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GARL AND R E F E R E N C E LIBRARY OF T H E H U M A N I T IE S VOL UM E 2 1 1 0
Victor Cousin, Pierre Duhem, Maurice De Wulf, Martin Grabmann, fitienne Gilson, Harry Austryn Wolfson, Marie-Dominique Chenu, Philotheus Boehner, Georges Chehata Anawati · Henry Julius Wetenhall Tillyard, Egon Wellesz, Jacques Samuel Handschin, Bruno Stäblein, Gustave Reese · Alois Riegl, Adolph Goldschmidt, Henri Focillon, Arthur Kinsley Porter, Sirarpie Der Nersessian, Louis Grodecki
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V o l u m e 3: P h i l o s o p h y a n d t h e A r t s
E d i t e d by H e l e n
D a mic o
w ith D o n a l d
Fe n n e m a
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First Published 2000 by Garland Publishing Inc. Published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2000 by Helen Damico All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or here after invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-1-315-80504-7 (eISBN)
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Pr ef a c e
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C o n t r ibu t o r s Pa r t
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C r e dit s
I. P h i l o s o p h y
In t r o d u c t i o n
Marcia L. Colish 13
Vic t o r
C o u s in
(1792-1867)
John Marenbon 23
Pie r r e
D u h e m
(1861-1916)
John E. Murdoch 43
M a u rice
D e W u lf
(1867-1947)
t Fernand Van Steenberghen 55
M a r t in
G r a bm a n n
(1875-1949)
Philipp W. Rosemann 75
Ét ie n n e t Edward A.
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G il so n
(1884-1978)
Synan
H ar r y A u st r y n W o l f so n
(1887-1974)
Arthur Hyman 107
M a r ie -D o m in iq u e
C h e n u
(1895-1990)
André Duval and Jean Jolivet 119
P h ilo th eu s f
B oeh ner
(1901-1955)
Fr. Gedeon Gâl, O.F.M. v
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G e o r g e s C h e h a t a A n a w a t i (1 9 0 5 -1 9 9 4 ) David B. Burrell, C.S.C., Charles E. Butterworth, and Patrick D. Gaffney, C.S.C.
II.
Par t
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M u sic o l o g y
In t r o d u c t i o n
Nancy van Deusen 153
H e nr y
Ju l i u s W e t e n h a l l
Til l y a r d
(1 8 8 1 -1 9 6 8 )
Diane Touliatos 165 181
(1 8 8 5 -1 9 7 4 )
Eg o n W e l l e sz
Milos Velimirovic Ja c q u e s
Sa m u e l
H a n d s c h in
(1 8 8 6 -1 9 5 5 )
Keith E. Mixter 189
Br u n o
( 1 8 9 5 -1 9 7 8 )
St a bl e in
Charles M. Atkinson 203
G ust a v e
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(1 8 9 9 -1 9 7 7 )
Theodore Karp Pa r t
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Reese
III. A r t
H ist o r y
In t r o d u c t i o n
W. Eugene Kleinbauer A l o is
R ie g l
(1 8 5 8 -1 9 0 5 )
Margaret Olin
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A d o l ph
259
H e nr i
G o l d s c h m id t
(1 8 6 3 -1 9 4 4 )
Kathryn Brush Fo c il l o n
(1 8 8 1 -1 9 4 3 )
Walter Cahn 273 287
A r t h u r
Po r t e r
(1 8 8 3 -1 9 3 3 )
N e r se ssia n
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Kin g s l e y
Linda Seidel Sir a r pie
D er
Nina G. Garsoian
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L o u is G r o d e c k i (1 9 1 0 -1 9 8 2 ) Madeline H. Caviness
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Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation o f a Discipline: Volume 3: Philosophy and the Arts is the third volume of three that present biographies of scholars whose work influenced the study of the Middle Ages and transformed it into the discipline known as Medieval Studies. Volume 1 dealt with figures in medieval historiography from the seventeenth century to the twentieth. Volume 2 provided accounts of thirty-two men and women from the sixteenth century to the twentieth who developed medieval philology and literature into a profession. Their subject dealt with the languages and literatures of greater Europe from about the seventh century through the fifteenth and included Celtic, Scandinavian, Germanic, and Romance nations. Volume 3 presents biographical essays on twenty scholars whose work flourished in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and who initiated and, in some cases, changed the course of the disciplines of medieval philosophy and science, art history, and musicology. The biographies represent character, convey an impression of the subjects’ temperament and milieu, and note facts of experience and activity. They likewise aim to set forth a relationship, if you will a continuum, among scholars in their respective disciplines. The subjects are multinational, and their lives in some measure reflect developing selves, but they do so in the context of their emergence as pioneers and shapers of their respective disciplines. Medieval Studies is international, multidisciplinary, and chronologically vast: the biographies in all three volumes of the collection reflect that complexity and variousness. Hence the collection includes biographies from the major disciplines—history, literature, philosophy, science, music, and art history—and their representative subfields. The objective was inclusivity, representation, and balance. To limit the selection we decided to concentrate on scholars who were no longer living. Selection criteria included: vii
(1)
(2 )
(3)
(4)
Uncontested merit o f those who pioneered or revolutionized particular fields. In Volume 3 Martin Grabmann set standards for palaeographic study in medieval philosophy that have prevailed to our own day; Henry J. W. Tillyard and Egon Wellesz founded the discipline of Byzantine musicology; Victor Cousin established Abelard as a major figure through his nineteenth-century editions of Abelard’s works; and Alois Riegl transformed and broadened our perception of medieval art, as embracing all art, including crafts and textiles, and the art of historical periods formerly undervalued. Multinational representation. The subjects of Volume 3 hail from Austria, Belgium, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Turkey, and the United States, although for some, their work flourished in other countries (Philotheus Boehner, Jacques Handschin, and Sirarpie Der Nersessian as examples). I attempted to show cross-national influence. An example is the French Henri Focillon, whose work and teaching influenced the American A. Kingsley Porter and the Armenian Sirarpie der Nersessian. Gender representation. One woman is included here: Sirarpie Der Nersessian, who pioneered Armenio-Byzantine studies in Art History. This paucity of women scholars, in this volume as in Volumes 1 and 2, illustrates the late emergence of women as scholars of the medieval period. Disciplinary representation: Included are essays from such sub-fields as polyphony, monophony, and Byzantine notation (Handschin, Stâblein, and Tillyard) in Music; as architecture, stained glass, and theory (Porter, Grodecki, and Riegl) in Art; medieval synthesis of theology and philosophy, historical Thomism, réévaluation of William of Ockham, and manuscript, palaeography, and archival studies (Gilson, Chenu, Boehner, and Grabmann) in Philosophy. Some pioneered comparative and interdisciplinary studies; all published work that is still essential to our understanding of the past and, more important, the present. Faced with two subjects of equal standing, the choice was determined by two criteria: (a) The subjects professional energy and charisma that was self-reflective yet dedicated to the building of a discipline, and (b) the appropriateness and professional standing of the biographer. Major scholars who, for one reason or another, had to be omitted, have been discussed in the essays included (e.g., in Art History, Émile
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Male is treated in the Focillon, Porter, and Grodecki essays). Some prominent scholars were still alive when the volume was under preparation (e.g., Dom Jean Leclercq in Philosophy and Meyer Schapiro in Art History). Each discipline alone could readily fill a volume of its own. The biographies are not meant to be full accounts. Some nonetheless are moving records of portions of individual lives. Each essay is accompanied by a selected primary and secondary bibliography that reflects the subject’s work in the medieval period. In some instances we have had to condense the bibliography even further to keep within reasonable page limitations. In other cases we have not provided information on Letters and Papers either because there were none or because information was unavailable. The project began as a collaboration between me and Joseph B. Zavadil, who died in late spring of 1992. A valued colleague, he participated in the conception of the project and the arrangement of Volume 1; after his death I continued as editor alone, with the help of my graduate assistants Donald Fennema and Karmen Lenz, who checked all bibliographical references and proofing. Any venture of this size is a collaboration, and I am grateful to the many scholars, in addition to the contributors, who took part in the selection process of this volume: Pamela Z. Blum, Marcia L. Colish, William J. Courtenay, Julian Gardner, Flester G. Geller, Oleg Grabar, Peter Jeffrey, Mark D. Jordan, Robert J. Keller, O.P., Herbert L. Kessler, Ernst Kitzinger, Norman Kretzmann, Kenneth Levy, Leonard T. Librande, Karl F. Morrison, The Very Reverend Paul J. Philibert, O.P., Walter H. Principe, C.S.B., Lillian M. C. Randall, Edward Rosener, Willibald Sauerlander, Norman Smith, Neil Stratford, Robert W. Thomson, Leo Treitler, Nancy van Deusen, David T. Van Zanten, Kurt Weitzmann, John W. Williams, and David H. Wright. Others whose contributions made this volume possible are Susan Tarcov, for her assistance in editing; at the University of New Mexico, my colleagues John Bussanich, Susan Patrick, and Patricia Risso; my students Donald Fennema, Karmen Lenz, and Lorraine Pratt; the staff of the Department of English; and the staff of the Inter-Library Loan and Reference divisions of Zimmerman library. I am indebted for the support I received from Michael R. Fischer, Dean of Arts and Sciences, Scott Sanders, Chair of the Department of English, the Research Allocations Committee, and Ellen H. Goldberg, former Associate Provost for Research. At Garland Publishing, I am grateful for the care and attention paid to the manuscript by Judy Ashkenaz, Alexis Skinner, Mia Zamora, and James Morgan, the editor.
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Particular thanks go to Charles M. Atkinson; Peter Batts, O.P.; Madeline H. Caviness; David Flood, O.F.M.; Stanley L. Jaki; The Very Reverend Boniface Ramsey; Philipp W. Rosemann; and, finally, to Giles Constable, whose support on all three volumes was invaluable, and to the late Dom Jean Leclercq, who was a constant source of encouragement and help. The authors of the essays that follow contributed their time and talents; they are notable witnesses to the importance of the lives they portray. Several of the essays are documents of merit in their own right. Included herein are the last essays by Fr. Gedeon Gal, O.F.M., Edward A. Synan, and Fernand Van Steenberghen. To these is this volume dedicated. Helen Damico University o f New Mexico
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Row i: (left to right) Victor Cousin, courtesy Librairies Larousse; Pierre Duhem, courtesy Mme. Marie-Madeleine Gallet; Maurice De Wulf, courtesy Dover Publications, Inc. Row 2 : (left to right) Martin Grabmann, courtesy University Library, Catholic University o f Eichstätt; Étienne Gilson, courtesy Pontifical Institute o f Mediaeval Studies; Harry Aus try n Wolfson, courtesy The Harvard University Archives; Marie-Dominique Chenu, courtesy Editions du Cerf[droits reservés]. Row 3 : (left to right) Philotheus Boehner, courtesy Fr. Gedeon Gal, O.F.M.; Georges Chehata Anawati, courtesy Fr. Emilio Platti, O.P.; Henry Julius Wetenhall Tillyard, courtesy Markos Dragoumis, Milos Velimirovic, and The Muscial Quarterly, Oxford University Press. Row 4 : (left to right) Egon Wellesz, courtesy Milos Velimirovic; Jacques Samuel Handschin, courtesy Paul Haupt Publishers; Bruno Stäblein, courtesy Gloria Himmer-Falkenstein and Maria Stäblein; Gustave Reese, courtesy Theodore Karp. Row y. (left to right) Alois Riegl, courtesy Mitteilungen der k.k. Zentral-Kommission fü r Erforschung und Erhaltung der kunst- und historischen Denkmale; Adolph Goldschmidt, courtesy Staatsarchiv Hamburg; Henri Focillon, courtesy Walter Cahn. Row 6: (left to right) Arthur Kingsley Porter, courtesy Ayer Publishers; Sirarpie Der Nersessian, courtesy Dumbarton Oaks; Louis Grodecki, courtesy Mme. Catherine Grodecki. xi
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N in a G. G a r s o i a n
Ohio State University
Columbia University
Ka t h r y n B r u s h
Ar t h ur H yman
University of Western Ontario
Yeshiva University, New York
D a v i d B. B u r r e l l , C . S . C . ,
T h e o d o r e Ka r p
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D. G a f f n e y , C . S . C Notre Dame University, University of Maryland, and Notre Dame University Pa t r i c k
Wa l t e r Ca h n
Jo h n M a r e n b o n
Trinity College, University of Cambridge K e i t h E. M i x t e r Ohio State University
Yale University E. M u r d o c h Harvard University
Jo h n M a d e l in e H. Ca v in e ss
Tufts University M a r g a r e t O l in An d r é D uval a n d
Art Institute of Chicago
Je a n Jo l i v e t
Le Saulchoir and Sorbonne University O.EM. The Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure University IG e de o n Gál ,
P h i l i p p W. R o s e m a n n
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University of Chicago
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University of Virginia
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Université Catholique de Louvain Ve l im ir o v ic
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The approaches to medieval philosophy taken by many of the scholars profiled in this book were affected by politics, in one form or another. Seeking to provide answers to the problems of their day in the medieval past, they left equivocal legacies to more recent medievalists who study the period for different reasons. In the history of philosophy the boundary between “medieval” and “modern” when they wrote was the divide between “religious” and “secular.” And religion, whether in the confessions of Christian churches, the conflicting conceptions of Muslim identity, or the self-understanding of Jews in the non-Jewish world, was embroiled in contestations with Enlightenment rationalism and its nineteenth-century sequels and with twentieth-century fascism and communism. That this situation should have conditioned the work of these major framers of the study of medieval philosophy is not surprising. Less predictable are the ways in which their approaches to the subject were later appropriated. The essay on Victor Cousin flags how accidental his contribution to medieval studies actually was. Amid the flux of French revolutionary politics, he created a safe haven for his research through an eclecticism that disinclined him from locating truth in any one philosophical school or figure. Still, his nationalism led him to view the history of philosophy as the triumph of French thinkers, causing him to seize on Abelard and to exaggerate his significance. But Cousin also launched the critical edition of Abelard s works. While Cousins periodization and characterization of medieval philosophy have not survived, his stress on the importance of critical editions has. And Abelard continues to draw disproportionate attention if for a host of reasons that have nothing to do with nationalism. It is not just the clash between the church and secular republicanism that contextualizes the work of the Catholic scholars in this volume but also the timing of their careers in relation to internal developments in their 3
church, most notably Pope Leo XIIIs launching of a neo-Thomist revival. The sense of being present at the creation, or at most, the creation plus one generation, deeply influenced scholars like Maurice De Wulf and Étienne Gilson, each of whom professed Thomism as the definitive philosophy, deemed to have superseded all its precursors and to have solved in advance the problems of the modern world. The felt need to defend the relevance of medieval thought as leading up to the Thomist synthesis of reason and revelation and to criticize thinkers after Thomas who departed from it united these two scholars. But it did not prevent them from taking sharply divergent positions on what medieval philosophy really was: philosophy tout court, whose practitioners’ religious beliefs were irrelevant to their philosophy, in De Wulf’s case, or philosophy enriched and informed by revelation, in Gilsons. The message their books were designed to convey, especially to Francophone readers, was that religious belief was no bar to full citizenship in the republic, or the republic of letters. Further, the “integral humanism” Gilson promoted, along with Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), sought to offer a corrective to a society that, in abandoning metaphysics, had abandoned God, and hence had abandoned man. While the transatlantic side of Gilsons career was not motivated by a need to escape European fascism, as was the case with some of the emigré literary scholars such as Ernst Robert Curtius and Erich Auerbach discussed in Volume 2 of this series, his defense of “integral humanism” as a rationale for his brand of Thomism shared something of the character of the rescue operation many of those literary scholars thought they needed to perform for the Western humanistic tradition. In assessing the legacy of De Wulf and Gilson, readers should note that the authors of the essays on these figures are themselves proponents of their traditions. Fernand Van Steenberghen shares with De Wulf the tendency to emphasize those medieval philosophers whose work leads up to or shares in the Thomist paradigm. Like De Wulf he conceives of medieval philosophy as having a history distinct from theology. But with the exception of formal logic, which Van Steenberghen does not mention here, the felt need to defend the study of medieval thought in these terms has lost some of its cogency in recent scholarship on medieval philosophy in general and on Aquinas in particular. True, some carryover of the De Wulf-Van Steenberghen approach can be found in recent publications as, for example, Anthony Kennys Aquinas. But more typical is the desire to recover Aquinas the speculative theologian as discussed in Mark D. Jordans Ordering Wisdom and in Brian Daviess The Thought o f Thomas Aquinas. Writing under the eaves of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies which Gilson was instrumental in founding, and which thrives happily
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today, Edward A. Synan emphasizes correctly that Gilson placed medieval philosophy on a firmer and broader historical foundation than any scholar before his time. He also succeeded in incorporating theology into philosophy, sensitive, in particular, to the critical metaphysical questions raised for medieval thinkers by the revealed traditions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. While disagreeing with De Wulf on this last point, Gilsons story line remained “the medieval synthesis and its disintegration.” To be sure, Gilson was more generous in treating medieval figures who were not stars in the Thomist or proto-Thomist scenario but who could not be written out of the script. At the same time, he tends to reformulate their thought in Thomistic terms. Thus, in his The Christian Philosophy o f Saint Augustine, Gilson makes the table of contents of Thomas’s Summa theologiae his organizing principle, reassembling Augustine’s ideas according to that scheme. In his The Philosophy o f St. Bonaventure, Gilson constantly compares Bonaventure with Thomas, making Thomas the reference point. Gilson aims at, and succeeds in, shedding his Thomist spectacles best in The Mystical Theology o f Saint Bernard. Here, he recognizes in Bernard of Clairvaux an authentic antischolastic who has to be taken on his own terms. Another kind of political and ecclesiastical agenda affected the career of Marie-Dominique Chenu. A Dominican, formed by a Thomistic education, he inherited a thoroughly historical and contextual approach to Thomism from his predecessor at Le Saulchoir, Pierre Mandonnet. In forwarding that enterprise, Chenu in that sense was not breaking fresh ground in opposing other neo-Thomists who opted for the atemporal “perennial philosophy” approach to Aquinas. What temporarily derailed him, rather, was his support for the Christian worker and worker-priest movements that smacked of Godless communism to his ecclesiastical superiors. But here, as is often the case with the victims of would-be censors, the wider scholarly world benefited when Chenu was benched as a seminary professor. For his move to the École pratique des hautes études in Paris made his ideas and methods available to researchers at the summit of the French secular educational establishment, where they continue to bear rich fruit. Chenu may have embraced the historical approach to medieval thought because, as a theologian, he held that doctrine has to incarnate itself, repeatedly, in the language and thought patterns of successive ages. His outlook has been validated and advanced in the work of the host of nontheological scholars whom he taught and inspired. Politically vindicated by his church in Vatican Us decree on the church and the modern world, Chenus ongoing influence on the study of medieval thought can be seen at a number of points that go well beyond his
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richly contextual studies of Aquinas and thirteenth-century Scholasticism. Unlike many of his predecessors, Chenu took a stand on the wider interpretive issues facing medievalists in the mid-twentieth century. Not content merely to enlist in the ranks of medievalists contesting the dispraise of their period as the “Dark Ages,” as did several historians profiled in Volume 1 of this series, he also criticized Charles Homer Haskins’s conception of the twelfth-century Renaissance by showing that its flowering could not be grasped fully without appreciating the religious revival marking that age. In this sense, his most important current followers are Richard W. Southern, as demonstrated in his 1953 study The Making o f the Middle Ages, and Giles Constable in his work, The Reformation o f the Twelfth Century. No less significantly, in his seminal essay on grammar and theology in the twelfth century, Chenu was one of the first scholars to grasp the importance of speculative grammar, semantic theory, and logic as a field in which medieval thinkers made important new discoveries taking them well beyond the classical philosophy they inherited, discoveries creative in their own right as well as in their application to theological arguments. Here, Jean Jolivet, far too modestly, soft-pedals his own outstanding contributions to developing this insight in his works Godescalc d ’Orbais et la Trinité: La méthode de la théologie a l’époque carolingienne Abélard ou la philosophie dans le langage, and Arts du langage et théologie chez Abélard. Another figure whose contribution endures more fully than that of De Wulf and Gilson although he also received his education at the dawn of the neo-Thomist revival is Martin Grabmann. As a German, he could ignore the stand-off between the Catholic Church and republican or left-wing politics across the Rhine. But, as a German, he might have found himself caught in the crossfire of the second Reich’s Kulturkampf in which Catholicism was stigmatized in some quarters as an archaic and unpatriotic throwback to the Grossdeutsch empire centered at Vienna that the newly unified Germany had just rejected. Several circumstances enabled Grabmann to proceed with his own scholarly project while sidestepping such polemics. First, his initial doctoral studies prepared him in both theology and philosophy, both of which he taught at Vienna; he thus avoided the narrower outlook of many contemporaries. Second, Grabmann was among the first medievalists in his field to receive expert palaeographical training, a fact undergirding his conviction that editing texts from unpublished manuscripts was a professional necessity. And, given that his whole teaching career was spent in regions where Catholicism was the majority religion, he felt no need to develop a defensive strategy in order to justify his scholarly agenda. In Grabmann medieval scholarship acquired a founder whose ideas were fully
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capable of weathering the transition from his own time and place to our own, just as well as Chenu’s. For Grabmann, Scholasticism was not a set of doctrines—Thomist, Augustinian, Aristotelian, Neoplatonic— that united medieval thinkers, giving them their project and modern historians a predetermined story line. Rather, Scholasticism was a set of intellectual methods, whose development and use cut across other categories. Grabmann was, to be sure, an admirer of Aquinas. But his aim was less to insist on the normative value of Thomas’s solutions, for all times and places, than to learn, from Thomas, how to be as up-to-date and open-minded a Christian thinker in the present day as Thomas was in his. Finally, with Chenu, Grabmann was sensitive to the creative and post-Aristotelian aspects of medieval philosophy as well as to its receptive aspects. As Philipp W. Rosemann notes, Grabmann wrote with seminal effect on medieval logic and semantics in his 1951 article entitled “Die Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Sprachphilosophie und Sprachlogik.” In this and other ways, Grabmann joins Chenu in being the only neo-Thomist included in this volume whose work retained full viability after the age of Vatican II, when the neo-Thomists of the strict observance lost their primacy in Catholic intellectual circles. In understanding how that shift occurred, the work of two other scholars treated in this volume is central. Neo-Thomists believed, with Dante, that Aristotle was “the master of those who know,” the exemplar of the “reason” that Thomas had joined to revelation. It was the separation of reason from revelation and the progressive criticism of Aristotle in various areas, from logic to epistemology to physics, that led to the disintegration of medieval thought after Thomas. Many of the figures responsible for that outcome were followers of John Duns Scotus (ca. 1266-1308) and William of Ockham (ca. 1285-ca. 1349), Franciscans who were far more influential in the later Middle Ages than Thomas, even though his own order closed ranks and made the defense of his positions obligatory for Dominicans. For neo-Thomists, it was necessary to mention Scotists and Ockhamists as the naysayers who were the beginning of the end. But interest in their thought more or less stopped there. In this setting the career of Philotheus Boehner marked a real turnaround. As noted in Gedeon Gal’s essay in this volume, political accident, the outbreak of World War II, led him to stay in North America and to found the Franciscan Institute at St. Bonaventure University, a body that perpetuated his work. Having completed the critical edition of Ockham, its members continued to contribute to critical editions of Scotus and other Franciscans. Boehner was also aware of Ockhams originality as a logician, and of the other postAristotelian aspects of his thought, an insight that continues to inform more recent assessments of him, as exemplified in Marilyn McCord Adams’s
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1987 study, William Ockham. Here, we can see a parallel with Chenu. While Boehner was initially dismissed by the neo-Thomist establishment as developing his scholarly agenda merely out of partisan Franciscan zeal, in the wider, and more recent, scholarly community his work has been thoroughly vindicated. Almost equally enduring, and for some of the same reasons, is the contribution of Pierre Duhem. In some respects he can be compared with Cousin: both scholars reflected nationalism in focusing on medieval thinkers who were French or who studied and taught at Paris even though similar ideas can be found in thinkers at other centers or from other countries. Still, most of Duhem’s working principles remain as fresh and pertinent today as when he wrote. First, for the new subdiscipline of history of science, he laid down the qualifications required of its medievalist researchers: now, as then, they must be schooled in “real science” as well as history, philosophy, and theology. Second, his argument that it was the High Middle Ages that launched the criticism of Aristotle’s worldview that was to culminate in the Newtonian revolution has been sustained, although recent scholars now push back the date to the thirteenth century and the work of Oxonians like Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon, noting its connection with the theories of the fourteenth-century Parisian physicists whom Duhem emphasized. Finally, while John Murdoch rightly observes that neither historians of science nor intellectual historians today share Duhem’s view that logic was unimportant to the development of the post-Aristotelian outlook, Murdoch is equally correct in noting that Duhem grasped the relevance to scientific thought of the theologians’ distinction between Gods absolute and ordained power. Current historians of science, like Edward Grant in his work The Foundations o f Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religiousy Institutional and Intellectual Contexts, agree with Murdoch here and carry forward Duhem’s project thus amended. The high medieval desire to mathematicize science, the training of logicians to think rigorously about counterfactuals, and the ability of theologians to imagine the existence of other possible worlds that God might freely have created, it is now held, are factors that led to post-Aristotelian science. In some ways the current appreciation of scientific and later medieval Franciscan thought in the work of Duhem and Boehner, and their followers, has begun to construct a new paradigm for medieval philosophy that lays to rest both the “Thomist synthesis and its disintegration” and the “medieval classicism versus the Dark Ages” models, in favor of a newer narrative that sees the boundaries between “medieval” and “modern” as far more permeable and, in any event, as drawn in different places.
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It might be thought that scholarship on medieval Jewish and Muslim philosophy would have its own dynamics, proceeding unaffected by the kinds of political and intra-ecclesiastical issues that influenced scholars studying Christian thought. To an extent, this is true. Yet, a closer consideration of the work of Harry A. Wolfson and Georges Anawati belies the idea that the Jewish and Muslim subdivisions of medieval scholarship have marched entirely to their own drummers. As Arthur Hyman indicates, Wolfson came from the world of the East European shtetl and was grounded early and thoroughly in a traditional Talmudic culture that owed nothing to the secular and non-Jewish outside world. But, on the completion of graduate studies of an essentially philological sort, he broke into print with a paper on Moses Maimonides, the single most rigorous medieval rationalizer of revealed religion to be found among the sister faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. His major works that followed focused on Kaldm, or philosophical theology, and on Philo, as a source for rationalism in all the medieval revealed faiths. How and why did Wolfson get from his roots to this kind of scholarly agenda? Two possibilities suggest themselves. At the time when Wolfson entered the field, it was dominated by German-Jewish scholars who reflected one of two outlooks. One school, seeking to revive an interest in Jewish traditions which, they held, their assimilated co-religionists ignored, emphasized the literature of Talmud and Mishnah alone—the commentary on the religious law seen as defining Jewish practice and Jewish identity. [See Moritz Steinschneider s Jewish Literature from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Century.] The other school, eager to demonstrate the claims of Jews to full civil status in a Germany where their legal emancipation was a matter of debate, treated medieval Jewish thought as philosophy alone. As with De Wulf and his followers, their point was that being believers was no impediment to Jews’ being philosophers, philosophers, moreover, whose ideas were taken seriously by Christian thinkers when their writings were translated into Latin as discussed in Isaac Husik’s A History o f MediaevalJewish Phibsophy. These schools of thought were united only in the tacit agreement that the history of Jewish pietism and mysticism had no place in the narrative. If Wolfson was responding to this debate, he clearly aligned himself with the second position, although, as an American citizen, its original political resonance would have been beside the point for him. Another possibility is that Wolfson took as his model De Wulf’s work directly and applied it to Jewish thought. Either way, the theme of Philo as the fons et origo of Western medieval philosophy is easily the aspect of Wolfson’s legacy that later scholars have found the most problematic. It is true that one can find recent works perpetuating the reduction of medieval Jewish thought to philosophy, in which the
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philosophers religious beliefs are irrelevant, such as Oliver Leamans History o f Jewish Philosophy. But the current standard authority on the subject, Colette Sirat in her A History o f Jewish Philosophy, can be read as a strong critique of Wolfson and those he influenced. As for her subject matter, Sirat thinks it important to include Talmudism and pietism and to consider their relationship to philosophical theology. To her, the term “Jewish philosophers” refers to thinkers who consciously embraced the God of the Bible and the God of the philosophers and who sought to coordinate the love of wisdom each deity inspired, as opposed to thinkers who happened to be Jewish but whose Judaism had no bearing on their philosophy. As for Wolfsons Philo thesis, Sirat flatly rejects it. At best, Philo stands as a purely symbolic exemplar of later Jewish philosophy. In her view the earliest medieval Jewish philosophers, who wrote in Arabic and who were part of the Arabic intellectual community in the Near East and Spain, took their cue from the translation of Greek philosophy into Arabic in the eighth and ninth centuries, and from Muslim Kaldm. One might add, in support of this conclusion, that Philos influence on Christian thinkers lay primarily in his biblical exegesis, not his philosophy, and that the newest wrinkle in the study of medieval Jewish thought is its placement in its social context, including the tensions within Jewish communities that helped to shape it. [See, for example, Joseph L. Blaus The Story o f Jewish Philosophy The essay on Anawati presents him as a scholar most important for his work in editing and translating texts and for the center of learning he established and over which he presided in Cairo, offering resources and a cordial welcome to researchers whatever their beliefs. These are valuable and unimpugnable contributions. But like other scholars, Anawati was formed by his education and affected by the intellectual and political currents of his time. While his bibliography is longer on editions than on interpretive studies, and while, in one paper, he considers theology and mysticism along with philosophy, it is striking that the texts he chose to edit were philosophical and scientific and that his one major interpretive work, the history of Muslim theology co-authored with Louis Gardet, is a history of Muslim Kaldm. Far from being a mere archaeologist unearthing texts for others to interpret, Anawati thus took a personal stand on a central interpretive issue, first conceptualized by medieval Muslims themselves and redebated up to the present day: How are Islam in general, and medieval Islam in particular, to be understood? Is the essence of the tradition the mysticism of the Sufis, the believer s personal encounter with Allah? Is its essence orthopraxis, guided by the Koran and the religious law and their official interpreters? Or is it Kalam> reasoned faith, and the still more elaborate understanding and reformulating of doctrine in
.]
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philosophical terms? For many Muslims, then and now, the first two options are the tenable criteria of self-definition. To them, the third option embodies a passing moment, dating from the ninth to the twelfth centuries, that occurred in a marginal part of the vast geographical area in which this world religion took root. Supporters of the third option tend to be Arabists, in terms of where they think the intellectual and political center of the religious community is, or ought to be. They tend to focus on the Near East and Spain before the thirteenth century, because that is where and when the action was. And, in the wake of postcolonialism, they tend to emphasize the philosophical and scientific contributions which these regions made to medieval Europe, especially over against the resurgence of Muslim fundamentalism. This historiographical divide, reflecting conflicts within Muslim scholarship, has had its resonances in the work of non-Muslim scholars. In playing his hand of cards as he did, Anawati clearly aligned himself with one among several available interpretive positions. It is a matter of speculation, but one wonders how much his training as a neo-Thomist in the Dominican environment where he was educated predisposed him to adopt that perspective. In any case, it would seem that he decisively reversed his orders and his church’s earlier rationale for the study of non-Christian cultures by Catholics. Far from viewing this activity as a preparation for missionary work, Anawati saw it as a way of promoting ecumenism. This viewpoint certainly helped shape Vatican Us decree on the relations between the church and non-Christian religions. The mutual respect between Christianity and Islam at the heart of Anawati’s project does represent a principled position, and one which we can hope continues to thrive. But his conception of Islam as Kaldm, primarily or exclusively, faces a rockier future. Recent scholarship evinces some tendency to follow that model, treating Muslim philosophers as philosophers only, in a manner analogous to the work of Wolfson and De Wulf, as in Majid Fakhry’s A History o f Islamic Philosophy and Oliver Leaman’s An Introduction to Medieval Islamic Philosophy. It also evinces the tendency to stress religious culture as the essence of Islam, marginalizing or ignoring philosophy, as in Henry Corbins History o f Islamic Philosophy. At the same time, and comparable to Colette Sirat, there are other scholars who seek to move beyond that dichotomy, with studies such as Franz Rosenthal’s Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept o f Knowledge in Medieval Islam and W. Montgomery Watt’s Islamic Philosophy and Theology embracing revealed religion, the tradition of its interpretation, mysticism, and philosophy alike. Despite their differences, then, striking parallels and convergences link the scholars treated in this volume, whether acknowledged by the figures themselves or by the authors who have described their contributions.
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Indeed, sometimes their points of agreement and disagreement are what made them prime examples and determinants of the scholarly state of play at the time when they wrote. Sometimes their projects, as they envisioned them, have remained powerful models for later scholars, in ways both predictable and unanticipated. With respect to all of them, as the poet said, “Books have their own fortunes.” Bi b l io g r a ph ic a l N o t e
The discussion of the works of Christian philosophers refers to pertinent material from the following sources: Marilyn McCord Adams, William Ockham, 2 vols. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1987); Giles Constable, The Reformation o f the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Brian Davies, The Thought o f Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Étienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy o f Saint Augustine, translated by L.E.M. Lynch (New York: Random House, 1960); Étienne Gilson, The Philosophy o f St. Bonaventure, translated by Illtyd Trethowan and F.J. Sheed (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1938); Étienne Gilson, The Mystical Theology o f Saint Bernard, translated by A.H.C. Downes (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1940. Reprint. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1998); Martin Grabmann, “Die Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Sprachphilosophie und Sprachlogik,” Mélanges Joseph de Ghellinck, vol. 2 (Gembloux: Duculot, 1951), pp. 421-34; Edward Grant, The Foundations o f M odem Science in the M iddle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional\ and Intellectual Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Jean Jolivet, Godescalc d ’Orbais et la Trinité: La méthode de la théologie à Tépoque carolingienne (Paris: Vrin, 1958), Abélard, ou la philosophie dans le langage (Paris: Seghers, 1969), and Arts du langage et théologie chez Abélard, 2nd ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1982); Mark D. Jordan, Ordering Wisdom: The Hierarchy o f Philosophical Discourse in Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986); Anthony Kenny, Aquinas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); and Richard W. Southern, The M aking o f the M iddle Ages (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953). Discussion o f the works of the Jewish and Islamic philosophers highlights information from these sources: Joseph L. Blau, The Story o f Jewish Philosophy (New York: Random House, 1962); Henry Corbin, History o f Islamic Philosophy, translated by Liadain Sherrard (London: Kegan Paul, 1993); Majid Fakhry, A History o f Islamic Philosophy, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); Isaac Husik, A History o f Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1916); Oliver Leaman, History o f Jewish Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1997), and A n Introduction to M edieval Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Franz Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept o f Knowledge in Medieval Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1970); Colette Sirat, A History o f Jewish Philosophy in the M iddle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Moritz Steinschneider, Jewish Literature from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Century, 2nd ed., translated by William Spottiswood (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1857); and W. Montgomery Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh: University Press, 1967).
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( 1792 1867 )
John Marenbon
Victor Cousin, one of the outstanding nineteenth-century historians of medieval philosophy, was neither a medievalist nor, principally, a historian of philosophy. Rather, Cousin was himself a philosopher (even if a rather unoriginal one, with a marked taste for scholarship and belles lettres), and an organizer of the teaching of philosophy. As such for nearly twenty years he exercised an extraordinary official dominance over philosophical studies in France. Born on 28 November 1792 in Paris, the son of poor, working-class parents, Victor Cousin would have received little education had he not happened, one day when he was nearly twelve, to spring to the defense of another child who was being bullied. The grateful mother, discovering that the young Cousin had taught himself to read and write, took it upon herself to pay for his education at the Lycée Charlemagne, where he excelled. He went on to the École Nórmale, which had just opened, and by 1815 he was teaching philosophy at the Sorbonne. Cousin was a public success, a fact that made him one of the victims of a series of measures designed to suppress freedom of thought and speech in the aftermath of the assassination of the Due de Berry in 1820. Deprived of his post, he became tutor of the Due de Montebello’s son and traveled with him to Germany. He had been there twice before already, in 1817 and 1818, and he had met many of the leading German philosophers, including G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831). But now Cousin found himself arrested by the Prussian police, accused of plotting against the government, imprisoned for six months, and released only as a result of Hegel’s intervention. Cousin was by no means radical in his politics (his pupil, Jules Simon, would write of him that “he was certainly a liberal, but even more a conservative” [Simon, 26]). But the mere fact of his being a philosopher, and one who upheld the liberty of the individual and the independence of philosophy, made him the object of conservative suspicions and liberal sympathy. 13
Cousin returned to France a martyr to the liberal cause, and in 1828 he was once again teaching philosophy at the Sorbonne. Like his earlier lectures, those of 1828 and 1829 attracted a large following, were immediately published, and were frequently reprinted. Although Cousin himself deplored the July Revolution of 1830, he benefited from the new governments liberal leanings. A large assortment of titles and positions were heaped on him: he became not merely a titular professor at the Sorbonne, a state councillor, and a member of the Académie Française (1830), but also a member of the Royal Council for Public Education, director of the École Normale (1832), and a Pair de France (1833). For nine months in 1840, he was even minister for education. At the same time as he received these positions and honors, Cousin gave up teaching: his lectures at the Sorbonne were taken over by a junior colleague, and even his small classes at the École Normale— friendly chats rather than rigorous instruction—were abandoned after 1836. Instead Cousin devoted his remarkable energies to organizing the study of philosophy in France and choosing those to whom it was entrusted, areas in which his position as councillor for public education, director of the École Normale, and president of the jury for the agrégation in philosophy gave him almost absolute authority. The 1848 uprising and its consequences put an end to his power, and in 1852 he retired completely, devoting himself to writing and (he was an ardent bibliophile) to the great collection of books he had built up in his flat in the Sorbonne. Cousin died on 13 January 1867 in Cannes. Cousins publications were numerous and wide-ranging. Apart from his reports on education in Prussia, some political articles, and the biographies of Jacqueline Pascal (1625-1661) and other seventeenth-century ladies to which he gave much attention in his later years, Cousin s work was devoted to philosophy and its history. He translated Plato’s dialogs, and edited Proclus’s Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides and the works of a whole series of French philosophers: Peter Abelard (1079—1142), Blaise Pascal (1623—1662), René Descartes (1596-1650), Pierre Maine de Biran (1766-1824). Then there were the printed versions of his lecture courses from 1815 to 1821 and from 1828 to 1830 (eight volumes altogether in the authorized collected edition of 1851), the four volumes of Fragments philosophiques pour faire suite aux cours de l'histoire de la philosophie (a collection of his learned articles on points of detail in the history of philosophy); and Cousins one philosophical treatise, Du vrai, du beau et du bien, derived, though much altered, from his lectures of 1818. Cousins tendency to reissue the same works more than once, sometimes with new titles, and often with small but not insignificant changes, makes his oeuvre a bibliographer’s nightmare.
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That so much of Cousins philosophical work is connected with the history of the subject is partly a matter of his temperament and partly a result of the circumstance that his removal from public teaching in 1821 forced him to concentrate on his editorial work; but it is also linked to the nature of his own philosophical views. Like his philosophical mentors Pierre Laromiguiere (1756-1837), Pierre Paul Royer-Collard (1766-1824) and Maine de Biran, Cousin started out strongly under the sway of the philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, especially Thomas Reid (1710-1796) and Dugald Stewart (1753-1828). But from the time of his first trip to Germany in 1817, he began to be strongly influenced by the very different philosophical tradition represented by Immanuel Kant (1724—1804), Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743— 1819), F.W.J. von Schelling (1775-1854), and Hegel. Cousin’s knowledge of the German language remained limited—he studied Kant in a Latin version and gained much of his knowledge of Hegel not from his books but through his personal contacts with the philosopher himself. Perhaps his limited comprehension of so complex and varied a body of thought made it all the easier for him to assimilate it into the French tradition. This involved his correcting, as he believed, Kant’s view that we cannot penetrate beyond the laws that govern our understanding to a theoretical knowledge of how things are in themselves, and also his making extensive and unacknowledged borrowings from Hegel. In particular, he took from Hegel the idea that philosophy should not be detached from its history, which can be seen to have followed a comprehensible pattern. But in place of the absolute idealism in which Hegel’s dialectic reaches its fulfillment, Cousin put eclecticism, the view that every philosophical system contains part of the truth, and that the philosopher s task is therefore to put together into a whole the truths he finds scattered throughout the history of philosophy—an equivalent, in the intellectual sphere, of the politics of the juste milieu so favored at the time (see Cornelius, Die Geschichtslehre). Cousin contributed to medieval scholarship in two ways: first, through his treatment of medieval philosophy as part of his general history of philosophy, and second, through his detailed historical, analytical, and editorial work on medieval philosophy, almost all of which was centered on Peter Abelard. As will be shown, these two aspects of his activity were rather strangely disconnected. Cousin put forward his general history of philosophy in the lectures he gave in 1828 and in 1829. The 1828 lectures (Introduction a Thistoire de la philosophie) set out the general principles governing the history of philosophy, while those in 1829 (Histoire de la philosophie du XVIIIe siecle) prefaced the detailed consideration of eighteenth-century thinkers with a
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chronological account of philosophy from the earliest times. Medieval philosophy is considered briefly in the second of the 1828 lectures and at much greater length in Lecture 9 of the 1829 course. Behind Cousin’s approach to medieval philosophy lay two conflicting impulses. On the one hand, many people of Cousin’s time tended to see philosophy as the enemy of Christian religion. Cousin himself did not: he presented his own philosophical views as being compatible with— indeed, as supporting— religious orthodoxy, and he went out of his way to remove any pantheistic suggestions when editing his early work for publication. Nonetheless, Cousin always championed liberty of thought, and it was for this that he suffered in the 1820s. He could not but therefore look askance at the obvious connection between medieval philosophy and Christian doctrine. On the other hand, he was committed to tracing the story of philosophy from the ancient period to his own days, and he believed that truth was to be found in all philosophical systems. Cousin’s solution was to present medieval— or, as he usually called it, “scholastic”—philosophy as a prelude to modern (sixteenth- to nineteenthcentury) thought. “Just as the Middle Ages were the cradle of modern society, so was scholasticism that of modern philosophy” (Cousin [1829], 334). Scholasticism was, in his view, not fully philosophical. The Middle Ages, he argued, was the period when ecclesiastical authority was absolute. Scholasticism was the use of philosophy in the service of faith, under the aegis of religious authority. The fundamental characteristic of Scholasticism lay, therefore, in “the fact that it moved within a circle that was not of its own devising, but had been imposed on it by an authority other than its own” (Cousin [1828], 28). Yet philosophy did not lose its nature, and it sought to grasp and bring to awareness the religious form that it was forced to take. Hence Cousin’s ambivalent judgment: That thought which moves in a circle not at all of its own devising and which it does not dare to overstep is a thought which can contain the entire truth, but yet is not thought in that absolute liberty which characterizes philosophy properly speaking. Scholasticism, then, in my view, is so far from being the final word in philosophy that— to speak generally and strictly—it is not even philosophy at all [ibid., 30]. Yet, despite its failure to be philosophy in the strict sense, Cousin argues that Scholasticism took the four forms characteristic of every period of philosophy, which he previously traced in the thought of the ancient East and in Greek philosophy: idealism, sensualism, skepticism, and mysticism.
