How the Doctrine of Incarnation Shaped Western Culture 0739174339, 9780739174333

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How the Doctrine of the Incarnation Shaped Western Culture



How the Doctrine of the Incarnation Shaped Western Culture

Patricia Ranft LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

Published by Lexington Books A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom Copyright © 2013 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ranft, Patricia. How the doctrine of the incarnation shaped Western culture / Patricia Ranft. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-0-7391-7432-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-7433-3 (electronic) 1. Incarnation—History of doctrines. 2. Jesus Christ—Influence. 3. Civilization, Western. I. Title. BT220.R36 2012 232’.109—dc23 2012036858 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America



Dedication To Gerardine Luongo Ranft whose boundless generosity, intellectual curiosity, and determination to change the world is a model for us all To Annette Davis the best executive secretary and friend on the planet and To Ólafur Stefán Oddsson Cricco and Finnur Oddsson Cricco In gratitude for their work on the index

Introduction

Chapter One Reason for the Study Sometimes the impetus to delve deeper into medieval Western theology arises in quite unexpected places. Recently it has come from disciplines we usually think of as somewhat distant from the world of monasteries and scholasticism; today we find scholars of physics, linguistics, the theatre, world history, epistemology, and labor history proposing theses about Western theology that beg for further exploration. They are advancing the belief that one particular Christian doctrine, the Incarnation, had an inordinate influence on Western culture at the time it was establishing its fundamental characteristics. Some fields of endeavor more traditionally involved with theology (such as literature, philosophy, art history, and spirituality) have begun to respond to the challenge, but as of yet historical theologians have not responded in any comprehensive way. This study is such a response. It investigates whether, where, and how the doctrine of the Incarnation had the definitive effect on Western culture during its formative stage that so many scholars claim it did. These claims are well argued. While contemplating the origin of empirical science Alexandre Koyré, Alexandre Kojève, Jean-Claude Milner, and Alexandre Leupin conclude that because it appears first and only in the early medieval West, that society should be examined for factors responsible for this uniqueness.1 Kojève then argues that there was present in the medieval West a Christian belief so radical and incompatible with ancient Mediterranean culture that Christians choose to severe themselves from that pagan culture and form a new and distinct society based on that Christian belief. Leupin calls this rupture “unique in history because it was internal, voluntary, and conscious.”2 It forced an epistemological break with ancient pagan culture’s perception and understanding of the universe, which in turn left “no system of thought untouched” and “clear[ed] the epistemological ground where science will take root.”3 Kojève prods further, concluding that the specific doctrine responsible for this break is the Incarnation. “Monotheism itself is obviously not responsible for this [break], given that it can be found in advanced paganism, as well as with Jews and Muslims,” nor is creationism (present in Judaism and Islam) or the Trinity (found in Platonism and neoPlatonism). “There remains, then, only the doctrine of the Incarnation, which is furthermore the only great Christian dogma to be both authentically and specifically Christian from the point of view of historical reality,” Kojève continues. “So if Christianity is responsible for modern science, this responsibility comes exclusively from the doctrine of the Incarnation.”4 Milner takes “Kojève theorem” to its logical conclusion: “There is never any synonymy between a notion belonging to antiquity and a modern notion.” Leupin applies the theorem to areas other than science and concludes that “art, literature, philosophy, aesthetics, linguistics, and so on” are equally affected by the doctrine of the Incarnation.5 Kojève, Koyré, Milner, and Leupin are far from alone in believing that “the Middle Ages, insofar as it worked out the consequences of the Incarnation, is also the birthplace of our own

modernity.”6 Many others contend that in addition to being responsible for its birth, the Incarnation encouraged medieval society to pursue change and develop those characteristics at the root of Western culture. Art historian Barbara Raw, for instance, maintains that the Incarnation informed the new Anglo-Saxon art of the West. “Works of art did not simply record past events, nor was their value confined to the instruction of the illiterate or the decoration of churches; they were a means of raising the mind to God and a reminder of the reality of the Incarnation.”7 She adds that the early medieval controversy over icons was really about the Incarnation and ways of reminding society of its reality. She cites as one example Claudius of Turin’s comparison of the art in his church with those of pagans and Jonas of Orleans’s reaction to Claudius; Jonas accused Claudius of contempt for the Incarnation.8 Historical theologian Jaroslav Pelikan also sees the first art of the West as shaped by the Incarnation. He believes that the first Western art was a new and different kind of religious art that corresponded to the development of Western understanding of the Incarnation.9 Before Pelikan, B.F. Westcott stated the connection even more strongly. “It is impossible that the facts of the Incarnation and Resurrection can leave art in the same position as before. The interpretation of Nature and the embodiment of thought and feeling through outward things must assume a new character,” and thus the Incarnation gives art “a fresh birth, a transfiguration of all human powers.”10 Literary scholar Guy Raffa’s analysis of the most esteemed medieval epic, Dante’s Divine Comedy, identifies the Incarnation as the promoter of change, concluding that “through the incarnational efforts of its author and protagonist, the commedia ultimately champions a new way of thinking and being in the world.”11 Another literary scholar, Max Harris, maintains that medieval theatre, “the fleshist, most sensual” art form, cannot only be reconciled with the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, but that theatre and the Incarnation are “paradigms of one another.” To truly understand the origin of Western theatre we must start with the thesis that “the Incarnation is through and through theatrical, and that the theatre… occupies common ground with the Incarnation.” All subsequent developments in Western theatre are rooted in this certainty.12 Derek Krueger makes an even broader argument, claiming that all Christian writing is incarnational, for “the incarnation of the Logos in Jesus was a materialization of God’s speech analogous to committing words to parchment.”13 As such, “the theology of the Incarnation afforded opportunities for the positive valuation of writing.… [W]riting is no longer debased: it is a licensed saintly mode, an imitation of God.”14 In an exhaustive study of personhood and Christian tradition, philosopher-theologian Stephen Hipp insists that the understanding of personhood, so peculiar and central to the public life of Western society and owing much to Greek philosophy, is transformed by the Incarnation. Indeed, the modern Western notion of person is the direct result of centuries of reflection on the Incarnation during the Middle Ages. “As long as one has failed to take into account” the Incarnation, “one will not have the understanding necessary to make a definitive pronouncement on the mystery of the person.”15 In his seminal work, Incarnation, philosopher Michael Henry continues this theme in his discussion of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. He argues that the divine Incarnation, as defined in the fifth century at the Council of Chalcedon, is analogous to all human incarnation in which humans become individualized and personalized;

it is the basis for understanding life in general. “To be born signifies to come into a flesh,” Henry insists. “It is in this way that a phenomenology of the flesh invincibly reverts to a phenomenology of the Incarnation.… A phenomenology of the Incarnation must logically precede that of the flesh.”16 Philosopher James Smith claims there exists within the doctrine of the Incarnation a model for phenomenology and “for understanding the function of language.”17 The latter is articulated in the work of Augustine, that greatest and most influential of thinkers responsible for the formation of the new West, who states that all knowledge comes not by the word but by “the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us.” Communication of thought from one consciousness to another is possible, because the logic of “the Incarnation in which the transcendence ‘in flesh’ does not undo its transcendence; the signum does not deny the mysterium, but rather points to it.” Smith adds: “The Word, in appearing in flesh, is not reduced to corporeal reality, and yet it is able to appear. In the word, the referent is not reduced to the sign, but nevertheless the thing is indicated by the sign.”18 Religious philosopher Ian Ramsey contends that there is a fundamental link between language and the doctrine of the Incarnation, as enunciated at Chalcedon. Here the Church used metaphorical language to explain the Incarnation and thus provided the means by which the new could and would break with the old.19 The elements of a metaphor “undergo a complete change in losing their familiar meaning in each other and give birth to an entirely new knowledge,” linguist Martin Foss explains, thus allowing creation to arise “out of destruction, out of a seeming conflict and out of a loss of familiarity. And only in this way the ‘new’ can come to life.”20 Stephen Need agrees, adding that the Incarnation guides all “notions of human language about God” and thus, by implication, about the world and ourselves.21 He concludes that “the ‘inner logic of language’ arises out of the ‘inner logic of Christology.’”22 Art historian Aidan Nichols also sees the metaphorical language of the Chalcedon doctrine of the Incarnation to be the vehicle by which the Latin West became distinct from the Greek East23 and to be responsible for “the rise of a Christian art.”24 Awareness of the centrality of the Incarnation in much medieval spirituality is also growing. David Kennedy’s study of Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection sees the Incarnation at its core.25 Significant advances have been made within women’s history and gender studies. Most notable among these works is the groundbreaking work of Caroline Walker Bynum, whose Holy Feast and Holy Fast quite nearly revolutionized women’s history when she clarified many apparent contradictions in medieval women’s history simply by identifying the incarnational aspects of their lives. Her later works, in particular Fragmentation and Redemption and The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336, rely even more heavily on the doctrine of the Incarnation for analysis of medieval culture.26 Patristic historian Virginia Burrus sees late antiquity as a turning point in the history of gender, for here the Western concept of masculinity broke with antiquity’s notion. Citing Peter Brown’s statement that “the Christian Church was the impresario of a wider change,” Burrus argues that one of those changes was a result of the Church’s theological debates on the nature of the godhead. “Nicene Christianity’s contested articulation of the roles of Father, Son, and Spirit emerges as one of the most potent sites for reimaging manhood in the Late Roman Empire.”27 Perhaps the most comprehensive rethinking of the Incarnation and its relationship to

Western culture, specifically to one of its chief accomplishments, natural science, is found in the work of Thomas Torrance. As does Kojève et al., Torrance believes that “it is particularly the Christian teaching about the Incarnation” that forced a break with the ancient pagan world, and “recreat[ed] the very foundations of human philosophy, science, and culture, so that that Gospel could take deep root and develop within human society.” The implications of the doctrine were so vast that it “forced [early Christians] to develop an ordered outlook of a distinctively Christian orientation upon the whole relation of God to the universe, which shook the ancient world to its foundation and called for new ways of human life.” Torrance reminds us that Christian theologians of the first three centuries were dogmatic, pragmatic thinkers, interested in “inquiries leading to real and useful knowledge.” They had “questions about the actual world around them,” and were part of a movement that was “the precursor of empirical science.”28 Specifically, “out of careful thinking together of the doctrines of the Incarnation of the eternal Logos and of the creation of the world,” there arose what Torrance calls “three masterful ideas” about the universe: its unitary rationality, its contingent intelligibility, and its contingent freedom.29 Inspired by these “revolutionary” ideas, “classical Christian theology of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries worked out its outlook upon the universe and at the same time reconstructed the cultural foundations in philosophy and science upon which the pagan picture of God and the cosmos rested.”30 The basic rationality of the universe suffered some rebuffs during the course of the centuries (for which Torrance offers lengthy analysis), but Torrance maintains that, thanks to Max Planck and Albert Einstein, science once again rests firmly on the foundational concept of a rational universe.31 He contends with bravado that modern science “rests upon foundational ideas that science did not and could not have produced on its own, ideas that derive from the Christian understanding of the relation of God to the universe.”32 Tapio Luomo offers us further insight into Torrance’s incarnational thought in his own study, Incarnation and Physics. Luomo organizes Torrance’s thought concerning the relation between Christian theology and science into three ideas: the idea of contribution (theology impacts natural science, specifically, “that the incarnational theology of the Early Church provided Western thinking with intellectual substance which made the rise of empirical science possible”); the idea of compulsion (“genuine scientific thinking never dictates what reality ought to be like but humbly and attentively obeys its self-testimony”); and the idea of reminder (“the natural sciences, and physics in particular, which have something important to tell theologians”).33 It is Torrance’s idea of contribution that interests Luomo most, for this is where he articulates his understanding of the Incarnation. Luomo reminds us that Torrance does not begin from scratch, but rather modifies another thesis, that the Christian doctrine of creation was responsible for the birth of modern science.34 Since “Torrance maintains that it was not until the creation was reflected upon in relation to the doctrine of the Incarnation that fertile soil for scientific development was found,” the order of creation, marred by the Fall, is only restored to its rightful path after the Incarnation.35 To see creation, therefore, outside the context of the Incarnation is to view a flawed order incapable of giving rise to empirical science. Luomo also emphasizes Torrance’s treatment of the doctrine during the church’s crucial

internal debates over the Incarnation in the fourth and fifth centuries. Luomo believes that Torrance sees a break similar to the epistomological break posited by Kojève and Leupin, because “in the Early Church Fathers’ theological doctrine of the Incarnation and especially in the concept of homoousion” was a mandate to reject all Hellenistic mythology.36 What Luomo considers Torrance’s boldest thesis is the belief that Einstein’s theory of relativity was pioneered by the Incarnation theology born of these internal debates.37 In fact, these beliefs can be looked at in reverse, for “in Torrance’s opinion, both Maxwell and Einstein have made the doctrine of the Incarnation intellectually easier to understand.”38 Luomo ultimately qualifies or parses much of what Torrance contends, but he still is able to hold Torrance’s work in high regard.39 “His insistence that both theology and the natural sciences share in the same single rationality, though in diverse fields, is most imperative,” according to Luomo, as is the “Christological bridge between theology and the natural sciences, between the Incarnation and physics” that Torrance so aptly builds.40 While theology, the proper home of the doctrine, has not fully addressed the historical dimensions of the doctrine, it has not ignored the doctrine. A few decades ago interest in the doctrine was ignited with the publication of The Myth of God Incarnate. The book ignited a lively controversy when it questioned the centrality of the doctrine in Christianity and its believability for the modern “sophisticated” Christian; it was immediately answered by a plethora of essays, reviews, and books.41 The controversy, however, did not delve into the larger issues brought to the forefront by Kojève et al. It remained a rather narrow, parochial, internal conversation and made no attempt to trace the doctrine’s relationship to and effect on culture or historical developments. To date, historical theologians have not yet reexamined the doctrine in light of these theses, a particularly disappointing situation, since much of what these various scholars maintain cries out for historical clarification.42 For instance, discussions by scientific scholars often reveal a deficient or at least outdated view of the relationship between antiquity, the medieval West, and modern Western culture, a view that ultimately impacts the value of their theses. Many fail to appreciate the full significance of the Middle Ages in Western history and thus minimize medieval contributions. Historians, however, are overwhelmingly abandoning the traditional tripartite periodization of Western history that these non-historian scholars are still working within. A division of eras into ancient, medieval, and modern is no longer consistent with our current knowledge of medieval history. 43 What is more consistent with the evidence is a bipartite periodization into an ancient era ending with the demise of Rome and a modern era beginning with the Early Middle Ages. This schema identifies three distinct civilizations rising around the Mediterranean basin as Roman culture faded: Byzantine, Western, and Islamic. These societies establish themselves by constructing new civilizations out of their own background and elements found in antiquity. Each society owes a tremendous debt to antiquity for the elements it borrows, but each also begins its own unique history at this point. By studying the doctrine within this more accurate historical context, we gain better access into the process responsible for the development of Western culture during its formative years. The newer schema allows room for additional historical clarification concerning the origin of modern Western disciplines. This is true especially for science. Until recently there was

almost universal acceptance of the post-Enlightenment premise that modern science begins either with Newton or with Copernicus and Galileo preparing the way. To the philosophès this was self-evident, for they had declared the Middle Ages—or more precisely, the Christian Middle Ages—to be void of human progress; this belief was at the heart of traditional periodization of Western history. It essentially closed the door on research into medieval contributions to science. Thanks to recent research, however, it is now clear that such hasty conclusions about the Middle Ages are faulty.44 This means that early theses about the historical impact of the doctrine of the Incarnation on modern science, particularly Torrance’s, were formed before current knowledge of medieval contributions to science was easily available. Consequently, they actually underestimated the role the doctrine played in the birth of modern science. It is the goal of this study to identify the presence of the doctrine in the new West and the cultural contributions inspired by the Incarnation paradigm during Western society’s formative years. I offer historical documentation for and theological clarification of the thesis that, by serving as an intellectual catalyst within medieval society, the doctrine of the Incarnation profoundly influenced those people and events responsible for the shape Western culture acquired. It was an agent of change and development. As catalyst the doctrine is, therefore, in large part—not exclusively, but to a degree not previously documented—responsible for the distinctive nature of Western culture. I borrow these terms from their native habitat to use metaphorically. In chemistry a catalyst is a substance that can cause a change in the rate of a chemical reaction without itself being affected by the reaction. With a change in the rate of reaction comes an increase in the number of interactions between reactants. Substances that increase the rate of reaction are called positive catalysts; those that decrease the rate are inhibitors. The catalyst becomes an agent of change by providing a new mechanism or path through which the reaction can proceed. Enzymes are the most common and efficient natural catalysts. In addition to catalysts, chemists tell us there are promoters, substances that increase the activity of the original catalyst when mixed with it. The metaphor helps us understand the role the doctrine played in the formation of Western culture. Ideas are the enzymes of social change, and the ideas inherent in the doctrine were agents of change. Reflection upon the doctrine led to increased interactions between ideas and culture. More reflection prompted more interactions and an increase in the rate of change. The twelfth century is a case in point; it witnessed perhaps the greatest number of discussions about the doctrine and the birth of many of the West’s most characteristic and enduring traits and institutions. This is not an historical coincidence but an illustration of the doctrine at work as a catalyst. Within the paradox and mystery of the doctrine of the Incarnation is a plethora of ideas, and when these ideas were discovered and examined they acted as agents for change. They provided the West with new mechanisms with which to confront its world. In the presence of the doctrine’s catalytic properties medieval society forged a new path that was uniquely its own. It is what made the West the West. Yes, it was helped by numerous promoters such as economic activity, climate, the arrival of Greek and Islamic thought, advances in technology and material inventions, increased contact with other societies, but without the doctrine of the Incarnation the culture Western society developed during its early centuries

would be significantly different. The relevance of this research extends well beyond the field of theology. By clarifying the doctrine’s role in shaping of Western culture knowledge of medieval society in general expands, as does understanding of how Western religion and culture interacted. In addition, the investigation into medieval Incarnation theology reaps benefits in a vast number of disciplines and areas of research, some of them quite unexpectedly. My own area of research is an example. My original interest in the doctrine of the Incarnation stemmed not from art, science, linguistics, or any other discipline mentioned above; it came from labor history. In a recent book on theological attitudes toward labor I documented contributions medieval religious made to the construction of a work theology.45 I found an enormous amount of correlation between their theories about work and work done, yet I was not persuaded that work theology alone was responsible for the great burst of labor-related advances medieval society made. True, “medieval society labored, created, maintained, and invented in ways and areas not seen before in the West,” and, true, “the work theology medieval religious formulated and the labor they engaged in had an impact of historical significance on societal attitudes toward work and workers.”46 Still, I believed that there was a deeper cause for these changes. It was in my search for that cause that I came across the stimulating research on the doctrine of the Incarnation being done in so many fields. I have come to believe that the changes and advances made in so many areas during the Middle Ages are intertwined with that society’s focus on the Incarnation. I also believe the medieval focus on the doctrine was in no small way responsible for changed attitudes toward the world, attitudes that the doctrine intrinsically mandated. At the heart of this argument is the belief in the power and presence of the doctrine of the Incarnation as catalyst. As formulated first at Nicea and then restated by theologians throughout the Middle Ages, it is a doctrine of supreme opposites, where the human and divine are synthesized in a paradoxical, irrational way. The doctrine’s formulation defies reason, even while its paradox acts as a catalyst in intellectual endeavors. The Word Incarnate is present yet absent, imminent yet transcendent. Humans are inherently sinful yet ultimately redeemable. They are citizens of the City of Man yet heirs to the City of God. Life is a locus for two ever present, opposing, yet interacting forces. This omnipresent juxtaposition of opposites creates tension that reason seeks resolve, reduce, or duplicate. The search to do so creates movement. It is this movement, the rational search to reconcile opposites and penetrate the paradox, which motivates society to embrace change. Scholasticism was but one of the many cultural artifacts born out of medieval society’s desire to penetrate, even eliminate, the paradox; thirteenthcentury masters proposed that the answer is found in the synthesis of faith and reason. This is the power of the doctrine. Its paradox frustrated old masters and new, women and men, laity and clergy, and efforts to render the paradox intelligible prodded Western culture onward. I employ the term catalyst metaphorically to describe the nature of the function the doctrine performed in medieval society. I do not identify some indisputable document that proves the doctrine of the Incarnation was a catalyst; there is none, for metaphors cannot be proven. Still, the doctrine is first and foremost an idea, a mental formulation that most medieval people believed in. I think that it is counter-intuitive to posit that ideas do not impact culture in some way, so I proceed accordingly. I gather in one place the numerous discussions and manifestations of the doctrine found in medieval society and allow the weight of that material

to speak for itself. My presentation is more expository than analytical. I concentrate particularly on those sources related to society’s attitude toward the world. That attitude was neither inevitable nor immediately evident but one that took Christians centuries to develop. The more Christians reflected on the doctrine the more they realized that the world could not be ignored, for the Word Incarnate contained the world. Their attitude toward the world changed. Increased reflection on the doctrine increased the effect the doctrine had on the shape of Western culture. The doctrine became an agent of change. Other factors are involved, but the dominance of the doctrine in intellectual circles and culture is undeniable. Consequently, I conclude that historical documentation does indeed support the thesis that the doctrine of the Incarnation is in large part responsible for the unique shape of Western culture. In many, many ways, it is why Western culture developed the shape it did. Part One proceeds chronologically through the first millennium. Chapter two reviews the history leading up to the doctrine’s formulation, documenting how the orthodox definition finally adopted was not a foregone conclusion. Chapters three and four document the doctrine’s treatment by early medieval Western theologians. The doctrine germinated slowly, but the sources reveal that even in this nascent period it played a major role in the development of a distinctly Western culture. Part Two deals with the High Middle Ages and is thematic. In the eleventh century the doctrine became a focal point in the controversy that catapulted the West into its intellectual maturity: the Eucharistic debates. Toward the end of that century Anselm of Bec developed his innovative theology. Chapter five examines both and discusses how the debates and Anselm’s theology contributed to Western acceptance of and reliance on rationalism. The next two chapters examine the presence of the doctrine in the thoughts and actions of specific people. Peter Damian is the subject of chapter six, while chapter seven focuses on women. The aim of these chapters is to illustrate how the Incarnation doctrine dominated the thoughts of both leaders and the disenfranchised and how its theology reverberated in their actions and attitudes. Chapter eight then looks at three key developments of the High Middle Ages—individualism, political theory, and science—and documents the presence of the doctrine in their history. Before concluding I test the plausibility of my thesis by situating it within contemporary trends to see if it is consistent with accepted historiography. Chapter nine, therefore, is devoted to this task, followed by a brief afterword. Before ending my introductory remarks, however, I would like to make some observations on the limitations of this study, so readers’ expectations will be realistic. As should be clear by now, the book considers only the Middle Ages, those centuries when Western society broke with antiquity and formed a new and unique culture. The Middle Ages establishes the fundamentals of Western culture. Subsequent ages have altered, improved, subtracted, and challenged those fundamentals but have not eliminated them. Rather than seeing modernity as a rejection of or a reaction against a dark and sterile Christian Middle Ages, recent historiography strongly argues the opposite; the modern West is the adult child of the medieval West.47 The reader should also note that this is a study of a religious idea and, as such, it is an investigation into the thoughts of those who spent their lives reflecting on the applications and implications of religious ideas: theologians and religious. Moreover, they were people who possessed the power to effect change and shape culture in the Middle Ages. I do not discount

the influence the doctrine had on the populus Dei, but the medieval masses were not the primary vehicles of culture. Theologians and religious were. I distribute my research accordingly. In addition, I judge the humanities and fine arts to be accurate expressions of culture, so I spend most of the time searching these forms for the presence of the doctrine. Finally, the book is not intended to be the last word on the subject. It is historical theology’s first step. It presents a wide overview of the material and thus is helpful for scholars and students in divergent fields trying to understand the origin of their discipline and its fundamental principles. It provides them with a history of the doctrine’s presence in cultural developments during the gestation of Western culture and a historical context for future research. Much work remains to be done. Most topics need to be expanded (for example, political theory and science), counter-claims evaluated more thoroughly (the impact the doctrine had on Eastern culture), assumptions examined and judged (the homogeneous nature of medieval society, the relationship between doctrine and practice and between intellectual and popular culture), and alternative interpretations considered and their validity assessed. With this completed study, scholars from so many diverse disciplines may proceed to address these gaps. Their undocumented claims are now properly documented.

Notes 1. Recent world history textbooks, apparently desiring to avoid the appearance of cultural imperialism, often discuss technology and empirical science as synonymous; among the scholars discussed here the two fields are distinct. See, for example, Philip Lee Ralph, et al., World Civilizations, 9th ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), 1:322, where the authors argue for the superiority of Chinese pre-modern science to counter the false and “widespread assumption of European superiority in science.” They support this thesis by citing Chinese inventions and developments in civil engineering and agriculture—things considered technology within the discussion here. 2. See Alexandre Leupin, Fiction and Incarnation: Rhetoric, Theology, and Literature in the Middle Ages, tr. David Laatsch (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), p.xii. Much of the discussion of these five scholars follows Leupin’s excellent analysis in his introduction. 3. Ibid., p. xvii. 4. Alexandre Kojève, “L’Origine Chretienne de la science moderne,” in Mélange offerts à Alexandre Koyré, bk.2 (Paris: Hermann, 1964), p.302. 5. Jean-Claude Milner, “Lacan and the Ideal of Science,” in Lacan and the Human Sciences, ed. A. Leupin (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), pp.27-42. Quote is found in Leupin, Fiction, p.xv; Leupin quote is ibid., p.xvii. 6. Leupin, Fiction, p.xvii. See also Alexandre Koyré, Études galileennes (Paris: Hermann, 1939). 7. Barbara Raw, Trinity and Incarnation in Anglo-Saxon Art and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp.59-60. See also Aidan Nichols, The Art of God Incarnate (New York: Paulist Press, 1980). 8. See Jonas of Orleans, De culte imaginum, PL 106, 307-9; Nichols, Art, p.61.

9. Jaroslav Pelikan, Imago Dei (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp.77 and 69. 10. Cited in Nichols, Art, pp.50-51. 11. Guy Raffa, Divine Dialectic: Dante’s Incarnational Poetry (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), p.21. 12. Max Harris, Theatre and Incarnation (London: Macmillan Press, 1990), p. x. 13. Derek Krueger. Writing and Holiness (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p.7. 14. Ibid., p.149. 15. Stephen Hipp, Person in Christian Tradition and in the Conception of Saint Albert the Great: A Systematic Study of its Concept as Illuminated by the Mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation (Münster: Aschendorff, 2001), p. 527. 16. Michel Henry, Incarnation: une philosophie de la chair (Paris: Seuil, 2000), pp.17879. See Antonio Calcagno, “The Incarnation, Michel Henry, and the Possibility of a Husserlian-Inspired Transcendental Life,” Heythrop Journal 45:3 (2004), 290-304. 17. James K. A. Smith, Speech and Theology: Language and the Logic of the Incarnation (London: Routledge, 2002), p.123. 18. Ibid., 127. He quotes Augustine, De doctrina christiana, 1.12.13. 19. See Ian Ramsey, Religious Language: An Empirical Placing of Theological Phrases (London: SCM Press, 1957). 20. Martin Foss, Symbol and Metaphor in Human Experience (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949), pp.61 and 215. 21. Stephen W. Need, Human Language and Knowledge in the Light of Chalcedon (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), p.218. 22. Ibid., p.33. 23. Nichols, Art, p.140. 24. Ibid., p.49. 25. See David Kennedy, Incarnational Element in Hilton’s Spirituality (Salzburg: Universität Salzburg, 1982). 26. Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987); Fragmentation and Redemption (New York: Zone Books, 1991); and The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (New York; Columbia University Press, 1995). See also “The Blood of Christ in the Later Middle Ages,” Church History 71:4 (2002) 1-65; and “Women Mystics and Eucharistic Devotion in the Thirteenth Century,” Women’s Studies 11 (1984), 179-214. 27. Virginia Burrus, “Begotten, Not Made”: Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), p.7. 28. Thomas Torrance, The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1980), pp.48-50. 29. Ibid., p.58. 30. Ibid., p.60. The term “revolutionary ideas” is used on p.62. These ideas are expressed in most of Torrance’s works, but a focus on the central significance of the Incarnation is found particularly in his Space, Time and Incarnation (London: Oxford University Press, 1969); The

Incarnation, ed. Thomas Torrance (Edinburgh: The Handel Press, 1985); Reality and Scientific Theology (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985); God and Rationality (London: Oxford University Press, 1971); Theological Science (London: Oxford University Press, 1969); and Divine and Contingent Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981). For analysis of Torrance’s thought, see Tapio Luoma, Incarnation and Physics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) and the bibliography included within. 31. See Thomas Torrance, Christian Theology and Scientific Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), esp. ch. 2, pp.41-73. 32. Torrance, Ground, p.73. 33. Luomo, Incarnation and Physics, pp.141 and 11. 34. See Stanley Jaki, Science and Creation (New York: Science History Publication, 1974). 35. Luomo, Incarnation and Physics, p.30. 36. Ibid., p.34. Homoousin is a theological term expressing the con-substantiality of the Son and the Father and was at the center of the Nicene era theological debates. 37. Ibid., p.37. See in particular n.162. For Torrance, see Christian Theology and Scientific Culture, pp.11-39. 38. Luomo, Incarnation and Physics, p.156. 39. For example, see ibid., p.60: “Therefore his idea of contribution should preferably be seen as a suggestion, proposal, and invitation to reflect more fully on the impact of Christian theology… rather than a fully settled, closed, and final starting point or basis for such an encounter between the sciences.” 40. Ibid., p.164. 41. For a succinct summary of the controversy and the literature, see The Debate Continued: Incarnation and Myth, ed. Michael Goulder (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1979). 42. The exception, obviously, is Torrance, who is a trained theologian. His expertise in the natural sciences, however, tends to make one forget that theology, not science, is also his home. 43. The movement to rethink traditional periodization gained prominence with the success of William Bark, The Origins of the Medieval World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1958), and it has grown steadily ever since. The recent trend to eliminate use of the term Renaissance as a distinct historical period (the most notable example perhaps being the renaming of Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies to Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies) is but one aspect of the larger project. Because it takes popular culture literally decades to catch up with research, it is not surprising that scholars outside the discipline are unaware of latest developments in the in-house literature of historians. Textbooks, however, have been telling students for centuries that the fall of Rome was the end of antiquity and the beginning of a new civilization. For nearly a half century they have taught that “the early Middle Ages formed the seedbed of a new civilization [and] during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a new distinctly Western culture emerged.” Brian Tierney and Sidney Painter, Western Europe in the Middle Ages 300-1475, 4th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), p. 4. First edition was published in 1970. 44. See the classic Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, 6 vols.

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1923-58); and the more current Edward Grant, The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 45. Patricia Ranft, The Theology of Work: Peter Damian and the Medieval Religious Renewal Movement (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 46. Ibid., p.194. 47. See Tierney and Painter, Western Europe, p.4: Since the twelfth century “there has been no sudden break, no universal relapse into barbarism, no inexplicable change of direction” in Western society.

PART ONE: THE FIRST MILLENNIUM

Chapter Two Formulation of the Doctrine of the Incarnation It may surprise some to learn that discussion of the Incarnation was the last rather than the first of the great theological debates of early Christianity. Perhaps this is because human belief in the Incarnation is rendered easier after other cardinal doctrines of Christianity are contemplated. Yet, paradoxically, it is the Incarnation that reveals these other doctrines. The doctrines of creation and the Trinity are examples of this ironic situation, for understanding these doctrines leads to a fuller understanding of the Incarnation. This is the opinion Athanasius expressed in De incarnatione Verbi Dei. After devoting the first three chapters to the doctrine of creation, he pauses to clarify why. You are wondering, perhaps, for what possible reason, having proposed to speak of the Incarnation of the Word, we are at present treating of the origin of mankind. But this, too, properly belongs to the aim of our treatise. For in speaking of the appearance of the Saviour amongst us, we must needs speak also of the origin of men, that you may know the reason of His coming down was because of us, and that our transgression called forth the lovingkindness of the Word, that the Lord should both make haste to help us and appear among men. For of His becoming Incarnate we were the object, and for our salvation.1 Moreover, there is no creation without the Trinity and no Trinity without the Incarnation. “There was a close analogy between the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the person of Christ. Each doctrine drew together many of the motifs” which were “the common property of all orthodox Christians.” The doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation result when “divergent emphases” are given these “common presuppositions.”2 The fact that the doctrines of creation and Trinity are contained within the Incarnation doctrine offers yet another reason why the Incarnation was the focus of the last doctrinal debates. The debate also raged the longest. It starts well within late antiquity and is completed after the West is a distinct culture. It flows into and from other doctrinal disputes and permeates every theological discussion in varying degrees during the entire formative period. Thus, it is often hard to summarize. The disputes may appear to us to be esoteric and dry, but one must remember that they were anything but to their contemporaries; behind “the seemingly abstruse language, issues of vital existential concern were at stake.”3 Identification of the key elements of Christianity’s message occurred gradually, and only when differences of opinion forced attention on a specific belief. By the fifth century Christians possessed a sophisticated understanding of the development of doctrine. Vincent of Lerins writes: Is there, then, to be no religious progress in Christ’s Church?…But progress, mind you, of such a sort that it is a true advance, and not a change, in the Faith. For progress implies a growth

within the thing itself, while change turns one thing into another. Consequently, the understanding, knowledge and wisdom of each and all—of each churchman and of the whole Church—ought to grow and progress, greatly and eagerly through the course of ages and centuries.… It is proper that the doctrine of the Christian religion should follow these laws of progress, so as to be consolidated by the course of years, amplified by time, refined by age, and yet remain uncorrupted and unimpaired.4 And so the early Christians did. Already by the third generation distinct traditions were developing. Syrian Christianity was articulated somewhat differently that Roman Christianity, and the Armenian tradition was a variant of both. As various interpretations presented themselves most of them were recognized as orthodox, for the vast majority of them shared a common core of beliefs. Not all interpretations put forth were so judged, however, and soon a few questionable strains of Christianity appeared. Gnosticism was probably the earliest and most widespread of the interpretations that the fledging church deemed outside the mainstream; eventually it was labeled heresy. Gnosticism, with its dualistic and elitist tendencies, remained in the wings for centuries (some might say it is still there), its greatest danger perhaps resting in its ability to mutate into other more virulent forms of heresy. In quick succession other heretical tendencies followed. Marcion promoted an extreme interpretation of Pauline Christianity; Valentius, a form of Christian Gnosticism; Montanus, an immoderate type on prophesying; and Tatian, a radical Christianity. The movements born of these men embraced encratism (belief in the evil nature of sex) and millenarianism (belief in the imminent Second Coming). Another characteristic they shared in common was that the movements, while judged outside of boundary of what church historians call “normative Christianity,” did not contain dogmatic heresy.5 Still, their sometimes eager adoption among segments of Christian society demanded a response, and hence there arose around mid-second century a reasoned defense of normative Christianity.6 It is among these “apologists,” as they are called, that the intellectual foundation of Christianity is first exposed. The works of Aristides, Justin Martyr, Tatian, Athenagoras, and Theophiles of Antioch have survived, in addition to fragments of the anonymous Letter to Dionysius and the works of Quadratus, Melito of Sardis, and Apollinaris of Hierapolis. Contemporary with these apologists is Irenaeus of Lyons, often dubbed the first systematic theologian of Christianity.7 His corpus, particularly Against Heresy, is an excellent summation of the developments in normative Christianity during the second century. The heresies and the responses they generated are chiefly concerned with non-doctrinal issues: authority, the episcopate, the relationship between Christianity and other cultures, the unity of the church, and the like. In the next century the focus changes to doctrine. The change is so drastic that the third century is often treated as “the turning point in the history of Christianity.”8 The first controversy is the Monarchian heresy. This heresy derives its name from its focus on the Godhead’s monarchy and “concern for the monotheism fundamental to Christian revelation and faith.”9 It is with this controversy that we see the beginning of the great Trinitarian and Christological debates of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages.10 It had two loci of development, western Asia and Rome, and reached prominence by the turn of the third century. The debate was almost inevitable, for the neophyte church had to figure out, first, what Christ’s

relationship is to the one God and to divinity, and, second, what words properly express this relationship. Confusion was common. The line between orthodoxy and heterodoxy was often clouded; both sides often cited the same Johannine writings as their authority.11 The perplexing nature of early Christians’ belief about the Incarnation is seen in the church’s reaction the Monarchian heresy; according to the author of Refutatio omnium haeresium popes Zephyrinus (199-217) and Callistus (c.218-22) were receptive to its tenets, at least those promoted by Praxeas and Sabellius. Callistus went so far as to advocate belief in the Godhead as a single person and was the champion of a doctrine known as modalism (or Sabellianism). Here the Trinity is simply “modes” or facets of the one God.12 Another group of Monarchists known as the Dynamic Monarchians extended the belief further and contended that in light of the perfect harmony Jesus attained with the Godhead, he was in fact adopted into the Godhead. Such a belief may seem obviously heretical in a post-Nicene and post-Chalcedon world, but it was far from evident in early Christianity. Elements akin to this are plentiful in primitive Christianity, as we see the Shepherd of Hermas explain.13 And why the Lord took His Son as councillor, and the glorious angels, regarding the heirship of the slave, listen. The holy pre-existent Spirit, that created every creature, God made to dwell in flesh, which He chose. This flesh, accordingly, in which the Holy Spirit dwelt, was nobly subject to that Spirit, walking religiously and chastely, in no respect defiling the Spirit; and accordingly, after living excellently and purely, and after labouring and co-operating with the Spirit, and having in everything acted vigorously and courageously along with the Holy Spirit, He assumed it as a partner with it.14 This passage is cited as we begin in earnest our discussion of the history of the formulation of the doctrine of the Incarnation to remind us of an essential fact crucial to our study here: The doctrine in its final form and as adopted and implemented in Western society was anything but self-evident or a foregone conclusion. It literally took centuries of reflection and analysis before the Incarnation was seen as Western Christians see it today and before the implications of the doctrine were identified.15 It is necessary to acknowledge this if we are to explain why Incarnation theorists hold the Early Middle Ages to be the epistemological break between antiquity and modernity and not when the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, was physically present. It is only after the content of that event and belief is fully digested that the break occurs. It is also important to remember that what is argued here is a historical thesis: it is the the particular way the West formulates, interprets, and implements the doctrine that is a major factor (if not the major factor) responsible for the uniqueness of Western culture.

Early Problems and Solutions As an opening volley in the doctrinal controversies of Christianity, Monarchianism was mild. It gained no widespread popularity, caused no schisms, drew few responses, and disappeared by the end of the third century. Still, the thrust of the heresy had to be addressed, and the author of Refutation omnium haerasium obliged by writing a lengthy criticism of monarchian tenets.16 Hippolytus refuted the monarchian treatment of the Son and the Spirit’s relationship

with the Father by proposing that they are divided by function. “For the Father indeed is One, but there are two Persons, because there is also the Son; and then there is the third, the Holy Spirit. The Father decrees, the Word executes, and the Son is manifested,” he writes. “It is the Father who commands, and the Son who obeys, and the Holy Spirit who gives understanding.”17 Such arguments brought with them their own problems, however, and rather than defeat the Monarchian argument, Hippolytus’s rebuttal placed him in the shadows; Pope Callistus maintained that Hippolytus’s Son was a created being.18 Tertullian’s refutation of Monarchianism was more successful. It is hard to underestimate Tertullian’s importance among early theologians. He is universally acknowledged as the first Latin theologian of note, the founder of Western theology, and the most significant shaper of North African Christianity. Because of his influence (particularly through his vocabulary), what he had to say about the Incarnation is of importance beyond the Monarchian dispute19 It is Tertullian, for example, who first employed the Latin term consubstantialis to explain the Son’s relationship to the Trinity, a term that along with the Greek equivalent term, homoousios, is at the center of doctrinal debate for three centuries.20 It is clear that Tertullian himself is aware of the importance of vocabulary in rational arguments, telling his audience, “I prefer your exercising yourself on the meaning of the thing rather than on the sound of the word.”21 In Against Praxeas Tertullian claims that Praxeas “was the first to import to Rome from Asia this kind of heretical pravity,” that is, the Monarchian heresy, thereby doing “a twofold service for the devil at Rome: he drove away prophecy, and he brought in heresy.”22 This heresy, “which supposes to possess the pure truth, in thinking that one cannot believe in One Only God in any other way than by saying that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are the very selfsame person,”23 ultimately leads to the heretical belief that “the Father forsooth was born, and the Father suffered.”24 Such belief renders Christianity indistinguishable from Judaism. We see also in his argument the recognition of the mandate within the doctrine of the Incarnation to divide the Old from the New. But, this doctrine of yours bears a likeness to the Jewish faith, of which this is the substance— so to believe in One God is to refuse to reckon the Son besides Him, and after the Son, the Spirit. Now, what difference would there be between us and them, if there were not this distinction which you are breaking down? What need would there be of the gospel, which is the substance of the New Covenant, laying down (as it does) that the Law and the Prophets lasted until John the Baptist, of thenceforward the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not both believed in as Three, and as making One Only God?25 Furthermore, Tertullian tells us that these heretics “are constantly throwing out against us that we are preachers of two gods and three gods, while they take to themselves pre-eminently the credit of being worshippers of the One God; just as if the Unity itself with irrational deductions did not produce heresy, and the Trinity rationally considered constitute the truth.”26 For Tertullian, Scripture holds the key to the mysteries of the Godhead, not (faulty) human reason. “And so, most foolish heretic, you make Christ to be the Father,” thus rendering much of Scripture false. “For if Christ is God the Father when he says, ‘I ascend unto my Father and

your Father, and to my God and your God,’ He, of course, shows plainly enough that there is above Himself another Father and another God.” 27 Tertullian concludes: “Silence! Silence on such blasphemy. Let us be content with saying that Christ died, the Son of the Father; and let this suffice, because the Scriptures have told us so much.”28 The second half of the third century was also significant in the historical development of Christology. Many of the ideas declared heretical in the early years of the century found a new home in later years, as did Sabellius’s Monarchianism. When Sabellianism reached Cyrene, its proponents and opponents submitted their views to Denis, Bishop of Alexandria, to scrutinize for orthodoxy, who in turn had his opinion scrutinized by Rome. Dionysius was highly influenced by Origen’s somewhat subordinational trinitarian and Christological beliefs and was eventually censured by a Roman synod for denying consubstantialis, although one could argue that the condemnation was over semantics rather than faith. With some theologians using Greek terms and others using (sometimes, newly coined) Latin words to define rationally a mystery that by its very nature defied rationality, it is no wonder confusion reigned for decades as the church sought the proper terminology for its beliefs. By the end of the third century theologians had at least some of the terminology necessary to continue development of the doctrine.29 One of the most significant advances was the increased use of the term Logos to designate the divinity of Christ. It is of special interest here because the idea of Logos was a means of correlating the doctrine of the Incarnation with the doctrine of creation. “Now the Word of God says, ‘I am the truth.’ In the Phaedrus, also, Plato, speaking of the truth, uses Logos as an idea. “Now an idea is a conception of God; and this the barbarians have termed the Word of God [Logos],” Clement of Alexandria wrote at the turn of the third century. “Now the Word issuing forth was the cause of creation; then also he generated himself, ‘when the Word became flesh’ that He might be seen.”30 Clement was far from the first or only apologist to emphasize the relation between the Incarnation and creation; Irenaeus a near century before him wrote of the “Word, who is always present with the human race, united and mingled with His own creation, according to the Father’s pleasure, and who became flesh, is Himself Jesus Christ the Lord.”31 It remains a minor theme, however, until the fourth-century work of the great Athanasius, the architect of Nicene dogma.

Athananius In Athanasius’s thought the relationship between the doctrines of creation and the Incarnation are a central organizing principle for his conception of life. He establishes a primarily pastoral rather than speculative theology in De incarnatione, and that work remains a foundation and staple for his mature thought, even through the great Trinitarian debates of his later career.32 Athanasius begins the treatise by establishing the inseparable nature of the two doctrines: “It is, then, proper for us to begin the treatment of this subject [the Incarnation] by speaking of the creation of the universe, and of God its Artificer, that so it may be duly perceived that the renewal of creation has been the work of the self-same Word that made it at the beginning.”33 The Word is the origin of both creation and re-creation.34 Renewal is necessary, because after freely being created in God’s image, “men, having despised and rejected the contemplation of

God, and devised and contrived evil for themselves,” were condemned to return “to their natural state, so that just as they have had their being out of nothing, so also, as might be expected, they might look for corruption into nothing.”35 Such is only just and a result brought about freely by men themselves who “rejected things eternal” and “became the cause of their own corruption in death.”36 Yet, because God is Goodness and because “neglect reveals weakness,” it was “out of the question to leave men to the current of corruption,” however well deserved it be.37 “What possible course was God to take?” Athanasius asks in frustration. A demand for repentance would not be sufficient, for human repentance would never satisfy divine claims. “What was required for such grace,” was the Word of God: “For being Word of the Father, and above all, He alone of natural fitness was both able to recreate everything, and worthy to suffer on behalf of all and to be ambassador for all the Father.”38 Once recreated in their original image and likeness of God, humans can be united with God, or, as Athanasius says in a much quoted passage, “For He made men that we might be made God.”39 Thus, the Word became flesh, “to bring the corruptible to incorruption.”40 When the ‘immaterial Word of God comes to our realm,” it fills “all things everywhere” and “no part of creation is left void of Him.”41 Given the inherent weakness of human nature that “was not sufficient of itself to know its Maker,” the Word’s presence in creation provided a way for creatures to learn about their Creator.42 For whereas the grace of the Divine Image was in itself sufficient to make known God the Word, and through Him the Father; still God, knowing the weakness of men, made provision even for their carelessness: so that if they cared not to know God of themselves they might be enabled through the works of creation to avoid ignorance of the Maker.… So it was open to them, by looking into the height of heaven, and perceiving the harmony of creation, to know its Ruler, the Word of the Father, Who, by his own providers over all things makes known the Father to all, and to this end moves all things, that through Him all may know God.43 Athanasius repeatedly insists, however, that it is not creation alone that provides access to knowledge of the Divine. Humans lost their ability to know their Creator through creation once they destroyed the image and likeness of God within themselves. Learning “the truth about the Father once more by means of the work of creation… was no longer a sure means. Quite to the contrary; for men missed seeing this before.”44 No, in their corrupt state humans needed the image of God to be restored within them before they could once again know their Creator. After all, “what was the use of man having been originally made in God’s image” if he no longer had the ability to acquire knowledge of the Creator, if he be not fit to receive it even now” and was so deceived as to “think that others are their makers?”45 Athanasius answers his own question: What then was God to do? or what was to be done save the renewing of that which was in God’s image, so that by it men might once more be able to know Him? But how could this have come to pass save by the presence of the very Image of God, our Lord Jesus Christ? For by men’s means it was impossible, since they are but made after an image; nor by angels either,

for not even they are God’s images. Whence the Word of God came in His own person, that, as He was the Image of the Father, He might be able to create afresh the man after the image.46 The treatise continues, discussing the death and resurrection of Jesus as well as providing two refutations of arguments against the Incarnation, but this passage is the gist of Athanasius’s belief in the Incarnation. “By the Word revealing Himself everywhere” through the Incarnation, “all things have been filled with the knowledge of God.”47 He is careful throughout the treatise not to promote pantheism, however closely related the Incarnation and creation are. The Word was not absent from the rest of creation while present in the body, “nor, while He moved the body, was the universe left void of His working and Providence; but, thing most marvellous, Word as He was, so far from being contained by anything, He rather contained all things Himself; and just as while present in the whole of creation, He is at once distinct in being from the universe, and present in all things by His own power.”48 This is of prime importance in Athanasius’s theology. The Incarnation embraces not simply humanity but all creation, and thus divinity permeates the world. “Being in His own Father alone wholly and in every respect,” the Incarnate Word also “was, without inconsistency, quickening the universe as well, and was in every process of nature and was outside the whole, and while known from the body of His works, He was none the less manifest from the working of the universe as well.”49 This reality is at the heart of Athanasius’s theology, and we can hear him marvel at the depth of the mystery as he concludes, “And this was a wonderful thing that He was at once walking as man, and as the Word was quickening all things, and as the Son was dwelling with His Father.”50 As theologian Colin Gunton points out, “differences between Christologies generate differences in the conception of the mediation of creation.”51 With Athanasius’s Christology we have not only “a matrix for an understanding of the relationship between creator and creature,” but also one for the relationship between creature and the rest of creation.52 According to some modern theologians, Athanasius and other Nicene-era theologians such as Gregory of Nazianzus developed Christologies that identified the Incarnation essentially as a transformer of human culture.53 Creation is rendered God-like through the Incarnation and seen as essential to salvation; because the Incarnation permeates creation once again humanity could encounter God through the world. The Word Incarnate is present in space and time. In fact the Word specifically became Incarnate in order to be present in space and time, so humanity must explore space and time to discover the Word. The importance of this theological understanding of the relationship between Creator, creature, and creation becomes all the more significant when we realize that it is this theology “which was established beyond all peradventure by Athanasius” that became “entrenched in the Church” after the Council of Nicea.54

Doctrinal Debates The need to establish doctrinal orthodoxy, particularly for doctrines pertaining to Creator, creature, and creation, became even more pressing after the appearance of Arianism. About the same time that Athanasius was writing his treatise on the Incarnation, Arius was preaching that

the Word Incarnate, albeit a most perfect creature, was inferior to the Father. Although traditionally Arius’s heresy has been characterized as a Trinitarian heresy, some argue today that “the issues were not trinitarian as the textbooks suggest, but soteriological, ethical, and Christological”55—all of which are contained in the doctrine of the Incarnation. Indeed, Pelikan sees the development of the dogma of the Trinity during the Nicene era “as the Church’s response to a question about the identity of Jesus Christ.”56 Arius seems to have been driven to his conclusion after contemplating Proverbs 8:22-23 (“The Lord created me, the firstborn of his ways, before the hills, I was brought forth. When he established the heavens I was there”), a passage subject to much debate in early Christianity.57 Even though the exegesis and polemic writing of Arius has been transmitted by Arius’s chief opponent, Athanasius, Arius’ letters and his popular ditty Thalia indicate that Athanasius’s summation of his thought was accurate.58 Athanasius saw Prov 8:22 as the heart of his disagreement with Arius and thus devotes most of Discourse 2 to a rebuttal of Arius’s interpretation of the passage.59 As the debate continued even beyond the Council of Nicea (called specifically to provide an orthodox answer to Arius’s challenge), questions about the nature of the relationship between Creator, creature, and creation also continued to surface. To the Arians who pointed out that Proverbs says “He created,” Athanasius retorts, yes, “but they call not the Son creature,” because in Scripture “they acknowledge what is by nature proper to the Son, that He is the Only-begotten Wisdom and Framer of the creatures.”60 The Arians “famous assertion then, that the Son is a creature,” Athanasius rejected, “for the Word of God is not creature but Creator.”61 Therefore, “through the Word things which came to be, which before existed not, were made.”62 It becomes apparent when reviewing the enormous amount of literature that this controversy spawned that Nicene-era theologians knew they had to understand creation before they could define the Incarnation. Christological discussions of the relationship between Christ’s divinity and humanity was but another way of exploring the same issue. Is the Word Incarnate the Creator, that is, divine and one with the Father Creator, or is he a creature created by the Father Creator and, therefore, fully human? Gregory of Nyssa summarizes the dilemma thus: “Are we to regard the Son and the Holy Spirit as belonging to created or uncreated existence?”63 Answers are not always clear. For example, Eusebius of Caesarea calls the Word Incarnate the “perfect creation of a perfect Creator”64; does that render him Arian? Once orthodoxy established the Son and Spirit as uncreated, however, it follows that, although distinct, creation is good by virtue of the Creator’s Word being present in that creation. “Now the world is good, and all its contents are seen to be wisely and skillfully ordered. All of them, therefore, are the works of the Word,” Gregory of Nyssa states, because the Word is Goodness itself.65 During the course of the fourth century further refinements of the doctrine of the Incarnation were made via the debates that (sometimes heatedly) continued. We see this in Nemesius of Emesa, an otherwise unknown author of a late fourth-century compendium, On the Nature of Man. According to Nemesius, “God created both an intelligible and a phenomenal order, and required some one creature to link these two together in such a way that the entire universe should form one agreeable unity, unbroken by internal incoherences.”66 The Word Incarnate provides this link and is “the best proof that the whole universe is the creation of one God.”67

Likewise, proof of the Trinity rests on proof of the Incarnation. It should come as no surprise, then, that “a few decades after Nicea the theme of the formulation of dogma shifted completely” from implicit discussion of the Incarnation in the explicit discussion of the Trinity to explicit formulation of the doctrine of the Incarnation: “Now the theme is not the preexistent Son of God, but the incarnate one. Not the relation of God to God is now at issue, but the relation of God to man in the person of the earthly Christ, who dwelt among men.”68 Numerous councils were called in the process and theologians galore contributed their opinions.69 The Cappodocian Fathers wrote some of the more influential treatises on these interdependent themes, and some hold that the Second Council of Constantinople, where “classical orthodox theology now clearly appears,” adopted in force the formulas of belief worked out by Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzus.70 Perhaps none are as insistent as Athanasius is about the intertwining nature of the doctrines of creation and Incarnation, but they all echo the same principle: the Word Incarnate created and penetrates the universe. Gregory of Nyssa argues that only because the Word Incarnate permeates the whole of creation is humanity saved. “Death, and corruption, and darkness, and every other offshoot of evil” were “subjected to the knife and the cautery” with “the approach of the Divine Power,” and creation was cleansed of all evil. A harmony of thanksgiving will arise from all creation.… These and the like benefits the great mystery of the Divine incarnate bestows. For in those points in which He was mingled with humanity, passing as He did through all the accidents proper to human nature, such as birth, rearing, growing up, and advancing even to the taste of death, He accomplished all the results before mentioned, freeing both man from evil, and healing even the introducer of evil himself. It is, then, completely in keeping with this, that He Who was thus pouring Himself into our nature should accept this commixture in all its accidents.71 Gregory continually stresses that the Word Incarnate’s “commixture” does not merely pertain to humanity but to all creation. Phrases such as “every created being” and “the whole universe” frequent his discussions. All creation “by equal degree of inferiority” is equally distant from the Word Incarnate, “for that which is absolutely inaccessible does not allow access to some one thing, while it is unapproachable by another, but it transcends all existences by an equal sublimity.” If this were not so, then we would have to “suppose that the power which governs the Universe does not equally pervade the whole”—a conclusion that Gregory considers contrary to orthodox belief.72 In Second Theological Oration Gregory Nazianzen tackles the complexities of the Trinity but is almost immediately drawn into discussion of the relationship between the Word Incarnate and creation. “And how shall we preserve the truth that God pervades all things and fills all?” he ponders, frustrated at the complexity of the mystery.73 “Now, unless I appear to anyone too careful, and over anxious about the examination of this matter, perhaps it was of this and nothing else that the Word Himself intimated that there were things which could not now be borne,”74 for the truth is that “the whole Word is full of difficulty and obscurity.”75 Still, he pursues this mystery in another oration, this one on the Word Incarnate’s birth. Here he states that creation “was a work fulfilled by His Word.”76 It is

a creation “worthy of admiration when we consider the harmony and the unison of the whole, and how each part fits in with every other in fair order and all with the whole, tending to the perfect completion of the world as a Unit.”77 Thus, “the magnificence of the Creator-Word” is able to unite “the visible and invisible creations.”78 Basil comes right to the point in his celebrated Hexaemeron: “Behold the Word of God pervading creation, beginning even then the efficacy which is seen displayed today, and will be displayed to the end of the world.”79 Cyril of Jerusalem, Basil’s contemporary, reflects at length on the relationship between Incarnation and creation. “Believe that of One God there is One Only-begotten Son, who is before all ages God the Word,” he instructs. “There is then One Only God the Maker both of souls and bodies; One the Creator of heaven and earth, the Maker of Angels and Archangels; of many the Creator, but of One Only the Father before all ages—of One Only, His Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom He made all things visible and invisible.”80 Lecture Twelve is devoted entirely to instruction on the Incarnation. “Wait for the proper time of instruction in this lecture, and thou shalt receive the proof” that the Word of God, Maker of all is indeed Word Incarnate, Cyril writes.81 “If then thou seekest the cause of Christ’s coming, go back to the first book of the Scriptures. In six days God made the world: but the world was for man,” and all in that world was good.82 After humans destroyed that goodness, the prophets besieged God to restore creation’s goodness, because “the evil is irretrievable by us, and needs thee to retrieve it. The Lord heard the prayer of the Prophets. The Father disregarded not the perishing of our race; He sent forth His Son, the Lord of heaven, as healer.”83 In brief, the Word Incarnate came to restore goodness in creation. The Christological issues brought to the forefront in the Arian controversy continued to demand attention throughout the fifth century. Eventually they emerged from the shadows of the Arian debates to dominate theological discussion in their own right. The inevitable disagreements accompanying those debates give birth to the Christologies of Apollinarius of Laodicea, Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Nestorius, and Eutyches. Reaction to these interpretations came quickly, and by mid-century the councils of Ephesus I (431) and Chalcedon (451) had articulated a Christology that became the definitive orthodox doctrine concerning the Incarnation. With the counciliar statements of Ephesus we see how reflection on the Incarnation encouraged new attitudes towards the world. The prehistory of the Council is complex and highly political, as much a mixture of the sacred and the profane as the doctrine it formulated. When Emperor Arcadius died in 408 he left behind a son “who was just weaned” and three daughters. The eldest daughter Pulcheria took over immediate control and became “the protector of [Theodosius II, the son] and of his government.”84 Being careful always to govern “in the name of her brother,” Pulcheria was, nevertheless, the de facto emperor, ruling, even after Theodosius II’s marriage, “excellently, and with great orderliness.” The source of her power seem to rest on the dual pillars of politics and religion; she had an impeccable reputation in religious matters and promoted religious and charitable institutions at every opportunity. According to Sozomen, “how many houses of prayer she build magnificently, and how many hostelries and monastic communities she established, the arrangement for the expenses for their perpetual support, and the provisions for the inmates” is hard to overestimate.85 Moreover, Pulcheria immersed herself in

ecclesiastical practices. She took it upon herself to consecrate an altar in the episcopal church of Constantinople “made of gold and precious stones.” Her imperial robe was used as an altar covering, her picture hung above the altar; she and her group of virgins dominated Vespers at the episcopal church; and the Virginity Festival, celebrated in Constantinople during the 420s, was closely associated with Pulcheria.86 It is not surprising, then, that she became embroiled in a controversy surrounding the preacher Proclus’s emphasis on Mary as Theotokos (Mother of God; God-bearer) and Nestorius’s rejection of it. There is much evidence to suggest that Nestorius’s opposition to Mary as Theotokos was heightened because of his opposition to Pulcheria’s involvement in church matters; perhaps he saw the former as a means of attacking the latter. In so far as Nestorius actively opposed Pulcheria’s dominance in church affairs (he refused to use her imperial robe, took down her picture, and barred her from attending Vespers in his church), Nestorius’s attack on Pulcheria’s chief devotional object, Mary, was almost predictable. Underlying tensions in Christological discussions between Alexandrian and Antiochene theologians had been present for decades, so when Mary’s relationship with the Word Incarnate became a focus of attention, it was quickly subsumed into the larger Christological debate between the schools. In 428 Proclus, a close ally of Pulcheria, preached a sermon during the Virginity Festival and proclaimed that the feast “is the perfect boast of the society of women, and the glory of the female sex, because of the occurrence of the Mother and the Virgin;” all creation should “‘leap about’ and “the human race exult in joy, because women are honored”—a sermon which appears to be as much a defense of Pulcheria as Mary.87 Immediately after being elevated to his see in April, 428, Nestorius made it a priority to discredit the theological premises supporting Proclus’s sermon, and in the wake, diminish the power of Pulcheria and Mary in one theological thrust. Soon the focus was pinpointed on the title Theotokos, a claim that Nestorius deemed blasphemous. In November Socrates tells us that “an associate Nestorius had brought from Antioch, a presbyter named Athanasius” to preach that because “Mary was but a woman, and it is impossible that God should be born of a woman,” she could not be called Theotokos. “These words created a great sensation, and troubled many both of the clergy and laity; they having been heretofore taught to acknowledge Christ as God, and by no means separate his humanity from his divinity on account of the economy of incarnation.” The uproar grew as Nestorius “delivered several public discourses on the subject in which he assumed a controversial attitude and totally rejected the epithet Theotokos.88 Nestorius met his match, however, in the bishop of Alexandria, Cyril. This “doctor par excellence of the Incarnation,”89 questioned the orthodoxy of Nestorius’s position. Nestorius offered a compromise of sorts, proposing the title Christocos, not Theotokos, but Cyril retorted that this too was unorthodox, “for if our Lord Jesus Christ is God, how can it be that the Holy Virgin who gave birth to Him is not the Mother of God, Theotokos?”90 Nestorius was not able to defend his position persuasively, being, in Socrates’s opinion, “scared at the term Theotokos, as though it were some terrible phantom,” “disgracefully illiterate,” and unfamiliar with the historical tradition of the term.91 In November 430 Theodosius II called a council at Ephesus to consider the matter. The following June it met and condemned Nestorius. Cyril’s

interpretation was thereby given an imprimatur. The council did not reconcile the opposing sides in its condemnation, and the conflict over the Incarnation continued well beyond the next council at Chalcedon into the seventh century. The emphasis on the Incarnation during this era is highly significant to us here, for it documents how two of the chief devotions of Christianity came to be understood as overt manifestations of the doctrine: devotion to Mary and to the Eucharist (of which more will be said later).92 It also allows us to see how all creation was increasingly perceived as included in the redemptive act of the Word Incarnate. Both Cyril, chief spokesman for the Alexandrian school, and Theodore, Cyril’s equivalent in the Antiochene school, insisted that Christ saved the world as well as humanity, because “even when still in the bosom of the Virgin who bore him, [the Word] filled all creation as God,” Cyril wrote. “So by the grace of God, he tasted death for everyone, giving up his own body to it, although by nature he was life.”93 Sin tears apart the unity of creation; once sin is satisfied, unity is restored. “Therefore the connection between all things is also reestablished on the basis of our renewal. The first fruit of this is he who is Christ according to the flesh, in whom there is accomplished a very good and, so to speak, a compendious new creation of all things,” says Theodore. Hence, “the agreement and harmony and connection of all existing things will be saved.”94 Christ saves the microcosm as well as the macrocosm. As Pelikan summarizes, “The salvation of the cosmos lay in the reintergration of the only creature in whom all the constituent parts of the cosmos were represented, that is, man.”95 Mariology and the doctrine of the Incarnation are theologically, historically, and logically intertwined. If the Word Incarnate was born of Mary, then Mary is Theotokos, the Mother of God. Cyril states the connection so: “Since the holy Virgin gave birth after the flesh to God who was united by hypostasis with flesh, therefore we say that she is theotokos.”96 The doctrine of the Incarnation includes—even demands—reverence for Mary, and vice versa. The theology of Peter Chrysologus, whose genius “is eminently Latin,”97 is a prime example of this. Peter’s reverential Mariology, complete with insistence on her divine maternity, perpetual virginity, and immaculate conception, has, in Robert McGlynn’s estimation “special merit in the field of patristic thought precisely because it is not the result of any treatise expressly dedicated to her honor, but rather because it is found in a number of different sermons on the circumstances and import of the Incarnation.”98 Mary “alone encompassed God, whom the world cannot contain. She bore Him who carries the world; she gave birth to her begetter… and the narrow straits of the bodily dwelling were moved when the magnificence of God took up residence in the virginal breast.”99 Vincent of Lerins’s argument is even more emphatic. This unity of person, then, was complete and perfect not after His birth from the Virgin but in her very womb.… It is through this unity of person that it follows, by reason of a like mystery, that, since the flesh of the Word was born of a spotless Virgin, and most impious it is to deny it. And since this is so, away with the thought that any one should attempt to defraud the holy Mary of the privileges of the Divine favour and special glory. For by a certain unique gift of our Lord and God, but her Son, she is most truly and blessedly to be confessed as Mother of God, Theotokos; but Mother of God not in the same in which a certain heresy imagines it,

namely, that she may be called Mother of God solely because she gave birth to that man who afterwards became God.… Not in this way is the holy Mary Theotokos, but rather, as I said before, because already in her holy womb was brought about that all holy mystery whereby, on account of the singular and unique Unity of Person, as the Word in Flesh is Flesh, so the Man in God is God.100 The inseparability of Christology and Mariology explains why the Nestorians’s original attack on Mary was immediately perceived to be an attack on the Word Incarnate. In fact, it was precisely because Nestorians realized the inseparable nature of Christology and Mariology that they focused on Mary’s position in salvific history, intent upon decreasing its prominence. Besides the use Pulcheria made of Mary in her search for justification of her power, the people of Constantinople, Nestorius’s see, were also granting Mary new and enthusiastic attention. Moreover, they were aware of the vast implications of a Mariology rooted in the Nicene doctrine of the Incarnation. Proclus defended this attention in the sermon that initiated the conflict, claiming that the Virginity Festival “is the perfect boast of the society of women, and the glory of the female sex, because of the occurrence of the Mother and the Virgin.”101 In reply, Nestorius was willing to acknowledge the essential role of Mary in the Incarnation, but he believed that Theotokos went too far: “This word is not appropriate for her who gave birth, since a true mother should be of the same essence as what is born of her.” In the spirit of compromise he added, “But the term could be accepted in consideration of this, that the word is used of the Virgin only because of the inseparable temple of God the Word which was of her, not because she is the mother of God the Word.”102 Much the same is true concerning the Eucharist and the Incarnation. Already in the fourth century Hilary of Poitiers, writing De Trinitate to refute the Arius’s letter to Alexander of Alexandria, spoke of the inseparable connection between the two. Now our Lord has not left the minds of His faithful followers in doubt, but has explained the manner in which His nature operates, saying, “That they may be one, as We are one: I in them and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in one.”… For if in truth the Word has been made flesh and we in very truth receive the Word made flesh as food from the Lord, are we not bound to believe that He abides in us naturally, Who, born as a man, has assumed the nature of our flesh now inseparable from Himself, and has conjoined the nature of His own flesh to the nature of the eternal Godhead in the sacrament by which His flesh is communicated to us? For so are we all one, because the Father is in Christ and Christ in us.103 To Hilary the Eucharist is a reality through which Christ is present in us, but it is also a metaphor that sheds light upon the mystery of the Incarnation: “As He lives through the Father in like manner we live through His flesh. For all comparison is chosen to shape our understanding, so that we may grasp the subject of which we treat by help of the analogy set before us. This is the cause of our life that we have Christ dwelling within our carnal selves through the flesh,” Hilary adds. “If, then, we live naturally through Him according to the flesh, that is, partaken of the nature of his flesh, must He not naturally have the Father within Himself according to the Spirit since He Himself lives through the Father?”104 The Eucharist is proof

that Christ is the Word Incarnate and the Word Incarnate is one with the Father; the “verity of communion” within the Godhead “were vouchsafed us through the sacrament of the Body and Blood.”105 In the following century theologians continued to speak of the Eucharist within their Trinitarian and Christological debates. Both the Alexandrian and Antiochene schools reflected openly upon the theological implications of the Eucharist. Theodore, eventually considered unorthodox, was quite emphatic in his belief in the real presence, arguing that Jesus “did not say, ‘This is the symbol of my body,’ but ‘This is my body.’”106 However, he viewed this real presence as a transformation achieved by the Spirit, not the Son: “By the coming of the Holy Spirit it is transformed into body and blood, and thus it is changed into the power of a spiritual and immortal nourishment.”107 Cyril, on the other hand, rejected this emphasis and replaced the Word Incarnate at the center of the Eucharistic transformation by wedding the doctrines of the Incarnation and Eucharist: “God makes us alive, not merely by granting us a share in the Holy Spirit but by granting us in edible form the flesh which he assumed.”108 Proclaiming the death according to the flesh of the only begotten Son of God, that is, Jesus Christ, and confessing his Resurrection from the dead and his Ascension into heaven, we celebrate the unbloody sacrifice in the churches, and we thus approach the spiritual blessings and are made holy, becoming partakers of the holy flesh and of the precious blood of Christ, the Saviour of us all. And we do this, not as men receiving common flesh, far from it, nor truly the flesh of a man sanctified and conjoined to the Word according to a unity of dignity, or as one having had a divine indwelling, but as the truly life-giving and very own flesh of the Word himself. For, being life according to nature as God, when he was made one with his own flesh, He proclaimed it life-giving. Wherefore even if he may say to us, “Amen, I say to you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood,” [John 6:53] we shall not conclude that his flesh is of some one as of a man who is one of us, (for how will the flesh of a man be life-giving according to its own nature?), but as being truly the very flesh of the Son who was both made man and named man for us.109 Elsewhere Cyril exegetes John 6:53 again, this time arguing that the passage did not refer to the human body and blood of Jesus but rather to “the very flesh of the [Word Incarnate] who gives life to everything” and the means through which people become re-made in the image and likeness of God.110 Overall, what is plain when reviewing the documentary evidence from both schools is that, whether they agreed upon the wording, they acknowledged that the doctrines of the Incarnation and Eucharist were integrated throughout. Unable or unwilling to do much more than declare that “it is unlawful for any men to bring forward, or to write, or to compose a different Faith as a rival to that established by the Holy Fathers assembled with the Holy Ghost in Nicea,”111 the Council of Ephesus did little to resolve the issues brought to the forefront by Nicene theologians. If anything, it exacerbated theological tensions between the schools and between the imperial and ecclesiastical realms. Consequently, there was a call for yet another council a mere two decades later at Chalcedon. It succeeded no more than Ephesus did in resolving disagreements over Christological doctrine. It did, nevertheless, provide the terminology eventually accepted as orthodox

throughout the West and much of the East when it adopted Pope Leo’s formula, written to address the question of “what [a Christian] was bound to think concerning the Incarnation of the Word of God.”112 In the short term, though, Chalcedon continued to confuse the theological landscape as much as Nicea and Ephesus had; “the Council of Chalcedon in fact proved the start of a long crisis which filled the end of the fifth century, the whole of the sixth century and lasted well beyond that.”113 That crisis, however, was centered in the Eastern, not Western, sees.114 The West settled down, so much so that Pelikan can conclude that “the Chalcedon Christology set the terms for the theology and devotion of the Latin church at least until the Reformation, and even then the various contending doctrines of the person of Christ vied with one another in their protestations of loyalty to Chalcedon.”115 As the West began its separate and distinct existence in the early Middle Ages the doctrine of the Incarnation was very much a part of its foundation. Western society saw God as the Word Incarnate who rescued humanity from its corruptibility, re-established the image and likeness of God within each person, and thus saved the entire cosmos by re-integrating humanity into it.116

Augustine Our discussion has not yet included the most important theologian of the Western world, Augustine, for the simple reason that Augustine was not involved in the conciliar politics we have been concentrating on. Moreover, Augustine was only occasionally drawn directly into the polemics surrounding the doctrinal heresies of the Trinity and Incarnation; he was focused, instead, on two major heresies that plagued the African church, Donatism and Pelagianism. Still, Augustine did make a contribution to the Western formulation of the Incarnation doctrine indirectly through his theology of the Trinity. The latter “provided the West with its own understanding of the mystery of the three persons akin to, yet independent of, the Platonism of Eastern Trinitarian thought.”117 The chief contribution of Augustine’s trinitarian theology rests in its anthropological insights, for there Augustine argues that all contemplation of God must start within the individual. “For God made man after His own image and likeness. Search then in thine own self, if haply the image of the Trinity bear not some vestige of the Trinity?” he asks.118 With this premise Augustine is set to answer unresolved issues inherent in Christology. Pelikan summarizes those questions. On the one hand, what made the incarnation of the divine Logos possible? How could the situation of man be described in a way that would not make it incongruous for the Second Person of the Trinity to take upon himself the very human nature that flesh was heir to? On the other hand, could the coming of the Logos into flesh be described in such a way as to make clear, indeed vivid, why it was necessary that he became incarnate? Without forgetting the wonder of creation and the dignity of incarnation, could the Christian doctrine of man also speak about the fall into sin and the need for salvation?119

This is Augustine’s task, to answer these remaining questions. His approach was deliberately not that of the Greek fathers.120 Augustine chose rather to discuss nature and grace, not hypostases,121 and illustrated his interpretation with the grand metaphor drawn from his understanding of human psychology. Every person’s individuality includes memory, understanding, and will. Every person is made in the image and likeness of God. Therefore, God must also possess something like our memory, understanding, and will. I do not say that the Father is memory, the Son understanding, and the Holy Ghost will.… I do not say that these things are to be equated by analogy as it were to the Holy Trinity, that is to say are arranged according to some exact rule of comparison. This I do not say. But what do I say? See, I have discovered in thee three things which are exhibited separately, whose operation is inseparable; and of these three every single name is produced by the three together; yet does this name belong not to the three but to some one of those three. In the Trinity, then, believe what thou canst not see, if in thyself thou hast heard, and seen, and retained it.122 In De Trinitate libri quindecim he restates his thesis. “We have also used the creation which God made to remind those who ask for reasons in such matters, that as far as they can they should descry his invisible things by understanding them through the things that are made,” Augustine writes, “so that through this, as a kind of mirror, as far as they can and if they can, they might perceive in our memory, understanding and will that God is a trinity.”123 Therefore, “Are not those who merely observe in their own minds what we have discussed and suggested, but those who see it precisely as an image, so that they can in some fashion refer what they see to that of which it is an image.”124 While this approach leads to numerous contributions to Christian anthropology and the theology of grace and to a growing distinction between Eastern and Western theology, it also includes previous theological stances concerning the relationship between the doctrines of the Incarnation and creation. Augustine states the connection as strongly as Athanasius. He establishes beyond doubt that “God is then diffused through all things,” not as a quality “but as the creative substance of the world which he governs and maintains.”125 Nothing is excepted. All creation is filled with the Word Incarnate. He explains further in De Trinitate. Because there is but one Word of God through which all things were made, which is unchanging truth, in which all things are primordinally and unchangingly together, not only those things that are in the whole of this creation now, but things that have been and will be; but there is a question of “have been” and “will be,” there they simply are; and all things there are life and all are one, and indeed there is there but one “one” and one life. 126 God’s presence in creation is presupposed in Augustine’s belief that humanity meets God in his creation. God is goodness itself, and he “made all things very good,” which means humanity can discover God’s goodness in his creation. “Ask the loveliness of the earth, ask the loveliness of the sea, ask the loveliness of the wide airy spaces, ask the loveliness of the sky, ask the order of the stars, ask the sun making the day light with its beams, ask the moon tempering the darkness of the night that follows, ask the living things which move in the waters

which tarry on the land, which fly in the air,” Augustine challenges. Ask anything, even ask humanity where “its loveliness comes from, and it will confess, from God, the Creator of loveliness.” The answers are clear: the whole world and its people are a means by which humanity is “able to understand and recognize God, the creator of the whole universe.” In short, people can and do arrive “at a cognition of God the Creator by means of the things which he created.”127 Of course, humanity can be corrupted, which according to Augustine, means “deprived of some good,” but “if they are deprived of all good, they will be absolutely nothing. Hence, as long as they exist, they are good. Therefore, whatsoever things exist are good.”128 It is important for us to realize how insistent Augustine was on this point, for all too often our textbook presentation of Augustine has downplayed his positive attitude towards the world and attributed to him instead a misleading “City of God equals good, City of Man equals bad” mentality. True, the City of Man is corruptible, but this is precisely why the Word not only created the universe but also became Incarnate: to become part of that universe. As Pelikan explains, for Augustine, “the reason the incarnation was necessary was that man had not merely done wrong—for this, repentance would have sufficed—but had fallen into a corruption, a transiency that threatened him with annihilation. As the agent of creation who had called man out of nothing, the Logos was also the one to rescue him from annihilation. This the Logos did by taking flesh.”129 By placing the Incarnation in the forefront of his theology, Augustine changes the natural theology and pantheism of the pagans into Christian theology.130 These most eminent heathen philosophers, who were able to behold “the invisible things of God by the things that are made; have yet, as is said of them ‘detained the truth of God in injustice,’ because they philosophized without a Mediator, that is, without the man Christ.”131 This is the legacy of Augustine, his insistence on meeting not just the deity in creation but on meeting Christ therein and thus the Trinity. Because “our heart is restless until it rests in you,”132 we have to know the world, for Christ the Word Incarnate reveals himself to us through the world. Admittedly, creation can also distract and “kept me far from you, those fair things which, if they were not in you, would not exist at all,” but “through grace and faith which you have given to me, which you have breathed into me by the incarnation of your Son” the Word Incarnate will show the way.133 As the patristic era drew to a close, the formulation of the doctrine of the Incarnation was set. How Western people reacted to this formula is the story of how the West became the West. Notes 1. Athanasius, De incarnatione Verbi Dei, 4, (SC #199) (Paris: Éditiones du Cerf, 2000); NPNF 4:38; PG 25, 416-76. See discussion in Luoma, Incarnation and Physics, pp.31-60, of his and Torrance’s interpretation of the relationship between creation and the Incarnation. Torrance holds that “creation hinges upon the homoousian,” a thesis which Luoma thinks is too extreme (p.44). John Macquarrie, Christian Theology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977), also maintains that creation and reconciliation “are not separable acts but only distinguishable aspects of one awe-inspiring movement of God”—his Incarnation (p.269).

2. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, vol.1: Emergence of the Christian Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 1:228. This is not to deny the interdependent nature of all Christian doctrines. 3. Macquarrie, Christian Theology, p.297. We must also remember how much more involved the average lay person was in theological subtleties than modern day counterparts. For example, Arius’s theology was summarized in his ditty and sung throughout the streets of the city. 4. The Commonitory of St. Vincent of Lerins, tr. T. Herbert Bindley (London: Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 1914), 23:54, 56 (pp.89-91). Also PL 50, 630-86. 5. W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), pp.13439. How and who defined the “church” at this early stage is much in question, and it becomes apparent as the history of that entity progresses that much of its analysis and labeling occurred after the fact. Still, Frend argues that throughout these centuries there always existed a “normative Christianity” to carry one tradition in unbroken continuity. 6. Most just dwindled away, while some such as the Marcionites, became a mainstay in Syrian monasticism (ibid., p.218) and provided a basis for the acceptance of Manichaeism in Mesopotamia. See U. Schmid, Marcion und sein Apostolos (Berlin: De Gruyer, 1995); and Jean Danièlou and Henri Marrou, The First Six Hundred Years, vol.1: The Christian Centuries, tr. Vincent Cronin (New York: Paulist Press, 1964; 2nd imprint, 1978), p.98. 7. For Aristides, see PG 20, 45-906; his is the earliest apology. Also see Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, tr. R. J. Deferrari (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993,1955), 4,3,2 (for Aristides); 4,3,1-2 (for Quadrales); and 4,27 (for Apollinaris). For Justin Martyr, see Apologies. Iustini martyris apologiae pro Christianis, ed. M. Marcovich (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1940). For Tatian, see J. Leblanc, “Le logos chez Tatian, Athénagore et Théophile,” Annales de philosophie chrétienne 149 (1905), 634-39. For Athenagoras, Writings, see ANF 2, 129-62. For Theophilo of Antioch, see To Autolyces, ed. R. M. Grant (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970). See Melito of Sardis, On Pascha, ed. S. G. Hall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). For Ireneus, see Adversus haereses, ANF 1, 315-578. 8. Danièlou and Marrou, First Six Hundred Years, 1:181. 9. Michael Schmaus, Dogma, 5 vols. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1971), 3:141. 10. The Ebionites’ belief in Christ as man and not God is usually bypassed, rightly or wrongly, as the first Christological debate because of its relationship with Judaism. Oscar Cullman, cited in Danièlou and Marrou, First Six Hundred Years, 1:57. 11. Cf. F. Loofs, Leitfaden zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte, 5th ed., (Halle-Salle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1950-53), 1:142-44. 12. Chapter 9 in Refutatio omnium haerasium, ed. M. Marcovich (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1986) provides a lengthy narration of the debate. Also in ANF 5:9-153. 13. See A. Brent, Hippolytus and the Roman Church in the Third Century (Leiden: Brill, 1995), and John Behr, The Way to Nicea (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001). Behr (p.138 n.1) argues against the term ‘dynamic monarchianism’(p.138 n1). 14. The Pastor of Hermas, Bk.3, Similitudes 5, ch.6, in ANF 2:35-36. 15. Many contemporary theologians see this process as on-going. See Debate Continued, ed. Goulder.

16. Refutatio author’s calls Zephysinus “an uninformed and shamefully corrupt man” (9:2) and Callistus “a man cunning in wickedness … impelled by restless ambition” (9:6). 17. Hippolytus, Contra Noetum, ed. R. Butterworth (London: Heythrop Monographs, 1977), 14. Also ANF 5:228. 18. The charge was ditheism. See Frend, Rise, p.345; and Behr, Way, 141-62. 19. Danièlou and Marrou, First Six Hundred Years, 1:153: “It is rare to find an example where the creative influence of a single man has played so clear a role. Tertullian endowed the African Church—and through it, the whole Latin Church—with a liturgical, theological, and ascetical vocabulary.” See E. Evans, “Tertullian’s Theological Terminology,” Church Quarterly 139 (1944/45), 56-77. 20. For discussion of the role of vocabulary in the development of doctrine, see Schmaus, Dogma, 3:139-49; W. Dürig, “Disciplina. Eine Studie zur Bedeutung des Wortes in der Sprache der Liturgie und der Väter,” Sacris Erudiri 4 (1952), 245-79; and W. G. Rusch, “Some Observations on Hilary of Poitiers’s Christological Language in the De Trinitate,” Studia Patristica 12 (1975), 261-64. 21. Tertullian, Adversus Praxean, 3, in ANF 3:599; Against Praxeas, ed. E. Evans (London: SPCK, 1948), 3. 22. Ibid, 1, in ibid., 3:597. 23. Ibid., 2, in ibid., 3:598. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid., 31, in ibid., 3:627. 26. Ibid., 3, in ibid., 3:599. 27. Ibid., 28, in ibid., 624-25. 28. Ibid., 29, in ibid., 3:625. 29. Tertullian was the first to use “person,” “trinity,” and the phrase “one substance in three persons.” See Gerald O’Collins, The Tripersonal God (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), pp.104-6. 30. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 5.3, in ANF 2:448. See also Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus, 2:10: “God, then, having His own Word internal within His own bowels, begat Him, emitting Him along with His own wisdom before all things. He had this Word as a helper in the things that were created by Him, and by Him He made all things.” 31. Irenaeus, Adversus haereses, 3.16.6, in ANF 1:442. 32. This treatise is really the second part of a single work Jerome refers to as Adversus gentes libri duos;” the first part is commonly referred to as Against the Heathen. The date is usually assumed to be ca. 318, before the Arian controversy, but some question this. See Charles Kannengresser, “Le texte court du De incarnatione athansien,” Recherches de science religieuse 52 (1964), 589-96; 53 (1965), 77-111. See PG 25, 95-198; NPNF 4:36-67. That the doctrines are central to Athanasius is vehemently argued by Torrance, although he maintains that Athanasius’s Incarnation-creation theological connection is not a continuation of the Hellenic idea of Logos but a reaction to it. See Thomas Torrance, “The Hermeneutics of Saint Athanasius,” Ekklēsiastikos Pharos 52:1 (1970), 446-68. See discussion of Torrance’s thought in James Ernest, The Bible in Athanasius of Alexandria (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2004), 13-18. For a review of Athanasian secondary literature, see ibid., 1-28. The great

divergence of opinion over Athanasius can perhaps be seen by comparing Torrance’s admiration with Timothy Barnes’s distain in Athanasius and Constantius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). Here (p.3) Barnes states that Athanasius “is a subtler and more skilful liar” than previous scholars acknowledge. 33. Athanasius, De incarnatione, 1.4, in NPNF 4:36. 34. Frances Young, with Andrew Teal, From Nicea to Chalcedon: A Guide to the Literature and Its Background, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), pp.70-72. 35. Athanasius, De incarnatione, 4.4 in NPNF 4:38. 36. Ibid., 5.1, in ibid. 37. Ibid., 6.8-10, in ibid., 4:39. 38. Ibid., 7:4,5, in ibid., 4:40. 39. Ibid., 54.3, in ibid., 4:65. The passage has spurred various intepretations throughout the centuries, but few today hold that Athanasius was advocating human deification. Rather, it is seen as Athanasius’s attempt to illustrate creatures’ participation in the Creator through the Word. 40. Ibid., 7.5, in ibid., 4:40. 41. Ibid., 8.1, in ibid. 42. Ibid., 11.1, in ibid., 4:42. 43. Ibid., 12.1 and 3, in ibid., 4:42-3. 44. Ibid., 14.7, in ibid., 4:44. 45. Ibid., 13.3-4, in ibid., 4:43. 46. Ibid., 13.7, in ibid. 47. Ibid., 16.3, in ibid., 4:45. 48. Ibid., 17.1, in ibid. 49. Ibid., 17.2, in ibid. 50. Ibid., 17.5, in ibid. 51. Colin Gunton, Father, Son and Holy Spirit (London: T & T Clark, 2003), p.99. 52. Ibid., 98. 53. See discussion in ibid., 32-57. 54. Ibid., p.38. 55. Young, From Nicea, p.62. Gunton, Father, p.58, call Arianism “perhaps the twentieth century’s favourite heresy, and is among the most appealing of them all.” 56. Pelikan, Christian Tradition, 1:226. 57. See ibid., 1:193. Athanasius, Orationes contra Arianos, 2.16-22, NPNF 4:357-93, PG 25, 247-410, is an exegesis of the passage. 58. The bulk of Arius’s beliefs are preserved only in Athanasius’s writings. See Orationes contra Arianos, 4:306-447, esp. 4:308-310; and PG 25, 247-410; Historia Arianorum, in NPNF 4:270-302; and De Synodis, NPNF 4:451-80, esp. 4:457-60. See also Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, 1.6, in NPNF 2:3-5. 59. See his letter to Alexander, 4, in Athanasius, De synodis, 16 in NPNF 4:458. Arius paraphrases Prov 8:22; Thalia can be viewed as a commentary on Prov 8:22-30. 60. Athanasius, Orationes, Discourse 2.19.47, in NPNF 4:374. 61. Ibid., 2.50, in ibid., 4:375.

62. Ibid., 2.49, in ibid. 63. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, 1:18, in NPNF 5:56. 64. Eusebius of Caesarea, Demonstratio Evangelica, 4.2, cited in Young, From Nicea, p.17. 65. Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism, 1, in NPNF 5:476. 66. Nemesius of Emesa, On the Nature of Man, in Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius of Emesa, ed. W. Telfer (London: Library of Christian Classics, 1955), p.229. 67. Ibid., p.235. 68. See Werner Elert, Der Ausgang der altkirchlichen Christologie, ed. Wilhelm Maurer and Elisabeth Bergsträsser (Berlin: Lutherisches Verlagshaus, 1957). Quote is cited in Pelikan, Christian Tradition, 1:226. 69. Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. Edward Rochie Hardy and Cyril Richardson (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), p.26. 70. Sources, both primary and secondary, are abundant for a history of these councils. All of the ecumenical councils of the fourth and fifth centuries, with the exception of Nicea, have preserved a record of the debates leading up to their decrees, an addition to the decrees themselves. See C.J. Hefele –H. Leclerq, Histoire des Conciles (Paris: Letouzey, 1907-52). 71. Gregory of Nyssa, Great Catechism, 26-27, in NPNF 5:496. 72. Ibid., 27, in ibid., 5:497. 73. Gregory Nazianzen, Theological Oration, 2:8, in ibid., 7:291. 74. Ibid., 2:20, in ibid., 7:295-96. 75. Ibid., 2:21, in ibid., 7:296. 76. Ibid., 38:9, in ibid., 7:347. 77. Ibid., 38:10, in ibid., 7:347-48. 78. Ibid., 38:11, in ibid., 7:348. 79. Basil, Hexaemeron, Homily 9.2, in ibid., 8:102. See PG 29, 3-208. 80. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, 4:7,4, in ibid., 7:20-21. See PG 33, 3311180. 81. Ibid., 12:3, in ibid., 7:73. 82. Ibid., 12:5, in ibid., 7:73. 83. Ibid., 12:7-8, in ibid., 7:74. 84. Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History 9.1, in ibid., 2:419. See PG 67,844-1630. 85. Ibid. See discussion of Pulcheria and the Council of Ephesus in my Women and Spiritual Equality in Christian Tradition (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), pp.87-90. 86. Ibid., and Vasiliki Limberis, Divine Heiress (London: Routledge, 1994), pp.55 and 106. 87. Proclus, cited in Limberis, Divine Heiress, p.60. According to Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History, 9.1, in NPNF 2:419, “She provided zealously and wisely that religion might not be endangered by the innovation of spurious dogmas.” 88. Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, 7.32, in NPNF 2:170-71. See PG 67, 29-872. 89. Danielou and Marrou, First Six Hundred Years, 1:344. See J. Schäfer, “Die Christologie des hl. Cyrillus von Alexandrien in der römischen Kirche, 432-534,” Theologische Quartalschrift (1895), 421-47.

90. Cyril of Alexandria, Epistle to the Egyptian Monks, 4, cited in ibid. 91. Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, 7.32, in NPNF 2:171; “It is therefore obvious that Nestorius had very little acquaintance with the treatises of the ancients.” 92. See Frend, Rise, pp.757-58. Henry Chadwick, “Eucharist and Christology in the Nestorian Controversy,” Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 2 (October 1951), 155, writes: “The Eucharist is central for the comprehension of Cyril’s religion.... Here is the heart of Cyril’s faith, the dynamic which imparted such intense religious fervor to his monophysite monks. Every Eucharist is a reincarnation of the Logos.” See chapter 5 below. 93. Third Letter of Cyril to Nestorius, in Christology, ed. Hardy, 350-51. See. G. Joussard, “Saint Cyrille d’Alexandrie et le schéma de l’Incarnation ‘Verbe-chair,’” Recherches de science religieuse 44 (1956), 234-42. 94. Theodore of Mopsuestia, In epistolam Pauli ad Colossenses commentarii fragmenta, PG 66, 926-32; De incarnatione libri quindecim, PG 66, 969-94; and E. Dekkers, “Un nouveau manuscript du commentaire de Théodore de Mopsueste aux Épîtres de Saint Paul,” Sacris Erudiri 6 (1954), 429-33. 95. Ibid. 96. Third Letter of Cyril to Nestorius, in Christology, ed. Hardy, 352. 97. Robert H. McGlynn, The Incarnation in the Sermons of Saint Peter Chrysologus (Mundelein, IL: Saint Mary of the Lake Seminary, 1956), p.13. 98. Ibid., p. 125. 99. PL 52, 584 (sermon 143). 100. Commonitory, 15:40 (pp. 65-68). For his views on the Incarnation doctrine see J Madoz, “Los excepta Vincenté Lir. en la controversia adoptionista,” Revista española de teologia 13 (1953), 475-83. 101. Proclus, cited in Limberis, Divine, 55-56. 102. First Letter of Nestorius to Celestine, in Christology, ed. Hardy, p.348. 103. Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate, 8.13, in NPNF 9:141. See PL 10, 9-472. 104. Ibid., 8.16, in ibid., 9:142. 105. Ibid., 8.14, in ibid. 106. Theodore of Mopsuestia, Catechetical Homilies, 15.10, cited in Pelikan, Christian Tradition, 1:237. 107. Ibid., 16.36, in ibid. 108. Cyril of Alexandria, On the Incarnation of the Only Begotten, cited in ibid. 109. Cyril of Alexandria, Letter 17.12, in St. Cyril of Alexandria Letters 1-50, tr. John I. McEnerney (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1985), pp.86-87. Right before he ties the Incarnation and Eucharist together, Cyril connects the Incarnation with creation: “But when he was visible, and still remained an infant in swaddling clothes, and in the bosom of the Virgin who bore him, he filled the whole of creation as God, and was coruler with the one who begot him.” Ibid., 17.12, in ibid., p.83. 110. Cyril of Alexandria, That Christ is One (Oxford: Library of Fathers of the Church, 1881); PG 75, 1253-1361; Pelikan, Christian Tradition, 1:238. 111. Canon 7, Council of Ephesus, in NPNF, 2nd series, 14:231. 112. The Tome of Leo, 2, Letter 28, NPNF, 12:38. Hardy, Christology, p.359, calls this

“the one representative of Western theology in the official documents of the Ecumenical Councils.” 113. Danielou and Marrou, First Six Hundred Years, 1:353. 114. Again, imperial politics played a huge role in the continued conflict. The emperor at one point imposed his theology on the army, and the people responded by participating in the famous circus competition between the Blues and the Greens. 115. Pelikan, Christian Tradition, 1:266. 116. Pelikan’s influence on my presentation here can readily be seen in its terminology. See, in particular, ibid., 234-35; and 284-85. 117. Frend, Rise, pp.672-73. 118. Augustine, Sermones de Scripturio Novi Testamenti, sermon 2, in NPNF, 7:263. 119. Pelikan, Christian Tradition, 1:278-79. 120. In Colin Gunton’s opinion, rejection of the Cappodocians’ theology by Augustine was in error. See his The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991). 121. Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, repr. 1978), p. 235. 122. Augustine, Sermones, sermon 52, in NPNF, 7:411. See also Augustine’s better known explanation in Confessions, ed. James O’Donnell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) 13.11, and his discussion in ibid., 13.5. 123. Works of Augustine, vol. 5: The Trinity, tr. Edmund Hill, ed. John Rotelle (Brooklyn, NY: New City Press, 1991), 15:39. 124. Ibid., 15:44. 125. Augustine, Letter 187, 4.14, in The Works of Saint Augustine, tr. Roland Teske (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2004), Part 2: Letters, vol.3: Letters 156-210, 4.14. 126. Augustine, Trinity, 4:3. 127. Augustine, Sermones, sermon 24, in NPNF, 7:365. 128. Confessions, 7.12. 129. Pelikan, Christian Tradition, 1:285. 130. Still, Augustine maintains that natural theology can bring us to God the Creator: “For this name of God by which He is called could not but be known to every creature, even to all nations, before they believed in Christ. For such is the power of true Godhead that it cannot be altogether and utterly hidden for the rational creature, once it makes use of its reason. For, with the exception of a few in whom nature is excessively depraved, the whole human race confesses God to be the author of the world.” In Joannis Evangelium tractatus, 106, 4, in Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel According to St. John, tr. John Gibb, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1873-74). Also see Augustine, Trinity, 15:6: “The universal nature of things which surrounds us, to which we too belong, proclaims that it has a most excellent founder, who has given us a mind and natural reason.” 131. Augustine, Trinity, 13:24. 132. Confessions, 1.1. 133. Ibid., 19.27.

Chapter Three Early Reflections on the Doctrine and Its Impact Torrance believes that Christians of late antiquity “reconstructed the cultural foundations in philosophy and science upon which the pagan picture of God and the cosmos rested” so “that the Gospel could take deep root” within society.1 Furthermore, he maintains that “it was particularly the Christian teaching about the Incarnation (including the passion and resurrection of Christ) in its relation to the creation… that forced [the Church] to develop an ordered outlook of a distinctively Christian orientation upon the whole relation of God to the universe.” Ultimately this resulted in the formation of a new culture subsequently called the West.2 Here we examine some of those areas where reflection on the doctrine acted as an agent of change.

A New Society Tertullian, as noted already, is the first significant Western theologian; he is also one of the first theologians to argue that the doctrine of the Incarnation mandated a break with the ancient Mediterranean civilization. In a study of the relationship between Christianity and culture, theologian H. Richard Niebuhr popularized the proposal that Tertullian was “the greatest representative in early Christianity of the ‘Christ-against-culture’ type.”3 Niebuhr was quick to add, though, that Tertullian’s problem was specifically with human culture where “sin chiefly resides,” not with the divinely created world.4 This distinction allows Tertullian to have a positive attitude toward creation, for as he says, “nature should be to us an object of reverence.”5 It likewise gives Tertullian motivation to embrace a new culture, one more compatible with the goodness of creation, and to reject any culture that was not. In Apology, Tertullian explains his stance at length. We are not Indian Brahmins or Gymnosophists, who dwell in woods and exile themselves from ordinary human life. We do not forget the debt of gratitude we owe to God, our Lord and Creator; we reject no creature of His hands, though certainly we exercise restraint upon ourselves, lest of any gift of His we make an immoderate or sinful use. So we sojourn with you in the world, abjuring neither forum, nor shambles, nor both, nor booth, nor workshop, nor inn, nor weekly market, not any other places of commerce. We sail with you and fight with you, and till the ground with you; and in like manner we unite with you in your traffickings—even in the various arts we make public property of our works for you benefit.… [Still,] I do not frequent your religious ceremonies...I do not at the Saturnalia bathe myself at dawn...I do not recline in public at the feast of Bacchus.6 Until quite recently, most analyses have followed Niebuhr’s critique of Tertullian’s theology and focused on his rejection of contemporary culture; some argue that Tertullian’s condemnation of pagan culture included all human culture. Tertullian’s Apology, however,

contradicts this conclusion repeatedly. His first priority is to establish a new culture where Christianity can thrive, not to eliminate culture. This, after all, is what Christ did. The Son became Incarnate “not with the object of bringing boors and savages by the dread of multitudinous gods, whose favour must be won, into some civilization, as was the case with Numa; but as one aimed to enlighten men already civilized, and under illusions from their very culture, that they might come to the knowledge of truth.” Once acquainted with Christianity, humans have to make a decision concerning culture. Simply put, “if it be of such a nature that acceptance of it transforms a man, and makes him truly good, there is implied in that the duty of renouncing what is opposed to it as false.”7 One of the first things to renounce is any element in culture that prohibits or even inhibits human transformation. Roman prohibition of Christian worship is an example. “In fact, we alone are prevented having religion of our own,” Tertullian argues. “We are excluded from the rights and privileges of Romans, because we do not worship the gods of Rome.” The remedy is to form a new society with its own rights and privileges.8 The centerpiece in Tertullian’s new society is the incarnational nature of communication. According to Leupin, under Tertullian’s guidance, “a completely unique relation between writing and reference now begins.”9 From Tertullian onward, Western religious writing is seen as the incarnation, metaphorically but also literally, of Christ. The narration is consubstantial with the thing itself, or, as Tertullian says in a treatise on the Incarnation, “what is written cannot but have been.”10 The New Testament is the experience itself and the depository of experience; it is truth and the representation of truth. Tertullian elevates Christian writing to a status and dignity far more exulted than in ancient Mediterranean culture. He does this in part by placing the defense of Christianity’s veracity squarely on the Word and on the written word: “We have made a full exhibition of our case; and we have shown you how we are able to prove that our statement is correct, from the trustworthiness, I mean, and antiquity of our sacred writings,’ he proclaims in Apology. “Who will venture to undertake our refutation; not with skill of words, but as we have managed our demonstration, on the basis of reality?”11 Tertullian also changes the essence of ancient rhetoric, thereby opening the door to the use of rhetoric within a Christian culture. This is accomplished through the transformation, not condemnation, of ancient rhetorical thought. Tertullian finds value in ancient literature—he argues in The Shows that “our investigations must go back to a remote antiquity, and our authorities be none other than books of heathen literature”—but he does alter its very purpose.12 No longer is rhetoric’s goal to persuade, as the ancient authors proposed; the goal is now to present Truth, as manifested through Christ. “Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further belief.”13 Still, because “when He is found, it is difficult to make Him known to all,”14 Christians must establish ways consistent with their beliefs to communicate “all the Lord’s sayings.”15 So Tertullian creates a way by claiming rhetoric for Christianity. Leupin contends that Tertullian’s On the Apparel of Women is “a point-by-point counter-text to the pagan vision of ornament, for example, as it appears in Ovid’s The Art of Love.” In the latter Ovid “establishes

the dominance of rhetoric and of adornment as successful illusion,” while in the former Tertullian presents “the exact antipode of this submission of the body and writing to appearances.”16 The purpose of Tertullian’s attack on the falseness of dyed hair, use of makeup, and the like is to reveal the worthlessness of illusion and to offer a Christian substitute: that which truly is. Hence he urges: “How unworthy the Christian name, to wear a fictitious face, you, on whom simplicity in every form is enjoined!—to lie in your appearance, you, to whom lying with the tongue is not lawful!”17 In all things Christians must be and appear the same; to appear other than what is is to be an illusion, a falsehood. Throughout Tertullian is arguing not that appearance is inconsequential, or that comeliness “be censured as being a bodily happiness,” rather only that appearance must be one and the same with what is true.18 What is good, moreover, provided it be true and full, loves not darkness: it joys in being seen, and exults over the very pointings which are made at it. To Christian modesty it is not enough to be so, but to seem so too. For so great ought its plentitude to be, that it may flow out from the mind to the garb, as it were, upon its own furniture.… The angels who are to carry us are now being awaited! Do you go forth to meet them already arrayed in the cosmetics and ornaments of prophets and apostles; drawing your whiteness from simplicity, your ruddy hue from modesty; painting your eyes with bashfulness, and your mouth with silence; implanting in your ears the words of God; fitting on your necks the yoke of Christ.19 Again, Tertullian is not negating the value of appearance. To the contrary, he is highlighting its importance by exerting all his energy toward Christianizing it, using the doctrine of the Incarnation as his model. As the Word Incarnate re-created humanity in the image of God, so too must Christians re-create rhetoric in the image of Truth. As Leupin summarizes, “Tertullian wishes not to destroy rhetoric but to alter its character by linking it with an ethic, an aesthetic, and a philosophy that differ radically from the model of pagan oratory. Rhetoric must now be modeled on a conceptual and incarnate cause.… The writing of the body, the signifier of desire, must bow to this one cause.”20 Tertullian tends to a similar task in The Shows; here he rescues theatrical representation from condemnation and exclusion by converting ancient forms to Christian forms according to the model of the Incarnation. He admits rejection of ancient shows “is not clearly and in words imposed upon God’s servants,” but it is implied that “every show is an assembly of the wicked.”21 Originally, “the theatre was properly a temple of Venus,”21 a place “where you have rivalry, you have rage, bitterness, wrath, and grief, with all bad things which flow from them—the whole entirely out of keeping with the religion of Christ.”22 As such a spectator cannot see these shows without being affected by them in a negative way: “We are debarred from every kind of spectacle, and especially from the circus, where such excitement presides as in its proper element.”23 Where such anti-Christian sentiments do not prevail, however, there is no reason to condemn the representation. In short, Tertullian does not have a problem with theatrical representation, only with what is being represented. Change the message and the medium is acceptable. After all, “what you reject in deed, you are not to bid welcome to in word.”24 Likewise, what you embrace in deeds should be welcome in words.

Even as things are, if your thought is to spend this period of existence in enjoyments, how are you so ungrateful as to reckon insufficient, as not thankfully to recognize the many and exquisite pleasures God has bestowed on you?… What nobler than to tread under foot the gods of the nations—to exorcise evil spirits—to perform cures—to seek divine revealings—to live to God? These are the pleasures, these the spectacles that befit Christian men—holy, everlasting, free. Count of these as your circus games, fix your eyes on the courses of the world, the gliding seasons, reckon up the periods of time.… If the literature of the stage delights you, we have literature in abundance of our own—plenty of verses, sentences, songs, proverbs; and these are not fabulous, but true; not tricks of art, but plain realities.25 For those who might still hesitate, believing that there are not enough dramatic elements in Christian theatre, Tertullian asks, “Would you have something of blood, too? You have Christ’s.”26 As the treatise draws to a conclusion, Tertullian reminds Christians that the message of Christianity is so ennobling that it transforms everything it becomes incarnate in. “But what are the things which eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and which have not so much as dimly dawned upon the human heart? Whatever they are, they are nobler, I believe, than circus, and both theatres, and every race-course.”27 Athanasius’s new society begins with rejecting Greek natural theology.28 He admits that some might find God through creation, but “this was not a sure means.”29 He also admits that “the philosophers of the Greeks have composed many works with plausibility and verbal skill,” but even with all their rational sophistication their knowledge is incomplete. How can a creature, after all, “be rational without knowing the Word (and Reason) of the Father?”30 Only “the Word of God, most strange fact, teaching in meaner language, has cast into the shade the choice sophists.”31 Greek knowledge is mortal and limited, but true knowledge is immortal and eternal. Truth is absolute, not relative.32 But as to Gentile wisdom, and the sounding pretensions of the philosophers, I think none can need our argument, since the wonder is before the eyes of all, that while wise among the Greeks had written so much, and were unable to persuade even a few from their own neighbourhood, concerning immortality and a virtuous life, Christ alone, by ordinary language, and by men not clever with the tongue, has throughout all the world persuaded whole churches full of men to despise death, and to mind the things of immortality; to overlook what is temporal and to turn their eyes to what is eternal.33 This is Athanasius’s new society. In that society “an honorable life is needed, and a pure soul, and that virtue which is according to Christ; so that the intellect guiding its path by it, may be able to attain what it desires, and to comprehend it.”34

The Individual and Language in Augustine Other cultural innovations are introduced by Augustine. They too are the result of contemplation on the doctrine of the Incarnation. The most popular and widely read of

Augustine’s works, Confessions, is “written entirely within the logic of the Christian epistemological break, yet they also open new territory,” Leupin claims, because “the Incarnation is the model that the Confessions take at the beginning in posing the questions, ‘Quis ego? Qualis ego?’ Like the Incarnation, such questions represent a discursive individuation of the subject. The response, like its model, is also the story of a life.”35 Augustine is careful to emphasis that such a narrative has many layers of meaning, not all of which can be comprehended by its readers; the same is true of the doctrine of the Incarnation. A person’s freedom to accept or reject, acknowledge or ignore, be it the doctrine of the Incarnation or Augustine’s Confession, is always present. Whereas Truth is absolute, there is always “diversity of true opinions” about the absolute.36 Herein lies Augustine’s break with the classical past. The individual is given a freedom from and power over the authority of culture that can never be taken away, because it is part of a person’s essence, an essence created by God. Truth is not only an abstraction; it is made concrete by the Word Incarnate physically embodying it as an individual. Hence, truth is always absolute (the Godhead) and always particular (the Word Incarnate). Augustine applies this to literature. Good literature contains absolute truth, but this truth is particularized—it has physicality, is made incarnate—by the particular author whose expression of that truth is open to interpretation.37 This dual nature of the written word is responsible for “many truths that occur to investigators as these words are interpreted in different ways.”38 Augustine organizes this confusion into “two types of disagreement.… One concerns the truth of things, the other is argument about the intention of the speaker.”39 Concerning truth, Augustine relies on God, but concerning interpretation, Augustine turns to the individual. “Now, Lord, I confess to you in writing,” Augustine declares. “Let him read it who wants to, let him interpret it as he wants.”40 He explains again at greater length. So when one man says, “He meant what I say,” and another, “No, what I say,” I deem that I speak more reverently when I say, “Why not rather as both, if both be true?” If there is a third, and a fourth, and any other truth that any man sees in these words, why may we not believe that Moses saw all these truths? For through him the one God has adopted the sacred writings to many men’s interpretations, wherein will be seen things true and also diverse. Surely I myself —and I speak this fearlessly from my heart—if I were to write anything for the summit of authority, I would prefer to write in such manner that my words would sound forth the portion of truth each man could take from these writings, rather than to put down one true opinion so obviously that it would exclude all others, wherein there was no falsity to offend me.41 Those more familiar with the negative stereotype of medieval culture being unforgivingly univocal may at first find it hard to accept how insistent Augustine (who, we must emphasize yet again, influenced medieval society more than any other thinker) is that diversity of opinion is welcomed. “What harm comes to me, if various meanings may be found in these words, all of which are true? What harm comes to me, I say, if I think differently than another thinks as to what he who wrote these words thought?” Such intellectual activity is healthy. Indeed, it is at the heart of Augustine’s own intellectual strivings. We hear this in his ruminations about how differently he would have written Genesis. “Had I then been Moses,” he hypothesizes, “I

should have wished, if I had then been what he was and had been enjoined by you to write the book of Genesis, that such power of eloquence be given to me, and such ways to fashion words that not even they who cannot yet understand how God creates things would reject my words as beyond their powers; while they who can already understand, no matter what true interpretation they have arrived at in their thought, would not find it passed over in your servant’s few words.”42 Christianity does not stifle rational independence and diversity but encourages it. One can hear Augustine’s frustration as he asks again: “Therefore, while every man tries to understand in Holy Scripture what the author understood therein, what wrong is there if anyone understand what you, O light of all truthful minds, reveal to him as true, even if the author he reads did not understand this, since he also understood a truth, though not this truth.”43 Another innovation Augustine promoted was a theory of language rooted in the doctrine of the Incarnation.44 In this instance there is reciprocity; language helps him comprehend the Incarnation, and the Incarnation helps him understand language. Words are, according to Augustine, simply “signs of things” that people use to communicate meaning.45 “Already at the close of my infancy I looked for signs by which I could make known my meanings to others,” Augustine tells us. “But I myself, with that mind which you, my God, gave me, wished by means of various cries and sounds and movements of my limbs to express my heart’s feelings.” Of utmost importance is the fact that language can be a representation of a non-physical reality, “made by change of countenance, nods, movements of the eyes and other bodily members, and sounds of the voice, which indicate the affections of the mind in seeking, possessing, rejecting, or avoiding things.” Only after these internal non-tangible feelings are clothed in the physicality of words is it possible for a person to be fully alive: “When my mouth had become accustomed to these signs, I expressed by means of them my own wishes. Thus to those among whom I was I communicated the signs of what I wished to express. I entered more deeply into the stormy society of human life.”46 Words are thus present and absent, physical and nonphysical, all at the same time. Words transcend any given situation even as they are immanent. They are immanent signs that point to transcendent reality; words are incarnational. If they do not point to a thing, then they are “a mere sound,” incapable of communicating any thing. “From words, then, we learn only words—rather, the sound and noise of the words. If things that aren’t signs can’t be words, then although I have already heard a word, I don’t know that it is a word until I know that it signifies. Therefore, the knowledge of words is made complete once the things are known;” so it is with the Incarnation.47 James Smith summarizes it thus: The Incarnation is precisely an immanent sign of transcendence—God appearing in the flesh. Thus it is a structure of both presence and absence: present in the flesh, yet referring beyond, the Incarnation—as the signum exemplum—retains the structural incompleteness of the sign which is constitutive of language, for to constitute God-man as only man is to idolize the body, failing to constitute it as a manifestation of the divine. Divinity, while it cannot be reduced to this body, is nevertheless enfleshed in divinity and humanity, finitude and the Infinite. This is also why, for Augustine, all signs function as mediators: they are precisely that which both appear and at the same time maintain what they refer to in their transcendence. By referring or pointing to what is other than themselves, signs make knowledge of transcendence possible.”48

The Fine Arts Tertullian and Augustine recognize the impact the Word Incarnate has on human verbal and written communication. Words are incarnational and make knowledge of God possible; art is wonderfully suited to assist in that communication. It is able to make the transcendent physically and emotionally present while still being absent. It is this paradoxical nature of the Incarnation that so many early medieval thinkers were struck by. “The Son of Man and the Son of God, therefore, dearly beloved, then attained a more excellent and holier fame, when He betook himself back to the glory of the Father’s majesty, and in an ineffable manner began to be nearer to the Father in respect of His Godhead, after having become farther away in respect of His manhood,” Leo I explains.49 Aelfric echoes this thought centuries later, telling us that Christ ascended “to heaven with the body that he received on earth, but through his divine power he is both here and there.”50 So too is art both here and there, and the first Western Christians are quick to grasp that this similarity makes art a particularly appropriate mode of communicate for the truths of the doctrine. In the effort to comprehend the nature of the Incarnation, art is a ready aid, easily available for those who wish to penetrate the mystery of this ultimate paradox. The Incarnation provides justification for art in this fledgling society; certainly, it inspires it. The desire “to show the invisible by means of the visible,” as Gregory the Great says, is at the foundation of Western art even to this day.51 Many scholars claim even more. Nineteenth-century historian B. F. Westcott provocatively points to the revolutionary effect of the doctrine on art, stating that “it is impossible that the facts of the Incarnation and Resurrection can leave Art in the same position as before.” The doctrine of the Incarnation forces people to see themselves and creation in a new light, and, hence, “the embodiment of thought and feeling through outward things must assume a new character when it is known not only that Creation is the expression of the will of God and in its essence ‘very good,’ but also that in humanity it has been taken into personal fellowship with the Word.”52 Aidan Nichols writes that “the rise of a Christian art can be seen as the most natural consequence of the central Christian facts,” chiefly, the doctrine of the Incarnation.53 Nichols reflects further, arguing that the doctrine of the Incarnation presents “a vision of the universe so positive as to satisfy our deepest desire for security and meaning.”54 Thus, “Christian art began not as a speculation but as a thoroughly intelligible impulse” roused by the doctrine of the Incarnation.55 Pelikan claims that because of the doctrine of the Incarnation, the visual is “rehabilitated, rescued from the service of idols, and restored to the worship of one.”56 The claim is supported by Bede: “The Lord ascended upon a swift cloud so that when he entered Egypt he might overturn its idols, when the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”57 Pelikan also notes that in the course of fourth-century discussions on the doctrine of the Incarnation “the development of Christian art had also come to correspond with this theological development.”58 Archaeologist Giovanni de Rossi believes that it was more than mere correspondence between art and theology; he argues that early Western art was produced specifically to make visible the invisible divinity of the Word Incarnate.59 Art historians turn to specific examples to support their conclusions. Westcott offers the art

of the catacombs as early evidence that Christians recognized the implications of the Incarnation even before the doctrine was fully defined.60 F. van der Meer uses the walls of the Basicilia of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome to vindicate his conclusion, that the theology of the Incarnation informed early Christian art.61 Nichols turns to portraits and the art of the relic cult.62 Other examples are readily available. Besides the Roman catacombs, perhaps the best preserved examples of the art inspired by the doctrine can be found in the buildings of Ravenna. Here the richness of creation and the generosity of the Incarnation are portrayed in every nook and cranny of their structures. Ravenna also allows us to see how Christian art progresses as the church’s understanding of the doctrine progresses. For example, in catacomb art generated before the great ecclesiastical debates on the Incarnation, the Good Shepherd is typically portrayed as a rustic man with an unassuming tunic and stick. In the post-Nicene art of the Ravenna mausoleum of Gallia Placidia the Good Shepherd is now a divine figure, complete with a golden nimbus, tunic, and cross, and a purple mantle. The setting, however, is filled with reminders that this divine shepherd is also immanent in creation: graceful sheep, shrubs dotting the landscape, a restful blue sky, and sturdy rocks surround the beardless, youthful shepherd as he caresses one of the sheep as he watches the flock. The divine and the human are represented in their true paradoxical nature. Elsewhere in the mausoleum this message is repeated. Exquisite doves drink from a basin, graceful flowers stand in decorative planters, and stags quench their thirst amidst a series of mosaics portraying the central act of redemption: The Word Incarnate. The images are a near perfect representation of creation and Creator. The art itself is likewise representative of the Incarnation, for it presents physical, visible images that direct the viewer to invisible realities, much as the Word becomes visible in order to direct humanity to the invisibility of divinity.63 Interestingly, Ravenna also gives us a view of art not informed by the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation, for it is also host to the Baptistery of the Arians. Build by the Arian emperor Theodoric, its dome (the only surviving mosaic) is a close duplication of an older Ravenna orthodox baptistery, the Neonian Baptistery, with a major exception: its interpretation of the Incarnation is Arian. In the center medallion of both domes John the Baptist stands beside the River Jordan where Jesus is immersed, his genitals, and therefore his humanity, plainly visible. In the orthodox dome John the Baptist pours water on Jesus’ head with a paten—the plate used from the earliest Christian times to receive the Body of Christ. In portraying the divinity of Jesus, however, blatant discrepancies are found. In the orthodox dome Jesus’ head is surrounded by a pronounced and color-contrasting nimbus. John the Baptist holds a regal, jewel-encrusted cross in one hand, well above even the dove over Jesus’ head. None of these images of divinity are present in the Arian dome. There John the Baptist carries a plain shepherd’s staff in one hand, and his other hand is simply touching the hair of Jesus. The nimbus surrounding Jesus’ head is one thin red line, barely visible, and in great contrast to the strikingly vivid halos on the apostles who encircle the medallion. The paradoxical nature of the Incarnation—the human and the divine, present yet absent—is not portrayed in the Arian dome. Early medieval Western peoples’ awareness of the incarnational role art plays in society is repeatedly documented in the written sources. Augustine tells us how images of Jesus capture the essence of the doctrine of the Incarnation and that “the physical face of the Lord is pictured

with infinite variety by countless imaginations.” It is not “in the least relevant to salvation what our imaginations picture him like, which is probably quite different from reality.… What does matter is that we think of him specifically as a man” as well as God, for that is the core belief in the doctrine of the Incarnation.64 As the Gospels present different yet complementary views of Christ, so too should images. The only constant is that the image is informed by the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation: Christ’s humanity and divinity must both be represented. The Sixth Ecumenical Council solidified this requirement in its canons by insisting that the doctrine of the Incarnation mandates such portrayal. In order, therefore, that “that which is perfect” may be delineated to the eyes of all, at least in coloured expression, we decree that the figure in human form of the Lamb who taketh away the sin of the world, Christ our God, be henceforth exhibited in images, instead of the ancient lamb, so that all may understand by means of it the depths of the humiliation of the Word of God, and that we may recall to our memory his conversation in the flesh, his passion and salutary death, and his redemption which was wrought for the whole world.65 We have already cited Gregory the Great’s endorsement of using human art to reach the divine. He is aware of the line that separates the two: “We know that you do not ask for the image of our Saviour in order to worship it as God, but so that, by remembering the Son of God, you may grow in love for him whose image you wish to see.”66 As long as that distinction is remembered, art has great potential. In fact, one can “recall to memory the Son of God by the picture as if by Scripture.”67 Such sentiments are particularly pertinent, for most scholars believe Gregory’s opinion on art to be the basis for most medieval art.68 It is also likely that the attitude helped the West avert the bitter art controversies that plagued the Eastern world during the same time. Gregory is clear on the distinction between idol and image, on what the purpose of an image is, and on the fact that icons are to be encouraged. “Your request [for images] pleases us greatly, since you seek with all your heart and all intentness Him, whose picture you wish to have before your eyes, so that, being so accustomed to the daily corporeal sight, when you see an image of Him you are inflamed in your soul with love for Him whose picture you wish to see,” he wrote to the hermit Secundinus. “We do not prostrate ourselves before [the picture] as if before God but we adore the one whom, through the picture, we remember as born, suffering and seated on the throne.”69 By the time of Bede we see this principle firmly entrenched. In his vita of Benedict Bischop, Bede enumerates the “spiritual treasures” that Benedict obtained for his monastery in his travels. “In the first place he returned with a great mass of books of every sort. Secondly, he brought back an abundant supply of relics;” and, thirdly, he brought back the chief chanter of St. Peter’s to be choirmaster. Benedict, we can see, is well aware of how necessary the things of creation and creatures are to attaining union with the divine. He also brought back many holy pictures: … a painting of the Mother of God, the Blessed Mary ever-Virgin, and one of each of the twelve apostles… pictures of incidents in the gospels with which he decorated the south wall, and scenes from St. John’s vision of the apocalypse for the north wall. Thus all who entered

the church, even those who could not read, were able, whichever way they looked, to contemplate the dear face of Christ and His saints, even if only a picture, to put themselves firmly in mind of the Lord’s Incarnation.70 Hymns are another cultural form impacted by the doctrine of the Incarnation. By comparing ante-Nicene hymns with post-Nicene hymns we are able to conclude, in the words of Daniel Liderbach, that after the Council “there was a significant turning point in the development of the character of Christian hymns.”71 In ancient Mediterranean culture hymns to deities were vehicles for praise and confession, but the new Christian society made them vehicles for rational discourse. Many scholars go so far as to declare that the first Western hymns appeared in the fourth century only after Christianity declared its independence from its Jewish and pagan forerunners.72 The earliest Christian hymns have been preserved in the New Testament. Most are not familiar to us today as hymns, but they were originally anthems used in primitive church services: Phil 2:6-11; 1 Peter 2:22-25; 1 Tim 3:16; Col 1:15-20; Jn 1:1-14; Heb 1:3; Lk 1:4655; 68-79; and 2:29-32. These hymns suggest, rather than declare, that Jesus is both divine and human. Phrases like “He is the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15) are somewhat ambiguous and were of little use during the Christological debates of the fourth century. Some hymns, such as Phil 2:6-11, were probably sung at Eucharistic services before they were included in the canon of the New Testament. That congregations considered such verses as “He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature” (Heb 1:3) and “although He existed in the form of God” (Phil 2:6) to be definitive statements on the union of the divine and human in the person of Jesus is highly unlikely. One may say the same about the Great Alleluia, probably the very first hymn of the primitive church.73 Other non-scriptural hymns have survived. One second-century hymn (often attributed to Clement of Alexandria but may have been an earlier hymn he simply recorded) repeats the same themes as the scriptural hymns.74 It begins by stating its purpose: “Thy simple children bring/ In one that they may sing/ In solemn lays/ Their hymns of praise/ With guileless lips to Christ their King.” Throughout Christ remains ambiguously human yet more than human. Metaphors of divinity and humanity are interchanged, but no definitive statement on the union of the divine and human is made: “almighty Word of the Father highest Lord,” “Lord of all time and space,” “Shepherd of the sheep reason-gifted,”75 The recently discovered Odes of Solomon paints the same picture. Christ is “the Most High in all his perfection,” but the author fails to declare unequivocally his full indivisible unity with the Father: “I took courage and became strong/ And captured the world,/ And it became mine for the glory of the Most High/ And of God my Father.”76 Hippolytus of Rome includes a victory song in his Easter homilies in which Christ’s humanity is directly declared (“God becomes man and man is raised up to the likeness of God”), but his divinity is less evident.77 In one ancient Eucharistic liturgy Christ’s divinity is hard to find. Instead, He is called a “sacrament” which “gives life” so that “in a new age loving kindness might again be granted to us.”78 In another Eucharistic liturgy Christ is “He who is in God and has no mother, has descended to earth and lived as though motherless,”79 thereby leaving open the question of Jesus’ full humanity.

Thus the pre-Nicean church dealt with the paradox of the Incarnation by singing hymns which glorified the humanity and the divinity of Christ in words which left the mystery undefined. They “avoided any effort to sort out and reconcile contradictory assertions” about the Incarnation and allowed the hymns to strain against one another, believing that the tension itself captured the essence of the paradox. As we near the crucial fourth century, however, heretical interpretations created the need for precise communication of the paradox, and hymnologists responded. Liturgical hymns become more concerned with analytical, direct expression of the doctrine. They become platforms for doctrinal statements. Gone are the equivocal statements of the early hymns; gone are ambiguous and emotional images.80 We see doctrinal clarity in the following orthodox hymn from the Christmas liturgy: “We confess with unshakeable faith/ that God, who was made man/and who was given birth by a Virgin./ Before all time he was begotten of an immeasurable Father;/now we adore him who became incarnate in a Virgin’s womb./He is the creator of all, himself remaining invisible and distinct from creation.”81 Thalia, on the other hand, is written by Arius. He appeals to reason, and his statements about the person of Christ are unambiguous. The hymn is a full-blown theological polemic. The Unbegun made the Son a beginning of things originated; And advanced Him as a Son to Himself by adoption. He has nothing proper to God in proper subsistence. For He is not equal, no, nor one in essence with Him.… Understand that the Monad was; but the Dyad was not, before it was in existence. It follows at once that, though the Son was not, the Father was God. Hence the Son, not being (for He existed at the will of the Father) is God Only-begotten And He is alien from either. Wisdom existed as Wisdom by the will of the Wise God. Hence He is conceived in numberless conceptions: Spirit, Power, Wisdom, God’s glory, Truth, Image, and Word. Understand that He is conceived to be Radiance and Light. One equal to the Son, the Superior is able to beget: But one more excellent, or superior, or greater, He is not able. At God’s will the Son is what and whatsoever He is. And when and since He was, from that time He has subsisted from God82 There is no room for doubt here. The Son “is not equal” to the Father nor of the same essence. Moreover, inferred in the statement that the Son cannot comprehend the Father is the belief that God cannot be comprehended by humans. That all of this was encased in a hymn highlights the recast nature of the hymns and their function. They are now vehicles for theological education. Doctrine is the message, and music is the medium. The generalized faith statements of early hymns have been replaced by specific rational statements explaining that faith. Thus, a new model for a new culture is adopted, and the old model of the ancient world becomes less common. Post-Nicene hymns clarify and teach, rather than merely confess and

praise. They still do some of the latter, but it is no longer it primary purpose. Now they expound doctrine. Te Deum is an excellent orthodox parallel to Arius’s Thalia. 83 Composed in the midst of the Christological debates, Te Deum’s opening lines address the old model’s requirement of praise and confession: “O God, we praise you!/ As Lord we confess you.” After the mention of praise from angels, apostles, prophets, and martyrs, and additional confessions of faith from the Church and the whole world, the hymn enters into the heart of its contemporary controversies. Its focus is the Trinity and includes a dogmatic statement about the Incarnation: “Throughout the world the holy Church acclaims you:/ Father, of majesty unbounded,/Your true and only Son, worthy of all worship,/ And the Holy Spirit, advocate and guide./ You, Christ, are the king of glory,/ The eternal Son of the Father./ When you became man to set us free/ You did not spurn the Virgin’s womb.”84 Awareness of the power of hymns to teach drove both the orthodox and unorthodox to write more didactic music. Ephraim the Syrian tells us that he was not the first to use hymns to teach the public; heretics before him frequently used hymns to disseminate their Christology. He reports that one heretic named Bardaisan “fashioned hymns, and joined them with tunes.85 Ephraim realized the persuasive power of these hymns, plagiarized the melodies, and inserted his own lyrics. “I have chanced upon a book of Bardaisan/ And I was troubled for an hour’s space,” he writes in one of his Nisibene hymns, so “I hastened to purge them/ With the goodly and pure reading/ Of the Scriptures of truth”86 and put the result to music. He even got a choir of nuns to sing them morning and evening in the churches, thereby repeatedly disseminating his theology to whole congregations at a time. Sozomen repeats this story in his Ecclesiastical History. He tells us that when Ephraim “perceived that the Syrians were charmed with the elegance of the diction and the rhythm of the melody, he became apprehensive, lest they should imbibe the same opinions.” Therefore he “composed similar poems in accordance with the doctrines of the Church” and substituted his lyrics for Harmonius.87 Ephraim fought other heresies through hymns. One might even claim that the nineteen hymns of his Nativity cycle are didactic treatises against heretical interpretations of the doctrine of the Incarnation, as, for example, is Hymn Fourteen: “For He was God in entering, and He was man in issuing.”88 His understanding of the paradoxical balance between the human and the divine inspires his lyrics: “You are the Son of the living [God] and the son of a mortal./ You are the Son of our creator, Lord, who established all through you,/ And you are also the son of Joseph the carpenter who learned from you.”89 A lyrical explanation of why the Incarnation was necessary is found in yet another hymn: “Let us give thanks to God who clothed Himself in the names of the body’s various parts:.../ We should realize that, had He not put on the names/ Of such things, it would not have been possible for Him/ To speak with us humans./ By means of what belongs to us did He draw close to us:/ He clothed Himself in language, so that He might clothe us/In His mode of life.”90 It is hard to over-emphasize the educational value these hymns had. Even when hymns are conceived among the elite, they flourish within the whole community. In many cases they survive because of their popularity among the people. They provide ample opportunity for indoctrination. This is not to say that these hymns only stimulate the intellect and not the emotions. To the contrary, Augustine tells us that they were quite emotional and that “with great

fervor the brethren sing together in voice and heart.” Augustine himself “wept the more at the singing of your hymns.” But he also notes that these stirring lyrics originated in controversies over the Incarnation, “since Justina, the mother of the boy king, Valentinian, had persecuted your man Ambrose in favor of her heresy, to which she had been seduced by the Arians.”91 Most often, however, the emotional component was secondary to the teaching component. Gregory Nazianzen, for instance, wrote numerous educational poems, and many were used as lyrics for hymns.92 Ambrose’s hymns are among the most popular of the era. Music historian Inge Milfull reminds us how innovative Ambrose’s hymns were: “They combined a new metre, the iambic dimeter, which Ambrose virtually invented, with striking imagery and popular appeal.” Furthermore, they were specifically composed “for the encouragement of the Catholic party, which was being persecuted by Arian heretics.”93 They still praised, but their chief purpose was didactic, as in Spendor paternae gloriae, when Ambrose prays “that our faith, like a fire, burn bright and hot and be unaffected by the poison of false doctrine.”94 While that particular hymn contains Ambrose’s most overt reference to Arianism, most of them have, in varying degrees of explicitness, didactic statements on the Incarnation.95 The same is true for the majority of hymns from the era. “O Christ come among men as source of light,/ your ineffable birth is before the beginning of time,” Synesius of Cyrene writes. “You have created the world and fixed the orbit of the stars;/ you sustain the axis of the earth, you save all mankind.”96 Many of Prudentius’s hymns are unmistakeable attacks of Arian’s heretical doctrine of the Incarnation.97 Hymns written well into the post-Chalcedon era continue to be based on this new model. Anatolius, a bishop who participated in the Council of Chalcedon, wrote approximately one hundred Christological, anti-Arian hymns.98 Venantius Fortunatus, perhaps the most renowned hymnist of the new West after Ambrose, uses the symbol of the cross as a pedagogical tool to expound his understanding of Incarnation theology. In his revered Vexilla Regis he acknowledges the irrationality of the cross, citing “the mystery of the cross on which the Creator of mankind made man, was raised on high to die.” In a memorable turn of phrase he then praises the cross: “O blessed tree, that with your arms support the Saviour of the world/ a balance for that flesh divine.”99 Fortunatus’s other hymns are equally as impressive and influential.100 All use the cross as a symbol of the doctrine, all speak to the Word Incarnate’s effect on creation, and some allude to the Eucharistic presence of the Incarnation in the present world. In Pange lingua, a hymn Thomas Aquinas re-popularized, Fortunatus emphasizes the humanity of “Christ, the world’s Redeemer ” and how “He endured the nails, the spitting,/ Vinegar, and spear, and reed,” 101 but elsewhere Fortunatus’s focus is explicitly on the orthodox definition of the doctrine: “Maker and Redeemer, life and health of all,/ Thou form heaven’s beholding human nature’s fall,/ Of the Father’s Godhead true and only Son,/ Manhood to deliver, manhood didst put on.”102 The doctrinal debates over the Incarnation at Nicea led to reflection on Mary and her role in the Incarnation at Ephesus and Chalcedon; so too do the hymns. Lines such as Ephraim’s “fire entered into the womb, put on the body and came forth”103 easily led to explicit statements about whose body it was: “Of all bosoms that held him, one bosom sufficed for

Him… that bosom of Mary.”104 In a hymn by Sedulius, Marian imagery comes to the forefront in his theological expose of the Incarnation: “Sing of Christ the King / born of the virgin Mary/ The blessed maker of the word.”105 Fortunatus focuses on Mary in a hymn stressing the Word as Creator: “Mary carried in her womb the ruler of the world’s threefold fabric –/ Him that earth, sea, and sky reverence, adore, and praise./ The maiden’s womb was filled with grace from heaven and received as its burden/ Him whose will the moon, the sun, and all creation obey, each at its appointed time.”106 The most developed Mariology is found in Ephraim’s lullabyes where he places Mary explicitly within the theology of the Incarnation. “A wonder is your mother; the Lord entered her and became a servant; He entered able to speak and He became silent in her; He entered her thundering and His voice grew silent.”107 It is Mary who makes the paradox of the doctrine possible: “She gave Him milk from what He made exist. She gave Him food from what He had created.”108 Mary and Christ are permanently, mysteriously, and irrevocably intertwined. “O Lord, no one knows how to address Your mother,” lullabye eleven sings, “but if Your mother is incomprehensible, who is capable of (comprehending) You?”109 Even to Mary, the paradox and mystery she embodied are overwhelming: “You are within me, and You are outside of me, O Mystifyer of His Mother.”110 When we remember that all these hymns were sung in a communal setting at a sacred service, we can understand how influential they were. The strong oppositional imagery, the clearly stated theological arguments, the highly tensive language, the preservation of mystery, and the beauty of the poetry and melody are forged into an extremely effective pedagogical tool. In contrast to immovable art and to formal theological literature, people effortlessly take hymns home with them. Their educational potential was noticed, and they began receiving official attention. As the church developed its calendar, missal, and monastic office, hymns are included.111 Thus, through the medium of hymnology, Incarnation theology promoted a revolution in liturgical spirituality to meet the needs of the day, particularly its missionary needs among the Germans.112 Liturgy provided a space for Germans to encounter the truths of Christianity; hymns provided the expression. As words and art, hymns are incarnational. Accessible vehicles of communication, hymns engage both intellect and sensibilities:113 “You have illuminated man’s spirit with reason and wisdom./ Your eternal light is reflected everywhere/ so that, in the light, man might discover/ true beauty, and all becomes luminous.”114 If, as Gregory I says, art reveals the invisible by means of the visible, hymns make the inaudible audible.

The Doctrine among the Germans Of course, the doctrine of the Incarnation affected liturgy beyond its hymnology. According to Joseph Jungmann, master historian of Roman liturgy, during the early Middle Ages “profound alterations were made from the very outset in the Roman liturgy, especially in the Roman Mass —in fact, fundamental transformations.”115 The anti-Arian doctrine of the Incarnation promoted many of these changes. For example, the Little Doxology (“Glory be to the Father and Son and Holy Spirit”) was introduced into Roman liturgy as the ending of every liturgical psalm in

order to give “unequivocal expression to the essential equality of the three divine Persons” and in order to counter the Arian doxology (“Glory be to the Father and Son in the Holy Spirit”). The subsequent verse, “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end,” is found only in the West and again is directed against heretics who deny the eternity of the Son: the Arians.116 The phrase “through Christ” in the closing formula of the collect was precipitously dropped when it became apparent that Arians saw the phrase as an endorsement of their belief in the subordination of the Word Incarnate.117 The Credo, a liturgical and musical high point in solemn masses, is a lengthy faith statement summarizing the orthodox position on the Incarnation, as approved at the councils of Nicea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon. It is given premier prominence, and the congregation kneels when the words “And He was made man” are uttered. Originally, creeds were professions of faith at Baptism, but Western lands threatened by Christological heresies inserted one into the mass “as a barrier against them.”118 However, this tendency to use the liturgy as a vehicle to communicate antiArian theology had its problems, too; Jungmann argues that it led “to a one-sided stressing of the divinity of Christ.”119 Such imbalance may partially explain why Western culture took centuries to mature. The doctrine of the Incarnation is a doctrine of precise balance between two opposites. The balance is the paradox and heart of the doctrine. For centuries the church carefully guarded this balance and declared theologies heretical if that balance was not preserved. With too heavy an emphasis on the divine or on the human, the paradoxical balance is lost, as is the stimulation the paradox produces. It is the doctrine’s paradox and its challenge to reason that has historical impact, because it prods the human mind and makes it search restlessly for answers. If the tension between humanity and divinity is relaxed, then the stimuli is dissipated; absence of challenge invites absence of movement and change. We shall see that the principle is born out in the centuries that follow. When a corrective to the early medieval overemphasis on the divinity of Christ is countered in the High Middle Ages by emphasis on his humanity and the paradox dominates, then culture is stimulated, movement begins, and advances are made. Moreover, we know there is another corollary to consider. A doctrine of incarnation balanced precariously between the human and the divine extends itself into creation and influences the way society understands creation. Creation, too, is seen as paradoxical. If, however, extreme worldliness and extreme asceticism dilute that paradox, interest in resolving the paradoxes of nature lessens. During the Early Middle Ages when the world was over-saturated with the divine, humanity stood in awe of nature. Little progress was made in science. When the balance between the divine and the human is restored in the High Middle Ages, nature is desacralized and study of it begins in earnest. The doctrine had historical significance in another area; it contributed to a group’s specific culture. Frankish Germanic tribes followed the orthodox doctrine, and non-Frankish tribes endorsed the Arian doctrine. By the middle of the sixth century the Bavarians, Alans, Rugi, Heruli, Thuringians, Lombards, Visigoths, Suevi, and Vandals professed an Arian faith. The Franks, Alamanni, Frisians, and Saxons followed the Roman interpretation.120 Historians have long noted that different interpretations of the Incarnation lend themselves to the formation of different political organizations among Germanic tribes. E. A. Thompson, for example, argues that because “Arianism was not a centralized or interprovincial organization,” it was “more

suited organizationally to a people who wished to preserve their social identity.”121 Herwig Wolfram believes that Arian Christianity functioned “as a means of preserving ethic identity” and that this function “was responsible for the conversion of the overwhelming majority of the Goths.”122 An unfortunate presupposition in these interpretations, however, is the belief that “theology, specifically the Arian denial of the Trinity, mattered little to most Goths.”123 I disagree. I believe that Germanic tribes at some level recognized the significance of theology. Anecdotal evidence abounds. We know, for instance, that theology mattered to the Germanic kings Euric and Gundobad. They were particularly interested in theology surrounding incarnational doctrines. In a letter of Avitus of Vienne to the poet Heraclius, we learn that King Gundobad discussed the Trinity, the Incarnation, and certain scriptural passages with them both and that Gundobad had many priests advise him on matters of the Incarnation. Only at his death did Gundobad decide between orthodoxy and Arianism.124 The Vandal ruler Thrasamund debated theological matters with Fulgentius of Ruspe, even going so far as to rescue him from exile in order to debate him.125 Victor of Tunnuna tells us theology was frequently discussed in the baths.126 Yet, despite this readily available documentation, the assumption that Goths cared little for theology still dominates the literature. Few have pondered whether orthodox or Arian theology played a more active role in the formation of Germanic identity. I suggest that the evidence lends itself just as much to this interpretation as to one that asserts Arian Christianity was “added” after the fact, affixed to certain Germanic societies as a way of reinforcing their separate identity in the first place. Furthermore, I suggest that it will be fruitful to explore if and how Arian theology mandates certain behavior, ideals, and mentalities. Did Arianism give Germans an independent sense of reality, or did it require it? Did Arian nations eventually succumb to orthodox nations because Arian-inspired societies lacked certain creative elements found among the orthodox? Did Arianism have a different attitude toward the world? Why did Arian societies remain primarily oral societies while orthodox ones become literate? I believe these are valid questions, with no easy answers. Unfortunately, interpretations will likely never to be verified, for most evidence concerning Arianism has been destroyed or lost. Still, I argue that there is nothing in the extant evidence to nullify my thesis and much to reinforce it. German societies that adopted the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation, a doctrine filled with paradoxical relationships between creature, creation, and Creator, eventually triumphed over other German societies that adhered to the Arian doctrine of the Incarnation and that failed to acknowledge the paradoxical relationship between creature, creation, and Creator.

