fervently carried off, into the aroma, that is, by sweet exhalation, of your ointments . . . ”19 Natural, autonomous, self-moving modes of activity cease here, but the posture of receptivity is nonetheless actively adopted and intentionally maintained, even cultivated.20 But as noted in prior chapters, what the soul is drawn to is greater and greater participation, through the Spirit, in Christ. For Dionysius, the incarnate Jesus is the Hierarch, the sacred Source and Head of all hierarchies; for Gallus, accordingly, ecstatic participation in the hierarchy is mystical participation in Christ, including the cross. This is why Gallus so consistently links the transition from enstatic to ecstatic modes to the Pauline “no longer I but Christ” and also to the Job text: my soul chooses hanging and my bones death—a clear reference to the cross. The grace of ecstasy is nothing other than hierarchic participation in the very life of Jesus—“the participation which the bride receives from Him, for divine things ARE KNOWN ONLY 21 Hierarchic anthropology allows for a BY PARTICIPATION (DN 2).” more profound and intimate sense of participation in Christ.22 Under the total sway of grace, Gallusian ecstasy entails cumulative simplification toward an affective singularity, which is simultaneously a Godward expansion, stretching, and dilation. 19

Cmm2-CC 1B.70. It is thus imprecise and ultimately incorrect to assume that Gallus conceives of the soul as utterly passive and inactive in the highest triad, despite his sometimes stark rhetorical contrasts. 21 Cmm2-CC 2D.80: “ . . . secundum participationem quam a sponso percipit, ipsum sponsum describit; divina enim solis participationibus cognoscuntur, De div. nom. 2 . . . ” 22 Contrast the Cloud author’s distancing of the divine and the human, with all its shooting sparks and fiery darts of love that attempt to bridge the ontological chasm separating them, with Gallus’ “enstatic ecstasis” wherein ecstatic union with God remains in some sense “within” the soul. For the Cloud author, any sense of participation is gone; by contrast, Gallus’ framework is participatory throughout. Cf. Catherine Pickstock, “Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Significance,” Modern Theology 21 (2005): 543–74, at 546: “For Scotus, being and other transcendental categories now imply no freight of perfective elevation.” 20

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Counter-intuitively, simplification coincides with dilation. Prima facie, Gallus’ images can seem contradictory in this regard; e.g. the ascending soul is both simplified and contracted while also dilated and expanded, but in fact this is the same intuition that Gallus had applied to God, now applied to rational creatures in relation to God. Just as the divine simplicity and fecundity are correlative, so also the soul’s capacity for God increases as it is simplified in its approach to the utterly simple God. Simplicity and capacity are directly correlated, even though Gallus’ images and poetry, necessary for expressing this principle, often seem to move in opposite directions. Ecstatic ascent coincides with simplification. The anthropological correlate to the fecundity of divine simplicity is the capaciousness of human simplification as it is drawn to and united with God. A fundamental principle of Gallus’ hierarchic anthropology: the more simplified, the more capacious. It can thus be argued that Gallus’ anthropology of active receptivity and of ecstatic reception both assumes certain natural structures, capacities, and proper activities of the soul in and through which it receives the in-flowing of divine grace, and at the same time views these as integrally malleable and alterable in the very act of reception. They are made precisely so that they can be expansively simplified by grace. So, for Gallus, whatever is received is not simply received in the mode of the receiver, though that is true; but the receiver is also “elevatingly conformed” to what is received. So Gallus affirms the principle that “grace perfects nature,” where “perfect” has the sense of elevation (as does Aquinas), but in the Gallusian sense and texture of that notion, namely, of expansion, stretching, and perhaps most importantly, simplification:23 “this . . . does not destroy human nature but perfects (perficit) and exceeds (superat) [it] and, by filling (replendo) [it], assimilates and ineffably unites it to God himself.”24 Here, in a way that perhaps is least Dionysian and least stereotypically “hierarchical,” is the plasticity or malleability of the Gallusian soul. Precisely as a hierarchy, it is “stretchable” so as to accommodate its super-substantial, super-abundant Spouse. In a sense, this is a 23 On paradoxical human nature (by nature capax of what exceeds its nature) in Aquinas, see ST I-II.113.a10 ad2: “And thus the justification of the ungodly is not miraculous, because the soul is naturally capable of grace; since from its having been made to the likeness of God, it is fit to receive God by grace, as Augustine says, in the above quotation.” 24 Expl-DN 1.80.737.

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Gallusian version of Augustine’s restless heart, made “for God” (ad Deum), except that on Gallus’ terms, to be ad Deum entails the capacity for hierarchic self-transcendence. Super-nature is a latent potential within hierarchical nature; an obediential potentia. Gallusian ecstasy is thus transformative of the self; the soul is enstatically changed as it is capaciously simplified. Hierarchic anthropology thus allows for an original and nuanced relation between nature and grace and an alternative to the Aristotelian hylomorphic paradigm that relates grace to nature as form to matter. It allows Gallus to integrate an ecstatic dimension to human nature within the soul’s very nature, since even though the highest triad of the soul is “above nature,” as Gallus repeatedly states, and yet is also clearly, if also paradoxically, part of human nature. Here, then, grace does not add something extrinsic, a super-added forma or habitus, to the soul; it is not “tacked on,” not added from without, not extrinsically infused; rather, the soul hierarchically participates in the Christological arche, who is the Source and Font and Head of her hierarchical existence and life. The grace of her Spouse activates the hierarchic soul by affecting it in that very part of its hierarchic nature which was created precisely for this. Gallus can affirm that “grace elevates nature” but in a distinctive way. “Elevation” is not the addition of an extrinsic form, habitus, etc., but the pneumatic activation of the hierarchic potentia for ecstatic union with Christ. Gallus’ anthropology offers a model for how nature might, in its very structures, be oriented toward super-nature. It is made for grace, only fulfilled by grace, even as grace remains freely given and the soul without it remains unfulfilled, even though at its enstatic level it can function naturally. In the end, Gallus’ appropriation of the Dionysian angelic hierarchy thus offers a paradigm for conceiving of human nature as characterized by what might be termed “dynamic essentialism.”25 As a hierarchy, on the one hand, the soul has a specific, given nature, an anthropological structure—an essence. But that very hierarchic nature, on the other hand, makes it dynamically expandable, simplifiable, ecstatically self-exceeding, self-transcending for ultimate relatedness to God. 25 This notion finds a modern expression in the work of Bernard Lonergan. According to Nicholas DiSalvatore, for Lonergan “what static essentialism and closed conceptualism have in common is an oversight, not of the hierarchic universe as such, but of the possibility that lower grades of being can participate in higher grades of being” (“The Notion of Faith in the Early Latin Theology of Bernard Lonergan,” Ph.D. dissertation, Boston College, 2016, p. 47).