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Cousin divides medieval thought into three periods. The first, from the ninth century to the twelfth (John Scottus Eriugena [ca. 810-ca. 877], Anselm [1033—1109], Abelard, and Peter Lombard [1100—1160] are briefly discussed), was a time in which there were few disputes and none of them truly philosophical. The second period is that of Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225—1274) and John Duns Scotus (ca. 1266—1308), whose differences on theological questions, Cousin believes, also touched on serious questions of philosophy. Tentatively, Cousin places Aquinas and the Dominicans as representatives of idealism, and Scotus and the Franciscans as representatives of empiricism (or sensualism). But, he explains, it was not until the third period of Scholasticism that the conflict between these two systems erupted, in the form of a dispute between realists and nominalists. Although the dispute had already been foreshadowed in the nominalism of the late-eleventh-century thinker Roscelin (ca. 1050-ca. 1121) and the reaction to it, it was William of Ockham (ca. 1285—ca. 1349) who took up and fully developed nominalism. Against him were ranged realists such as Henry of Ghent (1217-1293), Walter Burleigh (1275—ca. 1345), and Thomas Bradwardine (ca. 1290-1349), whose views were, in turn, controverted by nominalists such as John Buridan (1300-1358), Robert Holcot (d. 1349), and Peter d’Ailly (1350-1420). The effect of this conflict should have been to engender the third characteristic form of philosophy, skepticism: But what skepticism could there be in the Middle Ages? The human spirit had not yet arrived at a sufficient degree of independence to put into question the basis itself, that is to say, theology. And so the skepticism could not but fall on the form, that is to say on scholastic philosophy—which it completely destroyed [Cousin (1829), 378-79]. Hence the contempt in which Scholasticism was held in the fifteenth century and the birth of a new system. By contrast, the fourth characteristic form of philosophy, mysticism, was well represented throughout the Middle Ages: Cousin mentions thinkers from the whole range of the period, from Eriugena, Bernard of Clairvaux (1091—1153) and Hugh of Saint Victor (1096-1141), to Bonaventure (ca. 1217-1274) and Jean Gerson (13631429), whom he treats at some length. Cousin’s sketch may be disappointingly overschematic, at times chronologically inaccurate and lacking in much detail about what and how thinkers in the Middle Ages actually argued. But it was a pioneering survey, since medieval philosophy had not been systematically examined before in
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France (and scarcely even in Germany). Before the end of his life, all this had changed, and Cousin believed himself, not without reason, to have been responsible: “We found it [Scholastic philosophy] entirely abandoned; we leave it better cultivated in France than anywhere else in Europe” (Cousin, Histoire générale de la philosophie [1864], 247). Despite its new title, Histoire générale de laphilosophie depuis les temps les plus anciens jusqua la fin du XVIIIe siècle is in the main a reprint of the 1829 lectures, with some additions and changes. Footnotes show Cousins awareness of the work of French medievalists over the three preceding decades—such as Ernest Renans (1823-1892) study of Averroës and Averroism and Charles de Rémusats (1797-1875) biography of Abelard. He reacts to German scholars who described Eriugena as a “profound metaphysician” by repeating and elaborating his earlier view that he lacked originality (ibid., 196). Aquinass and Duns Scotuss thought is more fully treated and his opinion of Aquinas has risen: “[Aquinas] never ceased,” he says, “to be faithful to the spirit of philosophy” (ibid., 216—18). Small revisions in the 1864 edition show that Cousin is now especially anxious to stress the positive aspects of the influence of Christianity. For example, at the end of his chapter on Scholasticism in the 1829 lectures, Cousin observed that, in taking up the four characteristic tendencies of all philosophy, Scholasticism stopped short of going to the extremes found in the thought of ancient India and Greece. He then remarked that sadly, the historian is not permitted to give the credit for this sobriety to the wisdom of the human spirit: he must trace it to its very feebleness, to the active and still powerful control of ecclesiastical authority [Cousin (1829), 388-89]. By 1864 he has changed this comment to the following: Do not give credit for this sobriety to the human spirit; but rather, trace it to Christianity, and to the active and still powerful control of reasonable ecclesiastical authority [Cousin (1864), 246]. Some of Cousins revisions take into account the textual discoveries he himself made in the area. He found a manuscript of Roger Bacons Opus tertium and printed some of his findings in the Journal des savants (1848). In the 1864 work, he takes account of this work in his presentation of Bacon. Similarly, the section on Peter Abelard—who is now described as “the father of modern rationalism . . . the first person to apply philosophical criticism
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to theology”— is entirely rewritten {ibid., 199). But it remains very brief, and does little justice to Cousins remarkable work on this thinker during the forty previous years. Cousins general views about the history of philosophy were not such as to lead him to a special study of medieval philosophy, and least of all to devote himself to a thinker from the twelfth century, a period which he considered to have been without even the limited freedom of thought enjoyed in the later Middle Ages. Cousin came to Abelard in part for patriotic reasons. Abelard extended the French tradition of thought back five hundred years before Pascal, and Cousin was proud to be able to declare that it was France that had given Europe both the founder of Scholasticism—Abelard—and Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy (Cousin [1836], iv). But Cousin also began to study Abelard as a result of his abiding fascination with manuscripts and newly discovered texts. His first, and his most important, work on Abelard, Ouvrages inédits d ’A bélardpublished in 1836, is precisely a collection and presentation of previously unprinted texts. Two of these newly edited works are among Abelard’s most important contributions to medieval thought. Sic et non, Abelards systematic collection of apparently contradictory patristic quotations, was known already, but Cousin was the first to make available, not the whole text, but very substantial excerpts. From these he was able to show that eighteenth-century scholars, like Ursinus Durand (1682-1771) and Edmond Martène (16541739), who had treated the work as a sure sign of Abelards heretical views, were mistaken. The apparent skepticism in Abelard’s method is merely provisional. Sic et non is, in reality, “a construction of powerfully proposed theological problems and antinomies which oblige the mind to salutary doubt, forewarn it against the danger of narrow and precipitate solutions, and prepare it for better solutions” {ibid., clxxxix). Even more important is Abelard’s Dialectica, his comprehensive treatise on logic, of which Cousin prints an abridgment amounting to roughly half of the complete text. Except for the problem of universals (which is not considered in the Dialectica, since the unique manuscript lacks the opening section where it would have been discussed), medieval logic was little regarded and little studied until the work of Carl Prantl (1820-1888) later in the nineteenth century and little understood until very recently. Cousin showed remarkable intellectual independence in printing Dialectica, one of the most impressive of all medieval logical texts, even though he did not attempt to unravel any of Abelard’s arguments; he regarded the work, rather, as a valuable source of historical information about Abelard’s teachers and career. Also included in the volume were extracts from Abelard’s early, literal glosses on the logic of Porphyry and
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Aristotle, and the opening of his long commentary on Boethius’s De topicis dijferentiis. Cousin finds nothing of interest in any of these pieces. The appendix to Ouvrages inédits, where Cousin describes and prints extracts from various other manuscripts, is a veritable treasury of material on early-medieval and twelfth-century thought, much of which would not be properly exploited until recent decades. Some of the pieces were his own discoveries; others had been mentioned in the Histoire littéraire de la France, but never had been printed. Among other things, Cousin discusses the very important tenth-century collection of material on logic in what is now Paris B.N. lat 12949 {ibid., 618—24), and the twelfth-century collection of material on logic (ibid., 613-18), now Paris B.N. lat 13368. He gives extracts from the Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris (d. ca. 1160), whom he wrongly considers to have been Bernard of Chartres {ibid., 627-39); extracts from a commentary on Plato’s Timaeus now known to be by William of Conches {ibid., 648-57); and the full text of an eleventh-century versification of the Categoriae Decern—the pseudo-Augustinian paraphrase of Aristotle’s Categories {ibid., 657-69). In the volume on Scholastic philosophy in his Fragments philosophiques, Cousin reproduced the material here and added further sections, including a discussion of Abelard’s contemporary, the logician Adam of the Petit Pont (Parvipontanus), and of the twelfth-century translation of Plato’s Phaedo, and editions of a version of Abelard’s Carmen ad Astralabium and of his little treatise De intellectibus (and, in later editions, he added his work on Roger Bacon’s Opus tertium). Cousin began Ouvrages inédits with a two-hundred-page introduction (reprinted in the Fragments philosophiques), which shows how careful and inquisitive a scholar he could be when working with original materials. From his sources, Cousin established a number of important facts about Abelard—that he had been a pupil of Roscelin’s, that he knew no Greek, that his knowledge of Plato was limited to Calcidius’s translation of the Timaeus, and which ancient logical texts he studied. Cousin also attempted to assess Abelard as a philosopher. He began from the preconception that the main—indeed, almost the only—philosophical question of the time was the problem of universals. Are “genera” and “species” merely words, as Roscelin argued, or are they things, as Roscelin’s opponents held? Cousin believed that Abelard defended an intermediate position, “conceptualism,” according to which genera and species exist, but merely as concepts in the mind, abstracted and collected from individuals. But this conceptualism was not a genuinely eclectic combination of what was positive in the ideas of the two opposing schools. All that Abelard took from the realists was their denial of nominalism, and in fact his conceptualism was really “a more circumspect and less coherent” nominalism {ibid., clxxx).
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Cousin’s classification of Abelard as a conceptualist depends, in fact, on a strangely circular argument. He did not know Abelard’s two long commentaries on Porphyry’s Isagogey on which twentieth-century scholars have based their understanding of his theory of universais. But, in the same manuscript as Abelard’s literal glosses, he found a fragment entitled “On genera and species” (ibid., 513-50), in which he believed he had found a conceptualist theory of universais. Because he already assumed that Abelard was a conceptualist (and also because the writer calls William of Champeaux [ca. 1070-1121] his teacher), he unhesitatingly attributed the fragment to Abelard. The irony is that in the De intellectibus, which Cousin discovered and printed a few years later, there is an authentic account of Abelard’s mature views on universais— but Cousin never seems to have noted it. Many of Cousin’s reservations about the quality, or even the existence, of medieval philosophy appear to have been overshadowed, if not dispelled, by his enthusiasm for Abelard. Near the beginning of the introduction to Ouvrages inédits (vi), Cousin calls for a complete edition of Abelard’s works to be made. He promises to do all in his power to assist in it and declares that, were he younger, he would undertake it himself. In fact, when he was more than ten years older, Cousin produced, not a complete edition of all that Abelard had written, but a companion to his Ouvrages inédits, a comprehensive collection of the works of Abelard that had been previously printed, but in various places: Opera hactenus seorsim edita. The two volumes appeared in 1849 and 1859, with the assistance of Charles Jourdain and Eugène André Despois for Volume 1 and of Jourdain alone for Volume 2. A substantial set of Abelard’s writings had already appeared in a 1616 edition issued by the young scholar André Duchesne (1584-1640) and François d’Amboise (1550-1619), the aristocratic enthusiast of Abelard. Other newly discovered works had been published in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But, unlike Migne, who had published a collection of Abelard’s works in Volume 178 of the Patrologia Latina (1855), Cousin was in many cases not content merely to reprint the text of the existing editions. The letters, the Theologia Christiana and the Theologia Scholarium, for example, were freshly edited (see Barrow, Burnett, and Luscombe). Slowly, modern scholarship has been making Cousins edition obsolete. Full critical editions of most of the works have now been published, and other—especially logical—writings have been discovered. But Cousin’s editions have not yet been entirely replaced; there is still no new comprehensive collection. Although Cousin’s own writings on philosophy languish in well-deserved obscurity, it is in no small measure due to his efforts that Peter Abelard is among the best known and most widely read of all medieval philosophers.
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Se l e c t e d B i b l io g r a ph y
Works B o o k s a n d A rt ic l es
Ed. Procli philosophi Platonici opera. 6 vols. Paris: Eberhart, 1820-27. 2nd rev. ed. Paris: Durand, 1864. Trans. Œuvres de Platon. 13 vols. Paris: Bossange (etc.), 1822-56. Ed. Œuvres de Descartes. 11 vols. Paris: Levrault, 1824-26. Cours de philosophie, par M. V Cousin . . . Introduction à l ’histoire de la philosophie. Paris: Pichon et Didier, 1828. Cours de l'histoire de la philosophie, par M. V Cousin . . . Histoire de la philosophie du X V IIle siècle. Paris: Pichon et Didier, 1829. Revised as Histoire générale de la philosophie depuis les temps les plus anciens jusqu a la fin du XVIIIe siècle. Paris, 1863. Newed. Paris: Didier, 1864. Ed. Ouvrages inédits d A ’ bélard pour servir à l'histoire de la philosophie scolastique en France. Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1836. Ed. Œuvres philosophiques de M aine de Biran. Paris: Ladrange, 1841. Ed. Pensées de Pascal. 1843. 2nd rev. ed. and enlarged. Paris: Ladrange, 1844. Fragments philosophiques pour faire suite aux cours de l ’histoire de la philosophie. 4 vols. Vol. 1, Philosophie ancienne. Vol. 2, Philosophie scolastique. Vol. 3, Philosophie moderne. Vol. 4, Philosophie contemporaine. 4th ed. Paris: Ladrange, 1847. 5th ed. Vol. 2, renamed Philosophie du moyen âge. Paris: Didier, 1865. Ed. Petri Abaelardi opera hactenus seorsim édita. Vol. 1, with C. Jourdain and E. Despois. Paris: Durand, 1849. Vol. 2, with C. Jourdain. Paris: Durand, 1859. D u vrai, du beau et du bien. Paris: Didier, 1853. L e t t e r s a n d Pa p e r s
Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, Jules. M . Victor Cousin: sa vie et sa correspondance. 3 vols. Paris: Hachette, 1895·
Sources Barrow, Julia, Charles Burnett, and David Luscombe. “A Checklist of the Manuscripts Containing the Writings of Peter Abelard and Héloïse and Other Works Closely Associated with Abelard and His School.” Revue d ’histoire des textes 14-15 (1984-85): 183-302. Cornelius, A. Die Geschichtslehre Victor Cousins unter besonders Berücksichtigung des Hegelschen Einflusses. Geneva: Droz, 1958. Histoire littéraire de la France. Edited by [various]. 12 vols. Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1733-63. Janet, Paul. Victor Cousin et son œuvre. Paris: Calmann Levy, 1885. Jolivet, J. “Les etudes de philosophie médiévale en France de Victor Cousin à Étienne Gilson.” In Gli studi di filosofia medievale fra otto e novecento, edited by Ruedi Imbach and Alfonso Maierù, pp. 1-20. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1991. Simon, Jules. Victor Cousin. Paris: Hachette, 1887.
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(1 861 - 1 9 1 6 ) John E. Murdoch
Pierre-Maurice-Marie Duhem, in many ways the founder of the study of the history of medieval science, was born on 9 June 1861 in Paris, France, the first child of Pierre-Joseph and Marie Duhem, née Marie-Alexandrine Fabre. Some three years later, the young Pierre was joined by twin sisters: MarieJulie and Antoinette-Victorine. When Pierre was ten years old, JeanCharles-Marie, the youngest and final child in the Duhem family was born, only to die from diphtheria six weeks later. To add to the family’s grief one of the twins, Antoinette, also succumbed to the disease. Duhems father, from Roubaix in the north of France, was a representative and associate of a textile firm, while his mother was of a bourgeois family from Cabrespine in Languedoc, where the Duhems vacationed quite frequently. Duhem was brought up in a staunchly conservative Catholic atmosphere; his sister, Marie, eventually became a nun, and his mother was not only a devout Catholic but an ardent royalist. Indeed, to the end of his life, Duhem himself was no less conservative, no less a Catholic. On more than one occasion this brought him into conflict with the social and political upheavals in France that occurred throughout his life: the end of the Second Empire, the Franco-Prussian War, the onset and subsequent crushing of the Commune, the installation of the Third Republic—whose liberalism and freethinking were so repellent to Duhem—and the Dreyfus Affair, in which Duhem assumed a decidedly anti-Dreyfusard stance. Duhem was barely ten at the time of the Commune; yet it and subsequent events left a lasting impression on the youth. In 1872 Duhem entered the Catholic Collège Stanislas, overseen by the Abbé de Lagarde who selected for the college motto “Français sans peur, Chrétiens sans reproche,” which could have well described Duhem himself in later years. At Stanislas Duhem had teachers who decisively influenced the career he was to follow. One teacher, Jules Moutier (1829-1895), especially left his mark. It was he, 23
Duhem claimed, who first instilled in him a love for physics, in particular the application of thermodynamics to chemistry, a field that was to prove one of those most significant in Duhem’s career as a physicist (Duhem, Notice [1913],72). Upon completion of his studies at Stanislas, Duhem had to decide between the École Polytechnique, his fathers choice, and the École Normale Supérieure, his mothers preference. Whatever the reasons—perhaps he wished to follow an academic career rather than that of an engineer— Duhem chose the latter. Thus, receiving a first on the entry examinations, he enrolled in the École Normale Supérieure in 1882. He published his first paper (on the application of thermodynamic potential to voltaic cells) in 1884 while he was still a student. In October of the same year he presented his thesis, “Le potentiel thermodynamique,” which was rejected by a jury made up of the future Nobel Prize physicist Gabriel Lippman (1845—1921) and two mathematicians, Charles Hermite (1822-1901) and Émile Picard (1856-1941). One possible reason for this rejection was that Duhem had (correctly) criticized the principle of maximum work postulated by Marcellin Berthelot (1827-1907), the chemist and physicist who was at the time extremely influential in the French scientific world. Moreover, Berthelot, a friend of Lippman and minister of education from 1886 to 1887, extended this influence apparently to Duhem himself. In a biography written in 1936 by Duhem’s daughter, Berthelot is reported to have reached the verdict with respect to Duhem’s career that “ce jeune homme n’enseignera jamais à Paris” (Pierre-Duhem, 53, 146). In any event, Berthelot was clearly a member of those liberal Third Republic scientists whose thinking, at least on political and social grounds, Duhem found so uncongenial. In 1885 Duhem successfully completed his agrégation in physics and submitted what was in effect the manuscript of the rejected thesis (a rather unusual and courageous act), which was duly published the following year. Then, in 1888, Duhem submitted (successfully now) another doctoral thesis in mathematics, not physics, though its subject, magnetism by induction, was equally physical. In the interim Duhem had begun teaching at Lille (1887—93) as maître de conférences in the faculty of science. A quarrel with the dean at Lille led to his departure to Rennes where he taught in the faculty of science (1893—94) before receiving a professorship in physics at Bordeaux (1894-1916), a post he held to the end of his life. In 1900 Duhem was elected as a membre correspondant to the Académie des Sciences and in 1913 became a nonresident member of the Académie, testifying to his high standing in the scholarly community in France. Yet personally more important than these academic honors was
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Duhem’s marriage to Marie-Adèle Chayet in 1890. They had a daughter, Hélène, one year later. In 1892 Duhem’s wife died in childbirth, as did the child, their second daughter. Duhem himself died suddenly at fifty-five on 14 September 1916 while on vacation in Cabrespine. Yet in his short life, he had succeeded in publishing close to four hundred articles and some twenty-two books. Duhems academic and publication career falls into three periods. Between 1884 and 1900 physics, especially thermodynamics and electromagnetism, predominated, although he kept working and publishing in the field until the end of his life. His interest and published work in the philosophy of science ran from 1892 to 1906. Earlier on in this period (1892-96), he had published articles dealing with the philosophy and history of physics in issues of the Revue des questions scientifiques (reprinted in Duhem’s Prémices philosophiques [1987]). Duhem’s major and influential book in the philosophy of science La théorie physique: son objet et sa structure was published in 1906, translated into German in 1912, and as late as 1954 and 1958 into English and Italian, respectively. The chapters constituting this work had already appeared in 1904 and 1905 in issues of the Revue de philosophie, a periodical Duhem himself had helped to found. Publishing books whose contents had appeared earlier as articles was not new. Duhem had applied the procedure even in some of his works on physics and was to follow it as almost standard in the publication of his works in the history of science. Although Duhem’s career and scholarly production as a philosopher of science and, especially, as a physicist have left their traces in his work as an historian of science, the works he published in his two former roles will be ignored in what follows. Even of his work as an historian, only that of his publications in medieval science will be considered. Indeed one should realize that Duhem had done work in the history of science for some years before he came to realize that there was anything of scientific importance in the Middle Ages. For example, Duhem published his Lévolution de la mécanique in 1903 without any consideration whatsoever of things medieval. Following his usual habit, the chapters of this book had appeared serially earlier in the same year in the journal Revue générale des sciences pures et appliquées. The final chapter was included in the issue dated 30 April 1903, so it is a fair inference that Duhem had not noticed before that date medieval developments or sources in the science of mechanics that were worthy of attention. As a matter of fact, because Duhem continued to have chapters of his historical books appear in one or another periodical in advance of the publication date of the book itself, one can often determine exactly when, give or take a month or two, he became aware of the importance of medieval
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science and, furthermore, judge more accurately when he came across this or that source or had this or that idea or thesis with respect to the history of medieval science. Thus the first four chapters of what was to become (in 1905) Volume 1 of Duherris Les origines de la statique had appeared in the October 1903 issue of the Revue des questions scientifiques. Not a word about medieval sources is found in these four chapters. Indeed, in moving in Chapter 1 from deliberations on pseudo-Aristotle and Archimedes on the law of the lever directly to Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) in Chapter 2, Duhem comments: “The commentaries of the Scholastics dealing with the Mechanicalproblems of Aristotle added nothing essential to the ideas of the Stagirite. To see these ideas develop new branches and bear new fruits, one must wait for the beginning of the Sixteenth century,” namely, Leonardo {Les origines de la statique [hereafter OS], 1:13; English translation, 16). One had to await the April 1904 issue of the Revue for Chapter 5 of Duhem’s prospective book on statics, which, considering Duhems usual rapidity of publication, was a fairly long time. The story behind Duhems delay in submitting Chapter 5 has often been told (Jaki [1984], 385; Martin, 149-50). Henri Bosmans (1852—1928), professor of mathematics at the Collège Saint-Michel in Brussels, himself a historian of sixteenth-century mathematics, some time late in 1903 or early 1904 had occasion to visit Julien Thirion (1852-1918), editor of the Revue des questions scientifiques, in Louvain. When Bosmans asked whether he could see the manuscript of the further chapters of Duhems work, Thirion replied: “I haven’t got it yet. Duhem has not yet finished it. He says he still has some reading to do” (Jaki [1984], 385). This “some reading,” it turned out, was in medieval sources. Perhaps Duhem had been alerted to these sources by mention of at least one of them (the De ponderibus) in a postcard he received from Paul Tannery (Tannery, Correspondance, 14: 218-19), or by reference to them in earlier works by Charles Thurot (1869) and Giovanni Vailati (1897), or perhaps he came across them on his own. Yet whatever may have led Duhem to these sources, it marked one of the first times, perhaps the first time, he had appreciated that there was something of substance in medieval science. Chapter 5 (in the April 1904 issue of the Revue des questions scientifiques) of Les origines de la statique covered the Alexandrine sources of statics in the Middle Ages (writings ascribed to Euclid, the Liber Karastonis, and the Liber de canonio), and succeeding issues (in July and October) began the history of medieval statics in earnest: Jordanus de Nemore, the school of Jordan us, medieval statics and Leonardo da Vinci, the school of Jordanus in the sixteenth century, and the reaction to Jordanus {OS [1905-06], 1: Chapters 6-9). The signal
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importance Duhem now ascribed to Jordanus and medieval statics can be seen not only from the fact that Duhem held that this medieval author was known to the entourage même de Galilee, but that Jordanus provided the seed of the principle of virtual work whose full fruition was seen in the eighteenth century in the Mécanique analytique of Lagrange (OS, 1: 123, 266). In any event, we have here written confirmation that Duhem began to see the value of medieval science, in particular of medieval statics, sometime between October 1903 and April 1904. Around the same time, however, he began to have a suspicion—and quantitatively it was only that—that some medievais might have something worthwhile to say in the realm of dynamics. Tannery wrote to Duhem on 7 November 1903, informing him that he was arranging a session on the history of science for the Deuxième Congrès International de Philosophic to be held in Geneva in September 1904 and that he hoped Duhem would write quelquespages for the event, even if he had no desire to attend the congress itself. Duhem replied on 11 November that he would contribute un petit article on the history of mechanics. Duhems petit article turned into the lengthy “De 1’accélération produite par une force constante: notes pour servir à l’histoire de la dynamique,” considered by Tannery “la pièce capitale des Actes du Congrès.” In contrast, Duhem himself had been quite modest when submitting the manuscript on 5 July 1904: “the subject,” he claimed, “was not virgin territory when I took it up; I hope, however, to have brought to light several little or badly known facts” (Tannery, Correspondance, 14: 216-21: letters of 7 November, 11 November 1903; 5 July, 17 July 1904; cf. Martin, 155-56). This lengthy article treated the explanation of acceleration from antiquity to the seventeenth century; what Duhem had in mind by these “little known facts” were medieval and Renaissance sources not noticed by earlier historians in their treatment of the topic (such as Emil Wohlwill, “Die Entdeckung des Beharrungsgesetzes,” 1883—84). He cited his own work, for example, on Jordanus’s contentions about the acceleration of heavy bodies and mentioned a reference to the topic in the fourteenth-century Walter Burleigh (1275-ca. 1345) and others, and traced the notion of impetus from antiquity, Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225—1274), Nicholas of Cusa (1401— 1464), and up to Leonardo. He had yet to uncover the role impetus played in John Buridans (1300-1358) theory of the acceleration of bodies in free fall and the continuation of the motion of projectiles. Buridan eventually was to become, of course, the real hero of fourteenth-century physics for Duhem. In sum, then, we can take it that Duhem became aware of the value of medieval mechanics—chiefly in statics, less so in dynamics—between October 1903 and July 1904.
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Duhem continued his work on the origin of statics through 1905 and 1906, while at the same time working—again publishing chapters serially in journals—on his Etudes sur Léonard de Vinci. Referring to Leonardo, the first two volumes bore the solicitous title Ceux quil a lus et ceux qui l’ont lu (Those whom he read, those who read him), once again indicating, as in Duhem’s works on statics, the focal position of da Vinci. On the other hand, Volume 3 of the Etudes (1913) abandoned this subtitle and had in its place Les précurseurs parisiens de Galilée, its contents having appeared serially from 1909 through 1913 in issues of the Bulletin italien and the Bulletin hispanique. This new subtitle to Volume 3 is a clear indication that by this time he had worked out what was to become known as the “Duhem thesis” of the crucial importance of medieval science. This “thesis” was, perhaps, most strikingly put by Duhem in a letter he wrote in 1913 to the president of the Accademia dei Lincei explaining the subject of Volume 3 of his Etudes: When one studies the works of one of those who, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, created dynamics, such as the work of Galileo, one customarily opposes these doctrines to those of Aristotle; and just as one considers the Middle Ages as a whole to follow slavishly the Peripatetic physics, one believes that one can discover an extremely deep abyss between medieval science and the science of modern times; the appearance of the latter seems to be a sudden creation that nothing in the past announced or prepared the way for. A more exact knowledge of the doctrines taught within the schools of the Middle Ages leads us to revise that judgment. It teaches us that in the fourteenth century the masters of Paris, rebelling against the authority of Aristode, had constructed a dynamics totally different from that of the Stagirite; that, essentially {en ce quils ont d'essentiel), this dynamics contained already the principles that were destined to acquire from Galileo and Descartes an exact mathematical form and experimental confirmation; it teaches us that from the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Parisian doctrines had spread to Italy where they had met with lively resistance from the Averroists, jealous guardians of the Aristotelian tradition and of the great commentator; that these doctrines had been adopted, during the sixteenth century, by the majority of mathematicians; and, finally, that in his youth Galileo had read many of the treatises where these theories, that were destined to be developed by him in a magnificent way, were laid out [Duhem, Letter (1913): 429-31]. In some ways 1913 was a banner year for Duhem. Not only did he then publish the final volume of his Etudes sur Léonard de Vinci in whose 28
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preface he spelled out his “thesis” in terms similar to those quoted above, but he was elected, as we have seen, as a nonresident member of the Académie des Sciences, on the occasion of which he submitted a “notice” of all his work up to that time (Duhem, Notice [1913]). In its historical segment he saw fit to include, verbatim, much of what he had said in the preface to Volume 3 of his Etudes, a succinct repetition of his “thesis” of the importance of medieval science. Yet in whatever form—be it the letter to the Accademia dei Lincei or his preface to the third volume of the Etudes—the thesis is in need of comment to supplement it and to fill out its implications. First, it is clear that Duhem believed in a slow evolution of scientific knowledge. He speaks of foundations being laid in the fourteenth century, reaching another stage in the fifteenth century, yet another in the sixteenth, and then receiving their final form in the seventeenth century with Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and René Descartes (1596-1650). Yet even before he had laid down his definitive 1913 “manifesto” with respect to medieval science, he claimed that “science does not know of spontaneous generation” and that it progresses “by an uninterrupted sequence of barely perceptible improvements” naturally “from doctrines set forth in the schools of the Middle Ages” (OS, 1: 156, iv). Duhem was fond of expressing his gradualist sense of scientific progress in biological metaphors: he proposes that “the graceful flight of the butterfly with glistening wings makes one forget the slow and painful crawling of the humble and sombre caterpillar” {OS 2: 286; quoted by Jaki [1984], 389) or that Galilean mechanics was an adult form of which Buridan’s mechanics was the larva (Le systeme du monde [hereafter SM\, 8: 200). Science does not make any “brisk jumps,” is not constituted of “sudden and unforeseen discoveries”; important discoveries are “almost always the fruits of slow and complicated preparation pursued for centuries” (Etudes, 1:1,156). This slow-developing continuity was characteristic of science, and it was evident in no uncertain terms when science moved from its medieval phase into its early modern form. A second matter of business is to determine exactly what were the accomplishments in fourteenth-century science that Duhem had in mind in working out his thesis. In mechanics, both dynamics and kinematics, there seems to be little doubt that the most important (especially to judge from the frequency with which he refers to them and the amount of time he spent in establishing them) were (1) the successful explanation of the continuation of projectile motion and the acceleration of bodies in free fall and, (2) the development of the doctrine of the latitude of forms (which is to say, those medieval attempts to determine how forms or qualities, including motion, increase or decrease in intensity, for example, how something becomes hotter or redder or faster). In Scholastic terms, this was called the doctrine of the intension and 29
remission of forms, and the latitude of forms had to do with the various attempts to measure these increases and decreases in forms or qualities. This much Duhem had specified in 1913 with the completion of Volume 3 of Etudes. Yet he considerably expanded this list of medieval accomplishments in the few remaining years of his life when he wrote Le système du monde. If one focuses on those volumes that were published posthumously, one finds the roster of fourteenth-century accomplishments referred to above (since he published verbatim large sections of Volume 3 of Etudes in what was to become Volume 7 of Le système), but in addition the following items: the assertion of the possibility of infinité and infinitesimal magnitudes, of the existence of void space, of the rotation of the earth, and of a plurality of worlds; the establishment of new, non-Aristotelian views of motion, place, and time. Other “successes” were also duly documented: for example, what the medievals had to say about the theory of tides, the equilibrium of the earth and the sea, and other geological phenomena (SM , 9: chaps. 15-18), but one senses that they were of less importance to him. A third most significant, indeed crucial, supplement to Duhem’s thesis is the all-important question of what made it possible for all these fourteenthcentury accomplishments to come about. Duhem’s answer was short and direct: the action of the church in 1277. For it was in that year that the bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier, condemned 219 propositions that were held to embody “quosdam manifestos et execrabiles errores,” an event that assumed crucial importance in Duhem’s eyes. What seems to be the first explicit reference to Tempier’s action occurs in the 1909 Volume 2 of Etudes where, with two of the condemned propositions in the back of his mind (to which we shall return later), he claims for 1277 the honor of being the date of la naissance de la Science moderne (Études, 2: 412). Later in Volume 3 (1913) of his Études, Duhem heralded Tempier’s action in condemning these propositions as an event that was going to liberate Christian thought from the yoke of Peripateticism and Neoplatonism and thus produce what was to be called the science of the “modernes.” Tempier s condemnation provided, he believed, a veritable citadel protecting Christian thought from pagan assault (Études, 3: viii, 125). On the other hand, no mention is made of 1277 in his 1913 letter to the Accademia dei Lincei, which is curious since the explicit purpose of this letter was to give the sum and substance of Volume 3 of the Études. O f course the condemnations of 1277 had attracted the attention of scholars, largely in the history of medieval philosophy, before Duhem, but none had ascribed so momentous a role to them in terms of what was to come in fourteenth-century thought, let alone fourteenth-century science. This is not to say, however, that Duhem was totally inattentive to earlier notices of the
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1277 condemnations. For when, at the beginning of Volume 7 of Le système du monde, the “naissance de la Physique moderne” is again said to date from Tempiers 1277 action, Duhem reveals that the operative description is due to his colleague Albert Dufourcq ([1872-1952] SM, 7: 4). Indeed, although Dufourcq does not seem to have spoken of the birth of modern physics, he did view 1277 as crucial because of its radical separation of divine omnipotence from Aristotelian necessitarianism (Dufourcq, 361; cf. Jaki [1984], 409). However, the extreme import of the 1277 condemnations is revealed only when one goes deeper into the specifics of how Duhem regarded particular condemned propositions and their influence on subsequent thought. Two of them had, in Duhems mind, more impact than all others: (1) Proposition 3 4 — “Quod prima causa non posset plures mundos facere”—was naturally concerned with the consideration of the possibility, against Aristotle, that God could have created more than one world; (2) Proposition 4 9 — “Quod Deus non possit movere celum motu recto. Et ratio est, quia tunc relinqueret vacuum”—which for Duhem did double duty in the development of new views concerning place and the existence of a void (see, in particular, the “before and after 1277” sections in Le système du monde dealing with place [SM, 7: 1 5 8 - 3 0 2 ] ) and the void [SM, 8: 1 6 - 6 0 ] ) . These two propositions were, he averred, the foundation of the whole edifice of Aristotelian physics, and their being declared anathema implicitly demanded the creation of a new physics that would be acceptable to Christian reason (SM, 6: 66). Thus, though he was able to connect the events of 1277 with new medieval ideas in cosmology relative to place, the void, and the plurality of worlds, he was extremely hard-pressed to claim an influence of the condemnations upon the seminal medieval ideas in mechanics—such as impetus theory and the doctrine of the latitude of forms—which, after all, formed the nub of Duhems contention that the principles of the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century were already there in the fourteenth. Summarizing the foregoing, one can arguably come up with the following encapsulation of the “Duhem thesis.” The church’s criticism of Aristotelian (necessitarian) metaphysics led in the fourteenth century at the University of Paris to the formulation of novel ideas in mechanics and natural philosophy. These were the work, for the most part, of John Buridan, Albert of Saxony (1316-1390), and Nicole Oresme (ca. 1320-1382). Duhem characterized this new physics, especially that of Buridan, who served, as it were, as the chef d'école, as a “Science expérimentale” which engendered a “Positivisme chrétien” (SM, 6: 729). Subsequently, the doctrines of the new physics were disseminated in the sixteenth century, when a key event was Domingo de Soto’s
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(1494—1560) putting together uniformiter dijformis motus (uniformly accelerated motion) with bodies in free fall. Finally, as stated in the letter to the Accademia dei Lincei quoted above, Galileo came to know the treatises containing this fourteenth-century Parisian physics and was to bring it into proper mathematical form. A fourth gloss to the “Duhem thesis ״should be noted. Duhem spoke continually about the central role of Parisian physics in the fourteenth century, although he realized that some of the same things were going on at this time at Oxford. Yet he did his best to downgrade this English role. At times, he (wrongly) dated Oxonian treatises so late that Parisian efforts could have influenced them, when often it was actually the other way around (SM , 7: 84, 602). In general, when Duhem cites English Scholastics, it is usually to compare them with the superior Parisian scholars. Oxford masters, we are told, possessed “terribly foggy intellects,” which had dire need of ‘going in search of the light of Paris” (ibid., 636). In contrast, Buridan is said to harbor a sharp view (ibid., 79) and Oresme to exhibit elegant methods that could not penetrate the insurmountable barrier of la Manche (ibid., 645). For Duhem, one of the reasons for this second-rank status of English scholars was their all too frequent reliance on logic and sophismata. He is proud that Oresme never wrote anything on logic; excuses Albert of Saxony’s collection of no less than 259 sophismata because he also commented extensively on natural philosophy (ibid., 620—21); and neglects to mention anywhere that Buridan wrote extremely important treatises—a Sophismata among them, no less— in fourteenth-century logic. Thus, Duhem was in a position where he was better able to heap disdain on “cette acrobatie logique . . . en vogue à l’école d’Oxford” (ibid., 622). Furthermore, if one compares Oxford with Paris, we often find in the former nothing but a pitiful pile of sophismata in which one searches in vain for even a reflection of the truth (ibid., 647—48). Eventually Oxford, Duhem believed, killed Paris. For the day that Paris forgot its own traditions and adopted the dialectic of the University of Oxford marks the decadence of “la scolastique parisienne” (ibid., 627). Thus, all in all, Duhem had an abiding prejudice against medieval logic, especially its English practitioners (on this, see Murdoch [1991], 266—71). Nor did he exactly hide this bias. He concluded the preface to Volume 3 (1913) of Études (xiii-xiv) by noting that the long and extraordinarily powerful effort in replacing Aristotelian physics by modern physics had received support from the most ancient and resplendent of medieval universities, namely, the University of Paris. He adds: “How could a Parisian fail to be proud of this?” Similarly, he notes that at the University of Paris the Picard Jean Buridan and the Norman Nicole Oresme were the most eminent 32
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promoters of this effort. He adds: “How could a Frenchman not experience legitimate pride in this?” To make matters complete, Duhem appends a reference to 1277 when he observes that the University of Paris, which at that time was the guardian of Catholic orthodoxy, led the struggle against Peripatetic and Neoplatonic paganism. He adds: “How could a Christian not render thanks to God for this?” Duhem fleshed out the 1913 thesis in Volumes 6 through 9 of Le système du monde. The initial volumes of Le système covered Greek cosmology and the Latin astronomy of the Middle Ages (under which rubrics Arabic astronomical and cosmological ideas were occasionally considered!). Beginning with part of Volume 4 and all of Volume 5 (the last to be published in Duhem’s lifetime), he documented the rise of Aristotelianism. It was really with Volume 6, however, that his thesis makes its appearance. Its very title reveals the fact: Le reflux de l,Aristotélisme: les condemnations de 1277. Hard on the heels of this volume, the next three provide a detailed account of “la physique parisienne au XlVe siècle,” where each of the members of Duhem’s canonical roster of achievements receive appropriate treatment and under whose rubric appears the story, not just of Parisian successes, but of Oxford efforts as well. (Volume 10 covers “La cosmologie du XVe siècle” and, inter alia, carries some of the topics of the preceding volumes into that century.) One could not possibly mention all those who approved of what Duhem had done for the history of science, but perhaps the most appropriate place to begin such a selected account is E.J. Dijksterhuis’s (1892-1965) 1924 Val en Worp, an essay in the history of mechanics from Aristotle to Newton. Giving a fair amount of Latin text behind the “new insights into Scholastic natural sciences” that he believed Duhem provided (the latter, unfortunately, almost always gave only French translations of the pertinent sources), Dijksterhuis prefaced his documentation by noting Duhem’s “everlasting merit” first for having corrected the usual, very negative view of medieval science by showing what had been accomplished in the fourteenth century, and second, for quite rightly calling the authors of these accomplishments “les précurseurs parisiens de Galilée” (Dijksterhuis [1924], 57-58, 121). Shortly after Dijksterhuis’s book, in his “La physique nouvelle et les différents courants philosophiques au XIVe siècle,” Konstantyn Michalski took extensive notice of Duhem’s work, offering from the vantage point not of a historian of medieval science but of Latin medieval philosophy in general what he modestly claimed to be “quelques renseignements complémentaires” (Michalski, 140-58). Other scholars also built positively upon Duhems conclusions and ideas; criticisms of his contentions took longer to develop. When they did, one can see three aspects within the critical reaction: (1) Duhem’s claims 33
concerning fourteenth-century “origins” of seventeenth-century science; (2) response to his view about the crucial importance of the 1277 condemnations; (3) restoration of the proper place of logic and the English in the history of fourteenth-century science. (1) One of the earliest criticisms of Duhem’s view of the fourteenthcentury origins of modern science, as well as the most telling because of the documentation it brought with it, was that of a historian of science whose primary area of concern was not the Middle Ages but rather the Renaissance and the seventeenth century: Alexandre Koyré (1892—1964). Already in 1935 Koyré had presented his disclaimer of any significant medieval background for the Scientific Revolution, a disclaimer that was to reach a much wider audience in the first of his Études Galiléennes in 1939: namely, that in spite of the appearance of historical continuity that Duhem had urged, classical physics, issuing from the heads of Giordano Bruno (ca. 1548-1600), Galileo, and Descartes, did not in fact continue the medieval physics of the précurseurs parisiens de Galilee; the true precursor of classical physics was not Buridan or Oresme, but Archimedes. What is more, the intellectual attitude characteristic of this final “classical physics” was the result of a “decisive mutation” (Koyré [1939], 1:9-10). The next important critic of Duhem was Anneliese Maier (19051971). Just how significant she believed a critical evaluation of Duhems contentions to be can be seen from the very title of the first volume (1949) of her five volume Studien on late Scholastic natural philosophy: Die Vorläufer Galileis im 14. fahrhundert. However, although she thus spoke of fourteenth-century forerunners to Galileo, it was in a different sense— or so she felt—from that of Duhem: On the one hand, late medieval accomplishments did not anticipate (vorweggenommen) those of the seventeenth century. On the other, they had prepared (vorbereitet) the way for them (preface to the first edition of Volume 3 [1943], An der Grenze von Scholastik und Naturwissenschaft, 5). Further, she agreed with Duhem’s gradualism when she claimed that the history of the exact sciences in the Christian West was a history of the gradual vanquishing (allmähliche Überwindungj of Aristotelianism; but she was at odds with Duhem insofar as she maintained that there were two stages to this vanquishing: the first culminates in the fourteenth century, the second in the seventeenth, and the first does not, as Duhem contended, lead to the second (Maier, vol. 1 [1949] Vorläufer, 1-2, 4-5). Maiers fellow, and slighdy younger, historian of medieval mechanics, Marshall Clagett (b. 1916), was equally disturbed with Duhems procedure and with the erroneous results it so frequently seemed to produce (Clagett
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[1958]: 359-62; and [1962]: 251-52). His own view of the importance of the medieval accomplishments for the formation of modern science was “that the physical concepts of a Galileo, or a Descartes, or even a Newton, radical as they might seem, were conditioned in many ways by the ancient and medieval learning that survived into the early modern period” (Clagett [1959], xxi). Although Clagett did not himself say so in so many words, it would seem fair to relate his view of the medieval “conditioning” of seventeenth-century physical concepts to Maier s contention of medieval preparation. In conclusion, it would surely seem proper to view both Maier and Clagett as opting for a good deal less continuity between medieval and modern than was maintained by Duhem. This is not to say, however, that both would not agree that appreciable continuity was “left over” and nevertheless did obtain between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. It seems fair to say that this is announced by their general ascriptions of “conditioning” or “preparation” to the fourteenth century, but more than that by the roster of topics they treat when they get down to the business of writing their histories of medieval mechanics and natural philosophy, for, with some exceptions, these rosters are quite Duhemian. To be sure, the topics themselves are treated more in their proper medieval contexts. Nonetheless, the fact that Duhem considered the most important entries in his roster of fourteenthcentury accomplishments (namely, the problems of projectile motion and acceleration in free fall and the doctrine of the latitude of forms) to be directly related to, and influential upon, what transpired in the seventeenth century, together with the fact that both Maier and Clagett devote considerable attention to just those accomplishments, surely reveals Duhems decided influence on the kinds of continuity they claimed between medieval and modern. (2) The response to Duhems view of the crucial importance of 1277 was decidedly mixed. Dijksterhuis, for example, writing as late as 1950, gives reasonable coverage to the relevance Duhem had urged for his two favorite condemned propositions, concluding that “it cannot be denied that Tempier’s action, however contestable it may have been in many respects, had in a sense a stimulating effect on natural philosophy because it obliged philosophers to reflect more seriously on the concepts of place, time, and motion” (Dijksterhuis [1961], 174; the Dutch original was published in 1950). Koyré’s stance was quite different. Koyré footnoted the admission by the noted historian of medieval philosophy Étienne Gilson (18841978: see essay in this volume) that 1277 might be viewed as the date when the birth of “cosmologies modernes” became possible within the Christian milieu (Gilson, 460), by quipping that this possibility often remained just
35
that: possible. The majority of Scholastic natural philosophers preferred, he claimed, to study the world as it actually was, not to study possibilities God could have caused to be had He so wished but did not cause to be because He did not so wish (Koyré [1949], 46-51). While not as severely critical as Koyré, Clagett contended that Duhem’s thesis about 1277 had “not been tested in any extensive way,” but that the condemnations “may have played some role in certain cosmological speculations like those connected with the possibility of the existence of a plurality of worlds” (Clagett [1967], 275). Still, the emphasis placed on 1277 quite clearly ignores, Clagett held, the fact that there were quite substantial developments in natural philosophy leading to fourteenth-century Parisian physics that had nothing to do with the condemnations (see ibid.; and Clagett [1962]: 251). Far and away the most important consideration of Duhem and the condemnations has been that of Edward Grant. This is perhaps to be expected since he worked extensively in just those areas relating to cosmology, place, and void space that, in Duhem’s eyes, were so intimately involved with the condemnations and with his two pet propositions in particular. However, Grant did not agree with Duhems thesis of the fourteenth-century origins of seventeenth-century science, and he considered Duhem’s claim for 1277 as the birth of modern science to be “exaggerated and indefensible” (Grant: 217). Yet Grant asserts that Duhem was right to emphasize the special significance of condemned propositions 34 and 49. This assessment corresponds to Grants belief that Duhem had “moderated his opinion” about 1277, moving from his description of 1277 as the birth of modern science in Volume 2 of Études to a concentration on propositions 34 and 49 and their relation to the criticism of the Aristotelian theories of place, time, and the infinite in Volume 8 of Le système du monde (ibid.: 216). As for Koyré’s verdict on Duhem and 1277, Grant admitted that Koyré was correct in his insistence that most Scholastics would prefer to study the world as it really was, but wrong to argue “that undue concern with unrealizable possibilities was unproductive and sterile” (ibid.). (3) As we have seen, Duhem regarded both the English and logic as having deleterious effects on fourteenth-century science, but further investigation of the texts pertinent to these areas showed, not merely that Duhem was quite incorrect in his prejudicial treatment of logic and English scholars, but that there were important corrections deriving from the intimate involvement of logic in natural philosophy to be made to Duhems canonic roster of medieval accomplishments. Duhem was right in maintaining that the role played by logic in English natural philosophy in the first half of the fourteenth century was 36
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appreciably more extensive than it was in parallel French material. But he was wrong to dismiss it as somehow inferior to French efforts in natural philosophy (which, in any case, contained in their own right a good deal of the application of logical techniques to physics). Of course, Duhem knew of the works of the Oxford Calculators, but he simply did not understand them, especially when their analysis of physical problems bristled with the new logic and sophismata. For that matter, neither Maier nor Clagett fully realized the central role that logical techniques and conceptions played in fourteenth-century science. This realization was left to Curtis Wilson. Something of a new era in the study of these Oxford Calculators began when he published his slim, but extremely important volume William Heytesbury: Medieval Logic and the Rise o f Mathematical Physics (1956). As the subtitle of this book indicates, it is the close involvement of logic in what Heytesbury (fl. 1340) was doing (the titles of his two major works are Regulae solvendi sophismata and Sophismata) that was at the center of Wilsons analysis. It is true that Duhem had treated some of the topics that Wilson concentrates on in Heytesbury and in other medievals, but he did not, as Wilson himself pointed out, cover the most important authors or go into the topics in sufficient detail to appreciate their significance for the fourteenth-century scholar. Subsequent to Wilson, any number of other historians have realized and emphasized the importance of logic for late-medieval natural philosophy (see, to cite only a few scholars, the volume edited by Stefano Caroti, and that edited by Norman and Barbara Kretzmann; see also Murdoch; and Edith Sylla). Recently there has been a revival of interest in Duhem in which, by and large, his thesis of the continuity between medieval and early modern science has met with varying degrees of approval. Duhem’s contention, for example, that Galileo knew of fourteenth-century Parisian physics has been affirmed and historically sharpened. One of his primary supports came from Galileo’s having twice referred to certain doctores Parisienses in his Juvenilia (Etudes, 3: 582—83). Yet several years after Duhems death Antonio Favaro, editor of the National Edition of Galileos works, in his essay “Galileo Galilei e i Doctores Parisienses” maintained that although the]uvenilia are written in Galileo’s hand, they are materials copied secondhand by an extremely young Galileo and should not be taken as expressing Galileo’s own thought or reasoning. Yet, that they do represent something of Galileo’s own thought and do not date from his youthful student days has been shown by William Wallace, Alistair Crombie, and Adriano Carugo, substantiating Duhem’s GalileoParis connection. Alternatively, this connection may not have been as direct as Duhem assumed, deriving instead, as Wallace has shown, from Galileo’s contact with Jesuit professors at the Collegio Romano (Wallace [1984]). 37
Even more pro-Duhem have been the investigations of Roger Ariew and Peter Barker. In an essay entitled “Duhem and Continuity in the History of Science,” the authors defend Duhem’s view of the continuity between medieval and early modern science and go on the attack with respect to its major critics, chiefly Koyré and Maier. Among the items of their armamentarium are the charges that Koyré has misinterpreted Duhem’s claim of 1277 as “la naissance de la science moderne,” since, quite possibly, Duhem’s language is not literal but figurative. Furthermore, the claims of Koyré and Maier are really based, these authors point out, on the discontinuity of medieval metaphysics from modern metaphysics, and consequently they do not gainsay the continuity of medieval and early modern science claimed by Duhem. In any case, for Duhem, positivist that he was, science excludes a lasting role for metaphysics. Finally, Ariew and Barker maintain that it was wrongheaded to accuse Duhem “for mis-dating the revolution that gave birth to modern science”: in “Duhem’s account of science there can be no revolutions, so he can hardly be blamed for getting their dates wrong” (Ariew and Barker, 374). Yet whether one is in agreement with or critical of Duhem’s role in the history of medieval science, there is no denying that Duhem essentially founded in large part the history of medieval science. His pioneering efforts in this regard have been claimed to be such that “all future work [in the history of medieval science] will consist, in large measure, in working the veins which he has opened” (Durand, 168). Even his critic Clagett has maintained “that one can say that in a sense the succeeding study of medieval mechanics has been largely devoted to an extension or a refutation of Duhem’s work” (Clagett [1959], xxi). Duhem did instigate and stimulate immeasurably the investigation of the history of medieval science; as its putative founder he himself is still today worthy of careful and extensive study. Se l e c t e d Bib l io g r a ph y
Duhems voluminous scientific publications have been omitted. The most comprehensive published bibliography appears in Jaki [1984], pp. 437-56. Duhem himself listed his publications to 1913 in his Notice, pp. 7-34. See also Stoffel.