Eastern Christianity The doctrine of the Incarnation is also a dominant factor in the growing discrepancy between East and West. In the West there was a basic consensus. Nicea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon were the repository of orthodoxy in matters concerning the Incarnation, and with a few minor (yet significant) exceptions, debate over the wording of the doctrine ceased, with the paradox intact. As the High Middle Ages approached, the West turned its attention to other aspects of the doctrine; why and how God became man occupied the great Western minds of the eleventh

through thirteenth centuries. In contrast, Eastern theologians continued to battle over the wording of the doctrine for nearly a millennium, frequently with imperial government interventions. Was homoousion (of two natures) the correct expression, or was homoiousion (in two natures)? Is salvation from the Son or through the Son? In light of the doctrine, is latreia (absolute worship) of icons permissible or only proskynesis (relative worship) of images? An exaggerated fear of Nestorianism haunted Byzantium and often led to an underappreciation of Jesus’ humanity and of the paradoxical nature of the doctrine. The Monophysite schism was one result of such disagreements over the doctrine, and many see the Iconoclastic conflict as another. That icons were a testimony to the Incarnation, a physical point of contact, was agreed upon by iconoclasts and iconophiles alike; they disagreed on its propriety. Westerners never debated the issue of icons; for them it was a non-existent problem. It was one for Easterners because of a strain in Eastern theology that held that images were identical to the prototype. Given that presupposition iconoclasts agreed that only the Eucharist was the image of the Word Incarnate, and all others were idolatrous.127 Constantine V, for example, claimed that because a true image is identical to the prototype in every aspect, including substance, any image of Christ must be consubstantial with Christ. The only created thing that is a true consubstantial image of Christ is the Eucharist, and so the Eucharist is the only true representation of Christ on earth. All other representations are not true images and must be abandoned. Moreover, since the imperfect representation an image of Christ has is due to the exclusion of Christ’s divinity, the possessor of icons is guilty of Nestorianism.128 Iconophiles fought back with their own interpretation of the doctrine. John of Damascus refutes the presuppositions, maintaining that “an image is not always like its prototype in every way. For the image is one thing, and the thing depicted is another; one can always notice differences between them, since one is not the other, and vice versa.”129 Icons have an admirable purpose, to “reveal and make perceptible those things which are hidden.”130 Because certain prototypes are beyond humanity’s experience “God in his Providence has clothed in forms and shapes things that are bodiless and without form, in order to lead us to more particular knowledge, lest we be totally ignorant of God and of bodiless creatures.”131 This is all possible because of the Incarnation. In former times God, who is without form or body, could never be depicted. But now when God is seen in the flesh conversing with men, I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake, who willed to take His abode in matter; who worked out my salvation through matter. Never will I cease honoring the matter which wrought my salvation! I honor it, but not as God.132 Patriarch Germanus I wrote in a similar vein: “In eternal memory of the life in the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ of His passion, His saving death, and the redemption of the world which results from them, we have received the tradition of representing Him in His human form—that is, in His visible theophany, understanding that in this way we exalt the humiliation of God the Word.”133 If we turn briefly to Maximus the Confessor, acknowledged dean of Byzantine theology, we

can see more clearly the role the doctrine plays in defining the differences between Eastern and Western religious cultures. Maximus’s theology of the Incarnation is at the center of all his theology. Later Eastern theologians’ use of his work made Maximus’s thought appear more controversial, but it contains an orthodoxy which appealed to theologians East and West. Maximus anchors his theology in Chalcedon terms. His main contribution rests in his interpretation of perichoresis, mutual permeation.134 From perichoresis comes Maximus’s emphasis on the reciprocity of the Incarnation, and from reciprocity comes “blessed inversion,” the deification of humans: “That God makes himself man for the sake of love for man, so far as man, enabled by God, has deified himself.”135 In the same way in which the soul and the body are united, God should become accessible for participation by the soul and, through the soul’s intermediary, by the body, in order that the soul might receive an unchanging character, and the body, immortality; and finally that the whole man, soul and body, should become God, deified by the grace of God-become-man, becoming whole man, soul and body, by nature, and becoming whole God, soul and body, by grace.136 This concept is the seed from which future differences between East and West grow. Maximus’s deification is orthodox, and as such the West did not have difficulty with it. It was Eastern theologians’ particular emphasis on it that made the difference, and even here it is not because Eastern and Western theologians disagreed in theory. Rather, cultural distinctiveness grew because it turned Eastern and Western eyes in different directions. The East remained preoccupied with deification throughout the High Middle Ages while Western theology focused more intently on the humanity of the Word. One result of Eastern concern with deification—it was so pronounced that even the humanity of Christ was deified in iconography137—was the lessening of the full impact of the doctrine’s paradoxical nature. Maximus safeguards the paradox by employing polarities (human-divine, God-creation, man-woman, intelligiblesensible, paradise-world) to explain the reciprocity of the Incarnation, but later theologians do not.138 Medieval Eastern theologians accepted Athanasius’s dictum as the final word: “God became human so that in him humans might become God.” Such emphasis and understanding of deification within the theology of the Incarnation had vast implications in other aspects of Byzantine theology. Its anthropology held that human nature is not truly autonomous but destined to become divine. The goal in life is to realize that destination by realizing the image of God within. This lends a rather experiential characteristic to Byzantine spirituality as well as its theology. The experience of the saint is one and the same as the knowledge of the theologian (who, ideally, is a saint), thus leaving little room for an appreciation of rational discourse. In this East and West are at odds. Both believe in the validity of experience and reason in pursuit of God, but they prioritize it differently. By the twelfth century the West had high regard for reason, while Byzantium considered it to be the least reliable method for attaining truth. Instead, the direct, personal experience of the saint was given highest consideration. From Ephesus onward Eastern councils place more emphasis on what is not, less on what is. Apophatic theology found a welcome home within Byzantium. The differences in Western and Eastern theologies of the Incarnation manifested themselves in their respective cultures. Attitudes toward phenomena such as miracles are good examples,

because miracles occur at the intersection of the divine and the human, the spiritual and the physical, the creator and the created. They are a theophany, as is the Incarnation. In the East living holy persons were considered to be agents of miracles; the Holy Man of Late Antiquity still dominated the junction of the natural and supernatural worlds of Byzantium.139 In the West dead holy people were more often the agents.140 Hence, miracles that occur through intercession of the dead or in the presence of tombs and relics dominate early medieval Western sources. In narratives such as Sulpicius Severus’s Vita S. Martini, the anonymous Vita partum iurensium, Gregory of Tours’s Liber in Gloria martyrium, and Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, the authors present miracles of the dead as a visualization of the invisible, much as the invisible God became visible to us in the person of Word. Gregory of Tours tells us that his miracle narrative is another incarnation of the invisible into the visible; this is why he desires “to publicize some of the miracles of saints that have until now been hidden.”141 In this he follows the Incarnation model of “our Lord Jesus Christ, [who] in the flesh assumed from the Virgin, deigned to show many miracles to people.”142 Early Western society began seeing all miracles, not just the birth of Jesus, as a manifestation of the Incarnation. It believed that there was a profound connection between the Incarnation, the dead, and miracles. Benedicta Ward makes this point when discussing the influence of Gregory the Great’s Dialogues. In his picture of St. Benedict of Nursia in the Dialogues, praying in his cell and beholding the whole world gathered up in a single ray of light, Gregory was recording no mere wonder; it is an image of the union of man with God in, as he says, an “inner light” that gave the perspective of heaven to the whole of creation. This ability to see reality in its totality as created and recreated by God removed miracles from the realm of simplistic wonder tales. In their Christian context they were signs of humanity redeemed, signs of the last ages, of the ending of time in the simple moment of redemption to which all things were to be related.143 Thanks in great part to the role the West assigned to the doctrine of the Incarnation, miracles helped the West establish its own distinct identity. Notes 1. Torrance, The Ground, p.49. 2. Ibid. 3. H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper & Row, 1951), p.51. See Edward James, Europe’s Barbarians, AD 200-600 (New York: Pearson Longman, 2009); and Peter Sarris, Economy and Society in the Age of Justinian (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), for discussion of antiquity’s culture at the time of transition. 4. Ibid., p.52. 5. Tertullian, Treatise on the Soul, 27, in ANF 3:208. 6. Tertullian, The Apology, 42, in ANF 3:49. 7. Ibid., 21, in ANF, 3:36. 8. Ibid., 24, in ANF, 3:39. 9. Leupin, Fiction, p.27. The following analysis closely follows Leupin’s analysis.

10. Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ, 3, in ANF 3:523. 11. Tertullian, Apology, 46, in ANF, 3:50. 12. Tertullian, The Shows, 5, in ANF, 3:81. 13. Tertullian, The Prescription against Heretics, 7, in ANF 3:246. 14. Tertullian, Apology, 46, in ANF, 3:51. 15. Tertullian, Prescriptione, 8, in ANF 3:247. 16. Leupin, Fiction, pp.34-35. 17. Tertullian, On Apparel, 2.5, in ANF 4:21. 18. Ibid., 2:2, in ANF, 4:19. 19. Ibid., 2:13, in ANF, 4:25. 20. Leupin, Fiction, p.39. 21. Tertullian, Shows, 3, in ANF 3:80-81. 22. Ibid., 15, in ANF, 3:86. 23. Ibid., 16, in ANF, 3:86. 24. Ibid., 17, in ANF, 3:87. 25. Ibid., 19, in ANF, 3:91. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., 30, in ANF, 3:91. 28. Tapio Luoma, Incarnation and Physics, p.37. 29. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 14, in NPNF, 4:44. 30. Ibid., 11, in NPNF, 4:42. 31. Ibid., 50, in NPNF, 4:63-64. 32. See my “The Role of the Eremitical Monk in the Development of the Medieval Intellectual Tradition,” in From Cloister to Classroom, ed. E. Rozanne Elders, pp.80-95, (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1986), for discussion of how central contemplation of the word “truth” was in medieval intellectual developments. 33. Athanasius, Incarnation, 47, in, NPNF 4:62. 34. Ibid., 57, in NPNF, 4:67. 35. Leupin, Fiction, p.46. 36. Augustine, Confessions, 12.30. 37. Ibid., 12.23. 38. Ibid., 12.24. 39. Ibid., 12.23. 40. Ibid., 9.2. 41. Ibid., 12.31. 42. Ibid., 12.26. 43. Ibid., 12.18. This is not to say that Augustine is not aware of the dangers of false opinions. See discussion in Smith, Speech and Theology, p.11. 44. This is related but distinct from Tertullian’s application of the doctrine to communication. 45. Augustine, Confessions, 1.8. 46. Ibid., 1.8; and 1.6. 47. Augustine, cited in Smith, Speech, pp.119-20.

48. Ibid., p.123. 49. Leo I, De ascensione Domine II, sermon 74:4, NPNF 12:188. 50. Aelfric, 11:22, cited Raw, Trinity, p.5. 51. Gregory the Great, Ep. 9:148, cited in ibid., p.58; PL 77. 52. B.F. Westcott, “The Relation of Christianity to Art,” in The Epistles of St. John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1886), pp.325-26. 53. Nichols, Art, p.49. 54. Ibid., pp.1. 55. Ibid., p. 51. See Catherine Brown Tkacz, The Key to the Brescia Casket: Typology and Early Christian Imagination (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), where meticulous analysis removes all doubts about a direct corollation between theological ideas and early Christian art. 56. Pelikan, Imago Dei, p.99. 57. Bede, Homiliae 2.15, cited in Raw, Trinity, p.56. 58. Pelikan, Imago, p.69. 59. De Rossi was a nineteenth century catacomb scholar; his work is discussed in A. Grabar, Christian Iconography, tr. Terry Grabar (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), and Nichols, Art, p.51. 60. Westcott, “Relation,” 317-60. 61. F. van der Meer, Early Christian Art, tr. P. and F. Brown (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1967), p.42. For a more recent view, see Robin Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (New York: Routledge, 2000), particularly chapter 4: “Portraits of the Incarnate God,” pp.94-129. 62. Nichols, Art, pp.54-56. 63. Discussion of the art of Ravenna is plentiful. For excellent reproductions, see Giuseppe Bovini, Ravenna Art and History (Ravenna: Longo Publishers, n.d.). 64. Augustine, Trinity, 8.7. 65. Sixth Ecumenical Council, canon 82, in NPNF 14:401. 66. Gregory the Great, Ep. 9.148, cited in Raw, Trinity, 58. 67. Ibid. 68. Raw, Trinity, p.57. 69. Gregory, Ep. 9.148, cited in ibid., p.58. 70. Bede, Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, 6, in The Age of Bede, ed. and tr. D.H. Farmer (New York: Penguin, repr. 1985), pp.190-91. 71. Daniel Liderbach, Christ in the Early Christian Hymns (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), p. 58. Much of what follows regarding hymns is influenced Liderbach. 72. See Inge B. Milfull, The Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p.1. 73. Some maintain that this is the hymn referred to in Mt 26:30: “And after singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.” See Liderbach, Christ, p.42; and Earliest Christian Hymns, eds. F. F. Church and T. Mulry (New York: Macmillan, 1988). 74. See ANF 2:298. 75. Ibid., 2:296.

76. Ode 10, cited in Liderbach, Christ, p.55. 77. Hippolytus of Rome, Homily 6, Ex homiliae dominicae Paschae, PG 10, 863-64. 78. Acta Apostorum Apocrypha, ed. R. A. Lipsius and M. Bonnet (1891-1903), 2:268, in Hymns to Christ, ed. Constante Berselli (Middlegree, GB: St. Paul Publications, 1982), p.34. 79. Monumenta Ecclesiae Liturgica, ed. D. F. Cabrol and M. Leclerq, 2:231, in ibid., 38. 80. Liderbach, Christ, pp.125-39; quote p. 134. There are exceptions. One hymn from the era avoids controversy with neuter phrasing: “our archetype,” “the image of justice;” and “the model and essence of the Spirit.” In Patrologia Orientale, ed. Graffin and F. Nau, 18, 445-48, in ibid., 46. 81. Monumenta Ecclesiae Apocrypha, 2:232, in ibid., 42. 82. Arius, Thalia, in Athanasius, De synodis, 15, ANF 4:457. 83. Joseph Connelly, Hymns of the Roman Liturgy (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1957), p.13, attributes it “probably’ to Nicetas of Remesiana. See K. Gamber, “‘Te Deum’ und sein Autor,” Revue bénédictine 74 (1964), 318-21. 84. PL 86, 944. Translation in The Liturgy of the Hours According to the Roman Rite (New York: Catholic Book Publishers, 1975), 652-53. 85. Ephraim Syrus, Against Heretics, Homily 53, in NPNF 13:130. It has often been assumed in the past that the Nicene-era Syrian church was quite distinct, theologically and culturally, from the Western church. Paul Russell, “Two replies to the Arians: A comparison of the theological orations of Gregory of Nazianzus and the hymns and sermons on the faith of Ephraem of Nisibis,” Ph.D. diss., The Catholic University of America, 1992, makes a most convincing case that this is false and that Ephraem’s theology is a prime example of their similarities. See also, Ephram the Syrian Hymns, tr. and intro. Kathleen McVey (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), pp.3, 5. 86. Ephraim Syrus, Nisibene Hymns 51, in NPNF 13:129. 87. Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History, 3:16, in NPNF 2:296. See Edmund Beck, Die Theologie des Hl. Ephraem (Rome: Vatican Library, 1949). 88. Ephraim Syrus, Hymns on the Nativity, in NPNF 13:223-62. Quote is Hymn 14, in ibid., 13:252. 89. Ephraim Syrus, Hymns of Faith, 17.9-10, cited in Russell, “Two Replies,” p.225. 90. Ibid., 13.1-2, in Saint Ephrem: Hymns on Paradise, tr. Sebastian Brock (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990), pp.45-46. 91. Augustine, Confessions, 9:7. 92. See, for example, his “Hymn for the Night,” PG 27, 311-14. See Anthologia Graeca Carminum Christianorum, eds. W. Christ and M. Paranikas (Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner Verlag, 1963); and Die Griechische Christichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1953). 93. Milfull, Hymns, p.1. 94. Connelly, Hymns, 12. Ambrose’s influence on Western liturgy is seen in the popularity of the Ambrosian rite, as well as his hymns. See Pietro Borella, Il rito ambrosiano (Brescia: Morcelliano, 1964). 95. See Liderbach, Hymns, pp. 61-62. 96. Syrenius of Cyrene, Carminae, PG 66, 1608-09. His other hymns are found in PG

66,1587-1616. See W. Theiler, Die chaldäischen Orakel und die Hymnen des Synesios (Halle-Salle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1942). 97. See his O Sola Magnarum Urbium, in Connelly, Hymns, p.65; and Quicumque Christum Quaeritis, in ibid., p.65. 98. Anatolius, St. Stephen’s Day-Stichera at Vespers, in ibid., pp.68-69. 99. Venantius Fortunatus, Vexilla Regis, in Berselli, Hymns, pp.88-89. 100. See Paulinus of Nola, Carmina 19, 718-30, in PL 61,550, for an example of how Fortunatus was himself influenced. 101. The Hymnal 1940 According to the use of the Episcopal Church (New York: The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1961), 66. 102. Welcome, happy morning, in ibid., 87. 103. Ephraim Syrus, On the Nativity, 14.22, in NPNF 13:252. 104. Ibid., 14.7, in ibid., 13:250. See ibid., 4, ibid., 13:235: “With rival words Mary burned… “The day that Gabriel came… I was the handmaid of Thy Divine Nature and am also the Mother of Thy human Nature, O Lord and Son!” 105. Connelly, Hymns, hymn 38 (p.56). 106. Ibid., hymn 95 (p.162). 107. Ephrem, tr. McVey,132. See also my Women and Spiritual Equality, pp.86-87. 108. Ephraim, ibid., 102. 109. Ibid., 131. 110. Ibid., 149. 111. Hymns were introduced into the Office quite early. A cycle of hymns, often referred to as the Old Hymnal, was prescribed by Benedict of Nursia in his Rule for each hour, as did Caesarius of Arles for his monasteries. See Milfull, Hymns, p.2. 112. W. Jardine Grisbrooke, “A Contemporary Liturgical Problem: The Divine Office and Public Worship,” Studia Liturgica 9:1 (1973), 136. [9:1,129-68; 9:2 (1973), 3-18; 9:3(1973), 81-106]. 113. Ibid. 114. Gregory Nazianzan, PG 27,311-14; tr. in Berselli, Hymns, p.64. 115. Joseph Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, tr. Francis Brunner, 2 vols. (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1950; replica ed. 1986), 1:328. 116. Ibid., 1:328. See Synod of Vaison (529), canon 5, in Mansi, 8, 727. 117. Jungmann, Mass, 2:381, n.32. 118. Ibid., 1:471. 119. Ibid., 2:362. 120. James Russell, The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp.137-39. 121. E.A. Thompson, The Visigoths in the Time of Ulfila (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p.110. 122. Herwig Wolfram, History of the Goths, tr. Thomas Dunlap, rev.2nd ed. (Berkeley, CA: University of Caliifornia Press, 1994), p.85. 123. Thomas Burns, A History of the Ostrogoths (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984), p. 158.

124. See Avitus of Vienne, Ep. 53 (47), MGH, AA, Vi-2,82. 125. Ferrandus, Vita Fulgentii, in Vie de saint Fulgence de Ruspe, ed. and tr. Gabiel Lapeyre (Paris, 1929). 126. Victor of Tunnuna, Chronicon, MGH, AA, XI, 193; PL 68, 947-62. 127. Pseudo-Dionysius, De coelesti hierarchia, PG 3,124; Meyndorff, Byzantine Theology, p.44. 128. David Bell, Many Mansions (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1996), 21041. 129. John of Damascus, On the Divine Images, tr. David Anderson (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 3.16. John’s De fide orthodoxa (PG 94, 781-1228) was the standard textbook for Byzantine students. 130. John, Divine Images., 3.17. 131. Ibid., 3.25. 132. Ibid., 1.16. John’s exalted opinion of creation, unfortunately, does not exert the influence it deserves in subsequent Eastern theology. 133. Germanus I, De haeresibus et synodis, PG 98,80; Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, p.44. Earlier, canon 82 of the Trullan Council declared that “in order to expose to the sight of all, at least with the help of painting, that which is perfect, we decree that henceforth Christ our God must be represented in His human form.” See Mansi, XI, 977-80. 134. Some scholars agree that Maximus used the term exclusively to denote the divine permeation of humanity. See G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1952), pp.293-95. Others see his use as truly mutual. See Lars Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Open Court, 1995), pp.21-36. 135. Maximus, The Earlier Ambigua of Saint Maximus the Confessor and His Refutation of Origenism, tr. Polycarp Sherwood (Rome: Herder, 1955); Thunberg, Microcosm, p.32. 136. Maximus, Ambigua, PG 91, 1088; Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, p.164. 137. As John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, 2nd ed. (New York: Fordham University, 1979), p.48, says, “by making an icon of Christ the iconographer also makes an ‘image of God,’ for this is what the deified humanity of Jesus truly is.” He also quotes Theodore the Studite: “‘The fact that God made man in His image and likeness shows that iconography is a divine action.’” PG 99, 420. 138. See Maximus, Ambigua, 10, 41; Thunberg, Microcosm, pp. 32-36. 139. Peter Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971), 80-101. 140. Joan Peterson, The‘Dialogues” of Gregory the Great in their Late Antique Cultural Background (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1984), pp. 141,144. 141. Gregory of Tours, Glory of the Martyrs, tr. Raymond Van Dam (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1988), pref. 142. Ibid., 2. 143. Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), p.216.

Chapter Four The West Establishes Itself Given the role the doctrine of the Incarnation played in the Western understanding of the miraculous, miracle stories are excellent sources for further exploration. I believe these narratives illustrate how the doctrine prodded the West to develop one of its key traits, its emphasis on human potential.

Christian Miracle Narratives Although the world surrounding early medieval society was certainly awash with tales of wonderment, Western miracle narratives are quite different. First of all, they are not tales to astonish or mystify. They have a particular purpose: they teach. “Whoever speaks about God must take care to try to instruct the character of his hearers,” Gregory the Great preaches, and this he does especially well in Dialogues.1 He believes that stories of saints and miracles “are sure to prove inspiring to all who hear of them.”2 In fact, they are such a rich pedagogical tool that “interrupting the study and explanation of the Scriptures” is justified, “for the amount of edification to be gained from a description of miracles is just as great.”3 Gregory of Tours maintains that his miracle narrative fulfills the pedagogical charge, because it proclaims “what edifies the church of God and what enriches barren minds to recognition of perfect faith by means of holy teaching.”4 What the miracles teach us is, simply put, the power and purpose of the doctrine of the Incarnation. “Those who devote themselves wholeheartedly to the service of God can sometimes work miracles by their own power” because of the Incarnation.5 It is the ultimate miracle: “In fact, the Creator’s very purpose in coming down from heaven to earth was to impart to earthly man this heavenly power… What raised our weakness to these heights was the descent of an almighty God to the depths of our own helplessness.”6 Secondly, as Bede’s explanation of the purpose of miracles states, they are themselves incarnational. In a commentary on Mark 1:27, Bede writes: Having witnessed his miraculous power, they were astonished at the newness of the Lord’s teaching. Through what they had seen they were roused to investigate what they had heard. Indeed, it was for this purpose that miracles were performed, whether by the Lord himself in his assumed humanity or by the power that he committed to the disciples. The Gospel of the Kingdom of God that was being proclaimed would more surely be believed when those who promised future heavenly joys to the inhabitants of earth demonstrated on earth itself works both heavenly and divine.7 Moreover, a miracle narrative is a story of how the Creator and the created merge into one phenomenon at one locus. It is a microcosm of the Incarnation narrative which tells of the Creator and the created united in one person, Christ. Christianity’s belief in miracles flows

from its belief in the Incarnation. Lastly, Christian narratives emphasize the subjectivity involved in miracles, not their objective reality. Gregory of Tours categorically states at the beginning of his miracle tales that “a miracle is seen only by those whose mind is more blameless.”8 He holds himself to this requirement and confesses that previously “because of the foolishness of my closed mind I was never motivated to believe these stories until that power which is at present being revealed reproved my slow-witted hesitation.”9 In other words, miracles can only be recognized and teach the receptive individual, and the individual is responsible for that reception. When Gregory sees a lamp overflowing in front of Radegund’s relics, he fails to see its miraculous origin until he stops and “reconsidered and remembered what I had heard earlier.”10 And while the physical eye of the individual is required in order to see a miracle, it is the individual’s interior eye that is necessary for understanding. Gregory the Great explains it thus: “The point is that as long as the disciples could see our Lord in his human flesh they would want to keep seeing him with their bodily eyes. With good reason, therefore, did he tell them, ‘If I do not go, the Advocate will not come.’ What he really meant was, ‘I cannot teach you spiritual love unless I remove my body from your sight; as long as you continue to see me with your bodily eyes you will never learn to love me spiritually.’”11 Likewise, Baudonivia tells us in Radegund’s vita that “after having collected many relics of the saints, had it been possible, she would have petitioned the Lord Himself in the seat of His Majesty to dwell here in sight of all,” because she intuitively knew that, given the incarnational nature of miracles, they are perceived through the individual’s senses. Nevertheless, miracles are more than mere physical phenomena. They have a subjective element that is beyond objective reality: “What [Radegund] could not see with her carnal eyes, she could contemplate with her spiritual mind.”12 Miracles nourished a sense of self by encouraging—demanding?—reflection in order to perceive the fullness of its meaning. To the Western medieval Christian, then, a miracle is never solely a wondrous happening. It is a vehicle to communicate the message of the Incarnation, that the Word made flesh united the human with the divine and thus made possible the union of all humanity with divinity. A miracle is a bridge between the city of God and the city of man, and in this role it helps delineate the characteristics of both. This is another way in which Incarnation theology was an agent of change in Western culture; it established a specific world view for a new society, one quite different from pagan antiquity. We see this poignantly expressed in Gregory the Great’s discussion of one of Benedict of Nursia’s mircles. One night while praying a flood of light descended upon Benedict. Next, “according to his own description the whole world was gathered up before his eyes in what appeared to be a single ray of light,” and he saw the soul of a friend carried up to heaven. Peter, the deacon with whom Gregory has these dialogues, is amazed at such “an astounding miracle” and asks Gregory “how is it possible for anyone to see the whole universe at a glance?” Gregory: ‘Keep this well in mind, Peter. All creation is bound to appear small to a soul that sees the creator. Once it beholds a little of his light, it finds all creatures small indeed. The light of holy contemplation enlarges and expands the mind in God until it stands above the world. In fact, the soul that sees him rises even above itself, and as it is drawn upward in his

light all its inner powers unfold.… Of course, in saying that the world was gathered up before his eyes, I do not mean that heaven and earth grew small, but that his spirit was enlarged. Absorbed as he was in God, it was now easy for him to see all that lay beneath God. In the light outside that was shining before his eyes, there was a brightness which reached into his mind and lifted his spirit heavenward, showing him the insignificance of all that lies below.13 As Benedicta Ward says, “Gregory was recording no mere wonder; it is an image of the union of man with God in, as he says, an ‘inner light’ that gave the perspective of heaven to the whole of creation. This ability to see reality in its totality as created and re-created by God removed miracles from the realm of simplistic wonder tales.” So it is in essence for all Christian miracles. In the new West miracles and miracle narratives abound not as a remnant of pagan culture, but as “signs of humanity redeemed, signs of the last age, of the ending of time in the single moment of redemption to which all things were to be related.”14 In short, they are signs of human potential actualized in the single moment of the Incarnation.

Gregory the Great: Authority as Service Application of Incarnation theology to miracle narratives changed a received cultural form into something new. The Incarnation theology of Gregory the Great does the same. He breaks with the past and builds for the future, for example, when he applies Incarnation theology with Augustine’s ideas about language. The result is a method of exegesis that becomes the backbone of medieval biblical scholarship. Gregory starts with the presupposition that miracles manifest themselves inwardly and outwardly, much in the same way that language communicates to one’s mind and body: “All divine communication has its inward and outward aspects.”15 Gregory does not spiritualize divine communication but insists instead on its incarnational nature. To emphasize only one aspect of God’s communication is to ignore the fact that the divine assumes an historical form. “He who fails to take the words of the story in a literal sense hides the light of truth that has been offered to him, and when he labors to find in them some other inner meaning, he loses what he could easily have arrived at on the surface.”16 This becomes the fundamental principle of Western biblical exegesis: there are many levels of meaning therein. A highly significant instance of Gregory’s application of Incarnation theology to broader societal concerns is seen in his concept of authority as service. Pastoral Care is the best expose of these ideas, and it quickly became the definitive directive in medieval society for those exercising authority.17 While Gregory’s influence on Western ideas of government is widely acknowledged, few discuss the root of those ideas, his Incarnation theology. That is the point here: the doctrine of the Incarnation shaped Gregory’s concept of authority as service, which in turn shaped ecclesiastical and secular attitudes toward government. All authority, according to Gregory, comes from God, and the model for its exercise is the Incarnation, the ultimate act of humility wherein the divine serves humanity. Authority is humble service. Let the humble hear, “That the Son of Man came not to be minister” (Matt 20:28); let the haughty hear, that “The beginning of all sin is pride” (Eccl 10:13). Let the

humble hear, that “Our Redeemer humbled himself being made obedient even unto death” (Phil 2:8);… the humility of God has been found the argument for our redemption. For our enemy, having been created among all things, desired to appear exalted above all things; but our Redeemer, remaining great above all things, deigned to become little among all things. Let the humble, then, be told that, when they abase themselves, they ascend to the likeness of God.… And what is more sublime than humility, which, while it depresses itself to the lowest, conjoins itself to its Maker who remains above the highest?18 Gregory is well aware of “how great is the weight of government.” After all, Jesus himself fled the exercise of secular authority (Jn 6:15), “because He had come in the flesh to this end, that He might not only redeem us by His passion, but also teach us by His conversation, offering Himself as an example to His followers.”19 This is not a reason to refuse to exercise secular authority. Rather, it is the model for its humble exercise. True, “there are some also who fly [from ruling] by reason only of their humility,” but they must make sure they are genuinely humble and “not pertinacious in rejecting what [they are] enjoined to undertake.” When one is called upon to rule, one ought “to undertake supreme rule, in his heart to flee from it, but against his will to obey.”20 Humility must be the hallmark of all good rule. This is often difficult, because “commonly a ruler, from the very fact of his being pre-eminent over others, is puffed up.”21 At all times rulers must remember their authority is “over vices, rather than over his brethren” and that “through the custody of humility, acknowledge themselves to be on a par with the very brethren who are corrected.”22 Because authority is the exercise of service there is no room for the exercise of mastery, “for he is rightly numbered among the hypocrites, who under the pretence of discipline turns the ministry of government to the purpose of domination.”23 Twice Gregory supports his contention by citing Mt 20:25: “Whoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant; even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered to, but to minister.” Herein lies the heart of Gregory’s concept of authority. It is not simply power. It is “a state of relationship with God within which power is exercised; within which the pastor learns how to properly, spiritually, use his authority in service of others.” Again, the model for this relationship is the Incarnation. Thus rulers “acknowledge themselves to be fellow-servants of servants… ‘knowing that both their and your Master is in heaven’ (Ep 6:9).”24 That Gregory’s concept of authority as service was influential is evidenced by the popularity of Pastoral Care and by the secular governmental reforms initiated by clergy trained in Gregory’s philosophy. Clerics Alcuin and Hincmar, leading forces behind Carolingian reform, instructed clergy to read Pastoral Care at all times: “Wherever you go, let the handbook of the holy Gregory go with you. Read and re-read it often,” Alcuin advised.25 When we turn to Anglo Saxon England, we see a similar respect for Gregory’s ideas about authority. Bede includes a lengthy review of Gregory’s work in his Ecclesiastical History. He notes that the goal of Pastoral Care was to describe “the qualities essential in those who rule the Church,” and that the purpose of Synodical Book was to provide guidelines for the administration of those rulers.26 He tells us that one of Gregory’s successors, Pope Honorius, instructed King Edwin of Northumbria to “make a regular study of the writings of your teacher

and my master Gregory of recent memory.”27 In his vita of Cuthbert Bede quotes Gregory’s advice on how clergy should live and includes entire letters of Gregory on the matter in Ecclesiastical History. Bede considers Gregory’s mandate that clergy live the vita apostolica to be so essential that he repeats it twice in Ecclesiastical History and once in Cuthbert’s vita. It is a clear reminder that even the first ministers of the church lived humbly and in service to the greater community. Bede also cites Gregory’s stern reminder to Augustine of Canterbury that his authority is valid only because of the Incarnation.28 He is to remember “that whatever powers to perform miracles you have received or shall receive from God are entrusted to you solely for the salvation of your people,” just as the Word became incarnate for the salvation of all people. Bede likewise understands how this all leads to a keener awareness of self: “In all the outward actions which by God’s help you perform, always examine your inner dispositions. Clearly understand your own character and how much grace is in this nation for whose conversion God has given you the power to work miracles.”29 Bede displays a similar respect for Gregory’s conception of authority in its exercise by secular rulers. They must exercise authority in imitation of the Word Incarnate. Bede includes Gregory’s letter to King Ethelbert to underline the importance of Gregory’s belief that secular authority shares the same characteristics and goals as ecclesiastical authority. “The reason why Almighty God raises good men to govern nations is that through them He may bestow the gifts of His mercy on all whom they rule,” he writes. “Make their conversion your first concern.”30 Bede and Gregory both saw the need to address the issue of how to apply the Christian concept of authority to the secular realm. To that end Bede advised Archbishop Ecgberht of York to learn more about how to wield his secular authority by reading Pastoral Care “in which [Gregory] discoursed very skillfully concerning the life and vices of rulers.”31 Bede includes in his Ecclesiastical History Pope Honorius’s advice to King Edwin of Northumbria to “make a regular study of the writings of your teacher and my master Gregory of apostolic memory.”32 The impact Gregory’s concept of authority had on Alfred the Great is readily available. Alfred’s promotion of education was a central policy throughout his reign, perhaps because of respect for education per se, certainly as a means to provide a continuous pool of clerks for government.33 To that end he translated various texts that he believed best prepared his people for positions of authority. Alfred’s first choice was Pastoral Care. In it he instructs “all the youth now in England born of free men” to read it. 34 The preface also reveals Alfred’s plan to send a copy of Pastoral Care to every bishop to “be kept securely in each cathedral church (mynster) under their control… unless the bishop wish to take them with him, or they be sent out anywhere, or anyone make a copy of them.”35 When we remember the dual nature of authority wielded by Alfred’s bishops, as secular administrators and as members of the witan (similar to the authority Gregory’s bishops exercised), we can more properly see how, in Alfred Smyth’s opinion, “Gregory’s Pastoral Care—as well as being a handbook for bishops, also acted from Alfred’s point of view, as a kind of holy writ to bolster his authority as king.”36 Furthermore, by endorsing Pastoral Care Alfred was endorsing the concept of authority therein. All authority is modeled on the Incarnation: “The function of authority is the reconciliation of humanity and God” and “is intimately bound up with the restorative act of Incarnation.”37

We should also note that Alfred hired a scholar to translate Gregory’s Dialogues, whose third book was written to celebrate the Western triumph over Arianism.38 In Alfred’s preface to that translation he reveals how intertwined he saw temporal and spiritual authority. He refers to his own regal authority as a “lofty station of worldly office” exercised “amidst these earthly anxieties.” The only way he could overcome the anxieties of a purely secular rule was to “reflect my mind on heavenly things amidst these earthly tribulations.”39 Finally, we have evidence of Alfred personally adopting Gregory’s concept of authority as service, for Asser tells us that Alfred distributed his income “to the poor of every nation who came to him. And in this he was mindful how much human understanding needs to take care that the opinion of the holy Pope Gregory be observed when, in his wise discussion of the division of alms, he says, ‘Give not little to him when much is due, and give not nothing to him to whom something is due, or anything to him to whom nothing is due.’”40 In conclusion, Gregory, who referred to himself as “Servus Servorum Dei” more than any other epithet, was a model authority figure whom Alfred imitated and encouraged others to imitate.41

Carolingian Kingship Gregory’s incarnational understanding of authority as service and humility is found in Carolingian society as well. Sedulius Scottus wrote On Christian Rulers ca. 855 for either Lothar II or Charles the Bald, and Gregory’s theology of authority permeates the entire work. “For, what are the rulers of the Christian people unless ministers of the Almighty? Moreover, he is a faithful and proper servant who has done with sincere devotion whatever his lord and master has commanded to him. Accordingly, the most upright and glorious princes rejoice more than they are appointed to be ministers and servants of the most High than lords or kings of men.”42 We know that Pastoral Care was promoted as a standard to be adhered to throughout the land, for when Thegar of Trier wanted to emphasize how “little good remains in any of [the bishops],” he offered as proof the fact that “they do not wish to accept the book of Saint Gregory which is entitled The Pastoral Rule.”43 Incarnation theology influenced the Carolingian concept of authority in other ways, too. Merovingian concepts of rulership were pagan; Carolingian ideas were Christian. This has long been acknowledged and diligently explored by historians, especially by the dean of Carolingian studies, Walter Ullmann. The Carolingian ruler was a ruler by God’s grace, “as the vice-regent of God.”44 While Louis the German declared that “it is evident that by virtue of divine grace we are set above all other mortals,” there is no evidence that Carolingian rulers actually considered themselves divine.45 Rather, they believed that as recipients of this grace each becomes persona mixta. The ruler was human, yet above all humans. He was a layman and yet not a layman; he performed the duties of a cleric, yet was not a cleric. He stood, as Gregory the Great says frequently about Christ, in liminality, part of both worlds. “Someone who stands in a doorway is partly inside, partly outside,” Gregory writes, “and so our Redeemer, who became incarnate for us, before human eyes stands as if in a doorway, for he is visible in his humanity, but remains invisible in his divinity.”46 In much the same way the Carolingians envisioned kingship. The king was the mediator between the populus Dei and

God, as was the Word Incarnate. “The mediator between God and humanity confirm you in this reign as mediator between clergy and people and ruler with his eternal reign,” declares the enthronement formula in one Carolingian ordo.47 In an even more dramatic way Carolingian kingship was modeled on the Word Incarnate by virtue of the king’s rebirth. Throughout the gospels Jesus identifies himself as “the fulfillment of the Old Testament messianic kingly ideal.”48 Old Testament kings were “Your anointed” (Ps 89:39); Yahweh told Samuel to “anoint [Saul] to be prince over My people Israel” (1 Sam 9:16). Thus Jesus was christos, māšiah: the anointed. By being anointed at their coronation kings became Christus Domini, the Lord’s Anointed. Unction transformed the king’s very person into a new being. He was reborn. Pope Stephen recognized this transformation in Louis the Pious when he hailed him as “the second King David,” David being both the ideal king and a type of Jesus.49 Gregory the Great recognized the anointing of kings as a turning point in the personal life of a king; henceforth the inheritance of God was his.50 Isidore of Seville wrote similarly.51 The anointed king left behind his natural birth inheritance and was reborn as God’s minister of the divine inheritance.52 Carolingian association of rebirth and anointing with kingship takes on new significance when it is noted that simultaneous with the spread of this custom was the spread of Adoptionism, a variation of the Nestorian heresy. As Alcuin correctly comments, “the entire Church of Christ, once the heresies of Eutyches and Nestorius had been condemned, was at peace for a long time, with nothing disturbing it, until this new sect” promoted a “false doctrine in asserting that there was an adoption of the Son of God.”53 The heretical interpretation of the Incarnation by Elipandus of Toledo and Felix of Urgel was but one result of the Carolingians’ revival of interest in the doctrine. There were two other major controversies occupying Carolingian intellectuals, and they too were offsprings of the Incarnation doctrine: the filioque clause and iconoclasm.54 Peter of Pisa provides an interesting example of how the doctrine stimulated cultural activity: “Let us speak in praise of Christ, only-begotten son of the Father/ who, as we read in the pages of books, is the creator of the world…./ He took on human flesh to save those whom He had created/ and revealed His power in countless miracles.”55 Writing to Paul the Deacon, Peter comments on how the Word Incarnate sent Paul to “ceaselessly fertilize the hearts of those who wish to learn, and this your praiseworthy teaching of the parts of speech in the study of Greek reassures us that you will remain here” to prod the intellectual renaissance then in progress. “In Greek you are an acknowledged Homer, in Latin a Virgil, in Hebrew a Philo, Tertullian in the arts,” so Paul must be “a shining light” sent by Christ “to quicken the sluggish to life by souring fine seeds.”56 Paulinus of Aquileia, another Carolingian who is “probably mindful of the struggle against Hispanic Adoptionism,” makes the broad claim that all doctrine flows from the doctrine of the Incarnation.57 “Doctrine can be understood as the sweetness of honey/ which Jesus, the wholly sweet and desirable, made to flow/ like dew when His flesh in its weakness was given up/ to the Passion and through the resurrection became very strong?/ This, I declare, is the rock twice struck by the rod, that poured/ forth in generous floods water which sated the numberless crowds.”58 The Incarnation is not an invitation to accept doctrine passively. It is, rather, a mandate to actively engage the world and one’s intellect. “Preserving as we should the truth of history/ let us diligently seek

the allegorical meaning./ The deeds of our Redeemer are full of mystery, their roots are golden and their fruits are of the sweetest./ For as Jesus the saviour of the world said Himself: ‘My Father works and now I work too.’”59 The Adoptionist controversy lingered throughout the 780s. When Charlemagne gained control over the territory where the controversy was centered, he convened a council at Regensburg specifically to condemn the adoptionist theology of Felix. In 793, however, some Spanish bishops re-ignited the controversy by defending adoptionism and forcing the Carolingians to call another council at Frankfort. One result of this second council was Paulinus’s treatise, Liber sacrosyllabus.60 Soon Felix was once more defending his original position, and Alcuin was attacking it. A formal debate at Aachen in 799 ended Felix’s role in the heresy, but anti-adoptionist theology continued to be produced into the next decade. Elipandus, the chief Spanish proponent of Adoptionism, summarized the problem as “one party of [Spanish] bishops says that Jesus Christ is adopted according to his humanity and in no way adopted according to his divinity,” and the opposing party says “unless he is the proper and only Son of God and Father according to both natures rather than the adopted Son,” then Jesus is not the true Son of God.61 Modern scholars concur that in fact Elipandus was merely trying to establish the true humanity of Jesus, not to deny his true divinity, but his contemporaries judged it differently.62 The Adoptionists’ approach toward the Incarnation emphasized the selfemptying or self-lowering of divinity to humanity; the Carolingians insisted on the assumption and exaltation of humanity by divinity at the moment of conception. The issue of orthodoxy aside, that the Carolingians were triumphant is of utmost significance, for belief in the raising up of humanity to divinity inspires humanity, via imitatio Christi, to fulfill its natural potential. The Carolingians did not imply that humans can assume divinity; only Jesus can and did. Divinity assumes human nature at the moment of Jesus’ conception, while every other human is originally conceived in sin and needs to be adopted. This adoption is accomplished by sacramental baptism, the Christian rite of rebirth. The Roman rite of baptism includes the anointing with oil by a priest. Charlemagne decided to follow the Roman custom and issued an edict in 784 demanding that priestly anointing be included in the baptismal rite, a rite for “one being reborn” in which “a door for entering into adoption is opened for believers.”63 Consistent with these developments is the use of “the Clovis oil,” preserved from Clovis’s baptism for all royal coronations; as Clovis was reborn at baptism, kings were reborn at coronation.64 These cultural and theological developments shaped Carolingian coronation rites. We must remember that the court theologians focused on the Incarnation in the Adoptionist debate were also the chief advisors to the crown. As Alcuin confessed, the clergy were educated in order to serve both Church and state: “I became many things to many men, in order to train many for the advance of the holy church of God and the honor of your imperial kingdom.”65 The rites formed under these men reflect their understanding of the Incarnation. Subtle modifications were made to existing Roman rites that incorporated a heavy emphasis on the model of authority present in the Incarnation, especially as interpreted by Gregory the Great. For example, at Charlemagne’s coronation at Metz, Bishop Adventus changed the Gregorian rite ever so slightly to include an admission of the king’s authority originating in God and valid only if administered as a servant;

“God, who providest for thy peoples by your mercy and rulest over them in love, grant this thine servant the spirit of wisdom, to whom thou has given power to govern.”66 Later rites emphasized the king as a type of Christ. At the heart of all these political innovations is the doctrine of the Incarnation. In the Incarnation Jesus is mediator between his people and God. So too is a Christian king. In the Incarnation Jesus humbles himself to become a servant; in his rule a king must do likewise. A king’s power rests on his ability to convince his people that he follows in the footsteps of Jesus and his Old Testament types. Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed through whom humanity is reborn. An anointed, reborn king models himself accordingly. Furthermore, it is hardly coincidental that as the debate over Jesus’ adoption was waged, the papacy was calling the Carolingians the adopted sons of St. Peter. As Smaragdus reminds them, “God Almighty adopted you as his son, o renown king, when your head was anointed with the sacred oil.”67 In the Incarnation the adopted is raised up to the status of the adoptee; humanity is elevated without divinity being degraded.

The Arts Celia Chazelle’s examination of Carolingian art reveals that the Carolingians increasingly attempted to create visual imagery that complemented their witness to the Incarnation in literary texts. They “expressly sought iconographic means to convey the doctrine not only that Jesus is God but that he unites two complete natures in his one person.”68 As proof she offers a detailed analysis of the richly decorated Gellone Sacramentary and Hrabanus Maurus’s In honorem sanctae crucis.69 Beyond the innovations in the portrayal of the union of Jesus’ divinity and humanity that these images herald (especially images of Christ crucified), the evidence suggest that the Carolingians also realized the potential the union of text and image had, a potential that subsequent Western art actualizes. The Incarnational paradox of a union of opposites, the divine and the human, is imitated by the union of word and image.70 Paulinus of Aquileia encouraged the Carolingians to represent “the flesh of Christ that he took from the Virgin… through figura,” and they did.71 They frequently discussed passion texts—the passion being the supreme expression of the paradox of the Incarnation which “encompassed the most humble aspects of Jesus’ humanity and his manifestation of eternal divinity”—and represented the text through images of the cross and corpus.72 In In honorem sanctae cruces Hrabanus combines text and image by writing the text in the form of a cross.73 The illumination of Poem 28 has Hrabamus kneeling down beneath a text formed in the shape of a cross, in awe of the “eternal and perpetual and inseparable God, Trinity and unity” whose Word Incarnate did “assume human flesh and soul and undergo the cross for the salvation of the human race.”74 Hrabanus’s opinion of those who preserve text and image in manuscripts is quite exalted, for “this activity is a pious one, unequalled in merit by any other which men’s hands can perform. For the fingers rejoice in writing, the eyes in seeing, and the mind at examining the meaning of God’s mystical words.”75 Others wrote acrostic poems in the form of a cross. Alcuin’s intricate poem De sancta cruce is an excellent example of this type of union of text and image. His text reiterates many

of the themes the Carolingians found within the doctrine of the Incarnation: “Cross, you are the world’s delight, sanctified in Jesus’ blood/ God our king dealt out heaven’s judgement from the cross/ Cross of piety, true salvation in the four parts of the world./ Sweet cross, accept your crown under Christ’s rule./ Hail, holy, brilliant cross; you have broken the world’s bonds!/ Miracles appear, revealed anew to the world in deeds of salvation!/ Rise, the world should be washed in the fount of your faith!”76 Verse inscriptions such as this one accompanied the growing number of crucifixes and crosses and extolled “the strength of Christ and majesty of God, born of men.”77 As the ninth century progressed, so too did the number of literary and artistic witnesses to the passion of the Word Incarnate. It is “the first time in western Europe that this became a significant subject of artistic representation.”78 In three of the more prominent images—Psalm 115 in the Utrecht Psalter, the Drogo Sacramentary crucifixion miniature, and the Pericopes ivory—the artists attempt to portray Jesus crucified as fully divine and fully human is plainly evident.79 By the end of the ninth century, however, we can detect a slight change in emphasis. Whereas earlier Carolingians were intent upon joining text and image to reinforce the joint presence of the divine and the human in the one person of the Word Incarnate, these later Carolingians began to stress additional aspects of the Incarnation: the physical realities of the passion. Haimo of Auxerre talks about the bitterness of the passion,80 while the popular vernacular text Heliand emphasizes the torments of the cross.81 Liturgy and liturgical exegesis increasingly includes references to the physical aspects of Jesus’ redemptive act; Florus of Lyons’s De expositione missae, Candidus Bruun’s De passione Domini and Hrabanus’s De institutione clericorum are examples.82 Gottchalk’s hymn for Matins is typical of the type of attention the passion was getting: “He piously wept in the evening,/ And reconciled us to the father, his entire body cleaved,/ By offering himself, an acceptable sacrifice on our behalf.”83 Jesus’ sacrificial suffering is also frequently seen as a model to be imitated. One Palm Sunday sermon reminds humanity “to imitate the crucified Christ” by fasting, suffering, and performing penance.84 Candidus urges monks to “follow the footsteps of [Christ’s] death,”85 for “whatever was done in the Lord’s passion, my brothers, was for the sake of our salvation and a saving example.”86 He then encourages his readers to “set before the eyes of the heart” every aspect of the passion “so that they do not fear to suffer for him.”87 Such calls for imitation are not superabundant in Carolingian literature, but there are enough to suggest that these helped lay the foundation upon which the imitatio Christi movement of the High Middle Ages rested. Around this time the West began developing its own unique form of theatre. That the debates over the Incarnation were also occurring at this time may not be coincidental, for it is certainly plausible to claim a causal relationship between the increased emphasis on the doctrine of the Incarnation and the increased acceptance of the theatre in the new West. Scholars such as Max Harris claim even more, arguing that the Incarnation and the theatre are “paradigms of one another” and that “the idea of the Incarnation is through and through theatrical.” His reasoning is sound. The Incarnation is the supreme testimony “to the value of the flesh and of human time and space as a proper dwelling place for God and… for humankind.” The theatre, on the other hand, is “the fleshiest, most sensual and… the most ‘worldly’ of art forms” whose true purpose is “to influence a particular human

audience” to imitate “a world beyond performance.”88 Likewise, divinity’s full and complete acceptance of the flesh, time, and space that humanity occupies is expressed in the Word Incarnate through the same medium theatre uses: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory” (Jn 1:14). It is not surprising, perhaps even predictable, therefore, that the origins of Western drama are found within rituals commemorating the Incarnation. Carolingian bishop Amalarius of Metz was among the first to press for inclusion of dramatic elements in liturgy. His popular Liber officialis applied this approach to the mass.89 His efforts were successful enough to warrant criticism from those opposing any explicit merger of theatre and liturgy; the Council of Quiercy condemned some of his proposals in 838.90 The trend continued, though, despite bits of opposition. Music gained prominence, and by the tenth century it was increasingly used in the mass to interpret the text and shape the response. It was during this period that a trope from the Introit of Easter mass, Quem quaeritis?, was transformed into what music historians call the earliest liturgical drama.91 Toward the end of the tenth century the Regularis Concordia, a rule for English Benedictines written by reformer Aethelwold, included detailed stage directions for the performance of the trope during the liturgy. The Quem quaeritis? trope became the model for other feasts. Soon Christmas—the Feast of the Incarnation—liturgy was deemed “better suited than Easter to the development of drama,” and it quickly became the locus for further developments in drama. By the end of the tenth century the plays Pastors and Magi were regularly performed, and by the eleventh century eleven versions of Pastors and eight Magi circulated.92

Hrotsvitha Simultaneous with developments in liturgical drama were developments of another kind in Germany. In the women’s monastery of Gandersheim Hrotsvitha was writing the first “preliturgical drama in the Middle Ages.”93 While Hrotsvitha’s position in the history of literature has not always been appreciated, recent scholarship now acknowledges her pivotal role in Western history.94 Here we are interested specifically in the question of whether the theology of the Incarnation influenced her literary output and was responsible for her originality. That Hrotsvitha broke new ground in literary history is no longer debated. She is hailed as the first woman dramatist of Germany, Christianity, and the West; the first poet of Saxony, the first woman historian, the only woman author of a Latin epic, the inventor of the Christian epic, and the first to redefine antiquity’s portrait of women.95 Her originality, however, lies much deeper than any list of “firsts” can indicate. She was a pioneer of monumental proportions in the construction of Western literary culture. That Hrotsvitha borrowed, copied, and imitated the literary canons of antiquity is evident even to the novice critic, so obviously claims of originality cannot rest here. Rather, her originality rests on a type of originality tenth-century society needed. The failed Carolingian Empire taught the West that survival entailed more than the resuscitation of the past. Tenth-century society’s problems demanded tenth-century solutions. Solutions from ancient Mediterranean cultures were ineffective in medieval culture,

for the West was a different world. Innovative vehicles of thought, novel modes of communication, new kinds of relationships, and a different definition of self were needed if the neophyte Western society was to survive its birth. Hrotsvitha rose to the occasion. Her genius lie in her ability to discern the needs of her society and create cultural forms to address those needs. She combined the best of the old with the best of the new in such a creative manner that the resulting literary forms became part of the foundation of Western literature. Sometimes she did this in a most simple way. For example, for centuries the passio of late antiquity had circulated in the West, but Hrotsvitha was the first to recognize the inherent dramatic value of these legends. By retelling them through dialogue she created a new genre responsive to the particular appetites of her day. Because the history of Hrotsvitha’s works is still being established we cannot unequivocally state where or how they influenced Western drama. Nevertheless, we can say that, at minimum “they represent a link, whether isolated or not, between classical drama and medieval morality plays.”96 Hrotsvitha is quite aware of the nature of her talent and contribution. She repeatedly addresses the issue of originality and the courage needed to pursue innovation, readily admitting that “I am defenceless at every point, because I am not supported by any authority.” That, however, is the price one pays when pursuing the novel. Creating something imperfect is certainly a lesser fault than not creating at all. “Why should I fear the judgment of others,” she questions, for any defect in her work? The only judgment she fears is the condemnation she would deserve “if I sought to withhold my work.”97 She is aware of another price one pays when breaking with tradition, the negative reaction of those who view all novelty suspect. Anticipating this, she pleas with her readers not to “withhold the favor of your benign goodwill from these flawed pages that are not built on the authorities of precedent or the wisdom of sages.”98 Many Catholics one may find, and we are also guilty of charges of this kind, who… frequently read Terence’s fiction, and as they delight in the sweetness of his style and diction they are stained by learning of wicked things in his depiction. Therefore I, Strong Voice of Gandersheim, have not refused to imitate him in writing whom others laud in reading.… Doubtlessly some will berate the worthlessness of this composition as much inferior, much humbler, on a much smaller scale, and not even comparable to the language of him whom I set forth to imitate. I concede to that; but I say this to my critics:… this alone I strive for with humble and devoted heart—even if aptitude is lacking on my part—that I may return the gift I received to its Giver again. For I am not such a lover of myself nor so vain that in order to avoid censure I would refrain from preaching Christ’s glory… to the extent He grants me the ability to do so.99 In the preface to the legends she confides that “however difficult and arduous and complex metrical composition may appear for the fragile female sex, I, persisting, with no one assisting, still put together my poems in this little work… so that my talent, however tiny, should not erode.” She continues, wanting to be sure that her objective is clear. She writes “if for no other purpose but for this case, it may be transformed into an instrument of some utility regardless of the limits of my ability.”100 She wants to participate in the transformation of a pagan culture

into a Christian one, no matter what the price. To achieve this she must create a new genre, not perfect an old one. It was not creation ex nihilio, but creation through synthesis of old and new. She employed the metaphor of weaving to express her understanding of creation. Hers was the task to gather sources and then “weave the strands of these works” and “put together my poems in this little work.”101 She reiterates this theme in a letter to her patrons, telling them that “I have tried whenever I could probe to rip small patches from philosophy’s robe and weave them into this little work of mine, that the worthlessness of my own ignorance may be ennobled by their interweaving of this nobler material’s shine.”102 Often she employed the contrast of opposites: “unpolluted Divinity” versus “polluted lips,” “luxury” versus “austerity,” “delicate constitution” versus “harsh conditions.”103 The contrast of opposites is also at the heart of the dramas’ themes: God versus the devil, heaven versus hell, victors versus victims, virtue versus vice. It is hard to miss the influence of the Incarnation paradigm on these literary constructs. Hrotsvitha creates a new genre by wedding opposites together much as the doctrine of the Incarnation weds the human and the divine, the Old Law and the New. As Christ transformed a pagan society into a Christian society, Hrotsvitha transforms an ancient literary form into a Western one. Her desire for transformation is also seen in her use of antonomasia, a rhetorical device she frequently employs to equate a person with an epithet. It is more than a descriptive, parenthetical phrase; it is a trope which helps transform a person into an ideal.104 Thus Hrotsvitha is transformed when she calls herself “the Strong Voice of Gandersheim,” clamor validus Gandshemensis. This particular trope becomes even more interesting when one realizes that the phrase is a pun on her given name (Hruot = clamor; swith = validus) as well as a way of identifying herself with John the Baptist, vox clamantis in deserto (Jn 1:23), the voice proclaiming that the Transformer of the Old Law is Jesus.105 In her history of Gandersheim, Hrotsvitha has John, patron and model par excellence of her monastery, announce that the members of the monastery will act as agents of the Word Incarnate.106 While she imitates Terence in literary matters, it is John she imitates in spiritual matters. He participates in the transformation of the Old Law into the New Law; she participates in the transformation of the old pagan culture into the new Christian culture. She pursues the transformation of “the uselessness of pagan guile to the usefulness of Sacred Scripture.”107 Again and again she changes minor characters in ancient literature into major characters in medieval literature. She demotes central figures to peripheral ones. She makes controlling, strong men weak buffoons, while meek, feeble women become self-assertive, robust heroes. Gone are the warrior kings of heroic literature, present are the kings who do battle with human nature. Classical drama is reborn as Christian drama, and heroic epics are metamorphosed into Christian ones. Her goal was to transform classical literature into a literature peculiar to her own culture: medieval literature. She succeeded. Along the way Hrotsvitha also transformed the literary image of the ideal woman. The passive women of Terence’s plays are converted by her into women who create and control the dramatic action throughout the entire composition. Contrary to classical inclinations, weak, subjugated women are not immortalized by Hrotsvitha. Only strong, independent women are, women whose character strongly resembles the self-portrait Hrotsvitha provides for us in her

prefaces. Plays such as Sapientia become vehicles for Hrotsvitha to extrapolate her theories on education and her opinion of educated women. Sapientia is “the ideal female teacher” who possesses secular knowledge and Christian wisdom, the role model for all Christian teachers.108 In The Resurrection of Drusiana and Calimachus the character of Drusiana is an “entirely new” type of woman and marks “the beginning of a new tradition” in theatrical images of women.109 Unlike women found in late antiquity’s passio literature Hrotsvitha’s women do not sacrifice any of their identity as women to achieve independent status. Rather, they fully embrace their roles as mothers, daughters, and sisters, for their strength emanates from those roles.110 Even early scholars of Hrotsvitha noted that her women, with their “blend of feminine dignity and dauntless spirit,” were no longer chained to classical images of “soft, sweet pagan heroines” but had “gone far beyond to the freedom in inquiry.” They were the first modern women who “stood upon the crest of the millennium.”111 There are, of course, numerous factors responsible for Hrotsvitha accomplishments. She acknowledges those who educated her: “I was first taught by Ricardis, the wisest and kindest of teachers, and by others thereafter, who continued my education and then, finally, by my lady of high station, Gerberga of royal blood, my merciful abbess.”112 She knows that she was inspired by the classicists, “the eloquent words of learned folks,”113 especially by Terence, and by prevalent literary conventions.114 She was encouraged by some philosophers, probably Gerberga’s former teachers (although she tells us that “there were not many who gave me encouragement and praise”). She knows, too, that her innate intellectual abilities contributed to her success, telling us that “I am a creature capable of learning” because “God gave me a sharp mind.”115 Her chief literary source is the Acta sanctorum, and her language is predominantly ecclesiastical, predictably so, given her life in the monastery. Nevertheless, the most significant contributing factor to her work is her theology. It is her theology, after all, that she uses to transform ancient Mediterranean literary culture into medieval literary culture. It is her theology that produces original literature when woven with classical literature. It is also, I argue, her theology that provides her with a paradigm for creation and transformation. That paradigm is the Incarnation. As already alluded to, Hrotsvitha uses opposition to express her theological understanding of the Incarnation. The Word is “not the Father, but art of the same substance with the Father.” We see this literary device repeatedly employed in Sapientia. Here Hrotsvitha provides us with her only explicitly theological expose of doctrine, and it is, unsurprisingly, on the Incarnation and filled with the juxtaposition of opposites. We also see Hrotsvitha’s belief in the ability of the doctrine to give meaning to life’s cruelest moments. Sapientia has just witnessed the torture and martyrdom of her three daughters and now prays for death herself. Adonai Emmanuel, whom before all time God, the Father of all, created and whom in our own time the Virgin Mother bore; one Christ, of two natures but the duality of natures not dividing the unity of one person, and the unity of the person not lessening the diversity of Thy two natures. Let all that is knowable through science praise Thee, and all that is made of the material of the four elements exult Thee, because Thou alone with the Father and the Holy Ghost are made from without matter, begotten by the Father with the Holy Ghost.… Thou didst

not scorn to become man, capable of human suffering, so that all who believe in Thee should not perish in eternal strife, but have the joy of everlasting life; Thou hast not refused to taste death for us, only to destroy it by rising again from the dead. Very God and very man, I know that Thou hast said that Thou wilt reward a hundredfold all of those who gave up the hold of worldly possessions and earthly love for the worship of Thy name, and Thou hast promised to the same to bestow on them the gift of life everlasting. Inspired by the hope of this promise, I followed Thy command, freely offering up the children I bore. Therefore do not Thou delay any more to keep Thy promise, and free me quickly from the fetters of my earthly body so I may rejoice in the heavenly reception of my daughters.116 The mystery of the Incarnation deepens when one realizes that if humanity is made “in Thy own image”117 then humanity is the synthesis of opposites, as is the Word Incarnate. Hrotsvitha repeats this conclusion in Calimachus: “O God, scrutable and incomprehensible, simple and inestimable, Thou alone art what Thou art. Mixing two diverse elements, Thou created man; separating the same two elements, thou dissolved what made up the whole.”118 Only when a body and soul (whose “elements are contrary to each other”) are synthesized is there a human person.119 In Pafnutius she prays “that the dissolving, diverse parts of this human being/ may happily return to the source of their original being.”120 Even this return Hrotsvitha expresses through opposites; St. John reminds Calimachus that God “gave you life by making you die.”121 Hrotsvitha’s use of opposites is not merely external or superficial; it is the way she sees reality. Three decades ago David Chamberlain examined Hrotsvitha’s treatment of music in her plays. He concluded that she uses musical opposition—concordia and Discordia—to express her understanding of reality. The two opposites “introduce Boethian ideas and images that recur abundantly, though often implicitly, in the rest of the play and create a brilliantly unified whole.” Katharina Wilson extended Chamberlain’s analysis to Hrotsvitha’s legends and concluded that the themes of concordia and discordia are “omnipresent” there as well. Wilson identified further use of concordia and discordia beyond music proper to tonal references (the good pray harmoniously; the devil roars) and ordinary sounds (the virgins in Dulcitius have “tinkling voices,” while Dulcitius clashes pots and pans): “Concord reigns when men and women ‘concordari’ with God’s will, discord if the bonds with Christ and his church are loosened.”122 In other words, Hrotsvitha’s use of musical opposition is rooted in her Incarnation theology. The more one scrutinizes Hrotsvitha’s theology the more one realizes that it is the paradox of the Incarnation and its synthesis of opposites that dominates her thought. It is the paradigm through which she sees the world. In Pafnutius the hermit explains it thus: “Just as the macrocosm consists of the four elements, contrary to each other but still made concordant through the Creator’s will according to the regular arrangements of harmony, so too man is made up not only of those selfsame elements mentioned before but also parts much more contrary than those four.” When asked whether the elements are the most contrary things in creation Pafnutius replies no, it is the mortal body and the immortal soul. One comes to that realization because the Creator “not only created the world in the beginning out of nothing… but also in the seasons and in the ages of men gave us the ability to grasp the wondrous science

of the arts.”123 It follows, therefore, that “His creatures whom He created in His own image” should exercise that ability so that humanity can let “all that is knowable through science praise Thee.”124 We have heard Hrotsvitha in her prefaces confess how seriously she takes this obligation. “To deny God’s gracious gift” is a grievous wrong, and it is especially egregious to “deny that by the gift of the Creator’s grace I am able to grasp certain concepts the arts concerning.”125 Hence Hrotsvitha is “eager to share with you the tiny drop of knowledge which I drank from the overflowing cup of philosophers.”126 Generations before Anselm Hrotsvitha tells us that the philosophic tool best capable of aiding humans in their search for truth is the dialectic. Pafnutius: But if we follow the rules of dialectical, then we must concede that not even these two [body and soul] are contrary to each other. Disciples: But who could deny that, father? Pafnutius: He who knows the dialectic method of argument; for nothing is contrary to the essential substance, which contains within itself all contraries. Disciples: What did you have in mind when you said “according to the regular arrangement of harmony”? Pafnutius: I meant this: just as high and low tones, joined harmoniously, produce music, so too the contrary elements, brought together in concordance, produce one single world.127 As the discussion continues we see how the paradigm permeates Hrotsvitha’s understanding of all creation, using music as her prime example. To the disciples’ question of where and how human music can be observed, Pafnutius answers: “Not only, as I said before, in the union of body and soul, and not only in the emission of high and low sounds, but also in the pulse of our veins and in the measure of our limbs, as in the parts of our fingers, where we find the same mathematical proportions of measure as we mentioned in harmonies, because music is not only the agreement of sounds but also that of dissimilar entities.”128 Hrotsvitha’s grasp of the Incarnation as the synthesis of opposites is consistent with her frequent designation of God as Creator, for through the Word the synthesis of the contradictions in creation and creatures are reconciled. Hrotsvitha sees transformation of a fallen creation as the primary reason for the Incarnation.129 In Calimachus she states that transformation comes when Calimachus is “reborn in Christ.” Only then can he “be transformed into a better man.”130 Hrotsvitha defines what she means by “a better man”; it is when Calimachus is “transformed from a pagan into a Christian: from a worthless man into a chaste and virtuous man.”131 Such human transformation is possible because God “who has made me in Thy own image and breathed life into Thy creation” became Incarnate, that is, “partaker in our human fraility.”132 Hrotsvitha hints more than once that women play a special role in the transformational work of the Word Incarnate. In Gallicanus Constance confesses that she has been transformed “from pagan errors” into a fount of chastity by the “example [of] Thy Mother’s virgin bed where Thou didst manifest Thyself true God” yet “true man, of a mother’s womb.”133 In Sapientia the role of motherhood in the reconciliation of good and evil is a major theme throughout. It is in her role as mother that Sapientia gives Emperor Hadrian a detailed lesson in

math when he asks how old her daughters (Fides, Spes, and Karitas) are. She tells her daughters how “I nursed you with my milk flowing free” and espoused them to “a heavenly, not an earthly” bridegroom and may thus deserve to be called mother-in-law of the Eternal King.”134 Even the daughters’ torturers realize the significance of the female bond and want to kill them slowly, so their mother “may be tormented all the more acutely by their pain.”135 That Hrotsvitha is talking specifically about women’s role in salvific history and not humanity in general is clear in Sapientia’s repeated references to female sex organs and the physical relationship between her and her daughters (Sapientia has no sons, for only women are heroines in Hrotsvitha’s dramas). The daughters are “flowers of my womb,”136 “sisters, born of the same mother,” “firstborn,”137 the children to whom God gave “life in my womb.”138 When Hadrian orders Fides to “have her nipples cut off,” Fides responds after her mutilation, “You have wounded my chaste breasts, but you have not hurt me. Look, instead of blood, milk gushes forth.”139 Spes calls out as she is tortured, “O mother, mother, how efficacious, how useful are the prayers you say.”140 With her last breath Spes urges her mother to “rejoice, good mother, be glad, and do not feel sad in maternal concern.”141 These are not gratuitous references to female anatomy and roles. They are emphasized quite deliberately so Hrotsvitha’s audience (and we should remember that her community of religious women were probably the original audience142) would have no doubt about women’s full participation in reconciliation. Hrotsvitha provides her community with models to follow, just as Hrotsvitha’s Constance is shown Mary as an example. In Dulcitius and Sapientia sisters are reconciled to God by following the example of sisters. “I hope to follow their example and expire,” Hirena says about her sisters, “so with them in Heaven eternal joy I may acquire.”143 The bond between Hrotsvitha’s women extends well beyond the physical into the very essence of their being. “I am born of the same parents as my sisters,” the eight year old Karitas proclaims when Hadrian asks if she will follow her sisters’ rejection of paganism. “Know, therefore, that we are one and the same in what we want, what we feel and what we think. In nothing will I differ from them.”144 When the sisters in Dulcitius are imprisoned for their Christianity the soldiers separate them so as to deprive them of the supportive bond of sisterhood. Hirena “may be converted easier [to pagan worship] if she is not intimidated by her sisters’ presence.”145 She, of course. resists, telling her persecutors through contrary images that she “will never yield to evil persuasion.… The more cruelly I’ll be tortured the more gloriously I’ll be exalted.”146 In all the scenes where Hrotsvitha emphasizes the physicality of and relationship between women, the women in the end are triumphant. They “are united with Christ in heaven.”147 In the final analysis, though, Hrotsvitha’s exaltation of women is about physicality. She is obviously aware that her argument concerning women’s proper position in salvific history has an effect on their position is society (hence Hrotsvitha’s repeated reference to her critics), but she does not come to her conclusions through feminist ideology. She draws her conclusion from the doctrine of the Incarnation. In the Incarnation Christ embraces humanity by embracing flesh. It is through the Word’s physicality that humanity is redeemed. This is the message of Hrotsvitha’s dramas: Redemption comes through the flesh. Given that her audience was women

it is only natural that she illustrate this mystery with women’s bodies. Through their physicality Sapientia and her daughters are saved: “Our bodies may tremble at the thought of torture, yet our souls exult in the reward so grand.”148 Notes 1. Gregory the Great, Commentary on Job, 2, in Early Medieval Theology, tr. George McCracken and Allen Cabaniss (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1957), p.186. 2. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, tr. Odo J. Zimmerman (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1959), Bk 2, Life and Miracles of St. Benedict, 7. 3. Ibid., Bk 1, prol. 4. Gregory of Tours, Glory, p.19. 5. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, Bk 2, 31. 6. Ibid., 23. 7. Bede, In Marc. I, in CCL 120:448, in Bedae Venerabilis Opera, ed. D. Hurst, Part II: Opera Exegetic (Turnhout: Brepols, 1960), p.448. 8. Gregory of Tours, Glory, 1. 9. Ibid., p.23. 10. Ibid., p.24. 11. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, Bk 2, 36. 12. Baudonivia, The Life of the Holy Radegund, Bk 2, 16, in Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, ed. and tr. JoAnn McNamara and John Halborg (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992), pp.96-7. Baudonivia is discussing Radegund’s pursuit of the cross and explicitly ties the power of relics to the Incarnation. Ibid. 13. Gregory the Great, Dialogues, Bk 2, 35. 14. Ward, Miracles, p.216. 15. G.R. Evans, The Thought of Gregory the Great (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p.153. 16. Gregory the Great, Commentary, 4, in Early Medieval, p.188. 17. Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), p.193. 18. Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule, 3, 17, in NPNF, 12:41. I use the more common title Pastoral Care throughout. 19. Ibid., 1.3, in ibid., 12:3. 20. Ibid., 1.6, ibid., 12.5. 21. Ibid., 2,6, in ibid., p.14. 22. Ibid., in ibid., p.15. 23. Ibid., in ibid., p.16. 24. Aelred Niespolo, “Authority and Service in Gregory the Great,” Downside Review 122 (2004), 117. 25. Cited in Alfred P. Smyth, King Alfred the Great (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p.531. 26. Gregory the Great, Pastoral, 2,1, in NPNF, 12:96.