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Human nature is naturally capable of being graciously drawn beyond itself,26 where grace has both the sense of gratuity and of elegant continuity and even self-possession; elevated such that the change is perfectly congruent with, though exceeding, its nature. The supernatural activity of the highest triad most fully expresses and actualizes the hierarchic nature. In a phrase, the Gallusian soul is “ecstatically enstatic,” meaning that precisely in this ecstatic activity, the soul’s nature is fully constituted and most fully realized.27 The Gallusian soul is not a simple static vessel that receives and is thus filled with and so “contains” the divine Plenitude. Rather it is a dynamic, multi-valent structure that joins with all of created reality in pulsating with the metaphysical rhythm of procession and return, anthropologically manifest in the ascending and descending valences within the soul itself. In the simultaneity of ascent and descent, the soul is always participating ecstatically in affective union with its Bridegroom, even as the union born of ecstatic ascent is always “overflowing” and descending into the receptive soul. Thus does Gallus’ hierarchic anthropology negotiate grace and nature, transcendence and immanence, higher and lower, mystical and moral. As noted in the Introduction, our overarching argument is that by construing the soul as a Dionysian hierarchy Gallus offers an original paradigm for conceiving of the divine–human relationship. More precisely, it affords him a sophisticated model for conceptualizing an intimate, interdependent, and reciprocal relationship between knowledge and love, between intellectus and affectus, in the soul’s relationship to God, enabling the soul ultimately to possess the “wisdom of Christians.” To that we now turn.

26 See Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 50. 27 See Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 189f: “This means that man does not find salvation in a reflective finding of himself but in the beingtaken-out-of-himself that goes beyond reflection—not in continuing to be himself but in going out from himself.” Ratzinger suggests that the concept of ecstasy is “the basic spiritual form of Christian existence” (171, n. 134), and that “[w]e must, therefore, look for a difference expression, a better formula . . . we should look in the direction of a spirituality of conversion, of ec-stasy [Ek-stase], of self-transcendence, which is also one of Rahner’s basic concepts, although, for the most part, he loses sight of its concrete meaning in his synthesis” (168–9).

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THE FINALITY OF LOVE The foregoing lays the groundwork for the third and final overarching theme of Gallus’ theology, namely, the ultimate supremacy of love. No attentive reading of Gallus’ theology can deny it; indeed, it is often seen as the signature feature of his thought, as well as its most influential, as most famously manifest in the later medieval Cloud of Unknowing. Nor is there any reason to downplay the superior role that Gallus ascribes to love and its corresponding faculty or power, the affectus. Love is after all, as the apostle Paul (the exemplar mystic for both Dionysius and Gallus) put it, the greatest (1 Cor. 13); the sine qua non of the Christian life, without which everything else, including and especially all knowledge, is vacuous and merely noisy. On Gallus’ reading of Dionysius, the highest calling and privilege of the human, moreover, is to encounter affectively the wholly not intelligible, but yet totally loveable Trinity (totus non intelligibilis, sed totus amabilis), which, as Hierotheus exemplifies, is to suffer divine things in and by the affectus; it is, quite literally, to be affected by God. But what exactly is the nature of this affectivity that reigns supreme for Gallus? Obviously (but no less importantly) first of all, the affectus is the summit of the ascending valence within the soul; it is the goal and terminus of the soul’s movement Godward, of the “cordial ascent.”28 Anthropologically speaking, the affectus or synderesis is the highest capacity or faculty of the soul, the apex mentis, through which it is most capax Dei. Second, as already signaled by his very choice of terminology, the affective experience has a crucial and irreducibly receptive, and in that sense, passive modality. Unlike the lower forms of rational inquiry and intellectual activity, wherein the knowing subject actively “extracts” its intellectual content, which it then grasps and comprehends, affective experience is gratuitously received from the intimate self-disclosure of the divine Spouse, who “offers itself to minds through a sensible and rapid fervour . . . in the affectus, that is, not in the intellectus.”29 Such is not subject to the initiative or control of the knower;30 rather, citing a biblical text 28 Adriaan T. Peperzak, “How Rational is the Heart? How Natural is Reason? How Universal is Faith?” in Jeffrey Bloechel, ed., Christianity and Secular Reason: Classical Themes and Modern Developments (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2012), 17–32, at 17. 29 Expl-AH 10.637.238: “ . . . raro tamen et momentanee in affectu, scilicet non intellectu supple, se offert mentibus per sensibilem et rapidum fervorem.” 30 It cultivates “intentionalities other than the objectifying ones” (Adriaan Peperzak, “Affective Theology, Theological Affectivity,” in Religious Experience and the End of

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oft-cited by Bonaventure,31 Gallus insists that it is “only experienced by the one who has received it (Rev. 2:17).”32 In short, “as It wills, and to whom, and when It wills, [the divine Light] offers Itself to minds through Itself.”33 Love for Gallus, furthermore, is also essentially ecstatic, or better, “ecstasizing,” that is, “ecstasy causing,” both for God (as it was for Dionysius) and for humans as well (an underdeveloped Dionysian intuition upon which Gallus capitalizes). The above-noted anthropological capacity for self-exceeding transcendence is actualized, activated, and “driven” by the ecstatic power of love. It could be said, adopting more recent voices, that the affective in Gallus’ theology transcends “the rational theatre of egological self-knowledge”34 and is, in a sense, “the openness of man that compels him to transcend again and again the limits of the merely knowable . . . ”35 This produces an account of the human as thus inherently, naturally, essentially (if also paradoxically) defined and constituted by an act of self-transcending love, an act that does not, however, destroy or abandon human nature but fulfills and consummates it. This, as noted above, is a dynamic and ecstatic account of the human. Following a Victorine intuition first articulated by Hugh of St. Victor, moreover, love transcends and thus exceeds knowledge; it “enters in” where intellectual knowledge remains on the outside. This intuition is the basis of love’s supremacy. By it, our Victorine negotiates the severe transcendence of Dionysius’ God. With its power to go farther than knowledge, love overcomes the otherwise unbridgeable distance between the soul and the unknowable God. Through love, in the felicitous phrase of Paul Rorem, Sinai’s dark cloud of unknowing becomes Solomon’s lovesick night of amorous experience.36 For Gallus, love is the means by which, and the place

Metaphysics, ed. Jeffrey Bloechl (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003), 94–105, at 96). 31 32 Cf. Bonaventure, Itin., ch. 7. Expl-DN 4.234.1337. 33 Expl-AH 10.637.236: “Sed quod non potest cooperari gratia pro nostra infirmitate, potest eidem per se ipsam operari omnifica uirtute, et cum uult et quibus et quando uult se offert mentibus per se ipsam. Et licet eas assidue inhabitet per iustitiam, raro tamen et momentanee in affectu, scilicet non intellectu (supple: se offert mentibus), per sensibilem et rapidum feruorem tamquam guttam illius fluuii ignei quem uidit Dan. 7c egredientem a facie maiestatis.” 34 Peperzak, “How Rational is the Heart?,” 28. 35 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1987), 360. 36 Rorem, Pseudo-Dionysius, 218.