Works B o o k s a n d A rtic les
“Sur le potentiel thermodynamique et la théorie de la pile voltaique.” Comptes Rendus des Séances de ÏAcademie des Sciences 99 (1884): 1113-15· Le potentiel thermodynamique et ses applications a la mécanique chimique et à l'étude des phénomènes électriques. Paris: Hermann, 1886. Uévolution de la mécanique. Paris: Joanin, 1903. Appeared earlier in 1903 in vol. 14 of Revue générale des sciences pures et appliquées. Translated as The Evolution o f
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Mechanics by Michael Cole. Alphen aan den Rijn: Sijthoff and Noordhoff, 1980. Les origines de la statique. 2 vols. Paris: Hermann, 1905-06. Previously appeared (without the additional Notes) in volumes 54-60 (1903-1906) of the Revue des questions scientifiques. Translated as The Origins o f Statics by G.F. Leneaux, V.N. Vagliente, and G.H. Wagener, with a foreword by Stanley L. Jaki. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1991. “De l’accélération produite par une force constante: notes pour servir à l’histoire de la dynamique.” In Ile Congres International de Philosophie: Comptes Rendus, edited by Edouard Claparède, pp. 859-915· Geneva: Kundig, 1905. La théorie physique: son objet et sa structure. Paris: Chevalier and Rivière, 1906. 2nd ed. rev. and expanded. Paris: Rivière, 1914. Facsimile reprint of 2nd ed. “avec avant-propos, index et bibliographie” by Paul Brouzeng. Paris: Vrin, 1981. First published in vols. 4 -6 of Revue de philosophie, 1904-05. Translated as The A im and Structure o f Physical Theory by Philip P. Wiener, foreword by Louis de Broglie. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954. Études sur Léonard de Vinci: Ceux q u il a lus et ceux qui l ’o nt lu. 2 vols. Paris: Hermann, 1906-09. With prefaces, four previously unpublished chapters, and additional Notes. First published in vols. 5-8 o f Bulletin italien, 1905-08. Vol. 3, Les précurseurs parisiens de Galilée. Paris: Hermann, 1913. With a new preface. First published in vols. 9-12 of Bulletin italien and vols. 12-14 of Bulletin hispanique, 1909-12. Le mouvement absolu et le mouvement relatif. Montligeon: Imprimerie-librairie de Montligeon, 1909. First published in vols. 11-14 of Revue de philosophie, 1907-09. Σ Ω Ζ Ε ΙΝ T A Φ Α ΙΝ Ο Μ ΕΝ Α : Essai sur la notion de théorie physique de Platon à Galilée. Paris: Hermann, 1908. Facsimile reprint edited by Paul Brouzeng. Paris: Vrin, 1982. First published in vol. 156 of Annales de philosophie chrétienne, 1908. Translated as To Save the Phenomena: An Essay on the Idea o f Physical Theoryfrom Plato to Galileo by Edmund Doland and Chaninah Maschler, with an Introductory Essay by Stanley L. Jaki. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969. Notice sur les titres et travaux scientifiques de Pierre Duhem. Bordeaux: Gounouilhou, 1913. Selections translated as “Logical Examination o f Physical Theory” and “Research of the History of Physical Theories.” In Pierre Duhem: Historian and Philosopher o f Science, edited by Roger Ariew and Peter Barker, pp. 151-69. Synthèse 83, nos. 2 and 3. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1990. Le système du monde: histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic. 10 vols. Paris: Hermann, 1913-59. (See George Sarton and Marie Tannery in Sources.) M edieval Cosmology: Theories o f Infinity, Place, Time, Void, and the Plurality o f Worlds. Edited and translated by Roger Ariew, with a foreword by Stanley L. Jaki. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. The translations are made from volumes 7-10 (with a brief section from volume 1) o f Le système du monde. Prémices philosophiques: présentées avec une introduction en anglais. Edited by Stanley L. Jaki. Leiden: Brill, 1987. [Reprints philosophical and historical articles from the Revue des questions scientifiques from 1892 through 1896.] Essays in the History and Philosophy o f Science. Edited and translated by Roger Ariew and Peter Barker. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996. LAube du savoir: Epitomé du système du monde. Edited by Anastasios Brenner. Paris: Hermann, 1997.
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Letters
a n d
Pa p e r s
“Correspondance de Paul Tannery et de Pierre Duhem (1896-1904).” in Correspondance, vol. 14 of [Tannery’s] Mémoires scientifiques, edited by Auguste Dies, pp. 210-26. Paris: Gautier-Villars, 1937. Letter to the President of the Accademia dei Lincei. Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, Classe sci. fisiche, matem. T I (1913): 429-31.
Sources Ariew, Roger, and Peter Barker, eds. Pierre Duhem: Historian and Philosopher o f Science. Synthèse 83, nos. 2 and 3. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1990. ---------. “Duhem and Continuity in the History of Science.” Revue internationale de philosophie AG (1992): 323-43. Bosmans, Henri. “Pierre Duhem (1861-1916): Notice sur ses travaux relatifs à l’histoire des sciences.” Revue des questions scientifiques 30 (1921): 30-62, 427-47. Brenner, Anastasios. Duhem, science, réalité et apparence: la relation entre philosophie et histoire dans l ’œuvre de Pierre Duhem. Paris: Vrin, 1990. Brouzeng, Paul. Duhem, 1861—1916: science et providence. Paris: Belin, 1987. Caroti, Stefano, ed. Studies in Medieval Natural Philosophy. Florence: Olschki, 1989. Clagett, Marshall. Review of vols. 6-9 of Duhem’s Le système du Monde. Isis 49 (1958): 359-62; 53 (1962): 251-52. ---------. The Science o f Mechanics in the M iddle Ages. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959. ---------. “Some Novel Trends in the Science of the Fourteenth Century.” In Art, Science, and History in the Renaissance, edited by Charles S. Singleton, pp. 275-303. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967. Crombie, Alistair, and Adriano Carugo. “The Jesuits and Galileo’s Ideas of Science and of Nature.” A nnali dell’Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze 8 (1983): 3-68. Dijksterhuis, E.J. Val en Worp: Een bijdrage tot de Geschiednis der Mechanica van Aristóteles tot Newton. Groningen: Noordhoff, 1924. ---------. De Mechanisering van het Wereldbeeld. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1950. Translated as The Mechanization o f the World Picture by C. Dikshoorn. Oxford: Clarendon, 1961. Dufourcq, Albert. Époque occidentale: Histoire de l ’église du XIe au XVIIIe siècle. Le christianisme et l ’organisation féodale 1049-1300. Vol. 6 of L’avenir du christianisme. Première partie: Le passé chrétien. Vie et pensée. 3rd rev. ed. Paris: Bloud, 1911. Durand, Dana B. “Nicole Oresme and the Mediaeval Origins of Modem Science.” Speculum 16 (1941): 167-85. Favaro, Antonio. “Galileo Galilei e i Doctores Parisienses.” Rendiconto della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filosofiche 27 (1918): 139-50. Gilson, Étienne. La philosophie au moyen âge, des origines patristiques à la fin du XLVe siècle. 2nd. rev. ed. Paris: Payot, 1944. Ginzburg, Benjamin. “Duhem and Jordanus Nemorarius.” Isis 25 (1936): 341-62. Grant, Edward. “The Condemnation of 1277, God’s Absolute Power, and Physical Thought in the Late Middle Ages.” Viator 10 (1979): 211-44. Jaki, Stanley L. Uneasy Genius: The Life and Work o f Pierre Duhem. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1984.
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---------. Scientist and Catholic: An Essay on Pierre Duhem. Front Royal, Va.: Christendom Press, 1991. [Contains appendices of translations from work of Duhem.] ---------. Reluctant Heroine: The Life and Work o f Hélène Duhem. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1992. Koyré, Alexandre. Etudes Galiléennes. 3 vols. Paris: Hermann, 1939. Translated as Galileo Studies by John Mepham. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press; Hassocks [England]: Harvester Press, 1978. ---------. “Le vide et l’espace infini au XlVe siècle.” Archives d ’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 17 (1949) : 45-91. Kretzmann, Norman, and Barbara Ensign Kretzmann, eds. and trans. The Sophismata o f Richard Kilvington: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Lacoin, Maurice. “De la scolastique à la science moderne: Pierre Duhem et Anneliese Maier.” Revue des questions scientifiques 127 [=5 série, vol. 17] (1956): 325-43. ---------. “Sur la gestation de la science moderne (XV-XVI siècles).” Revue d ’histoire des sciences 9 (1956): 193-207. Maier, Anneliese. Studien zur Naturphilosophie der Spätscholastik. 5 vols. Rome: Edizioni Storia e Letteratura, 1949-58. Vol. 1, Die Vorläufer Galileis im 14. Jahrhundert. 1949. 2nd ed., 1966. Vol. 2, Zwei Grundprobleme der scholastischen Naturphilosophie. Das Problem der intensiven Grösse. Die Impetustheorie. 2nd ed., 1951 [first edition in two parts: Das Problem der intensiven Grösse (Leipzig: Keller, 1939) and Die Impetustheorie (Vienna: Scroll, 1940)]. Vol. 3, An der Grenze von Scholastik und Naturwissenschaft. Die Struktur der materiellen Substanz. Das Problem der Gravitation. Die M athematik der Formlatituden. 2nd ed., 1952 [first edition (Essen: Essener Verlagsanstalt, 1943)]. Vol. 4, Metaphysische Hintergründe der spätscholastischen Naturphilosophie. 1955. Vol. 5, Zwischen Philosophie und Mechanik. 1958. [A brief selection from these volumes and other writings of Maier have been edited and translated with an introduction by Steven D. Sargent in his On the Threshold o f Exact Science: Selected Writings o f Anneliese Maier on Late Medieval Natural Philosophy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.] Maiocchi, Roberto. Chimica e filosofia: scienza, epistemologia, storia e religione nell’opera di Pierre Duhem. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1985. Martin, Russell Niall Dickson. Pierre Duhem: Philosophy and History in the Work o f a Believing Physicist. La Salle, 111.: Open Court, 1991. Michalski, Konstantyn. “La physique nouvelle et les différents courants philosophiques au XIVe siècle.” Bulletin international de L’Académie polonaise des sciences et des lettres, Classe d ’histoire et de philosophie et de philologie (1927): 93-164. Miller, Donald G. “Duhem, Pierre Maurice Marie.” In vol. 4 of Dictionary o f Scientific Biography, edited by Charles Gillispie, pp. 225-33. New York: Scribners, 1971. Murdoch, John E. “Propositional Analysis in Fourteenth-Century Natural Philosophy: A Case Study.” Synthèse 40 (1979): 117-46. ---------. “Scientia mediantibus vocibus׳. Metalinguistic Analysis in Late Medieval Natural Philosophy.” In Sprache und Erkenntnis im Mittelalter, edited by Jan P. Beckmann, pp. 73-106. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1981. ---------. “Pierre Duhem and the History of Late Medieval Science and Philosophy in the Latin West.” In Gli studi di filosofia medievalefra Otto e Novecento: contributo a un bilancio storiografico (atti del convegno internazionale, Roma 21—23 settembre 1989), edited by Ruedi Imbach and Alfonso Maierii, pp. 253-302. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1991.
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Pierre-Duhem, Hélène. Un savantfrançais, Pierre Duhem. Paris: Pion, 1936. “Pierre Duhem— sa vie— ses œuvres” and “Pierre Duhem— son œuvre scientifique.” Mémoires de la Société des sciences physiques et naturelles de Bordeaux, 7th series, vol. 1 (1917-1927): 1-718. Sarton, George, and Marie Tannery. “Appel pour l’achèvement du Système du monde de Pierre Duhem.” Isis 26 (1937): 302-03. Stoffel, Jean-François, ed. Pierre Duhem et ses doctorands: bibliographie de la littérature primaire et secondaire. Lo Neuve: Centre Interfacultaire d’Etude en Histoire des Sciences, 1996. Sylla, Edith. “The Oxford Calculators.” In The Cambridge History o f Later Medieval Philosophy, edited by Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, pp. 540-63. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Thurot, Charles. “Recherches historiques sur le Principe dArchimède.” Revue archéologique, n.s., 18 (1868): 389-406; 19 (1869): 42-49, 111-23, 284-99, 345-60; 20(1869): 14-33. Vailati, Giovanni. “Il principio dei lavori virtuali da Aristotele a Erone dAlessandria.” A tti della R. Accademia delle scienze di Torino 32 (1897): 940-62. Wallace, William A., trans. Galileo’s Early Notebooks: The Physical Questions. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977. ---------. Prelude to Galileo: Essays on M edieval and Sixteenth-Century Sources o f Galileo’s Thought. Dordrecht: Reidei, 1981. ---------. Galileo and His Sources: The Heritage ofthe Collegio Romano in Galileo’s Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Wilson, Curtis. William Heytesbury: Medieval Logic and thè Rise o f M athematical Physics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1956. Wohlwill, Emil. “Die Entdeckung des Beharrungsgesetzes.” Zeitschriftfu r Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenscha.fi 14 (1883): 365-410; 15 (1884): 70-135, 337-87.
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M
a u r ic e
D
e
W
ul f
( 1867 1947 )
t Fernand
Van Steenberghen
Maurice De Wulf, pioneer in the study of medieval history and philosophy during the first half of the twentieth century, was born in the small town of Poperinghe, Belgium, on 6 April 1867 to Henri De Wulf, a doctor, and Marie Berten. In October 1885 he entered the University of Louvain, where he began his studies in philosophy and letters and completed them with the study of law. He became a doctor of philosophy and letters in 1889 and a doctor of law in 1891. At Louvain, De Wulf met the person who was to influence the direction of his career decisively, Désiré Mercier (1851—1926). To make Merciers importance clear, it is necessary to go back to 1879, when Leo XIII published the encyclical Aeterni Patris, in which he entreated the Catholic philosophers to return to Saint Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225—1274) and follow him as teacher. Leo XIII had been nuncio to Brussels from 1843 to 1846; he had become familiar with the University of Louvain, which was at the time the only Catholic university outside of Rome. In 1880, to promote the acceptance of the views set forth in Aeterni Patris, the Pope asked the Belgian bishops to establish a special chair at Louvain for the teaching of the philosophy of Saint Thomas. This chair was created in 1882 and entrusted to the young Belgian priest Désiré Mercier. Mercier was immediately successful as a teacher; he attracted numerous students among the laity. De Wulf was one of them, an assiduous listener and fervent admirer of Mercier. To his two doctoral titles De Wulf added that of licencié en philosophie thomiste (1892). Yet this, for him, was not enough; he wanted to attain the superior degree of doctor of Thomistic philosophy, which required the publication of a dissertation. De Wulf consulted Mercier on the choice of theme, and suddenly, in the midst of their conversation, Mercier asked him, “Why dont you study the philosophy of the Middle Ages?” De Wulf eagerly accepted Merciers proposal: that was the starting point for his career as a 43
medievalist. He was going to play a part in the great project about which Mercier had been thinking for several years: to enlarge the chair of Thomistic philosophy into an institute. Because the scholarly study of the work of Thomas Aquinas would have to include the study of his historic milieu, the institute of Thomistic philosophy would comprise several chairs, among which would be a chair of the History of Medieval Philosophy. On a travel grant awarded him by the Belgian government in recognition of La valeur esthétique de h moralité dans l'art, De Wulf left for Berlin in January 1892, where he attended the lectures of Eduard Zeller (18141908), Friedrich Paulsen (1846-1908), and Hermann Ebbinghaus (18501909). He moved on to Paris where he followed the courses of Charles Victor Langlois (1863-1929) and frequented the Department of Manuscripts of the Bibliothèque Nationale. On his return to Louvain, he obtained the degree of doctor of Thomistic philosophy on 23 June 1893 and in July was named professor at the newly established Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, a post he held until 1939. In 1894, with Mercier, he founded the Revue Néo-scolastique (since 1946 Revue philosophique de Louvain), of which he was to be secretary until 1906 and then director, when Monsignor Mercier became archbishop of Malines. In 1901 he created Les Philosophes Belges, a series of texts and studies dedicated to Scholastic thinkers born in the Belgian territories in the medieval period. This title unfortunately limited De Wulf’s original scope of the series, for it had been his intention to call it Les Philosophes du Moyen Age. (The Louvain archives contain the proofs of the title page of the first volume bearing the intended title.) De Wulf had asked for a government subsidy, and when he was informed that, in order to obtain it, the collection would have to have a “national” character, he devised the title Les Philosophes Belges. Despite this regrettable limitation in scope, fifteen volumes were to appear from 1901 to 1941. In August 1914 the sacking of Louvain by the German army forced De Wulf to take refuge in France; during World War I he taught at the University of Poitiers. In 1915 he undertook his first voyage to the United States to lecture on medieval philosophy at Harvard and Cornell. Three years later, in 1918, he was invited to lecture at St. Michaels College, Toronto. During September and October 1919, he accompanied his former master Cardinal Mercier on a triumphant tour of the United States and Canada. Cardinal Mercier had excited the American peoples enthusiasm with his courageous stand against the Germans who had occupied Belgium. At the end of the journey, De Wulf remained in America. A chair in medieval philosophy had been created for him at Harvard, where he would teach each year during the
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first semester from 1919 to 1925, and for the last time in 1927. In 1920 he also lectured at Princeton. On 7 March 1934, on the occasion of his fortieth year of teaching, Hommage à Monsieur le Professeur Maurice De W ulf a festschrift comprised of articles by twenty-two medievalists, was given to him. In 1930, at seventytwo, De Wulf taught his last course, although he continued work on the sixth edition of his Histoire de la philosophie médiévale, the third volume of which appeared on 7 March 1947. He died on 23 December 1947, in his native Poperinghe, where he had retired a few months earlier. On 12 June 1894, the young De Wulf had married Marie-Louise Berten, with whom he had two children: George, born in 1895, who was to be ordained a priest by Cardinal Mercier in 1919, and Marie Antoinette, born in 1897, who died in infancy. Suffering from a mental illness, Madame De Wulf spent many years in a psychiatric asylum near Louvain where she died a few months after her husband on 15 August 1948. De Wulf’s bibliography contains 205 titles (books and articles), without counting some posthumous publications or reeditions. What follows is a summary of his principal works and a discussion of his doctrinal positions and their evolution through the course of his long career. De Wulf first published several important monographs: Études sur Henri de Gand ( 1894); Le traité ‘De unitateformae”de Gilles de Lessines (1901); Étude sur la vie, les œuvres et Tinfluence de Godefroid de Fontaines (1904). He also undertook, in collaboration with A. Pelzer (1904) and later with J. Hoffmans (1914), the publication of Quodlibets by Godefroid de Fontaines. Numerous other articles span the length of his career. Nevertheless, it is typical of his scholarly approach that he engaged, from very early on in his career, in the work of historical synthesis. Histoire de la philosophie scolastique dans les PaysBas et la principauté de Liège appeared in 1894 under the auspices of the Royal Academy of Belgium. De Wulf later resumed and developed this work in 1910 as Histoire de la philosophie en Belgique (376 pages) on the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of Belgian independence (1830-1905). In 1900 there appeared the first of six editions of De Wulf s master work, Histoire de la philosophie médiévale (1900-47), the text increasing with each edition, from 480 pages in 1900 to over 1,000 pages in 1947. An important contribution to the history of philosophy, the treatise was translated into English, German, Italian, and Spanish. In 1904 a second very personal work of synthesis appeared: Introduction à la philosophie néo-scolastique (350 pages). His 1920 lectures at Princeton were published as Philosophy and Civilization in the Middle Ages (1922), translations of which appeared in Chinese (1935) and in Dutch (1947). Mediaeval Philosophy Illustratedfrom the
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System o f Thomas Aquinas, based on a course taught at Harvard, appeared in 1922 and was later translated into French as Initiation a la philosophie thomiste (1932; posthumous reedition in 1949). Before explaining De Wulf s research as a medievalist, we should note that from his youth he was interested in aesthetics and philosophy of art. His very first publication, honored by the Belgian government in 1891 and published in 1892, is titled La valeur esthétique de la moralitédans I’art. He never ceased to be occupied with the problems of aesthetics. At Louvain he taught a course titled “Histoire des théories esthétiques”; at Brussels he lectured on the philosophy of art; his lectures given at Poitiers from 1915 and 1916 were published in a small but well-appreciated volume, L’oeuvre ¿ ,a rt et la beauté (1920), translated into Dutch in 1933 and reissued with new additions under the title Art et beauté (1943). To understand and appreciate De Wulf’s work as a medievalist requires a familiarity with the cultural situation in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. From the eleventh century on, a series of cultural polarizations had destroyed Europe’s spiritual unity: the “Great Schism,” the Renaissance, the Reformation, the advent of the new physics, modern philosophy, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, liberalism— all of these events had resulted in a profound rupture between Christian humanism and a new form of naturalist and rationalist humanism. The conflict of these two humanistic ideologies dominated the cultural history of the nineteenth century, and it appears most notably in the interpretation and appreciation of the thought of the Middle Ages. Rationalist historians see medieval thought as nothing more than an unimportant and uninteresting philosophical and religious syncretism, to the point that in treatises on the history of philosophy one moved from Plotinus to Descartes, as if nothing of interest happened between the end of antiquity and the Renaissance. Christian historians, on the other hand, see in the Middle Ages a philosophical current of great value, parallel with the evolution of theology, reaching its peak in the thirteenth century with Albertus Magnus (ca. 1200—1280) and Thomas Aquinas, who were at once philosophers and theologians. But even (pure) theologians such as Saint Bonaventure (ca. 1217-1274) contributed to the progress of philosophy. Christian historians found support for their position in the Thomistic renaissance, which emerged (especially in Italy) at the beginning of the nineteenth century and received the glowing approval of Leo XIII in 1879. The encyclical Aeterni Patris sparked a renewal of historical study on Thomas Aquinas and his century in the Catholic church, producing works by the great medievalists of the end of the nineteenth century: Cardinal Franz Ehrle (1845—1934),
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Father Heinrich Denifle (1844-1905), Clemens Baeumker (1853-1924), and Pierre Félix Mandonnet (1858-1936). This renaissance in the study of medieval thought was in tune with De Wulf’s mission, prompted by Mercier, to pursue the study of medieval philosophy. As a member of Merciers group, he dedicated his work as a historian to the service of the great enterprise of the Thomistic renaissance, to which the Institut Supérieur de Philosophie of Louvain had been called by Leo XIII himself. Without any doubt, the objectives pursued by Merciers Thomistic school exercised a considerable influence on the understanding of the history of philosophy which De Wulf developed, as well as on his interpretation of medieval thought. Introduction à la philosophie néo-scolastique (1904) particularly reveals the authors views at the beginning of his career on the idea of the philosophia perennis. True philosophy, a faithful interpretation of the universe, was formed slowly in the Greek world and reached its first peak in the work of Aristotle. Reborn in the Middle Ages, it attained a new peak in the thirteenth century, especially in the work of Thomas Aquinas. Restored in the nineteenth century by the Thomistic renaissance, this philosophia perennis follows its course and offers the contemporary world a balanced solution to its philosophical problems. De Wulf wanted to make his contribution to this renaissance ofThomism; the principal goal of his work as a historian was to emphasize the medieval roots of this philosophy. Also of note in this Introduction is De Wulfs attitude toward the question of the interrelationship between philosophy and Christianity. A quarter of a century prior to the controversy brought about by Emile Bréhier (1876-1952) and Étienne Gilson (1884-1978) over “Christian philosophy,” De Wulf maintained a clear position (in total conformity with Merciers ideas) according to which Christianity had profoundly influenced the civilization of the Middle Ages and the evolution of its thought; however, he also argued that, especially from the start of the thirteenth century, scholars had a clear concept of the autonomy of the secular branches of knowledge in their principles and methods. “Here then is why,” he writes, “there is no Catholic philosophy, any more than there is a Catholic science” (De Wulf, Introduction à la philosophie néo-scolastique, 247-48). For De Wulf, as for Mercier, a duly established scientific truth could never contradict the truth revealed by God. The conflicts between science and faith are never anything more than appearances, consequences of misunderstandings that need to be dispelled. About De Wulfs principal work, Histoire de la philosophie médiévale (1900), two things should be emphasized: on the one hand, the rich
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information it contains and the constant care which its author took in the successive editions to introduce all the results of historical research; on the other, the marked intervention of historical synthesis. The first point requires no lengthy explanation: it is enough to compare these editions, noticing the regular increase in the number of pages, to observe that De Wulf s Histoire is a veritable mirror of the progress made by an increasing number of researchers in the discovery of medieval philosophy. The second point should hold our attention, because what constitutes the originality of the Histoire are those very personal views put forth in it in the domain of historical synthesis. The preface to the first edition (1900) already reveals the authors intentions: he wants to introduce medieval philosophy in its authentic nature and to tell its true history, in other words, to revive the systems and to emphasize their connections. Thus, he wants to help the friends of Scholasticism understand the history of a doctrine that is precious to them, to illustrate to them the factors that contributed to its advent, apogee, and decline. This is Mercier’s collaborator speaking. De Wulf realizes his plan in a very personal way. First he insists on the fact that the Middle Ages produced some authentic philosophies—and not philosophico-theological syncretisms, as the rationalist historians claimed. Throughout the volume, he shows that the Scholastics posed numerous purely philosophical problems which they dealt with through the help of rational methods and which they resolved by means of true philosophical syntheses. De Wulf s most original views appear in his manner of understanding the evolution of medieval philosophy. He was struck by an undeniable fact: despite its variety of doctrinal currents and schools, medieval thought possessed a unity the equivalent of which is not found in any other period of history or in any other cultural milieu. This doctrinal unity appeared to him as the ideal toward which the efforts of most of the philosophers since the beginning of the Middle Ages unconsciously converged. Little by little a body of doctrine was formed which was enriched from generation to generation, reaching its peak in the system of Thomas Aquinas, only to fall apart in subsequent centuries under the influence of diverse factors. This body of doctrines De Wulf calls Scholastic philosophy. “Scholastic” has a doctrinal sense here, denoting a dominant philosophy of the Middle Ages. Consequently, the thinkers who openly rejected some fundamental doctrine of the Scholastics are called the “anti-Scholastics.” Those who, without contradicting these essential doctrines, professed a philosophy that was partially foreign to the Scholastics are the “Scholastic dissidents.” De Wulfs Histoire is constructed in its entirety according to these new concepts. Far from being “the father of the Scholastics,” as some historians
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call him, John Scottus Eriugena (ca. 810-ca. 877) becomes by reason of his pantheistic tendencies the prototype of all “anti-Scholastics.” For De Wulf, Cathars and Albigensians, and pantheists of the School of Chartres in the twelfth century; Amaury of Benes and David of Dinant in the beginning of the thirteenth century; Averroists, mystics, the heterodox, and the phenomenalist Nicholas of Autrecourt in the fourteenth century; and the fatalist John of Mirecourt are all anti-Scholastics. Roger Bacon (ca. 1214—1292), Raymond Lull (ca. 1233-1316), John Baconthorpe (d. 1346), Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260-1328), Raymond Sebond (d. 1436), and Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) are all “Scholastic dissidents.” Conforming to the logic of this interpretation, the “Scholastic synthesis” is explained at the same time as the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, but the ideas belonging to Thomas are printed in italics (De Wulf, Histoire, 6th ed., 262-90). The works of Ehrle and Mandonnet emphasized the existence of a Platonic-Augustinian current in the thirteenth century, a current which entered into conflict with Aristotelianism, and in particular with AlbertineThomistic Aristotelianism. De Wulf contests these views: he feels that the conflict unduly places “Peripateticism shaded with Augustinianism” in opposition to the “true Peripateticism” of Albert and Thomas. In other words, he thinks that Aristotelianism is a fundamental element of all “Scholastic” philosophies of the thirteenth century and that the Augustinian contribution is secondary; in his later works, he is going to propose replacing the “Augustinian” formula with expressions that were more vague but more misleading: “ancient Scholastics” or “pre-Thomistic Scholastics.” From 1900 to 1925, this interpretation of medieval philosophy was maintained without important changes. We should note that the third edition of the Histoire (1909) is an English-language edition by Dr. P. Coffey, a former Irish student of De Wulf’s and professor at Maynooth College. The work was clarified and certain sections were reworked. The fourth edition, again in French, appeared in 1912. Sensitive to critics of the preceding editions, De Wulf made some revisions: the “Scholastic synthesis” was separated from the account of the philosophy of Saint Thomas; the “anti-Scholastic” philosophers became “non-Scholastic” philosophers; the “dissident” philosophers became “secondary currents”; however, De Wulf maintained the existence of “the Scholastic philosophy.” In the fifth edition, which appeared in two volumes (1924—25) and contained newly introduced expansions and modifications, De Wulf defended two fundamental ideas: “There were in the Middle Ages philosophies distinct from theologies,” and “Scholasticism is not medieval philosophy in its entirety, but its best part; . . . it represents the collective inheritance of the majority of Western intellectuals.”
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The interpretation of the philosophical movement of the Middle Ages that De Wulf had been offering for twenty-five years never won over all the medievalists, but the fifth edition provoked more numerous and lively reactions. This is easily explained: the rapid progress of medieval studies in the course of this period increasingly revealed the richness and diversity of its philosophical doctrines. Gilsons early works (1919-24) had underscored the differences in thought and doctrine between Saint Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas. To many historians, the “Scholastic synthesis” appeared as an abstraction or even as an arbitrary construct; there never was a doctrinal unity in the Middle Ages except for that imposed by Catholic orthodoxy, which most teachers respected. Moreover, the term “Scholastic” never had a doctrinal meaning in the Middle Ages, and it was paradoxical to say that John Scottus Eriugena and Siger of Brabant (ca. 1230-ca. 1283) were not Schoolmen. Finally, from a pedagogical point of view, the classifications introduced in the Histoire de la philosophie médiévale as a consequence of the authors original views upset the chronological order in an excessive manner. De Wulf was nearly sixty-years old when the fifth edition appeared, and after more than thirty years of intense intellectual labor, he began to feel a physical lassitude that was slowly going to worsen. The opposition with which his most cherished ideas met in various circles could not leave him unconcerned. Many others of his age and with the prestige he enjoyed in so many countries would have thought only of defending their point of view. But his suppleness of mind and love for truth prevented him from insisting on his positions. Instead, he applied himself to examining the criticisms that had been addressed to him, discussing them with his colleagues. Beginning in 1927, he published two important studies: “Y eût-il une philosophie scolastique au moyen âge?” and “La philosophie du moyen âge. Questions de méthode.” In these articles, he opted against the expression “Scholastic synthesis,” which evoked the idea of a perfected system, but firmly maintained the historical reality of a “Scholastic inheritance” (sententia communis, Gemeingut), a group of predominantly metaphysical doctrines that were accepted by the great majority of teachers. The same year, he added to the record of the discussion the letters of Joseph Maréchal, Martin Grabmann, Ephrem Longpré, and Blaise Romeyer, published under the title “Tribune libre: Y eût-il une philosophie scolastique au moyen âge?” All of this effort of reflection, discussion, and organization resulted in breaking the ground for the sixth edition of the Histoire de la philosophie médiévale, to which the old medievalist devoted the last fifteen years of his life. Up until then he had always worked alone. This time, feeling the weight of age, he asked the president of the Institut Supérieur de Philosophie for an
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assistant, and I was appointed. But, in truth, the sixth edition is the work of the master: I helped him with the heuristic work (research for publications to use), the creation of the bibliographies, the preparation of the manuscript (especially for the third volume), and the corrections of the proofs; the copious index at the end of the third volume is the work of the late Christian Wenin, then still a student. I had numerous meetings with my teacher about the problems involved in the writing of his great work, but the essentials are his personal work: it was he who set the new structure of the work; it was he who studied most of the recent works and who wrote the majority of the abstracts. The principal innovations were the result of concern for keeping close to historical reality. For each of the three periods that correspond to the three volumes of the sixth edition, De Wulf distinguishes between a monographic study o f the masters, grouped according to chronological and geographical criteria, and synthetic studies, which are based on the preceding analyses. The term “Scholastic” loses its doctrinal meaning and becomes synonymous with “medieval.” De Wulf recognized that the idea of the “Scholastic synthesis” came from a philosophy of history and not from history itself; this idea was replaced by the more historically exact expression, “Scholastic inheritance.” We should add that the text of this edition is almost entirely new; numerous new figures have taken their place in the gallery of medieval masters. The first two volumes, published before World War II (in 1934 and 1936), were favorably received and translated into English, Spanish, and Italian. After World War II, at seventy-eight, the old master went back to work, having the pleasure of seeing the completion of his great work in 1947, a few months before his death. Maurice De Wulf worked not like Grabmann or Pelzer through the exploration of unpublished manuscripts, but rather like Gilson through the study and organization of published sources. We are indebted to him for several editions of texts (Gilles of Lessines, Godefroid of Fontaines), but especially for his works of interpretation and historical synthesis. Working at the service of the Thomistic renaissance in the Louvain school and as the fervent collaborator of Monsignor Mercier, he emphasized the thought of the thirteenth century and especially the work of Thomas Aquinas. After having long defended the idea of a “Scholastic synthesis,” he had the wisdom to adopt, after 1927, a more realistic and more strictly historical interpretation of medieval philosophy. His most notable personal contributions are to have established the following: the existence in the Middle Ages of a philosophical movement distinct from theology; the exceptional unity of medieval thought, which he explained above all by the unity of the civilization of the period;
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the distinction which he underscored after 192$ between the philosophers’ intentions and the internal logic of their doctrines. A notable part of his work is still valuable today. Thirsting as he did for truth and wisdom, he continues to represent the exemplary researcher. Se l e c t e d B i b l i o g r a ph y
De Wulf’s complete bibliography consists of 205 titles and can be found in Hommage à Monsieur le Professeur Maurice De W ulf pp. 41-63, under Sources.
Works Bo o k s a n d Ar t ic l e s
La valeur esthétique de la moralité dans Iart. Brussels: Corné-Germon, 1892. Études sur Henri de Gand. Paris: Alcan, 1894. Histoire de la philosophie scolastique dans les Pays-Bas et la principauté de Liègejusqu'à la révolution française. Brussels: Hayez, 1894-95. Histoire de la philosophie médiévale, précédée d'un aperçu sur la philosophie ancienne. 1900; 2nd ed. rev. and enlarged. Louvain: Institut supérieur de philosophie, hereafter I.S.P.; Paris: Alcan, 1905. 3rd ed. in English, translated as History o f Medieval Philosophy by P. Coffey. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909. 4th ed. rev. and enlarged, 1912; 5th rev. ed. 2 vols. Louvain: I.S.P., 1924-25. Translated as History o f Medieval Philosophy by Ernest C. Messenger. 2 vols. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1926. 6th rev. ed., 3 vols. Louvain: I.S.P., 1934-47. Translated as History o f Medieval Philosophy by Ernest C. Messenger. 3 vols. Longmans, Green, and Co., 1935-52. Ed. Le traité “De unitate form ae” de Gilles de Lessines. Vol. 1 of his Les Philosophes Belges. Louvain: I.S.P., 1901. Étude sur la vie, les œuvres et l'influence de Godefroid de Fontaines. Brussels: Hayez, 1904. Introduction à la philosophie néo-scolastique. Louvain: I.S.P.; Paris: Alcan, 1904. Translated as Scholasticism Old and New: An Introduction to Scholastic Philosophy, M edieval and Modern by P. Coffey. Dublin: Gill; New York: Longmans, Green, 1907. Ed. with A. Pelzer. Les quatre premiers Quodlibets de Godefroid de Fontaines. Vol. 2 of his Les Philosophes Belges. Louvain: I.S.P., 1904. Histoire de la philosophie en Belgique. Brussels: Dewit; Paris: Alcan, 1910. Ed. with J. Hoffmans. Les Quodlibets V VI, et VII de Godefroid de Fontaines. Vol. 3 of his Les Philosophes Belges. Louvain: I.S.P., 1914. L'œuvre d'art et la beauté. Louvain: I.S.P.; Paris: Alcan, 1920. Rev. ed. as A rt et beauté: conférences philosophiques. Louvain: I.S.P., 1943. Mediaeval Philosophy Illustrated from the System o f Thomas Aquinas. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1922. Translated as Initiation à la philosophie thomiste. Louvain: I.S.P., 1932. 2nd ed. Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1949. Philosophy and Civilization in the M iddle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1922. “Y eût-il une philosphie scolastique au moyen âge?” Revue néo-scolastique de philosophie 29 (1927): 5-27. “La philosophie du moyen âge. Questions de méthode.” Studia Catholica 3 (1927): 369-86. “Tribune libre: Y eût-il une philosophie scolastique au moyen âge?” Revue néo-scolastique de philosophie 29 (1927): 223-31.
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L e t t e r s a n d Pa p e r s
Some personal papers belonging to De Wulf, for instance concerning his lectures in the United States, notes on journeys abroad, and so forth, are housed at the Service des Archives o f the Université catholique de Louvain, 27 rue Montesquieu, 1348 Louva la Neuve, Belgium.
Sources Gilson, Etienne, Gerald B. Phelan, and H.A. Wolfson. “Memoir: Maurice De Wulf.” Speculum 25:3 (1950): 421-23. Hommage à Monsieur le Professeur Maurice De Wulf: volume mélange extrait de la Revue néoscolastique de philosophie, tome 36, fevrier 1934. Louvain: I.S.P., 1934. McEvoy, James. “Philosophie ancienne et médiévale.” Revue philosophique de Louvain 88 (1990): 217-39. Van Steenberghen, Fernand. Introduction à l ’étude de la philosophie médiévale, pp. 287-313. Louvain: Publications universitaires; Paris: Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1974. ---------. “Étienne Gilson et l’Université de Louvain.” Revue philosophique de Louvain 85 (1985): 5-21.