27. Ibid., 2,17, in ibid., 12:133. 28. Bede, History, 1:29. 29. Ibid., 1:31. 30. Ibid., 1:32. 31. Cited in Smyth, King Alfred, p.531. 32. Bede, History, 2:17. 33. Smyth, King Alfred, p.561. 34. King Alfred’s West Saxon Version Gregory’s Pastoral Care, ed. H. Sweet (Oxford: EETS, 1958; repr.1871 ed.), i, 6-7. 35. Ibid., i, 8-9. 36. Smyth, King Alfred, p.533. 37. Niespolo, “Authority,” 114. 38. Smyth, King Alfred, p.528; 544-45; and 563. Pseudo-Asser states that it was Waerferth of Worcester. 39. Bischof Waerferths von Worcester Übersetzung der Dialoge Gregors des Grossen, ed. H. Hecht (Leipzig, 1900) i.1; cited in Smyth, King Alfred, pp.214-15. 40. Asser’s Life of King Alfred, tr. L. C. Jane (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1966), p.84; Asser’s Life of King Alfred, ed. William H. Stevenson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), ch.103 (p.88). Asser offers other proof of Gregory’s popularity in Anglo-Saxon society; two passages in the vita are striking parallels with Gregory’s Dialogues and Moralia in Iob. Cf. Michael Lapidge, “Asser’s Reading,” in Alfred the Great, ed. Timothy Reuter (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 35. 41. Niespolo, “Authority,” 122. 42. Sedulius Scottus, On Christian Rulers, 1, tr. E. G. Doyle (Binghamton, NY: SUNY Press, 1983), 52. 43. Thegan’s Life of Louis, 20, in Carolingian Civilization: A Reader, ed. Paul Edward Dutton (Peterborough, ONT: Broadview Press, repr.1983), p.403. 44. Cited in Walter Ullmann, The Carolingian Renaissance and the Idea of Kingship (London: Methuen, 1969) p.50. Eamon Duffy, Ten Popes Who Shook the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), p.10, calls Ullmann “arguably the most influential papal historian of recent times.” See Ullmann’s festschrift, Authority and Power, ed. Brian Tierney and Peter Linehan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), for evidence of how his work has stood the test of time. 45. “Constat nos divina dispensante gratia ceteris mortalibus supereminere.” Cited in ibid., p.48. 46. Grégoire Le Grand: Homélies Sur Èzéchiel, tr. Charles Morel (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1990), Bk 2.15. See also Bk 2, Hom.3. 1-3. Limen, latin: doorway, threshold. 47. Ordo of Seven Forms, cited in Ullmann, Carolingian Renaissance, p.107. He calls it “one of the sonorous and memorable texts in all medieval royal ordines.” 48. Bruce Vawter, “The Gospel According to John,” in Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Rayond Brown, Joseph Fitzmeyer, and Roland Murphy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall: 21968), 63:162. Cf. Jn 18:28-40; Lk 23:3; Mk 15:2; and Mt 27:11. 49. Thegan’s Life, 16, in Carolingian Civilization, p.145.

50. “Haereditas enim multitudo fidelium est… unctonis ergo fructus est cultus divinae haereditatis.” Cited in Ullmann, Carolingian Renaissance. p. 74. 51. Isidore of Seville, Questiones in Vetus Testamentum, PL 83, 269. 52. Note Ullmann, Carolingian Renaissance, p.73: “In the West the actual administration of the unction with real oil played an important part in drawing a clear line of demarcation between the East and the West.” 53. Alcuin, MGH, Ep., 4:437; PL 100,144; and MGH 1.2-1:165. 54. Celia Chazelle, The Crucified God in the Carolingian Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p.38. 55. Peter of Pisa, “To Paul the Deacon,” in Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance, ed. Peter Godman (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), pp.83-5. 56. Ibid. 57. Chazelle, Crucified God, p.25. She adds that “the mystery of the union of two natures in Jesus’ person makes the death of the universe’s creator an even more urgent call to repentance.” I would elaborate some, noting that in light of the era’s preoccupation with eschatology (see my “The Maintenance and Transformation of Society: Cluniac Eschatology,” Journal of Religious History 17 (1987), 246-55) it was also a call to repair creation and “to make ready the coming of the Lord.” 58. Paulinus of Aquileia, Versus de Lazaro, 38-9, in Poetry, ed. Godman, p.99. 59. Ibid., 41-2, in ibid., p.101. 60. Cf. MGH Conc. 2.I, 140-42. 61. Beatus of Liebana, Contra Elipandus, PL 96, 902. 62. See John Cavadini, The Last Christology of the West (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 28-38. 63. Paschasius Radbertus, “The Lord’s Body and Blood,” in Early Medieval Theology, ed. McCracken, p.99; De corpore et sanguine Dominici (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969), 3.2. Also at this time the sacrament of confirmation was being wrestled from the baptismal rite and gaining a separate identity. In Charlemagne’s edict of 784 Confirmation was treated as an independent sacrament whose “matter” was the anointing of chrism and whose purpose was to strengthen one’s resolve to live as an adopted child of God. See Joseph Martos, Doors to the Sacred (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 178-81; 214-19. 64. Ullmann, Carolingian Renaissance, p.92. See also Ian Wood, “Administration, law and culture in Merovingian Gaul,” in The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp.63-81. 65. Alcuin, Letter 1, in Alcuin of York, c.A.D. 732 to 804, tr. S. Allott (York: William Sessions, 1974), 11-13. 66. Cited in Ullmann, Carolingian Renaissance, p.93. 67. PL 102, 933b; ibid., p.79. 68. Chazelle, Crucified God, p.79. 69. Ibid., pp.75-131. She singles out three images of Christ: the Te igitur image, Mary in the sacramentary, and the 28 carmina figurata of Hrabanus. 70. Ibid, p.113: “words fashioning image and images fashioning words, despite their contradictory natures.”

71. “Versus,” 4.30, in Poetry, p.97. 72. Chazelle, Crucified God, p.27. 73. See ibid., fig.12, and Hrabanus Maurus, In honorem sanctae crucis, ed. M. Perrin (Turnhout: Éditiones du Cerf, 1997). 74. Hrabanus, ibid., c.28, lines 67-69. Cited in Chazelle, ibid., p.109. 75. Hrabanus, cited in Poetry, ed. Godman, p.249. 76. Ibid., pp.149-43. 77. Chazelle, Crucified God, pp.132-33. She cites inscriptions by Hrabanus, Mico of St.Riquier, Sedulius Scottus, Hincmar, Notker the Stammerer, and John Scottus Eruigena. 78. Ibid., p.239. 79. See ibid., pp.239-99. 80. Haimo, Expositio in epistolam ad Romanos, 3, in PL 117,388; and Chazelle, Crucified God, p. 135. 81. The Heliand: The Saxon Gospel, Songs 60-68, tr. G. Ronald Murphy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp.166-92; and ibid., 134. 82. Cf. Floris, PL 119, 17-29; Candidus, PL 106, 57-104, and Hrabanus, PL 112, 1177-92. 83. Chazelle, Crucified God, p.154. 84. Ibid., p.154. 85. PL 106, 59-60; ibid. 86. Chazelle, Crucified God, p.163. 87. PL 106, 98, 101; ibid. 88. Max Harris, Theatre and Incarnation (London: Macmillan Press, 1990). See the pioneering work of Joseph S. Tunison, Dramatic Traditions of the Dark Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1907), 3-64. 89. John Wesley Harris, Medieval Theatre in Context (London: Routledge, 1992), pp.234. 90. Ibid., p.26. 91. Ibid., p.28. 92. Ibid., pp.31-2. 93. Katharina M. Wilson, “The Old Hungarian Translation of Hrotsvit’s Dulcitus. History and Analysis,” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 1:2 (1982), 177. 94. Until the twentieth century it was thought that Hrotsvitha’s neglect extended to medieval times, but discovery of her work in various manuscripts has negated that view. Karl August Barack published her work in 1858 (Die Werke der Hrotsvitha) in the original Latin; this was recently reproduced by Nabu Press, 2012. In 1900 her work was found incorporated into the twelfth-century Alderspach Passional; in 1922 in a twelfth-century Cologne manuscript; in 1925 in a Klagenfurt manuscript, and in 1933 in Magnum Legendarium Austriacum. See Boris Jarcho, “Zur Hrotsvithas Werkungskreis,” Speculum 2 (1927), 343-44. This also means that Conrad Celtis’s edition of Hrotsvitha’s work in 1501 was a more tempered discovery. See Joseph von Aschback, “Roswitha und Conrad Celtis,” Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften Sitzungsberichte 56 (1867), 3-62. 95. For discussion of the modern discovery of Hrotsvitha’s uniqueness, see Goswin Frenken, “Eine neue Hrotsvithhandschrift,” Gesellschaft für Ältere Deutsche Geschichtskunde

44 (1922), 101-114. 96. There is a similarity between Hrotsvitha’s Calimachus and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. 97. Preface to Gesta Ottonis in Medieval Sourcebook: The Plays of Roswitha, tr. Christopher St. John (www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/roswitha-gerberg.html); and Hrotsvithae opera, ed. Helen Homeyer (Munich: Setöningh, 1970), 385-86. 98. “Preface to Legends,” in Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: A Florilegium of Her Works, tr. Katharina M. Wilson (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1998), p.20. 99. “Preface to Dramas,” in Hrotsvit: Florilegium, pp.41-2. 100. Ibid., p.20. Peter Dronke, Women Writers of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p.66, writes: “The suggestion that writing in classical metres is especially hard for women, because they are frail, is deliberately preposterous and is said tongue in cheek.” 101. Ibid., p.19. 102. “Letter to the Learned Patrons of This Book,” ibid., p.44. 103. Pafnutius, ibid., pp.113-15. 104. See Katharina M. Wilson, “Antonomasia as a Means of Character-Definition in the Works of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim,” Rhetorica 2:1 (1984), 45-53. Hrotsvitha also employed rhetoric to achieve this end, noted earlier by A. Sturm, “Das Quadrivium in den Dichtungen Rosvithas von Gandersheim,” Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktinerordens und seiner Zweige 33 (1912), 332-38. 105. “Preface to Dramas,” in Hrotsvit: Florilegium, p.41 n.2. 106. Primordia, ibid., pp.109-10. 107. “Preface to Dramas,” in Hrotsvit: Florilegium, pp.41-2. 108. Deanna Evans, “Hrotsvit the Dramatist as Teacher,” Magistra 10:1 (2004), 53. 109. Rosemary Spague, “Hrotswitha Tenth-Century Margaret Webster,” Theatre Annual 13 (1955), 27. 110. Sapientia, in Plays of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, tr. Katharina M. Wilson (New York: Garland, 1989), pp.133-39. 111. E. Blastfield, Portraits and Backgrounds (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1917), 23-4; and Mary Butler, Hrotsvitha: The Theatricality of Her Plays (New York: Philosophical Library, 1960), pp.79-80. 112. “Preface to Legends,” in Hrotsvit: Florilegium, p.19. 113. “Preface to Gesta Ottonis. 114. “Preface to Dramas,” in Hrotsvit: Florilegium, p.41. 115. “Letter to Patrons,” in Hrotsvit: Florilegium, p.44. 116. Sapientia, pp.96-7. 117. Calimachus, in Plays, p.65. 118. Ibid., p.60. 119. Pafnutius, ibid., p.96. 120. Ibid., p.122. 121. Calimachus, ibid., p.60. 122. Katharina M. Wilson, “Hrotsvit and the Sounds of Harmony and Discord,” Germanic

Notes 14:4 (1983), 54. [54-56] 123. Sapientia, in Plays, p.132. 124. Ibid., p.148. 125. “Letters to Patrons,” Hrotsvit: Florilegium, p.5. 126. Pafnutius, ibid., p.101. 127. Ibid., p.96. 128. Ibid., p.100. 129. See chapter 2, above, for discussion of Athanasius, creation, and his On the Incarnation of the Word. For samples of Hrotsvitha’s use, see ibid., pp.7,12,17,95,96,100,and 132. 130. Calimachus, in Plays, p.62. 131. Ibid., p.63. 132. Ibid., p.65. 133. www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/roswitha-gallicanus.html. 134. Sapientia, in Plays, p.133. 135. Ibid., p.135. 136. Ibid., p.147. 137. Ibid., p.138. 138. Ibid., p.146. 139. Ibid., p.137. 140. Ibid., p.140. 141. Ibid., p.142. 142. Wilson, “Hrotsvit and Sounds,” 55, qualifies that, adding that “ultimately [God] is also her intended audience.” 143. Dulcitius, in Hrotsvit: Florilegium, p.50. 144. Sapientia, ibid., p.93. 145. Dulcitius, ibid., p.49. 146. Ibid., p.51. 147. Sapientia, ibid., p.95. 148. Ibid., p.87.

PART TWO: THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES

Chapter Five Intellectual Stirrings: The Eucharistic Debates and Anselm By the millennium the West was starting to mature. Reflection upon the doctrine of the Incarnation had led many in early medieval society to view various aspects of life differently; by the eleventh century application of these reflections bore fruit in the maturing Western culture. Further reflection continued to stimulate activity, particularly in the intellectual realm. By the end of the thirteenth century society had translated the doctrine into philosophy, law, an educational system, a political organization, and a whole array of social interactions.1 It is here in the High Middle Ages that we can most clearly see the many ways the doctrine of the Incarnation had a catalytic effect on Western culture. The doctrine is at its heart. The claim is not new. For decades scholars have acknowledged that the intellectual controversy that ushered in the High Middle Ages was the Eucharistic Controversy of Berengar. It was “a key episode in the process by which an intellectual and scholarly community took shape,” a bridge between the neo-platonic, pre-scholastic world of early medieval society and the more Aristotelian, philosophically sophisticated world of the High Middle Ages.2 It was the intellectual debate upon which the New West cut its first teeth and began its adult life in earnest.3 It introduced the methodology the West would use to forge forward and re-inserted speculative grammar, semantics, dialectics, and logic in the forefront of intellectual activity.4 Its language was that of Aristotelian metaphysics,5 a harbinger of things to come, and its location was in the new schools of the new West.6 The triumphant doctrinal formula was victorious chiefly because “it gave the fullest scope to the operations of the natural world,… reflected new consciousness of the laws of the physical world,” and thus “satisfied one of the most powerful urges of this period.”7 In Christian theology, to debate the Eucharist is to debate the Incarnation, for “only the Eucharist completes the Incarnation.”8 To acknowledge that the debate over the Eucharist stimulated change in Western intellectual life is to acknowledge the catalytic role the doctrine of the Incarnation had in the formation of Western culture.

Eucharistic Theology Belief in the Eucharist as the continued presence of the Word Incarnate developed slowly among the first Christians. By the time John’s gospel was written in the last years of the first century, identification of the bread and wine with Christ’s body and blood had gained some prominence. John 6 records a discourse of Jesus’ that did much to cement this belief for succeeding generations. “I am the living bread that came down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he shall live

forever; and the bread also which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh.” The Jews therefore began to argue with one another, saying, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” Jesus therefore said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate, and died, he who eats this bread shall live forever.” (Jn 6:51-58) As the second century progressed these words became the central focus of the early apologists’ discussion of the Eucharist. They drew “a close parallel between the incarnation of the Logos and the presence of the Christ in the Eucharist.” 9 Ignatius of Antioch opened the century with the confession that “I am convinced and believe that even after the Resurrection he was in the flesh,” because “the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ.” Those who do not so believe are considered unbelievers to be avoided.10 At mid-century Justin Martyr reports it being universally taught: “For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.”11 That the Word Incarnate and the Eucharist are one is explained in greater depth by Irenaeus of Lyons. To reject one is to reject the other, for both are God’s means for redeeming humanity: “Neither did the Lord redeem us with His blood, nor is the cup of the Eucharist the communion of His blood, nor the bread which we break the communion of His body.”12 It is the blood of the Word Incarnate in the Eucharistic cup that redeems, for “He has acknowledged the cup (which is a part of creation) as His own blood, from which He bedews our blood; and the bread (also a part of the creation) He has established as His own body.” When Irenaeus defends belief in the Incarnation against “apostasy, ignorance and passion,” his argument is rooted in the inseparableness of the Incarnation and the Eucharist. “How can they be consistent with themselves [when they say] that the bread over which thanks have been given is the body of their Lord and the cup His blood, if they do not call Himself the Son of the creator of the world, that is, His Word.… Let them, therefore, either alter their opinion, or cease offering the things just mentioned. But our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn establishes our opinion.”13 Clement of Alexander explains the oneness of the Incarnation and Eucharist by emphasizing how essential they are to humanity’s well being. He turns to the description of the Promised Land as one “flowing with milk and honey” (Ex 3:8) to illustrate their interchangeableness: “As nurses nourish new-born children on milk so do I also by the Word, the milk of Christ, instilling into you spiritual nourishment.” The Word Incarnate is “figuratively represented as milk,” and comes to us in the Eucharist, because “the blood of the Word has also been exhibited as milk.”14 In fact, “the Word is figuratively described as meat, and flesh, and food, and bread, and blood, and milk. The Lord is all these,” so why should one “think it strange…

that the blood is the Word?” The blood of the grape—that is, the Word—desired to be mixed with water, as His blood is mingled with salvation,” Clement writes, “and to drink the blood of Jesus is to become partaker of the Lord’s immortality; the Spirit being the energetic principle of the Word, as blood is of flesh. Accordingly, as wine is blended with water, so is the Spirit with man. And the one, the mixture of wine and water nourishes to faith; while the other, the Spirit, conducts to immortality. And the mixture of both—of the water and of the Word—is called Eucharist.”15 The Eucharistic theology of these second-century fathers formed the foundation for future discussions. They established the Real Presence of the Word Incarnate in the Eucharist. The theologians of the next few centuries changed emphasis as needed (for example, in the face of Arianism the emphasis on the Eucharist as Christ’s prayer to the Father was altered to Christians’ prayer to the Trinitarian Christ), but there was little controversy over Eucharistic theology throughout the early Middle Ages.16 With the coming of the High Middle Ages, that changed. From the eleventh century to the Reformation, Eucharistic theology took center stage. Given the intimate relationship between the Eucharist and the doctrine of the Incarnation, it is not surprising to find these discussions were often intense, acrimonious, and divisive—much like earlier Nicene era doctrinal conflicts. The battle for control over interpretation of the Eucharist was but another battle for control over interpretation of the Incarnation. Without agreement over the meaning of the Eucharist there is no unity among Christians. Proof of this is, unfortunately, too readily available in the splintered history of Christianity. Transubstantiation, impanation, consubstantiation, annihiliation, transig-nification, transmutation: these are doctrinal interpretations of the Eucharist that have torn Christianity apart throughout the centuries. Why people did not fight over the doctrine of the Incarnation directly, as they did in the Nicene era, is easy to understand within the proper historical context. Disputes over the wording of the doctrine of the Incarnation were waged by theologians intent upon institutionalizing belief. Disputes over the wording of the doctrine of the Eucharist were waged by clergy intent upon institutionalizing practice. Interest in the Eucharist began slowly and without rancor about two centuries before Berengarian Controversy. There was a small debate over Christ’s Eucharistic presence in 831 when Paschasius Radbertus stated that “following the consecration, there exists nothing other than the flesh and blood of Christ.”17 This flesh and blood is the Word Incarnate who promised eternal life for those who eat and drink of it. Radbertus’s view of the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist was supported by Hincmar of Reims, but Hrabanus Maurus and Gottschalk disagreed. The chief rebuttal of Radbertus’s stance came when Charles the Bald instructed Ratramnus to address the issue of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist. His answer was unambiguous: “It is the body of Christ but spiritually not physically; it is the blood of Christ but spiritually not physically.”18 To future generations these interpretations seemed diametrically opposed, but only because they viewed the debate through a metaphysical framework constructed after Aristotle’s distinctions about real and substance were adopted. Ninth-century contemporaries saw the debate more benignly as part of a continuing argument between followers of Augustine who emphasized Christ’s spiritual presence, and of Ambrose

who underlined the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Berengar That the ninth-century Eucharistic debate ended with a simple agreement to disagree indicates that additional factors were involved in the acrimonious controversy that erupted in the mideleventh century which did not end in polite disagreement. Councils condemned and retractions were demanded. The times were changing, and the controversy played no small part in effecting those changes. The chief protagonist in the controversy was a charismatic master from the school at Tours, Berengar. To recognize the depth of the changes that the controversy generated we must start with Berengar’s position. First, the “props which European order and civilization were built” —law, liberal arts and theology—“owed” their coherence, and their power to influence the world, to the development of schools” in the High Middle Ages.19 Tours was one of these schools, and Berengar was among the best and brightest of its masters. In the following century Otto of Freising commented upon the importance of the schools, and he singled out three masters most responsible for Western society’s new direction: Manegold at Paris, Anselm at Laon, and Berengar at Tours.20 Second, Berengar taught during a key moment in the history of Western schools, a moment of transition when masters of old learning were passing the baton to masters of new learning. According to C. Stephen Jaegar, the eleventh-century changing of the guard was much more than a generational passage. It was a transition from antiquity’s ubiquitous pedagogy, teaching via personal charisma, to a new pedagogy based on rational analysis. Jaegar considers Berengar to be “a figure very much on the border between the old learning and the new.”21 Old learning respected authority, and its masters were respected because they represented authority. New learning and masters confronted and challenged authority. A penetrating atmosphere of amicitia, and even amor, particularly as portrayed in a popular book at the time, Cicero’s De amicitia, was the ideal of the old schools, along with peace, personal decorum, and mutual admiration. When Adelman of Liège wrote a rebuttal of Berengar’s Eucharistic theology, he opened his letter to Berengar with a reminder of their shared school days at Chartres. He recalls “that sweetest and most pleasant of times we spent together” under the tutelage of “our venerable Socrates” —Fulbert of Chartres—who used to hold “intimate evening colloquies” in a garden. Here Fulbert would tearfully entreat his students to follow “the footsteps of the holy fathers” and not be detoured “into some new and false path.”22 Placed at the beginning of his argument, these reminders of Adelman were meant to call Berengar back to the model of old learning; it would help Berengar identify the errors he had fallen into because he had deviated from that model. New masters disowned the traditional model, even reveled in diminishing it when necessary. By the twelfth century a new model of learning was fully developed, and rational consistency, not personal charisma, drew students to a master’s lecture. We hear Abelard tell his son not to “put your faith in the words of a master out love for him” and “care not who speaks but what the value of his words are.”23 In Guitmund of Aversa’s description of Berengar’s classroom manner, we hear the disdain the new masters had for students’ cult of the personality. Berengar would persuade people by his

“pompous posing by elevating himself above others on a platform,” and “burying his head in his cowl, pretending to be in profound meditation, then finally, when the expectations of the listeners had been whetted by his long hesitation, giving forth in an extremely soft and plangent tone, which was effective in deceiving those who did not know better.”24 If we had only this account we would probably consider Guitmund’s judgement correct, that Berengar was nothing more than a pretentious, theatrical performer whose affectations persuaded people “by simulating the dignity of a teacher in his manner rather than by the substance of his teachings.”25 Fortunately, we do have more, and we know that although Berengar maintained the charismatic demeanor of an old master in the classroom, in his writings he wore the garb of a new master concerned chiefly with analytical thought.26 He was not the only master straddling the fence in the eleventh century. Abelard tells us that Anselm of Laon tried to satisfy both models but failed: “Anselm could win the admiration of an audience, but he was useless when put to the question. He had a remarkable command of words, but their meaning was worthless and devoid of all sense.”27 We must also remember that few have the ability to put a contemporary era into proper perspective. It is easy for us to see the shift in Berengar’s methodology, because we have the advantage of hindsight; his contemporaries did not. Old masters saw his subtle use of analytical reasoning as a threat to their ways. New masters viewed his pompous imposition of his personality into the classroom as an obstacle to progress. Ironically, though, the old masters were probably more insightful than the new masters. While both his methodology and presentation were at odds, respectively, with old masters and new, Berengar’s significance in the history of intellectual thought lies in his use of rational analysis. Goswin of Mainz was opposed to Berengar not because Goswin was “against things which were new,” but because he was against Berengar’s theology. Berengar and his disciples “hammer out new and vagrant interpretations concerning things sacrosanct, namely, concerning the heavenly sacraments, which the holy fathers, when they dared stretch their hands toward them, seeing that they surpassed not only human language, but also human reason, approached reverently.” New masters like Berengar “do not acknowledge that the things of God defy the speech of man and the world” and “lay in wait for incautious and simple-minded brothers and especially for those who frivolously run after intellectual curiosities and lure them with bait of a new teaching.”28 For some old masters the new methodology was dangerous. According to Lanfranc, this was Berengar’s error: “Having abandoned sacred authorities, you have taken refuge in dialectic.”29

The Controversy It is within this context that the eleventh-century Eucharistic controversy must be viewed. It was a catalyst in the intellectual world that gave rise to theological debate, but it also served as a transitional dispute between old pedagogy and new methodology, the door through which rationalism entered into Western intellectual life. Both Berengar and Lanfranc, the two leading opponents in the debate, “were essentially and by general repute the most famous masters of the liberal arts of the day”; neither, however, were trained theologians.30 The debate was an opportunity for them to feel their way, “however tentatively, towards the inquiring

scholasticism of the future.”31 Berengar’s arguments presented the West with “an enduring challenge” and were “a powerful force inspiring a more general sense of the need to explain,” not simply to believe.32 In response, the intellectual community began to clarify and systematize its endeavors, this time along rational lines. Indeed, the Berengar controversy was indispensable to the growth of Western intellectual life, for the debate revealed its shortcomings. It laid bare the need for better tools, more experience, and sharper instruments in the schools. As a result of this exposure the West took “a long step towards the flowering of scholasticism” and the maturing of Western educational and intellectual life.33 As was true for the Nicene era, Christianity’s first great era of clarification and systematization, the foundation for this activity was the doctrine of the Incarnation. Berengar and his foes knew very well that the doctrine of the Incarnation was the basis and justification of Christian involvement in the world. By the Incarnation Christ was present in creation for all time and in all places, immediately and locally. The argument centered not on this belief but on the terms used to express theWord’s presence in the Eucharist. The controversy started with the innocuous letter from Adelman of Liège to Berengar that, as we have seen, opened with a nostalgic reminder of their days together as students. Some time in 1047 Berengar had circulated his ideas about the Eucharist, and Adelman wrote soon after to note his disagreement. Adelman argued that Berengar would abandon his “new and false path” if he properly observed “the tears which broke forth and interrupted [Fulbert of Chartres’s] lecture whenever the force of divine ardor overflowed within him.”34 Adelman wanted to pull Berengar back into old learning where “there was more truth in Fulbert’s tears than in Berengar’s logic.”35 Berengar responded with scorn; he was committed to proceeding forward. Animosity increased as attacks and responses continued during the next decade. Berengar’s Eucharistic theology was condemned at the synods of Vercelli and Paris. In 1054 Hildebrand became involved when as papal legate he accepted a compromise statement penned by Berengar: “The bread and wine on the altar after consecration are the true body and blood of Christ.”36 As with many compromises, it ended up pleasing neither side of the debate, so it continued. Between 1048 and 1059 Hugh of Langres, Ascelin of Chartres, Wolphelm of Brauweiler, Theodiun of Liège, Anastasius of Cluny, and Durard of Troarn wrote against Berengar; Eusebius, Bruno of Angers, and Geoffrey Martel supported him. Of particular note is a letter Berengar wrote in 1049 to Lanfranc, then prior of Bec, suggesting that Lanfranc’s rejection of John Erigena’s theology of the Eucharist might be based on a faulty reading of Scripture, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. (In point of fact the theology Berengar was referring to was Ratramnus’s, but since the ninth century Ratramnus’s treatise had been erroneously attributed to John Erigena.) From this letter we see that Berengar was firmly aligned with the Eucharistic formula of symbolic or spiritual presence and Lanfranc with the real or physical presence. Through a convoluted set of circumstances the letter was read in public at the 1050 synod in Rome, complete with Lanfranc and the council’s denouncement of it.37 Berengar was called to appear before the council in Vercelli, but Henry I of France had imprisoned him, so the council went ahead and condemned Berengar’s opinions in absentia. For the next nine years disputation over Berengar’s theology dragged on. After the Easter synod in Rome in 1059 the debate turned permanently acrimonious.

Humbert of Silva Candida was Berengar’s chief opponent at the council, and he made it clear that he would settle for nothing short of full acquiescence to a profession of faith that Humbert had drafted. “I hold concerning the sacraments of the Lord’s table,” Berengar swore, “that the bread and wine which are placed on the altar after the consecration are not only a sacrament but also the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that physically [sensualiter], not only a sacrament but in truth, they are handled by the hands of priests, broken and crushed by the teeth of the faithful.”38 It was a highly significant statement, for as Richard Southern comments, “it would be hard to over-estimate the importance for the future of the Western Church of the Eucharistic doctrine as defined in 1059.”39 Berengar, however, did not consider it so. Even though he cast his own books into a fire he had lit when the synod was over, he resumed his Eucharistic writings, this time with resentment. During the next twenty years Berengar continued to argue his point, and opponents continued to condemn it. Finally, at the Roman council of 1079 Berengar signed a new profession of faith, this one written by Alberic of Monte Cassino in Aristotelian language.40 It was a sort of upside-down triumph for Berengar, although, of course, he did not see it that way. The profession was a victory for new masters and new learning, for it necessitated the inclusion of logic and dialectics in all future Eucharistic discussions.41 The controversy itself was a victory for them. By 1079 the relationship between reason and faith, between reason and authority, and between reason and reality was being redefined. Aristotelianism began replacing Platonism in academic debates, and speculative linguistic theories and semantics received new respect. A new basis for sacramental theology developed, and, as a result, a sacramental mentality started permeating society. The philosophical distinctions made in the midst of the controversy became the language used in the watershed definition of transubstantiation that dominated popular piety until it was challenged by reformers in the sixteenth century. In the twelfth century Peter the Venerable identified the three chief adversaries of Berengar as Lanfranc (who wrote bene, plen, perfecte), Guitmund (melius, plenius, perfectius), and Alger (optime, plenissime, perfectissime).42 Modern scholarship had tempered this judgement somewhat. Lanfranc’s writings were short, too personal, and had little circulation at the time; his involvement in the controversy ended after 1059.43 Guitmund and Alger, on the other hand, addressed the real issues at stake, bypassed ad hominem arguments and utilized dialectics, a key factor in the controversy. Lanfranc did not engaged in dialectics himself, but he did draw attention to Berengar’s use of it. Lanfanc went so far as to attribute Berengar’s errors to dialectics. There is much to be said for this judgement. Of course, Lanfranc saw Berengar’s use of dialectics as detrimental, while history views it as progress. Lanfranc argued as an admirer of old learning with its staunch adherence to past authority, Berengar as an champion of the dialectic, “because to have recourse to dialectic is to have recourse to reason; and he who refuses this recourse, since it is the faculty of reason that he is made in the image of God, abandons his own proper glory.”44 Lanfranc wanted dialectics banished from intellectual discussion, because any use of it gave the impression that one had more confidence in reason than “the true authority of the Holy Fathers.”45 Even Lanfranc himself did not live up to this standard, and despite repeated statements about the uselessness of dialectic in theological discussions, he utilized the method when he thought it to be to his advantage.

In actuality, the eleventh-century arguments were upgraded versions of the ninth-century Eucharistic debates. Berengar started the controversy by championing Ratramnus’s opinion that Christ is present spiritually in the Eucharist. His opponents championed Radbertus’s theology of physical presence. As Adelmann of Liège summarized the problem, Berengar was “accused of stating that [the Eucharist] is not the true body of Christ nor his true blood, but some sort of figure and likeness,” in ways reminscene of Ratramnus.46 It is this aspect of his theology that brought Berengar to the attention of a council in 1050. The thesis remained at the core of Berengar’s beliefs throughout his thirty years’ fight with scholars and churchmen. It apparently offended his sense of logic to suppose that the bread was not bread: “It is so plain that it suffices even a boy in school who knows about how words are joined to make sense can realize and be convinced of this.”47 From the beginning, then, we find Berengar resistant to the idea of the miraculous in the Eucharist: “For you to say that this [Eucharistic change] was a miracle ought to be a wonderful thing to say; in truth you would have said something insulting and contemptuous about God.”48 Yet, as we have seen, in the West miracles are incarnational. They are a theophany, the place where the divine and the human intersect. For Berengar to deny or even belittle the miraculous in the Eucharist was rightly seen by his contemporaries as an attack at Christianity’s core: the paradox of the doctrine of the Incarnation. Lanfranc realized this and insisted that belief in “miracles that are congruous to this faith of ours”49 be restored to the heart of Eucharistic theology: “We therefore believe that the earthly substances which on the Lord’s table are divinely consecrated through the ministry of priests are incomprehensibly, inexpressibly and wonderfully by the working of divine power converted into the essence of the Lord’s body.”50 This is a logic of a more profound nature, the logic of faith in the Incarnation, “for divine power, working miraculously, is able to do anything.”51 Alger of Liège insisted similarly, that the Eucharistic miracle pales in comparison to the miracle of the Incarnation. “Yet to those dialecticians asking whether the substance of the bread is converted into the body of Christ, and is no longer just bread,” Alger answers yes, that this is so because God is omnipotent [in omnibus et mirabilis]: “In his sacrament [God] makes accidental qualities exist of themselves which in other cases is impossible. Yet of this is the one who brought fertility to the Virgin without a seed, how miraculous is it if he makes qualities exist without the foundation of substance?”52 Peter Damian, who was not an active participant in the debates but whose moderate views both sides of the controversy tried to claim, agreed that the issue of miracles was at the heart of Eucharistic theology. In a letter to the Abbot Desiderus and the monks at Monte Cassino (men who did play an active role in the debate) Damian regaled them with tales of Eucharistic miracles.53 For him this was natural, because the Eucharist was itself a miracle. When a woman preserved a host and tried “later to have her husband drink it down with certain magic potions,” the sacrilegious act was foiled when “the host gave rise to a miracle which caused no inconsiderable amazement. For one half of this particle of the Lord’s Body was found turned into flesh, while the other half had not changed its appearance as bread.” The monks at Monte Cassino asked Damian to help them understand the meaning of this miracle. Almighty God changed the Most Holy Sacrament into the appearance of flesh in order to

impeach the disbelief of this wicked woman, while at the same time demonstrating the obvious truth of the Body of the Lord.… The fact that half of the appearance remained, however, served to furnish clearer evidence that, as you saw in one and the same substance the appearance of bread on one side and flesh on the other, you would recognize without separation the reality of both of true flesh and of true bread, since it is at once the very “bread that came down from heaven” (Jn 6:59) and at the same time the very flesh that proceeded from the substance of the Virgin’s womb.54 Damian does not draw extreme conclusions from the miraculous nature of the Eucharist. The participants in the debate do. When Berengar rejects the miraculous in the Eucharist, his opponents accuse him of rejecting all revelation and placing his trust solely in reason. Berengar admits that in matters concerning the Eucharist, he bypasses Scripture, but only because none of “the prophets or apostles or any place in the Gospels” say that the Eucharist “is made by a miracle.”55 The broader accusation about ignoring Scripture Berengar denies: “This accusation is a lie and not the truth, since I have placed sacred authorities in my argument whenever the need arose. But to act by reason in the apprehension of divine truth is incomparably superior” because “it is in the faculty of reason that [humanity] is made in the image of God.”56 Thus, by following the participants’ comments about miracles we come to the crux of the debate. Whatever paradigm we employ—old learning versus new, reason versus authority, Neo-Platonism versus Aristotelianism, scripture versus the dialectic, faith versus understanding—the fact of the matter is that the Eucharistic debate was about societal transition. Berengar’s opponents saw this immediately, and in their desire to slow or stop the transition they attacked Berengar. To them Berengar was inverting the traditional hierarchical order of things which placed reason in an ancillary position to authority. “The faithful Catholic prefers to approach the heavenly mysteries by faith, so as to be able finally to attain to faith’s reward, than without faith to waste time laboring to understand things which cannot be understood,” Lanfranc preached.57 Guitmund is even more exercised over the issue and resurrects Augustine’s credo, ut intelligam dictum to support his declaration that reason is never to trump faith: “For Christ did not command you to understand, but to believe. His is to care how what He wishes to be done may be done. Yours is not to discuss, but humbly to believe, all that he wishes to be done may be done. For you do not understand in order to believe afterwards, but first you believe in order to understand afterwards.”58 For Berengar and his opponents the argument over reason in theology led directly to an argument over a specific way of reasoning, the dialectic. Again, Lanfranc saw himself avoiding the dialectic and Berengar using it. God is my witness as is my conscience that when considering subjects of divinity I would wish neither to raise questions of dialectic nor to reply to them when they are raised. Even when the matter under discussion is such that it is patient of being more precisely explained by the rules of this art, so far as I can I conceal art by equipollences of propositions, lest I should seem to thrust more in art than in truth and in the authority of the holy fathers.59

For all his protestations, Lanfranc was clearing the way for his own use of the dialectic. Some would say he used it well and scored his most accurate points against Berengar’s argument with it; Lanfranc successfully discredited Berengar’s teaching by proving that “even as a matter of logic his syllogism failed as a support for his argument.”60 Lanfranc’s minor victories did not discourage Berengar. He readily admitted that Lanfranc was right about Berengar placing reason ever authority. In fact he turned Lanfranc’s criticisms on their head by turning to authority to support the use of reason. “It is the mark of the greatest spirit in all things to have recourse to dialectic,” Berengar proclaimed, for “the blessed Augustine deems dialectic worthy of such high definition that he says ‘Dialectic is the art of arts, the discipline of disciplines. She knows how to learn, she knows how to teach, and she not only wishes to make men wise, she actually makes them so.’”61 The discrepancies between Berengar and Lanfranc’s written attitudes and actual behavior reflect society’s ambiguity toward an expanded use of reason. In theory reason was subservient to authority, but theory is constructed by reason. Peter Damian is an example par excellence of the tendency during this transitional period to employ rational arguments to condemn the use of reason. Even though he proudly rejects “all the rhetors with their embellishments and reflexions without distinction and all the dialecticians with their syllogisms and sophistic quibbles,” Damian is a rhetorician at heart. He is a pioneer of new learning in every sense, yet sees its potential to “permit the long-winded schools of the proud philosophers to circumvent the disciple of the humble Christ.” Worried that he will be “defiled with the impurities of worldly wisdom” Damian prays that God will let “my guardian angel tell me that of which all the naive dialecticians are ignorant” and “the simplicity of Christ instruct me.” That simplicity of Christ, however, keeps leading him to new learning, and so his most influential treatise, Dominus vobiscum, written “after the fashion of the masters in the schools,” is soundly based not on scripture, but on reasoned arguments. 62 Peter Damian’s work allows us to see how short a transition period this was. New learning was quickly accepted. Dominus vobiscum was written around the same time Berengar was beginning to preach his Eucharistic doctrine, around 1048. Less than two decades later in 1065, Peter Damian wrote On Divine Omnipotence, his most sophisticated philosophical work. It was written in the shadow of the Berengarian debates and it “records the birth pangs of a new intellectual era.”63 Damian was a major force at the 1059 Roman synod where Berengar was forced to sign Humbert’s profession of faith, so it is plausible to posit that Damian had the controversy in mind when he wrote On Divine Omnipotence in 1065.64 When Berengar called the presence of the miraculous in the Eucharist into question, he called God’s omnipotence into question, and this is the issue Damian addresses. The treatise allows us to see how quickly the original complaint about Berengar’s use of dialectic became part of Damian’s solution. Damian composed four carefully argued dialectic points concerning omnipotence that prove beyond doubt that he mastered the art of new learning. His goal, however, is not to advance transitory learning (scientia) but to gain eternal wisdom (sapientia). Therefore, his treatise is also filled with warnings about “the blind foolhardiness of these pseudo-intellectuals who investigate non-problems.” Damian calls for discretion. He now willingly embraces dialectic for his own use, yet he also emphasizes its limitation. This is his contribution to the debate about the dialectic in theology: first learn scientia, and then

apply it correctly to reach sapientia. Both are essential. If that sequence is not followed, error will result. “These men, indeed, because they have not yet learned the elements of style,” he cautions, “and, still ignorant of those things boys study in school,” do not attain truth. Moreover, because they have acquired so little skill in the rudiments of learning or of the liberal arts, they obscure the study of pure ecclesiastical doctrine by the cloud of their curiosity. Clearly, conclusions drawn from the arguments of dialecticians and rhetoricians should not be thoughtlessly addressed to the mysteries of divine power; dialecticians and rhetoricians should refrain from persistently applying to the sacred laws the rules devised for their progress in using the tools of the syllogism.… However, if the techniques of the humanities be used in the study of revelation, they must not arrogantly usurp the rights of the mistress, but should humbly assume a certain ancillary role, as a maidservant to her lady.65 While we know that future generations disown the subservient role of reason, Damian’s proposal did give reason a definite role in the pursuit of truth. This prepared the way for the great intellectual advances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Before returning to Berengar and the Eucharistic debates, we should discuss another contribution of Damian’s to the flowering of Western intellectual activity, this one more explicitly related to the doctrine of the Incarnation. Most eleventh-century scholars were conflicted over their pursuit of scientia. Almost all scholars were, of course, also monks and nuns; should they not exert all their energy pursuing sapientia, divine wisdom, not secular knowledge? Damian’s solution to this dilemma was simple yet brilliant. He argued that there was in fact no conflict. Pursuit of one was pursuit of the other. The goal of both secular learning and theology was truth. Since Christ is truth, then pursuit of truth in any of its myriad forms is pursuit of Christ. “We know that you are truth,” Damian writes of the Word Incarnate, so Damian feels perfectly free to pursue knowledge in all fields. Hence he unapologetically writes about natural history, political theory, art, and social issues. Damian admits to no limitations in his pursuit of truth. “Truly, from the very beginning of the Lord’s incarnation, God passed into man, and man into God,” so that “according to the form of God said, ‘I am the truth and the life’; according to the form of man, ‘I am the way.’” When “‘the Word was made flesh,’ it does not mean that the divine nature was changed into flesh, but that by the Word flesh was taken up into union with the person” and made visible to all humanity.66 Thus, Damian unwaveringly declares, “Whoever opposes the truth after it has clearly been made evident will rightfully be judged an adversary of almighty God, provoking his inextinguishable anger against him if he persistently and arrogantly attacks the truth that is God himself.”67 Damian did not apply this principle only to theological matters; he wrote these words in the midst of a highly charged political struggle between the Empire and the church following the massacre of Roman troops on April 14, 1062. So far we have focussed on the impact the Eucharistic debate had in the intellectual world. What went on in this ethereal world consequently had a huge effect on other aspects of society, and it is to these that we now turn. The debate had vast repercussions in the lives of the nonelite because of how it effected the ritual life of medieval society. In the beginning of the debate sacramentum referred to most sacred rituals, ceremonies, and even symbols. Limiting

the word to a specify set of seven rituals was one of the long-term results of the debate. In the next century Abelard discussed six sacraments (he omitted holy orders) and Peter Lombard named the current seven in his popular Book of Sentences. It was Lombard’s seven that were institutionalized by the Fourth Lateran Council and became the backbone of late medieval culture. Ironically, it was Berengar who provided the definition that made the organization and classification of Christian sacraments possible: “A sacrament is the visible form of invisible grace.”68 In Rescriptum Berengar attributes this definition to Augustine, but scholars, failing to find the definition in Augustine’s corpus, credit Berengar.69 It is certainly Augustinian in spirit, so Berengar may have been erring on the side of caution in ascribing it to Augustine, or, despite his protestations of not needing to rely on authority, he may have used Augustine’s name to bolster his own credibility.70 Regardless, the definition is one aspect of the whole controversy that both sides agreed on. The definition is found in the works of Berengar’s adversary Alger of Liège and in later theologians, such as Gratian, Abelard, and Lombard.71 There was obviously a need to place Christian sacramentology on a firmer philosophical basis, and Berengar’s definition provided the foundation for both sides to proceed. Once they had this definition theologians developed more precise terminology to explain what takes place at the consecration. Lanfranc used the terms essentia and species, terms compatible with but not common in Aristotelian metaphysics. Durandus used the term substantialiter, as did Guitmund. As Guitmund stated, “in the Lord’s food we eat the substance of the Lord’s body and blood, not a mere shadow and figure.”72 Guitmund was also responsible for acceptance of the Aristotelian concept of accidents in Eucharistic and sacramental discussions.73 Berengar’s distinction between sacramentum and res sacramenti was another helpful step forward. By the end of the controversy all the necessary terms were in place for the next generation to develop a mature sacramentology and, eventually, a doctrine for the real presence: transubstantiation. That, however, was not the direction Berengar was headed. As he saw it, the divine presence in the Eucharist could be explained by the theory of impanation. Guitmund summarizes this theory as belief in the Eucharist “the substance of the bread and wine remained, but the ‘body and blood of the Lord are contained there in a manner that is true but hidden.’”74 The theory is the logical result of Berengar’s analogy between the Eucharist and the Incarnation: “The Word made Flesh assumed what it was not without ceasing to be what it was. Similarly, the bread consecrated on the altar loses its profaneness, its inefficacy, but not its proper nature; and it acquires as it were in place of that nature a divinely increased dignity and worth.”75 Berengar sees change only in terms of non-physical intangibles, such as dignity and worth. The change is a spiritual conversion. At the consecration “bread and wine become the Sacrament of faith, not by ceasing to be what they were, but by remaining what they were and being changed into something else.”76 This does not mean that the bread and wine are destroyed and replaced by Christ’s body and blood, for within Berengar’s non-miraculous schema, “this is a change that nature cannot undergo.”77 Rather, the change is spiritual, and the change in the person receiving the Eucharist is a spiritual change achieved through physical reception. He writes: Through the physical eating and drinking of the material elements, you recall to mind the

spiritual eating and drinking of the Flesh and Blood of Christ which takes place in the soul. While you refresh yourself interiorly upon the thought of the Incarnation of the Word and His Passion, you ought also to order your interior life with the same humility as that with which the Word became Flesh, and with His patience, and be absorbed in these things, and find joy in them, just as in physical food and drink your body finds repose.78 Ultimately, Berengar’s analogy between the Eucharist and the Incarnation fails, because his understanding of the Incarnation is deficient. In the Incarnation “the Logos did not cease to exist but assumed the body to himself, while in the Eucharist the bread did cease to exit [sic] as bread when it was changed into the body.”79 Nevertheless, our goal here is not to clarify the history of the Berengar controversy, but to show how reflection of the doctrine of the Incarnation was a catalyst for intellectual and social change. The above passage reveals how the doctrine prodded Berengar to endorse a concept society was still ambivalent about: individualism. Berengar believed that the Incarnation was the model upon which one’s personal, individual interior life (interioris tui vitam) should be ordered. Certainly, Berengar’s own life was a witness to this belief. His theology is personal, at times even emotional. His methodology is “intensely personal and individualistic.”80 He is not above ad hominum attacks.81 He sees the use of dialectic in personal terms; one had to be courageous and have “the property of a great heart to have recourse to dialectic.”82 While Berengar was far from alone in his flirtation with individualism, he was among its earliest pioneers. By mideleventh century there were hints of it in numerous spheres, and Berengar’s public debate did much to bring these whisperings out in the open.83 The new Eucharistic practices that became commonplace as a result of the Berengarian debates “were directed, not towards the restoration of community, but towards the kindling of personal devotion.”84 The elevation and adoration of the host, daily communion, the private mass, and solitary devotions to the reserved host were but some of the pietistic practices that developed in the wake of the controversy, and all catered to the individual. For Berengar, that was as it should be, for the Eucharist was the sacrament of the Incarnation, and the Word Incarnate saves each person one by one, not the community en masse. Since it is “thought of the Incarnation of the Word and His Passion” that inspires imitation and ultimately redeems, so too does thought of the Eucharist. “Restore yourself and rest in the Incarnation and Passion of the Word,” he writes.85 Belief in the Incarnation requires a subjective response, as does the Eucharist: “According to nature, that which you see with bodily eyes is bread; but considering the divine blessing that bread is the Body of Christ, after which you must strive with the eyes of your soul, the eyes of faith.”86

Anselm By the last phase of the Eucharistic debates reason had more respect, and the need for new intellectual tools and methodologies was recognized. New masters advocating new learning replaced the old masters with their traditional learning. Anselm (1033-1109) provides further documentation of the doctrine of the Incarnation’s role in Western history. He lived during those precise years that scholars claim gave birth to a distinctly Western intellectual culture,

and his role in its development is central.87 Moreover, because he was a man of action, Anselm’s life articulates the same belief in the paradoxical nature of the doctrine of the Incarnation that his texts do. He was fully engaged in both the City of Man and the City of God. Anselm entered the monastery of Bec in 1059 at age twenty-six, when Lanfanc was prior. Eadmer, Anselm’s biographer, tells us that Anselm “placed himself under [Lanfranc’s] guidance and in a short time became the most intimate of his disciples.”88 During the next four years, while Lanfranc was beginning to write his rebuttal of Berengar’s Eucharistic theology, De corpore et sanguine Domini, Anselm’s submission to Lanfranc was complete.89 As prior Lanfranc was in charge of novices and an extern school, where both Eadmer and Gilbert Crispin tell us “the best clerks from all parts of the world” were drawn because of Lanfranc’s reputation as a teacher. Inspired by Lanfranc’s mentoring, Anselm “gave himself up day and night to literary studies, not only reading with Lanfranc those things which he wished but teaching carefully to others the things which they required.” Anselm became Lanfranc’s teaching assistant.90 He tells us that his decision to stay at Bec was in part because of Lanfranc’s superior intelligence, “for there I shall be of no weight, so long as he is there who is conspicuous by the light of her pre-eminent wisdom.”91 He was right about Lanfranc’s light keeping him in the shadows, and “when Lanfranc was taken away to govern the monastery at Caen, Anselm succeeded him to the office of prior.”92 There is much that is different in the works of these two men. History has acknowledged Lanfranc’s high stature as a teacher, but it has never considered him to be in the same intellectual class as Anselm. Since accolades about Anselm abound (“the greatest speculative mind of the century,” “one of the most original medieval thinkers,” and even “one of the greatest minds in human history”), placing Lanfranc in an inferior position to Anselm does not tell us much.93 Regardless of Anselm’s intellectual superiority, though, he learned much from Lanfranc. Too often scholars have looked for Lanfranc’s influence on specific positions Anselm took in his theology and not found much. However, a good teacher passes on information to a student; an excellent teacher exposes a student to new attitudes towards learning. This is where we can find Lanfranc’s influence. Before Anselm found Bec and Lanfranc he had “gradually turned from study, which had formerly been his chief occupation,” left home, and wandered aimlessly around northern France.94 He wanted more from his intellectual endeavors than he was getting. Lanfanc was able to give him more.95 Lanfranc’s teaching opened up new vistas for Anselm. He was Anselm’s model teacher. How important Lanfranc the Teacher influenced his life is evident in a passage from Eadmer’s vita of Anselm where he discusses Anselm’s ideas concerning pedagogy. When an abbot came to Anselm to ask advice for his failing school, Anselm asked him about his teaching methods. Astoundingly, the abbot admitted that he and his monks “never give over beating them day and night.”96 Anselm explained why the abbot’s pedagogy failed.97 “You force them? Now tell me, my lord abbot, if you plant a tree-shoot in your garden and straightaway shut it in on every side so that it has no space to put out its branches, what kind of a tree will you have in after years when you let it out of its confinement?” “A useless one, certainly, with all its branches all twisted and knotted.”

“And whose fault would this be, except your own for shutting it in so unnaturally? Without doubt, this is what you do with your boys.”98 Anselm’s lesson “is too obvious to need explanation”: one has to create an atmosphere that stimulates growth if learning is to take place.99 When Anselm was called upon to defend the attention he gave to his own students, again he emphasized the importance of attitudes in teaching. “He compared the time of youth to a piece of wax of the right consistency for the impress of a seal,” Eadmer records. “‘Now consider a boy of tender years and little knowledge,’ Anselm explained. ‘Here indeed the wax is soft.… If you teach him, you can shape him as you wish. Realising this, I watch over the young men with greater solicitude.’”100 In short, it is how one teaches, as much as what, that makes a difference. The former shapes the pupil into a life-long student. Anselm learned this from Lanfranc.101 It is not beyond reason to argue that reflection on the doctrines of the Incarnation and Eucharist was responsible for Lanfranc’s pedagogy. It made Lanfranc look at his world differently. It created in him a new attitude toward intellectual activities. His determination to defend these doctrines inspired him to go where previous generations had not gone. The Incarnation and the Eucharist were the centerpieces of Lanfranc’s worldview, and so he used any and all tools available to protect those centerpieces.102 Grammar, rhetoric, logic, dialectic: none were off limit in his pursuit. (An oft-overlooked fact is that “Aristotle in Lanfranc’s hands had silently made his first successful intervention in a theological debate of central importance.”103) This was not an instance of dire necessity mandating drastic measures. Rather, it was an example of how belief in the ultimate paradox created a new attitude toward belief in any paradox. Paradoxes are complex, confusing, stimulating, mysterious, but above all else they challenge the human mind. A mind contemplating the nature of a paradox is open to all possible answers, even when the avenues available are considered dangerous. Such could be a description of Lanfranc’s activity in 1059-1063 as he taught Anselm and contemplated the Eucharist. Anselm would have seen his master applying the full force of his intellect to define and comprehend the paradox before him. It was the Incarnation doctrine’s paradoxical embrace of all things worldly and divine that ultimately established the principle upon which Lanfranc and his contemporaries, increasingly justified their search for worldly knowledge. This was how Lanfrance influenced Anselm; he exposed him to a new attitude toward learning.104 Lanfranc taught Amselm how to use his mind to explore, to conquer, to pioneer. It was this different attitude toward all knowledge that unleashed the changes in Western intellectual life, not specific knowledge. It should come as no surprise, then, to see that Anselm’s overwhelming preoccupation in his intellectual endeavors was the paradox of the Incarnation. In the last phase of Anselm’s life it is almost his exclusive focus.105 De Incarnatione Verbi, De Conceptu Virginali, Meditatio, and, of course, Cur Deus Homo were all written to answer questions concerning the Incarnation: Why did God become man? Was the Incarnation the only way to redeem the world? Why did God save the world? His earlier works, starting with Prayers and Meditations, were informed by the doctrine, but until he wrote Cur Deus Homo where he confronted the hard questions of the Incarnation full force, his conclusions were conservative.

Actually, he tells us that he went out of his way to “never state anything at all unless I saw that it could readily be defended wither by canonical writings or by the words of blessed Augustine.” He is offended when, after sending Lanfranc a copy of Monologion to critique before it was circulated, Lanfranc admonished him for not supporting his arguments with “divine authority” and “those learned in the holy books.” He peevishly responds that “this I have done as well as I could, both before and after your amiable paternal admonition.” He further insists that upon re-reading the work “I cannot conceive of having stated anything else myself. No reasoning of mine could convince me, however necessary it seemed, to venture to speak first.… I say this not to defend any of the things I said to you but to demonstrate that I did not presume to state them on my own but took them over from someone else.”106 He understood that if his contemporaries see his method as too radical they may not take the time to examine the content, so he does all he can to insure his readers that, despite his innovative method (it is sola ratione), his content is still orthodox. He writes to Abbot Rainald that “I have already suffered not a little from such hasty criticism [probably Lanfranc’s critique] because of what I said,”107 so to avoid future offence, he declares in the preface of Monologion that “after careful consideration, I have not been able to find that I have made in it any statement which is inconsistent with the writings of the Catholic Fathers, or especially with those of St. Augustine.” The difference between his method and others is that he does not explicitly cite his sources. The reader must do the checking: “Wherefore, if it shall appear to any man that I have offered in this work any thought that is either too novel or discordant with the truth… let him first read diligently Augustine’s books on the Trinity, and then judge my treatise in light of those.” He ends his Monologion preface by stating that “one will be much helped in understanding the matter of this book, if he has taken note of intention, and the method.”108 By the time he writes Cur Deus Homo at the end of the century he no longer feels the need to justify his work. He is now consciously challenging tradition by boldly proclaiming that both method and content are new.109 The more he studied the doctrine of the Incarnation the more inclined he was to depend on rational analysis. Not only the learned, but also many unlearned persons interest themselves in this inquiry and seek for its solution. Therefore, since many desire to consider this subject, and, though it seem [sic] very difficult in the investigation, it is yet plain to all in the solution, and attractive for the value and beauty of the reasoning; although what ought to be sufficient has been said by the holy fathers and their successors, yet I will take pains to disclose to inquirers what God has seen fit to lay open to me.110 Anselm willingly stands alone. Cur Deus Homo is innovative in method, and Anselm accepts personal responsibity for its conclusions.111 Anselm is comfortable with this reality. For him the faculty of reason is given to humans precisely to discover the truth. As Peter Damian preached before Anselm, the fact that Christ is Truth obligates humanity to seek truth in all things, liberal arts and sciences as well as theology.112 As early as 1077-1078 Anselm echoes the same conviction. One must pursue truth wherever it be, for if one “has seen light and truth, one has seen Thee.”113 Human reason is specifically for that purpose: “I thank thee that thou hast created me in this thine image, in order

that I may be mindful of thee, may conceive of thee.”114 Even though Anselm never comes close to placing the authority of revelation under reason, by the time he writes Cur Deus Homo he is no longer defensive about his reliance on reason. He sees the dialectical tension between authority and reason and makes it his mission to resolve that tension into a rational synthesis. Other contemporaries, such as Bruno of Segni in his treatise On the Incarnation of the Lord and His Burial, were being roused by the doctrine to attempt syntheses too, but Anselm’s synthesis is by far the most successful.115 It is indeed “a virtuoso performance with few rivals in the history of Christian thought, Eastern or Western.”116 While Anselm’s contributions are multiple, here we are concerned with his theology of change. “One of Anselm’s most significant contributions to intellectual history,” it is relevant here because it is basically a theology of the Incarnation: an unredeemed world is changed into a redeemed world.117 Change is the fundamental reality embraced by the Incarnate Word; God as divine is immutable, but God as human is mutable. Jesus changed the world, and he changed humanity. Jesus changed as he grew. In the opening chapter of Cur Deus Homo Anselm states that he is writing about the Incarnation for two reasons. First, so believers may understand what they believe, and, second, so he can change unbelievers into believers. Change occurs when “the learned and the unlearned” find answers for the questions at the heart of the doctrine: “For what cause or necessity, in sooth, God became man, and by his own death, as we believe and affirm, restored life to the world; when he might have done this, by means of some other being, angelic or human, or merely by his will.”118 Necessity, power, and will: These are the realities Christ personifies. G.R. Evans calls them “the forces of change.”119 Yet, they are also stumbling blocks, for they are traits contrary to the usual perception of deity. If these are the forces of change and Christ changed, how can Christ be immutable too? Was Christ compelled by necessity or by some power to die on the Cross? Is the answer compatible with deity? When Anselm sets out to answer these questions he utilizes a methodology based on the possibility of change, the hypothetical method. The method did not originate with him, but, as Evans says, “only Anselm made so thoroughgoing a use of it. The method underlies the arguments of Cur Deus Homo, and it gives Anselm a point of departure for everything he has to say there.”120 We need not consider the subtleties of Anselm’s argument here, for our focus is not on theology per se but on its impact. When Anselm proposes numerous alternative courses of action that God could have taken he is actually asking his readers to contemplate what things would be like if they were changed. The answers to Anselm’s hypothetical questions present possibilities, and thinking about alternatives is thinking about change. His exercise has an intended result, the resolution of the doctrinal difficulties of the Incarnation, but it also has another result: his method forces readers to reflect upon change. The reins holding back natural inquisitiveness begin to loosen. Anselm’s theology of change can be seen as both an effect of the past and a cause of future events. Change is intimately involved in the idea of reform. According to Gerhart Ladner, “reform ideas are ideas of conscious, intentional change.”121 Reform is a specifically Christian form of renewal “which has no true equivalent in pre-Christian times,” for it is rooted in the doctrine of the Incarnation. It is the personal reformation or “renovation toward that image-

likeness of man to God,” as known through Christ.122 Because reform is the effort to “re-form” oneself into the image of the Incarnate Word, Christian reformation also entails “building of the divine Kingdom and City among men” as Christ did.123 At first the idea of reform inspired personal and communal sanctity, but during the age of Peter Damian and Anselm, it was applied beyond the personal to the Church itself. Later still it was applied to “the whole Christianitas, to the political, socio-economic, and cultural milieu of life.”124 Ladner sees a clear connection between the changes in medieval society and its reform efforts, for that is what reform does: it changes. To extend Ladner’s conclusion further, one can argue that there is a prior connection between reform and change, the doctrine of the Incarnation. Both medieval reform and medieval change grow out of eleventh- and twelfthcentury society’s specific understanding of the Incarnation. The doctrine of the Incarnation, as enunciated by the likes of Lanfranc, Berengar, Peter Damian, and Anselm, provides the model. We should remember how daring a theology of change was for the time. It was a departure from reliance on authority, for answers to “what if?” do not rely on “what is.” Moreover, a sincere effort to reform mandated openness to all possible contingencies. It made scholars look for new ways to analyze questions, and this in itself introduced change into the intellectual world. The doctrinal issues of the Trinity that had preoccupied late antiquity and early medieval societies were particularly well suited to be addressed by Greek metaphysics. The issues of the Incarnation were not. As Evans comments, “Indeed, [Greek metaphysics] was designed for actually such purposes; it was a philosophy of the immutable.” When Anselm started focusing on the Incarnation and hypothetical change “old schemes of explanation did not meet the requirements of a philosophy of change.”125 To pursue the matter further meant new schemes of explanation had to be constructed. Here we can see in Anselm how contemplation of the doctrine of the Incarnation became a driving force directly and indirectly in the creation of medieval philosophy. He created an original philosophical framework filled with various notions: Aristotelian notions of modal propositions, hypothetical syllogisms, paronyms, negative formulations, and his own notions of natural truth, truth proper, and necessary reasoning.126 When he applied these tools to the doctrine of the Incarnation Anselm’s theology emerges with a changeless divine nature and a changeable human nature. The forces of change —necessity, power, and will—define humanity. As Evans insightfully concludes, “It was by giving room to such qualities of mind that twelfth-century theological thought developed its peculiar character. In this way it became perhaps more human and less God-like in its aspirations.”127 This is a prime example of how the doctrine of the Incarnation played a major role in the expansion of secular knowledge in the High Middle Ages. In the pursuit of a more thorough understanding of the doctrine scholars developed new attitudes toward authority, tradition, change, the forces of change, and natural curiosity. These attitudes in turn led to greater understanding of human nature and the world. As Damian argued earlier, because the Incarnate Word “is Truth itself,” society must pursue Truth relentlessly.128 This underlying premise justified and prodded the intellectual awakening sweeping through medieval society by the end of Anselm’s life, affecting “theology, philosophy, religious reform, both public and private, literature as well in poetry as in prose, architecture, sculpture, illumination, law both canon

and civil, mathematics and the natural sciences,” in short, “in all contemporary mental activities.”129 It was not limited to a narrow geographical area, either. By the late Middle Ages sophisticated intellectual activity was found throughout the West. Study of Christ’s human nature did much to foster a new type of humanism. Key concepts such as self-knowledge, intention, affection, and friendship were major focusses in twelfthcentury theology; they are also topics in modern secular humanism.130 Southern judges eleventh- and twelfth-century humanism to be “perhaps the greatest of all” ages of Western humanism, in no small part because it was so firmly anchored in “a strong sense of the dignity of human nature.” Scholars such as Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, and those from the school at St. Victor had acquired this sense by contemplating the Word Incarnate. Human nature was noble, because it was made in the image and likeness of God. No where was this likeness greater than in the intellect. “Finally,” Southern claims, “the whole universe appears intelligible and accessible to human reason; nature is seen as an orderly system, and man—in understanding the laws of nature—understands himself as the main part, the key-stone, of nature.”131 Clearly, Anselm personified the medieval humanist, for he believed that as imago Dei he could reach deep inside himself to find God. His was indeed “a triumph of an analytical introspective method” which would be adopted by those who followed in his footsteps.132 Anselm did not limit the use of this method to complex intellectual matters. He pioneered its application to psychology when he began a movement which was “the particular achievement of the twelfth century,” the analysis of affections.133 Writing to his friend Gundulf, Anselm chastised him for wanting written proof of Anselm’s affection. “I know full well that in you expect to read about nothing but the mutual affection of our love,” Anselm acknowledges, but, he tells Gundulf, affections can not be captured in writing. Your experienced conscience is my witness that, except insofar as it is conceived in the mind, this savor of affection is not perceived by anyone through either sight or hearing. Since therefore you know that the savor of love cannot be discerned either by the eyes or the ears but can be delightfully tasted only by the heart’s mouth, in what words or by what letter can your love and mine be described? And yet you press me insistently to do what cannot be done. May our consciences, by which we are aware of how much we love each other be [proof] enough for us.134 Despite his belief that “it is not possible to express adequately in writing what we mean to each other,” he frequently tries to do just that. “O, how my love burns within my heart,” he writes to two kinsmen. “How it seeks to express itself in words but no words suffice; how much it wants to disclose itself, but neither time nor parchment can contain it.”135 He seems aware of its novelty, acknowledging to Gilbert that such proclamations “about the affection of our mutual love” could easily be misunderstood by “those ignorant” of the nature of pure affection, especially when “it displayed itself face to face, lip to lip, embrace to embrace.”136 The physical component of internal emotions was not something Anselm ran away from, anymore than Jesus hesitated to embrace the physical and emotional components of humanity. As Anselm saw it, affections were where the physical and the interior lives of humanity

merged. Affection is not all spirit, but “affection of flesh and spirit.”137 It is impossible to separate the two. When one has affection for another, one yearns to be united with them physically as well as spiritually, “for to those whose minds the fire of love welds together it is not groundlessly irksome if the place they live keeps their bodies apart.”138 That is the uniqueness of affections. That is its mystery, its paradox. I cannot express what great joy flooded my heart, how much my hope for you increased, how high my already ardent longing for you flamed up, even intensely. Already my eyes desire, most dearly beloved, desire to see your faces, already my arms stretch out to take you in their embrace. My mouth yearns for your kisses, whatever remains of my life longs for your company, that my soul may rejoice with you in the complete joy of the life to come.139 Anselm’s reflection on the interior life is consistent with all other aspects of his work. It is but another instance of him scrutinizing the unknown. More significantly, his analysis is consistent with the incarnation paradigm. When examined outside this paradigm, Southern’s conclusion concerning Anselm’s insistence on the physical aspect of affection is difficult to understand.140 When one looks through the same Incarnational prism that Anselm did, it is quite easily understood—and powerfully convincing. Affections are not only of the spirit or only of the body. They are of both. One without the other is not affection. The doctrine of the Incarnation does not state that Christ is only divine or only human. He is both. One without the other is not Christ. There is only a fine line between Anselm’s analysis of affection and his overall analysis of knowledge of the self, for which he is well known.141 Eadmer tells us that “being thus inwardly more clearly illuminated with the light of wisdom and guided by his power of discrimination, he so understood the characters of people of whatever sex or age that you might have seen him opening to each one the secrets of his heart and bringing them into the light of day.”142 Eadmer continues, describing Anselm’s type of psychoanalysis: “He uncovers the origins, and so to speak the very seeds and roots and process of growth of all virtues and vices, and made it clearer than the light of day how the former could be attained and the latter avoided or subdued.”143 At the core of his understanding of psychology was the will. When Anselm brings his power of analysis to bear on his own will, he begins a revolution. After emphasizing God’s perfect use of the will, Anselm decries his own inability to master his will.144 Again and again I try to stir up my slothful mind and to draw it in from dissipating itself among vanities; but even when all its strength has been brought together, it cannot break through the shadows of its torpor, which the stains of its sins have brought upon it, and it cannot continue long in its intention. Alas, most wretched, wretched man that I am, this is the truth: it is no pretence; it is so.145 Friendships, after all, are but “the union of wills.”146 In a more formal analysis of the will in De Similitudinibus, Anselm describes it as that which resides in the soul along with reason and appetite (affectus). Reason allies humans with the angels, appetite with beasts, but “by will to both. Will holds a middle place between reason and appetite, inclining now to reason,

now to appetite.”147 The will, in other words, is the synthesis of reason and appetite much as the Incarnation is the synthesis of the human and divine.