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wherein, the soul is most fully united to God. Indeed, sometimes Gallus simply equates or identifies the affectus with union. Yet, a central goal of this study has been to complicate the apparently stark opposition, even incompatibility, between knowledge and love in Gallus’ theology. The claim of this study can be seen as an answer to a question well-posed by Declan Lawell: “Why does the soul need to even bother with intellect in the first place? If God is accessible [233] ultimately by love alone, then no matter how faithfully Gallus insists on the role of mind (and any accurate interpretation must take notice of the intellectual dimension of Gallus’s works), it will always be open to thinkers to by-pass the intellectual labour and find the Other in some unmediated access (of love, for example).”37 The question can be put simply thus: Is there a genuinely important, even integral relationship between knowledge and love, between, in his terms, intellectual and affective cognitio Dei in Gallus’ theology? Seven observations constitute an answer to this important question, all of which depend in large measure upon Gallus’ above-noted hierarchic anthropology. For Gallus, first of all, intellectual knowledge leads to love, as Lawell himself rightly notes: “Gallus constantly argues that love grows out of intellect. In the early stages of the soul’s ascent, affect and mind work in tandem until finally love alone takes over in the passage to the Other.”38 As noted in earlier chapters, Gallus goes to great lengths to show the preparatory value of rational inquiry and intellectual cognition, which has both an “instigational” and “dilational” impact upon the mind in its hierarchical ascent to God; that is, it expands and opens it upwardly, increasing its God-oriented concavity, and it fuels love’s desire for the divine Spouse. Second, that the affectus receives a genuine form of cognition is also strongly suggested by the fact that Gallus consistently orients the affectus toward the divine theoriae (as Bonaventure will do), just as he had the intellectus: “so the divine substance is only penetrated by . . . human or angelic minds . . . to the extent that divine mercy, by drawing the desire of minds, admits them to the more secret

37 Declan A. Lawell, Thomas Gallus, Jean-Luc Marion and the Reception of Dionysian Neoplatonism (Ph.D. dissertation, Queen's University of Belfast, 2008), 232–3. 38 Lawell, Thomas Gallus, Jean-Luc Marion and the Reception of Dionysian Neoplatonism, 232–3.

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experiences of the theoriae, through super-intellectual union, as above, he brought me in.”39 As noted in earlier chapters, the theoriae, seemingly corresponding to the Boethian intellectibilia, are essentially the differentiated manifestations of the divine nature, its various attributes or qualities, viz. truth, goodness, mercy, justice, beauty, etc. They are identical with God’s simple nature but expressed ad extra as distinct definable characteristics of God’s very being, flowing down from the Father of lights. It is these that loving minds experience, when they are taught neither “by reason nor by authority that which they thus experience more swiftly, that is, to be able to touch (attingere) and receive (accipere) that [divine] ray, by no efforts of their own and with the cooperation of grace.”40 Just as in intellectual cognitio, the object here is the divine theoriae; it is the mode of encounter that differs. Third, as the culmination of a hierarchical movement Godward, the affectus is the upwardly assimilative apex of all the lower aspects of the soul, including the properly intellectual. That is, though love transcends the soul’s lower intellectual modalities, it transcends them in their proper and lower modes. But it also contains within it in a higher modality, as every hierarchical grade or rank does in relation to its inferiors, whatever the lower ranks contain and enact. What is excluded is proper or normal rational and intellectual activity. This is where Gallus’ teaching on hierarchical simplification comes into play. At the affective summit, all the soul’s powers are cumulatively simplified into the single affective modality of seraphic love, such that what is discrete and distinct at lower levels is also synthesized and integrated into an affective singularity. This hierarchical continuity allows him, perhaps surprisingly but nonetheless consistently, to describe this affective encounter with God as a form of cognitio, as a cognitive act and experience: an affective cognitio Dei. Crucial in this process of affective simplification, fourthly, is the role of Christ and the Spirit. Gallus interposes at this point a kind of mystical theologia crucis, especially in relation to the intellectus, as it undergoes the death of its proper modality and activity. Gallus frequently cites a text from Job here: my soul chooses hanging; my bones death. The operative verse, though, is Gal. 2: no longer I, but Christ lives in me, by 39

Cmm3-CC 3A.166–7. Expl-AH 10.637.231: “nec ratione nec auctoritate egent edoceri quod sic certius experiuntur, scilicet nullis suis conatibus etiam cooperante gratia posse se radium illum attingere aut accipere.” 40

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which Gallus intimates not the utter annihilation or cessation of the intellectus, but its affective assimilation to a higher mode of operation in the risen Christ, and as Gallus insists, through the Spirit. There is here an apophatic “death” to the intellect that yet springs forth into the new life of a mode of cataphatic affectivity (as will be seen below). Given the rather understated role of the incarnate Christ, especially the cross, in the CD, Gallus’ interpolation of this notion here thus suggests that his is not only an affective reception of Dionysius generally, but also a Christological and even cruciform one too.41 Fifth, Gallus adopts a teaching on the spiritual senses of the soul in order to explain love’s super-intellectual cognitio Dei. More precisely, he uses a particular interpretation of the five-fold sensorium to distinguish the lower, intellectual kind of cognitio Dei from the higher, affective kind: intellectual cognition corresponds to sight and hearing, while affective cognition corresponds to smell, taste, and touch. As noted in Chapter 7, intellectual knowledge of God reflects the distance between knower and known apparently entailed in physical seeing and hearing. By contrast, that the affectus cognizes God through spiritual smell, taste, and touch implies that affective cognition entails the immediate “affecting” quality found in these three senses; they “are not exercised through a mirror (per speculum),” as are hearing and especially sight, but “directly (per speciem).”42 For Gallus, we cannot smell, taste, or touch without being “affected by that which we apprehend” (afficimur secundum id quod apprehendimus), as he put it.43 Affective cognition entails a form of direct contact with, actual participation in, what is sensed: “in so far as we thus taste, touch and embrace, and smell God, so, to that extent do we cognize him, by

41 This seems to find a parallel to the cross-oriented “Christ-mysticism” of St. Francis, though the Poverello’s approach is much more literal. It’s tempting to see Bonaventure’s cross-mysticism as a synthesis. See, for example, Itin. 7.6, where Bonaventure uses the same text from Job to describe his cross-mysticism. 42 Expl-AH 1.483.105: “Isti enim tres sensus siue in corpore siue in mente non exercentur per speculum, sed per speciem, et quantum Deum sic gustamus, tangimus uel amplexamur, et olfacimus, tantum ipsum cognoscimus participando ineffabiliter ipsius dulcedinem et suauitatem.” 43 Expl-AH 10.634.168: “In aliis uero tribus sensibus afficimur secundum id quod apprehendimus.” Cf. Bonaventure, “For what is the point of knowing many things but tasting nothing?” (“multa enim scire et nil gustare quid valet?”), cited in Gilson, Philosophy of St. Bonaventure, 76. In a phrase, “affective cognition” is a form of cognition that affects its practioner profoundly and intimately, in the manner of physical smell, taste, and touch.