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( 1875 1949 )
Philipp W. Rosemann
Martin Grabmann, neo-Scholastic theologian and philosopher, pioneering historian of medieval thought, and perhaps “the greatest Catholic scholar of his time” (Simon Konrad Landersdorfer, quoted in Ott, Martin Grabmann zum Gedächtnis, 31), was born at Winterzhofen, in Germany’s rural Upper Palatinate, on 5 January 1875· Winterzhofen, a small Jurassic village bordered by forests and fields, has been the home of the Grabmann family for many centuries: indeed, Martin Grabmann himself found a mention of one Michael Grabmann, resident in house no. 2, in a Dominican list for collections from 1483. The present house of the Grabmann family still bears the same number. Like his forebears, Martin Grabmann’s father, Joseph (1848—1915), was a farmer; he married Walburga Bauer (1850—1886) from Wallnsdorf, a neighboring village. Martin Grabmann had two brothers, one of whom, Johann, inherited the farm. Grabmann’s parents were Bavarians of a deep, robust piety; his devout and highly gifted mother, in particular, fostered young Martin’s early-discovered vocation to the priesthood, and it was she who saw to it that from 1884 onward, her son could attend the Gymnasium, or classical grammar school, in Eichstätt. She died just two years later, at the age of only thirty-six. In 1893 Grabmann went on to the College of Philosophy and Theology, the Bischöfliches Lyzeum, which at the time represented one of the foremost centers of the renascent Scholastic movement in Germany, with such eminent professors as Albert Stöckl (1823-1895) and Franz von Paula Morgott (1829-1900) on its teaching staff. It was Morgott, above all, who first kindled Grabmann’s enthusiasm for Saint Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225-1274), with the result that, in 1895, he chose to join the Dominican order, becoming a novice at Olmiitz (now Olomouc, in the Czech Republic) in August of the same year. The religious life, however, turned out not to be suitable for him, so that at his own decision he returned to Eichstätt after only six 55
months to resume studies for the secular priesthood. (Grabmann became a Dominican tertiary in 1921.) He was ordained in Eichstätt on 20 March 1898. After two years which the young priest spent as a curate in various parishes of his diocese—he had by now published numerous articles and reviews and was preparing his first book on the ecclesiology of Saint Thomas Aquinas— Bishop von Leonrod decided to send Grabmann to Rome, where, based at the German College S. Maria dell’Anima, he attended lectures at the Dominican College (now the Pontifical University Angelicum), gaining the doctorate in philosophy as well as the baccalaureate and license in theology in 1901, and graduating as doctor of theology a year later. But the principal academic profit of his stay in Rome was doubtless the opportunity to take up palaeographical studies at the Vatican Library, for the constant recourse to the rich unprinted manuscript material of the medieval schools was subsequently to become one of the overriding methodological features of Grabmanns entire oeuvre. As he would later remember in his “Autobiographical Notes” (Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, 3: 1-9), Grabmann was largely self-taught as a palaeographer, incurring all the disadvantages which that entails— the loss of time, for instance, and the sometimes crooked paths of learning. But Grabmann proceeded with great enthusiasm and initiative, encouraged as he was in his studies by the famous Heinrich Denifle, O.P. (1844-1905), then pontifical under-registrar, and by the prefect of the Vatican Library, the future Cardinal Franz Ehrle, S.J. (1845—1934), his “fatherly friend.” Both Denifle and Ehrle were counted among the most distinguished palaeographers of the time. Upon his return to Eichstätt, in 1902, Grabmann resumed pastoral duties as a chaplain, and later confessor, to the Benedictine convent of St. Walburg, while at the same time continuing, and indeed intensifying, his scholarly work. By 1906, when he was appointed professor of dogmatics at Eichstätt, Father Grabmann had composed no less than three books, along with forty-five articles and reviews. He now set about the first of his many chefs d’oeuvre, Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode, in two volumes. Published in 1909 and 1911, respectively, this work founded Grabmanns reputation, both national and international, as one of the most promising scholars in the field of the intellectual history of the Middle Ages. Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode earned its author almost immediately his first honorary doctorate, which was bestowed on him by the prestigious Institut Supérieur de Philosophie at Louvain, in 1913. Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode, and especially its second volume, made extensive use of unprinted sources which Grabmann
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had unearthed in libraries all over Europe. His research took him to Italy in 1906, 1910, and 1912; to Paris in 1905 and 1909; and to Belgium in 1910; but most important were the treasures of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, whose holdings in Latin manuscripts, of the early Scholastic period in particular, Grabmann once described as “the most precious in the world” (Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, 3: 3). His most popular book also dates from his time as professor at Eichstätt; Thomas von Aquin: Eine Einführung in seine Persönlichkeit und Gedankenwelt saw eight German editions and was translated into seven languages, including Japanese. It first appeared in 1912. There came, a year later, “a big leap from Eichstätt to Vienna,” as one contemporary newspaper put it. From his small college in the secluded town of Eichstätt, Grabmann was called to the chair of Christian philosophy at the Faculty of Theology of the then Austro-Hungarian capital. At Vienna Grabmann concluded another piece of pioneering research, this time concerning the literary bases of the history of Aristotelianism in the thirteenth century: his Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts appeared in 1916. A colleague in the theology faculty was the famous canonist Eduard Eichmann (1870-1946), who had an apartment in the same house as Grabmann. Eichmann became one of his closest and most valued friends, with whom he shared a deep interest in the intellectual history of the Middle Ages. When in the autumn of 1918 Grabmann accepted an appointment as professor of dogmatics in Munich, the presence there of Eichmann, who had himself moved to Munich earlier that year, was one of the reasons for his decision. But Grabmann was also looking forward to returning to his Bavarian homeland, and he relished the prospect of collaborating more closely with Clemens Baeumker (1853-1924), the founder of the celebrated series of Scholastic studies, the Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters. Indeed, Baeumker was the uncontested patron of medieval philosophy in Germany at the time, and from the amicable intellectual exchange with him Grabmann received “much stimulation and enrichment” (Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, 3: 4). After the traumas of World War I, the intellectual and artistic life of Germany enjoyed a golden age during the Weimar Republic, before the catastrophe of the Nazi regime. For Martin Grabmann the years in Munich marked the zenith of his academic career. His research, which focused upon the towering figure of Saint Thomas Aquinas, grew larger and larger in scope; in the quest to achieve a precise understanding of the Angelic Doctor s position in the history of ideas, Grabmann’s interests ended by spanning the
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whole intellectual movement of the Middle Ages. Between 1918 and 1939 he authored 212 books, articles, and reviews, supervising the theses of some thirty doctoral students. One of them, the late Father Ludwig Ott (1906— 1985), became a particularly dear friend; it is to him that we owe most of the biographical and personal details which we know about the great scholar. During his Munich years Grabmann established a characteristic rhythm of working. Besides the preparation which he had to do for his lectures— the teaching load is traditionally heavy at German universities— Grabmann found the time to study almost daily at the reading room of the manuscript department of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. From 1921 to 1938, he would travel every year in the spring—and sometimes in the autumn, too— to visit Rome and the Vatican Library; he knew Popes Pius XI and Pius XII personally. On these journeys, he availed himself of the opportunity to explore all the major Italian libraries relevant to medieval studies, visiting Florence, Bologna, Naples, Milan, Venice, and many other places. In 1927 and 1929 he journeyed to Spain; to Paris, Uppsala, and Stockholm in 1928; to Brussels and Bruges in 1930. It has been remarked that, curiously, Grabmann never made it to the famous English libraries; an invitation to lecture at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto also came to nothing, but perhaps Grabmann just did not like taking sea voyages. Apart from traveling extensively, he kept in touch with colleagues at home and abroad through a copious correspondence. No great name from among the contemporaneous medievalists is missing from the list of those with whom he exchanged letters, and many of them were his friends. Grabmann s international contacts are reflected in the catalog of honors and distinctions which he received in the 1920s and 1930s, for not only was he, in 1920, named a member of the Bavarian Academy (contributing up to 1943 twenty-one important monographic studies to its proceedings) and in 1934 elected corresponding member of the Prussian Academy, but he was also made corresponding fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (1927), an external member of the Pontificia Accademia di S. Tommaso d’Aquino (1930), and a corresponding member of the Société Philosophique de Louvain (1932). Between 1927 and 1935, Grabmann was awarded honorary degrees by the universities of Innsbruck, Milan, and Budapest. When Cardinal Achille Ratti (later Pope Pius XI) founded the Catholic University of Milan, in 1921, Grabmann, whom the cardinal had come to know as prefect of the Ambrosiana, was asked to become one of its first professors; but he declined, not wishing to forego the convenient proximity of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. The Church acknowledged Grabmann’s merits by elevating him to the ranks of Papal Domestic Prelate (1921), Proto notary
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Apostolic (1941), and Geistlicher Rat (1941). The commemorative set of two volumes which was published on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, in 1935, contained contributions from seventy-seven scholars through nearly 1,500 pages. Martin Grabmann’s academic career at the University of Munich was cut short in February 1939, after a conflict between the Faculty of Theology and the Nazi government over the succession of Eduard Eichmann, who had requested retirement. Backed by their archbishop, Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber (1869-1952), the faculty refused the candidate imposed by the government; as a consequence, it was closed down. The decision, of which Grabmann learned through the papers, filled him with deep indignation and bitter distress. In its cynicism, the Nazi administration sent him a document, signed by Hitler himself, thanking him for his services to the German people. It must have given him much satisfaction to learn that he was briefly reinstalled as professor of theology after World War II, lecturing again in the academic year 1946-47. But we must return to the war years; his involuntary removal to the status of emeritus did not slacken the pace of Grabmanns work. From 1940 until his death in 1949, he added about one hundred more titles to his bibliography. When the Allied bombardment of Munich made work there increasingly difficult, Grabmann resolved in 1943 to return to his beloved Eichstätt, where his bishop, former student, and faithful friend Michael Rackl (1883-1948) had procured him a small apartment in a house at the back of the seminary. Grabmann managed to save his voluminous library, just before his domicile in Munich was destroyed. In 1954 the Grabmann-Institut was founded within the Faculty of Theology of the University of Munich, to which Grabmann had bequeathed his library; it specializes in Franciscan theology. It is thus that the circle of Grabmanns scholarly career closed at Eichstätt, where it had begun sixty years earlier. While he continued to work untiringly, those close to him could not fail to notice the critical progress of a heart condition, especially from the summer of 1948 onward; their pleas for moderation in work remained unheard. On 30 December 1948, Grabmann confessed in a letter to a Dominican friend: “I am having trouble with the heart again, after feeling nothing for many months. I should have taken better care of myself” (Ott, Martin Grabmann zum Gedächtnis, 7). He suffered his first heart attack that very night. After two more heart attacks, Martin Grabmann died in the afternoon of 9 January 1949. “Writing fat books is easier than dying,” he had remarked to a friend. That Grabmann worked easily there can be no doubt. For he was a man of extraordinary intellectual gifts, of acute mind coupled with a prodigious
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memory: a page read was, for him, practically a page memorized. Still, Grabmann once admitted to an interlocutor that every new piece of work cost him an effort to start. In fact he had not chased after the opportunity to become a scholar; when he entered the seminary, it had been to become a parish priest. His short ministry as a curate was remembered long afterward for its warmth and benevolence; Grabmann is unforgotten by many former candidates of the seminary at Munich as an excellent spiritual director. Even when he had reached the heights of academic success he never ceased to consider himself a priest first and foremost, and a scholar only in the second place. The notes which he took on his retreats and his spiritual diary, the Ascetica, bear witness to the deep and uncomplicated devotion of a great heart. Sometimes doubts rose within him as to whether the academic way was the right one to work for the church; but his friends and superiors only encouraged him. Likewise, Grabmann never interpreted the numerous honors and distinctions he received as feathers in his own cap, being glad instead that the ideas and convictions for which he stood were finding recognition. He was a thoroughly modest person. Although Grabmann was not a nationalist—he censured the “traditionless, narrow-minded nationalism” of German scholarship under the Nazis (Grabmann [1946-47]: 246), urging a truly catholic internationalism instead—his roots in his Bavarian Heimat were deep. Indeed, Fernand Van Steenberghen (1904-1993) once remarked that “Monsignor Grabmann evoked, by his physique, the robust Bavarian peasant. O f medium height, rather corpulent, not very talkative, he had a slow gait and his gestures were reserved. His whole person radiated serenity and kindness. . . . He worked alone, without any assistance, but with the steadfastness, regularity, and stubbornness of a farmer devoted to the hard labor of his agricultural enterprise” (Van Steenberghen [1975]: 21 If.). Personal relationships always were very important for Grabmann; the same reverence and love with which he remembered his teachers were in turn shown him by his own students and friends, whose company this sociable, sometimes subtly ironic man enjoyed thoroughly. It is not easy to find one’s way through Grabmann’s oeuvre, which is at once of such enormous dimensions and so puzzlingly wide-ranging as to appear positively wandering and, indeed, unfocused. Grabmann wrote, to cite only a few examples, on Aquinas’s ecclesiology, the critical realism of the philosopher and psychologist Oswald Kiilpe (1862-1915), the history of Catholic theology, the contemporary importance of medieval philosophy, the methodology of palaeographical studies, and the controversy over Rene Descartes’s (1596-1650) teaching concerning the Eucharist. Yet there is a
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key to the inner structure of his prolific literary production: this key is his profound, broad-minded understanding of Thomism and its methodology. On the genesis of Grabmann’s Thomistic conception of learning and research, his teacher Franz von Paula Morgott exercised a crucial influence; the necrological article from 1901, “Dr. Franz v. P. Morgott als Thomist,” is instructive in this respect, for all the major elements of Grabmanns approach are already contained in it. The article also throws into sharp relief the fact that for Morgott, as for Grabmann, Saint Thomas provided far more than a merely doctrinal inspiration; by his personality he was a model for their lives: “et quae docuit, intellectu conspicere, et quae egit, imitatione complere . . .” (quoted in Grabmann, Einfiihrung in die Summa Theologiae, 2nd ed., 114). Grabmann relates an occasion in Eichstätt when Morgott gave him a slip of paper with a prayer to Saint Thomas, written in “a trembling hand” (Grabmann [1901]: 75). It is important not to forget this ethical and religious aspect of his scholarship, even if it is not always so much in evidence as, for instance, in his little book Das Seelenleben des hi. Thomas von Aquin (1924). But let us return to the content of Grabmann’s methodology. In truly Thomistic spirit, it derives from a principle formulated in the Summa Theologiae I, qu. 117, art. 1: “Scientia autem acquiritur in homine ab interiori principio, ut patet in eo qui per inventionem propriam scientiam acquirit, et a principio exteriori, ut patet in eo qui addiscit” (quoted in Grabmann [1901]: 47; also see the characterization of Aquinas’s approach in Grabmann, Thomas von Aquin, 6th ed., 39-60). There are, in other words, two principles of human learning: on the one hand, independent reasoning and dialectic; on the other, historical research into the opinions of our predecessors, whose previously acquired knowledge and experience are not to be easily dismissed. True knowledge is always constituted by these two elements, ratio and auctoritas. The consequences of this basic insight for Grabmann’s Thomism are far-reaching. Although he was himself primarily a historian of medieval philosophy and theology, Grabmann never presumed that the history of any philosophical or theological problematic contained as such its complete and perfect solution. “Studium philosophiae non est ad hoc quod sciatur quid homines senserint, sed qualiter se habeat veritas rerum” (Aquinas, De caelo I: 22; quoted in Grabmann [1925], 125 and Grabmann, Thomas von Aquin, 6th ed., 49). Yes, Saint Thomas Aquinas was indeed for Grabmann the “omnium horarum homo” (Grabmann [1925], 11), but he was not an exponent of what Van Steenberghen has called “palaeothomism,” a position which exhausts itself in the stale repetition of Aquinas’s teachings, together with
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strictures on the decadence of the modern mind. Grabmann, on the contrary, subscribed to an evolutionary view of human learning; there was progress in philosophy, he believed, and, within limits, even in theology— though progress in divinity concerned more its form than its content (Grabmann, Thomas von Aquin, 6th ed., 45-49). In truth, sound Catholic theology would always have to be substantially Thomistic, he maintained in his essay “Das Immerdauernde in der theol. Methode des hi. Thomas v. Aquin” (1942), concurring with Cardinal Ehrle’s dictum that “the fate of the theological Summa is the fate of Catholic learning; the recognition which it finds in the Catholic schools is the measure of the standard of theological and philosophical research” (cited in Grabmann, Einführung in die Summa Theologiae, 2nd ed., 47). The centrality of Aquinas notwithstanding, his doctrines need to be updated, requiring to be freed from historical limitations, for “quidquid recipitur, recipitur secundum modum recipientis” (Grabmann, “Der hi. Thomas von Aquin im Werturteil”: 821; “Nature and Problems of the New Scholasticism”: 130). “One cannot put aside the subjective psychological determinations nor the historical conditions in which these perennially sound truths at a given time find their expression and elaboration” (Grabmann, “Nature and Problems of the New Scholasticism”: 130). What we need is a philosophy “ad mentem D. Thomae” which is genuinely “suited to the needs of our time” (zeitgemäss\ Grabmann, “Der hi. Thomas von Aquin im Werturteil”: 824). In this task, much is to be learned from the dialog with contemporary currents of thought, for “the modern thinkers approach Thomas with their subjectivity, they bring along modern standards of evaluation for the formation of their judgments . . . they often focus their attention differently from the Catholic philosopher and theologian and thus perhaps perceive some things about Thomas which escape him” (ibid/. 821). Many of Grabmann’s publications exhibit a concern “not to recommend the teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas with empty praise, but to show in specific points of doctrine that Aquinas’s teaching is still up-to-date in the second millennium” (Morgott, in a letter to Grabmann quoted in Grabmann [1901]: 77). O f this attitude his inaugural lecture at Vienna, Der Gegenwartswert der geschichtlichen Erforschung der mittelalterlichen Philosophie (1913), and his essay “Der kritische Realismus Oswald Külpes und der Standpunkt der aristotelisch-scholastischen Philosophie” (1916) are particularly fine examples, evincing a respectable acquaintance with contemporary movements of thought. However, it is not here that the main thrust of Grabmann’s work lay; indeed, he believed in the necessity of a “division of labor” between specialists in the various fields of research, considering himself to be above all a
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historian of literature and ideas (Grabmann, “Nature and Problems of the New Scholasticism”: 158). Grabmann’s historical methodology is as thoroughly pervaded by the complementarity of ratio and auctoritas as are his ideas regarding the nature of philosophical and theological research at large. Moreover, his approach was remarkably consistent in the whole of his oeuvre; it remained the same, literally from his first book to his last. Already the title of his first full-length study sums up the characteristic dual path of Grabmann’s investigations: Die Lehre des heiligen Thomas von Aquin von der Kirche als Gotteswerk: Ihre Stellung im thomistischen System und in der Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Theologie (1903). “The main difficulty,” he tells us in the preface, “is the harmonious union of the historical and the systematic ways of exposition. . . . The synthesis of both methods yields an objective judgment on Scholasticism and Scholastic doctrine” (Grabmann [1903], v-vi). Accordingly, the study of a medieval thinkers ideas requires both the speculative penetration of his system, that is to say, the sympathetic endeavor to enter into the spirit that animates it, and the examination of its historical environment, of its place in the history of ideas. In a splendid passage of his Einführung in die Summa Theologiae des heiligen Thomas von Aquin (1919; 2nd ed., 1928), Grabmann has, perhaps unself-consciously, explained the genesis of his entire literary production from the application of the historico-systematic method to Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae'. When one has worked several times through the theological Summa in its entirety, when one has penetrated particular parts and problems of it more thoroughly, when one has immersed oneself in Aquinas’s other works, when one has tried to consider Aquinas’s writings and doctrine in the light of the works of the other great Schoolmen, when one has also become acquainted with the oldest pupils of the Prince of Scholasticism and with the later commentators of his theological Summay when one has finally traced the relationships between the Thomistic world of ideas and modern thought, when one has thus made the theological Summa the center of a strenuous scholarly life’s work, only then will one never have read enough of this work nor get tired of i t . . . [109]. Enlarging upon this programmatic statement, Grabmann has, a few pages later, given us what amounts to the fullest elaboration of his methodology (116-35; see also Grabmann, Thomas von Aquin, 6th ed., 204-16). The already familiar combination of “systematic procedure” (systematisches
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Verfahren) and “historical method” (historische Method¿), this interpretation through the collaborative forces of reason and tradition involves three elements on each side. The systematic approach will first try to make sense of a medieval work internally; it will then, according to the principle “auctor sui interpres,” take the thinkers other writings into consideration, along with the indispensable questions of authenticity and chronology; finally, commentaries and secondary literature will be consulted. The historical aspect of interpretation must embrace both the past and the present, as well as the future. In consideration of the past, only a thorough grasp of intellectual developments preceding the composition of a given work, including a firm understanding of the sources it exploited, will enable one not only to seize the full meaning of the author, but also to form a sound judgment as to his originality. In consideration of the work’s place in the intellectual climate of the author’s milieu, a scholar must familiarize himself with the contemporaneous currents of thought which the author perhaps combatted or with which he aligned himself. Last, in consideration of the future transmission of the work, the influence of a given work will be scrutinized, and its present-day significance, too, should be made the object of an evaluation. In his book on Thomas Aquinas’s ecclesiology, Grabmann remarked that it was a grave mistake to force medieval concepts and ideas into modern categories of interpretation alien to them. The conceptual framework for the understanding of Scholastic texts must be derived from those texts themselves (see Grabmann [1903], 68). When Grabmann therefore considered medieval philosophy and theology in terms of a methodology based on ratio and auctoritas, he placed a dichotomy at the center of his approach, a dichotomy which was itself, he believed, the core problem of the Scholastic movement (see, for example, Grabmann [1921], 38—40 and 56; the entire Geschichte der scholastischen Methode is devoted to it). But more than that, the harmonious solution of this pivotal difficulty, which Aquinas developed to unsurpassed perfection, marked, for Grabmann, the apex of Scholasticism (see, for example, Grabmann [1921], 110). Inversely, he took the disturbance of the balance between the positive tradition-oriented and the speculative elements to be responsible for the relative decline of Scholastic philosophy and theology in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as well as for its degeneracy after 1660 (see Grabmann [1933], 52, 192). To sum up, we can say that the ratioI auctoritas problematic was the leitmotiv of Grabmanns conception of philosophical and theological research, of his historical methodology, and of his view on the inner dynamic of the Scholastic movement. It thus lends a signal unity to his entire scholarly activity. There were, however, two other characteristic features of his
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brand of neo-Scholasticism, which, although they are not directly connected with the preceding, should not go unmentioned. First there was Grabmann’s exceptional cultivation of palaeography, which has already been touched upon. His outstandingly broad acquaintance with unpublished materials of the medieval schools affords his books and articles a distinctive freshness and originality, because he was never content to rely upon secondhand information or to repeat stale cliches: what he wrote was authenticated by an intimate knowledge of the sources themselves. Nobody has counted the number of manuscripts Grabmann discovered and described for the first time, but there is unanimity about his most important and most famous find (see his own judgment in Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, 3: 50): in 1924, he announced the detection of hitherto unknown Averroistic writings in Munich, Staatsbibliothek, Clm. 9559, ascribing them to Siger of Brabant (see Grabmann [1979], 1: 129-76). The find occasioned a lively debate, especially as the Quaestiones de anima contained in Clm. 9559 seemed to testify to a considerable weakening in Siger’s notorious Averroistic convictions. Alas, Grabmann’s attribution of the whole manuscript to Siger of Brabant is nowadays disputed, which does not, however, detract from the intrinsic interest of these texts for the development of medieval Averroism. For such an erudite palaeographer as Grabmann was, it is curious that he did not leave any important critical edition; but the explanation for the lacuna lies in Grabmann’s personality. Rushing from discovery to discovery, being for many decades at the forefront of manuscript research, he was not endowed, it would seem, with the endurance and philological meticulousness required by the travails of editing (Ott, “Martin Grabmann und die Erforschung der mittelalterlichen Philosophie”: l45f.; Van Steenberghen, “Martin Grabmann (1875—1949)”: 315). Unlike some other neo-Scholastic historians, Grabmann held fast to the notion of a “synthesis of Scholastic thought,” a “common property” (Gemeingut) in the approach of the medieval schools shared by them all (Grabmann, “Nature and Problems of the New Scholasticism,” 131; also see [1929]: 35; [1933], 57); this is another distinctive trait of his neo-Scholastic standpoint. His concise Die Philosophie des Mittelalters (1921), a fine booklet published in the Goschen series, substantiates the idea of a “common property” in a long chapter devoted to the “general characteristics of Scholastic philosophy” (Grabmann [1921], 26—58); these are divided into formal and doctrinal elements. On the formal side, Grabmann argues, the very organization of the medieval schools, with their largely common curricula and forms of teaching, molded thereby the literary genres in which their members clothed their thoughts; the practice of disputations, in particular, was
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decisive in shaping the Schoolmens techniques of exposition, as well as their language. Doctrinally, too, there were common denominators in all the Scholastic systems, even beyond their universal Christian inspiration with its consequent orientation, metaphysical and ethical, toward the eternal realm. For, as we have already seen, Grabmann identifies the fruitful tension between the exigencies of ratio and auctoritas, represented by philosophy and theology, as the central theme of the whole Scholastic movement. Grabmanns literary output falls quite naturally into three periods, corresponding to his academic affiliations with Eichstatt, Vienna, and Munich. At Eichstatt Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode (vol. 1, 1909; vol. 2, 1911), which shines among many smaller articles and reviews as the magnum opus of this period, provided detailed historical justification for the analysis of Scholasticism in terms of the reason/faith dichotomy, thus laying the groundwork for Grabmanns interpretation of the intellectual history of the Middle Ages. At the center of the Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode stands Saint Anselm of Canterbury, the “Father of Scholasticism,” whose programmatic “fides quaerens intellectum” epitomizes the innermost dynamic of Scholastic thought, at once pointing back to Augustine and foreshadowing Thomas Aquinas. The first volume surveys the evolution of the Scholastic method from its beginnings in early patristic times through Augustine, Boethius, and Eriugena—who went wrong precisely because in his approach philosophy preponderated over faith— up to Anselm (also see Grabmann [1906]). The second volume focuses upon the twelfth century, drawing a detailed map of the impact which the newly discovered Aristotelian logic had upon the standing of Anselm’s “credo ut intelligam” in the schools. Although preparations for the planned third volume were already “largely completed” (Grabmann [1911], vi) at the time when the second came out, Grabmann never finished it. Die theol. Erkenntnis- und Einleitungslehre des hi Thomas vonAquin (1948) can be “considered a substitute for the missing third volume” (Grabmann [1948], xi); however, it likewise remained unfinished on its author’s death. As a consequence of his new appointment to a chair of philosophy, Grabmanns preoccupations shifted somewhat in his Vienna period. He accentuated his interest in the contribution of Scholastic philosophy to contemporary intellectual life, publishing, apart from the inaugural lecture and the article on Oswald Kiilpe already mentioned, a piece entitled “Der hi. Thomas von Aquin im Werturteil der modernen Wissenschaft” (1913). This is not to say that he did not remain principally committed to historical research, but, significantly, he published little on theology during these Viennese years, choosing rather to concentrate on the philosophical aspects of medieval culture: his Louvain lecture on Aquinas’s commentaries on Aristotle
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(in Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, 1: 266-313) and an article on Suarez’s Disputationes metaphysicae (in Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, 1: 525-60) are typical products of this time. Despite the fact that between 1914 and 1918 (the war precluding all foreign traveling) Grabmann’s palaeographical work was mostly confined to Austrian libraries, in 1916 he brought out his Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts, “the main work from my time in Vienna” (Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, 3: 3). The book was a milestone in the field of Aristoteles latinus research and has done much to pave the way for the decision of the Union Académique Internationale, in 1930, to inaugurate the project of editing the entire corpus of medieval Latin translations of Aristotle; like Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode, it remains a standard work of reference. The influence of Aristotelianism upon the Scholastic movement in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries continued to command Grabmann’s interest in Munich; indeed, he has himself spoken of his “special liking” (Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, 3: 6) for the area, to which, over the years, he devoted some fifty studies, the most important of which have been collected in the three volumes of Mittelalterliches Geistesleben (1 [1926]; 2 [1936]; 3 [1956]) and, later, in the Gesammelte Akademieabhandlungen (1979). Father Ott has expressed his judgment that it is in this field that Grabmann’s main legacy is to be located (Ott, “Martin Grabmann und die Erforschung der mittelalterlichen Philosophie”: 144). But he was less attracted to the traditional Augustinian reaction to Aristotle than to the interplay between the two main currents of thought which actively sought to assimilate the new learning, namely, on the one hand, the orthodox Aristotelian movement initiated by Albert the Great (ca. 1200-1280) and, on the other, the radical Aristotelians represented by Siger of Brabant (ca. 1240-1284) and Boethius of Dacia (d. ca. 1284). Already in the twelfth century, the impact of Aristotelian logic upon traditional grammar, with its subsequent “logicization,” had created the new discipline of “speculative grammar,” another field in which Grabmann revolutionized research: according to the late Professor Jan Pinborg, easily the foremost contemporary specialist, “he was one of the first to appreciate the relevance of medieval speculative grammar, and by calling attention to the rich manuscript material he laid the foundation for further research” (Pinborg: 286). It is a special merit of Grabmann’s to have realized the potential of speculative grammar for twentieth-century philosophy of language, for it shares, not only with Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), whose Logische Untersuchungen Grabmann knew well (see Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, 1: 105), but also with modern linguists such as Noam
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Chomsky, the conviction that there is an underlying logical structure, a “universal grammar,” that is applicable to all languages. Indeed, medieval linguistic thought is at present a much-investigated topic of research, especially among linguists and analytic philosophers. His interest in Albert the Great, the teacher of Aquinas and resolute Christian Aristotelian, put Grabmann on the track of the Neoplatonic and mystical trends inspired by Albert’s teachings; his most notable publications in this domain include articles on Ulrich of Strasbourg (d. 1277), Albert’s favorite pupil (ibid.: 147-221; Grabmann [1979], 1: 177-260); the identification of John of Kastl (d. 1476) as the author of the important mystical treatise De adhaerendo Deo, commonly ascribed to Albert (Grabmann, M ittelalterliches Geisteslebeny 1: 489—524); the discovery of hitherto unedited quaestiones by Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260-1328) (Grabmann [1979], 1: 261-381); and the great German women mystics (Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, 1: 469-88). In 1933 Grabmann brought out his Die Geschichte der katholischen Theologie seit dern Ausgang der Vaterzeitr, the fact that the work has been reprinted again and again, being currently still in print in Germany, is perhaps an indication of the esteem in which it is held. It is based upon the great dogmatician M.J. Scheeben’s forty-five-page history of theology (in Volume 1 of his Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik), which Grabmann, however, completely revised and enlarged to a size of 368 pages (he made further additions in the second edition of the Italian translation, published in 1939). Die Geschichte der katholischen Theologie, which extends from Saint Bede (673—735) right up to the beginnings of the twentieth century, without passing over lesser-known ages, is a work of admirable erudition, covering close to 3,000 theologians in 281 pages (the remainder is taken up by the bibliography and the index). Yet in spite of this superabundance of material the book is surprisingly readable, deriving much of its perspicacity and liveliness from Grabmann’s close knowledge of the sources. He believed that each of the three main periods in the history of theology— that is, the patristic era, the Middle Ages, and modern times—experienced its bloom when a careful balance was achieved in the delicate relationship between ratio and auctoritas, that is to say, between speculative and positive theology. In the era of the Fathers, this golden age of theology occurred in the century after the first Council of Nicaea; medieval theology, Grabmann thought, reached its zenith in the one hundred years following the fourth Council of the Lateran; while in modern times, it was the Council of Trent which led to a period of particular theological fruitfulness. Since the Enlightenment, theology has lost its unity, ceasing to be scientia una in the Scholastic sense, so that the
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positive and speculative elements (such as dogmatics, exegesis, history of theology, canon law, pastoral studies) now tend to stand in no more than an extrinsic relationship to each other: one can read Grabmann’s regret between the lines. The growing scope, almost universality, of Grabmann’s work during the Munich years and later in Eichstätt never cast any doubt upon the primacy of Saint Thomas Aquinas among his projects. His research was concerned not only with the Angelic Doctor himself but also with his school; thus he made pioneering studies of more than twenty-five medieval Thomists, including figures such as John Capreolus (ca. 1380-1444) and John Tinctoris (1435— 1511), from the still much underresearched fifteenth century (Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, 3: 370-432). His most comprehensive studies in the field are the essay “Die italienische Thomistenschule des XIII. und beginnenden XIV. Jahrhunderts” {Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, 1: 332-91) and the “Forschungen zur Geschichte der ältesten deutschen Thomistenschule des Dominikanerordens” (ibid.: 392-431). In the thirty years between 1918 and 1948 Grabmann published eight books on Aquinas, some of which, for instance the works on the Summa, on the saint’s interior life, on his theological epistemology and introductory science, have already been touched upon in the course of this article. Nor was he at all averse to popularizing the results of his learned investigations, hoping to extend the influence of the Scholastic renaissance beyond the proverbial ivory tower. Both Das Seelenleben des hi Thomas von Aquin ( 1924) and Die Kulturphilosophie des hi Thomas von Aquin (1925) fall into the category of haute vulgarisation, originating as they do in lectures which their author delivered on the occasion of the sixth centenary of Saint Thomas Aquinas’s canonization in 1923. Grabmann’s most weighty contribution to Thomistic scholarship was his Die Werke des hi. Thomas von Aquin (3rd ed. [1949], first published in 1920 under the title Die echten Schriften des hl. Thomas von Aquin): “it is a major book which everybody involved in Thomistic studies uses daily” (Van Steenberghen, La bibliothèque du philosophe médiéviste, 262). Against a thesis of Pierre Mandonnet, O.P. (1858—1936), who claimed that the “official catalogue” of the saint’s writings drawn up for his canonization process was alone decisive for the question of authenticity, Grabmann established that the other ancient catalogs, as well as the manuscript tradition, provide crucial evidence for the determination of the genuineness or otherwise of Thomistic writings. Although Die Werke des hi Thomas von Aquin gives a comprehensive critical examination of the whole Thomistic corpus, its chief result was that numerous opuscules could safely be ascribed to Thomas which Mandonnet had declared spurious on the basis of the “official catalogue” (Grabmann, Die Werke, 3rd ed., 246fi).
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Thomism, the history of theology, medieval mysticism and Neoplatonism, Saint Albert and his school, speculative grammar, radical Aristotelianism and the Aristoteles latinus, Scholasticism and contemporary thought, the essence and history of the Scholastic method: Grabmann’s work has so many facets that it is difficult to determine wherein precisely the greatness of his achievement lies; that he was a great scholar there is no doubt. It is not artificial, indeed it is a most appropriate approach, to use Grabmanns own Thomistic categories in answering the question of his lasting legacy to medieval studies. For his own work reflected the duality of ratio and auctoritasy which he showed to be the very soul of the Scholastic method; he, too, was confronted with a positive tradition, a body of doctrinal material of which he could make sense only by bringing reason to bear upon it, by devising, that is, a rational approach which would unlock the treasures of tradition, making them fruitful for the present day. Grabmanns greatness lay both in the ratio of his research, that is, in its methodological form, and in the material results which the application of this ratio yielded for our understanding of auctoritas, the philosophical and theological tradition. On the material side, Grabmann has fertilized medieval scholarship not so much, I believe, by throwing the Scholastic movement into any fresh overall perspective, as by vastly extending our knowledge of its constitutive schools and currents: in truth, he was deeply suspicious of a tendency which he detected in some contemporaries like Rudolph Christoph Eucken (1846-1926), Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), or Ernst Troeltsch (18651923) to put about high-flown ideas on the great lines of medieval culture without any firm positive basis (Grabmann [1915]: 705). It is precisely to this positive basis that Grabmann has added copiously in every single one of the many fields in which he conducted research. Without his manuscript discoveries and the sagacity with which he exploited them the record of medieval thought would everywhere be less complete, less precise, and much less vivid. In addition, many of his writings retain even now an original freshness, containing, despite the remarkable advances which the past fifty years have seen in medieval studies, hints and material that still wait to be explored; I mention only his pioneering work on the history of the Thomistic school. Finally, Grabmann’s explanation of the development of medieval thought as essentially an evolving, dynamic relationship between faith and reason constitutes a convincing alternative to the more static conceptions which have dominated the discussion in the French-speaking countries: philosophy and theology were not always distinguished so clearly in the whole Scholastic movement as they were later in Aquinas, nor can Scholastic philosophy be identified tout court with a “Christian philosophy,” where reason is reduced to an ancillary role in the service of revealed truth. 70
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Grabmanns methodology, his ratio inquisitionis, is also of lasting value, and it possesses a particular relevance in the present crisis of neoScholasticism. The strict complementarity of the speculative and the historico-genetical methods on all levels of research remains a fundamental desideratum. Martin Grabmann has taught us that the interpretation of a medieval thinkers ideas presupposes an understanding of his intellectual environment. But he has equally emphasized that the history of philosophy (or theology, for that matter) is not a self-sufficient enterprise; in the same way in which a philosophy that loses contact with its tradition must slide into irremediably shallow subjectivism, an exclusively “positive” history of philosophy without speculative aspirations, and hence out of touch with contemporary intellectual exigencies, degenerates into a kind of intellectual archaeology. “Studium philosophiae non est ad hoc quod sciatur quid homines senserint, sed qualiter se habeat veritas rerum” (The study of philosophy is not about getting to know what people have taught, but about the truth of things). Se l e c t e d B i b l i o g r a ph y
The indispensable guide to Grabmanns published oeuvre as well as to the whole of his literary remains is Köstler and Ott s M artin Grabmann: Nachlass und Schrifitum, under Sources. Although only the most important o f Grabmanns over 400 publications appear below, some lesser-known items, which cast light upon his methodology and approach, have also been included.
Works Bo o k s a n d A r t ic l e s
“Die praktische Bedeutung des Thomasstudiums.” Augsburger Postzeitung, Beilage, 63/64 (1897): 436-37, 444-46. “Dr. Franz v. P. Morgott als Thomist. Ein Beitrag zur Theologiegeschichte des XIX. Jahrhunderts.” Jahrbuch fü r Philosophie und spekulative Theologie 15 (1901): 46-79. Die Lehre des heiligen Thomas von Aquin von der Kirche als Gotteswerk: Ihre Stellung im thomistischen System und in der Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Theologie. Regensburg: Manz, 1903. “Die Grundlegung der scholastischen Methode in der Patristik und Vorscholastik.” Wissenschaftliche Beilage zur Germania 50 (13 December 1906): 393-97. Die Geschichte der scholastischen Methode. Vol. 1, Die scholastischen Methode von ihren ersten Anjangen in der Väterliteratur bis zum Beginn des 12. Jahrhunderts. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1909. Vol. 2, Die scholastischen Methode im 12. und beginnenden 13. Jahrhundert. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1911. Thomas von Aquin: Eine Einführung in seine Persönlichkeit und Gedankenwelt. Kempten: Kösel, 1912. 6th ed., 1935. 8th ed., 1949. Translated by Virgil Michel as Thomas Aquinas: His Personality and Thought. New York: Longmans, Green, 1928. Der Gegenwartswert der geschichtlichen Erforschung der mittelalterlichen Philosophie. Vienna: Herder, 1913.
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“ Der hl. Thomas von Aquin im Werturteil der modernen Wissenschaft.” Theologie und Glaube 5 (1913): 809-24. “Uber Wert und Methode des Studiums der scholastischen Handschriften. Gedanken zum 70. Geburtstag von P. Franz Ehrle S.J.” Zeitschriftfür katholische Theologie 39 (1915): 699-740. Forschungen über die lateinischen Aristotelesübersetzungen des XIII. Jahrhunderts. Münster: Aschendorff, 1916. “Der kritische Realismus Oswald Külpes und der Standpunkt der aristotelischscholastischen Philosophie.” Philosophisches ]ahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft 29 (1916): 333-69. Einführung in die Summa Theologiae des heiligen Thomas von Aquin. 1919; 2nd ed., Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1928. Translated by John S. Zybura as Introduction to the Theological Summa o f St. Thomas Aquinas from the 2nd ed. rev. and enlarged. St. Louis: Herder, 1930. Die echten Schriften des hl. Thomas von Aquin: A u f Grund der alten Kataloge und der handschriftlichen Überlieferung festgestellt. Münster: Aschendorff, 1920. 2nd ed., Die Werke des hl. Thomas von Aquin. Eine literarhistorische Untersuchung und Einführung, 1931. 3rd ed., 1949. Reprinted with bibliographical additions by Richard Heinzmann, 1967. Die Philosophie des Mittelalters. Vol. 3 of Geschichte der Philosophie. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1921. Das Seelenleben des hl. Thomas von Aquin: Nach seinen Werken und den Heiligsprechungsakten dargestellt. 1st and 2nd ed. Munich: Theatiner-Verlag, 1924. 3rd ed. Freiburg, Switz.: Paulusverlag, 1949. Translated by Nicholas Ashenbrener, O. P., as The Interior Life o f St. Thomas Aquinas: Presented from His Works and the Acts o f His Canonization Process. Milwaukee: Bruce, 1951. Die Kulturphilosophie des hi. Thomas von Aquin. Augsburg: Filser, 1925. Mittelalterliches Geistesleben: Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Scholastik und Mystik. 3 vols. Munich: Hueber, 1926-56. Vol. 1, 1926; Vol. 2, 1936; Vol. 3, 1956, edited by Ludwig Ott. [Grabmanns “Autobiographische Notizen” are in vol. 3, pp. 1-9.] “Nature and Problems of the New Scholasticism in the Light of History.” In PresentDay Thinkers and the New Scholasticism, edited by John S. Zybura, pp. 129-60. St. Louis: Herder, 1926. “The Influence of Mediaeval Philosophy on the Intellectual Life of Today.” The New Scholasticism 3 (1929): 24-56, translated by Virgil Michel, O.S.B. [A lecture first given at the University of Munich in 1926.] An extended version of the original German paper appeared in 1937 under the title, “Die geistige Lebendigkeit der Philosophie des Mittelalters.” Zeitschriftfü r deutsche Geistesgeschichte 2 (1937): 1-24. Die Geschichte der katholischen Theologie seit dem Ausgang der Väterzeit: M it Benützung von M.J. Scheebens Grundriss dargestellt. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1933. Translated as Storia della teologia cattolica dalla fine dell’epoca patristica ai tempi nostri by Giacomo di Fabio. 2nd ed. [“con molto aggiunte dellAutore”] Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1939. “ Die Philosophie des Cartesius und die Eucharistialehre [sic] des Emmanuel Maignan O. Minim.” In Cartesio nel terzo centenario nel Discorso del Metodo, pp. 425-36. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1937. I divieti ecclesiastici di Aristotele sotto Innocenzo II I e Gregorio IX. Vol. 1 of his I Papi del Duecento e l A ’ ristotelismo. Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1941. “ Das Immerdauernde in der theol. Methode des hl. Thomas v. Aquin.” Klerusblatt 23 (23 December 1942): 374-78.
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Guglielmo di Moerbeke O.P., il traduttore delle opere di Aristotele. Voi. 2 of his I Papi del Duecento e lAristotelismo. Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1946. “Die völkerverbindende Macht der wahren Wissenschaft.” Stimmen der Zeit 139 (1946-47): 241-59. Die theol. Erkenntnis- und Einleitungslehre des h i Thomas von Aquin a u f Grund seiner Schrifi “In Boethium de Trinitate. ” Im Zusammenhang der Scholastik des 13. und beginnenden 14. Jahrhunderts dargestellt. Freiburg, Switz.: Paulusverlag, 1948. “Eduard Eichmannt.” Historisches Jahrbuch 62-69 (1949): 920-28. Gesammelte Akademieabhandlungen. Edited by Grabmann Institute of the University of Munich, with an Introduction by Michael Schmaus. 2 vols. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1979. L e t t e r s a n d Pa p e r s
Grabmann’s papers are dispersed among five different libraries and archives. Unpublished palaeographical notes and photographs of manuscripts are held at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich (Ana 326). The Grabmann Institute of the University of Munich has most, though not all, of the letters he received and a few from among those he sent, along with notes on his own publications. The library of the University of Munich has the manuscript of one of his Academy lectures (4° Cod. 1036). The archives o f the Bischöfliches Seminar at Eichstätt house a number of official documents (for example, the testament). Finally, the library of the new Catholic University of Eichstätt is the repository of a fine collection of personal documents (N l 3) and of numerous photographs (GS (3) 10.206-207).
Sources Anonymous (“fs”). “Das Geschlecht der Grabmann im Dorfe Winterzhofen.” Neumarkier Tagblatt (28 January 1953): Lokalseite 8. Flasch, Kurt. “La concezione storiografica della filosofia in Baeumker e Grabmann.” In Gli studi di filosofia medievale fra Otto e Novecento: Contributo a un bilancio storiografico, edited by Ruedi Imbach and Alfonso Maierù, pp. 51—73. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1991. Köstler, Hermann, and Ludwig Ott. M artin Grabmann: Nachlass und Schrifttum. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1980. Lang, Albert, Joseph Lechner, and Michael Schmaus, eds. Aus der Geisteswelt des M ittelalters: Studien und Texte M artin Grabmanns zur Vollendung des 60. Lebensjahres von Freunden und Schülern gewidmet. 2 vols. Münster: Aschendorff, 1935. Ott, Ludwig, ed. M artin Grabmann zum Gedächtnis. Eichstätt: Verlag der Katholischen Kirche in Bayern, 1949. ---------. “Martin Grabmann und seine Verdienste um die Thomasforschung.” Divus Thomas 27 (1949): 129-53. ---------. “Martin Grabmann und die Erforschung der mittelalterlichen Philosophie.” Philosophisches Jahrbuch 59 (1949): 137-49. ---------. “Grabmann, Martin.” In Neue Deutsche Biographie, edited by Historische Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. 6, pp. 699-700. Berlin: Dunckerand Humblot, 1964. ---------. M artin Grabmann— sein Leben und sein Werk. Neumarkt/Opfi: Grimm, 1975. Pinborg, Jan. “A Note on Some Theoretical Concepts of Logic and Grammar.” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 29 (1975): 286-96.
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Rosemann, Philipp W. “Histoire et actualité de la méthode scolastique selon M. Grabmann. Appendice: ‘Secundum aliquid utrumque est verum: ' Media via et méthode scolastique chez S. Thomas d’Aquin.” In Actualité de la pensée médiévale, edited by Jacques Follon and James McEvoy, pp. 95-118. Louvain-laNeuve: Éditions de l’Institut supérieur de philosophie, 1994. Scheeben, M.J. Handbuch der katholischen Dogmatik. 4 vols. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1873-98. Schmaus, Michael. “Leben und Werk Martin Grabmanns.” In Miscellanea M artin Grabmann. Gedenkblatt zum 10. Todestag, pp. 4-10. Munich: Hueber, 1959. ---------. “Einleitung.” In Gesammelte Akademieabhandlungen, vol. 1, pp. xi-xxxii. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1979. Van Steenberghen, Fernand. La bibliothèque du philosophe médiéviste. Louvain: Publications universitaires, 1974. ---------. “Martin Grabmann (1875-1949).” In his Introduction à Vétude delà philosophie médiévale, pp. 313-16. Louvain: Publications universitaires, 1974. ---------. “Introduction.” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 29 (1975): 211-21. My warmest thanks to Professor James McEvoy for reading a previous version of this article and offering many helpful suggestions.
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Ét
ie n n e
G
il s o n
( 1884 1978 )
f Edward A.