Anselm’s Influence While Anselm’s foray into psychology had no long term influence, it did catch the attention of his contemporaries and served to fertilize the ground for future generations’ exploration. Without recognition of the will’s role in deciding actions and attitudes, there is no recognition of one’s responsibility for either. It is only a short jump from Anselm’s ideas about will to the medieval ethic of intention.148 As Colin Morris comments, the promotion of intention as the foundation of Western ethics was but another “striking instance” of change.149 The ethic also has probably one of the longest histories of influence among all concepts born of this medieval renaissance, for it is the lynchpin in modern Western jurisprudence. On the question of influence there is still some debate among scholars over Anselm’s immediate effect.150 It is generally acknowledged that Gilbert of Crispin was influenced by Anselm, and Anselm’s influence on his pupil Honorius of Augustodunensis’s ideas about the doctrine of the Incarnation is particularly clear. “One of the most influential writers of the first half of the twelfth century,”151 Honorius’s works abound with marginal citations to Anselm’s lectures and texts. Guibert of Nogent testifies that Anselm “bestowed on me so assiduously the benefits of his learning” and “readily offered to teach me to manage the inner self, how to consult the laws of reason in the government of the body.”152 Pelikan maintains that it was Anselm’s theology of the Incarnation and Eucharist that heavily influenced Guibert, although John Benton argues Anselm’s influence on Guibert’s exegesis was minimal.153 However, more recently Jay Rubenstein argues persuasively “that the influence of St. Anselm upon Guibert was even more profound than either of [Pelikan or Benton’s] analyses suggest.” He backs up his claim with numerous passages from Guibert’s work which support the thesis that Anselm’s influence was at the very heart of Guibert’s work. It was Anselm’s “innovative theory” of the mind that “did indeed first rouse Guibert to independent thought and this initial inspiration formed the basis of most of his later literary output.”154 Scholarship concerning the influence of Cur Deus Homo and its Incarnation theology follows the same lines as that concerning Anselm’s influence in general; newer research is modifying the traditional generalization that its immediate influence was minor. Cur Deus Homo is cited in a debate between Henry of Lausanne and William the monk, an anonymous treatise from Bec, and Hermann of Tournai’s De Incarnatione Jesu Christi Domini.155 Excerpts from it are found in four collections compiled within a century of Anselm’s death. There is much persuasive evidence that Odo of Cambrai, Rupert of Deutz, Herveus of BourgDieu, Hugh of St. Victor, Richard of St. Victor, Peter Lombard, and Alan of Lille were influenced by Anselm’s theology of the Incarnation, as found in De Incarnatione Verbi and Cur Deus Homo.156 The question of influence on Roscelin and Abelard is more complex but clearly present. Roscelin and Anselm locked horns over the doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. Anselm, however, disavowed support (proably incorrectly157) and wrote De Incarnatione Verba to refute Roscelin’s interpretation.158 Early on in Roscelin’s discussion of

these doctrines he claimed Anselm “as a possible supporter” of his views, indicating that he had studied Anselm thoroughly. Abelard sided with Anselm, but in his own refutation of Roscelin he does not mention Anselm.159 Abelard’s first refutation was condemned at the Council of Soissons in 1121, so he revised it, the result being Theologia Christiana. Here Anselm’s debt is openly acknowledged. He takes one of Anselm’s analogies and offers what he thinks is an improvement on it.160 Abelard also references Anselm in his commentary of Romans, where he rejects the theory of the devil’s rights that Anselm had famously attacked; he replicates Anselm’s questions almost verbatim, uses Anselm’s analogies, articulates Anselm’s theory of exemplarism, and defines the concept of divine necessity as Anselm did. As Luscombe concludes, “when we take into account the strikingly unusual character of their common viewpoint… we must conclude that an onus of proof lies on those who disbelieve that Abelard was powerfully persuaded either by Anselm” or his disciples.161 From the latter part of the twelfth century onward there is no debate over Anselm’s influence within the intellectual community. It is exceedingly great. In large part this is due to Cur Deus Homo. Modern scholars judge it to be “one of the most influential treatises of the Middle Ages”; “Anselm’s greatest intellectual achievement”; and “his greatest work, certainly his most significant in terms of its influence on later theological thought.”162 By the end of the thirteenth century medieval scholars were coming to the same conclusions. Alexander Nequam, William of Auxerre, Philip the Chancellor, Alexander of Hales, Robert Grosseteste, and Bonaventure cite Anselm’s works frequently. Richard of St. Victor constructs a proof of God’s existence on Anselm’s proof, as does William of Auvergne, Alexander of Hale, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas.163 Already in the 1220s and 1230s Robert Grosseteste (who possessed a copy of Cur Deus Homo) was lecturing at Oxford on Anselm; he was quickly followed by Alexander of Hales lecturing at Paris.164 In De cessatione legalium Grosseteste discusses the Incarnation at length, acknowledges his debt to Anselm, and cites him as his authority more often than any other medieval theologian. In Tabula Grosseteste uses Cur Deus Homo as his authority in twenty-two sections, quoting twenty-six of Anselm’s forty-seven chapters. He even explicitly encourages his audience to read Cur Deus Homo themselves.165 Peter Lombard devotes Book Three of his Sentences to the Incarnation, and commentaries of Sentences have frequent citations from Cur Deus Homo.166 Michael Robson argues that Anselm’s “growing influence is manifested in the volume of quotations from Cur Deus Homo which supplanted [Augustine’s] De Trinitate as the principal guide on questions concerning the Incarnation”; statistics support this contention.167 By the time of Bonaventure, Anselm is the preferred authority “on the issues of the Incarnation.” Treatment of Anselm as the authority becomes standard by the fourteenth century, as can be seen, for example, in fourteenth century commentaries. In one study, Arthur Lee found Thomas of Buckingham in his Questiones super Sententias quoted Anselm 139 times and cited Cur Deus Homo forty-eight times, double the number of the next highest cited text.168 This reliance on Anselm and the perception of his authority as equal to Augustine is typical for centuries to come. Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibnitz, Kant, and Hegel are just some of the giants in Western intellectual history who pay homage to Anselm’s genius.169 In short, Anselm’s influence on Western culture is indisputable, as it is likewise indisputable that the doctrine of the Incarnation was a major influence on

Anselm’s thought. Before leaving Anselm, however, there is one additional observation to make. Eastern Christianity never produced an Anselmian equivalent. The Eastern church was conservative at its core, for it neither saw nor desired development in its belief system and was content to focus on the experiential nature of religious knowledge. Those debates on the Incarnation that eleventh- and twelfth-century Eastern theologians had were re-considerations of fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-century debates. In 1087 the monk Nilus advocated a type of adoptionism; in 1117 Eustratus, Metropolitian of Nicae, preached the human Christ in servitude to the divine Christ; in 1170 Constantine of Kerkyra and John Eirenikos promoted a type of Monophysism: all were condemned.170 In short, debate over the wording of the doctrine continued to occupy Eastern theologians during the same period that “Latin theologians reveled in the paradox of the Incarnation.”171 One wonders if Eastern cultural history would have been different if it had shared a similar focus on the doctrine’s paradox. Notes 1. See essays in When Worlds Elide: Classics, Politics, Culture, ed. Karen Bassi and Peter Euba (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010). For its influence on law, see R. W. Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, vol.1: Foundation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). He entitles Part II, “Turning Doctrine into Law.” A whole chapter could be written on the impact doctrine had on canon law and on the subsequent impact canon law had on the secular law in developing “nations.” See Jean Leclercq, “Un temoignage sur l’influence de Gregoire VII dans la reforme canoniale,” Studia Gregoriani 6 (1959-60), 173-227; and Kriston Rennie, Law and Practice in the Age of Reform (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010). 2. Charles Radding and Francis Newton, Theology, Rhetoric, and Politics in the Eucharistic Controversy, 1078-1079 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p.1. 3. Charles Sheedy, The Eucharistic Controversy of the Eleventh Century Against the Background of Pre-Scholastic Theology (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1947), pp.14-32. 4. Martin Tweedale, “Logic (i): From the Late Eleventh Century to the Time of Abelard,” in A History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy, ed. Peter Dronke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p.196. 5. Marcia Colish, Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition, 400-1400 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pp.166-67. 6. Otto of Freising, Chronica sive historia de duabus civitatibus, ed. A. Hofmeister, MGH, 1912, p.8. 7. Southern, Scholastic Humanism, pp. 45, 48. 8. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Drama (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), p.345. 9. Robin Darling Young, “The Eucharist as Sacrifice According to Clement,” in Rediscovering the Eucharist, ed. Roch Kereszty (New York: Paulist Press, 2003), p.69. [6391] 10. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter of Ignatius to the Smyrneans, in Early Christian Fathers, ed. Cyril Richardson (Westminster, MD: Library of Christian Classics, 1953), 7. 3.

11. First Apology of Justin, 66, in ANF, 1:185. 12. Against Heresies, 5.2, in ANF, 1:528. 13. Ibid., 4.18.4-5, in ANF, 1:486. 14. Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, 1.6, in ANF, 2:218-19. 15. Ibid., 2.2, in ANF, 2:242. 16. Martos, Doors, p.248. 17. Paschasius Radbertus, De corpore et sanguine Domini, CCCM (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969) 16:14. 18. Ratramnus, De Corpore et Sanguine Domini, ed. J. N. Bakhuizen van der Brink (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1954), 60,49: “Est quidem corpus Christi sed non corporale sed spiritale. Est sanguis Christi sed corporalis sed spiritalis. Nihil igitus hic corporaliter sed spiritaliter sentiendum.” 19. Southern, Scholastic Humanism, p.1. 20. Otto of Freising, Chronica, p.8. 21. C. Stephen Jaegar, The Envy of Angels (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), p.220. 22. Cited in ibid., p.219. 23. Ibid., p.230. 24. PL 149, 1428b; tr. ibid., pp. 81-2. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., p.82. 27. Letters of Abelard and Heloise, tr. Betty Radice (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), p.62. 28. Letter of Goswin of Mainz to Walcher, 29-31, in Jaegar, Envy, appendix B, pp. 366-67. 29. Cited in H. E. J. Cowdrey, Lanfranc (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003): “Hoc colligitis secundum humanan scientiam, non secundum divinam.” See pp.69-71. 30. R.W. Southern, Saint Anselm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p.46. 31. Cowdrey, Lanfranc, p.74. New documentary evidence is still surfacing; see Rudolf Maurer, “Berengarii ut videtur De eucharistia,” Wiener Studien 103 (1990), 199-205. 32. Colish, Medieval Foundations, p.166. 33. Sheedy, Eucharistic Controversy, p.32. 34. Adelmann of Liège, Epistola ad Berengarium, in Serta medievalia, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, CCCM 84 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 47-50; Jaegar, Envy, pp.219-20. The earliest criticisms were probably Hugh of Langres, De corpore et sanguine Christi contra Berengarium, PL 142, 1325-31; John of Fecamp, Albini confessio fidei, PL 101, 1027-98; and Durand, Liber de corpore et sanguine Christi contra Berengarium et ejus sectores, PL 149, 1373-1424. 35. Adelmann, ibid.; Jaegar, ibid., p.220. 36. Cited in Ian Christopher Levy, John Wyclif (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2003), p.138. For Hildebrand’s opinions on Berengar, see O. Capitani, “Per la storia dei rapporti tra Gregorio VIIe Berengario di Tours,” Studi Gregoriani 6 (1959-1961), 99-145. 37. According to Lanfranc, it all happened without his involvement, but Berengar ridiculed Lanfranc’s plea of ignorance. See PL 150,413. Regardless of how much orchestrating Lanfranc

did, the two were estranged for the next twenty years, a situation that apparently surprised and disappointed Berengar, since they had been on friendly terms up until this incident. 38. Cited in Cowdrey, Lanfranc, pp.63-4. 39. Southern, Saint Anselm, p.44. 40. See P. Meyvaert, “Berengar de Tours contre Alberic du Mont-Cassin,” Revue bénédictine 70 (1960), 324-32. 41. See Gary Macy, “The Theological Fate of Berengar’s Oath of 1059: Interpreting a Blunder Becomes Tradition,” in Interpreting Tradition, ed. Jane Kopas (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984), pp.27-38. 42. Peter the Venerable, Contra Petrobrusianos, PL 189, 789; Sheedy, Eucharistic Controversy, p.39; and Cowdrey, Lanfranc, p.59. See Lanfranc, De corpore et sanguine Domini adversus Berengarium Turonensem, PL 150,407-42; Guitmund, De corporis et sanguinis Christi veritate in Eucharistia, PL 149, 1427-1508; Alger, De sacramentis corporis et sanguinis Dominici, PL 180, 739-854. Also see Lanfranc of Canterbury: On the Body and Blood of the Lord/ Guitmund of Aversa: On the Truth of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, tr. Mark Vaillancourt (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009). 43. Lanfranc seemed to have lost interest in the affair after he left Bec. There is no record of him even reading, no less responding to Berengar’s De sacra coena, a treatise attacking Lanfranc. Still, his treatise is a significant part of the debate. 44. De sacra coena. Adversus Lanfranc, ed. W. Beekenkamp (Hague: Martinus Mijhoff, 1941), p.101. 45. PL 150, 417. 46. Adelmann of Liège, Epistola ad Berengarium, 50: “ut illorum de te dictis utar, non esse verum corpus Christi neque verum sanguinem, sed figuram quandam et similitudinem.” 47. Letter to Ascelin, II, 33-35, in ibid., p.148: “convincere ipsa verba in consecrationem panis instituta non decedere sacramento materiam panis.” 48. It is now better known as Rescriptum contra Lanfrannum. See CCCM 84; and De sacra coena, p.96. 49. PL 150, 435. 50. PL 150, 430; Cowdrey, Lanfranc, p.71. 51. PL 150, 427. 52. PL 180, 809-10; Levy, John Wyclif, p.155. 53. See Radding and Newton, Theology, pp. 95-169. 54. Letter 102, in Letters of Peter Damian, tr. Owen J. Blum (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 5:124. 55. De sacra coena, p.97. 56. Ibid., pp. 100-1. Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 279, thinks Berengar’s use of scripture may be more superficial and tenuous that he admits. 57. PL 150, 427; Sheedy, Eucharistic Controversy, p.42. 58. PL 149, 1441; ibid., p. 43: “non enim praecepit tibi Christus: Intellige, sed crede.” 59. PL 150, 416-17; ibid.

60. Cowdrey, Lanfranc, p. 70. 61. Rescriptum, pp. 85-6; Radding and Newton, Theology, pp. 13-4. 62. Letter 28: 4-6, in Letters, 1:257-59. See also Letter 119:9, in Letters, 5:349. 63. Irven Michael Resnick, Divine Power and Possibility in St. Peter Damian’s “De Divina Omnipotentia” (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992), p.112. 64. Resnick, ibid., pp. 77-8. This opinion is consistent with J. A. Endres, “Petrus Damiani und die weltliche Wissenschaft,” Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters (Münster: Aschendorff, 1910). 65. Letter 119:25-6, in Letters, 5:356. 66. Letter 81:31, ibid., 3:221. 67. Letter 89:99, ibid., 3:366. 68. Berengar, Epistola contra Almannum, tr. in Jean de Montclos, Lanfranc et Berengar (Leuven: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense, 1971), appendix 2: “sacramentum est invisibilis gratiae visibilis forma.” See also Levy, John Wyclif, p.145. 69. De sacra coena, p.114: “Est enim sacramentum praescribente beato Augustino invisibilis gratiae visibilis forma.” 70. Cf. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, ed. R. P. H. Green (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 2.1: “Signum est enim res praeter speciem, quam ingerit sensibus”; and De civitate Dei, CCSL 47-48 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), 10.5: “Sacrificium ergo uisibile inuisibilis sacrici sacramentum, id est sacrum signum est.” 71. J. de Ghellinck, “Une chapître dans l’histoire de la définition des sacraments au XIIe siècle,” Bibliothèque thomiste 14 (1930), 87. 72. PL 149, 1487: “Substantiam corporis et sanguinis Domini nos in cibo Dominico sumere, non umbram et figuram tantum.” 73. PL 149, 1450. 74. PL 149, 1430. 75. De sacra coena, pp. 98-99; Sheedy, Eucharistic Controversy, p. 106 76. PL 150, 419. 77. PL 149, 1431. 78. De sacra coena, p. 223; Sheedy, Eucharistic Controversy, p. 107. 79. Pelikan, Christian Tradition, 1: 199. 80. Sheedy, Eucharistic Controversy, p. 40. 81. De sacra coena, pp. 114; ibid., p. 104. 82. Ibid., p. 101: “maxime plane cordis est.” Ibid., p. 57. 83. The literature on it is immense. Colin Morris, The Discovery of the Individual 10501200 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, repr. 2000) remains the standard work. 84. Ibid., p.12. 85. De sacra coena, p. 255: “Reficiendo se, acquiscendo sibi in incarnatione et passione verbi.” 86. Ibid., p. 177. 87. R.W. Southern, “St. Anselm at Canterbury: His Mission of Reconciliation,” in Anselm: Aosta, Bec and Canterbury, ed. D. C. Luscombe and G. R. Evans (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 24.

88. Eadmer, The Life of St. Anselm, ed. and tr. R. W. Southern (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1962), 1:5 (p.8). See S. Anselmi Cartuariensis archiepiscopi Opera omnia, ed. Franciscus Schmitt, vols. 6 (Edinburg: T. Nelson, 1938-68); and Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, ed. Brian Davies and Gillian Evans (Oxford University Press; reis: 2008). See also Schmitt’s “Cinq recensions de l’’epistolla de Incarnatione Verbi de S. Anselme de Cantorbery,” Revue bénédictine 51 (1939), 275-87; “La lettre de saint Anselme au pape Urbain II a l’occasin de la remise de su ‘Cur Deus Homo,’ (1098),” Revue des sciences religieuses 16 (1936), 127-44. Also helpful is The Cambridge Companion to Anselm, ed. Brian Davies and Brian Leftow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 89. Southern, Saint Anselm, p. 53. 90. Eadmer, Life, 1:5 (p. 8). See also Gilbert Crispin Vita Herluini, in J. A. Robinson, The Saxon Bishops of Wells (London: Oxford University Press, 1918), 87-110. 91. Eadmer, Life, 1:5 (p. 9). 92. Ibid., 1:7 (p. 11). 93. Colish, Medieval Foundations, p. 167; and Sally Vaughn, St. Anselm and the Handmaidens of God (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), p. 288. 94. Eadmer, Life, 1:4 (p. 6). 95. Ibid., 1:5 (p. 8). Lanfranc’s fame as a teacher extended to Rome. When Pope Nicholas II decided to undertake reform he sent his clerks to Lanfranc for their education. Southern, Saint Anselm, p. 39. 96. Eadmer, Life, 1:22 (p. 37). 97. Anselm’s aversion to violence is evident here, too, and maybe has its roots in his childhood. See ibid., 1:4 (p.7). 98. Ibid., 1:22 (p. 37). 99. Ibid. (p. 39). 100. Ibid., 1:11 (p. 21). 101. His admiration for Lanfranc, of course, went beyond his role as teacher. Anselm wrote Lanfranc upon his elevation to the archbishopric of Canterbury that “although so many unexpected changes in circumstances frequently endeavor to separate you from me, they will, however, never be able to succeed. I do not mean that they will not separate our closely united souls from one another but that my devoted soul will certainly not be drawn away from you. Wherefore, even if I do not express what you know and I do not doubt, you cannot altogether escape him whom you carry within you.” Letters of Saint Anselm of Canterbury, vols.2, tr. Walter Fröhlich (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1993), 1:1 (p. 73). 102. Southern, Saint Anselm, pp. 47-50. 103. Ibid., p.50. The first explicit reference to Aristotle in a theological treatise was in Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo. 104. Evans, Anselm, p. 139. 105. Southern, Saint Anselm, divides Anselm’s productivity into three phases: 1) 1070-79; 2) 1079-1092/93; and 3) 1092/93 – 1109. 106. Letter 77, in Letters of St. Anselm (pp. 205-07; quote, p. 206). 107. Letter 83, ibid., 1:218. 108. Anselm, Monologium, preface, in St. Anselm: Basic Writings, tr. S. N. Deane, 2nd

ed. (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1962), pp. 36-7. 109. Southern, Saint Anselm, p. 205. 110. Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, 1:1, tr. James Gardiner Vose, in St. Anselm: Basic Writings, p. 179. 111. Southern, Saint Anselm, p.205. 112. Ranft, “Role of the Eremetic Monk.” 113. Anselm, Proslogium, 14, (p. 21). 114. Ibid., 1 (p. 6). 115. PL 165, 1079-84. See Reginald Gregoire, Bruno de Segni (Spoleto: Presso la sede del Centro, 1965). 116. Pelikan, Christian Tradition, 3:107. 117. G.R. Evans, Anselm and a New Generation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), pp. 174-97. 118. Cur Deus Homo, 1 (pp. 178-79). 119. Evans, Anselm, p. 187. 120. Evans, Anselm, pp. 174-75. As Evans further explains: “When God redeemed the world he brought about a change. Wherever there is alteration, or any departure from immutability, the possibility presents itself that the change might have been in some way different, or that it may not be permanent, or that it may lead to further change. While theology concerns itself exclusively with the existence and nature of God it has no need to take account of such matters. But as soon as it considers God’s actions in the world–and especially those actions in which he was himself personally involved as a man–it is necessary for theology to consider counter-factual hypotheses.” 121. Ladner offers this formal definition: “The idea of reform may now be defined as the idea of free, intentional and ever-perfectible, multiple, prolonged and ever repeated efforts by man to reassert and augment values pre-existent in the spiritual-material compound of the world.” Gerhart Ladner, The Idea of Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), p.35. Ladner’s work still defines the field. See Philip Stump, “The Influence of Gerhart Ladner’s The Idea of Reform,” in Reform and Renewal in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Thomas Izbicki and Christopher Ballitalto (Leiden: Brill, 2000), p.6. 122. Ibid., p.2. 123. Ibid., p. 320. 124. Ibid., pp. 423-24. 125. Evans, Anselm, p. 187. 126. Colish, Medieval Foundations, pp. 167-70. 127. Evans, Anselm, p. 195. 128. Anselm, Proslogium, p.23. 129. David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought (New York: Random House, 1962), p. 79. 130. Morris, Discovery, p. 163. 131. R.W. Southern, Medieval Humanism (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), pp. 31-32. It is not surprising to see the school of St. Victor also concerned with the theology of change. See Archard of St. Victor, De Trinitate et unitate et pluralitate creaturarum ed. M.

D’Alverny, Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale 21 (1954), 299-307; and Walter of St. Victor, Contra quatuor labyrinthos franciae, ed. P. Glorieux, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et litteraire du moyen âge 19 (1952), 187-335. Walter discusses change specifically as it relates to change in the Word Incarnate. 132. Ibid., p.33. 133. Morris, Discovery, p. 76. 134. Letter 59, in Letters of St. Anselm, 1:171-72. 135. Letter 120, ibid., 1:285-86. 136. Letter 130, ibid., 1:305. 137. Letter 120, ibid., 1:287. 138. Letter 5, ibid., 1:84. 139. Letter 5, ibid., 1:285. On the issues of whether Anselm’s letters of affection were homosexual expressions, see John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 218-20. Vaughn, St. Anselm, p. 18, succeeds in her goal of putting “to rest forever” Boswell’s claim that, on the basis of his letters, Anselm was homosexual. She does this by placing these letters of affection in their proper historical context. She concludes that Anselm’s homosexuality is “wholly in the eyes of the modern observers who do not understand either Anselm or medieval thinking.” 140. R.W. Southern, Saint Anselm and his Biographer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), p. 74. 141. See Vaughn, St. Anselm, p. 286: “Anselm represents the epitome of self-examination.” 142. Eadmer, Life, 13. 143. Ibid., pp. 11-12. 144. “… solvis quod vis, resuscitas quem vis, das regnum caelorum cui vis” Cited in Southern, Saint Anselm and Biographer, p.44. 145. Prayers, 9, cited in ibid. 146. Ibid., p. 73. 147. Ibid. 148. See discussion below, ch. 8, p.186-87. 149. Morris, Discovery, p. 75. 150. See debate in Anselm: Aosta, especially Jay Rubernstein, “St. Anselm’s Influence on Guibert of Nogent, pp.296-309; and Michael Robson, “The Impact of the Cur Deus Homo on the Early Franciscan School,” pp.334-47. 151. Southern, Saint Anselm and Biographer, pp.213-15. 152. Guibert of Nogent, Self and Society in the Middle Ages, tr. John Benton (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 1.17 (pp.89-90). 153. See Jaroslav Pelikan, “A First-Generation Anselmian, Guibert of Nogent,” in Continuity and Discontinuity in Church History (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 71-82; and Guibert, Self, p. 91 n.16. 154. Rubernstein, “St. Anselm’s Influence,” 296. 155. See, in particular, PL 180, 11, where Herman designates Anselm to be an authority on the Incarnation on par with the Church Fathers. See also Teoria della scienza teologica. ‘Questio de scientia theologiae di Odo Rigaldi e altri testi inediti’ (1230-1250), ed. E. Sileo,

Studia Antoniana 27:1 (1984) for comments of Eudes Rigaud (third master of the Franciscan school at Paris) about Cur Deus Home?’s influence on his comentary on Lombard’s Sentences. 156. See. D.E. De Clerck, “Le Dogme de la redemption: De Robert de Melum à Guillaume d’Auxerre,” Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale 14 (1946), 252-86; De Clerck, “Questions de sotériologie médiévale, ibid., 13 (1946),150-84. 157. Southern, Saint Anselm and Biographer, p. 80. 158. See PL 178, 357-72, for Roscelin’s work. 159. D.E. Luscombe, “St. Anselm and Abelard,” in Anselm Studies (Millwood, NY: Kraus International Publishers, 1983), 208-09. 160. See Anselm, Epistola de Incarnatione Verbi (Bonn: P. Hanstein, 1931), 13-14. 161. Luscombe, “St. Anselm,” 217. 162. Robson, “Impact,” p.334; Southern, Saint Anselm and Biographer, p. 77; and William Shannon, Anselm (New York: Crossroad, 1999), p.145. 163. Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), 2:1:202; 2:1:250; 2:1:263; 2:1:283; and 2:2:62 (Aquinas’s fourth proof), respectively. 164. M.R. Thomson, “An Unnoticed Autograph of Grosseteste,” Medievalia et Humanistica 14 (1962), 55-60; and Michael Robson, “Saint Anselm, Robert Grosseteste and the Franciscan Tradition,” in Robert Grosseteste: New Perspectives on His Thought and Scholarship, ed. J. Mc Evoy (Steenbrugge: Instrumenta Patristica, 1995), pp. 250-73. 165. Robson, ibid. 166. Peter Lombard, Sententiae in Quattror IV bibris distinctae, III, d.20 (Grottaferrata: Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1981), pp.125-29. 167. Robson, “Impact,” pp. 340-46. Robson includes a table of citations of Cur Deus Homo in commentaries on Sentences (p.345). 168. Arthur Lee, “Anselm and Thomas of Buckingham: An Examination of the Questiones super Sententias,” in Anselm Studies (Millwood, NY: Kraus International, 1983), 231-49. For a table of citations, see 244-49. 169. Lengthy excerpts from the works of these philosophers’ appraisal of Anselm in including in the introduction to Deanne, Saint Anselm: Basic Writings, pp. iii-xxvi. 170. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, pp.39-40. 171. Pelikan, Christian Tradition, 3:117.

Chapter Six Peter Damian: New Ideas and Attitudes It is not possible to prove that ideas shape history, no more than one can prove that destiny, environment, or natural forces do.1 Most people, however, find it counter-intuitive to suppose that human ideas have no impact on culture, or that culture is only formed by things and not also by human reactions and thoughts about things. Viktor Frankl spent his life rebutted such claims. Famed concentration camp survivor and psychiatrist-founder of logotherapy, Frankl argued that no person or thing can take away the freedom to determine one’s own attitudes or ideas about life. A person is never totally at the mercy of an external force; each person retains the ability to give that force meaning. For Frankl it meant that, hard as Nazi torturers tried, they did not ultimately determine the meaning of life in concentration camps. They stripped their victims of every material thing, but they could not take away their victims’ ability to give their own meanings to the experience. Because of this the Nazis did not ultimately control the shape of the Holocaust history. The way victims formulated their thoughts—the interpretation of its violence, their attitudes toward it, and the meaning they gave death—determined the meaning of their experience and hence their reactions. Frankl documented how time and again what inmates thought about their captivity determined their behavior. His years of practice afterwards reinforced his Auschwitz experience: what people think inspires what people do.2 Ideas motivate actions. In this chapter and the next I offer case studies of how the formulated idea—the doctrine— of the Incarnation promoted action. Peter Damian is my first subject, chosen because of his pivotal position in the ecclesiastical, political, and cultural worlds of his day. His theological understanding of the doctrine was a major catalyst in his life. It motivated him to act and behave in certain ways. In Peter Damian there is a well-documented bridge between his beliefs and practices, between his ideas and actions. Moreover, we know that he did his utmost to influence people with his ideas. He had multiple powerful correspondents in both the secular and ecclesiastical worlds and preached to vast numbers of the laity. The powerful in his audience had the authority to clothe these ideas in institutions, customs, and behavior; everyone in his audience had to opportunity to practice what he preached.

Theology of the Incarnation I mentioned in the introduction that research in the theology of work led to my current interest in the doctrine of the Incarnation. At the root of that theology is the thought of Peter Damian, specifically, his social theology.3 Christians are obligated to bear witness to their beliefs with external actions and to ready themselves and the world for the Second Coming. Both obligations are fulfilled by work. Damian spent his life preaching and writing about the sanctifying aspects of work. The religious reformers who followed him agreed, and as their reform movement spread, so did their new positive attitudes toward labor. Work was no longer

seen as only punitive and degrading. Its redemptive and uplifting aspects were increasingly recognized. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, long regarded as a pivotal period in the history of Western labor, a positive appreciation for the value of labor prevailed.4 The reformers’ attitudes toward labor had triumphed. There is, however, one more layer to excavate: What is at the root of Damian’s social theology? The answer to that question is the doctrine of the Incarnation. Contemplation of this doctrine unleashed ideas about life in society and, consequently, determined his actions.5 Born in 1007, Damian was schooled in Faenza and Parma and had his first teaching post in Ravenna. Probably in 1035 he entered the monastery of Fonte Avellana.6 By 1040-41 he was lecturing at the monastery at Pomposa, and it is here that he most likely wrote his first treatise, Letter 1.7 He had been asked by a nobleman named Honesta “to write something for you to use in silencing, with reasoned arguments, the Jews who debate with you.”8 Damian used the opportunity to organize the main tenets of Christianity. To make his apology convincing he presented his arguments first in the form of a monologue and then in a dialogue with an imaginary Jew.9 He begins with the statement from the Old Testament: “‘Let us make man in our image and likeness.’” When scripture says “‘Let us make’” and not “‘let me make’” it “asserts the Trinity”; when it says “‘our image’” and not “‘our images’” it “indicates unity.”10 The Christian understanding of God does not render Him multiple gods, or else Isaiah would have spoken of the “Lords of hosts” and not the “Lord of hosts” as he did. It was “the entire Trinity together” that created the world, but as David said, “‘by the word of the Lord the heavens were made,’” and Damian adds, this ‘Word of the Lord is the Son of the Father.”11 In short, Damian staunchly upholds the formal definition of the doctrine of the Incarnation. Damian goes on at length, commenting on Old Testament passages which foretell the coming of the Word, and then he ends his presentation with a reasoned summation. Examine, inspect and leaf through all the pages of Holy Writ, if you will, and consider thoroughly that the term “Most High” is used everywhere of God, is never found applying to a mere man. It follows then, that when “Most High” and “man” are brought together, we are to understand that God and man are called one person, of whom it is wonderfully said that he who was born in her, that is, in Zion, was indeed he who founded her. First, it is necessary for a city to be founded, and then later for a man to be born in it. But who has the power first to build a city and in it later come forth from his mother’s womb? Who, I say, but our Redeemer, who deigned to be born in the things which he made?12 For Damian, then, fundamental to all his beliefs is his understanding of the Word Incarnate as paradox. To reinforce the truth of this paradox Damian continually turns to the power of witness to sway his imaginary Jew into letting the “array of evident testimony of the saints” transform him into a believer. Clear, unambiguous witness speaks to one’s intellect, humanity’s highest faculty, and compels one to evaluate beliefs in light of that testimony. Therefore, “every case [I present] may stand on the word of two or three witnesses, or rather, pieces of evidence.”13 Damian identifies these witnesses by name “so that when something is stated and

you would perhaps care to go to the source, you might easily discover it so as to avoid misrepresentation.”14 Personal witness is powerful precisely because of its accessibility; we can go to the source and evaluate the veracity of its testimony. In personal witness “no mystical figure lurks, there is no hidden meaning,” only a narration of facts: “clearly narrated history.”15 After the testimony of dozens of biblical witnesses Damian turns to another type of evidence, creation: “Obviously, for anyone who still needs evidence after such an enlightening testimony, it remains for him to request a lighted lamp to view the radiant sun at noontime. With the vision of so many heavenly stars sparkling before you, Jew, I marvel how such deep shades of blindness can hold sway.”16 Damian admits to change, though, in creation. He believes that creation was changed radically by the Incarnation; Christ prefigured “the new creation that would take place in man, of which the Apostle says: ‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is in a new creation; the old order has passed away, and now all is made new.’”17 The change is extensive, for what the Truth of God “formerly commanded to be observed physically,” after the Incarnation “he later enjoined on his disciples to be understood spiritually.”18 From here Damian proceeds to eschatology. The first coming of the Word completes the historical order; the Second Coming concludes it. In the New Creation the Sabbath “symbolize[s] eternal rest,” the rest that comes when, citing Paul, “‘the Lord himself shall come down from heaven’” and “‘the trumpet will sound and the dead shall rise uncorrupted.’” Until that time, eschatology demands witness; it is everyone’s duty (Acts 1:8) to make sure that “the holy universal Church might be resplendent throughout the world … through the passage of time until its end.”19 Damian’s mature thought varies little from the theology expressed in his first treatise. The division of the treatise alone is a mirror of his priorities: fifty-six of the seventy-five chapters are devoted to the Word Incarnate and witnesses to the Word. As his ecclesiastical and intellectual career progresses, he maintains the same emphasis on the doctrine of the Incarnation. In two letters written before 1047, for example, Damian describes the Last Days in detail, citing numerous scriptural passages, relating tales of the “day of wrath and fury,” but in each letter he ends with a reminder of how the eschaton completes the changes begun in the first coming of the Word Incarnate.20 In one letter Damian tells Countess Blanche to center her spiritual life on meditation of “death and the terror of the last judgment.”21 However, with the eschaton comes happiness as well as terror, so she must remember that the second coming of Christ is a reality that “is comparably greater that the mind of man can ever conceive.… There we will be face to face with things revealed: how the Father ineffably begets the Son, and how the Holy Spirit proceeds from both of them.”22 The second coming is not an excuse to ignore the things of this world. To the contrary, the obligation to engage the world is stronger because of it. And since our redeemer, in coming from heaven, took flesh from the Virgin, this is indeed the land of the living toward which we must always hasten, every step an act of love. Venerable sister, embrace this bridegroom with true affection and in this always find your delight. “Make the Lord your only joy,” I say, “and he will give you what your heart desires.” Also, frequently receive his body and blood in to your mouth… for the adversary trembles to see the lips of a

Christian red with the blood of Christ. At once he recognizes the mark of his damnation and cannot bear to see the instrument of God’s victory by which he was taken captive and crushed. May Christ, therefore, by his mysterious sacrament be seen on your lips.23 Damian continues at length, explaining to the Countess that “whoever continually meditates on the mystery of his passion with the purpose of imitating him” will be rewarded by the “heavenly bridegroom” who promises, “‘when the day comes, I will take you.’”24 A more seasoned reflection on the Incarnation doctrine is found in letter 81, written ca. 1060. The only significant change in this later letter from Letter I is a greater emphasis on the paradoxical nature of doctrine. The earlier letter allows us to see how steeped in Incarnation theology Damian was as he began his writing career; the later letter reveals how consistent his thoughts on the doctrine throughout his life. The second primer begins much the same way as the first one did, with a short discussion of the Trinity. This time, however, he opens with one brief sentence on how a “perfect believer must believe in God the Father,” and then he immediately begins a lengthy discussion of the Son “by whom all things were created.”25 After completing his expose of the Trinity in seven chapters, the next twenty-eight chapters are devoted exclusively to what Damian entitles, “the Mystery of the Lord’s Incarnation.” 26 After setting the stage for discussion of he who “co-united true flesh and true soul,” Damian reviews the history of the development of the doctrine, rebutting the heresies of Apollinarius, Nestorius, Dioscorus, Felix of Urgel, and Elipandus of Toledo.27 Throughout he emphasizes the paradox of the Incarnation. Christ is “the mediator between God and man, since he is true God as he is also true man.… He indeed is the agent and the product of the agent, because as a priest he offered himself in sacrifice, and it was he himself who hung on the cross as a pleasing victim. Keeping in mind what is proper to both natures joined together in one person, humility was received from his majesty, weakness from his power, and mortality from his eternity.” The Incarnation unifies opposites. It is the ultimate paradox in which “one and the same mediator between God and men could both die, on the one hand, and be incapable of dying, on the other.”28 Damian spends the rest of the long chapter employing rational arguments and supplying analogies to help his audience understand the paradoxical “mystery of the Lord’s Incarnation,” a phrase he keeps repeating. His play on words and use of oppositional imagery help communicate the power of the paradox: “this uniquely wonderful and wonderfully unique generation of Christ”29; the Incarnation “made God man and man God”30; “the word of the flesh is one thing, but the Word made flesh is something different”31; “he speaks, indeed, on earth, and he states that he is in heaven”32; “for the Word is the Word and not flesh and the flesh is flesh and not the Word”33; “we adore the Word in Christ the man, and Christ the man in the Word”34; and in the Incarnation “God passed into man and man into God.”35 The paradoxical nature of the Incarnation is so central to Damian’s understanding of the doctrine that one entire chapter contains little else but descriptions of the paradox: In Christ, therefore, there exists both unity of persons and two natures with unconfused and always distinct properties. Thus, there is in him one nature that takes its origin from the virginal womb, and the other that, without any beginning at all, is co-eternal with God the

Father: One that cried in the cradle, the other in which he was adored by the Magi; one that grew in age and wisdom, the other by which he is the very power and wisdom of God”; and so on to the end of the chapter. One nature weeps at the death of a friend, the other raises the friend from the dead. One is God’s servant, the other is God’s son.36 This is the lesson of the doctrine of the Incarnation. It is the definitive paradox that yields some of its secrets to human reason but in the end remains an irrational mystery. Not once does Damian deviate from his emphasis on the juxtaposition of opposites that the paradox of the doctrine enshrines. “We, therefore, rightly profess two nativities in Christ,” one from the Father, the other from Mary, “for in Christ divinity and the human condition came together so that the Word might become flesh and that flesh might pass into God, allowing the one Emmanuel to come forth from both substances, who would be the proper mediator between God and man.” In the Word is “both the sublimity of the Godhead and the humility of the flesh.”37 Granted, “there is often much questioning about this topic,” but the answers are found in the paradoxical nature of the Incarnation. Who is it, then, by whom the world was made? Christ Jesus, but in the form of God. Who is it by whom the world was redeemed? Christ Jesus, but in the form of a slave. Who is it who was not abandoned in hell? Christ Jesus, but only in his soul. Before his resurrection, who was it who lay for three days in the tomb? Christ Jesus, but only in the flesh. Therefore, in each of these there is Christ, and in all of them there are not two but one Christ. Thus, we behold one and the same, thriving in his dual nature and naturally operating according to both substances; each substance, in communion with the other, performing what belongs to it, that is, in accord with the innate essential quality or natural properties of each. And thus we should weigh all of these things cautiously, so that we believe, on the one hand, that full humanity was assumed by God, and understand, on the other, that full divinity was united to man: but in such a way that we render to God what belongs to God, and to man what is proper to man.38 Paradoxes and the juxtaposition of opposites pepper all his writings. Christ is “both redeemer and ransom for us, he who both promises and is the promised.”39 The juxtaposition of opposites does not end with his theology of the Incarnation; it is at the heart of all his theology. Mary is “both mother and virgin”; “she conceived Him who was boundless, gave birth to Him who was eternal, and bore Him who was born before all ages”; “before He was born He so created her that He could worthily be born of her.”40 His social theology abounds with both paradox and juxtaposition. Witness directs our view from the earthly sphere to the heavenly. Eschatology mandates that we ready the things of this world for the coming of the next world. The individual versus community; imperium versus sacerdotium; microcosm versus macrocosm: these are the themes that dominate Damian’s thought. And in each and every instance meditation on these incarnational paradoxes motivated him to change. It motivated him to work—hence, his groundbreaking theology of work—towards the identification of these opposites and the reconciliation made possible by the Incarnation. Using the doctrine to guide him, he preached reconciliation and he reconciled. Papal legate and cardinal-bishop of the prestigious diocese of Ostia, a founder of the medieval reform

movement, promoter of a new school of piety, author of innumerable social policies, father of the canonical movement, and esteemed friend, advisor and confidant to secular and ecclesiastical rulers throughout the West, Damian offers us an excellent opportunity to see how ideas were turned into actions that shaped culture.

The Body of Christ In Damian’s eloquent Dominus vobiscum we gain fullest appreciate of how the doctrine of the Incarnation shaped his social theology, which, in turn, contributed much to the development of the Western concepts of individualism and community. Written during the early period of Damian’s public life, sometime ca. 1048, it is the theological masterpiece of the century.41 The treatise is a lengthy reply to a frequent question hermits asked him, “whether, since they live alone in their cells, they are allowed to say, ‘the Lord be with you,’” (that is, “dominus vobiscum,” since “vobis” is plural) and whether they “should reply to themselves according to the practice of the Church.”42 With a pledge to “let the simplicity of Christ instruct me,” Damian begins to explain.43 “Truly the Church of Christ is so joined together by the bond of love that in many it is one, and in each it is mystically complete. Thus we at once observe that the whole Church is rightly called the one and only bride of Christ, and we believe each individual soul, by the mystery of baptism to be the Whole Church.”44 The precise answer to the hermits’ query, then, follows logically: If they are one who believe in Christ, then wherever an individual member is physically present, there too the whole body is present by reason of the sacramental mystery. And whatever is fitting for the whole, is in some way fitting for each part, so that it is not out of the question for an individual to say what the assemble of the Church says together, just as that which an individual properly utters may also be voiced by many without reproach.45 Next, Damian presents his theology of the Body of Christ, the basis for the answer. It is rooted in a powerful Christology and filled with sophisticated ideas that become part of the fabric of medieval society. “Such is the unity of the Church in Christ that throughout the whole world there is only one bread of the Body of Christ and only one chalice of his Blood,” he writes. “If therefore we are all the one body of Christ, and even though we seem to be physically distinct we cannot be separated from one another in spirit if we remain in Him, I see no harm in observing the common custom of the Church even when we are alone, since by the mystery of our undivided unity we have never set ourselves apart from her.”46 That a profound sense of individualism permeates this treatise at this time is significant, for few contemporaries are aware of its power and importance. Damian is, thanks to his reflection on the Incarnation. For him, the Mystical Body of Christ makes individualism and community possible. Individualism is good only insofar as it serves the whole of society, and vice versa. “In the human body, moreover, the eyes, the tongue, the feet, the hands each have a function naturally proper to them. But the hands do not touch for their own benefit, or the feet walk, or the tongue speak, or the eyes behold just for themselves, but that which every part of the body can do specifically, is clearly performed commonly for all.” The individual without the

community or community without the individual voids the value of each. “Therefore, whatever a single member performs is rightly deemed to be the function of the body,” he continues, and “whatever the body does, to that all the parts consent by their cooperation.”47 This is so, because it is so with the Word Incarnate: “Just as a human body, though it is made up of many parts, is a single unit, because all these parts, though many, make one body, so it is with Christ.”48 Each person’s capacity for community is possible only because “if, while we are many, we are one in Christ, as individuals we possess our totality in him.” Thus it is that “what belongs to all is the right of each; and what is singularly special to each is, in the wholeness of faith and love, common to all.”49

Ethic of Intention Damian’s recognition of personal individuation in the Body of Christ led to greater emphasis on intention. He states the rule with precision and conciseness: “You are not at once to judge the external act, but you must rather carefully note the spirit and the intention with which it was done.”50 This is the ethic of intention that still lies at the heart of most Western jurisprudence and culture. As Colin Morris observes, “the new stress on intention” in the eleventh and twelfth centuries is so taken for granted today that it is “surprising to discover how slight was the earlier formal teaching about intention in Western tradition”; Aristotle’s Ethics discussed it, but that “was not available in Latin until the thirteenth century, and Germanic society had been generally unaware of the importance of the intention.”51 Damian’s contributions to the development of the Western ethic of intention is overshadowed by his near contemporary Abelard,52 but by no means should it continue to be ignored, if for no other reason than it predates Abelard’s.53 More significant here is the fact that Damian openly identifies his inspiration as the Word Incarnate. “You will thus observe that we must not so much note what a person does, but carefully examine the spirit and intention with which he does it. For if we look only to externals, we find the Lord and savior himself saying something he had forbidden, and acting contrary to what he had commanded.” Damian documents his statement with numerous examples of Christ so doing.54 He then concludes: “By these citations from Scripture I wish only to show that we should not judge by mere words alone, but should be aware of the spirit and intention with which they were spoken.”55 Because human nature with all its foibles is hard to master, “he falls seven times and is still described as virtuous, because in sinning he does not cease to be virtuous since he fails, not from intention but out of human fraility.”56 Even when talking about neutral behavior, Damian considers intention to be the prime criterion for judgment. “I fear certainly to offend you,” he writes to his own monastic community at Fonte Avellana, “but by my conscience, I was led to write these things with every good intention,” and his advice should be judged in that light.57 This reality places a heavy burden on us, though. While we are freed from condemnation solely on external basis, the ethic of intention places an obligation on us to examine our own motivations. “Examine your life with great subtleness, always hold up your deeds before your eyes,” Damian advises, because the ethic of intention demands it.58

Damian’s adoption of the “know thyself” dictum has practical implications. He states that although external behavior is not the criteria for judging innocence or guilt, we still must do our utmost to make actions reflect intentions. The goal is to have external actions bear witness to internal intentions. There may be occasions when external actions that are contrary to intentions may be overlooked,59 but the reverse is harder to forgive. When intentions are bad, even if external actions are good, it is hypocrisy. Without the proper inner disposition, the external action is a sham. Damian is most insistent that the two be consistent, perhaps because of his keen awareness of the power of witness. At all times one’s appearance and action must bear witness to inner truths. To do otherwise is the gravest of faults. “It seems better to me to be without charity that to represent himself as possessing its fullness,” Damian proclaims. His reason is simple: “When one lies about the truth by presenting it under false colors, it can never or only with great difficulty be corrected.”60 Again, his model and inspiration is the Word Incarnate. As Mary bore Christ in her womb for nine months so must “the elect carry Christ in the depth of their hearts.” Although “it is the greatest act to die for Christ,” as martyrs do, “it is no less great to live for Christ.”61 For Damian living for Christ is a life of penance and righteous honor, “hence, we must consider, dearly beloved, what a dignity is ours, and what a likeness there is between us and Mary. Mary conceived Christ in her bodily womb, and we bear Christ in our intellectual womb. Mary nursed Christ with the milk from her breasts, and we feed Christ with a delightful variety of our good works.”62 He applies this insight to the spiritual life and offers some practical advice. Even though we are capable of a variety of good works and hence a variety of virtues, Damian counsels specializing in just one. As each individual and the community as a whole have the same basic biological makeup, so too does each virtue contain the same essence as all other virtues. His advice comes at a time when society is becoming more diversified. As new groups formed they searched for a single ideal to model their lives on. Damian’s insight into the inherent unity of all virtues served to strengthen the bonds of society during this time of expansion. And thus, although each saint must be resplendent with all virtues, since none of them alone is truly a virtue if not compounded of other virtues, each must choose one virtue in preference to the others, to which he is especially devoted, and must not, so to speak, depart from its service. Nor can we, to be sure, practice all the virtues equally, but as we pay close attention to one of them, we become adept in that which is less than all the rest; and as we strive without ceasing to practice it, through the participation of one member, as it were, we encompass the whole body of virtues.63 Essentially, Damian placed his discussion of virtue within the paradigm of the microcosm/macrocosm topos. The topos is an effective reminder of the value of each person in universal history. Just as in Greek man is called a microcosm, that is to say, a little world, because in his physical composition he consists of the same four elements that are found in the whole earth; so also each of the faithful seems to be, as it were, a little Church, since, with all due respect to the mystery of hidden unity, each person also receives all the sacraments of human redemption

that God provided for the universal Church.64 Finally, he uses the analogy to explain how the Incarnation is the basis of his anthropology. The Incarnation completes humanity. But in a few words I should like to explain how man may be made complete, how he may be made perfect, using the order of things that can be found in the narrative on the creation of the world. For since man is called a microcosm, that is, a little world, it is necessary that in striving to achieve full growth he imitate the model provided by the earth; that as this visible and physical world is perfected by the mass and multitude of its parts, so also our inner man gradually arrives at his fullness by the increase of virtue. The Apostle says of this spiritual fullness, “Until we all become the perfect man, fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself.”65

Clerical Behavior In a society where clergy occupy a position of authority and respect, the standards by which they live has great impact on the health of that society. Damian devoted much of his life trying to assure that those standards were high. He saw the doctrine of the Incarnation as the model, basis, and reason for maintaining pristine clerical behavior. Liber Gomorrhianus, probably his most well-known treatise, contains a lengthy argument against clerical promiscuity because of the priest’s relationship to Christ. It is a serious sin because “clerics, indeed, profess, if not in words, at least by evidence of their actions, that they are not what they are thought to be,” physical receptacles for the Word Incarnate. They are supposed to be “not only the holy temple of the Lord but also his very sanctuary, in which with snow white splendor the illustrious Lamb of God is offered.”66 This is why clerical promiscuity is particularly tragic. “I mourn for the noble soul made in the image and likeness of God, purchased by the precious blood of Christ,” and “I deplore the fall of this illustrious soul and the ruin of this temple in which Christ had dwelled.”67 Indeed, all clerical misbehavior is a grave sin, because clergy are witnesses to the community: “It would be better for them to perish alone as laymen then… to drag others with them to destruction, as Truth itself testifies when it says, ‘But if anyone is a cause of stumbling to one of these little ones, it would be better for him to be drowned in the depths of the sea with a great millstone round his neck.’”68 How can a priest be a conduit for the grace of Christ if he himself is in need of grace, “that is, if you are forbidden to receive the Body of Christ, how will you be able to provide others with food from the heavenly table?”69 Although his criticism of homosexual behavior is the most cited part of this treatise, Damian rails against all overt sexual acts by clergy. His attack on incontinent clergy is “a fight against the forces of impurity that are attacking Christ.”70 Married clergy who flaunt their disregard for celibacy are “like tombs covered with whitewash; they look well from the outside, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all kinds of filth.”71 Such hypocrisy by priests—“the ministers of the Church, who have Christ as their master, him who was crucified”—is most damning, again because of their function in the community as witnesses.72

“A priest is selected from the Christian people at large” with “only the prerequisite of holiness;”73 clergy are “free from the servile works of this world, and should be dedicated only to tasks that pertain to divine service.” Chief among those tasks is changing the bread and wine into Christ’s Body and Blood. The relationship of the priest to Christ in the Eucharist gives him “the highest and most sublime value.” Consequently, “it is one thing to offend against God according to the various types of human frailty, and quite another to sin in offering his most sacred Body and Blood.” He continues: “Certainly, he who has no fear of taking the Lord’s Body into his polluted hands is guilty of being partner to those who crucified Jesus.”74 Even more harshly he asks: “What business have you to handle the body of Christ when by wallowing in the allurements of the flesh you have become a member of antichrist?” Damian then makes the argument that by virtue of the Body of Christ, a priest who fornicates with a lay woman is in fact committing incest, for she is “your daughter, not of the flesh, which would be bad enough, but rather your spiritual daughter [because] all the children of the Church are undoubtedly your children.” In light of the relationship all share through the Incarnation, “how in good conscience do you dare perform the mystery of the Lord’s body?”75 Finally, the married priest sins by diverting material goods to his family in direct counter imitation of Christ: “The Lord suffered on the cross for the salvation of the world, [and] he is now sacrificed on the altar to the advantage and profit of one single priest.”76 These same theological reflections on the Incarnation led Damian to other, rarely acknowledged contributions to Western culture. The treatise articulates some of the strongest arguments for equality before the law in medieval documents. Damian insists that justice must be blind to class, status, and gender. In sexual matters, it is irrelevant who the partner is, male or female, lay or religious. If the act is performed by “the free decisions of the sinner,” then judgment must be consistent. “If a man sins with a man… [or] if a monk should have relations with a nun,” the discipline must be the same. “It follows, therefore, that what you admit is reasonable for a nun, you should also logically allow as applicable to the monk.” When he comes across spurious church canons that impose unjust discipline, he asks in frustration, “Who would be so insanely foolish” as to think three years of penance for a layman is proper, “while deciding that a cleric is to do penance for six months?” Such treatment flies in the face of justice and is “deserving of contempt.” In another canon two different penances are given for the same act. “With which canons or decrees of the Fathers do these ridiculous ordinances agree, in that they are so self-contradictory?” Damian taunts. “By such variety of forms they cause a person to laugh rather than feel penitential compunction.”77 In comparison with the evident importance of sexual behavior, the regulation of clothing may at first appear trivial. Upon consideration, though, its significance is quickly recognized, for clothes and the sexual behavior of clergy are closely related. Both are ways of maintaining a clear line of separation from worldly entanglements. It was a line that was badly in need of repair, and Damian was among the earliest and most vocal eleventh-century leaders to call for reform. As Damian saw it, the sacerdotium needed to be independent of the imperium, and the first step toward maintaining its autonomy was to maintain a distinct and separate existence. For years the two had coexisted compatibly, but with the awakening strength of the imperium, the sacerdotium believed itself threatened with loss of identity. Damian’s call for church reform is

a call to save its independent identity, and what better way to do so than by behavior and appearance. Wearing clothes modeled on the garbs that clothed Christ’s humanity is a simple and effective way of declaring one’s allegiance to the sacerdotium, as are clothes modeled on secular leaders a declaration of allegiance to the imperium. The appropriate clothing for each group is obvious: “The royal court is flattered by fine clothes, but the church is pleased to see rough and unadorned attire.” The citizen of the City of God “does not delight in external display, but is happy to appear dressed for the eye of the hidden judge.”78 Damian’s golden rule for one seeking to be identified with the eternal is straightforward: “Let [Christ] be your food and also your clothing.”79 The psychology behind the rule is basic: “When one is preoccupied with the fine quality of his outer clothes, the entire inner disposition of a person is eroded.”80 It only makes sense that “you should, therefore, glory in being humbly clothed with Christ in a white garment, rather than be irrevocably buried in the avenging fire with the proud rich man attired in his purple.”81 One must “strive for that beauty of dress that will add to your esteem forever before the eyes of God, and not for that which helps you pass the time of this deceptive and frivolous life.”82 This is as the Word Incarnate lived. Even though divine, he announced the fullness of his humanity by wearing the lowliest of garbs: “The Creator of the angels himself when he lay crying in the manger, was not attired in purple or in sparkling dress, but, as we know, was wrapped in common swaddling clothes. Worldly pride should, therefore, blush, and the arrogance of humanity that is granted redemption should be confounded and stand in wonder at the radiant humility of the newborn Redeemer.”83 If clergy are truly imitators of Christ then they must follow the example of Christ who hid his special relationship with the Father under “rough and lowly garb.”84 Having established imitation of the Word Incarnate as the reason for humble dress, Damian then offers another explanation for why simple clothes are a tool for reform. Clothes render witness. The way one dresses reflects one’s values; clothes communicate a message. They bear witness to one’s priorities. Common sense makes one agree that one “certainly detects in the wearing of stylish clothes the desire for vain glory.”85 If, however, one wants to bear witness to Christ, then one should follow the example of John the Baptist who bore witness to the coming of the Word with “vesture bristled with camel’s hair.”86 Damian’s reform efforts included a campaign to raise awareness of the power of clothes to bear witness. “When someone sees a monk dressed in fine and costly garments, does he not at once consider him to be devoid of the spirit of God, striving for earthly goals rather than those of heaven?” he asks. He then states his guiding principle: “From a person’s attire one can infer what his inner disposition is like, and from his external appearance can judge the quality of his purpose.”87 The monk who is in service of this world wears worldly clothes that reflect that service, while one in the service of God wears poor garb. The monk who does not abide by this principle runs the risk of clothing himself “in darkness,” for “in his desire to appear important in the eyes of men, he has undoubtedly become vile in the estimation of the heavenly Judge.”88 Damian knows human nature well enough to realize that the witnessing power of clothes also presents a reverse temptation, the desire to use clothes to communicate a pharisaical message. For witness to be properly rendered there must be a strict correlation between the message and the messenger, between external witness and internal commitment. Without such

correlation the witness is false. Damian, therefore, warned monks of the danger of wanting “to be seen in public as someone quite different from what secretly they know themselves to be.”89 Humble clothes can be deliberately used to make people think the wearer is humble when the opposite is true, “for there are some who use the uncouth appearance of their garb to win approbation of the crowd.” Too often “it is egoism that is up for sale at a bargain price.” False witness will never work, Damian warns, for “anyone who expects a heavenly reward for wearing disheveled clothes must not cease to trample all applause and human esteem under foot.”90 Only the humbly garbed monk who truly practices imitatio Christi and “truly bears the stigma of Christ, and, dead to the world, takes up his cross to follow him" will be “important in the sight of God.”91 Ironically, failure of reformers such as Damian to make the sacerdotium and the imperium separate and distinct did not result in a failure to influence culture; failure to resolve issues shapes culture as definitively as resolution does. Surely few would disagree that the struggle between church and state remains to this day a prominent characteristic of Western culture. Damian was an active participant in the very beginning of this struggle. That his reforms were motivated by his understanding of the doctrine of the Incarnation is, therefore, of great consequence.