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ineffably participating in his sweetness and suavity (dulcedinem et suavitatem).”44 With this sense-triad, Gallus gestures at a mode of cognition distinct from conceptual, noetic, or abstract “quidditative” knowing, which he likens to physical seeing. Just as no one can see a sweet-smelling aroma or hear a delicious taste, so, similarly, love’s super-intellectual experiences (experientias illas superintellectuales) of God exceed all concepts and every “mental word” (verbum mentis); much less can they be expressed in physical words or in writing: “with [mere] words one cannot teach someone, who has never tasted sweetness, about sweetness.”45 Yet, these experiences are not strictly speaking indescribable. A physical smell or taste is often characterized as undefinable, though one can still meaningfully invoke the experience thereof for someone who has experienced something similar, from which a comparison might be drawn. So, among those who have had a similar experience thereof, the affective encounter with God can be meaningfully evoked: “those experienced in such matters (experti) can instruct and inflame those who have already experienced (experientes) them (1 Cor. 2:13: comparing spiritual things with spiritual etc. . . . ), just as one who has tasted many sweet things can infer concerning a sweetness or a sweet thing in comparison with something else that he tasted similarly.”46 In short, Gallus deploys a doctrine of the spiritual senses to characterize affective cognitio Dei: “The affectus tastes, touches, and smells spiritually, [while] the intellectus sees and hears.”47 By “sensing, tasting and smelling,” the “principal affection ascends into divine things infinitely above the intellect.”48 He thus gestures at a “spiritually sensuous” experience, an experiential perception, couched in the language of Expl-AH 1.483.105: “quantum Deum sic gustamus, tangimus uel amplexamur, et olfacimus, tantum ipsum cognoscimus participando ineffabiliter ipsius dulcedinem et suauitatem.” 45 Expl-DN 4.234.1342: “Vnde experientias illas superintellectuales non ualet uerbum mentis scripto uel uerbo exprimere nec intra se loqui, sicut mellis sapor uel aromatum odor uisu uel auditu discerni non potest nec aliquis eas nouit nisi qui accipit (Apoc. 2c).” 46 Expl-DN 2.155.1028: “Experti tamen experientes possunt instruere et inflammare (1 Cor. 2f: spiritualibus spiritualia comparantes etc. . . . , sicut qui multa dulcia gustauit potest conferre de dulcedine uel dulci cum alio qui similiter gustauit.” 47 Expl-EH 4.869.227: “Affectio siquidem gustat, tangit et olfacit spiritualiter, intellectus videt et audit.” 48 Glss-AH 3.34.264: “ . . . per aliam experiendo, sentiendo, gustando et olfaciendo summa vi anime que est principalis affectio ascendens in divina in infinitum super intellectum . . . .” 44

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smell, taste, and touch, in contrast to intellectual or rational knowing analogous to physical sight and hearing. Recalling that the objects of the spiritual senses are the theoriae, what affective cognition thus involves is a cognition of the same divine theoriae that the intellectus cognizes in its own way, but in a different modality, through which the cognizer is intimately affected by its encounter therewith. With this teaching on the spiritual senses as the primary mode of affective cognition, Gallus negotiates the problem of divine unknowability, which in his time had become especially acute. Increasingly, thinkers were pushed to harmonize an Augustinian claim, patently cataphatic, regarding an eschatological visio Dei, with a Dionysian insistence, uncompromisingly apophatic, on divine transcendence of all human knowing. Gallus charts a middle way. As spiritually sensuous, love’s cognitio is a genuine perceptio: certain, immediate, meaningful, and qualitative. But it is also, so to speak, nonquidditative: though truly perceived and experienced, the divine essence remains un-comprehended, un-grasped by the intellect, and in that way unknown.49 Gallus styles Dionysius’ mysterious teacher, Hierotheus, and his SUFFERING DIVINE THINGS, as an example. He was “experiencing divine sweetness, suavity, and flame, through [the senses of] taste, smell and touch . . . . Hence, Exod. 33:20 says: man shall not see me, and live. It does not say ‘he shall not taste,’ ‘he shall not smell,’ ‘he shall not touch’ . . . ”50 A sweet-smelling aroma may be known immediately, certainly, meaningfully, unmistakably, in a way that affects its perceiver powerfully, while what it is that smells thus remains mysteriously unknown. It is genuine cognition of an incomprehensible God. Gallus thus offers a distinctively western strategy for navigating the unknowable God, a distinctively western form of apophasis, and an anthropological correlate to the essence–energies distinction of the East: God remains “quidditatively” unknown,51 49 C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (London: G. Bles., 1946), 40: “hitherto you have experienced truth only with the abstract intellect. I will bring you where you can taste it like honey and be embraced by it as by a bridegroom.” 50 Expl-DN 2.154.1002: “PATIENS DIVINA per apicem affectionis, scilicet unitionem experientem diuinam dulcedinem, suauitatem, flammam per gustum, olfactum et tactum. . . . Unde dictum est Exod. 33: non videbit me homo et vivet. Non dicit ‘non gustabit,’ ‘non olfacet,’ ‘non tanget,’ . . . ” 51 Cf. Dei Filius, 4.4: “For the divine mysteries, by their very nature, so far surpass the created understanding that, even when a revelation has been given and accepted by faith, they remain covered by the veil of that same faith and shrouded, as it were, in darkness . . . ”