Syrian
Étienne Henry (spelling favored by the family) Gilson, the most eminent modern historian of medieval speculation and, above all, of medieval philosophy and its relations to theology, was born in Paris on 13 June 1884; he died in Auxerre on 19 September 1978. His years of research, writing, lecturing, and teaching earned him successive appointments at the universities of Lille, Strasbourg, Paris, Harvard, and Toronto. From 1932 Gilson held an appointment at the Collège de France; in 1929 he became co-founder and over four decades director of studies at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto; in 1946 he became one of the “Forty Immortals,” a member of the Académie Française. Two publications provide full accounts of Gilsons life and works: an authorized biography by Laurence K. Shook, C.S.B. (1984) and a full bibliography by Margaret McGrath (1982). Gilson was the third of five sons born to Paul Anthelme Gilson and his wife, Caroline Juliette Rainaud. His father came from a line of Parisians that extended at least to the Revolution. Family lore held that before the Revolution of 1789 the Gilsons had come to Paris from the north of France, near Belgium. One of his ancestors escaped the guillotine only because, as he waited in line for execution, that usually efficient device broke down. Gilson’s mother descended from a Burgundian family and a number of localities were important in his life: Melun, Vermenton, Cravant, and Auxerre. Gilson’s parents owned and managed a small dry-goods shop. Despite the early incapacitation of her husband by a stroke, Mme. Gilson managed to see her three younger sons through the University of Paris: Étienne became an eminent scholar, André a priest, and Maurice a medical doctor. The Gilsons were practicing Catholics. Gilson’s formal education began in two religious schools, the first conducted by the Christian Brothers near the Gilson home in the parish of SainteClotilde. His second school was Notre-Dame-des-Champs, conducted by 75
diocesan priests; until he was nineteen, Gilson was a “Champiste.” His excellent formation in the liberal arts at his first two schools was supplemented by serious exposure to classical music, the love of which remained with him throughout his life. His first encounter with the discipline that would be his lifework was in the “philosophy year” at the Lycée Henri IV (1902-03). Yet despite his prize for philosophy at the lycée, he felt ill prepared: when called up for military training Gilson brought with him the school texts in philosophy he felt he had not understood. With them he relieved the tedium of his compulsory year of service (1903—04). From 1904 until 1907 Gilson studied philosophy at the Sorbonne under Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1857-1939) and Émile Durkheim (18581917) among others, and followed lectures by Henri Bergson (18591941) at the Collège de France. Given a book late in his life that dealt with an aspect of Jewish life in the Middle Ages, Gilson said of his Jewish masters and colleagues, “I owe everything to those people.” Gilsons interest in philosophical speculation was out of step with the positivist atmosphere of the Sorbonne of that day. Told that he ought to do “something positive,” he proposed the history of philosophy, well understood, done with rigor: “That’s positive enough, isn’t it?” (Shook [1984], 18). Although certainly a historian of philosophy, Gilson insisted to the end that only a philosopher can deal with the history of philosophy. Only half facetiously would he complain that abstract discourse on philosophical issues counts as “philosophy,” whereas the identical discourse, garnished with names, is called the “history of philosophy.” This first accommodation to the prevailing tone of French officialdom is an indication of the felicitous unity Gilson achieved by his academic integrity, his French patriotism, and the devotion to the Catholic Church that would permeate his life. (Since Napoleon I at least, if not from the foundation of the Collège de France by Francis I, education has been a primary concern of government in France.) At eighteen Gilson fell in love with Thérèse Ravisé, a cousin whose consanguinity was sufficiently remote to permit their happy marriage in 1908. Equipped with the appropriate decree from the Ministry of Public Instruction, Gilson began his teaching career at the Lycée Lalande in Bourgen־Bresse near the Swiss frontier, primarily in philosophy, but at the beginning in a number of other disciplines as well. Meanwhile he continued to work on the two theses required for a doctorate from the University of Paris. Their subject was the medieval source material of René Descartes (1596-1650), a theme suggested to him by Lévy-Bruhl. In searching for the medieval roots of Cartesian thought Gilson first encountered the period that became his principal object of study. In particular, he first met Saint Thomas
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Aquinas (ca. 1225-1274), whose name he could not remember having heard in his two Catholic schools. From the Lycée Lalande Gilson moved with his wife to lycées at Rochfort-sur-Mer, Tours, Saint-Quentin, and Angers. At the time their first child Jacqueline was born, Gilson underwent a month’s special training designed to prepare future army officers at a military camp near Sedan. A second daughter, Cecile, was born in 1913. An only son, Bernard, was born later in 1928. In 1913 Gilson defended his theses with such resounding success that he merited designation as a prospective university-level professor. Presented to the Institut de France by the distinguished Victor Delbos (1862-1916), they were published as the Index scholastico-cartésien (1912) and La liberté chez Descartes et la théologie (1913). In an invited article he juxtaposed Cartesian “innate ideas” with Thomistic views on knowledge (1914). A government appointment assigned Gilson to the teaching staff of the University of Lille. There he proposed to teach a course on the philosophical contributions of Thomas Aquinas, and, to his surprise, the university administration encouraged him to do so. This unexpected approval was owing, perhaps, to a certain rivalry with the nearby Catholic University of Louvain, where Désiré Mercier (1851-1926) had founded the Ecole supérieure de philosophie in which Aquinas was held in high honor. For Gilson, as for Europe and indeed for the world, this happy season ended abruptly with the advent of World War I. On 2 August 1914 the new professor was mobilized as a sergeant in the Forty-Third Infantry Regiment of the French Army. Gilson was briefly transferred to head a section of machine gunners in the 165th Regiment. By June 1915 he was posted to Verdun and by November promoted to second {sous) lieutenant. On 23 February 1916, the third day of the German offensive, Gilson was stunned and buried under wreckage caused by an artillery shell. Rescued by his orderly, he came to consciousness surrounded by armed German soldiers with their weapons ready. Their officer assured him in German (which he understood) that “We are not barbarians!” For the rest of the war Gilson was imprisoned in officers’ camps. Apart from one interval of “reprisals” provoked by the alleged maltreatment of German prisoners, he was generally well treated. During those years, through daily contact with his fellow prisoners, Gilson developed a fluent control of spoken English and Russian. He was also able to continue his work on medieval thought (booksellers were allowed to supply books to prisoners), and in 1917 even managed to publish “Du fondement des jugements esthétiques” in a French journal. At the end of World War I Gilson was promptly released; by Christmas 1918 he was with his family and in February 1919 resumed his teaching
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at the University of Lille. His military service was acknowledged by the award of the croix de guerre and his promotion (1924) to the rank of first (full) lieutenant. In May 1919 Gilson was transferred to the staff of the University of Strasbourg as one of a team of scholars entrusted with transforming that institution, a German foundation since 1882, into a French university, that is, into one with programs that would mesh with the lycée system of French secondary education and with other French universities. Precious aspects of the German system, however, were retained, notably “seminar ״instruction and the “institutes ״combining staff and students from several academic areas. At Strasbourg, too, Gilson responded creatively to the influence of fellow savants, this time to the economic historians Marc Bloch (1886-1944) and Lucien Febvre (1878-1956). It cannot be doubted that here the seed was sown for his conception of a multidisciplinary “institute” of medieval studies in which each specialty might interact with and enhance others. The Strasbourg period was a happy one for the Gilsons. Their lives flourished. The presence of Thérèse at his lectures, their daily attendance at mass in the cathedral, even their support for symphony concerts at Mulhouse gave them the air of a model couple. In the summer of 1921 the death of François Joseph Picavet (1851— 1921), chargé de cours for medieval philosophies in the University of Paris, opened to Gilson a double appointment in Paris. He was invited to replace Picavet at the Sorbonne (where his students would be comparable in age to the undergraduates at North American universities), and to this was joined more advanced teaching at the Ecole pratique des hautes études. Gilson was willing to accept a reduction in rank for this opportunity. The year following, during the summer and fall of 1922, Gilson became involved in an important nonacademic activity. Famine had struck both Ukraine and Russia in the winter of 1921-22. Political considerations blocked government aid from the West, and, as always in widespread disasters, children were the most pitiable of the victims. A citizen group in Paris, the Association for Aid to Russian Children, collaborated with the Nansen Committee of the League of Nations to mitigate the suffering. Gilson joined the association and was sent to investigate and recommend remedies. His ability to speak Russian was a necessary, but not a sufficient, reason for his having undertaken this humanitarian mission to combat hunger and the epidemic disease to which hunger exposed innocent populations. In 1922 as well, a second and revised edition of Gilsons first volume of Le thomisme: introduction au système de S. Thomas d ’A quin was not only
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the harbinger of a lifelong series of such revisions (McGrath, 26-27), but was also Gilsons first contact with the Parisian publisher Joseph Vrin (d. 1957). They became fast friends despite the sorry state of the manuscripts with which Gilson would burden Vrin for the next thirty-five years. Gilsons academic successes continued both in France and abroad. His impressive collection of honorary degrees began with an LL.D. from St. Andrew’s University in Scotland in 1925 and ended with honors from the Catholic University of America in 1971 and from the Brazilian Academy of the Latin World in 1972. Shook has justifiably called 1926 his “year of wonders,” his annus mirabilis. With the Dominican scholar Gabriel Théry (1891-1959) and his erudite Parisian publisher Vrin, Gilson founded the journal Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge in 1926. Thanks to a scholar who had been his student at Strasbourg, Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, this journal “survived the deaths of all three founders” (Shook [1984], 139). In that year, too, occurred Gilson’s first visit to North America, a visit that was to transform his life. In the summer of 1926 he taught two courses at the University of Virginia (“Why wasn’t I born in Virginia?” he wrote to Thérèse [ibid., 143]). Chief among the seminal events of that visit was the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy, convened at Harvard. Gilson presented both a major and a minor paper to the congress and seems to have been its dominant personality. In the fall term he gave two courses at Harvard, and in January 1927 he made his first visit to Toronto. Harvard offered him a full professorship in the Department of Philosophy, and an unnamed Torontonian tried to recruit him for Saint Michael’s College of the University of Toronto. Both overtures met with immediate, if only partial refusal. Gilson agreed to teach at Harvard during the fall terms of 1927 and 1928, and he became a co-founder of an “Institute of Mediaeval Studies” on the campus of Saint Michael’s College in 1929, along with Henry Carr, C.S.B. (1880-1963), and Gerald B. Phelan (1892-1965), a priest from Halifax with a Louvain doctorate who was already teaching philosophy at Toronto. Thus Gilson became the latest in a series of European savants attracted to Toronto by the small staff of Basilian priests who conducted the college. The conception of an “institute” in which a broad range of medieval disciplines could be investigated and taught side by side, each illumined by all the others and without excessive departmentalization, had been germinating in Gilson’s mind since his days in Strasbourg immediately after World War I. Within two years Carr was elected Superior General of the Basilians and in that post supported Gilsons plans for recruiting promising young
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Basilians. As director of studies for the new institute, a role Gilson held until his retirement more than forty years later, he was able to select the most appropriate universities for the training of new staff. If one instance can serve for many, L.K. Shook, C.S.B., who would one day produce Gilsons definitive biography, was advised to go to Harvard for what interested both him and the institute, medieval Germanic literature. In addition to his work as director of studies, Gilson would regularly spend the fall semester in Toronto, returning to Paris for his university teaching there and, after 1932, for lecturing at the Collège de France. But his time in North America was not devoted exclusively to the Toronto enterprise. He received an honorary doctorate from Harvard in 1936, that university’s tercentennial, and in the same year delivered Harvard’s William James Lectures, later to be published as The Unity o f Philosophical Experience (1937). A most notable honor in a life rich in honors was the invitation from the University of Aberdeen to deliver the Gifford Lectures of 1931 and 1932; these went to press as L’esprit de la philosophie médiévale (1932). Seeking papal approval, Gilson and other institute officials entered into negotiations with the Vatican’s Congregation for Seminaries and Universities. To the surprise of the petitioners from Toronto, Monsignor Ernesto Ruffini, secretary of the congregation, enlarged the scope of their request for a primarily “philosophical” institute to one in which every medieval discipline would enjoy equal prestige, a modification which the future cardinal rightly judged was what they wanted. Later, as cardinal, Ruffini would present a most conservative persona at the Second Vatican Council. On those terms, a papal charter was granted in 1939, just ten years after the institute’s foundation, and the project became the “Pontifical” Institute of Mediaeval Studies with the right to award a license and a doctorate. The first is a three-year program, once described by Gilson as providing “the minimum background for reading Dante.” The doctorate in medieval studies, more exigent than the Ph.D., crowns a course reminiscent of the Parisian docteur es lettres requirements. In 1939, too, the annual Mediaeval Studies began publication, and in the years ahead a Department of Publications would become the second largest academic press in Canada. Before the end of September 1939 Gilson left his family in the country to go to Paris, having assured Thérèse that he would return shortly. It is all but certain that the French government directed him instead to take up his usual fall teaching at Toronto and while in North America to do what he could to promote sympathy for the cause of France at war. In any event, this is what he did, chiefly by lecturing on the Christian humanism in which he saw the salvation of the West. Since lectures at the Collège de France had been suspended, and with no thought of the defeat and occupation to come,
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he did not return to Paris until April of 1940. With invasion and defeat, his Vermenton home was occupied by SS troops, and twice he was approached by German officials; twice he refused to collaborate, and after that he was left in peace. When his family was able to return to Vermenton from their second home in Cravant, they found their property severely damaged. Another side of the World War II years was also trying. Although Gilson was a faithful Catholic, the troubles endured by the great Dominican M.-D. Chenu (1895-1990; see essay in this volume) at the hands of the Vatican bureaucracy seemed grotesque to him; Chenus description of the theology program at Le Saulchoir, Une école de théologie: Le Saulchoir, very different from such programs in Rome to be sure, was put on the Index of Forbidden Books. Painful to Gilson also was the number of French Catholics, some bishops not excluded, who sided with the Vichy puppet government and opposed the Resistance (for which his teenaged son Bernard carried messages). Repeated efforts by Harvard to get Gilson out of occupied France came to nothing. With the end of World War II in 1945 Gilson’s competence in languages and his activity to promote renewal of French political life earned him an appointment from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as delegate to the San Francisco Conference where the United Nations organization was born. This was followed by an appointment in October of the same year to the conference in London from which UNESCO resulted; Gilson served on the committee formed to draft its constitution. These concerns with high politics did not prevent his responding to the “existentialist” philosophies which, in the immediate postwar years, were suddenly modish. Gilson was particularly interested in their possible affinities with Thomism and, even more, with Augustinianism. In 1946 Gilson ended his five-year, war-caused hiatus in his work at the Toronto institute. This was also the year of his election to the Académie Française. His formal discours de réception took place in May. Gilson replaced Abel Hermant (1862—1950), a member who had been expelled, and the new Academician made a subtle and discreet allusion to him in his inaugural address. Another distraction from his academic work was his appointment (he failed to be elected) to the Council of the Republic for a two-year term by the triumphant Popular Republican Movement, the Mouvement Républicain Populaire. For a season he was “Senator Gilson.” There now began a period of the greatest trials in Gilson’s long life. By the fall of 1949 Thérèse neared the end of her struggle with leukemia. Gilson who had been teaching in Toronto was summoned suddenly to Paris; he arrived in time to be at her side when she died in November.
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A Thomistic congress in Rome provided yet another tribulation for one so faithful to his church. The congress was dominated by two members of the Holy Office who made things difficult for two Louvain philosophers, R Van Steenberghen (b. 1904) and L. de Raeymaeker (b. 1895), while the hostility to the Jesuit H. de Lubac (1925-1974), who would later become a cardinal, was hardly concealed. Gilson made it clear that he was outraged despite the fact that he and the Louvain institute had not seen eye to eye on every philosophical issue. When Gilson and the Louvain scholars showed themselves willing to do battle, the opposition retreated. Another struggle ended neither so quickly nor so happily for Gilson. He had begun to fear that in the unsettled state of Europe a Soviet invasion of France could not be resisted by the all but unarmed French forces, and the United States did not seem eager to rearm them. His daughters would be in the path of such an invasion, and his son was of military age. Never one to keep his opinions to himself, especially among trusted friends, Gilson had the misfortune to voice his analyses and his fears at dinner with friends at the University of Notre Dame where he had gone to lecture. Hearsay concerning his table talk inspired Waldemar Gurian (1902—1954), a Russian émigré on the Notre Dame staff, to write an “open letter” to Commonweal, a journal edited by Catholic laity, accusing Gilson of “neutralism” and “defeatism.” At first hesitant to respond, Gilson finally did so: l'affaire Gilson was under way. It came to an end many months later with a full and written apology from Gurian, but the squabble had reached London and Paris where Gilsons request for retirement from active teaching at the Collège de France had been misinterpreted as evidence of his abandonment of France to her enemies. A humiliating vote by his colleagues refused him the normal bonorariat status, an affront reversed only after a long delay. One happy result of the unhappy affair was that the celebrated Trappist Thomas Merton (1915—1968), of Seven Storey Mountain fame, wrote to console him and seems to have succeeded. Perhaps wiser, almost certainly holier, Gilson continued to expand his horizons. Gilsons work began to move into the area in which the liberal arts shade into the fine arts and into that other neighborhood where philosophical theologizing shades into the spiritual life: Dante, Bernard, Abelard and Héloïse, transformations in Christian humanism visible in successive conceptions of the “city of God.” This last was the theme of his lectures at the opening of the Cardinal Mercier chair at Louvain. Gilson even came close to violating his own convictions on the subject of “textbooks,” but those on which he collaborated are less classroom manuals than serious works whose limited scope and clarity of style place them within the capacities of contemporary students. Here too he provided prefaces for inexpensive editions of the
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encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII and Cardinal Newmans Grammar o f Assent (1954). He was invited (as his lifelong friend Jacques Maritain [1882-1973] had been) to deliver the A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., later to be published as Painting and Reality (1957). No accomplishment of this fecund period surpasses Gilsons History o f Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (1955). His own characterization of it in an interview is the best possible: “It is all that a specialist knows in his field.” In 1959 for the first time the robust Gilson was interrupted by illness; he underwent surgery for prostatitis in January, and the procedure would be repeated in September of 1962. In June 1959 his seventy-fifth birthday was celebrated by three festschrifts. Twelve colleagues at the Pontifical Institute closed that years volume of Mediaeval Studies; the volume was published under the title Etienne Gilson Anniversary Studies. In Paris Mélanges offerts à Etienne Gilson proffered articles by continental scholars along with four from the United Kingdom and two from the United States. An Étienne Gilson Tribute brought together twenty essays by his North American students, to say nothing of the editorial board of five others. He took himself less seriously than did his colleagues; from this period dates his pungent observation that “It is wonderful to be a professor; all your personal errors become official doctrine.” For the next fifteen years Gilsons diminishing physical resources gradually limited his activities, but his intellectual life remained vigorous. Despite student unrest, he taught courses at Berkeley during the spring of 1969 with signal success. If the number of his special lectures declined, new themes occupied his reflections. He became increasingly insistent upon the impossibility of separating medieval philosophy from theology, despite a formal distinction that he did not impugn. The philosophical implications of language fascinated him as well, despite his innocence of contemporary linguistics (Shook [1984], 378-81). Physical science, too, and its relationship to philosophy were the occasion for a 1970 series of lectures, which appeared as DAristote à Darwin et retour (1971). Because he felt unable to cross the Atlantic once more, he sent these lectures to Toronto. Gilson spent his last years in his family home at Cravant. There he read as much as his failing sight permitted (Benjamin Jowett’s translation of Plato for English style, for instance), was amused and perplexed by the signs of quasi-reasoning observed in his cat, and cared for his daughter Jacqueline, a painter. With some trepidation he acceded to his parish priests request that he deliver a homily in his village church. A few days before his death in the Central Hospital of Auxerre he exchanged biblical pleasantries with the
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hospital chaplain. On reading Gilson’s name at the foot of his bed the chaplain said, “If the Gospel did not forbid it, I should call you my Maitre!” Gilson answered in the Latin of the Vulgate “Magister vester unus est Christus” ([Your only master is Christ], Matt. 23:10). After a solemn funeral mass in the Cathedral of Saint Stephen in Auxerre, Gilson’s remains were buried beside those of his wife in Melun, a town in which Peter Abelard had once conducted a school. Brief remarks at the graveside were pronounced by his old friend M.-D. Chenu, O.P. This account of Gilson’s eventful life and heritage of books, articles, lectures, and reviews has conveyed a number of his convictions on what academic activity, and particularly the activity of philosophizing, ought to be. It has been noted that he was sensitive to the malign influence exercised by textbooks and manuals; his answer was to give absolute priority to primary sources. From this stems much of his effectiveness: to read a work of Gilson on a medieval author is to be in the presence of that author, with Gilson always at the reader’s elbow, directing one’s attention to the crucial passage, interpreting the obscurities, drawing comparisons with the immense store of philosophers, poets, theologians, saints, and sinners with whom his erudition had made him familiar. Gilson’s convictions extended beyond questions of methodology to matters of interpretation. First, he believed that beyond all other philosophical disciplines, metaphysics is the guarantor of all human knowing, and that among the concerns of the metaphysician is the ultimate issue of being. On this last step in purely rational knowing, Gilson was convinced that Thomas Aquinas had perceived more clearly than all others the dynamism of even the least of beings, the pure and unmixed Act of Being Itself which is the metaphysician’s name for what the theologian names the Holy One, obscurely perceived by the great philosophers of antiquity (Plato’s Good, which is also One; Aristotle’s thought that thinks itself; the name heard from the bush that burned but was not consumed, “I am,” “I Who am”). Gilson held that philosophy, metaphysics included, had proceeded through the Middle Ages in company with and in service to theology; this, he thought, is the order that must obtain. Distinct to be sure, the two disciplines cannot be separated. His sympathetic biographer was right to say that “He came very near to saying that, for the believer, philosophy . . . is impossible” (Shook [1984], 349); if he came “very near,” he did not go over that edge. Thus Gilson advanced from the respectable but less exact estimate of Thomas and of Thomism that inspired his first teaching at Lille before World War I. The volume Le thomisme: introduction au systeme de S. Thomas d ’A quin which, like so many others, grew out of his teaching, began as a
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study of the “system” of Saint Thomas; he came to see that despite his order and clarity, Aquinas did not propose a system. After the 1927 edition, Gilson’s works on Thomism were no longer “introductions to the system of Saint Thomas” but “introductions to the philosophy of Saint Thomas.” Even this notion began to trouble him, and he came to think that philosophy within a theologian’s arsenal is in truth theology, not to be cut out and pasted together in a systematic way. Evidence of this change is his last words on Bonaventure (ca. 1217—1274) in the 1943 edition in which Gilson took notice of criticism by E Van Steenberghen, whose interests he had once defended in Rome. The Louvain philosopher had written that Gilson’s book was not the philosophy of Bonaventure, but a “mutilated exposition of his theology”; Gilson wrote: “We accept this reproach in its entirety” (Gilson [1943],409). Those of us who heard Gilson lecture and who participated in his seminars know with what respect, but with what rigor, he handled beginners. He carried his erudition lightly, spoke with wit as well as with wisdom. Gilson knew well that, as he had reminded the world was the case with Saint Anselm, our philosophy and theology is a “halfway house,” a medium between blind faith and eternal clarity of vision. Se l e c t e d B i b l i o g r a p h y
Gilsons enormous literary production (McGrath lists 935 items) can be categorized under three headings: monographs on particular medieval figures, doctrinally oriented studies, and general histories of medieval speculation. In view of the availability of the McGrath survey (see under Sources), entries here are limited to the most significant of Gilsons works and to English translations only. Works Bo o k s a n d A r t ic l e s
Indexscholastico-cartésien. Paris: Alcan, 1912. La liberté chez Descartes et la théologie. Paris: Alcan, 1913. “L’innéisme cartésien et la théologie.” Revue de métaphysique et de morale 22 (1914): 456-99. “ Du fondement des jugements esthétiques.” Revue philosophique de la France et de l ’Etranger 83 (1917): 5 2 4 ^ 6 . Le thomisme: introduction au système de S. Thomas d ’A quin. 1919. Rev. and augmented. Strasbourg: Vix, 1922. 3rd ed. rev. and augmented as Le thomisme: introduction à la philosophie de saint Thomas d A ’ quin. 1927. 5th ed. rev. and enlarged. Paris: Vrin, 1943. Translated as The Christian Philosophy o f St. Thomas Aquinas by L.K. Shook. New York: Random House, 1956. La philosophie au moyen âge. 2 vols. 1922. 2nd rev. ed. as La philosophie au moyen âge: des origines patristiques à la fin du XTVe siècle. Paris: Payot, 1944. La philosophie de saint Bonaventure. 1924. 2nd rev. ed. Paris: Vrin, 1943. Translated as The Philosophy o f St. Bonaventure by I. Trethowan and EJ. Sheed. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1938.
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Introduction à l ’étude de s. Augustin. Paris: Vrin, 1929. Translated as The Christian Philosophy o f St. Augustine by L.E.M. Lynch. New York: Random House, 1960. Lesprit de la philosophie médiévale. 2 vols. Paris: Vrin, 1932. Translated as The Spirit o f Medieval Philosophy by A.H.C. Downes. London: Sheed and Ward, 1936. “The Problem of Christian Philosophy.” Translated by Anton Pegis. Hound and Horn 5 (1932): 433-51. La théologie mystique de saint Bernard. Paris: Vrin, 1934. Translated as The Mystical Theology o f Saint Bernard by A.H.C. Downes. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1940. The Unity o f Philosophical Experience. New York: Scribners, 1937. Héloïse et Abélard. Paris: Vrin, 1938. Translated as Heloise and Abelard by L.K. Shook. Chicago: Regnery, 1951. Dante et la philosophie. Paris: Vrin, 1939. Translated as Dante the Philosopher by D. Moore. London: Sheed and Ward, 1948. Réalisme thomiste et critique de la connaissance. Paris: Vrin, 1939. L ’être et l ’essence. Paris: Vrin, 1948. Le réalisme méthodique. Paris: Vrin, 1948. Being and Some Philosophers. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1949. Jean Duns Scot: introduction à ses positions fondamentales. Paris: Vrin, 1952. Ed. The Church Speaks to the Modern World: The Social Teachings o f Leo XIII. New York: Doubleday, 1954. History o f Christian Philosophy in the M iddle Ages. New York: Random House; London: Sheed and Ward, 1955· Introduction to Grammar o f Assent by John Henry Newman, pp. 7-21. New York: Doubleday, 1955. Painting and Reality. New York: Pantheon; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957. Elements o f Christian Philosophy. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, I960. With T. Langan. Modern Philosophy: Descartes to Kant. New York: Random House, 1963. D ’A ristote à Darwin et retour: essai sur quelques constantes de la biophilosophie. Paris: Vrin, 1971. Dante et Béatrice: études dantesques. Paris: Vrin, 1974. L e t t e r s a n d Pa p e r s
Gilsons letters are housed in Toronto, filed at St. Michael’s College and in the Gilson Archives at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.
Sources d’Alverny, Marie-Thérèse, and M .-Dominique Chenu. “In Memoriam. Etienne Gilson.” Archives d ’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 45 (1978): iv. Denomy, Alex, ed. Mélanges offerts à Étienne Gilson. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies; Paris: Vrin, 1959. Étienne Gilson Anniversary Studies. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1958. McGrath, Margaret. Étienne Gilson: A Bibliography/Une Bibliographie. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1982. O ’Niel, Charles J., ed. A n Étienne Gilson Tribute. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1959.
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Shook, Laurence K. “Étienne Henry Gilson (1884-1978).” Mediaeval Studies 41 (1979): v xv. ---------. Etienne Gilson. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984. Van Steenberghen, Fernand. “In Memoriam: Étienne Gilson.” Revue philosophique de Louvain 76(1978): 540-4$. Vignaux, Paul. “Étienne Gilson.” Revue de métaphysique et de morale 84 (1979): 289-95.
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H
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( 1887 1974 )
Arthur Hyman
Harry Wolfson, eminent historian of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic philosophy, was born in the autumn of 1887 in Ostryn, a town of some 2,000 inhabitants, near the border of White Russia and Poland. (To commemorate his birthplace Wolfson later took “Austryn” as his middle name.) The second child of a family of seven, he was the oldest son of Max Wolfson, a teacher of Hebrew and Russian, and his wife Sarah. Wolfson received his early education in his native town where he spent much time in the Beit ha-Midrash (study hall of the synagogue) engaged in the study of traditional Jewish texts. Already in these years he was considered a child prodigy, exhibiting an excellent analytic mind and a certain esthetic bent which at that time manifested itself in drawing. But the educational opportunities in Ostryn were soon exhausted, and in his ninth year Wolfson’s parents sent him to Grodno in Lithuania. There he attended the yeshiva (academy of traditional Jewish learning) while living with his maternal grandparents. After a year in Grodno, he studied at the yeshiva in Slonim and in 1898 he became a student at a yeshiva in Bialystok. In 1900 he returned to Ostryn, but after a brief stay was sent to the famous yeshiva of Slobodka where he studied until the age of fifteen. During the years at the various yeshivot Wolfson acquired great proficiency in talmudic literature, and he learned the method of exegesis and argumentation which in his mature work became what he called “the hypothetico-deductive method of textual analysis.” But already at this time Wolfson also had more “modern” interests. He belonged to a Zionist society, and he read extensively in modern Hebrew literature. Wolfson arrived in the United States in September 1903, his father having come three years earlier. Max Wolfson enrolled his son in the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Yeshiva on New York’s Lower East Side, and the son remained a student there for two years. Had Wolfson followed a traditional 89
pattern he would have become a brilliant Rosh Yeshiva (Talmud scholar and teacher) contributing to rabbinic literature volumes of learned and erudite commentaries and novellae. But this was not to be. Wolfson decided to exchange the world of the yeshiva for a firsthand knowledge of his new country. And so he went to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he became a teacher at the local Montefiore Hebrew School. While at Scranton he pursued high school studies, graduating from P.S. 36 in June 1908. At the urging of a local attorney, Myer Kabatchnick, Wolfson took the required examinations, was admitted to Harvard, and received a Price-Greenleaf fellowship. Harvard was to become Wolfson’s home for the remainder of his life. While Wolfson had broad intellectual interests, he found himself attracted to Harvard’s Department of Semitic Languages and Literature. There he studied under a distinguished faculty, of whom the Assyriologist David Gordon Lyon (1852-1935) and the historian of religion George Foot Moore (1851-1931) were his teachers. Later they became his mentors and friends. During these years Wolfson also developed a strong interest in philosophy. He was particularly impressed by George Santayana (1863—1952), all of whose courses he took. Wolfson graduated Harvard College in three years, receiving his B.A. in 1911 and his M.A. one year later. In that year he also published his first scholarly article entitled “Maimonides and Halevi: A Study in Typical Attitudes toward Greek Philosophy in the Middle Ages” in the Jewish Quarterly Review. The article, which had grown out of an undergraduate paper he had written for Santayana, received the Harvard Menorah Society prize and marked the beginning of Wolfson’s research in medieval Jewish philosophy. With recommendations from Moore and Santayana, Wolfson received a Sheldon Travelling Fellowship from Harvard, which enabled him to spend the next two years in great European libraries such as those of Berlin, Munich, Paris, and the Vatican where he researched Hebrew and other manuscripts. By that time he had also settled on his first major scholarly project, Or Adonai (Light of the Lord), a difficult and as yet insufficiently studied work by the late medieval Jewish philosopher Hasdai Crescas (1340-ca. 1410). Wolfson returned to Boston in 1914. One year later, he received his Ph.D., his dissertation having been devoted to Crescas. With the support of Lyon and Moore, Wolfson was appointed instructor in Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard, and his appointment was renewed annually. His first course dealt with problems in medieval Jewish philosophy. In 1916 there appeared the first fruits of Wolfson’s Crescas studies, a two-part essay entitled “Crescas on the Problem of Divine Attributes,” published in the
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Jewish Quarterly Review. In September 1918 Wolfson was inducted into the United States Army, where he served until his honorable discharge in January 1919. Discharged from the Army, Wolfson returned to his position at Harvard. One year later, in 1920, he was invited by Dr. Stephen S. Wise to serve as part-time associate professor of Jewish history at the newly established Jewish Institute of Religion. Wolfson accepted the offer and commuted for three years from Cambridge to the New York institution. In 1925 Wolfson was advanced to full professor at Harvard; in the same year Lucius N. Littauer (1859—1944), a wealthy Harvard graduate, established the Nathan Littauer Chair of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy, a chair which Wolfson was to occupy during the remainder of his academic career. As a result of Littauer’s gift Wolfson now had a secure position at Harvard. While Wolfson was largely busy with his studies and research during this period, he did not lack other interests. He became an active member of a Hebrew Club, Ohavei Sefer (Book Lovers), contributed articles to a daily Hebrew newspaper, Ha-Yom (The Day), composed Hebrew poems, and participated in the activities of the Menorah Society. This society had been founded on 25 October 1906 at Harvard by a group of intellectuals for the purpose of studying and promoting “Hebraic culture and ideals.” The society heard lectures by distinguished scholars and notables at its meetings and published the Menorah Journal, which appeared from 1915 until 1962. Wolfson was an active member of the Menorah Society and between 1915 and 1921 contributed a number of articles to its journal. Until 1925 Wolfson wrote occasional articles on questions of contemporary Jewish life, but thereafter he only wrote on scholarly topics. Wolfson had completed his Crescas' Critique o f Aristotle: Problems o f Aristotle's Physics in Jewish and Arabic Philosophy in 1917, but could not publish it for lack of funds until 1929. It was the generosity of Mr. Littauer that made its publication possible. Wolfsons Crescas' Critique o f Aristotle consists of a textual edition, an English translation, an introduction, and a commentary on the philosopher’s work. But it is a rather unusual book. O f the over 700 pages of the work, only seventy-five are devoted to Crescas’s text and seventy-five to the English translation; the rest consists of Wolfsons introduction and commentary which explain the text and the history of its problems. The commentary demonstrates Wolfsons unequaled mastery of Greek, Hellenistic, Islamic, and Jewish antecedents. In spite of the size of Wolfsons volume the edition covers only a portion of the first of the four treatises of Crescas’s work. His Crescas' Critique o f Aristotle as well as his early essays already demonstrated
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Wolfsons mastery of English style that became a hallmark of all of his writing. His literary style was now the embodiment of the aesthetic sense of his younger years. In December 1926 Judah Magnes, the president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, invited Wolfson to organize a department of philosophy at the newly established university. Wolfson considered the offer seriously, but in the end declined: If I were to follow my personal inclination, I am sure I would not hesitate for a moment in deciding to accept your offer. My immediate duty, however, lies here [at Harvard] . . . , I feel that I must stay on here to try to justify some of the hopes that have been placed in the new Chair which was established only a year ago [Schwarz (1978), 80]. Having completed the volume on Crescas, Wolfson turned to Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) for his next research project. Beginning with 1921, when his “Spinoza on the Unity of Substance” appeared, Wolfson published a series of articles that culminated in his second book, the two volumes of The Philosophy o f Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes o f His Reasoning. While the book was finished in 1932, Wolfson, as was his custom, reworked the manuscript, and the volume did not appear until 1934. His research on Spinoza did not interfere with Wolfsons other interests. During the period in which he wrote the Spinoza volumes, he published a number of fundamental articles on Jewish philosophy, of which “Notes on the Proof of the Existence of God in Jewish Philosophy” (1924) and “The Classification of Sciences in Medieval Jewish Philosophy” (1925) bear mention. During the same period, in 1931, he also published “Plan for the Publication of a Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelerri’ in Speculum. While working on his Crescas Critique o f Aristotle, Wolfson had become convinced of the importance of the medieval Hebrew translations of Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle for understanding late medieval Jewish philosophy—just as in their Latin version they were important for understanding late medieval Christian philosophy. And so Wolfson proposed a series of textual editions of Averroes’s commentaries in the original Arabic and in the Hebrew and Latin translations. Each edition was to be accompanied by an editor’s commentary in the language of the respective text. The Medieval Academy of America undertook to publish the series with Wolfson as editor-in-chief. A number of volumes appeared during his tenure. As Wolfsons research progressed there began to form in his mind a more ambitious project— to write a series of volumes tracing the history of philosophy from the Greeks to Spinoza. The overall title of the series was
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“Structure and Growth of Philosophic Systems from Plato to Spinoza.” By 1941 he had finished a volume on Greek philosophy, but his penchant for rewriting kept him from publishing the volume. However, as part of the volume he had written six chapters on Philo, and it was to the Alexandrian philosopher that Wolfson turned next. It had been the conventional wisdom that Philo belonged to the final phase of Greek philosophy, but as Wolfsons research progressed, he gained the conviction that Philo marked a new beginning. Far from being a minor figure at the waning of Greek philosophy, Philo was the father of what was generally called medieval philosophy. Medieval philosophy, renamed by Wolfson “Philonic philosophy,” was one philosophy in three branches—Jewish, Christian, and Muslim—which began with Philo and ended with Spinoza, the last of the medievals and the first of the moderns. Wolfson worked on Philo for seven years, expanding the original six chapters in the manuscript on Greek philosophy into two substantive volumes. These appeared in 1947 as Philo, and they were tellingly subtitled Foundations o f Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. While working on Philo, Wolfson had simultaneously worked on the Muslim (and Jewish) movement known as Kaldm (dialectical theology) and had published some articles on it. But he put aside his work on the Kaldm and turned to the church fathers next. Wolfson was well aware that this was a more daring undertaking. His books on Spinoza and Philo might evoke the interest and critical reactions of a group of specialists in the history of philosophy, but the church fathers had been the privileged territory of a long line of Christian theologians and church historians. Wolfson was well aware of the challenge, and he addressed it. Envisaging a dialog with an imaginary priest who accepted the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation on the basis of divine revelation and the teachings of the Catholic Church, and who, at best, could envisage the kind of investigation that Wolfson undertook as verbal expression of these teachings, Wolfson wrote: Even in the study of nature, philosophers often wonder whether the laws discovered by science, upon which men ultimately rely for the building of bridges and the flying of airplanes, are based upon a knowledge of nature as it really is or only upon appearances. No historian investigating texts of Scripture, whether of the Jewish or the Christian Scripture, should therefore object to being considered by theologians as dealing only with appearances [Wolfson (1956), ix-x]. After eight years of painstaking labor, Wolfson published the first volume of The Philosophy o f the Church Fathers devoted to “Faith, Trinity, and
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Incarnation” in 1956. There was a second volume, but Wolfson delayed its publication, since he first wanted to find out the reaction of the scholarly world to his novel theories. The second volume never appeared. The completion of the Philosophy o f the Church Fathers was marked with an all-day celebration at the Harvard Divinity School held on 2 November 1955. Colleagues and friends from the academic and the religious worlds (Jewish and various Christian denominations alike) came to pay tribute to the author and his work. Referring to George Foot Moore’s seminal Judaism in the First Centuries o f the Christian Era—a sympathetic work about Judaism written by a Christian scholar—George H. Williams (b. 1914), Professor of Church History at Harvard, paid the following tribute to his friend and colleague: For now, about a quarter of a century after Moore’s study of Judaism, Harry Wolfson is presenting, in the presence of scholars drawn from four religious traditions, the first of his two volumes on the philosophy of the Church Fathers, which, in the Jewish succession, is the exact counterpart of Moore’s two volumes. But in making this comparison, one would not wish to obscure even for a moment the uniqueness of Wolfson’s achievement. In the case of George Foot Moore we are able to piece out the prehistory of this great work. Indeed he valuates his own predecessors. . . . But Wolfson’s Philosophy o f the Church Fathers seems to have no direct spiritual ancestors or even cousins in the Jewish line of development [Schwarz (1978), 170]. Other recognition and honors were to follow. Harvard awarded him, for the Philosophy o f the Church Fathers, the prize for the best book by a faculty member published by the Harvard University Press. On 16 February 1956 he was honored at a dinner sponsored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews “for distinguished service in human relations and Brotherhood.” In the same year Wolfson became one of ten senior scholars selected by the American Council of Learned Societies for intellectual excellence and distinguished leadership in the field of humanities. He was invited to deliver the Ingersol Lecture on Immortality at Harvard, and his alma mater at its 305th commencement awarded him an honorary doctorate of humane letters. The citation read: “From enormous knowledge he graciously illumines the major problems of religious philosophy and their relation to revealed truth.” To these honors must be added the many honorary doctorates he received from American universities and seminaries over the years: Jewish
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Institute of Religion (1935), Jewish Theological Seminary (1937), Hebrew Union College (1945), Yeshiva University (1950), Dropsie College (1952), University of Chicago (1953), Brandeis University (1958), Columbia University (1970), and Stonehill College (1973). The Hebrew University of Jerusalem awarded him the Kaplun Prize for distinguished research and scholarship in Judaica. Still another form of tribute was his recognition by learned societies. He was a founding member, fellow, and past president of the American Academy of Jewish Research, a fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, of the American Philosophical Society, of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he served as president of the American Oriental Society. While Wolfson remained a bachelor all his life and spent most of his waking hours in his Widener study, he was by no means a recluse. Scholars and men of affairs from around the world came to see him in his study; he enjoyed their visits. He presided over the “Wolfson Table”—a well-known institution at the Harvard Faculty Club—where Harvard colleagues and others gathered regularly for lunch and good conversation. He enjoyed holidays and other celebrations at the homes of family and friends. Attendance at movies was for him relaxation after a strenuous day of research and writing. According to a story, probably apocryphal, Wolfson watched the beginning of a movie, then fell asleep, and woke up again at the end. From the little he had seen he constructed the plot of the movie invoking very much the method he used in his scholarly research. Wolfson retired in the spring of 1958, Harvard having extended his teaching career four years beyond the customary retirement age. Freed from teaching duties he pursued his research with new vigor. He continued his research on the Kalam, begun in 1955, and completed the manuscript of The Philosophy o f the Kalam in 1971. The volume appeared posthumously in 1976. In addition, he published numerous articles that covered such varied topics as Plato’s theory of ideas, Saint Thomas and Ibn Khaldun on divine attributes, and Saadiah (882-942) on the Trinity and the Incarnation. A volume of his essays entitled Religious Philosophy: A Group o f Essays appeared in 1961, and in 1963 he published, once again in Speculum, a revised version of his “Plan for the Publication of a Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem.” While during his early career he did not accept visiting appointments or invitations for lectures, starting with the 1950s he began to lecture at universities throughout the United States. In 1962 the New Century Club of Boston gave a dinner in honor of Wolfson’s seventy-fifth birthday. President John F. Kennedy (who had earlier received an honorary Harvard degree at the same commencement as
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Wolfson) marked the occasion with a presidential citation that celebrated Wolfson for: extraordinary personal influence, not only on your students at Harvard, but on all those engaged in reflective learning and research. You have broadened the horizons of human thought and have given an example of personal devotion and humility for which we are all grateful [Schwarz (1978), 223-24]. In 1965 the American Academy for Research presented its fellow and former president with the Harry Austryn Wolfion Jubilee Volume. The forty-nine international contributors to the volume consisted of colleagues, friends, and former students. To mark the submission of the manuscript of The Philosophy o f the Kalam to the Press the Harvard Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literature convened a three-day “Conference on Early Islamic Thought in Honor of Harry A. Wolfson” in April 1971. Those who attended from the United States, Europe, Israel, and Arabic-speaking countries were a veritable Who’s Who of scholars working in early Islamic thought. To celebrate Wolfson’s eighty-fifth birthday, which occurred in 1972, a group of friends collected a book fund of $85,000, and a reception was held at Widener Library to mark the occasion. The fund was a fitting recognition of another of Wolfson’s activities at Harvard, namely the establishment of a great collection of Hebrew books and manuscripts. The study of Hebrew at Harvard goes back to the university’s beginnings, but the library of Hebrew books was rather modest prior to Wolfson’s coming. During the 1920s Wolfson, with the financial help of patrons and former students, was successful in expanding the Hebrew collection substantially. Central to these acquisitions was the collection of Hebrew books and manuscripts of the great bibliophile Ephraim Deinart, which was acquired through the generosity of Mr. Littauer in 1929. In 1973 there appeared the first volume of a collection of Wolfson’s essays entitled Studies in the History o f Philosophy and Religion. Isadore Twersky (b. 1930), Wolfson’s successor at Harvard, and George H. Williams, Wolfson’s Harvard colleague, were the editors. Wolfson continued to work, but his health was now beginning to decline. He found it difficult and painful to walk, was increasingly tired, and developed gastrointestinal problems. Tests revealed that he suffered from anemia and that he had an intestinal obstruction that was malignant. An operation was performed, followed by chemotherapy. On 25 April 1974 Wolfson entered the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for the Aged in Roslindale. He had hoped to commute to Widener Library on a regular basis, but he was
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able to make the trip only a few times. He remained at the Center until 10 September 1974 when, following a drop in weight and extreme pain, he entered Harvard’s Stillman Infirmary. There the doctors found that the cancer had spread and that nothing could be done for him. He died peacefully on Thursday, 19 September 1974. The funeral was held in Boston the following Sunday, the services being conducted by Isadore Twersky and Israel Kazis, a friend and former student. Wolfsons life came full cycle when, the next day, he was laid to rest, next to his parents, in a plot reserved for “Ostriners” at Mount Zion Cemetery in Maspeth, Long Island. Arthur Hyman, a former student, conducted the commitment service. Wolfsons tombstone carries these two inscriptions: “from enormous knowledge he illumines the major problems of religious philosophy” (from the citation of his honorary doctorate from Harvard) and “Preeminent scholar of his generation, students flocked to him for inspiration” (an inscription in Hebrew and English composed by his cousin Harry Savitz). The second volume of Studies in the History o f Philosophy and Religion appeared posthumously in 1977 and Repercussions o f the Kalam in Jewish Philosophy appeared in 1979. As a historian of philosophy, Wolfson applied rigorous historical methods and techniques to the philosophers he studied; at the same time he was well aware that a historian of philosophy must also have a conception of what philosophy is and what philosophers do. Whatever else he may be, a historian of philosophy must also be a philosopher. Regrettably, Wolfson never provided us with an explicit essay describing how the nature of philosophy is illumined by the study of its history, but his views may readily be gathered from the careful study of his writings. Wolfsons thesis concerning philosophy, philosophers, and philosophic writing may be summarized in three propositions: (1) a philosopher formulates his position by acting as a commentator on and a critic of philosophic traditions which have reached him from his predecessors, rather than as an innovator; (2) a significant philosopher thinks in systematic terms, however unsystematic his writings may appear; and (3) philosophers write by means of hints, allusions, and innuendoes, rather than by means of explicit statements expressing their views. In viewing a philosopher as commentator and critic who reexamines and clarifies old ideas, tracing implications that had not been seen before, Wolfson emphasizes the tradition-centeredness of philosophic speculations. The philosophic enterprise is primarily “literary,” or, as Wolfson once called it, “bookish,” and exegesis is its major method. In his introduction to Spinoza Wolfson recalls that he once discussed with a group of friends the importance of bookish and philological learning
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for an understanding of the history of philosophy. One of those present asked him: “How about Spinoza? Was he a bookish philosopher?” Without hesitation Wolfson replied: As for Spinoza, if we could cut up all the philosophic literature available to him into slips of paper, toss them up in the air, and let them fall back to the ground, then out of these scattered slips of paper we could reconstruct his Ethics [Wolfson (1934), 1:3]. Toward the end of his Philosophy o f Spinoza, Wolfson considers the tradition-centeredness of philosophy once again; but this time he also inquires concerning the possibility of philosophic originality or novelty. He writes: Novelty in philosophy is often a matter of daring rather than of invention. In thought, as in nature, there is no creation from absolute nothing, nor are there any leaps. Often what appears to be new and original is nothing but the establishment of a long-envisaged truth by the intrepidity of someone who dared to face the consequences of his reasoning. . . . {ibid., 2: 331]. Lest we think that these citations reflect a view that Wolfson abandoned in his later writings, we find the same opinion in an essay “The Philonic God of Revelation and His Latter-Day Deniers,” which appeared in 1960, twenty-six years after the appearance of his Philosophy o f Spinoza. Taking issue with modern philosophers who consider their understanding of the concept of God novel, Wolfson writes: The speculation about God in modern philosophy . . . ever since the seventeenth century, is still a process of putting old wine into new bottles. There is only the following difference: the wine is no longer of the old vintage of the revelational theology of Scripture; it is of the old vintage of the natural or the verbal theology of Greek philosophy. Sometimes, however, even the bottles are not new; it is only the labels that are new—and one begins to wonder how many of the latter-day philosophies of religion would not prove to be only philosophies of label [Wolfson (I960): 124]. The scholarly world is in Wolfsons debt for emphasizing the tradition-centeredness of philosophy at a time when many philosophers had denied it. With his Philosophy o f Spinoza he stands in the forefront of those
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scholars who, in recent years, have shown convincingly the continuity of philosophic ideas and of the history of philosophy. In stressing the importance of tradition, Wolfson challenges Descartes’ opinion (which forms much of the basis of modern philosophy) that a philosopher must forget whatever he has learned and begin his speculations without regard to the past. There could be no more striking critique of Descartes’ methodological assumption than Wolfson’s study of Spinoza. No one who has read Wolfson’s book can fail to be convinced that the break between medieval and modern philosophy was a good deal less severe than we have been led to believe. In his Philosophy o f Spinoza, Wolfson ably demonstrated the systematic nature of philosophic thought. But Spinoza is the easy case, for if there ever were a philosopher who lent himself to systematic exposition, it was Spinoza. However, Wolfson does not rest his case here, but tests his thesis on the much less obvious Philo, who had composed philosophical homilies on Scripture rather than systematic works. Most scholars prior to Wolfson had considered Philo an eclectic who drew on a variety of philosophic notions to mold from them his scriptural interpretations. E.R. Dodds (1893-1979) may serve as a spokesman for this group when he characterizes Philo’s eclecticism as that of “a jackdaw, rather than of a philosopher” (Wolfson [I960]: 101). Wolfson takes issue with this evaluation by holding that in spite of their unsystematic appearance, Philo’s works contain a philosophic system. In the previously mentioned essay, “The Philonic God of Revelation,” Wolfson writes: . . . while we may deny Philo the honorific title of philosopher, . . . we can not deny him the humbler and more modest title of religious philosopher. As such, Philo was the first who tried to reduce the narratives and laws and exhortations of Scripture to a coherent and closely knit system of thought and thereby produce what may be called scriptural philosophy in contradistinction to pagan Greek philosophy [ibid.]. Similarly, in the introduction to his Philo, Wolfson defines his task as “an attempt to build of innuendoes a systematic structure of his [Philo s] thought” (Wolfson [1947], 1: vi). Wolfson’s contention that philosophy proceeds by hints, allusions, and innuendoes rather than by explicit statements may be paraphrased by saying that, for him, philosophic writing may be compared to an iceberg only part of which is visible, while the major portion remains invisibly submerged. In somewhat different fashion, Wolfson describes philosophic language as “symbolic.” By this he seems to mean that instead of
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manifesting literal meaning, philosophic statements are instruments for suggesting a nexus of ideas. Wolfson elaborates this contention when he writes in his Philosophy o f Spinoza that Spinoza (and one may presume other philosophers) use language . . . not as a means of expression, but as a system of mnemonic symbols. Words do not stand for simple ideas but for complicated trains of thought. Arguments are not fully unfolded but are merely hinted at by suggestion. Statements are not significant for what they actually affirm, but for the denials which they imply [Wolfson (1934), 1: 22]. Wolfson’s scholarly method follows from his conception of philosophic thinking and writing. If philosophy is tradition-centered, systematic, and proceeds by allusion, a method must be found for discovering the sources on which a given philosophy rests, the systematic structure that it exhibits, and the meaning its language implies. Wolfson finds this method in what he calls the hypothetico-deductive method of textual study. On the one hand, this method is akin to that used by rabbinic scholars in discovering the meaning of scriptural and rabbinic texts; on the other hand it is similar to that used by modern scientists in their investigation of nature. The hypothetico-deductive method rests on two assumptions: (1) any authoritative text, religious or secular, which is worthy of study “is written with such care and precision that every term, expression, generalization or exception is significant not so much for what it states as for what it implies” and (2) the thought of any authoritative writer is internally consistent. From the first of these assumptions it follows that the hypothetico-deductive method is designed for discovering what a philosopher meant, rather than what he said; from the second, that all contradictions in a philosopher’s thought are only apparent and can be resolved by harmonistic interpretation. How the hypothetico-deductive method functions is already described by Wolfson in his first book, Crescas' Critique o f Aristotle, when he writes: Confronted with a statement on any subject the Talmudic student [and, as Wolfson shows subsequently, the student of philosophic texts] will proceed to raise a series of questions before he satisfies himself of having understood its full meaning. If the statement isn’t clear enough, he will ask, “What does the author intend to say here?” If it is too obvious, he will again ask, “It is too clear, why then expressly say it?” Statements apparently contradictory to each other will be reconciled by the discovery of some subtle distinction, and statements
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apparently irrelevant to each other will be subtly analyzed into their ultimate elements and shown to contain some underlying principle. The harmonization of apparent contradictions and the interlinking of apparent irrelevancies are two characteristic methods of the Talmudic method of text study [Wolfson (1929), 25-26]. Besides its logical implications, the hypothetico-deductive method also has a psychological dimension that is indicated by the phrase that the study of a philosophers thought “unfolds the latent processes of his reasoning.” This implies that a philosophic system is a complex of thoughts and associations in a philosophers mind, only part of which appears in the statements found in his writings. The hypothetico-deductive method, writes Wolfson in his Crescas Critique o f Aristotle, “is in some respects like the latest kind of historical and literary criticism which applies the method of psychoanalysis to the study of texts” (ibid., 25). Perhaps the most novel aspect of Wolfsons thought is his division of the history of philosophy and the resultant notion of Philonic philosophy. According to the commonly accepted opinion, states Wolfson in the last chapter of his Philo, the history of philosophy is divided into three periods— ancient, medieval, and modern. Some historians describe the period between ancient and modern philosophy as “Christian.” If a historian describes the intermediate period as “medieval,” he usually begins with the church fathers of the second century; if as “Christian,” his usual starting point is Augustine in the fifth century or Boethius in the sixth. To this account there are usually added two footnotes. The first of these is the philosophy of Philo which is considered a postscript to Greek philosophy; the second is Islamic and Jewish philosophy which is introduced as a kind of preface to the Scholastic philosophy of the thirteenth century. Wolfson criticizes this conception of the history of philosophy by describing it as theological rather than scientific. It goes back to Eusebius’s and Augustine’s conception of history according to which “everything that came before Christianity is considered as preparatory to it and everything that happened outside of Christianity is to be considered only as a tributary to it” (Wolfson [1947], 2: 440). G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831), whose Philosophy o f History Wolfson cites, can be considered the modern exponent of this view. Wolfson set out to correct this conception of the history of philosophy in two respects. Philo, according to Wolfsons first correction, is not merely a footnote in the history of philosophy, but the founder and originator of what is usually considered medieval philosophy. Medieval philosophy,
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according to Wolfson’s second correction, should not be characterized as “Christian” but as “Philonic,” and “Philonic” philosophy is one philosophy which appeared in three forms—Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. Perhaps the most dramatic application of his thesis appears in Wolfson’s volume on the church fathers in which he argues that even in their discussion of such indigenous Christian beliefs as the Trinity and Incarnation, the fathers drew upon Philonic notions. Having presented his conception of Philonic philosophy and its Jewish, Christian, and Muslim manifestations, Wolfson, in the concluding pages of his Philo, presents a synthetic picture of the Philonic philosopher. This philosopher, Wolfson tells us, begins by recognizing two sources of truth: revelation and reason. O f these, revelation is the superior. Whether a Philonic philosopher accepts Hebrew Scriptures, Christian Scriptures, or the Koran, he is at one with other Philonic philosophers in maintaining that the tradition he accepts is true. Wolfson describes this acceptance of Scripture as a “preamble of faith” on which Philonic philosophy rests. In addition to providing human beings with truths of revelation, God has also furnished them with reason, another source of truth. Through their minds, human beings can discover truths about the world in which they live as well as norms for human conduct. But, according to the Philonic philosopher, the truths of reason are inferior to those of revelation. Since God is the author of the truths of revelation as well as those of reason, no conflict can exist between them. If there are apparent contradictions, they can be resolved by judicious interpretation. The correct understanding of Scripture together with the correct understanding of philosophy will reveal their underlying unity. This implies that the Philonic philosopher is engaged in a twofold task: to clarify the implied sense of Scripture through philosophic interpretation and to correct vagaries of philosophy by an appeal to scriptural teachings. While Wolfson’s research knew no boundary of creed, Jewish philosophy occupied a special place in his work. “I believe,” he once wrote, “that medieval Jewish philosophy is the only branch of Jewish literature, next to the Bible, which binds us to the rest of the literary world” (Wolfson [1921]: 32). He had planned to write a volume on Jewish philosophy, but, regrettably, this volume never came to be. Nevertheless, his writings on Jewish philosophy held a place of honor in his work. His magisterial Crescas Critique o f Aristotle is an exemplary edition of a Hebrew philosophic text and the many footnotes appearing in it illumine many aspects of Jewish philosophy that had never been clarified before. In addition he dealt in numerous essays with topics in the philosophies of Isaac Israeli (ca. 832-ca. 932),
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Judah Halevi (ca. 1075-1141), Maimonides (1138-1204), Gersonides (1288-1344), Saadiah, Crescas and others, and his learned studies helped much to advance the field. “Scholarship,” Wolfson once wrote, “by nature is a priestly craft. It is only right that its guardians be zealous for its purity and fearful of its being contaminated by the gaze and touch of the uninitiated” (cited in Schwarz [1978], 84). In his work Wolfson was the high priest of learning who guarded its purity, kept it from vulgarization, and chose for himself the kind of integrity and discipline which were expected of the high priest of old. This was fittingly expressed at his burial where the following verse from the prophet Malachi (2: 7) was read: “For the priests lips keep knowledge, and they shall seek instruction from his mouth. . . . ” The scholarly heritage and the many personal reminiscences that Professor Wolfson left shall be a blessing for us and for generations to come. Se l e c t e d B i b l i o g r a p h y
Works Bo o k s a n d A r t ic l e s
“Maimonides and Halevi: A Study in Typical Attitudes toward Greek Philosophy in the Middle Ages.” Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s., 2 (1911-12): 297-339. “Crescas on the Problem of Divine Attributes.” Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s., 71 (1916-17): 1-44, 175-221. “The Needs of Jewish Scholarship in America.” Menorah Journal7:\ (1921): 32. “Notes on the Proofs of the Existence of God in Jewish Philosophy.” Hebrew Union College A nnual 1 (1924): 575-96. “The Classification o f Sciences in Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy.” In Hebrew Union College Jubilee Volume, 1875-1925, edited by David Philipson, pp. 263-315. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1925. Crescas’ Critique o f Aristotle: Problems o f Aristotle’s Physics in Jewish and Arabic Philosophy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1929. “Plan for the Publication of a Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem.” Speculum 6 (1931): 412-27. Revised version in Speculum 31 (1963): 88-104. The Philosophy o f Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes o f His Reasoning. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934. Philo: Foundations o f Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947. The Philosophy o f the Church Fathers, Volume I: Faith, Trinity, Incarnation. 1956. 2nd rev. ed., 1964. 3rd rev. ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970. “The Philonic God of Revelation and His Latter-Day Deniers.” Harvard Theological Review 53 (I960): 101-24. Religious Philosophy: A Group o f Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961. “The Controversy on Causality Within the Kalam.” In Mélanges Alexandre Koyré, pp. 602-18. 2 vols. Paris: Hermann, 1964. “Notes on Patristic Philosophy.” Harvard Theological Review 57 (1964): 119-31. “Joseph Ibn Saddik on Divine Attributes.” Jewish Quarterly Review 55 (1964-65): 277-98.