Canons Regular The success of Damian’s other attempt at reform is clearly seen in his role as “veritable founder of the canons regular.”92 While many see canons as forerunners of the more popular mendicants of the thirteenth century, the canons deserve historical attention in their own right. Their impact on medieval culture is pervasive and positive, for their eyes were oriented toward the world and thus embodied “a new direction in medieval spirituality.” They actively engaged their world and in doing so, influenced its composition. Their communities were found in growing cities and rural areas; some were pioneers in urban pastoral care (their leper houses “most clearly express the new spirituality”), while others were contemplative houses in the forefront of intellectual advances (the great abbey of St. Victor was their most famous and influential).93 But we are concerned here with their origin. In their early days their connection with the Gregorian reform and the wider religious renewal movement was intimate in time, place, and ideals. Both movements originate in eleventh-century Italy, both propose the return to primitive Christianity and imitatio Christi as the solution to social problems, and both are rooted in the doctrine of the Incarnation. The new eremitic communities spearheading the reform are well known; St. Nilus’s group at Grottaferrata, John Gualbert’s Vallombrosan community, St. Romuald’s community of Camaldoli, and its daughter house at Fonte Avellana where Peter Damian was prior are prime examples.94 Damian provides us with the earliest detailed look into the canonical movement in his Contra clericos regulares proprietarios.95 Damian opens his letter to the canons of Fano cathedral with a clear call for them to maintain their separation from the rest of society, as God demanded of the Levites. It is “as if he were quite evidently saying [to the canons], As I claim them in a special way as my own, so I decree that they are to be in my service without ever subjecting themselves to any worldly

way of life, nor will I allow them like servants to be basely under the yoke of separate affairs, since they are dedicated to my service.”96 He attacks the lackadaisical attitude among some clergy who think it “a minor matter if by their carnal living they withhold from God what is theirs, so long as they do not retire from the Church’s official prayers and the administration of the sacraments by living in the midst of the narrow streets and marketplaces.”97 Such actions cry out for reform. John the Baptist provides the proper example of how they should act; they should bear witness to the Word. Like John, the canons “were appointed to give good example and… shine as lights in this world,” pointing the way to Christ. For those wishing to be good witnesses, his instructions are simple: “You should first straighten what is awry in your own lives, if that be necessary, and gathering in the school of Christ, you should remain together in a common way of life and in unanimity of spirit. There should be among you no separate housing, no division of purpose, no distinction of property.” A sense of community is most important, for those “who refuse to live together in fraternity, who are unwilling to live with their brothers and act together in unity” are not living as the example of the Word Incarnate demands: “Christ does not incorporate such as these into his own body, because he considers them cut off from unity with his members.”98 What the canons (Damian calls them “the knights of Christ”99) must do is, despite “the changing times of succeeding centuries… live in accord with [the apostolic] example.”100 In 1063 a Roman synod reaffirmed the canonical ideal. Not satisfied, Damian wrote Pope Alexander II to plead the case for more legislation to support the reform movement. He considered it of utmost importance that Rome encourage canons to live as those who bore witness to the Incarnation, to live the vita communis of the apostles. Imitating the apostolic common life is the surest way to live as Christ wants them to, for why would “Christ grant to clerics what he did not allow the apostles?” 101 In particular, the canons must not own property or money, for ownership, like clothes, blurs the line of distinction between them and the secular world. “Do you look to the world for your inheritance? If so, you cannot be a co-heir of Christ,” Damian declares, for “the perfect servant of Christ has nothing besides Christ.”102 The canons regular have to be perfect servants of Christ, because they are the “distributors of his heavenly sacraments” through which “the angelic powers associate with men. What purity, therefore, must clerics possess, how spotless they must be, and, finally, how removed from every stain of secular affairs.”103

Simony In another celebrated work, Liber gratissimus, Damian establishes his fundamental attitude toward sacraments and ministry and their relationship to the Word Incarnate in his opening sentence: “It is clear that from the very beginning of man’s redemption Christ Jesus, the mediator between God and man, organized his Church in such fashion that, on the one hand, he distributed his spiritual gifts through ministers of his Word, and still as their source retained within himself the fullness of all graces.”104 He continues. Without exception everything comes from the Word, “therefore, all the just draw their vital energy from this one source.”105 Moreover, “even though to all appearances the priest seems to be functioning, it is Christ

himself, the true priest and supreme pontiff, who grants his gifts to those who approach him with varying results.”106 It is Christ “who distributes his gifts and by a hidden providence determines in each his merits and the variety of his functions.”107 Ultimately, it is Christ who baptizes “because no matter who may exercise the ministry of baptism, it is still He who produces the sacrament with its profound effect.”108 Likewise, the Eucharist is “offered on the sacred altar through the instrumentality of a holy priest,” not by the priest directly. Exemplifying the paradigm of the Incarnation, Christ simultaneously offers and is offered in the Eucharist.109 Because of the growing problem of simony in the eleventh-century church, these principles were once again in the spotlight. The issue of the validity of sacraments administered by heretical priests had been addressed in the aftermath of the fourth-century Donatist heresy: the validity of sacraments and the grace they bestowed is independent of the minister’s worth. Yet in 1047 the question reared its head again, and in 1051 Pope Leo IX asked all bishops for their opinion on the matter. Damian’s first response is Liber gratissimus. Damian is still writing about simony in 1067. Why the issue was of major concern at mid-century is easy enough to discern. It was a time of accelerated economic and political changes. The once distinct boundary between regnum and sacerdotium was suddenly vulnerable, for simony blurs the line between the secular world and the ecclesiastical. It allows the material to intrude upon the spiritual, and thus the spiritual loses its independence. Yet the paradigm of the doctrine of the Incarnation demands each be independent and complete. It offends Damian’s logic and his religious sensibilities for a priest to act outside the model of the Incarnation. The Word Incarnate works through the priest: “It is the bishop who by his words calls down the Lord upon a man, but it is the Lord himself who makes that blessing efficacious for him.”110 When the people of Florence rose up in revolt against their simoniac bishop, Damian was called in by the opposing parties to mediate, but his mission failed.111 In a letter explaining his failure, he repeats the basic premise of Liber gratissimus: Christ is the mediator between the human and the divine, and the church is organized on that model. The Church “is truly the body of Christ.”112 Simony is not Christ-like “and, if I am not mistaken, no other heresy has emerged with such audacity, that it dared,” Damian bemoans in horror, “to take Christ from the word ‘Christian.” 113 The priest is minister of the sacraments, because at ordination Christ bestows grace “that they might arrive at maturity in the fullness of Christ” and mediate between the human and the divine as does the Incarnation.114

Stewardship Damian has quite definite ideas about responsibility and stewardship. An expansion of agricultural production that began in the tenth century was in full force by the eleventh century, and with the increased ability to tame creation came ethical questions. People from all walks of life asked Damian for advice on how to act properly: What was the proper attitude towards nature and its resources? After all, “man is in command over all nature, controlling it by his laws;” he better know what laws to enact.115 Much of Western society’s future was dependent on the answer to this question. It is to Damian’s credit that he recognized the pressing nature of the issue and began the

debate that continues into our own day. His contributions are limited, but for first steps, they should be noted. His guiding principles are, unsurprisingly, grounded in the Incarnation and scripture. First, for direction “we should go to Christ”116; second, every thing created by God “is certainly good”117; and, third, “almighty God indeed gave all created things for man’s use, reserving only souls to himself.”118 But the Creator did not leave humanity to its own wits. After he “put the whole earth at the disposal of men… he took pains to look after man and instruct him.”119 Damian considers himself a conduit of that instruction and so writes a lengthy treatise to discuss “the qualities of animals and briefly indicate how they might be adapted to human behavior” so that all “may sing out, ‘The life I now live is not my life, but the life that Christ lives in me.’”120 For Damian the duties of stewardship apply to everyone, in all areas: physical and spiritual, temporal and eternal. Bishops, for example, must “apply such watchful attention to supervising, first of all, the souls entrusted to you, and then also the property of the church, so that after you have finished the course of your stewardship, you… will be known far and wide as its guardian and shepherd.”121 The dual duty of stewardship is inseparable. One cannot be a worthy bishop if only the spiritual is attended to, for “he who is consecrated becomes steward of the Church’s property.”122 The principle determining this is found in the unity of creation established by the Incarnation: “May the day never dawn when a false human being should tear to pieces what the true Godman had joined together.”123 Christ provided the model for stewardship during his life with Mary and Joseph. Christ “is the craftsman who build the fabric of the world… the son of the artisan, and is himself an artisan, with his own hands working the bellows,” minding the goods of creation as all good stewards must.124 Consequently, Damian advises Duchess Adelaide of Turin that she must “fight against the forces of impurity that are attacking Christ,” as well as “govern your land without a man’s help, and those who wish to settle their disputes, flock to you for your legal decision.”125 If she hopes to be led “from this earthly realm to the kingdom of heavenly glory,”126 she must let “every legal decision promote the glory of almighty God” until she “finishes her stewardship.”127 He gives the same advice to Countess Guilla: “Dispose all that has been committed to you in such a way that, after your brief stewardship has run its course, you may be worthy to pass to the rewards of your eternal inheritance.”128 Concretely, this means she “should make restitution upon discovery things that have been stolen before your coming here”129; she must “break the pattern of customary evil that you have found, abolish the practice of confiscating the property of the poor, prevent unjust taxes and impositions on the serfs, and following the example of King Josiah, establish a new order of affairs.”130 Writing to a senator Damian reminds him that the union of the human and divine in the Incarnation must be reflected in his care for both the physical and the spiritual wellbeing of his people: “There can be little doubt that he who takes pains to build the physical structure of a church to the honor of almighty God has a part in erecting this spiritual temple.”131 He inveighs against a monastic community for their scandalously poor stewardship. They had forgotten the reason for why they were given stewardship of goods: “One man is richer than others, not for the reason that he alone should possess the things he holds in trust, but that he disburse them to the poor. He should distribute

the goods of others, not as their owner but as an agent, and not merely through motives of charity, but of justice.… Wherefore, he who takes from the rich to give to the poor is not to be thought a thief, but a dispenser of common property.”132 In the end the choice is simple. Damian expresses it through the juxtaposition of opposites as Christ did: “Despise riches lest you go begging forever; choose to be poor that you may reign unendingly. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit,’ Christ said, ‘for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’”133 Damian’s interpretation of stewardship was formed two centuries before Aquinas enshrined his call for just stewardship.134 In Damian we do not hear the reasoned arguments of scholastic theologians who followed in his wake. Instead we see him defend his interpretation yet again by referring to the doctrine of the Incarnation. Note that as we hastily and lightly touch on all these matters, we find that everything harmoniously serves the utility of men: heaven, earth, and even hell. And possibly one might here accuse me of presumption, if the authentic evidence of Scripture were not at hand. But here is what Paul says to the Corinthians, “for though everything belongs to you—Paul, Apollos, and Cephas, this world, life and death, the present and the future, all of them belong to you—yet you belong to Christ, and Christ to God.” So then, everything truly belongs to man, if man himself is truly a man. For he who is really and truly a man, alone deserves to be called a man.135

Authority Damian also believes that human authority, ecclesiastical or secular, is authority only in so far as the Word Incarnate grants that authority. There is nothing particularly new in Damian’s opinion. As Ullmann documents, such was the dominant understanding of authority from the Carolingians onward.136 The significance of Damian’s articulation rests in its timing, not in its originality. As early as 1057 Damian wrote Pope Victor II to remind him that only through the Incarnation did he had power. “What if the Savior were to confront you in his own word… ‘Into your hands I entrusted the keys of the Universal Church and placed you as my Vicar over the Church which I redeemed by the shedding of my own blood.’”137 This was only months before the heated discussions concerning the boundaries between secular and ecclesiastical authority begin rearing their heads in official documents.138 Eight years later Damian is still promoting his belief, this time more eloquently. And as both dignities, namely, the royal and the sacerdotal, are primarily joined to one another in Christ by the reality of a unique mystery, so are they united in the Christian people by a kind of mutual agreement. Each, in truth, needs the other for what he there finds useful, since the sacerdotium is protected by the defensive capability of the empire and royal power is supported by the holiness of the priestly office. The king wears a sword, that so armed he may confront the enemies of the Church; the priest engages in watchful prayer, that he may appease God for the benefit of the king and his people.139 Although modern Western culture rejects the argument that all authority comes from Christ, the

original structures of many Western political institutions were build upon the premise. Damian’s defense of the argument is noteworthy in this context, but his main contribution lies in his secondary argument, that there is a basic compatibility between secular and ecclesiastical interests. Such an outlook supports the pragmatic and utilitarian ideals that inspired many positive developments in medieval society.140 In addition to Christ being the source for all authority Damian sees him as the model for its exercise. It is “our savior’s earthly life, no less than his preaching” that is “his proposal for the direction in which our life should progress.” By offering an incomparable example of how to overcome “all obstacles of a world gone mad, not by threats of dire punishment but by the insuperable majesty of his resolute patience, he taught us in this way to bear quietly this rabid world.” Christ explicitly tells us the golden rule “in Scripture: ‘If someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn and offer him your left. If he makes you go one mile, go with him two. If he takes away your shirt, let him have your coat as well.’” Damian adds a corollary for priests: practice what you preach, for “to me this seems to be quite absurd, that the very priests of the Lord should attempt to carry out the very thing they forbid their people to do.141 This lesson is most necessary “since within the imperium and sacerdotium we must distinguish functions that are proper to each, so that the king may employ secular arms, while the bishop should buckle on the sword of the spirit, which is the Word of God.”142 The need to follow the example set by the Word is so strong and unassailable that Damian does not hesitate to condemn even a pope when he fails to follow Christ’s example. “Among all the gems of virtue that our Savior bestowed on us by coming down from heaven, there were especially two, namely, charity and patience, which in all their splendor he showed us, and which he first practiced and then taught.” Since charity was the reason for the Incarnation, and patience was the way the Word Incarnate overcame evil, “it is never permitted to take up arms in defense of the faith,” Damian concludes.143 “Now if someone should object to my arguments by stating that Pope Leo often became involved in acts of war, even though he was holy, I will tell you what I think,” he offers. Good people sometimes do bad things, but the bad is not the reason for consequent reward; the good is. When it comes to war, one must follow the example of the Incarnation; war is not a proper means for attaining a spiritual end. “Therefore, let secular law or the decisions of episcopal councils decide ecclesiastical cases, so that what should be handled by judicial tribunals or judged by the decision of the bishops, to our shame, not be adjudicated in trial by battle.”144 Notes 1. Such would be the thesis of the dying annalist school. See, for example, Fernard Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, tr. Sian Reynolds (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), 2:250. 2. Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, tr. Isle Lasch, 3rd ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984). See also my A Woman’s Way: The Forgotten History of Women Spiritual Directors (New York: Palgrave, 2000), pp.1-8. 3. For the impact of witness and eschatology on medieval culture, see my “The Concept of

Witness: From Its Origin to Its Institutionalization,” Revue bénédictine 103 (1987), 21-45; and “Maintenance.” 4. See Kellie Robertson, The Laborers’ Two Bodies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 5. See my Theology of Work, pp.33-96. 6. Another scenario would have him entering the monastery after 1036, already ordained. See G. Spinelli, “La data dell’ ordinazione sacerdotale di S. Pier Damiani,” Benedicta 19 (1972), 593-605. For a detailed analysis of Damian’s thought and for bibliographical references, see my The Theology of Peter Damian: “Let My Life Always Serve as a Witness” (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012). 7. See D. Balboni, “San Pier Damiano, maestro e discepolo in Pomposa,” Benedicta 22 (1975), 73-89. 8. Letter 1.2 in Letters of Peter Damian, tr. Owen Blum, vols. 1-3,5, and Irven Resnick, vols. 6-7 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1989-2005), 1:38. Note Damian’s inclusion of the phrase “with reasoned arguments,” thus documenting his use of reason in theological enterprises from the very beginning of his theological career. He also adds a section at the end of the treatise where he abandons all references and arguments from scripture: “I would still like to argue with you from reason, putting aside the statements of the prophets” (1.67 in ibid., 1:79). 9. 1.4 in ibid., 1:39. Damian also includes in his epilogue the accusation that the Jews were guilty of deicide. 10. 1.5 in ibid., 1:40. 11. 1.8 in ibid., 1:42. 12. 1.30, in ibid., 1:57. 13. 1.35, in ibid., 1:60. 14. 1.37, in ibid., 1:60-1. 15. 1.40, in ibid., 1:62. 16. 1.45, in ibid., 1:65. 17. 1.53, in ibid., 1:68-9. 18. 1.55, in ibid., 1:70. 19. 1.57, 60, in ibid., 1:71-2. 20. 21.9, in ibid., 1:201; and 22.9, in ibid., 1:211. 21. 66.8, in ibid., 3:50. 22. 66.29, in ibid., 3:68. 23. 66.6, in ibid., 3:46. Unfortunately, Damian is usually considered to be the premier theologian of contemptus mundi, but such labeling is embarrassingly dated and easily negated when his attitude towards the world is put in context and allowed to speak for itself. Actually, the historiography for contemptus mundi as a whole needs radical revision. See Robert Bultot, La doctrine du mèpris du monde, en Occident, de S. Ambrosae à Innocent III, vols.6 (Louvain: Editiones Nauwelaerts, 1963-64). 24. 66.6 in ibid., 3:46-47. 25. 81.6, in ibid., 3:204. 26. Chs. 42–45 focus on the Holy Spirit and chs. 46-48 conclude the primer.

27. 81.14, in ibid., 3:208. 28. 81.16, in ibid., 3:209. 29. 81.14, in ibid., 3:208. 30. 81.23, in ibid., 3:214. 31. 81.23, in ibid., 3:215. 32. 81.24, in ibid., 3:216. 33. 81.27, in ibid., 3:218. 34. 81.32, in ibid., 3:222. 35. 81.26, in ibid., 3:218. 36. 81.25, in ibid., 3:216-17. 37. 81.27, in ibid., 3:218. 38. 81.28, in ibid., 3:219. 39. 165.19, in ibid., 7:181. 40. Sermo 46, PL 144, 752 B-D. 41. Accolades abound. Giovanni Miccoli, don of Damian studies at mid-twentieth century, calls it “one of the most important ecclesiastical works among all the theological literature of the Middle Ages.” In “Theologie de la vie monasticque chez Saint Pierre Damien (10071072),” Theologica 49 (1961), 463. 42. 8.2 in Letters of Peter, 1:256. The article that revived interest in the topic in the modern era is Germain Morin, “Rainaud l’ermite et Ives de Chartres,” Revue bénédictine 40 (1928), 99-115. 43. 28.4, in Letters of Peter, 1:258. 44. 28.13, in ibid., 1:262-63. 45. 28.15, in ibid., 1:263. 46. 28.21, in ibid., 1:267. 47. 28.22, in ibid., 1:267-68. 48. 28.23, in ibid., 1:268-69. 49. 28.24, in ibid., 1:269. 50. 89.86, in ibid., 3:360. 51. Morris, Discovery, pp. 73-4. 52. Around 1135 Abelard wrote Ethics, or, Know Thyself in which he argued that intention alone determined guilt. 53. Morris acknowledges Damian’s role in the development of the concept of selfknowledge in theology but ignores him in the discussion of ethics of intention. Such treatment is, unfortunately, typical. 54. He cites Mt 5:22; Lk 24:25; Mt 5:39; and Jn 18:23; in letter 89.86, in Letters of Peter, 3:360. 55. 89.87, in ibid., 3:361. 56. 17.3, in ibid., 1:147. 57. 18.17, in ibid., 1:167. 58. 21.16, in ibid., 1:202. 59. 17.3, in ibid., 1:146. 60. 37.2, in ibid., 2:71.

61. Sermo 32, PL 144, 680B. 62. Sermo 45, PL 144, 747B. 63. 110.4, in Letters of Peter, 5:229. 64. 28.25, in ibid., 1:270. 65. 49.7, in ibid., 2:276. 66. 31.2, in ibid., 2:4. 67. 31.44, in 2:33. 68. 31.7, in ibid., 2:6. 69. 31.49, in ibid., 2:37. 70. 114.2, in ibid., 5:295. Dyan Elliott’s attack on Damian’s attitudes toward priests’ wives (Fallen Bodies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp.81-106) is, unfortunately, what results when scholars approach a subject outside the context of a theologian’s overall thought–and with a predetermined thesis in mind. Because Damian too willingly obliges the hasty/biased scholar by providing immoderate “sound bites,” and because scholars use dated secondary literature to support their interpretations (Elliott documents his conclusions with Blum’s 1947 work and Robert Bultot, Christianisme et valeurs humaines (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1963), both far behind current Damian research), he is unfairly judged to be a prime example of medieval anti-intellectualism, misogynism, and prudism. He is innocent on all three counts. See my Theology of Peter; Women and Spiritual Equality, pp. 133-38; and “Role of the Eremitic Monk,” 85-9. 71. 112.3, in Letters of Peter, 5:259. 72. 112.23, in ibid., 5:270. 73. 112.6, in ibid., 5:261. 74. 47.9-10, in ibid., 2:256-57. 75. 61.11, in ibid., 3:9-10. 76. 47.11, in ibid., 2:258. 77. 31.24-30, in ibid., 2:18-23. 78. 24.3-4, in ibid., 1:229. 79. 165.19, in ibid., 7:181. 80. 165.36, in ibid., 7:192. 81. 24.11, in ibid., 1:235. 82. 24.9, in ibid., 1:234. 83. 24.8, in ibid., 1:233. 84. 24.4, in ibid., 1:231. 85. 24.2, in ibid., 1:229. For history of witness, see my “Concept of Witness.” 86. 24.3, in Letters of Peter, ibid. 87. 165.37, in ibid., 7:192-93. 88. 165.42, in ibid., 7:195. 89. 165.45, in ibid., 7:197. 90. 165.43-45, in ibid., 7:196. 91. 165.45, in ibid., 7:197. For another interpretation of Damian’s attitudes toward his contemporary culture, see A. Cantin, “Saint Pierre Damien et la cultura de son temps,” Studi Gregoriani 10 (1975), 245-85.

92. Early historians of the canons, such as Augustus Fliche, Le réforme grégorienne 3 vols. (Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniese, 1937) so declared, although some later historians claim Hildebrand shared the honor. 93. Maureen Miller, “Secular Clergy and Religious Life,” in Medieval Religion: New Approaches, ed. Constance Hoffman Berman (New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 169. 94. One should note that these communities contributed much to the development of canon law; Camaldoli and Vallombrosa gave birth to the great Collection in Five Books. See J. C. Dickinson, The Origins of the Austin Friars (London: SPCK, 1950), p.38 95. It is written ca. 1051, eight years before the council in Rome issued its official blessing on the group. 96. 39.3, in Letters of Peter, 2:99. 97. 39.4, in ibid., 2:100. 98. 39.13, in ibid., 2:109. 99. 39.8, in ibid., 2:104. 100. 39.10, in ibid., 2:106-7. 101. 39.20, in ibid., 5:97. 102. 98.8, in ibid., 5:91. 103. 39.10, in ibid., 2:107. 104. 40.3, in ibid., 2:114. See Giovanni Miccoli, “La ‘simoniaca haeresis’ in Pier Damiani e Umberto de Silva Candida,” Studi Gregoriani 5 (1955-56), 73-81. 105. 40.4, in ibid., 2:115. 106. 40.12, in ibid., 2:123. 107. 40.4, in ibid., 2:116. 108. 40.5, in ibid., 2:117. 109. 40.20, in ibid., 2:131. 110. 146.11, in ibid., 6:160. 111. 146.10, in ibid., 6:159. His well-known mission to Milan ca. January 1059 was “because of two heresies, namely simony and that of the Nicolaitains.” He went as ordered by Nicholas II and his report is addressed to then archdeacon Hildebrand. See letter 65 in ibid., 3:24-39. 112. 146.4, in ibid., 6:156. 113. 146.7, in ibid., 6:158. 114. 40.6, in ibid., 2:118. 115. 86.73, in ibid., 3:293. 116. 86.86, in ibid., 3:298. 117. 10.2, in ibid., 1:114. 118. 5.2, in ibid., 1:94. 119. 86.10, in ibid., 3:259. This treatise is rather atypical for Damian. Based on Physologus, it belongs to an ancient tradition still popular in the Middle Ages. See Physiologus latinus: versio Y, ed. F. J. Carmody, Publications in Classical Philology 12 (1941), 95-134; and De bestiis et aliis rebus, PL 177, 9-164. 120. 86.10 and 12, in ibid., 3: 259-60, 261. 121. 74.8, in ibid., 3:155.

122. 140.9, in ibid., 6:107. 123. 40.82, in ibid., 2:189. 124. 114.13, in ibid., 5:301. 125. 114.3, in ibid., 5:295. 126. 114.18, in ibid., 5:304. 127. 111.16, in ibid., 5:257. 128. 143.11, in ibid., 6:147. 129. 143.9, in ibid., 6:146. 130. 143.4, in ibid., 6:144. 131. See, for example, Summa, Part II-II, q.66,a.7. 132. 142.14, in Letters of Peter, 6:132-33. 133. 142.17, in ibid., 6:134. 134. 108.18, in ibid., 5:204. 135. 83.5, in ibid., 3:243. 136. See, for example, Walter Ullmann, The Growth of Papal Government in the Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1970). 137. 46.3, in Letters of Peter, 2:251. 138. Nicholas II’s encyclical of 1059 Vigilantia universalis and its reissue in 1063 during the Cadalan schism paved the way for Gregory VII’s frontal attack on lay investiture. See Peter’s letters 88 and 89 in ibid., 3:309-69. Zachary Brooke, “Lay Investiture and Its Relation to the Conflict of Empire and Papacy,” in The Gregorian Epoch, ed. Schafer Williams (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1964), 25-35, marks the beginning of the investiture conflict with Humbert de Silva Candida’s Liber adversus simoniacos in 1058. However, this is erroneous. Damian penned his Liber gratissimus in 1052. This is another example of the pivotal influence Damian had on contemporaries and of his role as forerunner in many key issues of the era. It is all the more reason to assess the role the doctrine of the Incarnation played in Damian’s thought. 139. 120.11, in Letters of Peter, 5:392. 140. Some argue that disagreement with Damian’s ideal was also responsible for positive developments. Either way, Damian’s promotion of it is significant. 141. 87.7 in Letters of Peter, 3:303. 142. 87.9, in ibid., 3:304-5. 143. 87.11, in ibid., 3:306. 144. 87.13, in ibid., 3:307-8. Damian is referring to Leo IX’s battles against Robert Guiscard and the Normans. See ibid., 3:307-8, n.34.

Chapter Seven The Doctrine in Women’s Thoughts and Actions There are many areas of medieval life where the presence of Incarnation theology is evident; next I examine women’s history. That the Incarnation doctrine is central to women’s spirituality is not surprising, since extant women’s writings are largely found within the mystical tradition where the doctrine is ubiquitous. However, there is much evidence to indicate that the doctrine influences women’s lives beyond mystical spirituality. Identification of the impact Incarnation theology had on the lives and thoughts of medieval women has already begun, and it has produced probably the most significant breakthrough in medieval women’s history to date.

Physicality It took the magisterial voice of Caroline Walker Bynum to persuade scholars of the centrality of the doctrine of the Incarnation in women’s self-understanding, their everyday lives, and society’s perception of women. Bynum meticulously documents how medieval women’s asceticism “was a profound expression of the doctrine of the Incarnation.” They saw the Eucharist as the primary ritual of this doctrine, “the doctrine that Christ, by becoming human, saves all that the human being is.” Their supposed extreme asceticism was not extreme at all, but “was a profound expression of the doctrine of the Incarnation.” Furthermore, women understood the doctrine to be “compatible with, not contradictory to, new philosophical notions that located the nature of things not in their abstract definitions but in their individuating matter or particularity.”1 I press Bynum’s conclusions further and suggest that the doctrine was more than compatible. The Eucharist as fulfillment of the Incarnation actively promoted—impelled?—medieval women’s drive toward individuating matter (as Bynum insists, ‘these women saw themselves less in terms of gender than in terms of matter”2). As matter, women found in their physicality a likeness binding them to Christ’s physicality in ways that men were not able to. After all, as Hildegard of Bingen is told in one of her visions, “‘I sent My Son for [humanity’s] salvation, miraculously incarnate of the Virgin, true God and true man. What does this mean? That His Divinity truly came forth from Me, the Father and His Humanity truly took flesh from the Virgin Mother.’” But, the Father continues, “‘if I had given Him a physical father, who would He be then? Not My Son, but My servant, and that could not be.’” It was only through a woman’s body that “‘He, born of the Virgin, ate, drank, lay down to sleep and experienced bodily miseries’” and thus “‘conquered death and mercifully delivered humanity therefrom.’”3 Likewise, Gertrude of Helfta identifies a woman’s matter as the source for the Word Incarnate’s matter. As she drinks the eucharistic wine on the Feast of the Nativity, she hears “divinely inspired words such as these: ‘As I am the figure of the substance of the Father (Heb 1:3) through my divine nature, in the same way, you shall be the figure of my substance through my human nature, receiving in your deified soul the brightness of my divinity, as the air

receives the sun’s rays and, penetrating to the very marrow by thus unifying light, you will become capable of an ever closer union with me.’”4 On the following Christmas the physicality of Christ became even immediate to her as “on the same feast-day during the Mass Dominus dixit, I received you from the womb of your virginal mother as a most tender and delicate little, newborn Babe, and held you for a moment, clasped to my breast.” Yet again the next Christmas as Gertrude “was allowed to take from [Mary], a tiny child, you clasped my neck with your frail little arms.”5 In short, a woman’s body was the means through which the Incarnation was made possible. It was also how Gertrude was united with the divine. Many scholars before Bynum had concluded that Christ’s male gender excluded women from imitatio Christi.6 Medieval women themselves, however, did not arrive at this conclusion. To the contrary, women saw their gender as compatible with imitatio Christi. Obstacles are eliminated when the Incarnation is central to one’s belief. After all, as Bonaventure succinctly states concerning Jesus and Mary, “his body is from her body.”7 The tradition of scientific, theological, and philosophical use of the female gender to symbolize the less intellectual, more physical aspects of human nature actually provided women with an avenue of rapprochement to Christ. “In the gentle mirror of God she sees her own dignity: that through no merit of hers but by his creation she is the image of God,” proclaims Catherine of Siena about herself. Yet, “by our sin we lost the dignity you had given us,” she continues. Then, “You, God, became human and we have been made divine,” by “following in the footsteps of Christ crucified.”8 Elsewhere Catherine specifically identifies woman as the source of Christ’s physicality. “The Son was broken in body, and the mother similarly, for his flesh was from her,” Catherine writes. “He had the form of flesh and she, like hot wax, received the imprint of desire and love for our salvation from the sealing of the Holy Spirit, and by means of this seal the divine Word was incarnate.”9 Women’s appreciate of the physicality of Christ explains in large part their intense devotion to the Eucharist. Hadewijch expresses this devotion eloquently in a statement of her own self-worth. I desired that his Humanity should to the fullest extent be one in fruition with my humanity, and that mine then should hold its stand and be strong enough to enter into perfection until I content him…. In this sense I desired that God give himself to me, so that I might content him. As my mind was thus beset with fear, I saw a great eagle flying toward me from the altar and he said to me: “If you wish to attain oneness, make yourself ready!”… Then he came from the altar, showing himself as a Child; and that Child was in the same form as he was in his first three years. He turned toward me, in his right hand took from the ciborium his Body, and in his left hand took a chalice, which seemed to come from the altar, but I do not know where it came from. With that he came in the form and clothing of a Man, as he was on the day when he gave us his Body for the first time.10 It was through Christ’s physicality that Hadewijch approached God, and as a woman she was comfortable with such an approach. First “he gave himself to me in the shape of the Sacrament, in its outward form.… After that he came himself to me, took me entirely in his

arms, and pressed me to him.”11 His humanity provided Hadewijch with a model so she could do “just as he did, in will, in works, and in thought.”12 Far from excluding Hadewijch from imitatio Christi her body is what allows it. But Hadewijch is aware that imitation of the human Jesus is not the goal. To possess God she must possess him “wholly in my Divinity and Humanity.”13 Here is the reason for the Incarnation. It is to show her how to possess God in his totality, to live “according to his example and in union with him, as he was for me when he lived for me as Man.”14 As indefinite an adjective as comfortable might be, its connotations come close to capturing the state of mind many women had as they contemplated God. The doctrine of the Incarnation removes obstacles a misogynist society constructs to limit women’s access to God. An emphasis on the humanity of the Word Incarnate may have even made women more comfortable with Christ than many men were. This was because women, as Bynum has documented again and again, were at ease with their physicality.15 As mothers of both men and women, they embraced and fully accepted both female and male physicality. Men did not have that experience to guide them. Moreover, documentation of male distrust or even disdain of the female body abounds. But if a woman’s body made medieval men (particularly clergy) uncomfortable, the evidence clearly proclaims that women did not adopt the same attitude. We can sense how comfortable Gertrude of Helfta was with her body when she responded as a woman, maternally, to “the son of [Mary’s] virginal womb, a darling little child who made every effort to embrace me” in his “frail little arms.”16 It is through her physicality and Jesus’ that Gertrude was “entirely transformed.” It is through the shared physicality of Gertrude and Jesus that she enjoyed mystical union. “Through my human nature,” the Word proclaims to her, “you will become capable of an ever closer union with me.”17 Here was a woman quite comfortable in her body who used that body to achieve mystical union with the godhead. Some women were so comfortable with their bodies and their mysticism that words common to one domain were seamlessly interjected into the other. For instance, in the vernacular revelations of Christina Ebner, the verb enfahen, to become pregnant, is used to describe her dream pregnancy and her reception of the host;18 in Adelheide Langmann’s writing verwandeln, to change, describes both her vision of transubstantiation and emotional, interior changes within herself after the vision.19 Such attitudes led many women to turn to the Eucharist. A woman’s body is fruitful. It gives birth to newness. It feeds the hungry and helpless. “A mother can give her child to suck of her milk” just as “Mother Jesus can feed us with himself and does, most courteously and most tenderly, with the blessed sacrament,” writes Julian of Norwich. “The mother can lay her child tenderly to her breast,” as “Mother Jesus can lead us easily into his blessed breast through his sweet open side, and show us there a part of the godhead.” The comparison runs deep: “To the property of motherhood belongs nature, love, wisdom and knowledge, and this is God.”20 When a brother was bringing the Eucharist to a sick sister in a pyx, Elizabeth of Schonau “looked in—even though it was still closed—and the substance of true flesh appeared in it.”21 Mechthild of Madgeburg offers an explanation as to why women rejoice in the Incarnation: the doctrine makes a distant god closer. She could approach an incarnate God through her familiarity with her own body: “When I reflect that divine nature now includes bone and flesh,

body and soul, then I became elated in great joy” and realize that “we were and still are able to return” to the image and likeness of God. The Word became incarnate because “he wanted to restore us with his own feet and his own hands.”22 It is as if the unspoken goal of women such as Mechthild is to make the Incarnation accessible to all by explaining the doctrine in the affectionate imagery of everyday life: “The humanity of our Lord is an intelligible image of his eternal Godhead, so that we can grasp the Godhead with the humanity and, like the Holy Trinity, enjoy, hug, kiss, and embrace God.”23 We have heard Hadewijch speak similarly.24 There is another element in women’s writing for which Hadewijch is a prime representative. Her most fundamental understanding of God is as the Word Incarnate. Hence, she frequently emphasizes the paradox of the Incarnation by referring to the Godhead as “God-Man” and as “the Divinity and the Humanity,”25 and she writes a lengthy commentary on the four paradoxes of God’s nature.26 In one vision Christ tells her that if she desires “to possess me wholly in my Divinity and Humanity,” she must “be like me in my Humanity.”27 Hadewijch is also fully aware that a return to imitatio Dei is only possible through imitatio Christi—which in turn is only possible because of the Incarnation: “We shall love the Humanity in order to come to the Divinity.”28 In short, the doctrine of the Incarnation dominates her thinking. Her emphasis on the role of reason in life flows from her understanding of the doctrine, for “with reason you may understand what God has done through you, and what he would purpose in all.”29 Moreover, “if rational man’s noble reason would recognize its just debt and follow Love’s [“minne,” i.e., Christ’s] leading into her land… and to be one with the Godhead [he] must adorn himself with all the virtues that God clothed and adorned himself with when he lived as Man.”30 Hadewijch’s contemporary Angela of Foligno concurs. That the theology of two women drinking from different spiritual traditions (Hadewijch was a beguine and Angela was a mother and a Franciscan tertiary) had so much in common is an indication of how women in general used the doctrine of the Incarnation to pursue independence and self-determination. It gave them confidence and removed self-doubt. After telling her scribe about how once she was embraced by the Word Incarnate “with the very arm with which he was crucified,” Angela defiantly declared that “I was so completely certain that God was at work in me that even if everyone in the world were to say that I ought to doubt this, I would not believe them.”31 The opening sentence in the prologue to her Memorial places the Word Incarnate full center: “Those who are truly faithful know what it is to probe, perceive, and touch the Incarnate Word of Life.”32 Angela calls the Incarnation the “highest mystery,” and is in awe of its internal paradox which she expresses through oppositional imagery: “O incomprehensible one, made comprehensible! O uncreated one, made creature! O inconceivable one, made conceivable! O impalpable one, become palpable!”33 According to Angela, the Eucharist is the vehicle through which people comprehend the paradoxical mystery of the doctrine of the Incarnation. It is the sacramental mystery that provides a way for humans to confront the ultimate mystery of the doctrine. In this mystery the soul discovers God as uncreated and God as man, that is, the divinity and humanity in Christ united and co-joined in one person. Sometimes, in this present life, the soul

receives greater delight in the lesser reality than in the greater one. For the soul is more suited and conformed to the lesser reality which it sees in Christ, as the incarnate God, than it is to that which it sees in Christ as the uncreated God; because the soul is a creature which is the life of its flesh and of all the members of its body. Thus it discovers both God as man and God as uncreated, Christ the creator and the creature. It also discovers in Christ a soul united with flesh, blood, and all the members of his most sacred body. And this is why when the human intellect discovers, sees, and knows in this mystery Christ as man and Christ as God, ordainer of this mystery, it feels delight, and expands in him, because it sees, as I have said, God as man… made in the same form and almost like itself.34 In almost every section of the book Angela refers to “the God-man Christ,” “Christ, God and man,” or “the suffering God-man.” Her constant identification of Christ as the union of human and divine is Angela’s way of reminding her audience how essential the Incarnation is to happiness. It makes happiness possible. It is achieved when a person is “transformed, not partially, but totally, into the Beloved.” Out of love “God the Father provided a way for us to attain this transformation.”35 The way is the Incarnation. Therefore, through imitation of the God-man, “by following him” we are “transformed into the God-man.”36 Given Angela’s premise, it is not surprising that she developed a deep devotion to the host, a devotion for which she is both a pioneer and an exemplar. Many of her visions occurred during Mass at the elevation of the host and often included a vision of Christ’s body. When her scribe asked her to describe “this vision of the body of Christ,” she obliged. She said that she frequently saw “the clarity and brightness of Christ’s body… at the elevation of the host.”37 Once she saw Christ’s throat and neck, but sometimes she saw in the host “two most splendid eyes, and these are so large that it seems only the edges of the host remain visible.” She told her scribe that on one occasion the Christ Child appeared in the host “as someone tall and very lordly, as one holding dominion… so beautiful and so magnificently adorned. He looked like a child of twelve.” She emphasizes that she was able to contemplate the divine only through the human; she saw the body of Christ “with my bodily eyes.” So intense was this very physical experience that she wanted to prolong it; she confessed “that I was also very upset because the priest put down the host on the altar too quickly.”38 Without the physical reality of the Word Incarnate’s humanity Angela could not approach the divine. Thus, Angela nurtured an intense devotion to the crucified Christ along side of her eucharistic devotion. Her scribe describes how the two devotions were united in one of her mystical experiences. On the Sunday before the feast of the Indulgence, a Mass was being celebrated at the altar of the most reverend Virgin Mary in the upper church of the basilica of blessed Francis. At about the time of the elevation of the body of the Lord, while the organ was playing the angelic hymn “Holy, holy, holy,” Angela’s soul was absorbed and transported… [and] the image of the blessed crucified God and man appeared to her, looking as if he had just then been taken down from the cross. His blood flowed fresh and crimson as if the wounds had just recently been opened. She saw how the joints and tendons of his blessed body were torn and distended by the cruel stretching and pulling of his virginal limbs at the hands of those who had set upon him

to kill him.39 Such vivid and precise imagery indicates just how central physicality was to Angela’s selffulfillment. By concentrating on the physicality of Jesus in the host and in his suffering she brings her own physicality to its fullest expression: mystical union with the divine. Happiness comes through reflection upon the human, physical suffering of the Word Incarnate. She tells her scribe that during another mystical experience “a great joy had entered her soul at the moment of the elevation of the body of Christ and she heard God telling her: ‘Behold the man who was crucified.’” The vision of Christ’s physicality caused “a wonderful transformation” and “in this new state, into which she had suddenly passed over, her soul found itself enwrapped within Christ’s divinity.”40 The humanity of God gave her access to the divinity of God, and this access changed her forever.

Service and Direction Incarnation theology likewise was at the root of Angela’s concept of service. This is significant, for it is during the High Middle Ages that the West established its basic institutions and attitudes for service (first embodied in new religious orders founded to serve specific needs of particular groups, from administering hospitals and orphanages to ransoming captives). In service we can clearly see the connection medieval people made between Incarnation theology and action; they repeatedly report how belief in the Incarnation motivated them to act certain ways. Angela sees service as an obligation that flows naturally from imitatio Christi. She is told in a vision: “‘I want you to be useful to all who will see you; and not only them; I also want you to be of service and help to all those who think of you or hear your name mentioned. The more someone will have possession of me, the more useful shall you be to them.’”41 We see the same interest in the theological value of utility among the Cistercians. The concept played a major role in the development of a Western work ethic and in Western attitudes toward labor and laborers. Utility is a criterion for evaluating the worth of an action, whether it helps fulfill creatures’ obligation to their creator.42 Juliana of Mont Cornillon adopted this criterion. At an early age she became a member of the double monastery of Mont Cornillon “specifically founded by the citizens of Liege (it is said) to house citizens of both sexes who contracted leprosy and to support them in its facilities.”43 She “undertook not only what obedience commanded but also what utility prompted… offering service to all… and constant labor.”44 It is evident throughout her vita that her love for the Eucharist and awareness of the obligation to be useful was rooted in imitation of the Word Incarnate. Her hagiographer reports that “with devout and loving footsteps, she followed every saving deed that Christ exacted in the flesh.” She was particularly attached to Mary, “for the mystery of the Incarnation was perfectly celebrated in her when she consented with the reply ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord.’” Juliana “urged her confidantes to recite and teach this prayer,” thus “renewing the joy of Christ’s perfect Incarnation in her.”45 The vita of Alice of Schaarbeeck contains a similar portrayal of an inherent connection between Incarnation theology and a dedication to social utility through labor and service. Alice

believed that salvation was attained inwardly and outwardly. “Inwardly, she shone, thanks to her clinging to the image of God, while outwardly, there were the labors,… the needs on part of all her neighbors” which “she strove at every hour” to meet and thus “produce the fruit of Nativity.” This she “had heard in the Gospel,” and “she was keen to imitate his footsteps there.”46 Her hagiographer confesses that this is the reason why he wrote her vita, “as a mirror for the human race to make use of” and imitate Alice’s imitatio Christi.47 Because women were comfortable with the physicality of Christ and his human life, they were also comfortable advising others about imitation of Christ. The medieval period saw an abundance of women spiritual directors performing this task. Their positions as spiritual directors gave them extensive authority and respect within their society. While sources are scant for medieval women in general, those that are extant confirm this appraisal. Women were comfortable in their role as directors. Angela of Foligno saw spiritual direction as a form of service, thus fulfilling the obligation to be useful to others. Her directees included male and female religious and lay people (Instructions is actually a compilation of Angela’s teachings for her advisees). She is among the most influential directors of the Middle Ages. In the epilogue to Instructions the compiler tells readers to make use of her advice to “learn from Angela the great counsel, the wisdom of the way of the cross and its riches” and for them, in turn, to “teach it to men and women and all creatures.”48 Apparently many did. Ubertino of Casale, Franciscan leader of the Spiritualists, tells us that when he met Angela, “she restored a thousandfold all those spiritual gifts I had lost through my sins, so that from that moment on I have not been the same man I was before.”49 By the sixteenth century Angela, popularly known as magistra theologorum, was an established authority, and her Incarnation theology circulated in manuscripts found throughout the West. In 1505 Cardinal Jimenez de Cisneros Ximenes had her work printed and in 1510 made it part of his reform program. Other noted leaders of spirituality such as Teresa of Avila, Maria de San Jose, and Francis de Sales endorsed and promoted her theology.50 It is unfortunate that after the seventeenth century Angela’s (and, sadly, many other medieval women) popularity faded until the recent revival, for her long absence tends to make us overlook her true position in Western culture. As Angeline scholar Paul Lachance reminds us, though, Angela’s contributions to Western culture are significant. She was “one of the most outstanding exponents of a new wave of medieval piety that, although receptive to tradition, transcended it to forge new paths.”51 I augment his conclusion by noting that the tradition that she was receptive to, yet transcended, was that of Incarnation theology. Thanks to that theology women gained new awareness of their potential. Angela has worthy company. A complete list of medieval women directors is too long to include here: Hadewijch, Heloise, Clare of Assisi, Gertrude of Hackeborn, Mechthild of Hackeborn, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Gertrude of Helfta, Julian of Norwich, Birgitta of Sweden, Catherine of Siena, Catherine of Bologna, Dorothea of Montau, and, of course, Hildegard of Bingen are among the more familiar directors. These women earned reputations among their contemporaries as perceptive directors. They were women who found meaning for their lives within the theology of the Incarnation and communicated that meaning to others. I have written a detailed history of their direction elsewhere; here I want only to emphasize how much their direction was rooted in the doctrine of the Incarnation. Hadewijch, for example,

directs those finding life’s burdens heavy to the Word Incarnate. “We all indeed wish to be God with God,” Hadewijch consoles, “but God knows there are few of us who want to live as men with his Humanity, or want to carry his cross with him.” So Hadewijch advises them to find meaning in the suffering life brings by imitatio Christi. If one rebels against life’s burdens, then “we show plainly that we do not live with Christ as he lived.” Imitatio Christi eliminates the temptation to rebel against suffering. By advising others to imitate Christ by accepting the fullness of humanity, Hadewijch provides a way for her directees to deal with the practicalities of life. Do not “busy yourself unduly with many things… [or] waste too much time with your energy, throwing yourself headlong into the things that cross your path,” but instead “observe moderation… [and] follow the counsel I have given you.”52 In other words, imitatio Christi provides them with a model for a productive life on earth. The Word Incarnate teaches them how to look past the limitations of human nature which “must often fall short”53 and accomplish great things. Clare of Assisi ardently urges her disciples to gain control over their lives through imitatio Christi. She states it simply: “Follow Christ.” First, “shut out all tumult of this earth from their minds.” Second, do “not to be influenced by love of kinsfolk.” Third, “condemn the demands of the body and to subject the conceits of the flesh to the control of reason,” and, finally, “work with their hands at definite hours.”54 For Hildegard of Bingen, the humanity and divinity of the Word Incarnate is ever present, a truth that was verified in a vision of the Eucharist: “Concerning the body of Christ, I saw also that power which descended into the womb of the Virgin (so that the Word of God became true flesh) remains up to the present day… and that same power from the time that the Word of God became incarnate in the Virgin will remain even to the last day.”55 Hildegard uses this doctrine as the basis for her spiritual direction, as in the case of a prior who implored her to write a treatise for his community concerning the role of conversi (laybrothers) among them. After reminding them that “God, who is both God and man, and in every place… established as the mirror of His glory,” she advises them to imitate Christ and accept the world as he did. Anyone who fails to follow his example and “refuses to work, fail[s] to serve perfectly either God or the world.” Only “individuals who perform their work with the proper concern for body and spirit [will] ascend with good intention to God.”56 The High Middle Ages saw the influence of women spiritual directors increase dramatically, and the great directors of the fourteenth century bear witness to their continued authority. The eminent director Catherine of Siena bases her direction firmly in the doctrine of the Incarnation. She believes that service, both spiritual and physical, is an obligation of all Christians. “It is your duty to love your neighbors… [and] to help them spiritually with prayer and counsel, and assist them spiritually and materially in their need,” Catherine instructs. She also emphasizes the need for witness: “Here you owe each other help in word and teaching and good example, indeed in every need of which you are aware, giving counsel as sincerely as you would to yourself, without selfishness.”57 In Catherine’s theology union with divinity is the goal of humanity, and it is possible only because of the Incarnation. “‘I will make my Son a bridge by which you can all reach your goal,’” the Godhead declares, by “‘following in the footsteps of this gentle loving Word.’” Without the Incarnation bridging the gap between the Godhead and humanity, passage from the latter to the former is impossible. A bridge is

necessary because “by Adam’s sinful disobedience the road was so broken up that no one could reach everlasting life.” It is, of course, the greatest of bridges, one that unites two extremes: “Look! It stretches from heaven to earth, joining the earth of your humanity with the greatness of the Godhead.” Accordingly, Catherine understands the doctrine of the Incarnation as a paradoxical synthesis that benefits humanity. It is the way humanity is redeemed, for without the Incarnation human suffering could not atone for its sin and suffering would be meaningless. Indeed, “in this way and in no other is suffering of value.” Suffering outside the doctrine of the Incarnation is “suffering simply as suffering.”58 This is because “the earth of human nature by itself, as I have told you, was incapable of atoning for sin.” Accordingly, “your nature had to be joined with the height of mine, the eternal Godhead, before it could make atonement for all of humanity. Then human nature could endure the suffering, and the divine nature, joined with that humanity, would accept my Son’s sacrifice on your behalf to release you from death and give you life.”59 Catherine’s understanding of the doctrine is also in the core of her direction concerning communal responsibility, self-knowledge, individuality, and free will. To Charles V, King of France, she counsels imitatio Christi for the sake of his realm. “So I am asking you and I want you to follow Christ crucified,” she writes, “and be a lover of your neighbors’ salvation. Show you are a follower of the Lamb.”60 She instructs Raymond of Capua “to gain knowledge of yourself, without confusion, from the darkness. And from your good will I want you to gain knowledge of God’s infinite goodness.”61 She encourages Piero Gambacorta to “open wide your eyes of self-knowledge”; she encourages Pope Gregory XI, Bernabo (Visconti of Milan), and Monna Giovanna di Capo similarly. She reminds two members of the Mantellate Order of the “dignity which you received from God” when he gave “us, us, his own image and likeness.” Moreover, “he gave us our will to love that will of his. The will of the Word wants us to follow him on the way of the most holy cross by enduring every pain, abuse, insult, and reproach for Christ crucified, who is in us to strengthen us.” She also reminds the two women that life’s mysteries and “knowledge of ourselves” were unfathomable “until the Word, God’s only-begotten Son, became incarnate.” It is the Incarnation and that alone which gives life meaning: “Once he had chosen to be our brother, clothing himself in the coarseness of our humanity, it was revealed to us.”62 Julian of Norwich’s devotion to the Incarnation is perhaps most clearly seen in her well known portrayal of Jesus as mother, a portrait that goes to the heart of both Jesus’ physicality and women’s identification with his physicality. This identification gives her the strength to challenge social limitations placed on women. “I write as the representative of my fellow Christians,” she asks, “but because I am a woman, ought I therefore to believe that I should not tell you of the goodness of God?”63 She, of course, answers the question herself in the affirmative and proceeds to instruct others, confident in her authority. Her teaching, she tells us, “was shown to me in three parts, that is, by bodily vision and by words formed in my understanding and by spiritual vision,”64 thus she anchors it firmly in her own body. At the Incarnation “all the lovely works and all the sweet loving offices of beloved motherhood are appropriated to the second person.” Interestingly, when designating tasks to the persons of the Trinity Julian sees the Word as a worker—“our Mother works.”65 This is the imago Dei in

which she was made. The mother’s service is nearest, readiest and surest: nearest because it is most natural, readiest because it is most loving, and surest because it is truest. No one ever might or could perform this office fully, except only him. We know that all our mothers bear us for pain and for death. … The mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself, and does most courteously and most tenderly, with the blessed sacrament.66 Birgitta of Sweden’s spiritual direction is similarly rooted in the Word Incarnate, a fact that takes on new significance when one considers that Birgitta’s directees were the ruling elite of her day. Testimony to Birgitta’s direction was given in writing “by the lady queen and the archbishop of Naples, also by the queen and the king and the prince and many others from the kingdom of Cyprus and from the kingdom of Sicily; and by men, and by women, too, from Italy, from Sweden, and even from Spain.”67 Furthermore, during her lengthy residence in Rome she was in the thick of the political world. She engaged in numerous diplomatic efforts to free the papacy from French control, to rally the West to another crusade, to establish peace between the empire and the papacy. Her influence was such that she was discussed at the councils of Constance and Basel and in the works of theologians such as Jean Gerson, Pierre D’Ailly, and laywoman Margery Kempe. Concerning the Incarnation theology articulated in her works, Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) wrote that her theology has “for centuries shaped in a very decisive manner, the portrayal of the life and of the human sufferings of Jesus, in one word the image of Christ in the Church.”68 Perhaps the reason for her phenomenal influence is because her graphic, emotional representation of the humanity of Christ is written in such accessible language. Generations of artists have been inspired to immortalize her imagery in their paintings and sculpture.69 Birgitta’s bucolic narrative of Jesus’ birth is one of the most influential descriptions in art, for it radically altered Western depiction of the Nativity. Birgitta’s vision of the Crucifixion had almost the same impact on Western portrayal of the suffering Christ. The depiction of the Pieta, one of the most beloved subjects in Western art, follows Birgitta’s imagery. Likewise, her vision of Mary had vast implications, for there Birgitta captured the spiritual and physical dignity of woman. The imagery of Birgitta did indeed leave a permanent mark on the way Western art portrayed women.70 The source of her imagery is the doctrine of the Incarnation. According to Birgitta, the Word’s humanity is but a common-sense response of a loving God to humanity’s dilemma, for as her God dictates to her in Revelations, only “in my humanity all things were to be done rationally and distinctly, for the salvation and instruction of all.”71 Humans could not have grasped their redemption had it come solely through God’s divinity. Her theology of the Incarnation is clearly stated in one of her visions. God tells her why the Incarnation was necessary. You ask, therefore, why I do not openly show my divinity as well as my humanity. The reason is that the divinity is spiritual and the humanity is corporeal. Nevertheless, the divinity and the humanity are, and were, inseparable from the first moment that they were joined. The Godhead

is uncreated, and all things that exist were created in it and through it, and all perfection and beauty is found in it. If, therefore, such great beauty and perfection were to be shown visibly to eyes of clay, who would endure its sight?… Therefore, in order that man might better understand me, I, God the merciful, showed myself to him in a form like himself that could be seen and touched—namely, in my humanity, in which the Godhead exists but, as it were, veiled —in order that man might not be terrified by a form unlike himself.72 It is but a small step for Birgitta to go from here to intense interest with the body. Bynum reminds us that such interest was not unusual for Westerners at that time, but through the beauty and power of her imagery Birgitta raises the preoccupation to new levels.73 Its effectiveness is still felt today. “Blessed, therefore, be your eyes, your eyelids, and your glorious eyebrows,” she prays to Jesus. “Your most clean teeth” with which “you most moderately chewed physical food” are worthy of contemplation, as is “your throat, your stomach, and your viscera,” “your holy shoulders and neck,” “your precious ribs and your back,” “your knees with their hams and your shins;” these are just some of the body parts that Birgitta singles out for reflection. When talking about Mary the admiration continues: “Praise be your hair with all its strands,” “your glorious bosom,” “your most honest face,” “your most sacred breasts giving milk,” “your womb was as perfectly clear as ivory and shone like a place built on exquisite stones,” and so on.74 Clearly, Birgitta is promoting a positive image of the human body. Far from viewing the body as evil, she sees it as worthy of praise, an appreciation that extended especially to its reproductive organs. Such a positive attitude deserves historians’ notice, given Western society’s identification of personhood as a synthesis of body and soul. The late medieval period had few if any more influential voices than Birgitta’s (and none with more engaging imagery) proclaiming how essential the body is to the personal fulfillment and eternal happiness of humanity. It is a lesson she learned from her reflection upon the doctrine of the Incarnation.

Hildegard of Bingen Incarnation theology affected the lives of medieval women in many ways. This in itself makes Incarnation theology important, but when one remembers how many women in turn contributed to the cultural structure Western society was building at the time, that theology becomes even more important. To appreciate fully the role Incarnation theology played in the lives of influential medieval women we need only to look at the life of Hildegard of Bingen. She is an archetype of how the doctrine affected women’s lives, as well as a superb illustration of how the doctrine informed so many aspects of Western culture. As Peter Dronke observes, “there is scarcely a field to which [Hildegard] did not bring her individual contribution.”75 Music, drama, natural science, medicine, history, literature, philosophy, poetry, art, counseling, linguistics, zoology—these are just some of the areas shaped by her contributions. She possessed a comprehensive intellect and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. While it has taken many decades of scholarly research for modern society to acknowledge the impact Hildegard had on Western intellectual culture, her contemporaries were well aware of it. Only Bernard of Clairvaux comes to mind as a twelfth-century leader of equal import and influence.

She was known throughout the West; letters from Rome, Paris, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and all corners of the Holy Roman Empire testify to her reputation and influence. Monks, nuns, laity, abbots, abbesses, popes, bishops, archbishops, visionaries, cardinals, nobility, kings, queens, an empress, and an emperor corresponded with Hildegard, because, as Bishop Hermann of Constance wrote to her, “the fame of your wisdom has spread far and wide and has been reported to me by a number of truthful people.”76 The vast majority of correspondence deals with spiritual direction, but she was also highly influential in areas previously thought reserved for men. One of the most interesting letters addressed to her is from Odo of Soissons, famed teacher at the University of Paris. “It is reported that, exalted you see many things in the heavens and record them in your writing, and that you bring forth the melody of a new song,” he writes, indicating that her musical talent was already known in Paris even before her masterpiece Scivias was completed. What is more interesting, though, is exactly why Odo wrote to her. He was asking for her interpretation of Gilbert of Poitier’s controversial theology of the Incarnation, one which many Paris theologians believed was a form of Adoptionism. “Despite the fact that we live far away, we have utmost confidence in you, and, therefore, we would like for you to resolve a certain problem for us. Many contend that God is not both paternity and divinity. Would you please explain to us in a letter what you perceive in the heavens about this matter.”77 Her answer, that God “cannot be divided by a word as man can, for God is nothing other than entirety, and for this reason nothing can be added to or subtracted [sic] from Him,” was the standard by which Gilbert was condemned at the Council of Rheims in 1148.78 That a master of Paris should consult Hildegard for her opinion of a matter before a male church council and that her opinion was adopted is an impressive testimony to the esteem Hildegard was held by her contemporary intellectuals. From the late 1150s until 1170 Hildegard undertook four preaching tours, yet another indication of her high regard (this is especially impressive, given how territorial male ecclesiastics were of their preaching domain). Hildegard plays a major role in the societal transition from the early medieval view of God as transcendent and resurrectional to the immanent, incarnational view held in the High Middle Ages. For Hildegard the central fact of life is that God “willed [his son] to be incarnate of the Virgin to save lives.” Christ is “a human being within time… clothed with true humanity, a man’s form assumed for man’s sake.”79 As such, Christ is historical and physical, and thus he permeates all creation and all creatures. This understanding of the Word Incarnate dominates her view of all life. It is responsible for numerous contributions in various fields, for Hildegard believes that the Incarnation transformed creation. “And, assuming humanity, He did not forsake Deity; but, being one and true God with the Father and the Holy Spirit, he sweetened the world with His sweetness and illumined it with the brilliance of His glory,” she explains.80 A belief such as this has long reaching implications. It breeds new attitudes toward the world and, more importantly, toward change in the world. It is this attitude that reverberates throughout Hildegard’s thinking and is the motivation for many of the changes her contributions wrought in medieval society. She embraces creation and change because the Incarnation changed everything in creation: “Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor 5:17). We see this new attitude toward creation and change reflected in the art of Scivias. Here

thirty-five illuminations draw the reader into Hildegard’s visionary world of creation and change; they are among the most distinct, original illuminations of the medieval period. Their style is unmistakably unique, full of striking energy, and they faithfully capture the message of the text. Scivias overflows with an appreciation and acceptance of all things created and of the interrelationships between macrocosm and microcosm; the illuminations allow the readers to grasp Hildegard’s interpretation of reality with their senses as well as their intellects. Gone is the august grandeur of an awe-inspiring, impersonal god of the Carolingian and Ottonian illuminations, replaced by a new, more approachable, familiar portrait of a human god capable of being imitated. For example, in Book Three her eighth vision concerns the pillar of Jesus’ humanity “on which I saw all the virtues of God descending and ascending.” In the text she explains the vision thus: “This is to say that in the incarnate Son of God all the virtues work fully, and that He left in Himself the way of salvation; so that faithful people both small and great can find in Him the right step on which to place their foot in order to ascend to virtue.”81 The illumination accompanying the text includes a variety of familiar human figures of the Word Incarnate (a suffering crucified corpus, two Mother and Child figures, and so on), all drawn in such a manner as to convey a sense of immediacy that the viewer could relate to. In the illuminations for five other visions the Incarnation is recalled by the figure of a woman giving birth, that most human of all experiences. In her so-called minor works on music, medicine, and natural science we see the extent of Hildegard’s embrace of Incarnation theology and the effect that theology had on her view of creation. Even her letters and her imaginary language reflect an Incarnation theology. Hildegardian scholar Jeffrey Schnapp goes so far as to argue that Hildegard presents us with an example of how Incarnation theology is responsible for bringing the Middle Ages into a “golden age of neologism and verbal invention”; it gives medieval society permission to name or rename all creation reborn under the New Law.82 Hildegard’s invention of terms for things created in the Garden of Eden, such as penis, vulva, sweat, and feces, suggests that because of the Incarnation Hildegard wanted to start over anew and eliminate the residue of the Fall, including the language of the Old Law.83 The result, Hildegard’s imaginary language, Lingua ignota, “is the only systematically constructed imaginary language that has come down to us from the Middle Ages.”84 It is not simply incarnational in its conception but also in its structure. Hildegard invents some one thousand ten terms which she divides into categories. All of the terms are for physical things created, and the vast majority of them have to do with the human and natural world. According to Schnapp’s analysis, 25.74 percent (261 terms) name the elements in the natural world, 26.53 percent (269 terms) refer to things present in the lives of humans, and 16.96 percent (172 terms) name body parts and conditions and kin.85 It is not a language of divine abstraction but one of human physicality. This preoccupation with creation in Hildegard’s imaginary language is mirrored in her other works. “God cannot be perceived directly,” Hildegard reasons, but thanks to the Incarnation “he is known through creation, through humankind alone which is a mirror of all God’s wonders.”86 The desire to know God is the desire to know creation, so Hildegard pursues creation with a thoroughness rare in her day. Even in an era of summas and authors with encyclopedic ambitions, the breadth and depth of Hildegard’s writings on the natural

world is unusual. Sometime between 1150 and 1160 she wrote Subtleties of the Diverse Natures of Creatures (better known by the names of its two parts, Physica and Causae et curae). The former describes the beneficial and detrimental effects of herbs, plants, animals, elements, rocks and metals, and the latter is a medical compendium within the cosmic scale; both embrace the goodness of the world in order to better understand it. Between 1163 and 1173 she composed what some consider her most impressive achievement, The Book of Divine Works; here she develops a history of humanity in relationship to cosmos, a cosmos in which divine immanence is a major theme.87 The implications of her approach toward the world are explicit here. Hildegard’s universe is a changing, dynamic world in nature, culture, and history. In her earliest book, Scivias (written 1141-51) Hildegard establishes creation as “created for the service of humanity.”88 When she writes Physica she adds an essential corollary: “The elements willingly served humanity because they sensed that people were endowed with life, just as people worked with them.”89 Work is what makes the world tolerable for humans, and, as such, it is mandated. “God created all things and made all living creatures,” Hildegard instructs.90 “When God created man, he told him to work with the other creatures. Just as man will not end unless he is changed into ashes and as he will rise again, as also his works will be seen, the good, of course, for glory.”91 Her exploration of the doctrine of the Incarnation leads her to an ecological work theology. The responsibility to work is part of the divine plan inherent in the Incarnation. “‘After being born from the womb of the Virgin, I thought about man,’” the Son of God tells Hildegard. “‘I renewed those who had been estranged.… Because I placed men over all the other creatures, I planned things in such a way as to hold them all together.’”92 Work is the means by which humans hold creation together. To work is to share in God’s creative power: “Let the faithful man seize a plow with oxen so that he may, nevertheless, look at God who give greenness and fruit to the earth”—greenness (viriditas) connotes the creative principle of life for Hildegard—“and let him walk according to the commands of his master so that, cultivating earthly things, he does not desert heavenly things.” Work is rewarding and satisfying, and it makes earthly life more pleasant. “If we do not have care of earthly things, the earth will sprout thorns and thorny plants. We would then be sinning since the earth is supposed to feed all the animals but could not to do so if we did not care for it,” Hildegard argues. “A faithful person pays attention to these things and remembers them well.”93 Moreover, work creates permanent change: “Just as the work of God, which is man, will endure and not be ended, so also the work of man will not vanish because the work of man, which reaches to God, will shine in heavenly things.” Humans must be discerning in their work though, for work that does not produce good “will remain in punishments.”94 As such, humans must remember that they “are more changeable in their actions than any other type of creature,” and perform only work that changes them for the better.95 It is not always easy for humans to discern proper works, but if they do not choose wisely or if they refuse to work, then creation will become hostile. Hildegard regards work as a reward for a virtuous life, not a punishment for wrongdoing. When Adam and Eve fell in the Garden “primordial sin rashly and deceitfully choked off

human work”; the Incarnation unlocks the chokehold. Out of love of humanity “God gave man the ability to work,” and as a result “man should look forward to what is useful.”96 Work has the power to alter creation. It is a most powerful tool. “I could destroy all things I did not make or create,” Hildegard admits, but reverence for creation forbids it. So she imitates divinity: “All the things God created please me. I do not hurt anything,” she proclaims.97 Nor will Hildegard tolerate anyone who does, for she is aware of the role work plays in maintaining the ecological balance. In Hildegard’s writings we also find expression of medieval society’s growing realization of the fundamental creative nature of work. Work, according to Hildegard, is one of God’s greatest gifts to humanity and a key to its happiness. It is the foundation of selfdetermination and independence: “So you have the knowledge of good and evil, and the ability to work. And so you cannot plead as an excuse that you lack any good thing that would inspire you to love God in truth and justice. You have the power to master yourself.”98 Hildegard communicates these principles in another manner in Causae et curae when she discusses creation. Throughout her expose of creation she employs work metaphors, particularly the metaphor of cooking. Adam was created with a soul, which in turn possesses a will. This will is most powerful, “for the will is like a fire, baking each deed as if in a furnace. Bread is baked so that people may be nourished by it and be able to live. So too the will is the strength of the whole work, for it starts by kneading it and when it is firm adds the yeast and pounds it severely; and, thus preparing the work in contemplation as if it were bread, it bakes it in perfection by the full action of its ardor.” Procreation is presented with the aid of similar baking metaphors. By thus mixing the acts of creation and procreation with cooking Hildegard elevates the menial work of the cook to new heights. She even describes the work of the Holy Spirit as the work of the cook: “Just as ordinary dishes are changed into better-tasting dishes by the addition of seasonings and peppers… so is the ordinary nature of a person transformed through the fire of the Holy Spirit into a better sort.”99 Hildegard’s work metaphors are plentiful throughout all her writings. They are a constant reminder of how important she considers work and the high esteem in which she holds labor. “Learn from this analogy,” she instructs one abbot, for “Christ Himself sent His word forth to be preached in every land”100 and she is following his example. Hildegard’s respect extends beyond work to the worker, male and female: “Woman was created for the sake of man, and man for the sake of woman. And she is from the man, the man is also from her, lest they dissent from each other in the unity of making their children; for they should work as one in one work, as the air and wind intermingle in their labor.”101 To an abbess Hildegard sends a parable to summarize her philosophy of work. Listen now to a wise man’s parable: A certain man wanted to dig a cave, but while he was working with wood and iron, fire burst forth from a rock he had dug into. And the result was that this place could in no way be penetrated. Nevertheless, he took note of the location of the place, and with great exertion he dug other tunnels into it. And then the man said in his heart: “I have toiled strenuously, but he who comes after me will have easier labor, because he will find everything already prepared for him.” Surely, this man will be praised by his lord, because in length and breadth his work is much more useful than work done in arable land that is turned by the plow. And so his master will consider him a mighty knight competent to be in charge of his

army, and so he puts him in charge of the other farmers who present him fruit in their due season. For whoever has labored first is preeminent over the one who succeeds him. Indeed, the Maker of the world undertook creation first, and thus set the example for His servants to labor after is fashion.102 The reasons why medieval society set about creating a distinct culture full of energy, intent upon going in new directions, are captured in this simple parable. Hildegard fully appreciates the power of work and, in particular, the power of labor to create anew. Acceptance of the status quo is not enough; humans “who ha[ve] the power of reason and the spirit of intelligence” must support “the development of these things” and apply their intellectual powers to the care of creation.103 She embraces creation, embraces work in creation, and embraces the change in creation that work brings about. In all this Hildegard draws her convictions from the doctrine of the Incarnation. Her theology of work flows effortlessly from it. God created humanity “to work in humble obedience,” but when humanity sinned “God gave greater and stronger virtues to humanity by sending His Son into the world to raise up the prostrate human race.” If a person “is a strong, glorious and holy soldier in the work of restoration, which he does in soul and body,” then “he will receive his full and eternal reward… through My Son Who was born of the Virgin and suffered on the Cross.”104 Not only is humanity saved through the Incarnation but all of creation is, too: “The Son of God came into the world and did all these things as he showed the righteous way to those who believed in him… [and] the new world rose up.”105 Man need only follow Christ’s example–imitatio Christi–and a new material world is created. And, Hildegard continues, imitatio Christi is possible because humanity and Christ share a common nature: “This material that is the work of God is in man; it is also the material of humanity of the Son of God because God created man from the earth and the earth was also the material from which the Virgin brought forth the Son of God.”106 We can see how Hildegard’s beliefs stimulated her intellectually in natural science, an area where she helped pioneer methodological approaches in natural science. Research into this area of Hildegardian studies lags behind most other aspects of her thought, but the little that has been done places her squarely in the same class as better-known scientific pioneers such as Albertus Magnus. Historian Laurence Moulinier even claims that Hildegard’s presentation of the animal world in Physica makes that book the most original and important zoological study in the entire Middle Ages.107 Other scholars are not quite so efflorescent but still insist that Hildegard is a major pioneer in the development of a modern scientific approach in zoology. As historians Kenneth Kitchell and Irven Resnick say, Hildegard “passed beyond the randomness of the Physiologus and bestiary tradition and has imposed further order on the Hexaemeron tradition in an early attempt to see the world in a structured fashion”; as such, she “serves as a significant and individualistic bridge between the older learning and that which was to come.”108 And while Hildegard’s taxonomy is somewhat weak (she bases it partially on Genesis’s description of the six days of creation), the fact that she places the animal kingdom in a schema at all makes her work pioneering, for it is a break from the bestiary tradition of contemporaries and immediate predecessors and points society toward the natural philosophy that gained prominence in the thirteenth century.