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even as qualitatively experienced and encountered—totus non intelligibilis, sed totus amabilis, “the Desirable par excellence.”52 In short, Gallus offers a paradigm for an “apophatic affectivity,” in which “super-intellectual” does not mean ineffably beyond all experience or description; rather, for him there exists “a darkness beyond [the intellect] capable of being experienced, though not thought.” Affectivity is not a flight from all cognitive content.53 Sixth, affective cognition is not merely the goal and summit; it is also the perpetually fecund source of the ongoing activities of the lower orders in their proper and normal modalities, including and especially the intellectual. That is, when he posits a higher, affective cognitio above an intellective cognitio at the highest point in the ascending valence, this affective form not only builds upon and subsumes the intellective form, but also redounds to—is shared with and participated by—the lower, intellective cognition in accordance with its intellective modality. This is the descending valence in the soul, and it thus allows Gallus to valorize further the importance of intellectual knowledge, in its proper place, as well as to illustrate the attendant utility of his hierarchical anthropology. That is, the intellect’s capacity for understanding is increased by the intensity of affection. The fact, it should be stressed, that affective union fecundates intellectual activity and theological speculation is not merely a by-product or accidental feature of his anthropology, but rather an integral aspect of it, which Gallus consistently addresses in his Peperzak, “Affective Theology,” 100. Arguably, Gallus’ notion of affective cognitio Dei via the spiritual senses seems proto-eschatological or proleptically beatific. The underlying intuition is that beatifying human “knowledge of God” must have the directness, immediacy, pleasure, and assimilation between knower and known that is found in physical smell, taste, and touch. Accordingly, his doctrine of the spiritual senses is not an unhappy intrusion of a platonic mind–body, spirit–matter dualism. Rather, it reflects the implicit awareness that in the present post-lapsarian condition neither physical sensation nor rational (conceptual, ideational, notional) knowledge, by themselves, are adequate analogues for beatifying apprehension of God. But also that such apprehensio Dei must eventually, eschatologically entail something resembling each. That is, eternal blessedness must be an encounter of created, embodied spirit with Uncreated Spirit that is marked by the direct, immediacy of physical sensing, as well being a genuine act of spiritual intelligence; again, both physical sensation and noetic conceptualization in the present state are partial, discrete, anticipatory analogues of an eschatological experience that surpasses, but somehow subsumes both. At present, there is only a vague, meager intuition of beatific apprehension. We have no way of conceiving how it is an act of spiritual intelligence characterized by the directness of physical sensation—apart from an admittedly awkward doctrine of the spiritual senses. 52 53

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commentaries. It fills out, moreover, the paradigm he wants to put forward for theological labor, so to speak, and which, to his mind, is paradigmatically illustrated in his Victorine mentor, Richard of St. Victor, in whom affective cognitio Dei generated profound intellectual cognitio of the mysteries of the faith. Adopting (again) the words of a modern theorist, it can well be said that for Gallus “to be affected,” that is, affective experience, “differentiates into attraction, inspiration, enlightenment . . . ”54 in the lower registers of the soul and that, accordingly, “the affective dimension founds, permeates, and stylizes all other dimensions”55 of the soul. Perhaps as much as any other aspect of his theology, this especially mitigates against the charge of anti-intellectualism.56 For Gallus, affectivity is intellectually fruitful.57 Or, to return to the above-noted mystical theologia crucis, affective union springs forth and flows down into intellectual fecundity in the same way that the Cross in medieval spirituality and art becomes a tree of life, abundant and plethoric. For Gallus, in short, love is both the super-intellectual goal and source of all intellectual knowledge. Finally, Gallus’ understanding of affective cognition contains one last dimension, which emerges most clearly in his commentaries on the Song of Songs. His interpretation of this text is as an instance of the medieval penchant for synthesizing and harmonizing authoritative sources (despite their often heterogeneous character). Nowhere is this more apparent than in the way that he offers a Dionysian interpretation of the Song of Songs, reading it in light of his Dionysian anthropology, such that the different verses of the Song represent the bride speaking or acting at different hierarchical registers (e.g. “Here, the bride is speaking in the Dominions . . . , here in the Thrones . . . , etc.”). But if Gallus can be accused of imposing Neoplatonic hierarchy on an ancient Near Eastern love poem (and

Peperzak, “Affective Theology,” 100. Peperzak, “How Rational is the Heart?,” 20–1. 56 G. Théry, “Thomas Gallus et Égide d’Assisi: le traité De septem gradibus contemplationis,” Revue néoscolastique de philosophie 36 (1934): 180–90, at 185: “Le de septem gradibus temoigne de la memem tendance nettement anti-intellectualiste que nous avons signalee maintes reprises dans les escrits de Thomas Gallus.” 57 Pope Benedict XVI, third encyclical letter, 2009, Caritas in Veritate, 30: “Understanding and love are not in separate compartments: love is rich in understanding and understanding is full of love.” 54 55

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he can), he should also be seen as transposing Neoplatonic hierarchy into the interpersonal dynamic of erotic love. By interiorizing the Dionysian hierarchy, Gallus can integrate the totality of its stratified structure into the inter-subjective drama of the Song. The result is that the upwardly assimilative nature of the ascending valence moves not only progressively, but “accumulatively” from intellectual cognition (the divine attributes conceptualized abstractly, theoretically, mediately, graspingly), to affective cognition (the same attributes now perceived concretely, sensuously, immediately, suffering through the spiritual senses), to culminate in what could be called the soul-bride’s interpersonal and dramatic encounter with her divine Spouse. That is, by construing it hierarchically, the Gallusian soul can vertically assimilate lower forms of cognition into higher ones, climaxing in subjective relation with an Other: abstract concepts about God, assimilated to concrete percepts of God, assimilated to interpersonal relationship with God. Lovers encounter each other interpersonally, yet always as persons with qualities, traits, and attributes, which remain susceptible to abstract conceptualization, even as they are concretely perceived and remain both conceptualizable and perceivable, even as they are experienced precisely as the beloved’s characteristics. But once known interpersonally, those characteristics are no longer conceptualized and perceived generically, as it were, but always as taken up into, colored by, the relational ambiance and ethos. Similarly, in Gallus’ mystical theology the divine Beloved’s goodness, for example, is not merely goodness abstractly conceived; nor is it merely goodness concretely tasted; rather, it is both, but only and ultimately as His goodness and in relation to Him.58 One might say that the “vertical finality” of the hierarchized soul is interpersonal relation and finally union.59 Gallus’ 58 Cf. Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 97, a. 2, ad 2: “There is a twofold knowledge of God's goodness or will. One is speculative and as to this it is not lawful to doubt or to prove whether God’s will be good, or whether God is sweet. There is also an affective or experiential knowledge of the divine goodness or the divine will; one experiences in oneself the taste of the sweetness of God and the lovability of the divine will, according to what Denys says of Hierotheus who learned divine things from having experienced them in himself. We are thus invited to experience the will of God and to taste His sweetness.” As Torrell observes, these little-known texts on a delightful knowledge through experience connect with an authentically Thomistic theme (see Torrell, Spiritual Master, 90–9). 59 The notion of “vertical finality” is Lonerganian and is strikingly apt for capturing this feature of Gallus’ theology. For Lonergan, all of reality has “a vertical dynamism and tendency, an upthrust from lower to higher levels of appetition and

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above-noted Christ-mysticism, moreover, is best appreciated from this perspective. With this interpersonal transsumption of Dionysian hierarchy, the Dionysian Christ as true Hierarch, Source of all external hierarchical mediation, emerges as Jesus, the intimate Lover and Spouse of the hierarchized soul. Remarkably, Gallus thus reconfigures the metaphysical and objective participation in Christ of the Dionysian hierarchy into the inter-personal love of nuptial union. Ultimately, Gallus thus seems to conceive of human nature in all its dimensions (intellective and affective) as not as foundationally given for, but as finally constituted by relationship and consummated by interpersonal love. Such are the basic features of Gallusian affectivity and the role of love in his theology.