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“Maimonides on the Unity and Incorporeality of G o d ” Jewish Quarterly Review 56 (1965-66): 112-36. “Two Comments Regarding the Plurality of the Worlds in Jewish Sources.” Jewish Quarterly Review 56 (1965—66): 245—47. “Judah Halevi on Causality and Miracles.” In Meyer Waxman Jubilee Volume, edited by Judah Rosenthal, pp. 137-53. Chicago; Jerusalem; Tel Aviv: Noiman, 1966. “Maimonides on Modes and Universals.” In Studies in Rationalism, Judaism, and Universalism, in Memory o f Leon Roth, edited by Raphael Loewe, pp. 311-21. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966. “Patristic Arguments Against the Eternity of the World.” Harvard Theological Review 59 (1966): 351-67. “Plato’s Pre-Existent Matter in Patristic Philosophy.” In The Classical Tradition: Literary and Historical Studies in Honor o f Harry Caplan, edited by Luitpold Wallach, pp. 409-20. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. 1966. “The Jewish Kalam.” In The Seventy-fifth Anniversary Volume o f the Jewish Quarterly Review, edited by Abraham A. Neuman and Solomon Zeitlin, pp. 544-73. Philadelphia: Jewish Quarterly Review, 1967. “Nicolaus of Autrecourt and Ghazali s Argument Against Causality.” Speculum 44 (1969): 234-38. “Philosophy that Faith Inspired; Greek Philosophy in Philo and the Church Fathers.” In The Crucible o f Christianity: Judaism, Hellenism and the Historical Background o f the Christian Faith, edited by Arnold J. Toynbee, pp. 309-16. New York: World Publishing Company, 1969. “The Identification o f ex nihilo with Emanation in Gregory of Nissa.” Harvard Theological Review 63 (1970): 53-60. “Comments on Dr. Habermans Note.” Jewish Quarterly Review 61 (1970-71): 311-13. Studies in the History o f Philosophy and Religion. Edited by Isadore Twersky and George H. Williams. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973-77. “Answers to Criticism of My Discussion of the li!. rability of God.” Harvard Theological Review 67 (1974): 186-90. “Saadia on the Semantic Aspect of the Problem of Attributes.” In Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee Volume: On the Occasion o f His Eightieth Birthday, edited by Saul Lieberman and Arthur Hyman, vol. 2, pp. 1009—21. 3 vols. Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1974. The Philosophy o f the Kalam. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976. From Philo to Spinoza: Two Studies in Religious Philosophy. New York: Behrman House, 1977. Repercussions o f the Kalam in Jewish Philosophy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979. L e t t e r s a n d Pa p e r s
Wolfsons letters and papers are housed at Harvard University Archives, Pusey Library.
Sources Hyman, Arthur. “Harry Austryn Wolfson 1887-1974.” Jewish Book A nnual 33 (1975-76): 137-45.
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Moore, George Foot. Judaism in the First Centuries o f the Christian Era. 3 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1927-30. Schwarz, Leo W. “A Bibliographical Essay.” In Harry Austryn Wolfion Jubilee Volume on the Occasion o f His Seventy-fifth Birthday, edited by Saul Lieberman, with Shalom Spiegel, Leo Strauss, and Arthur Hyman, vol. 1, pp. 1-46. 3 vols. Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1965. [English Section; contains bibliography of Wolfsons works through 1963.] ---------. Wolfson o f Harvard: Portrait o f a Scholar. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1978. [Contains bibliography of Wolfsons works through 1963 with addition of books published thereafter.] Twersky, Isadore. “Harry Austryn Wolfson (1887-1974).” American Jewish Yearbook 76 (1976): 99-111.
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M
a r ie
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o m in iq u e
C
h e n u
( 1895 1990 )
André D uval and Jean Jolivet
Marie-Dominique Chenu, a prime figure in Thomist theology in its twentieth-century historical context and one of the first to hold daily work as a locus of theology, was born at Soisy-sur-Seine (Essonne), a suburb of Paris, on 7 January 1895. At eighteen, he entered the Dominican Order as a novice in the priory of Le Saulchoir (then located at Tournai, Belgium) on 7 September 1913. After a year he was sent for training to the Angelicum in Rome between 1914 and 1920 to study under the august Reginald GarrigouLagrange (1877-1964), specializing in the area of Christian doctrine. While studying at the Angelicum, he was ordained to the priesthood on 19 April 1919. He completed his studies with a brilliant thesis on contemplation, De contemplatione, which remains unpublished (see Conticello). As his first assignment, Chenu was appointed professor of Le Saulchoir in September 1920 to teach the history of Christian doctrine. In December of the same year, Pierre Mandonnet (1858-1936) established the Institut historique d’études thomistes at Le Saulchoir. The school was noted for its historical-contextual method applied to pedagogy and the analysis of texts and of social and political movements. In addition to Mandonnet, foundational to the formation of the school’s methodology were some of the most prestigious Dominicans of the twentieth century, Ambroise Gardeil (1859-1931), Antonin Gilbert Sertillanges (1863-1948), and the biblical scholar, Marie Joseph Lagrange (1855-1938). Chenu came under their influence, not only in his approach to Christian doctrine but in his vision and interpretation of contemporary events. During this time also (ca. 1925), Chenu met chaplains of the Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne movement (Young Christian Worker’s Movement), the JOCists, from whom he learned a method of analysis—See Judge-Act—and was introduced to their worldview. Chenu’s tenure at Le Saulchoir established his reputation as a medievalist. Between 1927 and 1935 he became the secretary of the Revue des 107
and then the librarian of the priory (1928-33). In 1932 he succeeded Mandonnet as president of the Société thomiste. Chenu’s courses and publications were central to the curriculum of the Institut historique d’études thomistes, and made it a pioneer institution in medieval studies at the very time this discipline was carving a place for itself in French academic life under the leadership of Etienne Gilson (1884-1978; see essay in this volume). A friendship developed between the two men, and in 1930 they were co-founders of the Institut d’etudes médiévales at Ottawa, later moved tp Montreal in 1941. In 1938, with the encouragement of Cardinal Eugène Tisserant (1884—1972), Chenu helped found the Institut dominicain d’études orientales in Cairo. Chenu was regent of studies at Le Saulchoir from 1932 on. When the pontifical faculties of philosophy and theology were established there in 1937, he became first rector. He used the occasion of his promotion to write Une école de théobgie: Le Saulchoir , a “small thin booklet” on the goals and spirit of the institution he headed, which unfortunately received “bitter remarks from some Roman theologians” (Chenu, quoted in Shook, 247). Between 1938 and 1939, prior to World War II, the faculty and books of Le Saulchoir were transferred to Etiolles, near Corbeil (Essonne). It was there that Chenu learned in February 1942 that Une écob had been condemned and placed on the Vatican Index. Chenu expressed his distress in a letter to Gilson: “The blow reaches not only the booklet but the house as well, and will certainly remove me from teaching. . . . May your friendly confidence soften my sorrow and keep me from bitterness. May it give assurance to my spiritual freedom” (ibid., 248). Chenu was relieved of his official functions and was transferred to Paris. Yet he did not abandon the field of medieval studies nor his conviction of the importance of theology in a historical context. As a great mind passionately convinced of the enduring value of the Gospel, Chenu was not unaware that a critical study of the Christian past intensifies one’s consciousness of the changes and needs of present-day society. It was thus that the medievalist Chenu became, for numerous priests and laity who were involved in the very different areas of pastoral work and evangelization, one of the most sought-after theologians in the latter half of the twentieth century. As a result of his exile to Paris, Chenu was invited by Gabriel Le Bras (1891-1970) to the fifth section (the study of religion) at the Ecole pratique des hautes études, where he later pursued a regular course of teaching (1944-51) and which was continued at the Institut Catholique de Paris. Within a short period, Chenu—who had a history of supporting enlightened social thinkers of the Catholic faith— became involved with laymen sciences philosophiques et théologiques
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and religious concerned about the state of the Catholic Church in France. He had been the clear-sighted supporter of the initiatives of Vincent Bernadot (1883-1941) from the bimonthly La vie intellectuelle (1927—) to the weekly Sept (1934-37); he had been a highly esteemed lecturer for the Semaines sociales de France (1938-39); and he had been a passionate defender of the Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne movement in France, actively engaged from 1933 in forming the young religious for involvement in the working world. He now became closely associated with the reflective process from which, under the impulse provided by Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard (1874-1949), sprang the beginnings of the Mission de France (1941) and the Mission de Paris (1943), which eventually evolved into the worker-priest movement (1943-54) that argued for a more flexible evangelical structure in the church. Along with other French Dominicans—Yves M.-J. Congar, Pierre Boisselot, Henri Marie Feret—Chenu followed with deep interest the initiatives and concerns of the worker-priests. Chenu supported the basic tenets of the movement and defended its approach (Keller, 35). Many small groups of workers from the thirteenth arrondissement of Paris, as well as Christian manufacturers and members of the Conseil d’Etat, benefited from Chenus warm presence, which nourished faith and clarified action. As a theological defender of the authenticity of the priesthood of the worker-priests, Chenu found himself personally involved in the crisis of condemnation of February-March 1954, when Rome—always anxious about the nonsacerdotal aspects of the movement and its involvement with workers’ unions—put a stop to the experiment. Chenu and several of his colleagues were silenced under obedience to the Master General of the Dominican Order, a silencing that was attenuated after the ascension of Giuseppe Roncalli (John XXIII) to the papacy in 1958. He was exiled to Rouen, but this only enlarged the network of his friends without altering the nature of his activities. While he continued to be engaged in medieval studies he began to promote further his reflections on the theology of work, the fruit of which had been his Pour une théologie du travail (1955), a collection of three previously published articles, before his silencing. In December 1961, Pope John XXIII convoked an ecumenical council at Rome; the pope’s move struck a chord in Chenu which continued to resonate with ever greater insistence. Although not a member of any officially constituted theological commission, Chenu was nonetheless present at Vatican II as the personal theologian of the bishop of Antsirabe, Madagascar, Chenu’s former student. The “Message to the World,” which inaugurated the council’s working sessions, was largely due to Chenu’s intervention with several cardinals. His major contribution was his insights in the document “The Church in the Modern World” (Gaudium et Spes). 109
Reassured by the openness of Vatican II and by the new thrust of the teachings of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI, Chenu was more attentive than ever to social phenomena and to the growing pains of the modern world. His faith made him optimistic with regard to the future, despite everything that then could upset and disappoint him. Those who looked to him and to his work could be found not only in France but elsewhere as well, especially in Italy; yet he himself was always ready to learn from the humblest members of his audience, and not only from the most educated. Chenu maintained an open attitude that encouraged dialog and a spirit of compassion up to an advanced age. He died in Paris on 11 February 1990 and was buried on 15 February from Notre Dame Cathedral at the request of the Archbishop of Paris. Marie-Dominique Chenu was a prolific writer. Even a cursory glance at his bibliography will reveal two principal interests: thirteenth-century Scholasticism, marked by significant research on the doctrine of the faith and culminating in works dealing with Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225-1274); and twelfth-century diversified research, where typically rigorous analysis is enriched with brilliant insights. These two centuries were his chosen field, and only rarely did he leave it. His best known works are on the thought of Thomas Aquinas. His lesser known though pioneering works address the theology of work and the place of the church in the contemporary world. Those who read Chenu’s works will inevitably be struck by the structural analogy between his thought and practice as a theologian on the one hand and his perspective and methodology as a historian of medieval doctrines on the other. As a theologian he laid great stress on the need to be open to a world in the process of becoming and to pastoral practice, in opposition to a theology that is disincarnate, atemporal, and reduced to a syllabus. As a historian he constantly returned to and studied in depth the historical context of faith and of sacra doctrina, and of the dependence of the latter on cultural developments. “It is the very law of the economy of revelation by which God manifests himself in history, that the eternal incarnates itself in the temporal, where alone the human spirit can reach it” (Chenu [1937], 116). Echoing these words, Introduction a l’étude de saint Thomas d ’Aquin (1950) begins with a chapter entitled “The Work in Its Milieu.” This “milieu” was not only the Order of Preachers and evangelization; it was also the university and the “renaissance” that came about from “the discovery of Aristotle and the assimilation of Greek reason by Christian philosophy” (Chenu [1950], 25). In 1937 Chenu himself directed the “holy curiosity” of the twentiethcentury theologian to “the feeling for new dimensions in the world”; to “the
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pluralism of human civilizations”; to “the unique greatness of the East”; to ecumenical movements; to “the social ferment caused by the access of the masses to public and conscious life”; and to the participation of the laity in the apostolate of the hierarchy (Chenu [1937], 142)—all things that Vatican II would eventually take seriously One further manifestation of the convergence of Chenus thought with events in history came about just prior to the time Chenu became regent of studies at Le Saulchoir (1932) and was at the peak of his historical-contextual method. It was then that the Annales d ’histoire économique et sociale, published by Lucien Febvre (1878-1956) and Marc Bloch (1886—1944), began to appear (1929), with Chenu as one of its first subscribers. Chenu noted the “significant coincidence” between his historical research and the Annales approach in the postscript to the reissued text of Une école (1985). His methodology paralleled “the new historiography, disengaged from the ‘great man theory of history and concerned with the daily life, the basic feelings, attitudes, and anonymity of the masses, and with the oral nature of history—in brief, concerned with lived faith and not just with taught faith” (Chenu, Une école [1985], 176). The present chapter is about Chenu as medievalist rather than Chenu as theologian, but it is useful to point out right at the beginning Chenus intellectual consistency and the central place that history occupied even in his theological thought. For him “the history of theology nourishes theology” (Chenu, La théologie comme science au XlIIe siècle [1957], 13). Thus, the criticisms and the condemnation that followed the publication of Une école were directed at Chenu, the theologian and medievalist (see E. Fouilloux, “Le Saulchoir en procès [1937-1942],” in Une école [1985], 39-59.) Chenus first major publication was Une école de théologie: Le Saulchoir (1937). Although it treats of the spirit and methods of teaching appropriate to a contemporary school of theology, the Middle Ages are strongly represented in it, not simply because Le Saulchoir recognized Thomas Aquinas as its master but because it did so in a way that touched closely on the perspective that has been depicted above. Chenu, for example, evokes the urban development of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and points to the parallels between the guilds and the universitas magistrorum et scolarium, and the institution of the Dominicans and Franciscans as “the connatural milieu where the social, cultural, and spiritual effervescence found both its fulfillment and its equilibrium” (Chenu [1937]: 95-96). Chenu is writing more than pure history: Chapter 1 of Une école anticipates Chapter 1 of Introduction à l’étude de saint Thomas dAquin. The material and spiritual are interrelated: Chenu asserts that from before 1230, the arrangement of “the day-to-day relations . . . between the [Dominican] priory and the University” had in view “a
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spiritual place . . . where, in the midst of all the twists and turns of a civilization on the rise, there could occur the enfleshment of Christian thought in Greek reason and Arabic science” (ibid., 104). This arrangement is therefore essential to the Dominican vocation: the proximity to a center of higher studies is indispensable at all times to a Dominican school. Hence the sigh of relief that concludes Chapter 1 when Le Saulchoir is finally transferred “to the gates of Paris, at Etiolles, . . . the Jacobins once again find their proper place” (ibid., 114). The final chapter of Une école deals with medieval studies as “a theological locus of great importance and quality” (ibid., 169) and outlines in detail the program and the methodology that Chenu will follow in his future works. In 1923 Chenu published “Contribution à l’histoire du traité de la foi” in Mélanges thomistes, and in 1924 “La raison psychologique du développement du dogme d’après saint Thomas” appeared in the Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques. These represent the different approaches of his future La théologie comme science au XlIIe siècle, which dealt with Saint Thomas’s choice between two alternative theses: that faith had to do with an enunciation (or with something enunciable, an enuntiabilis) or that faith had to do with a thing (a res). These were the alternatives posed since the twelfth century. According to Thomas, in Chenus analysis, “the object of faith must be a verum complexum ’ (the wording of the Scriptum super libros Sententiarum). Against the nominales, to whom the time of each successive enunciation of the object of faith was of no importance, he asserts that “time is an essential part of the act of faith” because “things simple in themselves are known by the human intellect according to a certain composition or complexio” (De veritate). La théologie comme science au XIILe siècle appeared in three successive states—in article form in 1927, and then as a separate monograph in 1943 and 1957, hardly distinguishable from one another. The 1957 edition is cited here. Chenu’s characteristic methodology predominates: theology is “the science of a book” that is “always bound up with the ways and means of the textual pedagogies of contemporary culture” (16). First there is the triviumi, the exploitation of which leads “from dialectic to science” (chap. 1). The technique of the quaestiones follows. After a detour through rhetoric and apologetics, the Summa of Alexander of Hales (ca. 1185-1245) is arrived at, where the problem is posed as to whether theology is a science, a term that was ambiguous in the first half of the thirteenth century (chap. 2). Chapter 3 is devoted entirely to Saint Bonaventure (ca. 1217-1274), who among his other perceptive insights was the first to distinguish among faith, revealed teaching, and theological science; to use the term “subalternation”;
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and to establish the parallel between the articles of faith and scientific principles, even though he still lacked an epistemological awareness of these breakthroughs. Chapter 4 discusses other advances along the same lines made by Alexander of Hales, William of Auxerre (d. 1231), and Roland of Cremona (d. ca. 1259). Chapter 5, the longest, analyzes with rare profundity the teaching of Saint Thomas on theology as science, with the theory of subalternation as a central and characteristic element. By “subalternating” theological enunciations to the science of God as to their principle, the synthesis of Aristotelian epistemology (understood rigorously at least in this first approach) and the demands of faith are established. “The very thing that makes theology a science is that which makes it ‘mystical.’ The theory of subalternation is simply the technical formula of the structural demands of theological knowledge” and “illumination and subalternation go side by side” (74—75), ideas already hinted at in Chenu’s doctoral thesis (Conticello: 382—83). Thanks to the theory of subalternation, faith has a leading role in the construction of the science of theology and is precisely what separates theology from science in the Aristotelian sense: the study of science distinguishes between object and method (for example, geometry and perspective), whereas the study of theology applies subalternation to principles but not to the object. Hence, there is only a “quasi-subalternationism” here, such that “doctrina sacra can only imperfectly be a science”; its principles remain obscure to it (Chenu [1957], 80-85). The concluding Chapter 6, largely summation, bears the subtitle, “Evangélisme et renaissance,” which formulates a leitmotiv of Chenus thought. Introduction à l ’é tude de sa in t Thom as d ’A q u in (1950)—arranged in two sections, “Lifework” and “Works”—allows the reader to grasp all at once Chenu’s pedagogical method, his historian’s perspective, and the manner and content of the influence he wielded. Each of its twelve chapters is followed by Research Suggestions, including fairly detailed bibliographies and precise indications regarding practical exercises, some of which could serve as dissertations or team projects. The main lines of Chenu’s theological and historical thought are expressed in striking formulas: “The forms and structures of language are not neutral or interchangeable garments that must, as quickly as possible, be put aside. They are the permanent support of thought, so that by examining the forms in which a mind is dressed, one has a good chance of discovering its very inner workings” (79). Scholastic “language characterizes at once a thought, a method, and a means of expression” (101). And the Su m m a Theologiae should be read according to an exitusreditus schema: Part 1, emanation; Part 2, return; Part 3, the Incarnation, center of the economy and the means willed by God (310—17).
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Only Chenu could have written the marvelous Saint Thomas d ,A quin et la théologie (1959), the book he supposedly liked the most. Unlike its predecessor, it is not intended for specialists, although everything in it implies considerable knowledge and reflection. Its defining characteristic that informs its originality is its balance. More than half of the work (four chapters) integrates into a biographical weft the themes of Chapter 1 of Introduction a létude de saint Thomas dAquin as “The Friar Preacher,” “The Master in Theology,” “The Contemplative,” and “The Herald of a New Christianity.” A third is then devoted to doctrine, divided under two headings, “Imago mundi” and “The Virtuous Life.” Perhaps in deference to his audience, Chenu says nothing of metaphysics nor mentions the real distinction between essence and existence (apart from a single clause on page 117). The whole endeavor is concerned with the concrete situation of creation, both cosmic and human, and its relationship to the Creator via nature, grace, and history. La théologie au douzième siècle (1957)—a collection of eighteen essays, eleven never previously published— represents a watershed in Chenu’s work. First, the work followed upon a series of courses Chenu taught at the École pratique des hautes études from 1944 to 1952. As is customary with Chenus work, certain themes dealt with in his teaching anticipate those treated in this book, while others recall previous writings. Second, the work marked an intensified interest on Chenu’s part in the twelfth century which was not new but which is more explicit here. Finally, Chenu’s structural conception of the book is unusual. He divided it into two parts: on the first phase of Scholasticism and on the evangelical awakening and theological science. The first part places the twelfth century in relation to the thirteenth, while the second marks a contrast. Likewise, the Table analytique des matieres (405— 06) proceeds along the lines of the historical analyses of La théologie comme science au XlIIe siècle. All of this seems to make the work a sort of sequel to what preceded it, although in fact this is not the case. The variety of points of view that appear in this book and the profusion of its insights and details make it a dazzling portrait of the twelfth century—a century that was innovative, formative, poetic, and Platonic, while at the same time it was fascinated by grammar and logic, intrigued by the East, and in love with the palpable, with images and with allegories. Whether Chenu would have wished it or not, the reader of this work quite naturally realizes that Bernard Silvestre (ca. 1080-1167), John of Salisbury (ca. 1115-1180), Alan of Lille (ca. 1128-1202), all names cited frequently here, and others like them would not have been at home in the thirteenth century. It is obvious that Chenu himself loved the twelfth century, and that
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is also clear from the topic he chose for his contribution to the Conference Albert le Grand of 1968: “L’éveil de la conscience dans la civilisation médiévale”; the little book that resulted from this is without any doubt the work of a douziemiste. Chenu’s influence in the area of medieval studies is considerable. In the institutional realm, apart from his teaching at Le Saulchoir, he cofounded the Institut d’études médiévales in Ottawa (1932) and formed a preliminary plan for the Institut dominicain d’études orientales in Cairo. On the level of his scientific accomplishments the testimony of Jacques Le Goff (b. 1924) is particularly apropos. In his view Chenu’s major contribution was to have taught medievalists that “one can illuminate the development and the activity of theology and of religious thought by situating them at the heart of a global history” (from the eulogy delivered at his funeral on 15 February 1990). In fact, and without listing any names, it is easy to see his influence at play in works both published and about to be published on the development of the thought of Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, on particular schools of the twelfth century, on the connections between doctrinal quarrels and institutional questions in the university faculties, on the relationship between grammar and theology, or between logic and ontology on the one hand and mysticism on the other, and so on— a pervasive influence that is often unrelated to any personal acquaintance with Chenu. Let us conclude with L.J. Bataillon that, in reading a book of Chenu’s, “one can have the impression of self-evident truths, . . . but that is only the result of the fact that the book has already borne its fruits” (Bataillon: 451). His thought and his methodology, even more decisively than his writing, have become a leaven. [Translated by The Very Reverend Boniface Ramsey, O.P., St. Vincent Ferrar Church, N.Y. Se l e c t e d B i b l i o g r a p h y
A partial listing of Chenus works is in Duval, pp. 9-29, Mazzarello: 855-66, and Van den Hoogen, pp. 289-300, under Sources.
Works Bo o k s a n d A r t ic l e s
“Contribution à l’histoire du traité de la foi.” Mélanges thomistes (1923): 123—40. “La raison psychologique du développement du dogme d’après saint Thomas.” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 13(1924) : 44-51. “La théologie comme science au XHIe siècle.” Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 2 (1927): 37-71. Published as La théologie comme science au X lIIe siècle, 1943. 3rd éd., rev. and enlarged. Paris: Vrin, 1957.
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With E. Fouilloux, G. Alberigo, et al. Une école de théologie: Le Saulchoir. Kain-lesTournai, Belgium: Le Saulchoir, 1937. 2nd ed. Paris: Cerf, 1985· Introduction à l ’étude de saint Thomas d ’A quin. Montreal: Institut d’études médiévales, 1950. Translated as Toward Understanding Saint Thomas by A.-M. Landry and D. Hughes. Chicago: Regnery, 1964. Pour une théologie du travail. Paris: Seuil, 1955. La théologie au douzième siècle. Paris: Vrin, 1957. Translated selected articles as N ature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century: Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West by Jerome Taylor and Lester K. Little. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. Saint Thomas dA quin et la théologie. Paris: Seuil, 1959. La Parole de Dieu: Vol. 1. La fo i dans l ’intelligence; Vol. 2. L’Evangile dans le temps. Paris: Cerf, 1964. L ’éveil de la conscience dans la civilisation médiévale. Paris: Vrin, 1969. La liberté dans la foi. Edited by Olivier de la Brosse. Paris: Cerf, 1969.
L e t t e r s a n d Pa p e r s
Chenus letters and papers are housed at Archives de la province de France, Le Saulchoir, Paris, France.
Sources Anawati, Georges C. “Le Père Chenu et l’Institut dominicain d’études orientales du Caire.” In L ’hommage dijféré au Père Chenu, edited by Claude Geffré, pp. 63-67. Paris: Cerf, 1990. Bataillon, L.J. “Le Père M.-D. Chenu et la théologie du moyen âge.” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 75 (1991): 449-56. Congar, Yves. “Le Père M.-D. Chenu.” In Bilan de la théologie du XXe siècle, edited by Robert Vander Gucht and Herbert Vorgrimler, vol. 2, pp. 772-90. 2 vols. Tournai and Paris: Casterman, 1970. Conticello, C.G. “De contemplatione (Angelicum, 1920). La thèse inédite de doctorat du P. M.-D. Chenu.” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 75:3 (1991): 363-422. Doré, J. “Un intinéraire témoin: M.-D. Chenu.” In Les catholiques français et l ’héritage de 1789: d ’un centenaire à l ’autre, 1889-1989, edited by Pierre Colin, pp. 313-39. Paris: Beauchesne, 1989. Duquesne, Jacques. Jacques Duquesne interroge le Père Chenu: un théologien en liberté. Paris: Le Centurion, 1975· Duval, André. “Bibliographie du P. Marie-Dominique Chenu (1921-1965).” In Mélanges offerts a M .-D . Chenu, pp. 9-29. Paris: Vrin, 1967. Hommage au Père M .-D . Chenu. Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 75:3 (1991): 361-504. Keller, Robert John, O.P. “A Theology of Work of M.-D. Chenu.” Chapter 2 in his Toward a Contemporary Roman Catholic Theology ofWork. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1993. Le Goff, Jacques. “Hommage de Jacques Le Goff, prononce à Notre-Dame au nom de l’Université, des historiens des Annales, des médiévistes.” Foi et développement 181-83 (1990): 6. Mazzarello, Maria Luisa. “Gli scritti del P. Marie-Dominique Chenu 1963-1979.” Salesianum 42 (1980): 855-66.
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Potworowski, Christophe F. The Incarnation in the Theology o f Marie-Dominique Chenu. Ph.D. Diss. Toronto: University of Saint Michael’s College, 1988. Shook, Lawrence K. Etienne Gilson. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984. Van den Hoogen, Toine. “Pastorale teologie: ontwikkeling en struktuur.” In De teologie van M .-D . Chenu, pp. 289-300. Alblasserdam: Kanter, 1983.
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Ph
il o t h e u s
B
o e h n e r
( 1901 1955 )
fFr. Gedeon Gâly O.F.M.
Philotheus Boehner, Franciscan priest, professor of philosophy, versatile medievalist, and one of the most prominent Ockham scholars of the mid-twentieth century, was born 17 February 1901 in the small village of Lichtenau (Westphalia, Germany). Christened Henry, he was the youngest of seven children born to Francis and Maria Boehner. After finishing high school in the Franciscan Seraphic Seminary of Brekel on 18 March 1920, Henry Boehner entered the novitiate of Die Sächsische Franziskanerprovinz vom Heiligen Kreuz (Holy Cross) in Warendorf (Westphalia). His Christian name, Henry, was changed to Philotheus (Lover of God). After a year of novitiate, in preparation for the priesthood he studied philosophy and theology for six years at Holy Cross province house of studies in Dorsten (Westphalia). During his theological studies he became so ill with tuberculosis (which had already claimed the lives of two of his siblings) that he was not expected to live. Nevertheless, against all expectations, he recovered, and on 2 April 1927 he was ordained as a priest in the cathedral of Paderborn. Since Boehner was very much interested in science at that time, his superiors gave him permission to study biology at the universities of Munich and Münster. In 1933 he obtained his doctors degree in biology with an outstanding dissertation on the tulip s movements in reaction to temperature. No doubt Boehner had studied medieval philosophy and theology while preparing for the priesthood, but he gained deeper understanding and appreciation of them during his sickness. As a convalescent, he translated into German Etienne Gilsons (1884-1978; see essay in this volume) La philosophie de saint Bonaventure. Later he translated two other outstanding works by the same author: Introduction à Tétude de s. Augustin and La théologie mystique de saint Bernard. During the summer of 1933, Boehner had the opportunity to attend a course given by Gilson in Paris on the history of Christian philosophy. 119
Boehner and Gilson became close friends. Gilson considered Boehner his “best German friend” (Shook [1984], 212). When Boehner urged Gilson to write the history of Christian philosophy, Gilson suggested that Boehner write it himself, with Gilsons collaboration. Gilson put his copious lecture notes at Boehner’s disposal and authorized him to use them according to his best judgment. Boehner elaborated on Gilsons lectures and completed them with ten chapters of his own. The result was the best history of Christian philosophy for that time (Boehner [1937]). By translating three of Gilson’s most important works and collaborating with the renowned medievalist on the history of Christian philosophy, Boehner became a first-rate medievalist though his doctorate was in biology. Between 1933 and 1939, he taught philosophy to the students of the Holy Cross province in Dorsten. At the end of 1938, the minister general of the Franciscan Order, Leonardo M. Bello (1882-1944), commanded Boehner to join the Scotus Commission at the Collegio Internazionale di San Bonaventura located in Quarcchi (Florence) and prepare the critical edition of the logical works of the greatest Franciscan philosopher and theologian, John Duns Scotus (ca. 1266-1308). But shortly thereafter the Scotus Commission was reorganized under new direction and transferred to Rome, and Boehner returned to Dorsten. Boehner was particularly interested in the philosophy of the badly neglected, misunderstood, and misinterpreted Franciscan philosopher, theologian, polemicist, and political thinker William of Ockham (ca. 1285—ca. 1349), called the Venerable Inceptor. Ockham became a bitter adversary of Pope John XXII in 1328 and joined Louis IV of Bavaria, an antagonist of the pope. As a consequence of his attacks on the pope, Ockham was repudiated both by the church and by the Franciscan Order. He died excommunicated in Munich on 10 April 1349. Boehner urged Gilson several times to undertake the critical edition of William of Ockham’s commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (1100—1160) at the Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto (founded by Gilson in 1929). Although as an “eccentric Thomist” (Shook [1989], 175), Gilson did not agree with the philosophy of the Venerable Inceptor, he nevertheless considered the project important and worthwhile. In a letter to G.B. Phelan, he wrote: “If we procure an edition of at least the prologue of the first book the Institute will rank among the indisputable seats of medieval learning” (Shook [1984], 212). Who would be better qualified to do the editing than Boehner himself, who had already done extensive research on the manuscript tradition of Ockham’s philosophical and theological writings? Boehner had compiled a list of
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about 150 manuscripts, conserved in the libraries of Europe, that contained writings of the Venerable Inceptor (Boehner [1958], 28-33). Gilson, therefore, in 1938 invited Boehner to the Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto to lecture on palaeography and to initiate the critical edition of William of Ockhams commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Boehner arrived at Toronto in April 1939, and there he finished the edition of the first question of Ockhams commentary. In September 1939, when it became clear that Canada would declare war on Germany, Boehner was advised to leave Canada in order to avoid being interned as an enemy alien. Boehner detested Hitler and his regime, not hesitating to express openly his opinion of the Nazis: “They have come from the devil, and they are going to the devil” (“Father Philotheus Boehner, O.F.M.”: 209). Not wishing to return to Germany, he asked for and received hospitality at the nearby St. Bonaventure College, located in southwestern New York, surrounded by the Allegheny foothills (enchanted mountains), in Cattaraugus County, between Olean and Allegany. The president of the college at that time was Thomas Plassmann (1879-1959), who had also been born in Westphalia, Germany, not far from Boehner s birthplace. During the following year, Plassmann and Boehner established the Franciscan Institute as a distinct unit within the Division of Graduate Studies at St. Bonaventure College. The main purpose of the institute was to promote the study of the Franciscan school, offering courses in philosophy, theology, and history, and conducting research in these fields. Research monographs would be published under the title Franciscan Institute Publications, which in the succeeding years were subdivided into Philosophy, History, Missiology, Theology, Text, and Spirit and Life Series (Angelo, 178-79). At the same time, Boehner initiated the New Series of the Franciscan Studies, which until then had been a series of monographs, published at irregular intervals, transforming it into a quarterly review of sacred and secular sciences. Boehner himself became the most assiduous contributor to this new periodical. There is scarcely an issue between 1941 and 1955 to which he did not contribute an article. At the Franciscan Institute Boehner lectured mostly on the philosophy and theology of the Franciscan school from Alexander of Hales (ca. 1185-1245) to William of Ockham. Mimeographed copies of these lectures (in four volumes) are available in the library of the Franciscan Institute and very likely also in other Franciscan libraries. The late Thomas Merton (1915-1968) attended some of Boehner s lectures. Merton remembered Boehner fondly: “Here at St. Bonaventure s there was one priest whom I had come to know well during this last year, a wise and good philosopher, Father Philotheus. We had been going over some texts of St. Bonaventure and Duns Scotus together, and I knew I
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could trust him with the most involved spiritual problem” (Merton, 333). As a recognized Ockham scholar, Boehner was frequently invited to give talks on the philosophy of Ockham at prestigious universities, being the first Roman Catholic clergyman invited to give a public lecture at Yale University. Plassmann and Boehner established the Franciscan Institute with the intention that it become a graduate school of teaching and research, leading toward master of arts and doctor of philosophy degrees. The first doctor of philosophy degree was awarded in 1947 to Sebastian Day of Australia. In 1948 the institute was recognized as a general studium of the Franciscan Order (Angelo, 176-78). One of the reasons for St. Bonaventure College being granted a university charter in 1950 was the Franciscan Institute and its publications under the guidance of Philotheus Boehner {ibid., 188-95). Besides teaching, Boehner’s principal concern remained the critical edition of the philosophical and theological works of William of Ockham. Fie had suspended the edition of the Sentences commentary while awaiting the proofs of the second fascicle of the prologue, which he had sent to the printer in Paderborn shortly before the war broke out. The proofs never came because they had been destroyed, together with the printing shop. Since for more than six centuries Ockham had been accused of every possible philosophical and theological error, Boehner made it his chief business to dispel the old prejudices and to present Ockhams teaching in a more favorable light. He was well aware that nothing is more deleterious to the correct understanding of the thought of an author than a work falsely ascribed to him; therefore, he edited the very controversial Centiloquium (1941—42), attributed to Ockham, proving that it is not an authentic work of the Venerable Inceptor. It is true that a number of the hundred conclusions sound Ockhamistic, but there are others that Ockham would have repudiated. Next, Boehner edited the Tractatus de Successivis (1944; about motion, time, and place), attributed to Ockham, proving that in its present form it was not genuine, but an extract from Ockhams authentic commentary on the Physics of Aristotle. In the introduction to De Successivis Boehner sketched the career of the Venerable Inceptor in Oxford, Avignon, and Munich, and listed the titles of the genuine writings, thus clarifying much confusion concerning Ockham’s life and work. The following year Boehner edited Ockhams Tractatus de Praedestinatione et de Praescientia Dei et de Futuris Contingentibus (1945). This edition is accompanied by a study in which he explains the difficult and intricate problems connected with this tract and shows that Ockham already had some idea of the three-valued logic. He also published parallel texts from other writings by Ockham and from the works of Peter Aureoli (d. 1322) and Gregory of Rimini (d. 1358) in five appendices.