So, too, is her work pioneering in the humanities, particularly in music and drama. Her Ordo virtutum is the first morality play, a genre key in the development of the modern drama. It allows more freedom in the construction of plot and dialogue and in the use of personification (Webster’s definition of personification is “incarnate”) of concepts. According to Dronke, Ordo virtutum was the first Western play to realize the possibilities of psychological drama.109 Hildegard’s music is similarly innovative. In music historian Barbara Jeskalian’s opinion, “musicologically, Hildegard broke new ground.”110 Her music is grounded in the same mathematical principles and approaches responsible for the grand Gothic cathedrals of the era. Still popular today, the poetic lyrics of her music are of highest quality. Most significant is Hildegard’s understanding of music as an extension of the doctrine of the Incarnation. In a letter to prelates at Mainz after they placed Hildegard’s community under musical interdict, Hildegard reveals how intertwined she believed music and the Incarnation to be.111 Music is one of “the sacraments of the Garment of the Word of God, Who, born virginally of the Virgin Mary, is your salvation.” From the beginning of creation “man needed the voice of the living Spirit” to sing the praise of God, “but Adam lost this divine voice through disobedience.” With the Incarnation as a model, humanity was shown how to once again praise God by incarnating its interior praise in a bodily presence. “Just as the body of Jesus Christ was born of the purity of the Virgin Mary through the operation of the Holy Spirit, so, too, the canticle of praise, reflecting celestial harmony, is rooted in the Church through the Holy Spirit. The body is the vestment of the spirit, which has a living voice, and so it is proper for the body, in harmony with the soul, to use its voice to sing praises to God.”112 Elsewhere Hildegard writes of the special rewards of imitatio Christi. Because they had “inclined themselves to the gentleness of the incarnate Son of God… because they had followed in [His] footsteps… they resound the song of the Lamb… they sometimes walked as if they were upon golden wheels. They carried lyres in their hands, which they played.”113 In many areas of human endeavor Hildegard broke new ground. In some fields she was simply representative. When we view her life as a whole, we gain insight into the mechanisms by which Western culture developed its unique form. The doctrine of the Incarnation is not the sole impetus behind the formation of her thought, but it is rarely if ever, absent from the discourse. The doctrine of the Incarnation is present in all her accomplishments, as it is in the other women discussed in this chapter. Together these women provide us with excellent illustrations of how ideas about the doctrine of the Incarnation shaped culture. Notes 1. Bynum, Holy Feast, pp.294-95. See Nancy Warren, The Embodied Word (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), for a discussion of how the doctrine affected Birgitta of Sweden, Julian of Norwich, and Catherine of Siena. 2. Bynum, Fragmentation, p.149. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, tr. Fathers of English Dominican Providence (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, repr. 1981), part 3a, q.28, art.1; and part 3a, q32, art.4. 3. Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, tr. M. Columba Hart (New York: Paulist Press, 1990),

bk.2, v.6, ch. 102 (pp.288-89). See Scivias, eds. Adelgundis Führkötter and Angela Carlevaris, CCCM 43, 43a (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978); PL 145 for Hildegard’s Scivias, Epistolae, Liber divinorum operum, and Physica. 4. Gertrude of Helfta, The Herald of Divine Love, tr. Margaret Winkworth (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), bk. 2 (Memorial), part 2, ch.6 (p.104). See Oeuvres Spirituelles, ed. P. Doyère et al, vols. 5 (SC 127,139,143, 255, and 331) (Paris: Éditiones du Cerf, 1967-86). 5. Ibid., bk. 2, part 2, ch.16 (pp.115; 117). 6. See Gender and Religion, eds. Caroline Walker Bynum, S. Harrell, and P. Richman (Boston: Beacon, 1986). 7. Bonaventure, “De assumptione B. Virginis Mariae,” sermon 1.2, in S. Bonaventurae opera omnia, ed. Collegium S. Bonaventurae (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1901), 9:690. 8. Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, tr. Suzanne Noffke (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), ch.13 (pp.48-50) and ch.1 (p.25). See Il Dialogo delle Divina Providenza, ed. G. Cavallini (Rome: Edizione Cateriniane, 1968). 9. The Letters of Catherine of Siena, tr. Suzanna Noffke (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000), letter 30. 10. Hadewijch, The Complete Works, tr. M. Columba Hart (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), vision 7 (pp.280-81). See Norbert de Paepe, Hadewijch: Strofische Gedichten (Ghent: Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie, 1967). 11. Catherine, Dialogue, ch.1 (p.25). 12. Poems in Couplets, 12: 39-40, in Hadewijch, Complete Works, p.341. 13. Vision 1, ibid., p.268. 14. Vision 14, ibid., p.302. 15. See Bynum’s Fragmentation, especially pp.181-238. 16. Gertrude, Herald, bk. 2, part 2, ch.16 (p.117). 17. Ibid., bk.2, part 2, ch.6 (p.109). 18. Leben und Geschichte der Christina Ebner, ed. Georg Wolfgang (Nürnburg: Karl Lochner, 1872); and Rosemary Hale, “Imitatio Mariae: Motherhood Motifs in Devotional Memoirs,” Mystics Quarterly 16 (1990), 193-204. 19. Adelheide Langmann, Die Offenbarungen der Adelheide Langmann, ed. Philipp Strauch (Strassburg, 1878). 20. Julian of Norwich, Showings, tr. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), long text, ch.60 (pp.298-99). 21. Elisabeth of Schönau, The Complete Works tr. Anne L. Clark (New York: Paulist Press, 2000). See Die Visione der hl. Elisabeth und die Schriften der Aebte Ekbert und Emecho von Schönau (Brünn: Verlag der Studien aus dem Benedictiner -und Cistercienser Orden, 1884). 22. Mechthild of Madgeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, tr. Frank Tobin (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), bk.4.14 (p.157). See Das fliessende Licht der Gottheit, ed. Hans Neumann, vols. 2 (Munich: Artemis Verlag, 1990-93). 23. Ibid., bk.7.1 (p.274). 24. Vision 7, in Hadewijch, Complete Works, p.281. See Herbert Grundmann, “Die Frauen und die Literatur im Mittelalter,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 26 (1936), 129-61; and

Katrinette Bodarwé, Sanctimoniales litteratae (Münster: Aschendorff, 2004). 25. For example, see letter 18, Hadewijch, Complete Works, p.85; and letter 28, ibid., p.113. 26. Letter 22, ibid., pp.94 and 102 27. Vision 1, ibid., p.268. 28. Vision 11, ibid., p.292. 29. Poems in Couplets, 4.9-11, in ibid., p.325. See also vision 9, ibid., pp.285-86; and letter 4, ibid., pp.53-55. 30. Letter 30, ibid., p.117. J. Van Mierlo, premier scholar of Hadewijch, promotes the translation of minne as Christ or Divine Love. See intro., in ibid., p.8, and J. Van Mielo, “Hadewijch, une mystique flamande du 13e siecle,” Revue d’ascetique et de mystique 5 (1924), 269-89; 380-404. 31. Angela of Foligno, The Complete Works, tr. Paul Lachance (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), part 1, ch.6 (p.175; Il Libro della Beata Angela da Foligno, ed. L. Thier and A. Calufetti (Grottaferrata: Editiones Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1985). See also Angela, ch.3 (p.146): “My soul saw this vision [of Christ] so clearly that I have no doubts about it, nor will I ever question it.” The epilogue attached to part 2 (Instructions) is an apology for woman’s leadership in its pleading for authority. “A strong woman brought to light what was buried under by blind men and their worldly speculations…. Teach it to men and women and all creatures…. It is not against the order of providence that God, to men’s shame, made a woman a teacher–and one that to my knowledge has no match on earth”(pp.317-18). Also see L. Leclève, Sainte Angelie de Foligno (Paris: Libraire Plon, 1936). Mechthild of Magdeburg’s Flowing Light ends with a similar defense of women’s authority. See Flowing Light, 7.62-65 (pp.330-36). 32. Part 1, prol., Angela of Foligno, Complete Works, p.123. 33. Part 2, instruction 35, ibid., p.308. 34. Part 2, instruction 32, ibid., p.295. 35. Part 2, instruction 28, ibid., p.287. 36. Part 2, instruction 15, ibid., pp.268-69. 37. Part 1, ch.3, ibid., p.146. 38. Ibid., pp.146-47. 39. Part 2, instruction 4a, ibid., p.245. For discussion of Angela as mystic, see Medieval Women Mystics, ed. Elizabeth Obbard (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002). 40. Part 1, ch.19, ibid., p.209. 41. Part 1, ch.6, ibid., p.168. 42. These two criteria are developed fully in Odo of St. Victor. See Ranft, Theology of Work, pp.110-11. 43. Life of Juliana, 2:1.1, p.86. 44. Ibid., 1:1.6, p.39. 45. Ibid., 1:4.16, p.57. 46. Alice the Leper, 5, in Ida of Nivelles, Lutgard and Alice the Leper, tr. Martinus Cawley (Lafayette, OR: Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey, 1987), pp.11, 13. 47. Ibid., 7 and prol.

48. Angela of Foligno, Complete Works, part 2, epilogue, p.317. 49. Ubertinus de Casale, Arbor vitae crucifixae Jesu, ed. Charles T. Davis, prol.5; cited in ibid., p.110. 50. Ranft, Women’s Way, pp.127-28. 51. Angela, p.105. 52. Ibid., pp.72-73. Quote from Hadewijch, Complete Works, letters 5 and 6. 53. Hadewijch, Complete Works, letter 2, p. 49. 54. Letter 4, in Francis and Clare, The Complete Works, tr. Regis Armstrong and Ignatius Brady (New York: Paulist Press, 1982), p.204; and “Epistolae ad b. Agnetem,” ed. W. Seton Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 17 (1924), 517. 55. Letter 89 in The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, tr. Joseph Baird and Radd Ehrman, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994-2004), 1:200. See Epistolae, ed. Lieven Van Acker and Klaes Hochmöller (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991-2001). 56. Letter 84r, ibid., 1:183-91. 57. Catherine of Siena, Dialogue, 6 (pp.33-4). 58. Ibid., 4 (p.29). 59. Ibid., 22 (p.59). 60. Letters of Catherine, letter 78, p.239. 61. Letter 70, ibid., p.220. 62. Letter 49, ibid., pp.148-50. 63. Julian, Showings, short text, 6, p.135. 64. Ibid., 7. 65. Ibid., long text, 59, p.296. 66. Ibid., 60, pp.297-98. 67. Life, 37, in Birgitta of Sweden, Life and Selected Revelations, ed. M. T. Harris, tr. A. Kezel (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), p.82. See Vita Sanctae Birgittae, ed. C. Annerstedt, in Scriptores Rerum Suecicarum medii aevi, 3, 2 (Uppsala, 1876), pp.188-206; Revelations of St. Birgitta of Sweden, tr. Denis Searby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); and Den heliga Birgittas Revelaciones extravagantes, ed. Lennart Hollman (Uppsala: Almqvist, 1956). 68. See Ranft, Women in Western Intellectual Culture, 600-1500 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp.168-74. 69. Fra Angelico, Niccolo di Tommaso, Turino Vanni, Lorenzo Monaco, Roger van der Weyden, Mattias Grunewald, Jan van Eyck, Hans Membling, Albert Durer, Titian, and El Greco are just some of the major artists art historians have identified. See ibid., p.125. 70. Her respect for humanity’s physicality extended to the male body as well. After Birgitta exquisitely described the birth of Jesus she adds that shepherds “wished to inquire whether [the infant] were male or female because the angels announced to them that the Savior of the world had been born and had not said ‘savioress.’ Therefore the Virgin Mother them showed them the infant’s natural parts and male sex.” Revelations 7.23, in Birgitta of Sweden, Life, p.205. 71. Ibid., 5:27, p.126. 72. Ibid., 5:10-18, pp.125-26.

73. See Bynum, Resurrection; and Ranft, Women in Western Culture, pp.172-74. 74. Prayers, in Bridget Morris, St. Birgitta of Sweden (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999), 4; Ranft, Women in Western Culture, p.172. Birgitta also had much to say about women’s family life, See On Marriage and Family: Classic and Contemporary Texts, ed. Matthew Levering (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). 75. Dronke, Women Writers, p.201. For a fuller discussion of Hildegard, see Ranft, Women in Western Culture, pp.51-70. 76. Letter 35, in Letters of Hildegard, 1:102. 77. Letter 40, ibid., 1:110. See also David Knowles with D. Obolensky, The Christian Centuries, vol.2: The Middle Ages (New York: Paulist Press, 1983), p.239. 78. Letter 41r, in Letters of Hildegard, 1:111-12. 79. Hildegard, Scivias, 3.1 (p.310). 80. Ibid., 3.4.1 (p.358). 81. Quote is ibid., 3.8.13 (p.435). The artist is unknown; Hildegard, a nun from Rupertsberg, or a monk from Disibod have been suggested. See ibid., p.25. 82. Jeffrey Schnapp, “Virgin Words: Hildegard of Bingen’s Lingua Ignota and the Development of Imaginary Languages Ancient to Modern,” Exemplaria 3:2 (1991), 278. See also M. L. Portmann and A. Odermatt, Wörterbuch der unbekannten Sprache (Lingua ignota) (Basel: Basiller Hildegard-Gesellschaft, 1986). 83. Schnapp, “Virgin Words,” 287. 84. Ibid., 283. 85. Ibid., 284. The language has survived in two manuscripts. In the Wiesbaden manuscript there are six categories and in the Berlin manuscript there are fifteen. 86. Causae et curae, ed. Paul Kaiser (Leipzig: Teubner, 1903), 65; Heinrich Schipperges, Hildegard of Bingen: Healing and the Nature of the Cosmos, tr. J. Broadwin (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 1997), 10; and Hildegard’s Healing Plants: From Her Medieval Classic “Physica”, tr. Bruce Hozeski (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001). 87. Barbara Newman, Sister of Wisdom (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989), p.19. Newman uses the title found in the earliest manuscript, De operatione Dei, and translates it On the Activity of God. Liber divinorum operum (The Book of Divine Works) is the title given in most other manuscripts and in Migne’s edition. I will use its more common designation here. 88. Hildegard, Scivias, 1.2.27 (p.86). 89. PL 197, 1125. 90. Hildegard of Bingen, Book of the Rewards of Life, tr. Bruce Hozenski (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 1:118 (p.62). 91. Ibid., 6:17 (p.271). 92. Ibid., 6:54 (p.284). 93. Ibid., 4:59 (pp.208-9). 94. Ibid., 6:17 (p.271). 95. Ibid., 4:30 (p.192). 96. Ibid., 4:8 (p.180). 97. Ibid., 5:3 (p.221).

98. Hildegard, Scivias, 3.10.2 (p.473). 99. Hildegard, Causae, 18, in Marcia Chamberlain, “Hildegard of Bingen’s Causes and Cures: A Radical Feminist Response to the Doctor-Cook Binary,” in Hildegard of Bingen: A Book of Essays, ed. Maud Burnett McInerney (New York: Garland, 1998), 64-5. 100. Letter 155r, in Letters of Hildegard, 2:100. 101. Hildegard, Scivias, 1.1.12 (p.78). 102. Letter 156r, in Letters of Hildegard, 2:103. 103. Hildegard, Book of Rewards, 4.20 (p.186). 104. Hildegard, Scivias, 3.2.19 (p.335). 105. Ibid., 4.23 (p.187). 106. Ibid., 4.21 (p.186). 107. Laurence Moulinier, “L’abbesse et les poissons: un aspect de la zoologie de Hildegarde de Bingen,” in Exploitation des animaux sauvage a travers le temps (Juan-lesPin: APDCA, 1993), 461-72. 108. Kenneth Kitchell and Irven Resnick, “Hildegard as a Medieval Zoologist: The Animals of the Physica,” in McInerney, Hildegard, 48. 109. Peter Dronke, Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p.169. 110. Barbara Jeskalian, “Hildegard of Bingen: Her Times and Music,” Anima 10:1 (1983), 8. Also important are the illuminations in Scivias. See L. Saurma-Jeltsch, Die Miniaturen in ‘Liber Scivias’ der Hildegard von Bingen (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1998). 111. Dronke, Women Writers, p.197. The interdict was imposed because of a dispute over the burial of man on convent grounds that the prelates of Mainz claimed died excommunicated. 112. Letter 23, in Letters of Hildegard, 1:77-79. 113. Hildegard, Book of Rewards, 6:48-49 (pp.282-83).

Chapter Eight Individualism, Political Discourse, and Science No discussion of Western culture’s characteristics would be complete without mention of individualism, politics, and science. Without its strong sense of individualism Western culture would be shorn of its liberal and fine arts and its economic systems. Without its political theory Western democracy would not exist. Take away science, and its material world would disappear. By documenting the presence of the Incarnation doctrine in the creators of those characteristics, the case for the doctrine’s pivotal role as catalyst in the shaping Western culture becomes even more persuasive. As before, there is no irrefutable proof that theology was a catalyst in these developments. Nevertheless, the cumulative effect of its presence at key moments, in key ideas, and in the minds of those who promoted these developments is most persuasive. The doctrine had the potential to promote change, and change occurred in its wake. Historical coincidence is too unlikely an alternative explanation for the presence of the doctrine in so many of the places where uniquely Western concepts and institutions developed. It is well documented that the doctrine was overwhelmingly presence in medieval theology, and that theology was the chief medium for the exchange of ideas and present in all fields of study. Medieval people were continually exposed to and participated in rituals and narratives build around the Western interpretation of the Incarnation. The doctrine permeated the whole of society.

Individualism The theological roots of Peter Damian’s individualism have already been documented. When he writes Dominus vobiscum (ca. 1048) he already has a keen sense of individualism and community. That sense rests on his understanding of the doctrine of the Incarnation, and the imagery he uses to explain individualism and community is the ultimate symbol of the Incarnation, Christ’s body.1 The individual is rooted in the community, the community in the individual, and both in the body of Christ: “The whole church is the one body of Christ, and we are the Church’s members,” he writes. “Whatever function is assigned by nature to a particular member can be said to be performed by the body which is its whole, so that one may quite properly say that the part functions for the whole and the whole for its parts.”2 As the Word Incarnate is paradoxically present yet absent, so are we: “Hence even though in our bodily solitude we appear to be far removed from the Church, still by the incorruptible mystery of unity we are always most intimately present in her.”3 Damian claims that despite the paradox of his two natures, the Word Incarnate is the model for interior unity within each person. “And this, the mystery of the Lord’s Incarnation, while not producing in Christ a duality of person, does not cause the reception of human nature to be something common to the blessed Trinity: for while simply retaining the permanent qualities of both substances [divinity and humanity] the individual unity of the person nevertheless remains always intact.”4

Damian carries the implications of these discoveries into numerous arenas. We saw how his discoveries led him to champion self-awareness. One must “diligently mediate”; “carefully look into every hidden recess of your soul, examine all the secrets of your heart”; make “the human mind, supported by sound advice, examine itself carefully and in great detail”; and so on.5 Self-awareness, in turn, makes him sensitive to the demands of stewardship. “Examine your life with great subtleness, always hold up your deeds before your eyes,” he tells Emperor Henry III, and use the “riches of the world” properly.6 “How great and varied a harvest [God] will require of your vast stewardship,” Damian instructs a bishop, “therefore, my dear friend, go back within your conscience, and while you can, diligently ponder the answer you must give” for that stewardship.7 Finally, we followed Damian as he extends the tenets of individualism into moral theology and develops an ethic of intention. He has an intense desire to mold culture according to his vision, even into the highest realms. Thus, during the schism of 1062 Damian attacks the antipope Honorius II for not acknowledging the ethic of intention: “Because we elected the pope without the consent of the emperor, you are not at once to judge the external act, but you must carefully note the spirit and the intention with which it was done.”8 Damian is not the only one discussing these matters nor is he always successful in gaining converts to his ways. His ethic of intention does not garnish immediate attention. It is left for others to ponder at leisure during the next half century, as the subject of the self becomes a greater concern. That ethics moves to center stage is not surprising, for as theologians increasingly explore the role of reason in theology, the realization that sin resides in reason followed naturally. They conclude that the intellect—where moral judgments are made, free will resides, and intention is formed—determines the presence or absence of sin. During the twelfth century increased attention is paid to an ethic of intention as Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Lombard, Alan of Lille, Peter of Poitiers, Peter the Chanter, and Simon of Tournai discuss conscience, the practice of virtue, and the sacrament of penance in their works.9 Perhaps the most dramatic and well known statement of this medieval ethic of intention, however, is not from a scholastic treatise but from the personal writings of Heloise. They actually predate Abelard’s similar formula.10 “Wholly guilty though I am,” Heloise confesses to Abelard after the tragic end of their illicit love affair, “I am also, as you know, wholly innocent. It is not the deed but the intention of the doer which makes the crime, and justice should weigh not what was done but the spirit in which it is done.”11 Here we can clearly see the intimate connection between the ethic of intention and the individual, because the intention determines the individual’s personal responsibility. That the doctrine of the Incarnation is the source for developments concerning the self is seen in theologians’ use of the mirror metaphor. The mirror is a common symbol for consciousness of self. Aelred of Rievaulx sees the humanity of Christ as the source of selfawareness: “The Cross of Christ is all but the mirror of the Christian.”12 Clare of Assisi uses it similarly in a letter to Agnes of Prague. “Place your mind before the mirror of eternity! Place your soul in the brilliance of glory!” she instructs her, “and transform your whole being into the image of the Godhead Itself through contemplation!”13 So there be no doubt who is responsible for the personal transformation she adds, “I am speaking of Him, Who is the Son of the Most

High, Whom the Virgin brought to birth.”14 In another letter Clare advises Agnes to “look upon that mirror each day, O queen and spouse of Jesus Christ, and continually study your face within it.” By doing so the mirror reveals not only one’s self but also the mystery of the Word Incarnate: “Look at the parameter of this mirror, that is, the poverty of Him Who was placed in a manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes.”15 Bernard of Clairvaux’s masterful exegesis of the Song of Songs is a treatise on the love of the Word Incarnate and its impact on the individual. Only through the physical, historical presence of Christ can each person reach full potential. Troubadours reveal their consciousness of self by describing their reaction to the Word Incarnate’s love: “Desired with thousandfold desire/ When wilt thou, Jesu, come to me?/ When wilt thou make me joyful, Lord?/ When satisfy my heart with thee?”16 Marguerite Porete’s vernacular masterpiece Mirror of Simple Souls utilizes mirror imagery to describe the individual’s journey to perfection. It is a journey which demands an interiority that the Word preached by word and example. I will help those who hear this book to grasp that it is necessary for us to retreat within ourselves—through thoughts of devotion, through works of perfection, through petitions of Reason—our whole life, by our power, which Jesus Christ did and which He preached for us. For He says, as it has been said: “Whoever will believe me, he will do such words as I do, and still even greater works will he do.” And it is necessary for us to do this before we have victory over ourselves.17 The Western concept of individualism also arose out of theologians’ more formal philosophical analysis of the terms of the doctrine, particularly persona.18 Richard of St. Victor’s De Trinitate, “a radically new attempt at demarcating personal ontology,” documents this development well.19 Richard rejects the traditional assignment of persona solely to propietas communis and instead insists that it denotes proprietas individualis, singularis, incommunicabilis.20 The latter trait draws attention “to the absolute uniqueness of each person” and thus Richard “makes a solid ontological contribution to the historical understanding of the notion of personhood.”21 In early thirteenth century theological works dealing specifically with the Incarnation much attention is given to the philosophy of individuation and personality. Alexander of Hales, Philip the Chancellor, Hugh of St.-Cher, and William of Auxerre partake in the discussions, and the issue of personhood is central to all four. Walter Principe, whose study is the most extensive analysis of the philosophical treatment of the doctrine during the thirteenth century, tells us that as a consequent to the focus on persona by these theologians, the concept of the individual received much attention. “When the union of the Word to human nature was accomplished, in that union the hypostasis was a person with respect to the excellent property, and it was an individual, and that individual has its foundation in the hypostasis of the Son of God,” Philip the Chancellor writes in a discussion on the role of the person in the union of the divine and the human.22 Principe calls such passages “highly personal discussions of individuation, of personality and personal discretion” which allow Philip to arrive at “a real, if not decisive, awareness of the concrete physical existence of the subject or person.”23 It is in this manner that theologians exploring the Incarnation end up

contributing to a fuller understanding of individualism, first, by delving into the metaphysics of esse and, second, by the personal approach and tone these quests possessed.24 There are lesser known examples of the Incarnation’s role in the development of individualism in the poetry and prose of Hadewijch. We have reviewed some of Hadewijch’s thoughts on the Eucharist and Incarnation, but there is much more to probe. Her work is, overall, more explicit and more radical than most of her contemporaries, for Hadewijch’s own individuality is more radical. As Gordon Rudy points out, Hadewijch breaks with tradition by not presenting her narration through the universal or idealized I; instead “Hadewijch writes about herself.”25 Her goal is simple and plainly stated: “We must love and attain knowledge of the Humanity like the Divinity.”26 She knows “the expedient of the service of Love/ But when it comes to the exercise of it,” she confesses that “I fare as the blind man is wont to do/ And let the beginning be my ending.”27 The solution is found in imitatio Christi: “In this we may be helped by Jesus Christ/ Who himself has revealed/ All the delight and all the suffering of Love/ And has made them clear with its radiance.” Specifically, “Be entirely ready for his service./ First you shall contemplate God’s work/ And supply the wants of all those/ Who are in need of you,/ just as he did/ In will, in works, and in thought./ In the second place he commands to incline the ear,/ So that one may hear Love’s voice:/ Be obedient outwardly and inwardly, /And to know nothing but Love’s will.”28 As we saw in the previous chapter, Hadewijch emphasizes the paradoxical nature of Christ as stated at Nicea. He is fully God and fully man: “I saw God was God, and man was man;… Then I saw God was Man, and I saw man was conformed to God.” This conformity includes conformity to the individualized persons within the Triune God. “When I saw that,” she explains, she received “the sharpest insight of all.” Following the example of Christ, she acts accordingly: “I have integrated all my diversity, and I have individualized all my wholeness.”29 Through imitatio Christi and by contemplating the doctrine of the Incarnation, Hadewijch discovers her own individuality. She realizes that her happiness depends on herself, “for I am a free human creature… and I can desire freely with my will, and I can will as highly as I wish; and seize and receive from God all that he is.”30 She does not get carried away with delusions of power through such individuation but rather wisely warns her spiritual directees that “even if you do the best you can in all things, your human nature must often fall short.” Her prescription for overcoming human limitations is, again, simple: Follow Christ’s example. Do his will “whenever you can discern it, taking trouble and doing your utmost to examine your thoughts strictly, in order to know yourself in all things.”31 In another letter of spiritual direction she speaks at length about the ancient dictum, know thyself.32 Her admiration for reason and utilitarianism is clear. If you wish to experience this perfection, you must first of all learn to know yourselves: in all your conduct, in your attraction or aversion, in your behavior, in love, in hate, in fidelity, in mistrust, and in all things that befall you. You must examine yourselves as to how you can endure everything disagreeable that happens to you, and how you can bear the loss of what gives you pleasure.… And in everything pleasant that happens to you, examine yourselves as to

how you made use of it, and how wise and how moderate you are with regard to it.… God has given us our beautiful faculty of reason, which instructs man in all his ways and enlightens him in all works. If man would follow reason, he would never be deceived.33 It is reason that brought Hadewijch to her awareness of self, and this self, because it shares the same human nature as Christ, can partake in Christ’s divinity. “May God grant you yourself to know in all things what you are,” she prays, “and may you thus attain to a knowledge of the sublime Love that he himself, our Great God, is.”34 The first step, therefore, is learning about one own mind, body, and soul through contemplation of the mystery of the Incarnation. He will teach you what he is, and with what wondrous sweetness the loved one and the Beloved dwell one in the other, and how they penetrate each other in such a way that neither of the two distinguishes himself from the other. But they abide in one another in fruition, mouth in mouth, heart in heart, body in body, soul in soul, while one sweet divine Nature flows through them both (2 Pet 1:4), and they are both one thing through each other, but at the same time remain two different selves—yes, and remain so forever.35 Awareness of her own individuality leads Hadewijch to look at community in a different light. She sees herself as a member of the communion of saints. This community is not an abstraction but a group of individuals united in Christ, “each one according to what each one loved and also according to what he was and still is.” This is where individuals find happiness, “in loving each of them in what was proper to him, and wishing for each of them that only what he held desirable and good might happen to him; whether this good was that of their will or of the divine will was a question with which I did not meddle.”36 In other words, community thrives when each person respects the individuality of others. And community is essential: “You must be glad of the life in common through which you now have guidance toward Love.”37 The next mandate follows logically: “He who wishes to become Love performs excellent works… to serve strangers, to give to the poor,/ to comfort the sorrowful as best he can,/ To live in the faithful service of God’s friends—/ Saints or men on earth—night and day,/ With all his might, beyond possibility.”38 Service is the duty of each individual to the community. And, predictably, Hadewijch finds in the Word Incarnate her model and the basis for her conclusion. We must be continually aware that noble service and suffering in exile are proper to man’s condition; such was the share of Jesus Christ when he lived on earth as Man. We do not find it written anywhere that Christ ever, in his entire life, had recourse to his Father or his omnipotent Nature to obtain joy and repose.… When the hour came (Jn 2:4) he acted; in words, in deeds, in preaching, in doctrine, in reprimands, in consolation, in miracles, and in penance; and in labors, in pains, in shame, in calumny, in anguish, and in distress, even to the passion, and even to death.… With the Humanity of God you must live here on earth in the labors and sorrow of exile… but serve the Humanity with prompt and faithful hands.39 When one remembers that it is medieval society that gave birth to so many of the service

institutions that still characterize Western culture today, the full significance of Hadewijch’s discovery of service through mediation upon the Incarnation is readily apparent.

Political Discourse Changing attitudes toward self, community, service, and work are ubiquitous in medieval sources. Once again, the common denominator in all these attitudes is the presence of Incarnation theology. While never the sole, and sometimes not even chief, ingredient responsible for every change, its omnipresence is undeniable. This is particularly true in politics. By the thirteenth century the Incarnation imagery of Christ’s body is found everywhere: in art, economics, theatre, women’s history, urban life, class identity, the church, science, psychology, community, ecology, piety, literature, aesthetics and architecture. The imagery saturates medieval culture. Christ’s body, either as a physical being or a eucharistic host, informed society’s choices as it molded, reconciled, and synthesized diverse elements into a unified whole. The presence of the image is especially visible in politics. A half century ago the magisterial work of E. Kantorwicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study of Mediaeval Political Theology, thoroughly documented the dominant role Christian theology had in Western political thought and identified, as his title indicates, the chief doctrine responsible for the specific shape of medieval politics: the Incarnation. Kantorowicz maintained that this was so self-evident that, in England political theorists well into the seventeenth century regularly used the terminology of a royal Christology to describe the office of king. In fact, “all the Christological problems of the early Church concerning the Two Natures once more were actualized and resuscitated” by English jurists. Arianism, Nestorianism, Patripassianism, Sabellianism, Monothelitism, Donatism, and Monophysitism were all included in various seventeenth-century definitions of kingship and then refuted. As Kantorwicz points out, “anyone familiar with the Christological discussions of the early centuries of the Christian era will be struck by the similarity of speech and thought in the Inns of Court on the one hand, and in the early Church Councils on the other; also, by the faithfulness with which the English jurists applied, unconsciously rather than consciously, the current theological definitions to the defining of the nature of kingship.”40 That this application was so unacknowledged until recently only underlines how deeply embedded the doctrine of the Incarnation is in the political psyche of Western culture. As discussed in chapter four, the doctrine is an integral part of Western kingship from the very beginning of the West. While Roman and Germanic elements of kingship are also included in early Western political ideas, the sources cited already document how a Christian concept of rulership dominates the early West, particularly among the Carolingians. As Joseph Canning comments, “the long-term historical significance of this development can hardly be exaggerated because it laid the foundations of the theory of monarchy which survived into modern times.”41 And, it should be remembered, it is Western monarchical theory that gives birth to modern Western democracy (and not Athenian democracy as sometimes assumed by the general public).42 We have discussed how Gregory the Great’s theology of service has a monumental influence on medieval ideas of kingship and king.43 Gregory sees the Word

Incarnate as the model par excellence; Jesus disclosed his own mission to be that of a servant (“Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve” Mt 20:28) and instructed others to follow his example (“Whoever wishes to become great among you shall by your servant” Mt 20:26). Moreover, Paul explicitly stated that “rulers are servants of God” (Rm 13:6).44 Gregory the Great, and Isidore of Seville before him, emphasize that “there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God” (Rm 13:1). Furthermore, rulers “must keep watch over your souls and be accountable for them” (Heb 13:17). By the late eighth century these sentiments are commonplace, enough for rex dei gratia to be added to the official title of Carolingian kings.45 Also commonplace is the belief that the rulers, secular and ecclesiastical, are vicars of Christ/God. “Do, most gentle king, whatever you can for the part that you perform for the royal ministry that you carry out, for the name of Christian that you have, for the place of Christ that you fill,” writes Smaragdus of St. Mihiel, while Catwulf says to Charlemagne that “you are in [God your King’s] place” and a bishop “is only in Christ’s place.”46 As the eleventh century approaches, though, one hears less of the ruler as vicarius Dei and more as vicarius Christi,47 a trend consistent with a more consciously Incarnation theology. By the millennium ecclesiastical leadership is generally considered to be an office of service within the Christian corpus, again, as exemplified by Christ and mandated in scripture. The first decades of the second millennium are filled with controversies concerning the specific jurisdictions of these two types of rulership. In some ways the separation between the regnum and sacerdotium grows during the first three centuries of the new millennium, yet in other ways their bond is tighter, chiefly because the ideology supporting both the regnum and sacerdotium is the same. And as Kantorowicz observes, “infinite cross-relations between Church and State, active in every century of the Middle Ages, produced hybrids in either camp… until finally the sacerdotium had an imperial appearance and the regnum a clerical touch.”48 Their commonality allows us to see how both are affected by the concepts in the doctrine. A variety of political sources, most of which are written by trained theologians, document society’s preoccupation with the Incarnation. A Christological cosmology permeates public life. The complicated Investiture Conflict of the late eleventh century served as an impetus among theologians to examine more closely the political implications of Christian doctrines. At the heart of the controversy is the paradox of duality within unity, the same type of paradox that the doctrine of the Incarnation embodies. Without duality there is no paradoxical unity, and paradox is essential. This is surely how Henry IV sees the issue. By usurping regnum and sacerdotium for himself, Henry declares, Gregory VII had denied “God’s pious arrangement which He wished principally to consist not in one, but in two: two, that is the regnum and sacerdotium, as the Saviour in his passion had intimated should be understood.”49 The controversy begins Western society’s more explicit discussion of political theory and practice. The growth of educational opportunities, the advent of Greek and Arabic sources, the development of territorial states, and the spread of humanism provided society with reasons to continue its new interest.50

Perhaps the most impressive of the early political treatises is Norman Anonymous, De consecratione pontificium et regnum. It offers us immediate evidence of the doctrine’s influence; it “was based on pure theological doctrine and biblical exegesis and above all else, an involved Christological thesis.”51 We thus have to recognize [in the king] a double person [gemina persona], one descending from nature, the other from grace, one according to humanity, the other according to the spirit and virtue. One through which, by the condition of nature, he conformed with other men; another through which, by the eminence of his deification and by the power of the sacrament [of consecration], he surpassed all others. In that one person he was, by nature, an individual man, in the other he was by grace Christus, that is, God-man.52 Throughout his work the Norman author argues that a king’s authority rests on imitatio Christi, but he interprets the term more literally than those we have dealt with so far. For the Norman, the ruler is Christ’s vicar and exact image in all but one way; the king is the Anointed One, Christus, by grace, while Christ is so by nature. The king is Christus temporarily; Jesus is Christus eternally.53 When discussing sacerdotium, the Norman argues that like the king, the bishop is also “in spirit Christus et Deus.” Both king and bishop are perfect images of Christ and God, with one significant difference (one that clearly makes the Norman a proponent for royalist claims): “In their office they both are the figure and image of Christ and God. The priest of the priest, the king of the king; the priest, of the inferior nature and office (that is, of the humanity), the king of the superior (that is, of His divinity).”54 Scholars accuse the Norman of being regressive and backward in his defense of the regnum, presenting a defense of kingship rooted in the arguments of a passing age. This is true, but it is important to note precisely where his ideas are dated. It is not in his dependency on theology per se that the following ages reject. Rather, his incarnation theology renders his Christocentric kingship impotent, because it too heavily emphasizes the divinity in the person of Christ, to the detriment of Christ’s humanity. His political theory rests upon a Christ whose crucified corpus is depicted in Carolingian, Ottonian, and Salian art with royal regalia, not upon a suffering, bleeding Christ more commonly found in the art of the High Middle Ages. He promotes imitation only of Christ’s divinity, even while he pays lip service to the dual nature of the Word Incarnate. The immediate future of Western political theory will lie not with the abandonment of a Christocentric understanding of the political life but in the adoption of an Incarnation theology with greater emphasis on Jesus’ humanity. Secular sanitization of political discourse does eventually triumph, but it takes centuries, and in the meantime the doctrine of the Incarnation continued to shape the political thought.55 It is most obvious in the use of corpus Christi and corpus mysticum imagery to explain the relationship between the individual and society.56 In modern discussions the individual is sometimes seen as distinct from society rather than integrated, but medieval discussions used the imagery of Christ’s body to maintain a concrete relationship between the two abstractions.57 The popularity of the imagery increased as reflection upon self and society increased. That body imagery should be used in medieval political discourse is not particularly

noteworthy; ancient philosophers used it extensively and medieval theorists openly acknowledged their predecessors.58 However, the ancients saw it primarily as an organizing principle for social roles. Medieval people perceived it as much more. To them it is a reality verified by scripture: “Now you are Christ’s body, and individually members of it” (1Cor 12:27). Their understanding took on new meaning as Eucharistic theology matured and emphasis on the host’s real presence culminated in the dogma of transubstantiation and the universal observance of the Feast of Corpus Christ. The host is the real body, corpus verum, of Christ, and every individual attending mass is one with that very real body. It is a reality as well as a symbol. It is hard to overemphasize the unifying power of the Eucharist in medieval society. We must remember what the Eucharist is; it is the sacrament of the Incarnation. The Eucharist is more than Christ’s body, more than his humanity. It is his divinity and his humanity paradoxically united in the Incarnation. “True Christians receive this divinity and this humanity when they take the Holy Sacrament of the Altar,” Marguerite Porete unequivocally states, and her contemporaries agree.59 The Eucharist is the Word Incarnate, humanity and divinity in one host. As reflections on this belief increased, the phrase corpus mysticum changed meaning. Originally it referred only to the host. After the twelfth century its meaning became much broader. It began to connote the body politic of the sacerdotium, for as Greek writings entered Europe in the thirteenth century, Aristotle’s body politic was synthesized with the Christian understanding of the term. This provided the West with a foundation for its political theory. Corpus mysticum is synthesized with corpus politicum, and the two “become almost interchangeable notions.”60 Medieval theorists expanded the Aristotelian image of the organic nature of individuals and community to demonstrate how diversity could be accommodated within unity. It is the power of corpus mysticum, though, which makes corpus politicum effective. “And just as men are joined together spiritually in the spiritual body, the head of which is Christ,” writes Lucas of Penna, “so are men joined together morally and politically in the respublica, which is a body whose head is the prince.”61 The body of Christ gives meaning to the body politic; the spiritual shapes the temporal. “In the human body the head is stimulated and ruled by the soul,” John of Salisbury states in Policraticus, the political treatise that began the fusion of the body metaphor of Christianity with antiquity’s.62 By employing the metaphor John is able to argue convincingly about the individual and communal responsibilities of each Christian with a term evocative of Cicero’s utilitas publica. In his statement that “the prince is therefore the minister of the public utility and the servant of equity,” we see the synthesis at work as he combines antiquity and Christianity’s concept of ministry, service, and utility into one office.63 The synthesis soon gave birth to another concept. When the Christian (and Platonic) ideas of individualism and social responsibility met the fullness of Aristotle’s Politics and Ethics, the Western idea of citizen began to germinate. Defenders of the regnum were especially enthusiastic about the raw material they found within Aristotle’s works. What should be remembered, though, is that in the thirteenth century Aristotelian ideas were not encountered in a void. They were introduced into a society that by now, thanks to its exploration of the doctrine of the Incarnation, had a firm sense of the individual, community, and the service

individuals owed the community. Fortunately, Thomas Aquinas recognized this relationship and resolved the conflict between the Aristotelian material body image and the Christian supernatural one: “Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it.”64 Aquinas’s scientia politica (Thomas coined the phrase) is a sophisticated philosophy in which man and woman are presented as mature citizens of the regnum without slighting allegiance to the sacerdotium.65 The Feast of Corpus Christi provides us with an opportunity to see how the theological concept of the body interacts with political concepts. The feast celebrates the Eucharist. A central symbol of late medieval culture, the Eucharist symbolizes the unification of the human and divine within the Incarnation. It is the defining ritual of Christianity from earliest times, and it became even more important after eleventh-century society implemented the corollaries of the doctrine. Through the Incarnation God sacramentalizes the world, so it is natural that the Eucharist as the sacrament of the Incarnation is the Church’s exemplar sacrament. During the High Middle Ages the Eucharist created, according to Miri Rubin, “a new structure of relations, thus modifying the symbolic order, and the social relations and political claims which could be attached to it.… It linked together identities already locally bound in the emerging, quasi-national units” of a world growing more cosmopolitan and politically complex every year.”66 As Christ’s body the Eucharist individualized all worshippers into specific organic parts of his body at the same time it unified them within that body; local political entities were validated through this Eucharistic sacramentology as they also are absorbed into larger national units.67 Perhaps nothing demonstrates the political power of the Body of Christ to individualize and universalize more than the communal celebrations of the Feast of Corpus Christi. The feast was celebrated locally in the diocese of Liege in 1246 and universally by the early fourteenth century, making it the first universally observed feast in the Roman church, a striking fact in itself.68 By its second century the communal processions, along with the play cycles for which it is best remembered, were widespread. After celebration of mass (a Corpus Christi liturgy was in use soon after the feast was established) parish members processed through town with the consecrated host—the Body of Christ—held high, usually from the church to the market place or town square.69 These processions were one of the main focuses of the feast and far exceeded the scope of previous processions. Cathedral canons and hierarchy, monasteries, religious houses, and parishes led by guild members all sponsored elaborate processions in which the position of each person in the march correlated with their status in the group.70 As the popularity of the feast grew the significance of one’s position in the procession also grew increasingly political. Guilds began to dominate these displays of power, although civic groups and corporations closely followed. Rubin claims that the hierarchies of the procession “being negotiated and displayed” were “the raison d’etre of the procession.”71 It was where newly emerging political entities established their position in the larger society, and older groups reestablished and re-asserted their traditional authority. More importantly, Corpus Christi processions expressed communal unity and resolved tension inhibiting that unity. It was a political statement of the highest order. Whereas scholars may still disagree over particular aspects of the procession, there is no disagreement over its essential characteristics. First and

foremost, the procession was political, and, second, the Eucharist—the sacrament of the Incarnation—was a symbol of such overwhelming concern that in medieval society it was the locus where political power was defined. Another avenue of local political expression was the Corpus Christi play.72 The impetus for the dramas was the same as all the other creative activities the eucharistic feast unleashed: the power of the symbol to unify and individualize, and to humanize and to make divine. They grew organically within the processions. By the mid-fourteenth century dramatic scenes were introduced along the procession route in pageant wagons.73 Eventually these tableaux vivants became full-fledged dramas; in York the procession of wagons started at 4:30 A.M. and had twelve performances along the parade route.74 Some even developed into forms akin to miracle plays, tales of sin and redemption such as the York and N town cycles from England, and the dramatic enactments of the comic and tragic in the French Jeu de la saint hostie. Evidence abounds indicating how extremely significant late medieval social groups deemed their Eucharistic celebrations. City councils regulated performances and even judged actors’ talents to insure their performance would “honour of the Citie and Worship of the saide crafts.”75 In the background regulating much of the activities were the Corpus Christi fraternities. They were similar to most other medieval fraternities in their practices, but their focus was mainly on the Eucharist, as in their promotion of the viaticum for the sick and dying. Ordinarily, the Corpus Christi fraternity was but the re-assembling of the political leaders of the village or city under a different name. Sometimes it served as a sort of apprenticeship for the second generation of political families to learn leadership skills. Given the power of the eucharistic symbol, that the politically ambitious received tutelage under the auspices of the Eucharist is not surprising.76 The role Corpus Christi dramas played in the development of both Western political consciousness at the local level and in actual political relationships is undeniable. As R. James concludes in his pivotal study of the feast, “the Corpus Christi play did more than merely register change; it also provided a mechanism by means of which status, and the honor which went with status, could be distributed and redistributed with a minimum of conflict resulting.”77

Science It may seem like a stretch to assert that Western science had its origin in many of the same Incarnation concepts responsible for Western ideas about individualism, community, intention, logic, love, authority, kingship, and local political consciousness, but the evidence is there. The relationship between science and Incarnation doctrine may be more veiled than in these other aspects of culture, but scrutiny reveals its presence. In the twelfth century the doctrine aroused latent attitudes toward creation and mastery of creation that formed a new natural philosophy, a philosophy considered by many scholars to be the basis of modern science.78 According to Edward Grant, “something happened” in the medieval period. It was not a scientific revolution and did not occur in the sciences themselves. It occurred elsewhere and

“proved conducive for the production of a scientific revolution” in the centuries that followed.79 A new attitude towards rationality and creation is that “something.” Grant continues: “It is indisputable that modern science emerged in the seventeenth century in Western Europe and nowhere else. The reason for this momentous occurrence must, therefore, be sought in some unique set of circumstances that differentiate Western society from other contemporary and earlier civilizations.”80 The doctrine of the Incarnation, as articulated and interpreted by Western medieval society, is the dominant member of that set. It is the idea that “created the institutional and mental conditions that made the later scientific revolution possible.”81 The process by which this was accomplished is complicated. Beginning in the eleventh century a change toward nature began to surface similar to the change in piety from a distant Christ to a personal Jesus. Once seen as hostile, alien, and filled with uncontrollable “super”natural forces, nature was increasingly viewed in less intimating, more approachable light.82 Cosmologists, or “physici,” as natural philosophers were often called in the twelfth century, filled the cathedral schools of the West and advocated the taming of nature through rational investigation.83 “Why are you so completely absorbed in your admiration of nature, why do you persist in marvelling?” Adelard of Bath asks his contemporaries in an effort to provoke reflection.84 Admiration is not enough; the wonders of nature demand more. Intellectual laziness must be overcome and nature examined with the full force of one’s intellect in order to learn from it. These early physici saw doubt as the first step, much as Abelard urges: “By doubting we come to inquiry, by enquiring we learn.”85 To approach nature anew took confidence, and this the physici received from various sources: the Greek and Arabic scientific works entering the West, the dialectic practiced in the schools, and, especially, a postAnselmian appreciation for reason. “Although man is not armed by nature nor is naturally swiftest in flight, yet he has that which is better by far and worth more—that is, reason. For by the possession of this function he exceeds the beasts to such a degree that he subdues them” writes Adelard.86 The flip side of increased respect for reason was a decreased respect for authority through continued use of doubt. Authority had to be scrutinized by reason and judged intelligible. If it was found wanting it was to be discarded, a prescription that raised many eyebrows and much resistance. Yet the physici were not to be discouraged; reason was to be applied to all things and complainers ignored. “Ignorant themselves of the forces of nature and wanting to have company in their ignorance, they don’t want people to look into anyone; they want us to believe like peasants and not to ask the reason behind things,” William of Conches protests. “But we say that the reason behind everything should be sought out.”87 There were to be no exceptions. Scripture, church fathers, and ancient and Arabic philosophers were all to be vigorously probed if reason was to prevail. So the physici boldly pointed out the fallibility of past theologians. “For though they were greater men than we are, yet they were men,” William of Conches declares.88 He underlines authority’s fallibility in his exegesis of Genesis. And the divine page says, “He divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.” Since such a statement as this is contrary to reason let us show how it cannot be thus.… The divine scriptures tell us that God created man from

the dirt of the earth; but this must not be believed—that the mind which is, as it were, spirit, light and clean, was made from dirt.… The divine page says that God made woman from the side of Adam. But, in fact, that He created the first man is not to be taken literally.89 William’s assault on the authority of scripture met with strong resistance; William of St. Thierry’s complaint to Bernard of Clairvaux about it is famous.90 illiam of Conches, however, also enjoyed support. Andrew of St. Victor bolsters the argument by reminding contemporaries of the Augustinian principle against the overuse of miracles: “In expounding scripture when the event describes admits to no natural explanation, then and then only should we have recourse to miracles.” One’s first resort must be reason: “Let him ask whether reason or the nature of things allow what he wishes to argue.”91 Abelard agrees. “When we require and assign the power of nature or natural cause to certain effects of things,” he stated, we do so “so that the constitution or development of everything that originates without miracles can be adequately accounted for.”92 Likewise, Alan of Lille held reason in high regard, opining that reason should be applied to both creation and Creator. He devoted much of his voluminous output to the relationship between reason, creation, and theology, and frequently repeated his overriding faith in reason as he explored things secular and sacred.93 In The Incarnation of Christ and the Seven Liberal Arts and in The Rules of Theology Alan proposes that reason can access all the truths of the liberal arts, but he stops short of rational analysis of the Incarnation: “In the bond of the Word every rule is confounded.”94 Gilbert of Poitiers’s stance is interesting because of his focus on the Incarnation and his involvement in the mid-twelfth-century debate on the doctrine. That debate over the doctrine should arise precisely at this time and engage the same masters responsible for the intellectual awakening of the West is hardly co-incidental, for debate was the medium scholars used to establish the relationship between theology and philosophy—a necessary step before the relationship between theology and science could be ascertained. The Incarnation debate dominated the mid-century. From 1130 to 1180 no other doctrine was discussed more. With the debate came accusations of the old heresies—Arianism, Sabellianism, Nestorianism—and some new conciliar condemnations were made.95 The discussions attained permanent and widespread importance when Peter the Lombard included them in his presentation of Christology in Sentences. This expose was “one of the central texts in the theological literature” on the doctrine of the Incarnation and became “the framework within which theologians, not only in the latter half of the twelfth century, but right up until the end of the period of high scholasticism, were to find their bearings.”96 Three main approaches were presented. The first approach Peter the Lombard calls the homo assumptus theory. It is articulated by Hugh of St. Victor, who had in fact borrowed much from Anselm. Hugh holds that the doctrine of the Incarnation is the mystery of all mysteries and that reason can never completely penetrate it. Reason can, however, elucidate aspects of the mystery, such as the ontological conditions of personhood. This Hugh does by using dialectics as a tool. The partial solution philosophy affords him, nevertheless, does not reveal the fullness of the doctrine’s mystery nor render theology less autonomous. The second theory, subsistence theory, is that of Gilbert of Poitiers and states that the person of Christ consists of

three substances (divinity, soul, and body) as opposed to humanity’s two substances (soul and body). Therefore, the doctrine of the Incarnation is “inexplicabilis.”97 Philosophy should be applied to this theological problem, but like Hugh’s assumption theory, theology in the subsistence theory is still autonomous. Its goal is distinct from philosophy’s. Theology provides a reason for faith and in that sense does not attempt to provide an exhaustive, rational solution to its problems. Still, Gilbert notes, theology does find some of its rules in natural philosophy, so utilization of philosophy is necessary when solving theological problems. The third theory is the habitus theory, and although Peter the Lombard rightly assigns its origin to Abelard, in many ways it is his, too. Abelard applied philosophy to the mystery of the doctrine without hesitation. He saw philosophy and theology as completely compatible and, therefore, believed the rules of philosophy held for theology. When Peter and his school adopted Abelard’s approach they took it a step further, claiming that philosophy can unravel the mystery of the doctrine through dialectics.98 This theory was repeatedly condemned in the 1170s (Gilbert’s was in 1148 and Abelard’s in 1140), and by 1180 the field was bare, ready for new theories. Interest shifted elsewhere, however, and the Incarnation debate was not reignited, indicating as Lauge Nielsen claims, that the goal of the debate was never really the solution or penetration of the mystery of the doctrine. It was, instead, a platform twelfthcentury intellectuals used to define the relationship between philosophy and theology99 It was a debate of supreme importance in Western history, much in the same way the eleventh century debate was, for it highlighted the power of reason and its role in the human quest for understanding life. In the wake of the debate reason is firmly planted in the very ground of Western culture, never more to be uprooted. The actual theories are beside the point. The orthodox definition of the doctrine had long ago been established and was not vulnerable. Moreover, twelfth-century thinkers were not trying to override that definition. Rather, they were trying to understand it better, as is plain when Peter the Lombard made Arius his foil while advancing his beliefs about the doctrine100 and Gilbert of Poitiers used his refutations of Arius and Nestorius as opportunities to argue for certain methodological rules.101 Because the goal was comprehension, much energy was spent analyzing the actual words used in the doctrine’s definition and traditional theology.102 Scholars vigorously applied themselves to the arts of language, especially grammar and dialectic, as they contemplated the signification of key terms used since Nicea to discuss the doctrine. Verbum, persona, natura, individuum, corpus, anima, nomen, substantia, unitate unum, homo assumptus, humana natura, humanitatem: terms such as these were subjected to intense scrutiny.103 Semantics gained popularity as twelfth-century scholars such as Abelard explored the role vocabula plays in discourse on the Incarnation. Because Christ is both res and verbum, language and logic are necessary in any theology of the Incarnation.104 Gilbert of Poitiers’s Incarnation theology is premised on the distinctions he made between persona and essentia, persona and natura; his rejection of Nestorianism was based on his interpretation of the terms appositio, commixto, and permixtio (he argued the correct term is compositio).105 He is probably the one who coined the terms personalis proprietas and filiatio, common terms in twefth-century discussions on the doctrine and ones that he believed necessary in order to avoid Sabellianism.106 Twelfth-century theologians reached little consensus or attained no

further elucidation of the doctrine, but their study of vocabulary did give rise to new insights into the usefulness of philosophy. Peter the Lombard and his school, for example, allowed philosophy to dictate the terms of the theological issues surrounding the doctrine.107 Hugh of St. Victor decided to maintain independence between philosophy and theology, while Abelard sought a middle ground.108 Efforts to penetrate the meaning of the doctrine’s terms led some theologians to develop innovative theories; Thierry of Chartres, Gilbert of Poitiers, and Clarembald of Arras constructed ones about theological language. Still others promoted a variety of methods in their pursuit of clarification; Hugh of St. Victor used categories formulated within his anthropology for his analysis of the doctrine.109 In Regulae theologica Alan of Lille utilized Euclidian methods found in Boethius’s De hebdomadibus. Philip the Chancellor’s investigation into hypostasis and persona brought him to hypostasis composita and an understanding of esse as esse naturae, esse individui, and esse morale (or esse persona).110 Willemien Otten brings our attention to an even more significant innovation to emerge from medieval meditation on the Incarnation doctrine: the introduction of “a certain relaxed and intimate tone or atmosphere present in twelfth-century discussions.” It produced what Otten calls a new texture, one that forms the backbone of medieval humanism and is dependent on a “rhetoric of conversation.”111 This is the importance of the doctrine, its power to provoke a particular shape to Western culture. It is a catalyst of huge proportion. The paradox of the doctrine is so baffling, its mystery so incomprehensible, that it drove generation after generation of Western artists and thinkers to resolve, reduce, or reproduce it. Scholars created innumerable ways to penetrate its impenetrability. Sometimes they did the opposite. Some concentrated on the impenetrability of the doctrine to ensure continuation of discourse; to find a solution would end debate, and the end of debate might prematurely end discourse before more knowledge could be gained and integrated into the larger scheme of things.112 It comes as no surprise, then, to see theologians begin to apply reason to a neglected topic, nature. Nor is it surprising that those reflecting on nature were the same theologians writing about the Incarnation. Thierry of Chartres’s commentary on Genesis dealt with both. He opened his treatise promising to explain creation rationally and nature scientifically; he ended it declaring that the Word was the Creator’s predefinition.113 Thierry’s student Clarenbaldus of Arras appended his own thoughts on the matter to Thierry’s commentary and claimed that the Word is the Creator and that ignorance of creation was responsible for Nestorianism and Eutyches’s heresy.114 Clarenbaldus saw change in the material world as proof of the continued presence of the Word in creation’s restoration. For him, to study change in creation—nature— was to study Christ.115 Chartrian theologians generally advocated similar, more rational approaches to creation. Thierry called Moses prudentissimus philosophorum and fellow theologians divini philosophi; they proceed to God from creation through rational inquiry. Because “the breakthrough to a science of nature as a discipline clearly delineated from metaphysics, theology, or ethics, however, is only achieved where concrete phenomena of nature become the object of rational inquiry,”116 this was indeed a necessary step in the development of Western science. Through the debates on the Incarnation the power of reason and its independence was acknowledged; reason was first allowed and then mandated in the

pursuit of the ultimate Christian mystery, the Incarnation.117 This cleared the way for reasoned inquiry into lesser mysteries of creation. There were various factors responsible for the new attention given creation (Latin, natura; Greek, physics). Re-examination of Plato’s Timaeus and the dissemination of Aristotle’s translated works certainly created most of the interest. Medieval preoccupation with Timaeus’s model of macro-microcosm, begun with John Scotus Erigena and popularized by Peter Damian, reached new heights in the twelfth century with Honorius of Autun’s Elucidarium and with the masters of Chartres. William of Conches and Gilbert of Poitiers promoted the model relentlessly, while Bernard Sylvester based his influential De mundi universitate on the macro-microcosm metaphor.118 To the scriptural revelation that each human was imago Dei twelfth-century scholars added the belief from natural philosophy that humanity was the image of the world. Following this sequence logically—God is one, so mankind is one, so the world is one— medieval theologians began championing what M. D. Chenu calls “the simplest but not the least significant evidence of this discovery of nature… the perception of the universe as an entity.”119 Once they saw the universe as independent and whole, they also recognized it as body regulated by its own laws. Humanity was obligated to scrutiny that entity, because to ignore it was to fail in its obligation to utilize reason to its fullest potential. As Roger Bacon says, partial knowledge is useless; it must be complete to be true (“nisi in suo toto cum aliis”). Significantly, he explains this mandate using the body metaphor: “All sciences are connected, and help each other, ‘as the eye directs the whole body, and the foot supports the whole body.’ The past is useless without the whole, ‘like an eye which has been plucked out, or an amputated foot.’”120 We must remember something that Chenu pointed out over a half century ago: the medieval discovery of Nature—an obvious prerequisite for the pursuit of science—was essentially a religious discovery made by theologians.121 It is a truth, unfortunately, that has been minimized, occasionally even overlooked, by recent historians. Yet the evidence is clear. As much as Aristotle’s natural philosophy was a stimulus to medieval interest in nature, it “was ultimately a serious barrier to renewal and progress in science.” It is only after medieval thinkers developed their own distinctly Christian natural philosophy, a philosophy explicitly about God and his creation, that they “created the institutional and mental conditions that made the later scientific revolution possible.”122 It was a natural philosophy born in part from reflections on confrontation with the problems inherent in the Greek approach, but it was also born out of reflections on the role of reason in understanding the mystery of the Incarnation.123 They had learned from their debates on the Incarnation that the most powerful tool there was in solving any problem was reason; surely reason could solve the problems presented by Aristotle’s natural philosophy by creating their own natural philosophy consistent with reason and Christian belief. This is a significant fact, for as Grant concludes, “the reason why science took root in Western society must ultimately be sought in the nature of science and natural philosophy that were developed.… Medieval natural philosophy shaped what was to come more than did the exact sciences.”124 This connection between the doctrine and the establishment of a scientific framework in

Western culture can also be seen in the works of a man many call the first modern scientist, Robert Grosseteste. The label rests on various claims, some contested. Koyré, for example, argues that Grosseteste’s work on optics laid the foundation for a mathematical science of nature; A. Crombie says he was the first to identify the need for a scientific methodology. Eastwood, however, argues that Grosseteste’s experiments were merely experiments that made advances. James McEvoy concludes that, with qualifications, Grosseteste was science’s progenitor.125 Debate over exactly what and how Grosseteste influenced Western science and the precise nature of his contribution continues, but no one denies he made foundational contributions. Nor does any one deny that Grosseteste’s natural philosophy and methodology shaped the University of Oxford’s engagement with nature, for which Roger Bacon provided testimony.126 This review of Grossesteste’s position in the history of science is necessary in order to allow full appreciation of the significance of the Incarnation doctrine’s presence in his thought. Once again, we find a creative, original architect of Western culture heavily influenced by the doctrine of the Incarnation. Scholars have long noted that Grosseteste was the first scholastic thinker to ask and answer a particular question about the Incarnation, why it occurred. He argued vigorously that the Incarnation was not the necessary consequence of sin. In at least three of his works—De cessatione legalium, Exiit edictum, and Hexaemeron—Grosseteste explored other possible reasons for the Incarnation. He knew that his answer, that the reason for the Incarnation was absolute and not contingent upon human frailty, was opposed to Anselm’s redemption theory, so he proceeded cautiously. He openly admitted the novelty of his position, for “I do not recollect seeing any of our authority reach the same determination.”127 He agreed with the general thrust of Augustine, Gregory, and Anselm’s arguments concerning why only the Word Incarnate could affect redemption of fallen humanity. Still, Grosseteste was disturbed. If sin brought about the Incarnation, and there were no sin, than the Incarnation would not have occurred. This he could not abide by, because, as R. Southern correctly summarizes, such treatment contradicted “the scientific principle which he had learnt from Aristotle that a cause must be greater than its effects.”128 If the Fall caused the Incarnation then it was greater than the Word, and such a stance offended Grosseteste’s logical and theological sensibilities. From the beginning, therefore, belief in the doctrine led Grosseteste to utilize his rational powers in a new direction. He saw his hypothetical question as an opportunity to explore the connection between various intellectual interests and to synthesize them into a unified, consistent whole. It was also an opportunity to base a theological investigation entirely on reason. Throughout the three mentioned works, Grosseteste listed a total of nineteen arguments in defense of his answer. Many are redundant, but the same conclusion permeates them all; the Word Incarnate is the final cause and unity of all creation toward which every thing and person tends.129 This is an absolute truth, independent of human activity. The Word Incarnate is the beginning and the end of all creation through which all is united into a harmonious, circular whole. Only “with the assumption of human nature by God in one person, then is the circle of all creation joined with the Creator.”130 It is exclusively “in the assumption of humanity by the Word of God that the fullest union of the universe occurs.”131 Furthermore, the Eucharist is the manifestation of this circle of creation: “The Son of God communicates this to us through our

nature, that is, he communicates to us through our fleshly senses in the Sacrament of the Eucharist where he assumes our nature and becomes a body like ours.”132 The Eucharist completes the circle perfectly. Grosseteste’s search for an answer to his hypothetical question led him to construct a thesis that has God unifying the universe through the Incarnation’s unity of the divine and the human.133 It is Grosseteste’s most strongly argued tenet, and it is one that he applied to all other areas of exploration in his work; “having once got hold of this idea, Grosseteste found it unlocked many doors.”134 Unity of creation became an underlying principle, one that he enthusiastically applied to his scientific interests. If the microcosm (that is, humanity) has the unifying principle of the heart in the human body, then the macrocosm must also have a similar unifying principle. It cannot be God, “because God is not man and cannot complete humanity, … it cannot be angels because angels do not share in the nature of lower creatures.” Nor could it be a God-angel, for there again commonality with lower creatures would be lacking. “Therefore, only if God assumed humanity in one person would the universe be brought back to its intended unity.”135 The Incarnation alone could and does provide the macrocosm with its intended unifying principle. The argument provides matter with a unifying principle. This is of supreme importance to Grosseteste. He humbly submits that while his answer to the question concerning the reason for the Incarnation may be judged wrong, he is sure of this. Logic dictates that “if it is true that God would have become Man even if mankind had never sinned, then all creatures were intended to be unified in this Man who is the head of the Church.”136 Grosseteste has logically proven his theological belief in the Incarnation and subsumed its conclusion into his natural philosophy. There is, of course, an extremely important corollary to Grosseteste’s thesis. If the Word Incarnate is at the juncture of the material and spiritual creation, then search for God must include a search within that material creation. This is a re-statement in a more exacting manner of the eleventh-century mandate to search for Truth in intellectual endeavors. In the thirteenth century the mandate was carried into the physical realm. Grosseteste and his fellow scientific pioneers now had a spiritual motive to examine creation. They believed that if they ascended from the material world into the spiritual, they would encounter the Word Incarnate. Bonaventure’s Journey of the Soul into God reflects the theological implications of Grosseteste’s approach toward creation. “We are created in such a way that the universe itself is a ladder for ascending to God,” Bonaventure writes. “Therefore, from visible things the soul rises to reflect on the power, wisdom, and goodness of God.”137 This is the motive for scientific exploration of visible things. Bonaventure speaks directly about applying oneself to mathematical science in the search for God. Since all things are beautiful and in some way delightful, and since beauty and delight do not exist without proportion, and since proportion is found primarily in numbers, all things must involve numbers. Therefore, “number is the principal exemplar in the mind of the Creator,” and in things it is the principal vestige leading to Wisdom. Since this is most evident to all and very close to God, it leads us… very close to God. It makes God known in all bodily and sensible things when we perceive them in number, when we take delight in their numerical proportions,

and when we make definite judgments in accordance with the laws of numbers.138 In another work Bonaventure repeats this basic theme. The Incarnation is the one through whom all creation came to be and is known: “If you know the Word, you naturally know all things.”139 Accordingly, the study of God is not isolated from the study of reality; the study of the material world is directly connected to the study of God. Belief that Christ is known through creation stirred interest in creation and led scholars to examine creation with previously unused methodologies compatible with science. These insights and conclusions to not belong to science proper, but without them scholars such as Robert Grosseteste and his Oxford successors would not have had the framework or, perhaps more importantly, the motivation to pursue the study of matter as fruitfully as they did. Notes 1. Acknowledgment of the image’s dominant presence is noted by numerous scholars. For comprehensive surveys see: Sarah Beckwith, Christ’s Body: Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings (London: Routledge, 1993); Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Gail Gibson, The Theater of Devotion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); and the classic, Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies. 2. Letter 28:22, in Letters of Peter, 1:268. 3. Letter 28:24, ibid., 1:269. Morris, Discovery, singles out Damian’s emphasis on the individual in eschatological discussions of death and the New Jerusalem and in his encouragement of personal reflection (pp.31, 147, 150-51), but he does not mention Damian’s Dominus vobiscum. Scholars continue to ignore this gold mine of nascent individualism. See Caroline Walker Bynum, “Did the Twelfth Century Discover the Individual?” in Jesus as Mother (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 85-109; and Aaron Gurevich, The Origins of European Individualism, tr. K. Judelson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). 4. Letter 81:21, Letters of Peter, 3:213. 5. Letter 78:24, ibid., 3:180-81; and Letter 87:3, ibid., 3:330. 6. Letter 21:16, ibid., 1:207. 7. Letter 12:3, ibid., 1:128. 8. Letter 89:80, ibid., 3:359.. 9. Colish, Medieval Foundations, pp. 228, 285-88. 10. It is, unfortunately, a testimony to the power of bias and stereotypes that generations of scholars have assumed that Heloise was merely echoing what Abelard begun ca. 1138-39 (“The merit or the praiseworthiness of the doer is not in the deed but in the intention.”) and was not capable of independent thought–or of influencing Abelard, when it has always been known that Heloise’s phrasing was penned prior to Abelard’s. Quote, Peter Abelard’s “Ethics,” tr. D. E. Luscombe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), p.28. See also Petri Abaelardi opera, ed. Victor Cousins, 2 vols (Paris, 1849, 1859); and Andrea Nye, “A Woman’s Thought or a Man’s Disciple?” Hypatia 7:3 (1992), 25-47. Recognition is finally surfacing. See John Marenbon, The Philosophy of Peter Abelard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 258-64; and Constant Mews, The Lost Letters of Heloise and

Abelard (New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp.131-35. The statements also belong to different genres. Heloise’s is a confession, while Abelard’s is a scholastic statement. 11. Letters of Abelard and Heloise, p.115. See Peter von Moos, Mittelalterforschung und Ideologiekritik (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1974). 12. PL 195, 263. 13. Third Letter to Agnes, 12-13, in Francis and Clare, Complete Works, p.200. 14. Ibid., 17, ibid., p.201. 15. Fourth Letter to Agnes, 15, 19, ibid., p.204. 16. Dulcis Jesu memoria, in Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verses, ed. F. J. E. Raby (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), 233, lines 73-7. 17. Marguerite Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls, tr. Ellen Babinsky (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 113 (p.184). For her condemnation, see Paul Verdeyen, “Le Procès d’inquisition contre Marguerite Porete et Guisard de Cressonessart (1309-1310),”Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 81 (1986), 47-94. 18. S. A. Turienzo, “Aspectos del Problema de la Persona en el Siglo XII,” in Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 2, Die Metaphysik im Mittelalters (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1963), 180-83. 19. Hipp, Person, p.161. See Richard de Saint-Victor, De Trinitate, ed. J. Ribaillier (Paris: Vrin, 1958); La Trinite, ed. G. Salet, SC 63 (Paris: Éditiones du Cerf, 1959). 20. Richard, ibid., 4.6; PL 196,934. 21. Hipp, Person, p.176. 22. Philip the Chancellor, Questiones de Incarnatione, 2.11, in Walter Principe, The Theology of the Hypostatic Union in the Early Thirteenth Century: Studies and Texts, (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1975), vol.4. See also vol. 1: William of Auxerre (1963); vol. 2: Alexander of Hales(1967); and vol. 3: Hugh of Saint-Cher (1970). 23. Questiones, 4:148. 24. See A. Milano, Persona in Theologia (Naples: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1987). 25. Gordon Rudy, Mystical Language of Sensation in the Later Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2002), p.72. 26. Poems in Couplets, 16:1883-84, in Hadewijch, Complete Works, p.357. 27. Ibid., 12: 99-104, in ibid., pp.342-43. 28. Ibid., 12:129-32; 36-44, in ibid., pp.343, 341. 29. Letter 28, in ibid., p.113. 30. Vision 11, in ibid., p.291. 31. Letter 2, in ibid., p.49. 32. Bernard of Clairvaux’s call for self-knowledge is well known. See De gradibus humilitatis, tr. George Burch (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941), p.147. 33. Letter 14, in Hadewijch, Complete Works, p. 77. 34. Letter 27, in ibid., p.107. 35. Letter 9, in ibid., p.66. 36. Vision 11, in ibid., pp.291-92. 37. Poems in Couplets, 7:25-26, in ibid., p.332. 38. Poems in Stanzas, 8:4-5, in ibid., p.148. 39. Letter 6, in ibid., pp.58-9.