THE SPIRAL At pivotal points, finally, throughout the foregoing presentation of Thomas Gallus’ mystical theology, the Dionysian image of a circle has been evoked in order to capture the particular kind of dynamism that attends to Gallus’ account of God and of the relationship between God and all that is not God, including the soul. It is fitting at the conclusion to return to this image one last time. As noted at the end of Chapter 9, in the simultaneity of the ascending and descending valences in the soul—knowledge process” (Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Finality, Love, Marriage, in Collection, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1988, 17–52), 18 in volume 4). Accordingly, “[v] ertical finality is of the very idea of our hierarchic universe, of the ordination of things devised and exploited by the divine Artisan. For the cosmos is not an aggregate of isolated objects hierarchically arranged on isolated levels, but a dynamic whole in which instrumentally, dispositively, materially, obedientially, one level of being or activity subserves another. The interconnections are endless and manifest” (Finality, Love, Marriage, 22 in volume 4 of the Collected Works). In this vertical “upthrust” the higher levels of being and activity “are relatively supernatural to the lower level activities in question.” Accordingly, the lower always has a kind of “obediential potency” in relation to the higher: “the potency to receive acts of this kind is obediential” (Lonergan, De Ente Supernaturali, in Early Latin Theology, trans. Michael Shields, eds. Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 137, 139 in volume 19).

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ascending to love, love descending to knowledge—the overarching impression of continual circulation of love and knowledge emerges clearly. But this is not a simple circle, not a mere returning to the original point of departure, in order merely to set out on the same course once again.60 Rather, precisely as a function of Gallus’ insistence on both the pleromatic divine nature and its attendant unknowability—in a phrase, its unfathomable super-abundance— this dynamic movement in Deum is better characterized as a spiral. As noted above, “new things” (nova) are continually flowing down into the hierarchized soul from her super-abundant Spouse, which in turn fecundates yet another affective return. There is here an epecstatic dimension to hierarchic human nature, a sense of continual and eternal progress.61 There is no static resting in God, no absolute cessation of the soul’s movements. In relation to the pleromatic Trinity, the affectus is always pursuing, stretching, expanding, always plenius, capable of more; it can always be further affected by its divine Lover.62 Never fulfilled, in the sense of filled full, it is always spiraling. A final, perhaps surprising, implication is that Gallus’ mystical theology is not rightly seen as an ascent paradigm, nor even as a mystical itinerary. It is not about leaving the lower for the higher, nor abandoning the natural for the supernatural, nor “kicking away the ladder” of lower, created things, including the self, as one passes over and out of this world. It is not a linear, unidirectional journey of the soul’s ascent to union with God. Gallus’ mystical Moses, as it were, does not (as he does for Dionysius) shed and abandon “everything else including himself” in his mystical union with God in Sinai’s dark

60

Indeed, a challenge for Christian Neoplatonism has always been the need to explain why and how the end differs from the beginning. 61 “In the life of the finite human spirit, gift is experienced as both a reception already given and an expectation that cannot be fulfilled by a simple return to its indigent self” (Foreword by Kenneth L. Schmitz in Antonio Lopez, F.S.C.B., Spirit’s Gift: The Metaphysical Insight of Claude Bruaire (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), viii–ix. 62 This means that the distinction between Creator and creature, for Gallus, is best conceived of not, precisely speaking, as infinite to finite or as unlimited to limited (though these are of course true), but rather as the difference between fullness and having-to-be-filled, between the Creator’s ontological opulence and the creature’s essential indigence, between always-more-than-having and always-having-to-receive.

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cloud. Uniquely expressing a Victorine intuition going back to Hugh of St. Victor, Gallus’ mystical spiral ultimately enables the soul to be an eternally dynamic abode of the Trinitarian presence, continually filled with the all-fullness of God.63

63 In this light, the opening lines of St. Bonaventure’s Breviloquium (vol. 9 of the Works of St. Bonaventure (The Franciscan Institute, 2005), acquire a certain interest. Bonaventure begins by citing the Epistle to the Ephesians, 3: 14–19: For this reason I bow my knees before the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened through his Spirit with power in your inner being, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. For the Franciscan, in this passage the Apostle Paul (who figures so centrally in the mystical theologies of both Dionysius and Gallus) “intimates that Scripture takes its origin from an inflowing (influentia) of the most blessed Trinity” (emphasis added). He notes that Paul himself was “filled with the Holy Spirit as a chosen and sanctified instrument” (emphasis added), so as to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge, and thus be filled with the allfullness of God. In this passage, Paul prays that his readers will receive the same experience (Prol.1). Second, it is Scripture itself that facilitates this experience, because Scripture too “does not take its starting point in human inquiry, rather it flows (fluit) from divine revelation, coming down from the Father of lights . . . ” [fusing Eph. 3:14 and Jas. 1:17]. Not only Scripture, though, flows thus from the Father, but also from Him, “through his Son, Jesus Christ,” the “Holy Spirit flows (manat) also into us,” producing faith, “and it is through faith that Christ dwells in our hearts.” This, he explains, is “the knowledge of Jesus Christ, from which source the authority and understanding of all Sacred Scripture flow (manat).” “No one,” accordingly, “can begin to comprehend [Scripture], unless that person has first been infused (infusam) with faith in Christ,” for “by means of faith” the “knowledge of sacred Scripture is given to us according to the measure of the inflowing (influentiam) of the Blessed Trinity” (Prol.2). In these opening lines, Bonaventure emphasizes the inflowing of the Trinity into (1) the author of Scripture (Paul), (2) Scripture itself, and finally (3) the reader of Scripture. The last, though, stands out here. Like Gallus, Bonaventure stresses the importance of this direct, inner experience of the Trinity within the soul as key to reading Scripture so as to arrive at knowledge of God.