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During the war years Boehner started working on the edition of Ockhams masterpiece, the Summa Logicae (1951-54). It was the most important, most extensive work written on logic since Aristotle. It consists of three main parts; the third is further divided into four parts, embracing all branches of logic from terms to fallacies. Boehner succeeded in editing parts 1 and 2 and the first section of part 3. He considered this a provisory edition, intending to prepare a more critical one later. In order to gain a more complete grasp of medieval logic, in 1955 he also edited two works of another great logician, the Venerable Inceptor’s contemporary and antagonist Walter Burleigh (1275-ca. 1345), who represented the realist school of logic, strenuously opposed by Ockham. Fascinated with logic, both medieval and modern (he taught both at the Franciscan Institute), Boehner also published a much appreciated booklet entitled Medieval Logic: An Outline o f Its Development from 1250 to c. 1400 (1952). In it he tried to show how medieval logic influenced modern symbolic logic. The most valuable and widely read book Boehner wrote on the philosophy of the Venerable Inceptor is his Philosophical Writings: A Selection, published posthumously (1957). The book crystalizes ideas about Ockham’s philosophy. In its introduction (ix-li) Boehner outlines the life of Ockham, presents the leading ideas of his philosophy, summarizes his epistemology, logic, metaphysics, and his teaching on creatures, ethics, and politics. There follow an essential bibliography and 147 pages of significant selections from various works of Ockham, with the Latin text on facing pages. The twenty-four articles Boehner wrote between 1939 and 1955 on the life, works, and philosophical and theological teaching of the Venerable Inceptor constitute an important contribution to Ockham studies. The importance of Boehner’s studies for the correct interpretation of Ockham was underlined already in 1947 by no less a medievalist than Paul Vignaux (1904-1987). Boehner’s Collected Articles on Ockham were published in 1958. Two of these studies are general, describing the current state of Ockham studies; eleven are critical, dealing with authenticity, chronology, and codicography; and thirteen, doctrinal, discussing Ockham’s epistemology, metaphysics, theodicy, and politics. Most important are the doctrinal studies, illuminating important aspects of Ockham’s philosophy: logic, metaphysics, ethics, theodicy, and politics. In these articles Boehner endeavors to dispel inveterate prejudices and accusations leveled against Ockham, whose philosophy and theology were once treated in the textbooks under titles like “The Disintegration of Scholasticism.” Ockham used to be labeled a fideist, rationalist, nominalist,
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agnostic, skeptic, empiricist; he was called a Platonist without the ideas, and the forerunner of Martin Luther. Boehner dedicated his best energies to proving that all these accusations were false, the result of a superficial reading and misunderstanding of Ockham. With the help of the manuscripts, he established which works were authentic and used them to document his interpretation. Although, for example, Ockham was once called prince of the nominalists (Princeps Nominalium), Boehner argued for a different view. It is true that the Venerable Inceptor vehemently denied the existence of universais either prior to or in things, and he emphasized very strongly that everything that existed was singular. However, he never said that universais were nothing but mere words or names. In Boehner’s view, Ockham’s universais are concepts in the mind; therefore he should be called a conceptualist. His conceptualism was not the idealistic kind, which severs the bond between thought and reality (this was completely unknown at Ockham’s time), but a realistic conceptualism. According to realistic conceptualism, a concept is the spiritual correspondent of extra-mental reality. In Ockham’s theory of cognition there is an immediate causal connection between thought and reality. The process of cognition starts with intuitive cognition (sensitive and intellective) by means of which we grasp reality. The object of cognition, as an active cause, produces in the mind an effect similar to itself. Naturally, such similarity is not physical but intellectual. A concept that does not concern one individual more than another is a universal concept that reflects, declares, expresses, and explains essences or substances of the individuals. With regard to the nature of the universal concept, Ockham was undecided at the beginning of his teaching career. First he was inclined toward the opinion that the universal concept was only a thought object (esse obiectivum) without having its own reality (esse subiectivum). Later he preferred the theory according to which the universal concept was a spiritual quality (accident) of the mind with its own existence, which can be identified with the act of intellection. The universal concept, as an entity, is singular, but insofar as it is predicable of many, it is universal. Boehner’s important article “Ockham’s Theory of Supposition and the Notion of Truth” accurately and in great detail explains Ockham’s theory of supposition, which is closely connected with his theory of signification and with the notion of truth. Boehner demonstrates that according to Ockham a proposition is true when the subject and the predicate stand or supposit for the same thing. Consequently the theory of supposition pervades not only the logic but the whole philosophy and theology of the Venerable Inceptor. Supposition is the property of the terms employed in a proposition. When
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the term stands or supposits for the same thing that it signifies (be it a thing outside the mind, a concept, or a name), it has personal supposition, for example, “man is an animal.” When it stands for a concept of the mind without signifying it, it has simple supposition, for example, “man is a species.” Material supposition obtains when a term stands for a spoken or written word, without signifying it, like “man is a noun.” The most important kind of supposition is personal supposition, which has many subdivisions: discretecommon; determinate-confused; merely confused-confused and distributive; mobile-immobile. For the truth of a universal proposition it is not required that the subject and the predicate be the same, but it is required that they stand for the same thing. The fact that according to Ockham terms with simple supposition stand for concepts and not for names further confirms that he was a conceptualist and not a nominalist. According to some textbooks of the history of medieval philosophy, Ockham not only did not have metaphysics but destroyed the very foundation of metaphysics. Boehner disproves this in his article “The Metaphysics of Ockham” (1947-48). It is true that Ockham did not write a commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, but he repeatedly expressed his intention to do so. He was unable to fulfill his promise because his teaching career was interrupted in 1324. Nevertheless, we know that he considered metaphysics a legitimate science that deals with reality. Its subject is the term “being,” which stands or supposits for real entities. For Ockham there is no abstract being but only singular or individual entities, like bodies, plants, animals, men, angels, and God. The term “being” is predicated univocally (that is, in the same sense) of all these entities. If we had no such univocal concept of being, we would not be able to form a concept of God, who cannot be known to us by intuitive cognition in our present life. But by combining the concept of “being” and the concept of “first” we have a concept of the “first being,” who is God. We should keep in mind that for Ockham the univocacy of the concept of being does not imply that some reality is common to God and creatures. Since according to Ockham every created being is singular and individual, he does not waste time speculating about essences, as distinct from their existences. Nor does he have to answer the question: what is the principle of individuation? He recognizes only two absolute entities: substances and qualities. Instead of destroying metaphysics, he simplifies it, and nothing is lost to metaphysics by such simplification but verbal difficulties and endless discussions about artificially created problems. Maurice De Wulf (1867-1947; see essay in this volume), one of the most outstanding medievalists, presented a completely distorted picture of
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Ockham’s philosophy in the sixth edition of his standard textbook on the history of medieval philosophy. Boehner, in his article “A Recent Presentation of Ockham’s Philosophy” (1949) corrected, very briefly, De Wulf’s misunderstandings and misinterpretations. A year later he wrote another article, “Zu Ockhams Beweis der Existenz Gottes” (1950), in which he set right De Wulf’s presentation of Ockham’s natural theology. De Wulf contended that Ockham’s theodicy was a complete agnosticism, because according to Ockham we do not have, in our present life, intuitive cognition of God, but know him in an abstract concept only; but such abstract concepts are nothing but figments of the mind with no reference to reality. For Boehner, nothing could be more misrepresentative of Ockham. It is true that according to Ockham we do not have intuitive knowledge of God in our present state, but that is the common and accepted teaching of philosophers and theologians. It is not true that according to Ockham abstract concepts are nothing but figments of the mind without reference to reality. On the contrary, Ockham teaches that our concepts, both concrete and abstract, are spiritual images or simulacra of reality because they are caused by reality. The Venerable Inceptor considered sufficient Scotus’s proofs for the existence of God, based on the principle of causality, namely, that an infinite process of essentially ordered causes is impossible. However, he suggested that a proof based on a series of conserving causes would be stronger because such causes must exist simultaneously, and an infinity of simultaneously existing causes would be impossible. It is true that Ockham did not think that we can demonstrate convincingly the unicity of God, but there were other authors who shared Ockham’s opinion. Besides, when Ockham speaks of demonstration, he has in mind the strict, Aristotelian meaning of demonstration where we argue from necessary premises to necessary conclusions. Much blame had been heaped upon Ockham on account of his ideas concerning the relations between church and state, papal and imperial power. During his teaching career in England the Venerable Inceptor was not interested in such problems, but in 1324 he was summoned to the papal curia in Avignon to answer certain questions concerning the orthodoxy of his theological opinions. There, at the request of his superior, Michael of Cesena (ca. 1270-1342), general minister of the Franciscan Order, he examined some constitutions of Pope John XXII dealing with the Franciscan ideal of poverty. In Cum inter nonnullos, John XXII asserted that whoever denied that Christ and his apostles had private property was a heretic. Ockham came to the conclusion that the pope was a heretic because he contradicted the solemn declarations of earlier pontiffs. In 1328, in the company of Michael of Cesena and some other friars, Ockham left Avignon, against the
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prohibition of the pope, and joined the emperor, Louis IV of Bavaria, in Italy; later he followed Louis to Munich. Louis, an antagonist of John XXII, had been excommunicated; consequently the pope excommunicated Ockham and the other fugitive friars. From that time on the Venerable Inceptor never tired of attacking Pope John XXII. Ockham sought to prove that John was a heretic who should be deposed, and that neither Pope John XXII nor any pope had the right to interfere in political matters. In order to clarify (and to justify) Ockham’s position, Boehner wrote “Ockhams Political Ideas” (1943), in which he explained in detail Ockham’s teaching concerning the relation between church and state, papal and secular power. Boehner concluded that Ockham’s opinions would be considered orthodox and reasonable today, even if at his time they seemed daring and contrary to the opinions advanced by the curialists. According to Ockham, both temporal and spiritual powers derive from God; neither is the church subject to the state, nor the state to the church. Nevertheless, if a pope became heretical (like John XXII), the emperor had the power and the duty to help the Christian people to depose him. Boehner’s legacy is considerable. It is due to his dedicated and intelligent endeavors that one of the most important and most influential philosophers and theologians of the fourteenth century, William of Ockham, regained his good name. No reputable medievalist can ignore Boehner’s thorough and well-documented studies on the most important aspects of Ockham’s authentic teaching. It is also due to Boehner’s preparatory labors that the research team of the Franciscan Institute of St. Bonaventure University have been able to prepare and publish the critical edition of William of Ockham, Opera Philosophica et Theologica (seventeen volumes), between 1967 and 1988. Boehner was a very talented, energetic, and many-sided man. His interests were not limited to the Franciscan school in general and to the rehabilitation of William of Ockham in particular. As a Franciscan priest, he was very much interested in Franciscan spirituality and spiritual direction. Already in 1932 he translated into German Saint Bonaventure’s Itinerarium mentis in Deum, and shortly before he died he translated the same work (with an excellent introduction) into English. In order to effect among Franciscan friars and sisters in America a “deeper knowledge and more ardent love of the Franciscan way of life” (Boehner, “Pax et Bonum”: 3), in 1950 he launched a new periodical called The Cord (after the cord or cincture worn by Franciscans). As with the Franciscan Studies, Boehner himself became The Cords most frequent contributor. Between 1950 and 1955, he published no less than sixteen articles in it.
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Among his many and varied activities Boehner never lost interest in biology and botany. Thomas Merton describes Boehner as a “true scientist, for whom natural beings were only a step on the ladder by which a soul rises to the contemplation of God” (Merton, quoted in “Father Philotheus Boehner, O.F.M.”: 212). Boehner “certainly had an eye for the smallest of God’s creatures” (ibid.). Merton recounts an episode: “I will never forget once when we were driving in a car through one of those narrow wooded valleys near Allegany, and were going too fast for the trees to be more than a blur, when Philo suddenly shouted: ‘Stop! Stop!’ and blurted out some unintelligible name of a rare moss. Fie hopped out of the car and was half way up the side of a small mountain before anyone knew what was happening” (ibid.). He loved mosses because they were “beautiful and useless.” The collection and classification of mosses (bryology) remained his lifelong hobby, and he published a number of articles on them in Science Studies of St. Bonaventure University. As soon as he became eligible, Boehner applied for United States citizenship, which he obtained without difficulty. In 1949 and 1952 he returned to Germany for short visits, and during the winter semester of 1953-54 he taught psychology to the students of the Holy Cross province in Warendorf. Philotheus Boehner died after midnight, Sunday, 22 May 1955, of coronary thrombosis, shortly after he was assured by his doctor that he was “abnormally healthy.” He is buried in the St. Bonaventure Cemetery, St. Bonaventure, New York. Se l e c t e d Bib l i o g r a ph y
Works Bo o k s a n d A r t ic l e s
Trans. La philosophie de saint Bonaventure by Étienne Gilson as Der heilige Bonaventura. Leipzig: Hegner, 1929. Trans. Introduction a l ’étude de s. Augustin by Étienne Gilson as Der heilige Augustin: Eine Einführung in seine Lehre. Leipzig: Hegner, 1930. Trans. Itinerarium mentis in Deum by Saint Bonaventure as Pilgerbuch des Geistes zu Gott. Werl: Franziskus-Druckerei, 1932. “Über die thermonastischen Blütenbewegungen bei der Tulpe.” Zeitschrift der Botanik 26 (1933): 65-107. Trans. La théologie mystique de saint Bernardby Étienne Gilson as Die Mystik des heiligen Bernhard von Clairvaux. Wittlich: Fischer, 1936. With Étienne Gilson. Die Geschichte der christlichen Philosophie: Von ihren Anfängen bis Nikolaus von Cues. 1937. 3rd ed. as Christliche Philosophie: Von ihren A nfängen bis Nikolaus von Cues. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1954. Guillelmi Ockham Quaestio prima principalis Prologi in prim um librum Sententiarum cum interpretatione Gabrielis Biel. Zurich: Goetschmann, 1939. “Manuscrits des oeuvres non-polémiques d’Occam.” La France Franciscaine 22 (1939): 171-75. Reprinted in Collected Articles on Ockham, edited by Eligius
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M. Buytaert, pp. 28-33. St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1958. Hereafter Collected Articles. “The Centiloquium Attributed to Ockham.” Franciscan Studies 1:1 (1941): 58-72; 1:2: 35-54; 1:3: 62-70; 2 (1942): 49-60, 146-57, 251-301. “Ockhams Political Ideas.” The Review o f Politics 5 (1943): 462-87. Reprinted in Collected Articles, pp. 442-68. Ed. The Tractatus de Successivis, attributed to Ockham. St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1944. Ed. The Tractatus de Praedestinatione et de Praescientia Dei et de Futuris Contingentibus ofW illiam o f Ockham. St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1945. “Ockhams Theory of Supposition and the Notion of Truth.” Franciscan Studies 6 (1946): 261-92. Reprinted in Collected Articles, pp. 232-67. “The Realistic Conceptualism ofW illiam Ockham.” Traditio 4 (1946): 307-35. Reprinted in Collected Articles, pp. 156-74. “The Metaphysics of Ockham.” The Review o f Metaphysics 1:4 ( 1947—48) : 59-86. Reprinted in Collected Articles, pp. 373-99. “A Recent Presentation of Ockham’s Philosophy.” Franciscan Studies 9 (1949): 443-56. Reprinted in Collected Articles, pp. 137-56. “Pax et Bonum.” The C ordi (1950): 1-3. “Zu Ockhams Beweis der Existenz Gottes.” Franziskanische Studien 32 (1950): 50-69. Reprinted in Collected Articles, pp. 399-420. Ed. De Puritate Artis Logicae Tractatus Brevior by Walter Burleigh. St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1951. Ed. Summa Logicae by William Ockham. Vol. 1, Pars Prima. Vol. 2, Secunda et Tertiae Prima. St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1951-54. Medieval Logic: An Outline o f Its Developmentfrom 1250 to c. 1400. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952. Ed. De Puritate Artis Logicae Tractatus Longior with a Revised Edition o f the Tractatus Brevior by Walter Burleigh. St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1955. Ed. and trans. Saint Bonaventurés Itinerarium Mentis in Deum: Introduction, Translation and Commentary. St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1956. Ed. Philosophical Writings: A Selection by William Ockham. Edinburgh: Nelson, 1957. Collected Articles on Ockham. Edited by Eligius M. Buytaert. St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1958.
Sources Angelo, Mark V. The History o f St. Bonaventure University. St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: Franciscan Institute, 1961. Borgmann, Pacificus. “P. Philotheus Bôhner O FM .” Franziskanische Studien 37 (1955): 292-95. ---------. “Boehner, Philotheus.” Lexikon fu r Theologie und Kirche, cols. 565-66. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1958. Buytaert, Eligius M. “Bibliography of Fr. Philotheus Boehner, O.F.M.” Franciscan Studies 15 (1955): 321-31. De Wulf, Maurice. Histoire de la Philosophie Médiévale. 6th ed. 3 vols. Louvain: I.S.P., 1934-47. [Editorial Board]. “Father Philotheus Boehner, O.F.M.” The C ord’b (1955): 206-15. [Editorial Board]. “In Memoriam.” Franciscan Studies 15 (1955): 101-05. Guillelmi de Ockham opera philosophica et theologica, [various editors.] 17 vols. St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: St. Bonaventure University, 1967-88.
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Heynck, Valens. “Verzeichnis der philosophisch-theologischen Veröffentlichungen Ph. Böhners.” Franziskanische Studien 37 (1955): 295-98. Merton, Thomas. The Seven Storey M ountain. London: Sheldon, 1948. Shook, Laurence K. ¿tienne Gilson. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984. ---------. “Gilson, Etienne Henry.” In New Catholic Encyclopedia, Supplement, vol. 18, pp. 175-77. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1989. Vignaux, Paul. “Les travaux du P. Boehner sur Ockham.” Revue du Moyen Age Latin 3 (1947): 99-102. Wolter, Allan B. “Boehner, Philotheus Heinrich.” In New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 2, p. 631. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967. ---------. “Philotheus Boehner: In Memoriam.” Franciscan Studies 44 (1984): vii-x.
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David B. Burrell , C.S.C., Charles E. Butterworth , ¿z?2 Patrick D. Gaffneyy C. S. C.
Georges Chehata Anawati, eminent Islamic and Christian philosopher whose studies of Islam brought about greater dialog on matters of faith and learning between Christians and Muslims, was born in 1905 in Alexandria, Egypt. He was the sixth of eight children in a Christian family that followed Greek Orthodox Christianity and that had emigrated from Syria two generations earlier. In 1921, a year before finishing his secondary school studies at the Frères des Écoles Chrétiennes in Alexandria, Anawati chose to join the Roman Catholic Church. Although the decision caused family tensions at the time, in later years he explained his decision as an expression of his natural piety and a normal consequence of his lengthy schooling by Catholic friars. With baccalaureate degree in hand, Anawati went first to the Université Saint Joseph in Beirut where he obtained a diploma in pharmacy in 1926 and afterward to the Ecole de Chimie Industrielle in Lyon where he was awarded a degree in chemical engineering two years later. From 1928 to 1934 he ran a pharmacy as well as a biological and chemical laboratory with two of his brothers who were physicians. During this period Anawati became interested in philosophy and began to read Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges (1863-1948) as well as Jacques Maritain (1882-1973). He also made the acquaintance of Yusuf Karam (1886-1959), a distinguished professor of philosophy at Cairo University, whose command of classical Arabic greatly impressed him. At this time the deep misunderstandings Christians and Muslims had of one another’s religious beliefs began to perturb him. His contact with two Dominicans in Cairo, Fathers Antonin Jaussen (1871—1962) and Marie-Dominique Boulanger (1885-1961), correspondence with Maritain and Louis Massignon (1883-1962), in addition to his deepening studies of Karam’s writings contributed to his decision to become a Dominican priest. After a year of novitiate studies in France (May 1934-May 1935), Anawati was sent to Belgium for four years of study—two each in philosophy 131
and theology—at the Dominican Studies Convent in Kain where he was ordained in 1939. While he was attempting to continue his theological studies, World War II forced him, along with other Dominican students who had not been mobilized, to move to the suburbs of Paris in 1941, then to the south of France, and finally to the suburbs of Chambéry, where he obtained a certificate permitting him to teach theology in Dominican convents. His intellectual and religious life was formed in that milieu. Under his mentors’ guidance, he retrieved a rich and unsurpassed medieval tradition and sought to mine those riches for the enrichment of the intellectual life of his contemporaries. In the course of his philosophical and theological studies, Father (or Abuna, as he was affectionately known, in keeping with the practice of Christians in the Middle East) Anawati had met and become deeply influenced by Father Marie-Dominique Chenu (1895-1990), especially by Chenu’s conviction that it was necessary to plumb the foundations— the original sources—of Muslim Arab learning and to do so in Arabic. This call to translate between the Christian and Muslim worlds became increasingly clear for Anawati, but he could not respond to it until he had steeped himself first in the Western and then in the Arabic and Islamic philosophical and theological traditions. Thus it seems almost providential that Father Anawati, unable to return to the occupied part of France in 1941, decided to go to Algiers for three years. While there, he obtained the equivalent of a B.A. (Licence ès lettres) in Arabic under the guidance of the many renowned Arabists connected with the Institute of Oriental Languages of the University of Algiers—Robert Brunschvig (1901-1990), Marius Canard (1888— 1982), Georges Marpais (1876-1962), Henri Pérès, Jean Cantineau (1899-1956), and Évariste Levi-Proven^al (1894—1956). They provided him with an unusually rich curriculum in Arabic language and literature, Islamic law and jurisprudence, Islamic dialectical theology or Kalarn, Arabic and Islamic philosophy and science, and the history of the Arabic and Islamic world. Above all, it was in Algeria that he first met Louis Gardet (1904-1986). The work of Georges Anawati and Louis Gardet is justly celebrated as opening doors that had been closed for centuries or, at best, that had been sometimes left ajar but were seldom inviting. In their major book Introduction a la théologie musulmane (1948), they did not forbear using the Christian name for the Kalarn study that had over the centuries set the tone for Muslim reflection on the deliverances of the Quran. Its subtitle, Essai de théologie comparée, virtually initiated a new field of study and prepared the way for decades of fruitful research. Anawati and Gardet sought to
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understand the mode of reflection on revelation proper to Islam as well as to communicate that understanding to Western scholars and fellow Christians, an effort that subsequent thinkers would thematize into an explicitly comparative method. The collaboration between Anawati and Gardet came about in an atmosphere generated by the groundbreaking intercultural work of Louis Massignon, whose ample perspectives animated so many younger French scholars to explore the linguistic and religious resources of Islam. Indeed, it was Massignon who, from his chair at the Collège de France in Paris, directed the young Egyptian Dominican to meet Gardet in the further reaches of southern Algeria. Gardet had joined the “Petits Frères du Sacré Coeur” (later to be called “Petits Frères de Jésus” or “Petits Frères de Foucauld”) to experience Muslim life in the desert far from Western surveillance. An admirer of Gardet’s work, Anawati traveled by train, boat, truck, and camel to reach that distant outpost. They spent the next four days talking. At the end of that first visit, Anawati resolved to follow Gardet’s lead, to learn as much as he could about Islam and its religious thought, so as to help catalyze mutual understanding. This first meeting was followed by several others at Gardet’s distant retreat. During 1943—44 Gardet joined Anawati for lengthy work sessions at the Dominican Convent in Algiers, where from the beginning they set as their goal to understand Islamic theology as thoroughly as possible. To this end, they translated different theological works into French as well as studying them and figuring out their details. Gardet’s more philosophical bent led him to pursue clarity of thought and expression by translating the theological tenets of these Muslim thinkers into accessible Western forms of thought. Through his translations, he was able to explain Islamic religious terms in a manner Western scholars could comprehend. Abuna Anawati, on the other hand, was more inclined to engage with contemporary Muslim scholars who had been trained in the classical Arabic tradition. He queried them about subjects pursued in the traditional Islamic religious schools, subjects Western Orientalists tended to ignore, so that he might discover the workings of the traditional Islamic disciplines and the meaning of their key terms in context. Through such contact, he came to understand what lay behind the theological concepts and was able to communicate these forms of thought through his writings. An example of the way the two worked together on such matters is their translation of Bajuri’s gloss on al-Laqani’s theological poem, Jawharatal-Tawhïdor The Jewel o f [Divine] Unity (1951). Somewhat ironically, then, the Dominican was less the Thomist in this case and more intent on communicating
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something of the heritage he shared to his Western colleagues. Yet there could be little doubt that he was a Catholic Christian or a Dominican priest. Indeed, to his friends—whether Christians, Muslims, or Jews—Abuna Anawati displayed a receptive hospitality that radiated from a serene center of a faith deeply and passionately held. Such characteristics are most evident in the articles he wrote during the early collaboration with Gardet, among which were articles on Christian and Muslim culture, Christianity and Islam, Christianity in Arabia before Islam, and the Eastern Church. In August 1944, as soon as transit from Algiers was possible, Anawati moved to Cairo at the behest of his French superiors. Doubtless inspired by the convictions of Massignon regarding “sacred hospitality” and abetted by his Egyptian sensibilities, he lay the foundations for the Institut Dominicain d’Études Orientales (IDEO) in Abbasiyya, a few short kilometers from the venerable university and seat of classical Muslim learning, al-Azhar. The building had been constructed in the 1930s as a study site for biblical students from the École Biblique in Jerusalem; it was soon to serve, as well, as an alternative site for the theological formation of French Dominicans who showed interest in the Arab or Islamic world. The heart and soul of the institute was the resident community of scholars who regularly received visiting students of Islam, younger and older; they welcomed the shaikhs (scholars and teachers) from al-Azhar in their home and library, and in time they came to know them personally. However, it was the Egyptian Anawati’s presence that intensified the hospitality. The learned community in Cairo came to understand that his presence in the Egyptian community—above and beyond his scholarly renown—facilitated the human intellectual exchange that would become popularly identified as “dialog.” The best known of Anawati’s early collaborators in this enterprise were surely Fathers Jacques Jomier (b. 1914) and Serge de Laugier de Beaurecueil (b. 1917), although other Dominicans worked tirelessly to achieve Anawati’s goal: to provide a meeting place for open discussion, wherein Western scholars would be able to interrelate with the scholars and teachers from al-Azhar. Somehow amid the demands of founding this institute for learning and intercultural exchange, Abuna Anawati found the time to accept an invitation as a visiting professor at the Institute of Medieval Studies at Montreal in 1950, 1952, 1954, and 1956. During this time, he also wrote and defended a Ph.D. dissertation on creation according to Avicenna and Saint Thomas Aquinas. The first initiative undertaken by Anawati and his collaborators was the founding of a library in 1944, nine years before the institute itself was formally constituted (1953). In 1954 they founded Mélanges de l’Institut Dominicain
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d'Études Orientales (.MIDEO). Initially a venue for their own work and that of the visiting fellows, MIDEO also came to serve as a barter for exchange subscriptions to journals across the Western and Islamic worlds. The result was a library in Islamic philosophy and theology containing 80,000 volumes that has few if any parallels. With the first issue of MIDEO Anawati began to publish a bibliography of classical Arabic texts published in Egypt each year as a resource for scholars interested in the recovery of the Arabic and Islamic tradition, a project he continued through Volume 15 (1982). The value of the institute’s library is not, however, confined to the quality and depth of its holdings. Rather, as the principal magnet drawing interested visitors and as the hub of the intellectual endeavors defining IDEO’s raison d'être, the library counts not only as a storehouse of scholarly resources set in an oasis of tranquility, but also embodies the aspirations and achievements of Abuna Anawati and collaborators. To that degree, the library localizes the intellectual pole of their mission and makes it almost tangible. In harmonious counterpoint, the chapel situated at the far opposite end of the building where the residents gather for daily prayer gives permanent shape to the spiritual pole. A manifest sign of the library’s importance stands near the center of the reading room, namely the shelves holding the publications researched or composed at the institute or the works variously inspired, solicited, or contributed under the patronage of Abuna Anawati and those who have shared his broad interests. Another is conveyed in the several bulky volumes of le livre d'or, the institute’s guest book, whose yellowing pages brim over with signatures often prefaced by memorable bons mots, constituting a veritable “Who’s Who” of Egyptian public figures and Arab and Islamic scholars, especially of the Francophone world, going back for several generations. From a metaphysical perspective, one compatible with Scholastic thinking, it is not the library’s contents tout court, but the nature of its order, that is, the way the books and journals are categorized and arranged, which catches the eye and speaks of an unusually distinctive mind behind the assembling of these treasured volumes. The books have been ordered, not according to the standard bibliographic systems such as those of the Library of Congress and the Universal Decimal Classification, but according to a system that resembles a medieval synthesis of philosophy and theology. Here all things available to human knowing can be traced out through an encompassing hierarchy that contains for each branch its proper place hearkening back to a confident rapport between the realms of faith and reason. Anawati’s work habits were prodigious. While his scholarly contributions to the many conferences to which he was frequently invited continued, he directed his attention in Arabic to current issues in Egypt of interfaith
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relations and fostered informal meetings among religious leaders who found they could trust his good offices. He had plumbed the depths of classical Kaläm in his works with Gardet and had laid the bases for a fledgling discipline of comparative theology; Anawati’s interest in this domain now gravitated to more contemporary issues of Christian-Muslim understanding. At the same time, resident scholars could always count on his judicious counsel in furthering their own work. This happened so consistently, among expatriates and local scholars alike, that the number of people who count Abuna Anawati as their teacher is enormous. In the academic world, for instance, specialists in several distinct fields related to Arab civilization and Islam and their convergence with Christianity, East and West, recognize him as a pioneer, guide, and master. To name but a few, one thinks of Professors Roger Arnaldez (Sorbonne), Carmela Baffioni (Naples), Carl L. Brown (Princeton), Hans Daiber (Frankfurt), Gerhardt Endress (Bochum), Pierre Larcher (Aix en Provence), Muhsin Mahdi (Harvard), Jean Michot (Louvain), Sayyid Hossein Nasr (George Washington), Joseph Van Ess (Tübingen), and John A. Williams (William and Mary). Similarly, literary figures, religious leaders, public officials, students of comparative spirituality, journalists, and various others who may have made his acquaintance if only incidentally, were drawn by that rare integration of sophistication and simplicity, clarity and insight, knowledge and awareness, respect and courage, candor and generosity, humor and principle, that so readily emanated from him in any situation. Egypt’s Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz and famous filmmaker Youssef Chahine, Nigeria’s Ambassador Mamane Oumarou, United States Ambassador Richard Parker, and journalists David Ottaway of the Washington Post and Eric Rouleau of Le Monde, are a few of those influenced by Anawati. Cairo has long been recognized as a cosmopolitan center of Arab learning, and Abuna Anawati’s IDEO quickly became one of its celebrated institutions. When Ibrahim Madkour launched the project of editing Avicennas great multivolume work, the Kitäb al-Shifa or The Healing in 1949, Abuna Anawati immediately joined forces and became a member of the editorial committee. His work on this massive undertaking expanded his knowledge of the sources of Arabic and Islamic philosophy enormously. With Mahmüd al-Khudairl and Fuad al-Ahwänl, he edited the introductory volume to the logical part, Avicenna’s Madkhal, or Isagoge (1952). In 1959, Mahmüd al-Khudairl, Fuad al-Ahwänl, and he collaborated with Sa'Id Zäyid on editing the second volume in the logical part, the Maqülät, or Categories. Later, he and SacId Zäyid edited the first of Avicenna’s two-volume Ilähiyyät, or Metaphysics (1960), in this collection, as well as Kitäb al-Nafs or On the Soul (1975) from the part of the work dealing with natural science. In addition, he
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compiled a bibliography of Avicennas works (1950) for the millenary celebration (anno Hegirae) of Avicenna’s birth and translated all ten books of Avicenna’s Metaphysics from The Healing into French (Ibn Sind, al-Shifa\ 1952). Several years later in 1978, and again in 1985, on the basis of newly available manuscripts, he revised the translation and added probing commentaries on the text. The sheer size of the undertaking, the excellence of the revision and commentaries, and Anawati’s rendering of Avicenna’s abstruse prose are the attributes that commend this translation. Anawati’s attempts to recover the sources of Arabic and Islamic philosophy led to his preparation of a bibliography of Averroes’s works for the 800th celebration (anno Hegirae) of Averroes’s death (1978) and, in collaboration with Sacld Zayid, to his edition of a collection of medical treatises by Averroes (1987). In addition, he edited the sixth volume of cAbd al-Jabbar’s al-Mughni or The Sufficiency (1963), the volume entitled al-Irada, or Will. Concurrently, Anawati investigated other subjects (mysticism, Gnosticism, fasting, Islamic science, political philosophy, pre-Islamic Arab Christian literature, and the Academy of the Arabic Language) and set down his reflections and the fruit of his research in numerous articles, a total of almost 350, published in various international journals and edited volumes (those in honor of Taha Husayn, Arberry’s volume on religion in the Middle East, and another in honor of George F. Hourani, for example). No single article stands out as changing the way Arabic and Islamic philosophy was understood, but the whole corpus weighs heavily as an important tool that helps scholars gain a better sense of the original sources. Differently stated, Abuna Anawati’s work in this domain consists less in presenting an entirely new idea of a text or series of texts than in making the texts themselves better known. His intellectual energy was such that in addition to all of these scholarly activities, not to mention his frequent participation in international learned conferences and colloquia, Anawati continued as director of the institute and its journal, MIDEO. He managed to find time to teach in Cairo and even to absent himself from Cairo periodically to teach at different universities elsewhere in Egypt, or in Europe, Canada, and the United States. Thus, he taught from time to time at the Institute of Higher Studies of Cairo University, the School of Pharmacy of the University of Alexandria, the University of Louvain, both the University Angelicum and the University Urbaniana in Rome, the University of San Francisco, the Near Eastern Center of the University of California Los Angeles, and the Institute of Medieval Studies of the University of Montreal, as already noted. He directed dissertations and theses in Cairo and abroad and served as a member of thesis and dissertation juries. In addition, he was a member of the Institute of Egypt, of the
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Egyptian Supreme Council for Culture, and of the Academy of Arabic Language; a member of the Vatican Secretariat for Christian Unity and of the Pontifical Council for Culture; and served as a consultant to the Vatican Secretariat for non-Christian religions. Moreover, Abuna Anawati appeared frequently as a guest speaker or counselor at centers of learning, sites of religious encounter, and countless consultations in chambers of high and low command, the latter in Egypt, Belgium, Canada, and at the Vatican. Finally, to provide a delightful insight into the playful yet serious dedication to learning of this multifaceted individual, something ought to be said of the discovery that awaited those privileged to visit Abuna Anawati in his own rooms at the institute, namely, his abiding passion for his first academic pursuit, pharmacy. One corner of the room housed a worktable covered with vials containing myriad substances, empty test tubes and jars, Bunsen burners, in short, all the paraphernalia of a working chemist. Apart from mixing simple medications for himself, Father Anawati used this corner to carry out experiments he had read about in his study of medieval science and delighted in arousing in others the tantalizing suspicion that he was pursuing the elusive art of alchemy—albeit purely as a dedicated scientist. Some of these experiments found reflections in his scholarly articles, but most were carried out simply as part of his unflagging attention to detail and infectious delight in learning. In sum, the balance of this unique individual’s contribution to our understanding of Arabic and Islamic religious and philosophic thought is portentous. Yet it is less accurately measured by the standard norms congenial to assessing publications, even though the number of these is prodigious. What best describes Abuna Georges Chehata Anawati’s contribution is a category at once more elusive, yet more transcendent: that of presence. He was himself present at a prescient moment, one of unprecedented fertility in philosophical theology in French Catholic circles: inspired to open its developed capacities for understanding to matters Islamic by the daunting presence of Louis Massignon, he was assisted by the expansion of intercultural horizons following World War II and coincident with decolonialization. The considerable institutional base of the Paris province of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) allowed him to attract like-minded confrères and friends to Cairo as well as to galvanize local Muslim and Christian support there so as to create an institution that displayed its mission in its daily life. Thus, he provided a meeting place for exchange that prepared the way for the virtual about-face of the Catholic Church to Islam, along with other religions and Judaism, in the slim yet far-reaching document of Vatican Council II: Nostra Aetate: On the Relations o f the Church to Non-Christian Religions
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(1967). Abuna Anawati was himself a key consultant in the process of redaction of that key document, which has served as the basis for Christian-Muslim relations and for subsequent interfaith reflections for all churches since its promulgation and which has animated the development of comparative theology as a scholarly discipline precisely by offering a fresh ecclesiastical climate. Anawati would insist that these achievements were the fruit of a consistent life in the midst of a constant community: a life devoted to comparative theological understanding by way of probing philosophical clarity and one surrounded by a fraternal charity that his presence continued to enhance. Anawati died at home, in the IDEO, on Friday, 28 January 1994. Two years later, the Association “Les Amis de 1’IDEO” printed and distributed a small book in celebration of the life and career of this remarkable priest, indefatigable scholar, and gentle, yet exacting, teacher, who was at the same time a man loved and respected by all who had the pleasure to know him. Two years later still, the same association issued a second small book in the same vein, this one in Arabic. The front covers of both volumes consist of a photograph of Abuna Anawati walking down the steps of the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies in Cairo (slowly, one supposes, for he is leaning on his heavy cane) most likely to greet one of his many visitors. The walls and steps are dark, almost foreboding. Only the white of Father Anawati’s simple Dominican robes, his wispy shock of hair, and the light framing the open door at the top of the stairs offer any contrast. Abuna Anawati’s personal radiance pierces the gloom, shining forth through his gentle smile and serene gaze, both of which were ever present—even during heated discussions. A man dressed in a shirt and trousers is centered in the door frame at the top of the stairs—probably one of the Dominicans in residence at the institute. Besides setting off the vastness of the staircase, the contrast between the two figures is emblematic of life within the institute— a setting where priests live together in prayer and devotion, where they pursue their own intellectual studies as individual scholars and as members of research groups, and where they interact with other scholars who are not always fellow priests or even necessarily Christians. This center for learning and study stands as one of Anawati’s most important contributions. From an account of the multiple celebrations of his accomplishments and testimonies to his memory held following his death, those unfamiliar with Anawati may best gain a sense of who he was and how powerfully he affected those with whom he came in contact. First, it must be noted how word of his death passed so quickly around the vast Cairo metropolis that his funeral the next day was attended by a large number of people, this despite
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the fact that on the day he died all government offices and many businesses had been closed for the observance of the Muslim Friday prayers and that it had, therefore, been nearly impossible to inform his numerous friends and acquaintances of his death. The announcement of his death in a local French newspaper and in the widely read Al-Ahrdm newspaper sufficed. Subsequently, two memorial services for Abuna Anawati were held in Cairo, another in Paris, one in Rome, and yet another in Istanbul. At each, Muslims joined with Christians to celebrate the life of an individual who had labored fervently and with extraordinary success to further understanding between these different religious communities— the life of a man of faith and intellect who had discerned early on how important it was to plumb the depths of Islamic learning in its theological and philosophical as well as its scientific manifestations both in order to appreciate such learning for its own sake as well as to see how it influenced and was perhaps influenced by Christian learning. Indicative of how multifaceted was the gentle person whose life and accomplishments have been set forth here is that three of us— two Holy Cross priests and a liberal Protestant— thought the finest tribute we could pay to a man each of us loved and admired was to collaborate on this account. In different ways, we are each engaged in some aspect of Abuna Anawati’s lifelong endeavors— the study of Christian and Islamic philosophy and theology, the recovery and careful presentation of original texts, even of their translation, interaction with students as well as with fellow scholars through teaching and research, the study of Islamic practices, and especially the attempt to foster dialog as well as mutual understanding between the two communities. Se l e c t e d Bib l io g r a ph y
Anawati’s complete bibliography may be found in Morelon, Le Père Georges Chehata Anawati, Dominicain (1905-1994) under Sources.
Works B o o k s a n d A r t ic l e s
With Louis Gardet. Introduction a la théologie musulmane: Essai de théologie comparée. Paris: Vrin, 1948. Trans, with Fuad al-Ahwanl. Kitab al-Nafi li-Aristutalis [On the Soul, by Aristotle]. Cairo: cIsaal-BabT al-Halabl, 1949. M u allafat Ibn Sind: Essai de bibliographie avicennienne. Cairo: Dar al-Macarif, 1950. Trans, with Louis Gardet. Close sur la “Jawharat al- Tawh id ״: poeme théologique d ’alLaqanï. Tunis: IBLA, 1951.