40. Kantorowicz, King’s, pp.16-9. 41. Joseph Canning, A History of Medieval Political Thought 300-1450 (London: Routledge, 1996), p.16. 42. See, for example, the discussion of its development in England in C. Warren Hollister, Robert Stacey and Robin Stacey, The Making of England to 1399, 8th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), pp.259-94. 43. See above, chapter four, and Walter Ullmann, Law and Politics in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), pp.233-34; and Cannning, History, p.19. 44. See Gregory I, Moralia, (Turnhout: Brepols, 1985), 26:26, 45 (p.1300); and Isidore of Seville, Sententiae, PL 83, 718-24. 45. Documentation in Canning, History, p.49. 46. Cited in ibid. 47. Kantorowicz, King’s, p.90. See M. Maccarone, Vicarius Christi (Rome, 1952), for discussion of the term’s use by the papacy. 48. Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, p.193. I use regnum here because Kantorowicz does. In chapter six I use imperium because Blum translated it so. 49. Die Briefe Heinrichs IV, ed. C. Erdmann (Leipzig: Hiersemann Verlag, 1937), p.19. 50. As Ullmann, Law, pp.227-28, points out, it is only in the late eleventh century that education of laity and clergy begins in earnest. He suggests this widened the pool of regnum defenders. Interestingly, it is Peter Damian and Humbert de Silva Candida who best summarized the ideas of the conflict in its earliest stage. See Canning, History, pp.85-87. 51. Ibid., p.251. 52. Norman Anonymous, De consecratione pontificum et regnum, MGH, LdL, III, 664, 26-28. Kantorowicz, King’s, pp.49-57, translates gemina persona as “twin person” and discusses the term at length. 53. Norman, ibid., 664, 20-22; 665, 2-3. 54. Ibid., 667, 8-10. 55. Kantorowicz documents it occurring as late as the Stuarts in England. 56. I am not offering here an analysis of symbols but only their presence and source. See Interpreting Cultural Symbols: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society, ed. Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn (Athens, GA: Georgia University Press, 1990), p.5. 57. Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), p.24. 58. See, for example, John of Salisbury, Policraticus, tr. Cary Nedermon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) who goes so far as to claim that an unknown work of Plutarch as an authority for his ideas about the body politic. 59. Marguerite Porete, Miirror, 15 (p.97). 60. Kantorowicz, King’s, pp.206-12; quote p.212. 61. Cited in ibid. 62. John, Policraticus, 5.2 (p.67). 63. Ibid., 4.2 (p. 31). 64. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part 1a, 8, 2. 65. See Ullmann, Law, pp.269-306. 66. Rubin, Corpus, p.348.

67. Carolyn Walker Bynum, “The Blood of Christ,” tells us that the difference between the symbols of body and blood serve to remind us how deliberate was medieval society’s choice of the body via the host to serve as its chief visible cultural symbol. 68. See Ranft, Women and Western Culture, p.126. 69. See Jacques de Vitry, The Life of Blessed Juliana of Mont-Cornillon 1192-1258, tr. Barbara Newman (Toronto: Peregrina Publishing, 1989), pp.100-2. Thomas Aquinas was probably the author of another popular office. Ibid., pp.185-96. 70. Rubin, Corpus, p.245. 71. Ibid. 72. “The gradual insertion of local political meanings into the eucharistic procession was at work everywhere.” Ibid., p.258. This is not to deny the use of the Corpus Christi processions in “national” politics. Rubin points out, for example, that aspects of majesty surrounding the host in the procession, such as the canopy, were often adopted by kings. Ibid., pp.252-55. 73. M. Pierson, “The Relation of the Corpus Christi Procession to the Corpus Christi Play in England,” Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters 18 (1915), 110-65. 74. A. Nelson, The Medieval English Stage: Corpus Christi Pageants and Plays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), pp.42-3. 75. Cited in Rubin, Corpus, p.281. 76. Ibid., pp.240-43. 77. M. James, “Ritual, drama and social body in the late medieval town,” Past and Present 98 (1983), 18. Corpus terminology looms large in discussion on plenitudo potestatis. The latter term was coined by Leo I but neglected until twelfth- and thirteenth- century theologians used it in arguments concerning the exercise of authority within the corpus mysticum. By mid-thirteenth century plenitudo potestatis was claimed by rulers and was a normal part of political discourse. When Edward I summoned his Model Parliament he demanded the plenitudo potestatis accompany representatives. The request was premised on the concept of a body politic, which in the medieval West was premised on corpus mysticum. Corpus mysticum in turn is rooted in Pauline imagery (1 Cor 12). The history of representative assemblies and the corpus mysticum imagery used in the formation of these assemblies (the constitution of which is uniquely Western) is a topic which bears further investigation. This is an instance where I arbitrarily excluded that discussion from this study. To do it justice I would have to follow it beyond the chronological limits of this study into the early modern period. 78. See Edward Grant, God and Reason in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Grant, Foundation; Roger French and Andrew Cunningham, Before Science: The Invention of the Friars’ Natural Philosophy (Brookfield, VT: Scolar Press, 1996); and Carlos Steel, “Nature as Object of Science: On the Medieval Contribution to a Science of Nature” in Nature in Medieval Thought, ed. Chumaru Koyama (Leiden: Brill, 2000), pp. 125-52. 79. Grant, Foundations, p.xiii. See Brian Stock, “Rationality, Tradition, and the Scientific Outlook: Reflections on Max Weber,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 41 (1985), 14: “It follows that the essential changes of the Middle Ages may not have taken place in

science or technology as such, but rather in more subtle mutations in the cultural and religious environment, which not only prepared the way for the reception of modern attitudes, but more importantly, began the debate.” 80. Grant, Foundations, p.168. 81. Steel, “Nature,” p.148. 82. M.D. Chenu, Nature, Man and Society in the Twelfth Century, tr. Jerome Taylor and Lester K. Little (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp.4-6, offers examples. 83. Natural philosophy was sometimes called naturalis scientia, as did Richard Kilwardby, De ortu scientiarum, ed. Albert Judy (London: British Academy, 1976), 17. See Tina Stiefel, “Science, Reason and Faith in the Twelfth Century: The Cosmologists’ Attack on Tradition,” Journal of European Studies 6 (1976), 1-2. 84. Adelard of Bath, Questiones Naturales, ed. M. Muller, Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters 31 (Münster, 1903, cited in Stiefel, “Science,” 2. 85. Abelard, Sic et non, prol., in Petri Abelardi Opera. 86. Adelard, Questiones, 20, in ibid. 87. PL 172, 56. 88. William of Conches, Dragmaticon, I, 66, PL 172. 89. PL 172, 37. 90. PL 180, 339-40. 91. Cited in Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1964), p.144. 92. PL 178,746. 93. PL 210, 218; 220: “nec vacat a mysterii ratione.” 94. “La Somme Quonian Homines d’Alain de Lille,” ed. P. Glorieux, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et litteraire du moyen age 20 (1953), 119. 95. For a complete history of the debate, see Lauge Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Gilbert Porreta’s Thinking and the Theological Expositions of the Doctrine of the Incarnation during the Period 1130-1180 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982). Much of what follows in based on Nielsen’s research. It is interesting to note that Gilbert Porreta, bishop of Poitiers, considered the heresies of Arius, Sabellius, and Nestorius to be dangerous enough to his contemporaries as to necessitate a refutation. See pp.142-89. 96. Nielsen, Theology, p.243. 97. Ibid., p.249. 98. See ibid., pp.362-70. 99. Ibid., p.369. 100. See, for example, Sententie, 11.1.71-11.1.75, 597-98, where he argues that, contrary to Arius’s opinion, the statement Christus est creatura is figurative. See also Friedrich Stegmüller, Repertorium commentariorum in Sententias Petri Lombardi, 2 vols (Würzburg: Schöningh, 1947). 101. See long discussion in Nielsen, Theology, pp.142-89. 102. See Ernest Curtius, “Zur Geschichte des Wortes Philosophie im Mittelalter,” Romanische Forschungen 57 (1943), 290-309; and Jacqueline Hamesse, “Le vocabulaire des florigèse médiévaux,” in Methodes et instruments du travail intellectuel au moyen âge:

Études sur le vocabulaire (Turnhout: Brepols, 1990), 209-30. 103. See Jean Leclercq, Etude sur le vocabulaire du moyen âge (Rome: Herder, 1961). Also see Marcia Colish, The Mirror of Language, rev. ed. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1983). 104. Abelard, Commentaria in Epsitolam Pauli ad Romanos, CCCM 11 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969), 1:20. 105. See Lauge Nielsen, “On the Doctrine of Logic and Language of Gilbert of Porreta and his Followers,” Cahiers d l’institut du moyen âge grec et latin 17 (1976), 4. 106. Expositio magistri Gisleberti, 32, in “A Commentary on the Pseudo-Athanasius Creed by Gilbert of Poitiers,” Medieval Studies 28 (1966), 4. 107. See F. Ferré, Language, Logic and God (New York: Harper, 1961). 108. See J. Jolivet, Arts du language et théologie chez Abélard (Paris: Vrin, 1969). 109. See Gillian R. Evans, “The Borrowed Meaning: Grammar, Logic, and the Problem of Theological Language in Twelfth-Century Schools,” Downside Review 96 (1978), 165-75. 110. Philip the Chancellor, Questiones de Incarnatione, q.2, 30, in Principe, Theology, 4:177. 111. Willemien Otten, From Paradise to Paradigm (Leiden: Brill, 2004), p.6. 112. Ibid., p.3. 113. “Nihil enim aliud est esse Verbum deitatis quam aeterna Creatoris de omnibus rebus praefinitio,” Tractatus De causis et de ordine temporum, 46, in “Creation and Creator of the World according to Thierry of Chartres and Clarenbaldus of Arras,” ed. N. Haring, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et litteraire du moyen âge 22 (1955), 137-216. 114. “Quamadmodum ex ignorantia creationis rerum haerese Eutychiana et Nestoriana ortae sunt,” Tractatus 11, in ibid., 203. 115. See 12-15, ibid., 203-4. Here he is modeling his discussion on Boethius. 116. Klaus Riesenhuber, “Arithmetic and the Metaphysics of Unity in Thierry of Chartres: On the Philosophy of Nature and Theology in the Twelfth Century,” in Nature in Medieval Thought, ed. Chumaru Koyama (Leiden: Brill, 2000), p.46. 117. The development was similar to an eleventh-century development. Then it was a question of whether the study of the humanities was justified. When Peter Damian declared that since Christ was Truth, Truth in all its manifestations must be pursued, the debate ended and humanities blossomed. See Ranft, “Role of the Eremitic Monk.” 118. Following in Damian’s tradition, other monastic thinkers also used the model. Hildegard of Bingen, Godfrey of St. Victor, and William of St. Thierry are among the more prominent of these advocates. 119. Chenu, Nature, Man, p.5. Chenu points to the spread of the word universitas to designate the universe as further proof. 120. Roger Bacon, Opus Tertia, ed. Brewer, 17-18, cited in Steward Easton, Roger Bacon and His Search for a Universal Science (New York: Russell and Russell, reis. 1971), p.72. 121. Chenu, Nature, Man, p.48. 122. Steel, “Nature as Object,” pp.147-48. Steel is summarizing Grant’s position but adds his own opinion: “One cannot deny that the late medieval speculations that undermined the evidence of the Aristotelian philosophy of nature in principle prepared the way for a new

paradigm of science. And in that sense the medieval tradition … contributed intrinsically to the preparation of modern science by problemizating and eroding the presuppositions of its own Aristotelian paradigm” (p.150). 123. Steel’s discussion of whether Greek science would eventually have given birth to modern science is interesting. Ibid., pp.148-50. He answers no. See also J. Cadden, “Science and Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: The Natural Philosophy of William of Conches,” Journal of History of Ideas 56 (1995), 1-24. 124. Grant, Foundations, p.192. 125. A. C. Crombie, Science, Optics and Music in Medieval and Early Modern Thought (London: Hambledon Press, 1990); E. Eastwood, “Medieval Empiricism: The Case of Robert Grosseteste’s Optics,” Speculum 43 (1968), 306-21; and James McEvoy, The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste (Oxford: Clarendon Press, repr.1986), 206-11. 126. Crombie, ibid., pp.115-32. 127. Grosseteste, De cessatione legalium, 36, in Dominic Unger, “Robert Grosseteste Bishop of Lincoln (1235-1253) on the Reasons for the Incarnation,” Franciscan Studies 16 (1956), 16. One should note that two monastic theologians, Rupert of Deutz and Honorius of Autun, asked this question prior to Grosseteste. 128. R. W. Southern, Robert Grosseteste (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p.221. 129. For example, “et secundum hunc modum ipse homo Deus esset primogenitus omnis creaturae, quia finis prior est in intentione, quam sunt illa quae sunt ad finem.” In Unger, “Robert,” De cessatione legalium, 39. 130. Exiit edictum, 14, in ibid., 22. The argument is first found in De cessatione, 30, ibid., 15. 131. Exiit edictum, 13, in ibid., 22. 132. De cessatione, 33, in ibid., 15. 133. See ibid., 25-32, in ibid., 12-15. 134. Southern, Robert, p.221. 135. De cessatione, 26 and 29, in Unger, “Robert,” 13-14. 136. Ibid., 37, in ibid., 16. 137. Bonaventure, Journey of the Soul into God, 1.2, in Bonaventure: Mystical Writings, ed. Zachary Hayes (New York: Crossroads, 1999), p.63, and 1.13, p.67. Bonaventure also uses the macro/microcosm metaphor. 138. Ibid., 2.10, in ibid., p.69. 139. Bonaventure, Collationes in hexaemeron, ed. F. Delorme (Florentiae: Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1934), 3,4.

Chapter Nine Reconciling the Doctrine as Catalyst with Historiography The final task is to situate my thesis within historiography. To that end I review recent work in three areas and argue that the thesis is consistent with interpretations that have already received broad acceptance. I examine scholarship on oppositional thinking, minesis and imitation, and labor in light of what we now know about the doctrine of the Incarnation.

Opposites In 1978 Ewert Cousins offered an interpretation of Bonaventure’s theology based on a thesis consistent with the one presented here, that Bonaventure looked at reality through the paradox of the Incarnation.1 Consequently, Bonaventure’s theology emphasized the juxtaposition or “the coincidence” of opposites. Cousins’s thesis was perhaps too advanced for its time to be fully appreciated, but more recent research has vindicated and further elucidated his position. Medieval society intentionally used oppositional imagery to advance its grasp of reality. Without awareness and identification of opposites the medieval synthesis of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries would not have occurred. In the last decade three studies have been published which document this deliberate focus on opposites. Catherine Brown documents how “the opposition of contraries” was “one of the very conditions” for teaching and learning; Sarah Kay explores its use in courtly love literature; and Constance Bouchard analyzes “the discourse of opposites” in twelfth-century France.2 The material these three scholars marshal in their defense also supports the thesis here. Brown and Kay’s stated purpose is to establish the use of contradictions or oppositions in their specific fields (pedagogy and literature, respectively), and they achieve their goal. However, upon reading Bouchard’s work, a study that received much deserved critical acclaim, a certain incompleteness of her thesis appears. It is true that “the medieval use of opposites as a way of seeing, explaining, and constructing reality during the twelfth century… was a constitutive element of the thought of that period, not the product of imprecision but a particular and deliberate form of organizing experience.”3 Bouchard documents in great detail how twelfthcentury thinkers set about “deliberately creating unresolved sets of opposites” as the means by which they could increase their knowledge of the world. She correctly notes that each term in their oppositional model was vital even while they judged one superior, because the inferior term was required for the definition of the superior term.4 In this way twelfth-century thinkers gave meaning and value to reality. These efforts were at the foundation of the renaissance that flourished under their able direction. Bouchard also analyzes the reasons why twelfth-century thinkers used the oppositional model as an exploratory tool.5 What she does not ask is why the West was the only Mediterranean society to make oppositional thinking so central to its thinking. After all, the

West was hardly in the forefront of philosophical developments. It had lagged behind both Islamic and Byzantine intellectual culture for centuries. In almost every aspect except this one the West followed the lead of the others in the Mediterranean basin. Yet, on this issue the West struck off on its own and began to develop a philosophical tradition distinct from the rest: Why? If Bouchard had asked this question she would have discovered that it was the particular nature and the pervasive presence of the doctrine of the Incarnation in the underlying assumptions of Western culture that made the West so receptive to the oppositional model. Neither of the other two societies placed the importance the West did on the paradoxical union of opposites. The West did so—at a time when it was also most focused on the doctrine. This stipulation does not challenge Bouchard’s conclusions; it further illuminates them. Bouchard correctly reminds us how central the theme of harmony in discord was in Plato’s thought. She acknowledges that the theme is most evident in writings that were unknown in twelfth-century Western society, but, not discouraged, she delves deeper and argues that the theme seeped into twelfth-century schools indirectly through the early medieval philosophers Augustine, Martianus Capella, and Boethius. When Bouchard claims that the “radical reversals” of the New Testament were also responsible for the popularity of oppositional models, she does not see this as independent of neoplatonism. Rather, she reduces the independent influence these New Testament reversals had on twelfth-century society by making them an extension of Plato’s influence. Only once does she even hint that New Testament role reversals and use of opposites could somehow be connected to the essence of the New Testament message, the Incarnation; she observes that reception of the twelfth-century use of opposition may have been made easier by the fact that “by this time it had for centuries been a fundamental point of doctrine that the drama of human salvation turned on Christ’s double nature, as fully human and fully divine.”6 What is proposed here is a re-prioritizing of Bouchard’s reasons. The doctrine of the Incarnation was the chief and most significant source for the twelfth-century flowering of oppositional thinking. All the other factors Bouchard mentions play a role in twelfth-century thought mainly because they are compatible with the doctrine of the Incarnation. Plato does not give birth to the Incarnation. Platonic philosophy did, however, provide appropriate categories and structures of thought for expression of this central Christian belief, for once Revelation became encoded in Platonic terminology, the terminology became an integral part of Tradition. Tradition—a co-transmitter of Revelation, along with Scripture, in the Roman tradition—kept Platonic philosophy alive and well in the West, not vice versa. Early Christians believed the Word Incarnate is the union of two opposites, and they found the Platonic concept of opposites best able to express that belief. Thus, when Bouchard provides examples of how the Platonic concept of opposites motivated changes in twelfth-century scholasticism, literature, conversion, conflict resolution, and gender, she should also note that the very reason why the Platonic concept is so visible in the first place is because the chief preoccupation, the dominant issue, the most discussed question of the twelfth-century intellectual world, is the doctrine of the Incarnation.7 Discussion of the doctrine brought attention to the Platonic concept of opposites; it is the language in which the doctrine is expressed. This is not to disagree that “the full flowering of oppositional thinking and writing came only in the twelfth century, at a time when the dialectic of antiquity was studied in a more

sophisticated way than it had been for six or seven centuries.”8 Rather, it is to acknowledge what was occurring prior to its full flowering. It places Bouchard’s thesis in a wider, historical context. Perhaps the only reason she failed to take this last step is because she concentrates so intensely on twelfth-century thinkers that she (like too many other scholars) overlooks their predecessors in the eleventh century. Yet twelfth-century philosophy is a continuation of eleventh-century philosophy, particularly in its rationalism and the dialectic. That the doctrine of the Incarnation is at the core of the Eucharistic debates of the eleventh century and the consequent promotion of the dialectic in Western thought has been documented, as has the doctrine’s influence on Anselm, traditionally dubbed father of scholasticism, and the presence of oppositional thinking in Peter Damian’s work. Damian’s lengthy catechism (Letter 81) allows us to see this oppositional thinking in action. To Damian, the Word Incarnate is the ultimate resolution of opposites where “whatever is that belongs to God is not taken from man, and whatever belongs to man is not removed from the godhead.”9 Instead, the polar opposites of divinity-humanity are united “in the one person of Christ [where] there would be in him both divine power to perform wondrous deeds, and human weakness for undergoing suffering.”10 Damian’s constant employment of oppositional language to describe life’s options continues throughout the entire primer, and he ends with a challenge to the reader to follow his example and “to propose parallel statements.”11 In other words, already in the mid-eleventh century thinkers were energetically employing sets of opposites and encouraging their disciples to do likewise. This fact does not negate Bouchard’s statement that twelfth-century thinkers were “deliberately creating unresolved sets of opposites.”12 They were not, however, the first. Eleventh-century thinkers had done so before them. More significantly, eleventh-century thinkers explain why they did it; they were prodded by their exploration of the doctrine of the Incarnation. Interest in the doctrine preceded and stimulated interest in other matters. First came the desire to understand the Eucharistic manifestation of the Incarnation more perfectly, then came the use of the dialectic to do so. First came the desire to state the doctrine in terms that society could comprehend, then came the organization of reality into its contrary categories for analysis. When Abelard describes his decision “to withdraw from the court of Mars in order to kneel at the feet of Minerva” and to choose “the conflicts of disputation instead of the trophies of war,”13 he is both mimicking the literary style of Peter Damian and commenting upon the structural oppositions of his day. Perhaps the best known example of the use of oppositional structure is Abelard’s Sic et non, where he organizes past theological statements into juxtaposing passages. Bouchard misses the opportunity to acknowledge the influence the doctrine had on Abelard’s structuring of reality. She emphasizes only that “for Abelard, recognition of a tension between opposing positions was a necessary beginning point for theological understanding”14 and does not pursue why. When Bouchard reports that Abelard’s “fullest embracing of dialectical tension may perhaps be found in his discussion of the paradoxical nature of the redemption of humanity through Christ”15 in his Commentaria on Romans and his Theologia scholarium, she seems finally to be addressing the why: “He was putting paradox in the foreground because it was at the heart of religious belief.”16 However, the paradox is she

referring to is not the ultimate paradox of the Incarnation but the paradox of radical reversal. The example she uses to illustrate her paradox is the change of the prideful Saul into the humble Paul. Such an answer is not deep enough. The paradox of role reversal is indeed central to Christianity, but it is a corollary to the ultimate paradox of Christianity, the doctrine of the Incarnation. It is reflection upon the paradoxical nature of the Incarnation itself, not merely its corollaries, which prompted Abelard to structure his discussions on the tension of opposites. “How cruel and iniquitous it may seem that someone should require the blood of an innocent person as the price for anything,” Abelard writes, “yet God found the death of his Son so acceptable that through it he was reconciled to the entire world.”17 The doctrine of the Incarnation is the defining paradox of Christianity. Christ is the reconciliation of opposites, the resolution of dialectic tension. The doctrine of the Incarnation is the exemplar upon which other paradoxes are based. Nearly all the evidence Bouchard, Brown, Kay, and others marshal to support their contention that twelfth-century writers deliberately used paradoxical realities to advance their theses supports the thesis here. Bouchard argues that medieval developments in scholasticism, romance literature, the epic, conflict resolution, conversion, and gender all required the presence of opposites to take the shape they did; the ultimate statement of opposites in medieval society was the doctrine of the Incarnation. Brown contents that pedagogy, poetics, dialectic, and hermeneutics were able to “move forward” because medieval society used contradiction as “a promoter to thought and discourse”18; the absolute contradiction inherent in the doctrine was the chief promoter of thought and discourse. Kay claims that contradictions stimulated developments in courtly literature; it was specifically the contradiction of the doctrine that brought contradictions in general to the forefront. Even Bouchard’s insistence that twelfth-century society was preoccupied with the terms of opposition and not their resolution19 is consistent with the history of the Incarnation doctrine, for that same society was intensely preoccupied with understanding each element of the Incarnation paradox, particularly the humanity of Christ. As in the case of oppositional discourse, theologians were concentrating on the components of the paradox, not because they were incapable or unaware of its resolution in Christ, rather so they could better grasp the depth of the paradox.

Mimesis: Imitatio Christi Research into imitation began in earnest mid-twentieth-century with M. D. Chenu and Pierre Mandonnet’s works on the role of the vita apostolica in the reform movement of the High Middle Ages.20 Study of the beguines, mystics, and women has increased contemporary interest in medieval efforts to imitate not only the apostolic life but also Christ himself.21 Today it would be a rare textbook on medieval studies indeed that did not include some discussion of how imitatio Christi or the vita apostolica inspired reform during the High Middle Ages. To understand the full significance of imitatio Christi and the vita apostolica in the formation of Western culture we must turn once again to Ladner’s analysis of the concept of reform.22 He tells us that reform is distinct from all other renewal ideas23 and is “essentially

Christian in origin and early development.”24 This is because reform is rooted in the “doctrine of the human person, therefore to the experience of its newness in Christ.”25 As such, the idea of reform is the idea that a person may freely, intentionally, and repeatedly make efforts to improve his or her own self and the world.26 Accordingly, true reform cannot be accomplished outside of the doctrine of the Incarnation. Without the Word Incarnate there is no reform, only other types of renewal. Ladner, however, states that Greek theologians “saw more clearly that the God-Man had remained God than that He had become man,”27 and thus did not celebrate the fullness of the paradoxical synthesis of the Incarnation as defined by Nicea as much as Western theologians did. This may account for much of the discrepancy between the East and West in terms of the impact the doctrine of the Incarnation had on their respective cultures (although Ladner himself does not discuss this; it is outside his stated goal). He notes that the West during the High Middle Ages developed new devotions to the passion and crucifixion, those most human events in Christ’s life, while the East did not. Karl Morrison believes that this different emphasis on aspects of the Incarnation led to different practices East and West: “These differences derived, in large part, from a special emphasis by Western authors not only on man’s inherent likeness to God (or to Christ as the Word of God) but also as the new formation of his soul through a likeness to the crucified and glorified Christ. From this it followed that, in Western theology, mimesis gained practical disciplinary aspects that it did not have in the East.”28 It is interesting to observe that when the Incarnation paradox was most fully realized by a society, reform was at its strongest. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, devotion to the humanity of Christ joined an already existing devotion to the divinity of Christ at the same time that an energetic reform movement was born. There was no similar reform movement in the Eastern medieval church; that society continued to underscore the divinity of Christ and thus experienced little of the power of inspiration inherent in the Incarnational paradox when Jesus’ humanity is juxtaposed to his divinity. In early Christianity long before the eleventh-century schism between the Western and Eastern churches, the whole of Christianity looked upon reform in Pauline terms, as personal reformation. However, as Ladner is quick to point out, the idea “proved eminently well adapted to the individual, but in addition it proved eminently well adapted to reach beyond personal spiritual renewal and to meet universal needs in given historical situations.”29 During the ensuing centuries the West extended the idea of personal reform first to the church and then to the whole of Western Christendom. The results can be seen in the initial monastic reform movement of tenth-century Cluny and its culmination some three hundred years later in the more encompassing reform of the mendicant orders. It is during these crucial centuries that Western culture matures and its basic characteristics emerge. It changed its German, classical, and Christian heritage into a unified, vibrant culture. As Ladner comments, “some of the great events which truly transformed history ultimately depended on changes, often only slight and subtle, in the realm of ideas. It is not unreasonable to expect that the idea of reform, because of the content, may have played a particularly important part in historical change.”30 To Ladner’s conclusion one should add the reminder of the fundamental connection between the doctrine of

the Incarnation and change, especially of the vital relationship between the reform movement responsible for medieval advances and the doctrine responsible for the idea of reform. Consequently, evidence relating to the reform movement is also evidence of the doctrine’s influence on Western culture.31 It is, therefore, worth our while to examine one of the chief paradigms of the movement, imitatio Christi. Its connection with the Incarnation is obvious. It is a model of literally endless possibilities and has the ability to inspire herculean achievements. The recent work of Karl Morrison on the concept of mimesis is helpful, for it allows us to see more clearly how imitatio Christi shaped Western reform which in turn shaped Western culture. Ladner demonstrates Western society’s use of reform through Christomimesis as a mechanism of change in the early and High Middle Ages. Morrison, on the other hand, concentrates on the Western use of mimesis (a term usually reserved for description of art and literature) as a mechanism of reform and, therefore, change. Ladner notes that the early Western fathers brought the concept of reform beyond that of the Greeks when Tertullian expanded its meaning to include the idea of enhancement, in melius reformari.32 Morrison sees mimesis as an adaptive mechanism for changing for the better. As such, it mediates between opposites, “between past and future” in order “to harmonize experience that is over and done with… with experience that extends.” Its goal is a unified tradition that imitates old ways yet reforms them “to keep them alive.”33 Its strategy is to use “paradox to elucidate enigmas of wholeness.”34 Morrison maintains that “if we study mimesis historically, as a basic principle in the adaptive evolution of Western culture,”35 we find it being used throughout the medieval period to resolve enigmas and paradoxes in verbal discourse. To “translate” Morrison’s thesis for our study here, we would say that imitation of Christ helped society resolve the mystery of the Incarnation into a paradox capable of being accepted, if not fully understood, by human reason. Imitation of Christ does not reveal the mystery of the Incarnation, but it does help reveal the mystery of the doctrine—as paradox—of the Incarnation. Morrison notes that the first applications of reform beyond the personal were discussed by Carolingians theologians Radbertus and Hincmar of Rheims. We have already documented the significant influence the doctrine of the Incarnation had on Radbertus. Hincmar shared Radbertus’s devotion to the Incarnation, particularly in relation to the Eucharist and Mary. Hincmar, however, was also preoccupied with the impact the doctrine had on episcopal government. He saw the bishops’ function as one of correction. This was their sole raison d’etre. He preached his message to the bishops with the aid of metaphors such as Christ, the true physician.36 The bishop was to imitate Christ and heal his flock of sin as Christ the physician healed. The flock in turn was to imitate Christ and correct their wayward lives to become perfect, as Christ is perfect. Throughout his sermons, “the theological bedrock on which Hincmar rested his mimetic analogies” was, according to Morrison, “the Incarnation.”37 It was Hincmar’s reliance on the doctrine that was “decisive,” for his understanding of the Incarnation “encompassed theories of change,… movement from an imperfect order of being to a perfect one. It was a movement of a precise kind. It took place by mediation between the asymmetrical poles of divinity and humanity, a mediation that did not cease when Christ was born of the Virgin, but that went on continually through the sacraments of the Church.”38

Hincmar’s approach was among the earliest attempts to focus on the effect the Incarnation’s mediation had on the world. It also played a significant part in beginning the ascendancy of what Morrison calls “mimesis by augmentation” 39 which was to dominate the West by the thirteenth century, at the same time that Aristotelian philosophy gained ascendancy. Platonic (and neoplatonic) philosophy was not as compatible with mimesis by augmentation as Aristotelian philosophy, so it is not surprising to see this type of mimesis rise in prominence as Aristotelian philosophy supplanted Platonic philosophy. We can see from these synopses of Ladner’s and Morrison’s works that they are in basic agreement. Morrison openly acknowledges his debt to Ladner in two areas: one, in the definition of the relationship between reform and mimesis, and between personal reform and institutional reform; and, two, in the identification of the connection between Christian art “and the fact that the keystone of Christian theology, the Incarnation, rendered visible the ‘Image of the invisible God.’”40 Still, he assigns much significance to pre-Christian influence on the idea of mimetic reform, while Ladner minimizes it. For Ladner, there is a quantum leap between pre-Christian ideas of renewal and the Christian idea of reform, including mimetic reform. Morrison does admit that a doctrine of augmentation is a continual Incarnation, but he is unwilling to say, as Ladner does, that it was specifically because the doctrines of Christianity were so central to Western society that both were able to impact society. Medieval reform and imitation did not utilize Christian doctrines; they have their origins in those doctrines. Reform and imitation were ways to make the Word Incarnate ever present to humanity, for, both Ladner and Morrison agree, humanity returns to imago Dei only by imitatio Christi: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me’” (Jn 14:6). Indeed, the Word became flesh specifically so we may know God through our shared physicality with Christ and imitate him accordingly. Peter of Celle summarizes this belief poetically. Your conception is an example for us, so that by your Spirit we may conceive fear of you. Your birth is an example for us, so that we may give birth to your love. Your life is an example, so that we may keep poverty, innocence, humility, gentleness, charity and chastity, mercy and piety. Your death is an example for us, so that we may preserve obedience and patience. Your resurrection is an example for us, so that we may believe in the resurrection of the flesh.41 Evidence of change growing out of melius reformari and mimesis by augmentation abounds. When discussing Peter Damian’s preoccupation with reform focus was on his witness through words because of the nature of the evidence available, but his contemporaries were more affected by his witness through example. Damian himself believed actions speak louder than words (although, ironically, we know this through his writings). It is easy for people to disregard “encouraging words,” he wrote, but rather difficult to ignore “an example that they might imitate.”42 Predictably, his letters are replete with imagery calling for his readers to follow in the footsteps of Christ and the holy.43 The canons regular followed his advice and wrote about it, too. The Bridlington anonymous, for example, endorses the use of both oppositional discourse and mimesis “to bring salvation.”

For we are bidden both to please men and not to please them, since the apostle says, “Do you please all men in all things, even as I please all in all” (1 Cor 10:33), yet in another place, “Had I been seeking up to now to please men, I should not be the servant of Christ” (Gal 1:10). Those who do not understand this think it a contradiction; though he said that he did not please men in such wise as to foster their vices, he was not really acting in order to please men, for his aim in doing so was to please God… and because he could not please God, if he did not present himself as a model for imitation.44 For canons, as with their mentor Damian, imitation of deeds is a most effective path to salvation. “Why do you think, brothers,” Hugh of St. Victor asks, “that we are instructed to imitate the life and conduct of good men, unless so that through imitation of them we may be reformed to the likeness of a new life? For in them the form of the likeness of God is engraved, and when through the process of imitation we are pressed against that likeness we too are moulded according to the image of that likeness.” He continues: “we who seek to be reformed through the example of good men… perceive in them the traces of actions… [that] arouse the admiration of human minds,” should do everything possible to have their actions “recreated inwardly in us.”45 The canons do not negate or ignore the traditional monastic emphasis on reform of attitude, but they do place unprecedented emphasis on behavior. Indeed, Bynum identifies the canons’ preoccupation with personal example as one of their major contributions to medieval society. Their promotion of such witness is evidence of their heightened awareness of social responsibility and service, an awareness that ultimately changed attitudes toward “two of the most basic categories of human activity—speech and conduct.”46 Emphasis on imitatio Christi led quite naturally to a deeper exploration of the Word Incarnate’s human life. When preaching on Holy Thursday Peter of Celle reminds his audience that “the bread is the Man-God, formed from two tithes, that is, from the divine and human natures, conceived in the Virgin of the Holy Spirit and born, made and mediator of God and man.” Having established the paradox of the Incarnation he proceeds to use opposites to explore the humanity of Jesus. “He is hidden, since he is not visible in the form in which he sits at the right hand of the Father, but is in view on the altar in the appearance of bread and wine”; he is in heaven, yet on the altar, he is both above and below.47 ‘Footstep’ imagery was popular.48 Peter of Celle devotes an entire sermon to this theme. He begins by summarizing the human life of the Word. “What exactly are his footsteps? Listen to what they are. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit; that was the first step. He was born of the Virgin Mary; the second step. He was placed in the manger; the third step,” and so on until his burial at the fourteenth step.49 Peter recounts these steps for one purpose, to encourage imitatio Christi. “Let us follow him who was born of the Virgin Mary, when by the help of that grace we join our free wills to grace. Let us follow him who was placed in the manger by having a humble opinion of ourselves,” and so on, up to the fourteenth step.50 In the tiny corpus of eight brief writings that have survived from Clare of Assisi the footstep imagery is employed five times.51 As spiritual director of the many women entering her monasteries Clare exhorts them to imitate Christ. “O dearest one, look up to heaven which calls us on, and take up the Cross and follow Christ,” Clare writes to Ermentrude of Bruges.52

I have already discussed the use of mirror imagery as a symbol of self-consciousness; the mirror is also a simile for imitatio Christi and restoration of imago Dei.53 It may be helpful to read some of Agnes of Prague’s letter again, this time with Clare’s use of imitatio Christi in mind. Look at the parameter of this mirror, that is, the poverty of Him Who was placed in a manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes. O marvelous humility, O astonishing poverty! The King of the angels, the Lord of heaven and earth, is laid in a manger! Then, at the surface of the mirror, dwell on the holy humility, the blessed poverty, the untold labors and burdens which he endured for the redemption of all mankind. Then in the depths of this same mirror, contemplate the ineffable charity which led Him to suffer on the wood of the Cross, and die thereon the most shameful kind of death.54 In another letter Clare combines the two images of footsteps and a mirror to the two goals of imitatio Christi and restoration of imago Dei. “I sigh with such happiness,” she tells Agnes, because she is “following the footsteps of the poor and humble Jesus Christ.” She urges her to persevere in her imitatio Christi by placing “your mind before the mirror of eternity,” so that she can “transform your whole being into the image of the Godhead Itself through contemplation.”55 Clare repeats this advise in all her letters. Agnes’s diligent imitatio Christi renders her perfect. If anyone hinders her imitation she should “embrace the poor Christ … and follow Him” all the more earnestly.56 In her most autobiographical and spiritual writing, the Testament, Clare repeatedly refers to the role that imitation plays in attaining one’s goal. Francis, the order’s benefactor, is Christ’s “true love and imitator [who] has shown and taught us by word and example”57; a prioress must encourage others “by her example”58; all members are “to strive always to imitate the way of holy simplicity, humility, and poverty” of Christ, Mary, Francis, and each other. In her closing exhortation Clare reminds her women of the union of the human and the divine in the Word Incarnate and thus in the church, by urging them not to turn away from “the path of the Lord” and risk offending “the Church Triumph and, indeed, the Church Militant.”59 In Francis’s writing we see the same degree of attention paid to imitatio Christi and imago Dei.60 In his vita of Francis, Thomas of Celano portrays Francis “virtually as the second Christ”61; Bonaventure writes in his vita of Francis that we should imitate Francis because Francis is the perfect imitator of Christ.62 Within decades of his death Francis is portrayed in numerous paintings and frescoes as the imitator par excellence of Christ’s humanity. Gone is the early medieval conventional portrait of a saint as a miracle worker. Present are scenes of sanctity depicting Francis’s Nativity crib, his stigmata, his preaching to the birds, and his work among the poor and sick.63 The portrayal of Francis’s imitation of Christ’s humanity culminates in the masterpieces of Giotto, where the identity of Francis’s humanity with Christ’s is undeniable, but where the presence of the divine in both is also unmistakable. The same can be said of Dante’s Francis. We must remember that this question of what role imitatio Christi played in the formation of the co-founders of Franciscan spirituality is a rather important one, given the significant leadership emanating from the Franciscan ranks during the remaining

centuries of the medieval West. Scholars such as E. Randolph Daniel and David Jeffrey have long ago made the case that it was the Franciscan desire to imitate Christ that led to their urban evangelization, their sense of social service, and even to their development of new forms of poetry.64 By the end of the High Middle Ages imitatio Christi was demanded of those aspiring to sainthood. This was a radical change of goals. As Phyllis Justice points out, “it is difficult for modern Christians to imagine a time when Jesus was not perceived as a figure for emulation, yet prior to the High Middle Ages this was so; Jesus was simply too far above the human condition to be imitated.” Justice believes that a more human, approachable Jesus was made possible by the new humanism of the new schools.65 Before her, Richard Southern declared that “the greatest triumph of medieval humanism was to make God seem human.”66 He looked to Anselm’s Cur Deus homo as the first to do so. It is more accurate to invert these observations; it was reflection upon the humanity of the Word Incarnate that brought about both the new humanism and the new schools, not vice versa. As in the case with Bouchard’s thesis, if Justice had taken her research a step further, she would have discovered that meditation on the doctrine of the Incarnation preceded the changes in the intellectual world. Admittedly, these changes are closely inter-related, both chronologically and in content. Still, this is no small matter. If we wish to identify those elements that made the West distinctly different from its neighbors, this is a significant historical point to establish. Behind the developments of the High Middle Ages was a pervasive reflection upon the doctrine of the Incarnation. True, imitatio Christi was encouraged and promoted by the new humanism, but that humanism had been born of and nourished by a deeper understanding of the Incarnation doctrine. As Bernard of Clairvaux repeats ad infinitum, Christ, “the only true master of mores,” is the model for the true humanist. He is the “exemplar of the moral life”67 and the teacher of love: “Learn, O Christian, from the example of Christ the manner in which you ought to love Christ.”68

Work and Theology There has been a recent surge in medieval labor history, most of it concentrated on late medieval society. Such focus is sound, for here the West first addressed labor, leisure, and poverty through serious legislation. Inevitably, researchers found themselves looking backward into the High Middle Ages for the roots of late medieval solutions to labor problems.69 Among those roots is the doctrine of the Incarnation. Chapters five and six document how the theology of Anselm and Peter Damian, the two leading intellectuals of the eleventh century, was shaped by the doctrine of the Incarnation. The doctrine is at the heart of the ecclesiastical reforms and monastic renewals of the High Middle Ages. It informed and promoted action. That the new orders which originated within these movements were likewise shaped by the doctrine is easily documented, for it is with these orders that historians first identified the growing importance of imitatio Christi, imago Dei, and vita apostolica in the creation of medieval material culture. The Cistercians are the premier example of an order which possessed a strong Incarnation theology and created

abundant material progress. Their economic contributions and innovations are legendary, and their labor affected the whole of Western society. They constructed the first irrigation system in northern medieval Italy; they introduced fulling mills into southern France; their successful labor in animal husbandry began the West’s change from a cereal to a meat diet; their English and Welsh wool was sought after throughout the continental cloth industry; they had a considerable corner on the Scandinavian fish market thanks to their advanced engineering skills needed for the industry’s construction of drying and salting facilities; and some Cistercian houses even engaged in shipping and mining.70 When we examine their writings we find a theology overflowing with devotion to “this Word [who] works all in all.”71 The work involved is real. “The wisdom of God, which all in all things is Christ… works in us,” Baldwin of Ford explains. “For the most part he works without our help, but sometimes, since we are God’s helpers, it seems that we assist him. With us he works in us what we, through him, work in him.… Thus the works and words of the just are the works and words of Christ.”72 In Baldwin’s theology we also find explicit reliance on imitatio Christi (“He gave us himself as an example”) and imago Dei (“anyone whose zeal for Christ has reached perfection is mindful of the fact that he was created in the image and likeness of God and mindful too of the price with which he was redeemed by the Son of God”).73 In his lengthiest expose of his work theology, Baldwin employs a discourse of opposites, that of rest and work, to capture the importance of work. Rest “is something much craved for and desired,”74 but it is also a paradox: “A rest which is extended often turns into boredom, and after the boredom of inactivity, we want to rest all over again by busying ourselves with labor. In this way we seek rest even when we flee it!”75 Rest is the higher good, the ultimate goal humans try to attain, but without work rest remains unsought. Work is the means by which humans realize the goodness of rest. “We seek [rest] in our labor, through our labor, and after our labor,” and we find it only in God, the supreme rest, “for he is always the same, always immutable and unchanging. With him there is no change.” In brief, “He is therefore always stable and at rest.”76 By defining rest as a state of unchangeableness Baldwin infers that work is a state of change. Consciousness of this aspect of labor is of utmost importance in the development of medieval society. Rest is the end to which humanity is destined: “Everything which [God] created or founded or made for man was done,” Baldwin explains, “to enable each of them to find that rest.”77 Labor, therefore, is not a punitive result of original sin, but a positive activity which brings one to rest, that state of unchangeableness found only in God in eternity. Work is a state of activity that changes the temporal world. Humans labor to rest; they change the temporal world to attain the unchangeable eternal world. “Perfect rest cannot be found in the place of affliction,” Baldwin admits, but by working here and now, “our rest is begun.”78 Such is possible solely for this one reason: “The Father rested in the Son to establish the beginning of the rest he desires and afterwards to perfect the rest he desires through the mystery of the Incarnation.”79 There is a corollary to Baldwin’s work/rest oppositional discourse. Once one realizes that “all entreat [rest] in their prayer” and “it is sought by everyone in toil,” then the type of labor done to achieve rest becomes less important. Only the fact that it is labor matters. “Everyone

engaged in study, every skilled artisan, every manual worker,” all work in order to rest in God: “those who are involved with farming, those occupied with the pursuit of arms, those concerned with the world of business, all those, in short, who are engaged in any of the many different sorts of study and labor and busy themselves with them–all of them, in all these things, yearn for rest and seek for rest.” Labor once considered socially inferior can no longer be so esteemed; the lowest maids’ work is equal to a king’s, for both bring the laborer to eternal rest. There is no hierarchical division of occupations in Baldwin’s discussion, no derogatory innuendoes or modifying descriptions. Baldwin presents each labor without prejudice, without assigning social status because it is “Christ, working and speaking in all.”80 In a society on the brink of expansion and diversification, such an attitude is most beneficial, for it allows people to engage in new occupations without fear of being socially stigmatized. It opens the door to social mobility and eventually to a middle class. It creates an atmosphere conducive to entrepreneurship and experimentation and appreciative of different types of toil. This brings us to another tenet of Baldwin’s work theology, its communal nature. To express his teaching concerning the relationship between an individual’s labor and the community Baldwin frames it within another discourse of opposites. “It may seem that I am destroying all that I build up earlier” he justifies his use of opposites, “but it sometimes happens that when two contrasting [ideas] are brought together, the truth shines out all the better.”81 The question appears complex: “There are different sorts of gifts, different sorts of service, and different sorts of working. How, then can all things be held in common?”82 The answer is simple: “Charity knows how to convert individual ownership into common ownership, and it does so not by doing away with individual ownership, but by making individual ownership serve a common end.… Indeed, although it is possible to have individual ownership without the common good, it is impossible to share things in common unless there is also individual ownership.” The model for this answer is the Incarnation: “One person is distinguished from another by what they possess individually, even though there is a common blessedness,” Baldwin explains. “The Father, after all, is not Father to himself but to the Son.”83 Thus, “a gift which one person has received as his own personal possession becomes of benefit to another because its usefulness is shared with him.”84 Paradoxically, then, the work of the laborer following the example of Christ “working and speaking in all the just,” benefits self and benefits the community, so “whoever has the gift of work or service, whoever has any other gift, whether greater or lesser, should possess it as having been given it by God for the sake of others. He should always be afraid that a gift he has received may turn against him if he does not use it for the benefit of others.” It likewise follows that “whoever has received a gift from God and shares its use and benefit with his neighbor truly possesses what he has received, and to him that has will more be given.”85 With Guerric of Igny we have the fullest statement of a Cistercian work theology grounded in the doctrine of the Incarnation. Sermons for Incarnation-related feasts are reservoirs filled with reflections on the centrality of the Incarnation in social matters. In this fourth Advent sermon on “a voice crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord” (Mk 1:3), Guerric articulates a rather sophisticated grasp of the relationship between the Word, eschatology, and work. He starts by noting the contradictions of this reality: “In this solitude of ours we have the

peace of solitude and yet we do not lack companionship.… We are surrounded by companions, yet we are not in a crowd. We live as it were in a city, yet we have to contend with no tumult, so that the voice of one crying in the wilderness can be heard.” Such is the goal of the happy person, to “hear not only the Voice of the Word but the Word himself, not John but Jesus.”86 In order to hear Jesus, though, one must work to prepare the way for him “by following in the footsteps of him who made himself the Way.” Labor must be constant, because “at every stage you met the Lord for whose coming you are preparing the way, and each time you see him in a completely new way.”87 Furthermore, the person “who prefers little prayers to the holy labors which he has promised to perform” will never find the way to Jesus. The toil may be difficult, but “the labors of the penitents” bring about the necessary changes for the coming of the Word, both in one’s heart and at the eschaton.88 The Word Incarnate is, for Guerric, the ultimate paradox: “Unto us a child is born” (Is 1:9), but “he is not a child, still he is always new.” For the Word “eternity has no beginning in birth nor decline in old age. For him his very newness is ancient and his antiquity new.”89 Guerric subjects even the Incarnation to a utilitarian standard, declaring that “his birth would have been quite useless had he not also been freely given.”90 Remembering that “by living and dying [little Jesus] gave us a form to be the model of our formation,”91 our lives, too, must be useful. The Incarnation was “for us who are wholly flesh, so that as we had previously only been able to hear the Word of God, we might now be able to see him and taste him made flesh, summoning all the senses to witness.”92 One of the things that the Word bears witness to is the concept of utility. “It is not for you to describe as useless what Christ accepts”; we are to follow his example.93 Christ’s passion bears witness to the usefulness of the body, so imitators of Christ must acknowledge “how useful [training the body] is for the rough and imperfect such as we,” for one’s “body is a member of Jesus” and “a scant diet and hard work redeems our life.”94 Likewise, the Word bears witness to the utility of creation. Humanity “sees that creation points to the creator… [and] makes use of it to help him to know and love their Creator.”95 Guerric admits that often it is difficult to decide whether “to please in the one case, in the other to be of use.” His conclusion is a synthesis: “He does best who mixes the useful with the pleasing.”96 It follows then that “sometimes it may be useful to own things,” while at other times it is not.97 It is, after all, not creation and possessions that are harmful, but the use we make of them. For those who are confused Guerric offers a model. “But [how] does a young man correct his way if not by observing [Christ’s] words, if not by following in the footsteps of him who made himself the Way by which we might come to him?”98 Christ “is the gardener of the whole world… the true gardener, the same Creator who cultivates and protects your garden” by working without ceasing: “He plants and waters until its growth is completed.”99 For those who pursue imitatio Christi, “the world will recognize… that he has been transformed by the renewal of his mind into that image of God in which he was made.”100 Thus will work change the world and make it ready for the Second Coming. “Look,” Christ proclaims, “I am coming quickly and bringing with me rewards to bestow on every one in proportion to his labors.”101 Contemplation is good, but what people sometimes forget is that true imitatio Christi involves work. Preaching to his community, Guerric reminds them of this

fact. Jesus deigns to meet and manifest himself not only to those who devote themselves to contemplation but also to those who justly and devoutly walk the ways of action. Many of you, if I am not mistaken, recognize what you have experienced; often Jesus whom you sought at the memorials of the altars, as at the tomb, and did not find, unexpectedly came to meet you in the way while you were working. Then you drew near and held on to his feet, you whose feet slothfulness had not held back for desire of him. Do not then be too sparing of your feet, brother, in the ways of obedience and in the coming and going which work demands, since Jesus did not spare his feet on your account even from the pain of the nails, and he still allows the work of your feet to be rewarded.102 Guerric leaves no doubts; in creation are “countless and unimpeachable works which show us God Incarnate” that are “not only to be wondered at but also to be imitated.”103 We can see from these examples of Cistercians theology that interpretations which hold that the order haphazardly stumbled upon economic success are highly suspect. Cistercian success was a result of their work, and their work was mandated by their theology, especially by imitatio Christi. Constance Berman’s research offers ample documentation that supports this interpretation; Cistercian contributions to the economic history of the West are significant, and they aggressively and consciously pursued these contributions because of their work ethic.104 That work ethic is expressed in a sophisticated work theology firmly rooted in imitatio Christi.105 In this latter matter the Cistercians are not unique. Numerous groups and people were likewise inspired to adopt a new work ethic after first adopting imitatio Christi. All this led to a significant change in attitude toward work and the worker. Without such a change neither the legislative advances in labor relations nor the economic developments of late medieval and early modern Western society would have been possible.106 Others besides the Cistercians grasped the impact the Incarnation doctrine has on attitudes toward labor. Jacques de Vitry tells us why Marie of Oignies “worked with her own hands as often as she could… She accounted all exertion and labour sweet when she turned her attention to the fact that the only begotten Son of the High King of Heaven who opens his hand and fills with blessing every living creature (Ps 144:16) was nourished by Joseph’s manual labor and by the work of the Virgin, the poor little woman.”107 Juliana of Mont Cornillon, the promoter of the Feast of Corpus Christi, was always “offering service to all,” doing “not only what obedience commanded but also what utility prompted.”108 When Alice of Schaarbeeck was “at work, she was strenuous, valiant, fore-girt, never engaged in idleness.” She made sure that “never an interval, never an hour, went by without her working.” She justified her spirituality by anchoring it in imitatio Christi. According to her exegesis of the Transfiguration narrative (Mt 17:1-13) the three disciples present represented the three approaches to God: “Lady Alice had heard in the Gospel that the Lord climbed the mountain with three disciples. She was keen to imitate his footsteps there, and so, to reach the peak of God’s mountain, she teamed her prayers up with her work and her meditation. Many a thing she found while engaged in work.”109 Accompanying these attitudinal changes toward work and worker is the adoption of a

utilitarian standard for judging work, and this too surfaces first among those concerned with imitatio Christi. The adoption has vast implications in matters concerning medieval labor. “By insisting that all actions be useful, [canons] were reminding their audience of the ability action has to contribute to the common good and of the potential actions have as an agent of change. Actions that have no utility, that do not contribute to the betterment of society, must be avoided, and actions that do contribute must be encouraged.… In a utilitarian perspective, a manual laborer, an artist, a prince, and a pope are equally judged good or bad by virtue of the utility of their work.” Thus it was that medieval society discovered that “the utilitarian perspective provided a basis for a new appreciation for all labor and laborers.”110 By the late thirteenth century this utilitarian assessment of work permeated much of society and altered the Western concept of work. Work must be “efficacious and useful” to the community.111 According to Guigo I, when a person is given the gift of work or service, he or she must remember that it was given them for the sake of others. If the gift is used to the benefit of one’s self and “is turned away from the common good” their work is no longer useful. “Anyone who seeks to work for his own usefulness (propriam utilitatem), therefore, not only finds nothing useful but even does great harm to his soul.”112 For Hildegard of Bingen, “it was the function of the Word of the Father to bring forth every created thing.” The Word created the world solely “for our use since that creation feeds and clothes us.” In turn, humanity—imago Dei—must imitate God “by producing what is usable to men.” Just as “the Son gave [humanity] their physical form” and “brought them to copulation,” so too must humanity by imitatio Christi brings the rest of creation to completion as Christ did.113 Mechthild of Madgeburg declares that at the Last Judgment a crown “produced on earth at a great cost—not with gold, nor with silver, nor with jewels; rather with human toil” will be given to those who were never “occupied with useless activity.”114 According to Hugh of St. Victor, canons began judging the pragmatic value of one’s behavior, looking “not to dignity but to utility.”115 For, as Hildebert of Lavaden remarks, “A man does not do all the good he is capable of if he refuses to be useful to others.”116 Once religious started emphasizing the sanctifying aspects of utilitarian labor they set in motion a series of new conceptions which affected the structure of society. If work is sanctifying and a part of imitatio Christi, then Christian action in the world is justified, even obligatory. Just as imitatio Christi superseded miracles as the chief criterion for sainthood, work replaces asceticism and withdrawal from the world as the path to holiness. Those aspiring to sainthood now had to labor in and for the world. Since the laity was most associated with manual labor and worldly work, the door to sainthood becomes more accessible to them. Eventually the church made the work a person did central for canonization.117 It is also at this time that society began to recognize and appreciate the many different types of vocations are necessary for a healthy community. Occupations once looked down upon were now found acceptable and sometimes even admired. It was but a short step to granting the workers in these occupations more respect. Notes 1. Ewert Cousins, Bonaventure and the Coincidence of Opposites (Chicago: Franciscan

Herald Press, 1978). See also L. Gillon, La theorie des oppositions et la theologie du peche au XIIIe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1937). 2. Catherine Brown, Contrary Things (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998); Sarah Kay, Courtly Contradictions (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001); and Constance Bouchard, “Every Valley Shall Be Exalted”: The Discourse of Opposites in Twelfth-Century Thought (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003). One should note that the Latin oppositus (a placing, setting against; interposition) and contrarium (coming from the opposite direction) do not carry the same negative connotations of the English opposites and contrary; the Latin has more to do with position, coming from different sides, as in polar opposites. 3. Bouchard, “Every Valley,” p.ix. 4. Ibid., p.9. 5. Ibid., p.10. She identifies two chief reasons: the influence of neoplatonism, and the presence of “radical reverses in the New Testament.” 6. Bouchard, “Every Valley,” p.15. 7. Nielsen, Theology, p.17. 8. Ibid., pp.20-21. 9. Letter 81:32, in Letters of Peter Damian, 3:222. 10. Letter 81:33, ibid. 11. Letter 81:35, ibid., 3:224. 12. Bouchard, “Every Valley,” p.3. 13. Letters of Abelard and Heloise, p.58. 14. Bouchard, “Every Valley,” p.38. 15. Ibid., p.39. 16. Ibid., p.40. 17. Abelard, Opera theologica, ed. Clegus M. Buytaert (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969), 1:177, cited in ibid., p.39. 18. Brown, Contrary Things, p.35. 19. The thirteenth century was concerned with resolution. One need only compare Sic et non with the thirteenth-century Summa theologica to appreciate the difference. Both present opposing sides to a question; Abelard offers no resolution, while Aquinas does. 20. See Chenu, Nature, esp. pp. 202-69; and the earlier, lesser known Pierre Mandonnet, St. Dominic and His Work, tr. Mary Larkin (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1945). 21. For mystics, see the work of Bynum, esp. Holy Feast; Jacques de Vitry, The Life of Marie d’Oignes, tr. Margot King (Toronto: Peregrina Press, 1989) and Life of Blessed Juiliana. There is a virtual industry of books published about Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, tr. Richard Whitford (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955). 22. Stump, “Influence of Gerhart Ladner,” p.3, says “it defined a new sub-discipline of history.” 23. Ladner, Idea, pp.39-48, provides a thorough discussion of the terminology Paul uses to describe reform, as well as a survey of other renewal terminology present in the ancient world. 24. Ibid., p.35. 25. Ibid., p.2.

26. Ibid., p.35. 27. Ibid., p.153. 28. Karl Morrison, The Mimetic Tradition of Reform in the West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp.419-20. 29. Ladner, Idea, p. 61. 30. Ibid., p.35. 31. During the 1970s and 1980s much ink was spent on debating what to call the movement. I use “reform” here to be consistent with Ladner and Morrison. 32. Ibid., pp.134-52. 33. Ibid., p. ix. 34. Ibid., p.xvii. 35. Ibid., p.xviii. 36. PL 125, 269. 37. Morrison, Mimetic Tradition, p. 155. 38. Ibid., p.156. 39. Ibid., p.226. 40. Ibid., p.420. 41. Sermon 51.789c, in Peter of Celle Selected Works, tr. Hugh Feiss (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1987), p.21. 42. Letter 117.7, in Peter Damian Letters, 5:321. 43. For a sample in just vol.1, see 1:108;125;167;182;203;212;242;270-71;and 291. 44. The canon is citing a passage from Augustine, whose Rule the canons followed. For a discussion of the presence of imitation via witness in the Rule, see my “The Rule of St. Augustine in Medieval Monasticism,” Proceedings of the PMR Conference, 11 (1986), 14350. See Bridlington Dialogue, 135-36; Augustine, De sermone domini in monte secundum Mattaeum, PL 34, 1271; translated in Caroline Walker Bynum, Docere Verbo et Exemplo (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1979), p.79. 45. Hugh of St. Victor, PL 176, 932-33, in ibid., p.82 and in Jaeger, Envy, p.259. See also Patrice Sicard, Hugues de Saint-Victor et son ecole (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991). 46. Bynum, Docere, p.195. See also L’abbaye parisienne de Saint-Victor au Moyen Age, ed. Jean Longere (Paris: Brepols, 1991). 47. Peter of Celle, Sermon for Holy Thursday, 1. 48. The imagery is based on 1 Pt 2:21: “For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps.” 49. Peter of Celle, Sermon 29.5. 50. Ibid., 29.6. 51. Letter 2.5; 3.3; 3.24; Rule, 2; Testament,10; in Francis and Clare, pp.195, 199, 201, 210, and 229, respectively. 52. Letter to Ermentrude of Bruges, 9, in ibid., p.208. 53. Aelred of Rievaulx, The Mirror of Charity contains probably the most notable use of the simile. See Aelredi Rievallensis Opera omnia, ed. A. Hoste and C. Talbot (Turnhout: Brepols, 1961). 54. Fourth letter, 14, 19-23, in Francis and Clare, Complete Works, pp.204-5.

55. Third letter, 4, 12-13, in ibid., pp.199-201. 56. Second letter, 4, 17-30, in ibid., pp.195-97. 57. Testament, 1-2, in ibid., pp.226-27. 58. Ibid., 19, p.231. 59. Ibid., 22, p.232. 60. See Second Version of Letter to the Faithful, 13, in ibid., p.68; Letter to Brother Leo, 3 ibid., p.48; Letter to Entire Order, 5, ibid., p.61; Office of the Passion, 7.8; 15.13, ib ibid., pp.89 and 98; Earlier Rule 22.2, ibid., p.127. 61. Jeryldene Wood, “Perceptions of Holiness in Thirteenth-Century Italian Painting: Clare of Assisi,” Art History 14.3 (1991), 305. 62. Bonaventure, Major Life of St. Francis, tr. Benen Fahy, 2, in St. Francis of Assisi: Writings and Early Biographies, ed. Marion Habig, 4th rev. ed. (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), p.632. 63. See John Moorman, “Early Franciscan Art and Literature,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 27 (1942-43), 338-58; Wood, “Perceptions;” and Jeryldene Wood, Women, Art and Spirituality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 64. See E. Randolph Daniel, The Franciscan Concept of Mission in the High Middle Ages (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1975); and David Jeffrey, The Early English Lyric and Franciscan Spirituality (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1975). 65. Phyllis Justice, “A New Fashion in Imitating Christ,” in The Year 1000, ed. Michael Frassetto (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 166, 169. 66. Richard Southern, Medieval Humanism, p.37. 67. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon on the Canticle of Canticles, 21.2.3, in Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. Jean Leder, Charles Talbot, and H. M. Rochais (Roma: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957), 1:124. 68. Sermon 20, in Canticles of Canticles, ed. Samuel Eales (London: Elliot Stock, 1895), p.110. 69. In addition to my Theology of Work, see Steven Epstein, Wages, Labor, and Guilds in Medieval Europe (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Kelli Robertson, The Laborers’ Two Bodies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); and The Middle Ages at Work, ed. Kellie Robertson and Michael Uebel (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 70. See my discussion of Cistercian labor in Theology of Work, pp.121-39, esp. pp.13839. 71. Baldwin of Ford, Spiritual Tractates, vols. 2, tr. David Bell (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1986), 1.6 (p.158). 72. Ibid., 1.5 (p.136). 73. Ibid., 16 (p.210). See also 2.9 (p.57); 1.1 (p.57); 1.3 (p.82); 1.7 (pp.200-1); and 1.15 (p.163). 74. Ibid., 1.5 (p.137). 75. Ibid., 1.5 (p.138). 76. Ibid., (pp. 130-31).

77. Ibid., (p.131). 78. Ibid., (p.142). 79. Ibid., (p.134). 80. Ibid., (p.137). 81. Ibid., (pp.87-8). 82. Ibid., (pp.181-82). 83. Ibid., (p.182). 84. Ibid., (p.184). 85. Ibid. (p.185). 86. Guerric of Igny, Liturgical Sermons, tr. a monk of Mt. St. Bernard (Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications, 1970), 1:4.3 (p.24). 87. Ibid., 1:5.1 (p.30). 88. Ibid., 1:5.2 (p.32). 89. Ibid., 1:6.1 (p.37). 90. Ibid., 1:7.1 (p.42). 91. Ibid., 1:8.5 (p.53). 92. Ibid., 1:10.1 (p.62). 93. Ibid., 1:11.2 (p.70). 94. Ibid., 1:11.4 (pp.71-2). 95. Ibid., 2:53.3 (p.207). 96. Ibid., 2:39.4 (p.119). Guerric also employs opposites in his discourse. Money, for example, “makes [one] more truly rich once he has distributed it or given it all way.” Ibid., 2:53.4 (p.208). 97. Ibid., 2:53.5 (p.209). 98. Ibid., 1:4.2 (p.24). 99. Ibid., 2:54.4 (p.216). 100. Ibid., 2:53.3 (p.207). 101. Ibid., 1:1.4 (p. ). 102. Ibid., 2:35.4 (p.95). 103. Guerric of Igny, Liturgical Sermons, 12.2-5; 42.5. 104. Constance B. Berman, “Medieval Agriculture, the Southern Countryside and the Early Cistercians,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 76:5 (1986), 121. 105. See my Theology of Work, pp.121-39. 106. See ibid., pp.191-201. 107. Jacques de Vitry, Life of Marie d’Oignies, BK. 1:38. 108. Jacques de Vitry, Life of Juliana, Bk. 1.14; 1.6. 109. Alice the Leper, 2, in Lives of Ida, 5. 110. Theology of Work, p.110. 111. See PL 198, 492; 554; and 557. 112. The Meditations of Guigo I, tr. A. Gordon Mursell (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1995), 106 (p.85). 113. Letter 31r, in Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, 1:96-98. 114. Mechthild of Madgeburg, Flowing Light, 7.7.

115. PL 176, 933. 116. PL 171, 142-43. 117. See Andre Vauchez, “Lay People’s Sanctity in Western Europe: Evolution of a Pattern (Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries),” in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, eds. R. Bluemfeld-Kosinski and T. Szell (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990).

Concluding Remarks We can confidently conclude now that the scholars cited in chapter one are correct; the doctrine of the Incarnation was the chief—not the only, but the chief—determining factor in the shaping of Western culture. The evidence supports Kojeve’s contention that the doctrine of the Incarnation forced an epistemological break with antiquity’s culture. The sources verify Koyre, Kojeve, Milner and Leupins’s theses that in working out the consequences of the doctrine Western modernity was born. Evidence abounds to prove that the conclusion of art, music, liturgical, theatre, and literary scholars is correct; the doctrine was a primary factor in the development of particular forms of Western fine arts. There is more than enough documentation to verify scholars’ claims that the doctrine of the Incarnation changed the way Western society perceived personhood, language, symbols, communication, authority, service, work, ethics, community, individualism, and change. Lastly, the main thrust of Torrance’s work, as qualified by Luomo, is now documented and found valid; once creation was viewed through the prism of the doctrine of the Incarnation, Western society found fertile ground for the germination of modern science. In short, at the establishment of every major facet of Western culture examined here, the doctrine was actively present. Where there were advances, there was an agent reflecting upon the doctrine. Time and again reflection focused on the doctrine’s paradox, its irrationality, its juxtaposition of opposites. The tension within the doctrine cried out for attention, and Western society responded with all sorts of ways to resolve that tension, reduce it, duplicate it, synthesize it—anything but ignore it. It was a catalyst of the highest positive order, for it helped Western society increase its rate of reaction to natural and social phenomena just enough to avoid static existence or implosion. Instead, it fostered new cultural forms capable of sustained, staple life. Reflection on the doctrine increased the number of interactions society had with innumerable facets of life, and these interactions created a unique culture. Thus Western culture became distinctly Western.

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