Glossary affectus: The soul’s capacity or power or faculty for union with God. It is associated with love, with feeling, with directness and immediacy, compared to physical smell, taste, and touch, and with receptivity, i.e. the capacity to be affected by God. Gallus also identifies it with the scintilla synderesis, the “spark of synderesis” (see below). ecstatic: Means literally a movement “outside of,” a “going out of,” “above,” or “beyond” the existing state or structure of the self; it is essentially selfexceeding. enstatic: Denotes a movement toward, or a state of being within, the self; it is essentially self-establishing or constituting. influentia: Often rendered “inflow” rather than “influence,” for Gallus it is a general term to describe the continual relationship between God and the soul, especially the effects of grace. The term has a particular association with hierarchy, for the effects of divine grace “flow down” or “inflow” the soul through the hierarchical structure of the soul. sinus mentis: An anthropological term, literally renderable as “fold” or “concavity” or “hollowed out space” of the mind or soul. For Gallus, it seems less a particular faculty or power and more simply a general capacity of the soul under the influence of grace. super (as prefix): Almost always means “beyond,” rather than, as in common English usage, “intensely” or “in great degree,” whatever term to which is prefixed. So, for example, “super-essential” means “beyond essences.” Even in common English usage, though, compare “super-human” (which means “more than human”) to “super-talented” (which means “highly talented”). synderesis: Often translated as the “high point” of the soul, for Gallus (and other non-scholastic theologians), this is not the soul’s memory of moral ideas (syntēreo: to conserve), nor is it a synthesis of moral problems (sundiariresis); it is not a synonym for “conscience”; rather it could be called a transcendent, intentional, dynamic state of consciousness in relation to God. theoriae: The attributes of the divine essence, e.g. goodness, beauty, justice, sweetness, which, though indistinct within the simplicity of the divine essence, are nonetheless conceptually distinguishable and able to be both contemplated by the human intellectus and experienced by the human affectus.

Bibliography Editions of the Cited Works of Thomas Gallus Commentaires du Cantique des Cantiques, ed. Jeanne Barbet (Paris: J. Vrin, 1967). Commentary on Isaiah, ed. Gabriel Théry. “Commentaire sur Isaïe de Thomas de Saint-Victor,” La vie spirituelle, Supplement 47 (1936): 146–62. Explanatio in Libros Dionysii, ed. Declan Anthony Lawell, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 223 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). Extractio ex Libris Dionysii, ed. Philippe Chevalier, Dionysiaca: Recueil donnant l’ensemble des traditions latines des ouvrages attribués au Denys l’Aréopage, 2 vols. (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer & Cie, 1937–50). Glose Super Angelica Ierarchia, ed. Declan Lawell, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis 223A (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). Qualiter vita prelatorum conformari debet vite angelice, ed. Declan Lawell, “Qualiter vita prelatorum conformari debet vite angelice: A Sermon (1244–6?) Attributed to Thomas Gallus,” Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 75.2 (2008), 303–36. Spectacula contemplationis, ed. Declan Lawell. “Spectacula contemplationis: A Treatise (1244–6) by Thomas Gallus,” Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales 76:2 (2009): 249–85, at 279–85.

Editions and Translations of Other Primary Works Anon., The Cloud of Unknowing, tr. James Walsh, S. J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1981). Anon., “Denis’s Hidden Theology,” in The Pursuit of Wisdom and Other Works by the Author of the “Cloud of Unknowing,” tr. James Walsh, S. J. (New York, Paulist Press, 1988). Aristotle, Metaphysics, vol, VIII, tr. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924). Barbet, Jeanne and Francis Ruello, Un commentaire Vercellien du Cantique des Cantiques: “Deiformis Anime Gemitus.” Étude d’authenticité par Jeanne Barbet et Francis Ruello. Édition critique par Jeanne Barbet. Traduction française Francis Ruello. Sous la Règle de Saint Augustin. Vol. 10. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005). Bonaventure, Opera omnia. Vols. I–IV, Commentaria in quatuor libros sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi; vol. V, Opuscula varia theological; vol. VI, Comentarii in Sacram Scripturam; vol. VII, Comentarius in Evangelium S. Lucae; vol. VIII, Opuscula varia ad theologiam mysticam

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Index abundance 33, 40, 41, 46, 48, 56, 58, 60, 63, 80, 94–5, 97, 101, 112, 133, 138, 144, 147, 149, 165–6, 170, 176, 201–4, 206–8, 211–12, 218–19, 222, 228, 235, 243, 254, 257 affect (noun) 23, 27, 79–83, 85–6, 89, 114, 119, 121, 129–30, 134, 136, 139, 145–51, 162, 167, 179, 184, 188, 190–1, 193, 195, 206, 218, 230, 248, 254, 257 affect (verb) 24–5, 90, 162, 186, 187, 195, 241–2, 246, 250, 252 affecting 185, 187, 244, 250 affection 19, 88–90, 118, 146–8, 150, 155–6, 160–7, 172, 179, 183–4, 189–91, 193–4, 202, 209, 217, 227, 251–2 affection/s 14–17, 19, 22, 58, 83, 88, 90, 118, 121, 136, 146–8, 156–61, 163–8, 172, 179, 181, 183, 185, 188–9, 191, 193–4, 200, 202, 209, 217, 226–8, 230, 240, 251, 254 affective 5, 188 affective 4, 5, 11, 15–17, 19–27, 70, 80, 87, 121, 126, 128, 132, 136, 140, 149, 158, 160, 162, 164–8, 170, 172–3, 175, 177–90, 193–5, 200, 203–12, 216, 222, 230, 239–40, 242, 245–57 affectivity 20, 25, 196, 209, 211, 230, 246, 250, 253–4, 256 affectivize 24, 140, 145, 158, 191 affectual 68, 118, 136, 160, 163, 175, 184, 193, 194–5, 200, 206–8 affectus 4, 15, 24, 26, 80–2, 85–90, 114, 129, 131, 133, 136, 138–9, 145–50, 158, 160, 161–4, 176, 177–8, 181, 184, 186, 188, 189–91, 193–4, 205, 209–12, 219, 227, 245–51, 257, 259 bride 25, 88, 102, 108, 120, 122, 126–7, 132, 134, 144–5, 147, 149, 151–3, 156, 161, 167–78, 180–1, 183–6, 191–3, 203–4, 205–7, 216–20, 222–3, 225–7, 229–30, 242, 255

bridegroom 25, 88, 102, 120–1, 126–7, 129, 131–2, 134–6, 144–5, 148–9, 151–3, 156–7, 161, 167, 169–70, 173–4, 176–8, 180–1, 183, 185–6, 190–3, 202, 204–7, 217, 219–20, 222, 225–6, 229, 245, 252 Christ 1, 17–18, 20, 22, 25, 33, 51, 63, 87, 126, 130–3, 136, 138, 140, 144–5, 147, 150, 153, 157, 164, 166, 169–73, 181, 185, 195, 202–3, 206, 210, 239, 242, 244, 249–50, 256, 258 cognition 18, 35, 38, 42, 74, 85–6, 108, 117, 121, 129, 133, 135, 137, 139, 140, 149, 193, 217, 227 cognition (affective) 5, 16, 19–21, 23–7, 126, 128, 136, 139–40, 142, 158–60, 162–7, 173, 175, 177–90, 192–6, 200, 207, 211–12, 230, 248–55 cognition (intellective) 16, 20, 24, 86, 108–11, 113–16, 118, 123–5, 128–9, 136–49, 151, 154–5, 157–8, 160, 162, 166, 168–9, 174–5, 191, 193, 200, 205, 207–9, 230, 248–50, 253, 255 creation 13, 19, 27, 57–74, 77, 111, 115, 143, 211, 215–16, 235–6, 240 cross 17, 242, 250, 254 delight 16, 128, 138, 183, 186, 190 Dionysius 2, 7–27, 32–3, 35–45, 48, 51, 53–5, 57–9, 62, 64–5, 68, 70–2, 75–85, 87, 89, 91–103, 109, 112, 115, 117, 127, 130–1, 138, 150, 155, 159–66, 168, 170–1, 174, 178, 181, 192, 200–2, 204, 207, 211, 215, 222–3, 229, 231, 234–40, 242–8, 250, 252, 254–6, 258 ecstasy 3, 15, 20, 26, 33, 45, 52, 56–8, 61, 65, 69, 72, 76, 78, 83–4, 98–9, 101–4, 110, 122, 126–34, 136–8, 140, 142–5, 149, 151, 155, 157–8, 160–2, 165–72, 177, 181, 191, 193, 201, 212, 222–3, 225, 234–6, 238–45, 247, 257

270

Index

enstasis 26, 52, 56, 84, 99, 104, 108, 121–3, 128–9, 131, 136, 140, 143, 145, 157–8, 167, 191, 212, 222–3, 235, 239–40, 242, 244–5 font 25, 36, 48, 56, 59–60, 64, 70–2, 203, 234–5, 244 fount 33, 46, 202 fullness 1, 3, 32–3, 40–2, 44–6, 48, 50, 52–4, 59–64, 66, 68–70, 72, 85, 97–8, 112–13, 138, 144–5, 165, 172, 178, 185, 201–2, 207, 212, 219, 223, 227, 233–6, 257–8 hearing 24–5, 115, 126, 155, 184, 186–9, 207, 250–2 hierarchy 8, 23–6, 51, 62–3, 76–9, 81–5, 87–8, 90–103, 107, 110, 116, 118, 120, 122–4, 127–8, 132, 134–8, 140, 142, 144, 147, 149–50, 158, 160, 162, 167, 171, 173, 191, 193–4, 199–201, 203–6, 208, 211, 215, 218, 220–4, 227–31, 233, 237–45, 248–9, 254–7 Holy Spirit 21–2, 25, 42, 45–53, 62, 66, 90, 113, 131–2, 138, 145, 150, 154, 157, 171–3, 179, 183, 195, 234–5, 239, 242, 249–50, 258 Hugh of St.Victor 6–7, 11, 16–17, 19, 76, 85–7, 91, 109, 115, 165, 188, 192, 199–200, 237, 247, 258 intellect 3–4, 9–27, 31, 38–40, 47, 70, 79–83, 85–6, 88–9, 92, 102, 108–19, 121, 123–6, 128–34, 136–64, 166–9, 172, 174–81, 183–5, 186–91, 193–5, 199–200, 202, 204–12, 217–19, 221–2, 227–8, 230, 240, 245–57 knowledge 1, 3–5, 7, 12, 14–17, 20–3, 25–7, 38, 42, 59, 63, 72, 84–8, 90, 93, 96, 100–1, 107–18, 121, 125, 128–9, 134–58, 159–61, 164, 166, 168, 171, 175, 180–2, 188, 193–5, 199, 202, 205–7, 209, 211, 227–32, 233, 240, 245–8, 250, 252–8 love 1–5, 14–17, 20, 23, 26–7, 31–6, 43, 45, 49, 52–5, 57–8, 67, 70–2, 84–5, 87, 98–101, 103, 107, 113, 121, 126, 128,

130–1, 135, 138, 144, 146–7, 155, 158, 161–7, 169–74, 177–81, 185, 188–9, 191–5, 200, 202–6, 209, 211–12, 216, 219–21, 224–32, 233–5, 240–2, 245–52, 254–8 nature (human) 3, 23, 26–7, 51, 75–106, 112, 116, 118–19, 121–2, 124–9, 134, 175, 200, 211, 222, 229, 237–45 plenitude 1, 10, 32–3, 38, 40–6, 48–50, 52–4, 56–7, 59–66, 68–9, 71–4, 82, 86, 88, 90, 112–13, 117, 119, 133, 138, 144–5, 153, 165–6, 181–2, 185, 192, 194, 201, 203, 205, 211, 217–18, 220, 223–4, 233–6, 238, 240, 245 pleroma 31, 33, 41, 43, 52–4, 56–7, 60, 63, 68, 86, 97, 101, 133, 153, 155, 162, 201, 216, 236, 257 plethora 60, 63, 72, 86, 133, 201, 211, 215–16, 236, 254 Richard of St. Victor 6, 11, 32–3, 35–7, 43–4, 47, 49, 53–4, 56, 58, 78, 91, 110–11, 143, 200, 210–11, 215, 235, 237, 254 senses (spiritual) 24–5, 173, 177, 182–90, 195, 202, 212, 250–3 sight 86, 115, 117, 141, 146, 184, 186–7, 189–90, 200, 207, 227, 245, 250, 252 sinus 124, 126, 133–4, 138, 153–4, 201, 204 smell 24–5, 144–5, 149, 176–7, 182, 184–90, 192, 195, 199, 204, 207, 224, 250–3, 259 taste 21, 24–5, 155, 177, 183–91, 195, 202, 205, 207, 211, 219–20, 228, 250–3, 255–6 touch 3, 24–5, 90, 183–6, 188–91, 193, 195, 207, 222, 249–53, 259 Trinity 31–57, 61–2, 67–8, 71, 73–4, 86, 91, 97–8, 100–1, 112–13, 116–17, 133, 155, 200–1, 205, 210–11, 215–16, 223, 234–6, 240–1, 246, 257–8 vision 7, 11, 18, 33, 84, 86, 90, 138–9, 151, 168, 177, 183, 191, 193