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Trans. Ibn Sind, al-Shifä\ La Métaphysique (al-Llähiyyät). 3 vols. Montreal: Institut d’Etudes Médiévales, 1952. Rev. ed. as Avicenne: La Métaphysique du Shifä Livres L à V and Avicenne: La Métaphysique du Shifö': Livres VL à X. 2 vols. Paris: Vrin, 1978-85. Ed. with Mahmüd al-Khudairî and Fü’äd al-Ahwänl. al-Shifa. al-Mantiq: 1. alM adkhal [The Healing, Logic: 1. Isagoge by Avicenna. Cairo: al-Matbaca alAmlriyya, 1952. “La philosophie politique de l’Islam.” La Revue du Caire 172 (1954): 104-14. “Textes arabes anciens édités en Egypte au cours de l’année 1953.” MLDEO 1 (1954): 1 0 3 ^ 0 . [Continued each year by Anawati through Volume 15 (1982).] “Traduction française de: Salähuddin al Munajjed, ‘Règles pour l’édition des textes arabes.’” MLDEO 3 (1956): 359-74. Ta rïkh al-saydala wa al- aqdqir f i al- ahdal-qadïm wa al- asr al-wasït. [The History o f Pharmacology and Medications in Antiquity and the M iddle Ages}. Cairo: Dar a Macärif, 1959. Ed. with Mahmüd al Khudairi, Fü’äd al-Ahwänl, and Sa'Id Zäyid. al-Shifä\ alM antiq: 2. al-M aqülät [The Healing, Logic: 2. Categories, by Avicenna]. Cairo: al-Hai’a al Ämma li-Shu’ün al-TibäT al Amïriyya, 1959. “L’alchimie du bonheur d’Ibn ‘Arabi (Kimyä’ al-sacäda).” M ID E O 6 (1959-61): 353-86. Ed. with SacId Zäyid. al-Shifa . al-Llähiyyät [The Healing, Metaphysics, by Avicenna]. Cairo: al-Hai’a al-cÂmma li-Shu’ün al-Tibä’i‘ al-Armriyya, I960. “Fakhr al DIn a RäzI: Tamhld l diräsat hayätih wa mu’allafatih” [Fakhr a Dïn alRâzl: Introduction to the Study of His Life and Works]. In Mélanges Taha Hussein, pp. 193-234. Cairo: Dar a Macärif, 1962. Ed. al-M ughnï f i abwäb al-tawhïd wa al- Adl. Vol. 6, part 2 of al-Lräda [The Sufficiency Concerning the Subjects o f Unity and Justice, Will], by £Abd al-Jabbär. Cairo: al-Hai’a al-Misriyya al-'Ämma li a Kitäb, 1963. “La déclaration Nostra Aetate et l’Ordre de S. Dominique.” In Consultation d ’experts sur Vatican LL et l ’Ordre des Frères Prêcheurs, pp. 25-26. L’Arbresle, 1967 [noncommercial printing]. “Exkurs zum Konzilstext über die Muslim.” In Das zweite Vatikanische Konzil: Konstitutionen, Dekrete und Erklärungen, Kommentare, vol. 2, pp. 485-87. 3 vols. Freiburg: Herder, 1967. “The Roman Catholic Church and Churches in Communion with Rome.” In Judaism and Christianity, vol. 1 of Religion in the Middle East: Three Religions in Concord and Conflict, edited by A.J. Arberry, pp. 347-422. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. Études de philosophie musulmane. Paris: Vrin, 1974. “Philosophy, Theology and Mysticism.” In The Legacy ofLslam, edited by J. Schacht and C.E. Bosworth, pp. 350-91. Oxford: Clarendon, 1974. Ed. with Sa'Id Zäyid. al-Shifä\ al-Tabi ciyyät: 6. Kitäb al-nafi [The Healing, Physics: 6. On the Soul, by Avicenna]. Cairo: al-Hai’a al-Misriyya al-cÄmma li-alKitäb, 1975. M u allafätLbn Rushd: Bibliographie dAverroès (Lbn Rushd). Cairo: ALECSO, 1978. “Rahmän et Rähim dans les Lawämic al-bayyinät de Fakhr al-DIn al-Râzî.” In Islamic Theology and Philosophy: Studies in Honor o f George F Hourani, edited by Michael E. Marmura, pp. 63-77. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984. Ed. with Sa'Id Zäyid. R asä'il Lbn Rushd al-Tibbiyya [Medical Epistles o f Averroes]. Cairo: al-Hai5a al-Misriyya al-cAmma li-al-Kitäb and Union Internationale des Académies, 1987.
],
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Sources Caspar, Robert. “Perspectives de la ‘théologie comparée’ entre l’Islam et le christianisme.” In Recherches d ’Islamologie: recueil d'articles offerts à Georges C. Anawati et Louis Gardetpar leurs collègues et amis, pp. 89-105· Louvain: Peeters, 1977. Frank, Richard. “Georges C. Anawati.” Newsletter o f the American Oriental Society 17 (1994): 1-6. Gilliot, Claude. “George C. Anawati.” Journal Asiatique 282 (1994): v-ix. Morelon, Régis, O.P., ed. Le Père Georges Chehata Anawati, Dominicain (19 051994): Parcours d ’une vie. Cairo: Institut Dominicain d’Études Orientales & Arab Press Center, 1996. ---------with Hânl Lablb, eds. Al-Ab Gürug Shahâtah Qanawâtï, al-D üm inïkànï (1905:1994) Mishwâr al- A m r (Father Georges Chehata Anawati, Dominican (1905-1994): The Course o f a Life. Cairo: Ma'had al-Dirâsàt al-Sharqiyya li-al Âbâ3al-Dümînïkân, al Markaz al-cArabï li-al Sahâfa, 1998. [Though the title of this Arabic volume is identical to the 1996 French volume, the content is substantially different.]
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Nancy van Deusen
For the centuries known today as the Middle Ages, Augustine provided a rationale, methodology, pedagogical program, as well as a goal for what could be designated “Musicology.” In his treatise, De musica, written during the early years of his conversion to Christianity, framed before and after by two treatises on the soul, as well as a treatise concerning the order that existed among the disciplines, the great theologian outlined reasons for a systematic study of music, claiming that music was absolutely necessary for the comprehension of underlying causes. Augustine’s argumentation provided reasons for an external sensorally perceived exemplification of what was nearly unknowable, that is, the internal, intimate, and unseen. Augustine placed music in a comparative position: on the right side of a proportional relationship, as equivalent to an unseen but very real concept. Augustine’s goal, then, was that music should lead the student, step by step, to a knowledge that was intellectual as well as experiential of God himself. Accordingly, Augustine’s De musica gave the study of music format and stability as a discipline, as well as establishing a proportional relationship between theological-philosophical concept and musical exemplification throughout the Middle Ages. Roger Bacon, for example, in the second half of the thirteenth century, reiterates Augustine’s assertion that nothing, really, could be made comprehensible without music as exemplum (see van Deusen [1997]). Augustine’s allusions to, and multifaceted discussion throughout his productive life of, figura were mined anew in the seventeenth century—an example of the longevity and influence of writer and topic. In short, as the result of Augustine’s absolute conviction that in music itselfresided the key to understanding physical cosmology, including the nature of material substance, human experience, and, finally, the ways of God, the study of music was taken for granted as a component of medieval education and constituted, according to Robert Grosseteste’s treatise on the liberal arts, a “ministry discipline.” 145
With this in mind, it is interesting to read Jacques Handschin’s deeply provocative articles, published in 1929, 1936, and 1952, that treat the same question exactly as Augustine’s treatise, namely the subject matter and the goal of the study of music. Concerning Handschin’s “Vom Sinn der Musikwissenschaft” (1929), “Ueber das Studium der Musikwissenschaft” (1936), and “Der Arbeitsbereich der Musikwissenschaft” (1952), two observations can be made. First, one notices from the dates of these articles how recent, in the course of the twentieth century, is the discipline of “Musikwissenschaft” or Musicology, if its program and area of investigation needed to be explained in the 1950s. A second observation may be made from the content of the articles: in the first two, Handschin delineates the human being who creates, performs, or comprehends music as the object of the science of musicology, not music itself. This premise, in fact, underlies all three of the articles. Further, musicology includes three aspects: research, teaching, and service to the human environment, or the lay public, that may be interested in music primarily as performance and relaxing entertainment (see Keith Mixter’s discussion of these articles in this volume). These three goals can be seen to form a structure, not only as they were exemplified in Handschin’s own professional career, but also for the other musicologists treated within this volume. They, indeed, have validity for the profession-discipline of musicology generally as it has been practiced during the course of the second half of the twentieth century. But Handschin’s delineation of the province of “musicology” also constitutes a great divorce between Augustine—hence a medieval view of the quadrivial art of music—and the new discipline of musicology as it was to develop from the 1950s to the present. Further, the new musicology lacked an underlying, accepted, and constantly renewed structure in which music functioned within a proportional relationship to philosophical concept, thus presenting a window, so to speak, to profound spiritual and cultural realities. Accordingly, musicology has been defined and redefined many times throughout its brief existence as a modern historical discipline. We find all of the musicologists under consideration here involved, one way or another, in the enterprise of definition, as well as the establishment and legitimation of musicology as a proper and identifiable area of investigation. Not only, however, was the province of musicology the study of musically active people, namely composers, musicians, and theoreticians within a historical context, but musicology itself appears to have been delineated by those persons who have engaged themselves in what they considered to be this discipline. Musicologists themselves have shaped the study of musicology to a remarkable degree, reinforcing the observation made by Giles
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Constable in his introduction to Volume 1 of this series that “medieval history, seen from this point of view, is defined by those who write it” (Damico and Zavadil [1995], 1: xiv)—a most appropriate statement for emerging twentieth-century musicology. In approaching the musicologists treated in this volume, one immediately notices ways in which the Middle Ages have been defined with regard to the music produced within this span of centuries by Jacques Handschin, Bruno Stablein, and Gustave Reese as well as the relationships between the Latin and Greek parts of the former Roman Empire delineated by Henry J.W. Tillyard and Egon Wellesz, who devoted their lives to the study of Byzantine music. For many years, it appears that these writers, as well as others who are not included within this volume, have shaped the musical Middle Ages in terms of specialist articles, as well as highly influential textbooks that appeared, especially in English, for the instruction of generations of undergraduate university students. The interpretative constructs of clear dialectical distinctions between “sacred” and “secular” medieval music, monophony and polyphony, liturgical and paraliturgical, or liturgical music versus “accretions”; the concepts of “composers” belonging to “schools,” and “form” and “compositional style” as determining agents within, and descriptive mechanisms for, medieval music—concepts current in the 1930s operating within the discipline of history and art history, and appropriated from these disciplines—all these have influenced generations of university students. All of these delineatory constructs have become dogma, especially in North America. Historical musicologists of this century, further, appear to have been attracted to periods rather than concepts. This factor is still very much in evidence today, particularly with respect to selection of university faculty in the United States, in which scholar-teachers represent predominately a historical period, rather than a personal manner of teaching and working with ideas. In addition, an American university faculty member, hired to represent, for example, the music of the twentieth century, is expected to remain, so far as research and teaching activities are concerned, to a large extent within the period for which that faculty member has been hired. We can notice, therefore, that in general and in the cases to be addressed below, historical musicology has attracted scholars to a historical period, rather than, as was the case in the Middle Ages, to music itself, as the unquestioned bridge to unseen, largely immeasurable substance, and to the reality of invisible sources of motivation, be they cultural, individual, or those of statecraft. One may ask the questions, what, otherwise, did the musicologists under consideration have in common, and what motivated their prodigious research and publishing activity? The sheer amount of work produced by these
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scholars is, of course, daunting, to say the least. It is interesting, first of all, to note that these musicologists all came from uppermiddle-class families—for example, well-to-do businessmen, industrialists, and a mayor—and all five, as young people, demonstrated a strong interest in, as well as capability for, the performance of music as well as music criticism: Handschin as an organist; Stablein as a conductor; Reese initially as a teacher of functional harmony; and Tillyard and Wellesz bearing a pronounced interest in the craft of musical composition (Wellesz studied composition with Arnold Schoenberg [1874— 1951]). Early experience with music performance, no doubt primarily of the second half of the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth, as well as with the theoretical-compositional frameworks, mainly formal-tonal, taught at that time, were greatly to influence what they all looked for, were interested in, and subsequently described in medieval music. Because of this, the writers represented in this volume not only acquainted the world, in several cases, with the sources of medieval music, and conceptually greatly influenced at least two generations of scholarship in this area, but they, together, form a historiography of musicology as a discipline during the twentieth century. An underlying question as one approaches their individual contributions is, how, indeed, did their work shape a concept of medieval music and of the discipline of musicology, and how were they in turn shaped both by their early training and their national backgrounds? All were, in a sense, as Tillyard described himself, “adventurers over untrodden paths,” but in quite different ways: Gustave Reese built a new discipline, establishing by his immense personal influence and energy—at a time when academic life in the United States was a “growth industry”— chairs of musicology at major universities throughout North America, and placing his many students in them; Jacques Handschin and Bruno Stablein in their manuscript collecting activities were truly pioneering at the time in technical as well as physical terms. Need one mention how much more difficult it was in those days to take photographs, make microfilms, and to travel across Europe, to say nothing of the conditions of major libraries both before and after World War II? The microfilm collections, especially of the University of Erlangen-Niirnberg (Stablein), but also of the University of Basel (Handschin) not only reflect the research interests of these two formidable scholars, but are also absolutely indispensable, particularly for scholars of liturgical music, that is, of Western and Central Europe from ca. A.D. 875 to the end of the fifteenth century. And Tillyard and Wellesz together delineated the questions, sources, as well as problems of interpretation, as they saw them, for the next two generations of research and writing concerning Byzantine music. If one surveys what has been written since their deaths, one quickly notices that all of the conceptual bases
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as well as underlying questions, remarkably, have been taken essentially from the questions these two scholars posed in the 1930s. Of this group only Handschin and Stablein worked to a large extent with medieval sources and therefore can, strictly speaking, be considered to be medievalists. On the other hand, the collaborative effort of Tillyard and Wellesz (with the Danish musicologist, Carsten Hoeg), although principally with later notations and sources, can be seen to have been one of the lasting scholarly achievements of this century in terms of the continuing collaborations and publications of the series Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae. What, then, attracted these scholars to the study of medieval music? What attracts young intellectuals today to the questions, sources, and problems—admittedly formidable—of this area of study? It would seem, increasingly, that the work of attaining necessary language skills, palaeographical and codicological expertise, all the time maintaining intellectual, not simply technical, goals, requires too much specialized preparation—then as well as today. What is the attraction of medieval music? There are, to be sure, nationalistic reasons. The belief—well-founded—that structural givens, with which even late-twentieth-century composers have worked, are to be found in medieval music, as well as an affinity with the rest of the world’s musical civilizations. Medieval music, as all five musicologists discussed here realized and noted, forms a gateway to understanding other world musical cultures. All clearly shared the point of view that the music of the Middle Ages was utterly fundamental— both musically-structurally as well as spiritually—to Western music, that analogies between Eastern and Western musical tradition reinforced one another, and that medieval music was also a conceptual as well as intervallic bridge to the rest of the world’s musical cultures. But, in answer to the initial question posed, and in addition to these obvious reasons, one also cannot help but notice that all of the writers exhibited a taste, sometimes even a voracious appetite, for the music itself, as well as the intellectual substance contained therein. All five were convinced that neither Western Latin-based musical culture nor the Eastern Greek and Slavonic traditions could be understood with any degree of sophistication without a serious involvement with medieval music. On the other hand, all maintained the point of view that musicology would remain a series of interesting, often entertaining, or even emotionally moving, impressions if the formative legacy of the Middle Ages were not considered. Reese, in particular, recognized that the new discipline of musicology in North America, although keen and energetic, was subject to quickly changing enthusiasms and lacked the stabilizing traditions that were based in a medieval culture, a situation that set North America apart from all
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of the rest of the world’s musical cultures. To mitigate this lack, he urged that his students have contact with medieval music through means of the editions and research that were available to them at that time. Such resources now seem paltry, due to the subsequent explosion of research, especially in interdisciplinary medieval studies. Many of the hypotheses, based on secondary literature of the first generation of the twentieth century, which he advanced in his Music in the Middle Ages (1940), can now be seen, in some cases, to have done more harm than good. Nevertheless, his strong intuition that medieval music must be taken seriously was a prophetic point of view. Reese was convinced that American musicology would remain an adolescent discipline, full of zeal and impressions—an enthusiastic club— if the discipline contributed nothing of a substantial nature to an understanding of the formative centuries of Western music. As a matter of fact, the musical culture of the Middle Ages had contributed intervallic structure as well as emotional parameters, and, if one were to take it into consideration, an enlightened discourse concerning the compositional process to twentiethcentury American music of many kinds, particularly that music that could be designated as uniquely American. Giles Constable, again, in his introduction to Volume 1 of this series, has stated that it is a source of pride among medieval historians that works, even of the eighteenth century are still read, considered to be worth reading, and of importance in and of themselves, not just as a disclosure of, and commentary on, the intellectual milieu in which they were written (see Damico and Zavadil (1995), 1: xxvi). The same is certainly true of the musicologists discussed in the pages that follow. In addition their legacy is inspiring—one of avid interaction with students; of lives devoted to scholarship; of a sustained intellectual activity and productivity; of undiminished interest in unsolved, often extremely difficult, problems, and newly discovered sources; of collaborative effort; and of the cultivation and nurturing of a relatively new discipline. These are profoundly altruistic, truly humane goals; and one’s sense of indebtedness is humbling. The world, at that time, was not at all friendly to scholarship, a place not conducive to intellectual activity requiring long and patient effort. Surely then, as today, a multitude of voices wondered aloud why one should concern oneself with the distant past in view of the pressing concerns of the present. Déjà vu: it is particularly appropriate, therefore, that this volume should appear now. Velimirovic designated Wellesz’s achievement as a “stepping stone” toward “new and loftier achievements.” One asks: what now? What are the challenges now presented by the lines of investigation chosen by Jacques Handschin, Gustave Reese, Bruno Stàblein, Henry Tillyard, and Egon Wellesz? As
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one considers the contributions of the past, one immediately also moves to the challenges of the present and of the future. First, with respect to the study of Byzantine music, the question of how to translate medieval Byzantine notation into modern notation, that is, transcriptional problems upon which both Tillyard and Wellesz concentrated their efforts is not the sole issue to be considered. If “heighted” pitch notation was not a priority until recently (that is, the “reformed notation” of the early nineteenth century), what were the priorities indicated by earlier medieval notation? Perhaps those working in this area have moved far enough in directions established by both Tillyard and Wellesz, and a fresh approach in quite another direction is needed. If music, in fact, as Augustine clearly stated, does provide an access to deep-seated cultural values, what, then, can be read from the earliest sources now extant of Byzantine music? Second, sources on microfilm were collected by both Handschin and Stablein—collections that in the meantime have received considerable support in terms of emendation and addition by their respective host universities—but the challenge for this generation is, again, not only that of genuine palaeographical and codicological competence, but the interpretation of these manuscripts in terms of intellectual as well as material culture. Manuscripts and material resources of many kinds obviously accompanied one another: Manuscripts, music, liturgy, and cultural features both conceptual and economic are factors that form a powerful nexus of tools. Music did not simply “develop,” “rise,” or “become popular”; music, as presented in the manuscripts so assiduously and tirelessly collected by Handschin and Stablein, is the external, sensorially available indication of deeply held values. These manuscripts, therefore, have enormous value, not only as a collection, but as potentially powerful cultural indicators. They are indicative of ways of thinking and expressing, as well as ways of working with materials. Finally, Reeses statesmanly activities on the part of musicological studies, as well as his tireless efforts in placing his students, in other words, his lifelong concern for musicology as a growing and developing discipline, could hardly be more appropriate today. The persuasion that each musicologist holding a professorial chair in that discipline had an obligation, not only to his or her own teaching and research, but also to the wider intellectual community of musicology is difficult to describe in precise and tangible terms. Nevertheless, Reese s commitment has to an astonishing extent determined the focus and force of musicology in the United States. But the fact that musicology was a discipline whose format was to a large extent determined by individual figures is not only the case for North America. Jacques Handschin, in his obituary for Karl Nef, his former teacher, whom he praises
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for having established musicology as a discipline in Switzerland, brings to mind how recently musicology has been established generally. Handschins activities and publications also point to an interest in relating musicology as a discipline not only to university administrators, but to a wider nonspecialist audience; his numerous articles for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the !Easier Nachrichten, and other newspapers, are cases in point. Some mysteries remain unsolved. Where, for example, is Handschins nearly completed edition of St. Martial compositions, reported to be nearing publication by Arnold Geering? B ib l i o g r a ph i c a l N o t e
The full references for items cited in the introductory essay are Helen Damico and tJoseph B. Zavadil, eds., M edieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation o f a Discipline. Volume 1: History (New York: Garland, 1995) and Nancy van Deusen, “Roger Bacon and Music,” in Roger Bacon and the Sciences, edited by Jeremiah Hackett (Leiden; London: Brill, 1997).
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H W
e n r y
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l iu s
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Til
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( 1881 1 9 6 8 )
Diane Touliatos
Henry Julius Wetenhall Tillyard, a pioneer in the modern study of medieval Byzantine music, was born in Cambridge, England, in November 1881, the son of a former mayor of the borough. Little is known about Tillyard’s family and early formative years. He had at least one sister. His brother, Eustace Mandeville Wetenhall (1889-1962), a professor of English literature at Cambridge University, became one of the most highly respected literary scholars and critics of the twentieth century, honored for his work by an O.B.E. Most of what is known about Tillyard’s training and early career in Byzantine music comes from the short personal biography he gave to Markos Dragoumis (b. 1934) when Dragoumis visited and studied with him at his home in Cambridge in 1963. Dragoumis, a musicologist of medieval Byzantine music and an ethnomusicologist of modern Greek Demotic music, published this short biography in the Anaplasis (November 1968) after Tillyard’s death in 1968. During this visit, Tillyard gave a photograph of himself to Dragoumis, who in turn sent it to Studies in Eastern Chant (vol. 2). Tillyard began his university studies in 1900 at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge and graduated in 1904 as a classicist fluent in ancient Greek and Latin. Immediately after graduation, Tillyard went first to Rome and then to Athens, where he stayed with some interruptions for three years (1904—07) at the British School of Archaeology. In the winter of 1904, Tillyard first heard Byzantine music chanted in the Metropolis (Cathedral) of Athens and had his first discussions on Byzantine chant with Argires Eftaliotes, his brother-in-law. These two incidents inspired Tillyard to begin the study of Byzantine music at this time with Ioannes T. Sakellarides (18531938), teacher, composer, and precentor. Tillyard went to the Arsakeio (the teachers’ school) of Athens to study with Sakellarides and to observe the Akathistos service, a service during Great 153
Lent, and the Epitaphios, the Good Friday service. Here Tillyard began his study of modern Greek church music (the Chrysanthine or neo-Byzantine system). From Sakellarides Tillyard learned the Chrysanthine reform which introduced a simplified system of neumatic notation and a set of solmization syllables. This reform, initiated by Archbishop Chrysanthos of Madytos (ca. 1770-1846), was officially in use by 1832. Although the Chrysanthine system is simpler than the medieval Byzantine notational system, it introduced Tillyard to the neumatic characters of Byzantine chant and would be helpful to him later in deciphering a key for transcribing the medieval notation. Through Sakellarides’ compositions, Tillyard also became exposed to the Western trend of four-part harmonizations of Byzantine chant. During this phase Tillyard focused his study on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Greek church music. Tillyard’s interest was expanded to pre-Chrysanthine, more specifically medieval, Byzantine chant after 1905 when he came into contact with Dom Ugo Gaisser (1853-1910) in Rome. In the spring of 1905, Gaisser encouraged and made it possible for Tillyard to study medieval Byzantine musical manuscripts at the Biblioteca Apostolica of the Vatican. Also during this time, Tillyard studied with Gaisser at the Greek College of Rome. The relationship between the two men continued when Gaisser went to Greece later that year to travel to Mount Athos and Tillyard returned to Athens. In 1907 Tillyard published his first article, “Instrumental Music in the Roman Age.” That spring Tillyard also wrote his first study on Byzantine music, “Greek Church Music” (published in 1911), based on his research into manuscripts at the Athens National Library. In the same year he made his first trip to Mount Athos. A peninsular self-governed religious principality comprising some twenty-odd monasteries in northeast Greece, Mount Athos was a storehouse of Byzantine treasures, including thousands of manuscripts containing medieval Byzantine music. Tillyard spent three weeks studying medieval Byzantine chant scored in the manuscripts of the monasteries. In the spring of 1909, in addition to continuing his studies and research in Athens and Lesbos, Tillyard visited Moscow where he examined Byzantine musical manuscripts at the National Museum of Moscow. Tillyard took each of these trips, and the many more that would follow throughout his career, so that he could become more knowledgeable about medieval Byzantine music. He made checklists and catalogs of the Byzantine musical manuscripts he examined, one of the first scholars in the field to do so. As an example, in the summer of 1910 Tillyard completed his catalog of Byzantine musical manuscripts of the British Museum and had it published in the M usical Antiquary (1911). That same year, he published his article on Kassia (“A
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Musical Study of the Hymns of Casia”). In the spring of 1912 Tillyard made his second visit to Mount Athos, continued his research in Athens, and visited the monasteries of Mount Sinai. In 1915 Tillyard discovered Byzantine musical manuscripts at Cambridge. At this time he also wrote articles on rhythm (“Rhythm in Byzantine Music”) and modes (“The Modes in Byzantine Music”) of Byzantine music. These publications and research contradict and correct the preceding works on rhythm in Byzantine chant published by Hugo Riemann (1849-1919), Oskar Fleischer (1856-1933), and Gaisser (which will be discussed below). Interestingly, Tillyard s research paralleled but was independent of the simultaneous findings of Egon Wellesz (1885-1974; see essay in this volume). In 1917 Tillyard began work on his doctorate at the University of Edinburgh. His dissertation, Byzantine Music and Hymnography, was published in 1923 in London. Tillyard wrote two articles concerning the problems in transcribing Byzantine musical notations (“The Problem of Byzantine Neumes” [1916; 1921]). These were the first studies of importance discussing the problems of medieval Byzantine neumes prior to the year 1150. In 1922 Tillyard first read Wellesz’s articles on Byzantine notation, unknown to him until then because of World War I. Tillyard’s response, “A Reply” in Byzantinische Zeitschrift (1924), initiated a friendship and collaboration that would last for the next forty-five years by means of frequent correspondence and occasional meetings. In 1922 and again in 1927, Tillyard visited the monastery of Grottaferrata outside of Rome to examine and photograph musical manuscripts there. In 1923 Tillyard wrote articles on the martyriae, or modal signatures, that specify the starting pitch of the melodic formulae for a mode. The identification of the different martyriae was important for the transcriptions of Byzantine music because they determined the mode, or scale, within a hymn (“Signatures and Cadences of the Byzantine Modes”). Further results on the martyriae appeared in his article on the Anastasima Stichera (“The Stichera Anastasima in Byzantine Hymnody”). These articles resolved the problems of modal signatures by classifying them according to the octoechos (the eight modes of medieval Byzantine chant). Tillyard deciphered the finals, or ending notes, of Authentic Echos (or Modes) I and II, solutions that Wellesz immediately agreed with and accepted. Between 1924 and 1925 Tillyard began to refute the stenographic musical theories of the Greek scholar Konstantine A. Psachos (1869—1949) in “The Stenographic Theory of Byzantine Music,” conclusions that accorded with Wellesz’s findings (“Das Problem der byzantinischen Notationen und ihrer Entzifferung,” 1930). Between 1928 and 1929, Tillyard
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continued his visits to archives to examine manuscripts and again visited Patmos and Athens. During these trips he uncovered facts which enabled him to date the beginnings of the medieval Middle Byzantine notation to the twelfth century. In 1930 Tillyard and Wellesz received an invitation from Carsten Hoeg (1896-1961) to come to Copenhagen as guests of the Rask-Oersted Foundation to discuss the present and future status of research in Byzantine chant. The resulting conference took place between 15 and 19 July 1931, with the proceedings being published in the Byzantinische Zeitschrift ( 1932). Also growing out of this conference was the series Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, which would further the study of Byzantine music and make this branch of medieval musicology more accessible to scholars. The series was planned to include monographs, facsimiles of manuscripts, and transcriptions. On the last day of the conference, the Royal Danish Academy appointed Tillyard, Wellesz, and Hoeg as co-editors of the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae. Thus, Tillyard, with Wellesz and Hoeg, is considered to be the co-founder of modern studies in Byzantine musicology. During this period, Tillyard published his article on the Eothina or Morning Hymns of Emperor Leo that contained important findings on the tradition of the Sticheraria manuscripts of the Middle Byzantine period. In 1936 Tillyard discovered the method of reading and transcribing the Coislin, early Byzantine notation (“Early Byzantine Neumes: A New Principle of Decipherment”; “Byzantine Neumes: The Coislin Notation”). With Hoeg, Tillyard, and Wellesz as co-editors, publication of the series Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae began in 1935 with Volume 1, Sticherarium. The preface states that the purpose of this volume as well as those that would follow would be to establish a collaboration of the three great branches of Christian music, that which was produced by the Balkan countries, Italy and Greece, and Russia and the Orient. Within the series each scholar focused on particular studies of Byzantine music. Hoeg researched ekphonetic notation, especially in the Heirmologion manuscripts, and notation of Old Slavonic music manuscripts. Wellesz focused on transcriptions, studies of Eastern elements in Western chant, and the Akathistos Hymn. Tillyard deciphered notational problems and published transcriptions, producing seven books for the series between 1935 and 1960. Also, in 1953 Tillyard wrote his article on Byzantine modes of the twelfth century in which he wrote his conclusions on modal signatures. Except for the World War II period when communications were interrupted, especially with Hoeg, Tillyard maintained a close communication with Wellesz and Hoeg between 1935 and 1960. After World War II the
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three scholars resumed meeting nearly every year, until Hoeg’s death in 1961, after which Tillyard and Wellesz bonded even closer. Because of his failing eyesight, Tillyard published only one article in the last decade of his life. This was “The Rediscovery of Byzantine Music” in Essays Presented to Egon Wellesz, where he reminisced about his early days in the field when he was “an adventurer over untrodden paths” (Tillyard [1966], 5). Tillyard’s autobiographical article, which arbitrarily ends in 1963, concludes with his gratitude: “I express my warmest thanks to the many Greek librarians, abbots, and monks for their help and hospitality which they extended to me and especially for the willingness with which they allowed me to copy and photograph manuscripts” (Dragoumis: 4). Besides being a devoted and untiring scholar whose travels led him to many libraries all over the world, Tillyard was also an educator. In 1908 he took up a position at Edinburgh where he taught ancient Greek and Latin until 1917. His other successive positions include those of professor of classics in Johannesburg (1919-21), of Russian in Birmingham (1921-26), of Greek in Cardiff (1926-44), and of lecturer in classics in Grahamstown, South Africa (1946-49). In spite of his academic positions, Tillyard never had a student in Byzantine music, but he had disciples, and he definitely influenced later scholars through correspondence and conversations. Markos Dragoumis remembers Tillyard as a great scholar of Byzantine music but yet a simple, generous man. Dimitrije Stefanovic (b. 1929) remembers the elderly Tillyard as quiet, humble, and kind, and felt that in his conversations with him he was talking to a great man. Stefanovic also recollects that in the 1960s when he met with Tillyard, Tillyard’s eyes were worn out from years of research on manuscripts. Wellesz characterized his colleague, collaborator, and friend in the following words: “generous in accepting the views of others, generous in helping where help was needed” (Wellesz [1971]: 1). Tillyard’s helpfulness was also documented by Oliver Strunk (1901-1980): “I am indebted to my good friend and esteemed co-worker Professor H.J.W. Tillyard for the loan of two of his irreplaceable negatives from [MS] Andreaskiti gr. 18 made as long ago as 1912” (Strunk [1966], xiii). According to Jorgen Raasted, Tillyard also had a humorous side and wrote ten to twenty unpublished humorous poems, which, along with Tillyard’s personal letters to Carsten Hoeg, are housed at the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae Archives at the Institute for Greek and Latin, Copenhagen University. In contrast, Tillyard’s correspondence to Wellesz, according to Stefanovic, was usually in short postcards and can be found in the Wellesz archives in Vienna.
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A few months prior to his death, Tillyard and his wife relocated from their house in Cambridge to an apartment in Saffron Walden, where they lived in the same building as their daughter and son-in-law. Tillyard died on 2 January 1968 at eighty-seven. The six weeks spent in Saffron Walden Tillyard considered to be among the happiest of his life. Scholarship and research in Byzantine music were in their infancy at the turn of the twentieth century. Although Jean-Baptiste Thibaut (1872—1938) and J.-B. Rebours had published editions of treatises on Byzantine musical theory, neither was able to decipher the notation. In 1904 O. Fleischer made almost complete transcriptions of melodies, but these were from late Byzantine notation. In 1905 Dom Ugo Gaïssers article “Les Heirmoi de Pâques” was one of the first scholarly articles linking music to text, and he also included transcriptions of the chants, although his transcriptions failed to solve rhythmical or modal problems. In 1907 Amédée Gastoué published his Catalogue des manuscrits de musique byzantine. Although his introduction and catalog were useful, his transcriptions into modern staff notation were incorrect. Hugo Riemanns Die byzantinische Notenschrifi im 10. bis 15. Jahrhundert followed in 1909. Riemanns text caused extensive controversy and subsequently opened investigations into the interpretation of medieval Byzantine musical notation. This was the state of study of medieval Byzantine music prior to Tillyard’s entry into the field. In Tillyard s fifty-six-year career in Byzantine music, he would successfully refute all of Riemanns theories and find solutions for the interpretation of intervals, keys, and, eventually, rhythm. Tillyard wrote a total of thirty-three articles. His “Greek Church Music” appeared in 1911 followed by “A Musical Study of the Hymns of Casia” and “The Acclamation of Emperors in Byzantine Ritual.” These essays on Byzantine music preceded the published articles of both Wellesz (1914) and Hoeg (1922) by several years and make Tillyard the pioneer of modern studies in Byzantine music. “A Musical Study of the Hymns of Casia” examines the music of a woman composer years before it was in vogue to examine neglected women’s compositions. Further, the article refutes Riemanns theories on the decipherment of intervals and keys in Byzantine music. (A later study refuted Riemanns rhythmic principles.) Research for “A Musical Study of the Hymns of Casia” took Tillyard to the manuscripts at the Athens National Library and Mount Athos, specifically the monasteries of Karakallou, Lavra, and Docheiariou. In the article he writes in Greek: “My visit to Mt. Athos was among the best episodes of my life . . .” (Tillyard [1911], 444, n.l). In “The Acclamation of Emperors in Byzantine Ritual,” Tillyard includes transcriptions from Pantocrator 214 (dated 1433) and suggests that the acclamations for Emperor John VIII
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Palaeologus (1425-48) and Patriarch Joseph II (1425-39) were based on an adaptation of earlier music. This same theory was later confirmed by Oliver Strunk in “The Byzantine Office in Hagia Sophia” (1956), based on acclamations found in Athens 2061 and 2062. With “Studies in Byzantine Music” (1913), Tillyard continued to dispute Riemann’s inconsistent theories on Byzantine music. Tillyard’s first book, Byzantine Music and Hymnography, appeared in 1923· In this concise text intended to give essential, fundamental information for the student of Greek church music, Tillyard explains the transcription of Byzantine notation. He refutes Riemann’s rhythmic theory, positing the metrical unit of the colon or versicle, that tries to fit every versicle of chant into a fixed scheme of two bars of common time. Further, he claims that Riemann’s transcriptions are “highly unvocal” (40). During this same period, Tillyard began to refute the modern Byzantine musical theories of Konstantine A. Psachos, who believed that the melodies used in the Greek Orthodox Church had remained stagnant and never changed; only the systems of notation preserving this melody had changed through the centuries. Tillyard refuted Psachos’s theories in two articles published in Laudate (1924, 1925) and one in the Byzantinische Zeitschrifi (1925), concluding that the neoByzantine melodies were not identical with the melodies preserved in medieval manuscripts. Tillyard was able to discredit Psachos’s theories because Tillyard was one of the few scholars who had studied all periods (early, middle, late) of Byzantine music in depth. He made transcriptions from all periods of notation beginning with the nineteenth century and working backward and uncovered a continuity of Byzantine neumatic notation from medieval times to the present day by comparing similar neumes in a chronological context. Tillyard’s articles of the late teens and early twenties focused on the problems of transcription: “The Problem of Byzantine Neumes” (1916, 1921); “Rhythm in Byzantine Music” (1916); “The Modes in Byzantine Music” (1918); and “Byzantine Musical Notation: A Reply” (1924). These articles solved the basic problem of establishing the intervallic relationships of the neumatic signs. The Middle Byzantine or Round Notation system was a diastematic notation in which the neumes indicated melodic intervals. The Byzantine system designated not set pitches but the succession of intervals throughout a complete chant; Tillyard defined the sizes of the intervals represented by the neumatic signs. Theories proposed by Tillyard in these articles were in accord with those proposed in the publications ofWellesz (1916—21). In fact Tillyard wrote Wellesz stating that they were in agreement on the basic method of transcription, because their melodies sounded alike.
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It was Tillyard alone who solved the meaning of martyriae in his article “Signatures and Cadences of Byzantine Modes” (1923-25): martyriae, or modal signatures, indicated the starting pitch of a melody and specified the echos (mode) in which it was to be sung. The martyria was always found at the beginning of the chant and was sometimes repeated one or more times in longer chants. This solution was especially problematic for Mode II, for which Tillyard identifies four possible martyriae. Even though these martyriae present a variety of starting pitches, or initial formulae for Mode II, they never indicate a different mode. Tillyard’s discoveries made possible the key to transcriptions of the Middle-Byzantine-notation period (ca. 1100-1450), a key confirmed by Wellesz: Wellesz, after a detailed study of the Proper Hymns for September, has written to me saying that my table of signatures has proved to be right in every instance. In the course of my own work on the Morning Hymns of Leo and on the Proper Hymns for November, I have found one or two new signatures, but otherwise full confirmation for those already tabulated. This means that all hymns in the Round Notation can now be read equally well, whatever the Mode may be [Tillyard (1939): 138]. In 1935 Tillyard published his Handbook o f the Middle Byzantine Notation, one of the first publications of the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae series. Tillyard’s succinct Handbook, an invaluable guide to the transcription of Byzantine neumes, sets out his principles of transcription as stated in the preface: [The] aim [of the Handbook] therefore will be to give the rules of this system as clearly as possible: to explain the symbols usually found in musical manuscripts; and to illustrate by practical examples the method of transcription recommended by the editors of the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae [5]. After the Handbook Tillyard contributed seven more volumes to the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, five of which were Transcripta, volumes with transcriptions that made the melodies more accessible to medieval scholars: The Hymns o f the Sticherarium for November (1938); The Hymns o f the Octoechus (2 vols., 1940-49); Twenty Canons from the Trinity Hirmologium (1952); The Hymns o f the Hirmologium (1956); and The Hymns ofthe Pentecostarium (1960).
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In “The Antiphons of the Byzantine Octoechus” (1939), Tillyard concludes that all hymns of the sticherarium “go back to one melodic source” (140) and that hymnography can be “transferred with little change” from the earlier Byzantine notational systems to the Middle Byzantine notation {ibid.). Tillyard bases his argument on his transcriptions of an anonymous manuscript he discovered, “Codex Peribleptus.” Originally belonging to the Monastery Tou Neou Peribleptou in Istanbul, the Peribleptus manuscript, a fourteenth-century sticherarion manuscript, was brought to Cardiff University in North Wales. Tillyard’s examination of early manuscript sources resulted also in his coining the terms for the two archaic Byzantine notational systems (from ca. A.D. 950), Chartres and Coislin, choosing French names as a tribute to French scholarship (1930; 1937). The Coislin collection of Greek manuscripts had been originally formed by Pierre Séguier (1588-1672). His grandson, Henri Charles du Cambout, the duc de Coislin (1664-1732), greatly expanded the holdings in 1731 and bequeathed the collection to the monastery of Saint-Germain-des-Pres. The manuscripts remained there until 1793 when fire partially destroyed the collection. The remaining 389 manuscripts were then moved to what is now the Bibliothèque Nationale. Tillyard derived the Coislin system from the best preserved example of this type of notation, found in Heirmologion manuscript: Coislin 220 of the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale. Tillyard found the best specimen of the Chartres notational system in Lavra MS T 67, named after the six folios of the Lavra manuscript that had been moved to the Chartres Bibliothèque Municipale. The holdings of this library were destroyed in 1944 by Allied bombardment. In the Coislin article Tillyard identifies other archaic notations as well: the “Esphigmenian” from a manuscript at the Monastery Esphigmenou on Mount Athos and the “Andreatic” from Codex 18 of the Skete of St. Andrew on Mount Athos. In addition to naming these early stages of notation, Tillyard discovered some clues to deciphering a method for transcription of these early neumes in his article “Early Byzantine Neumes: A New Principle of Decipherment” (1936). Tillyard was a pioneer of modern studies in Byzantine musicology. His knowledge of all periods of notation allowed him to find a historical continuity of notational systems from medieval to modern times. In a long series of publications dating from 1913 to 1960, Tillyard created the nomenclatures for the early ekphonetic notational systems, such as “Linear System,” “Coislin,” “Chartres,” “Esphigmenian,” and “Andreatic.” The names “Coislin” and “Chartres” have since been accepted and used by all scholars in the field. His knowledge of all Byzantine musical notations
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allowed him to formulate the basic principles of transcription of the Middle Byzantine notation, within which system he deciphered the intervallic relationship of neumes. He was also the first to define the meanings and interpretations of martyriae and modes. In the Byzantine notational systems prior to the 1150s, Tillyard attempted to find a methodology and was even able to decipher some of the neumes. His linguistic abilities allowed Tillyard to examine Russian, Greek, and Western musical sources in an attempt to find the influences on the Eastern Orthodox Church. Perhaps the most important attribute inherent in Tillyard’s scholarship is that his pioneering ideas, principles, and methodologies have endured the test of time and are still valid for successive generations of scholars in the field. Se l e c t e d B i b l i o g r a ph y
Works Bo o k s a n d Ar t ic l e s
“Instrumental Music in the Roman Age.” Journal o f Hellenic Studies 27 (1907): 160-69. “Greek Church Music.” The Musical Antiquary 2 (1911): 80-98, 154-70. “A Musical Study of the Hymns of Casia.” Byzantinische Zeitschrifi 20 (1911): 420-85. “The Acclamation of Emperors in Byzantine Ritual.” Annual o f the British School at Athens 18 (1911-12): 239-60. “Fragment of a Byzantine Musical Handbook in the Monastery of Lavra on Mt. Athos. ” Annual o f the British School at Athens 19 (1912—13): 95—117. “Studies in Byzantine Music.” The Musical Antiquary A (1913): 202-22. “Zur Entzifferung der byzantinischen Neumen.” Zeitschrift der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft 15 (1913): 31-41. “Rhythm in Byzantine Music.” Annual o f the British School at Athens 21 (1914-16): 125-47. “The Problem o f Byzantine Neumes.” American Journal o f Archaeology 20 (1916): 62-71. “The Modes in Byzantine Music.” A nnual o f the British School at Athens 22 (1916-18): 133-56. “Some Byzantine Musical MSS at Cambridge.” A nnual o f the British School at Athens 23 (1918-19): 194-205. “The Problem of Byzantine Neumes.” Journal o f Hellenic Studies 41 (1921): 29-49. Byzantine Music andHymnography. London: Faith Press, 1923. “Byzantine Musical Notation: A Reply.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 24 (1923-24): 320-28. “Signatures and Cadences of the Byzantine Modes.” A nnual o f the British School at Athens 26 (1923-25): 78-87. “The Stenographic Theory of Byzantine Music.” Laudate 2 (1924): 216-25; 3 (1925): 28-32; Byzantinische Zeitschrift 25 (1925): 333-38. “The Canon for Easter, with Music from a Byzantine Hirmologus.” Laudate 3 (1925): 61-71. “Some New Specimens of Byzantine Music.” A nnual o f the British School at Athens TJ (1925-26): 151-72.
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“A Byzantine Musical Handbook at Milan.” Journal o f Hellenic Studies 46 (1926): 219-22. “A Canon by Saint Cosmas.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 28 (1928): 25-37. “Early Byzantine Neumes.” Laudate 8 (1930): 204-16. “The Stichera Anastasima in Byzantine Hymnody.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 31 (1931): 13-20. “The Morning Hymns o f the Emperor Leo.” A nnual o f the British School at Athens 30 (1932): 86-108; 31 (1932-33): 115-47. “Byzantine Music at the End of the Middle Ages.” Laudate 11 (1933): 141-51. Handbook o f the M iddle Byzantine Notation. Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, Sub sidia, i. Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard, 1935. With Carsten Hoeg and Egon Wellesz. Sticherarium (Codex Vindobonensis Theol. Graec. 181). Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, main series, i. Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard, 1935· “Early Byzantine Neumes: A New Principle of Decipherment.” Laudate 14 (1936): 183-87. “Byzantine Neumes: The Coislin Notation.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 37 (1937): 345-58. The Hymns o f the Sticherarium fo r November. Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, Transcripta, ii. Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard, 1938. “The Antiphons of the Byzantine Octoechus.” A nnual o f the British School at Athens 36(1939): 132-41. The Hymns o f the Octoechus. Part I. Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, Transcripta, iii. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1940. “Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae: A Reply.” The Music Review 3 (1942): 103-14. The Hymns o f the Octoechus. Part II. Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, Transcripta, v. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1949. “The Stages o f Early Byzantine Notation.” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 45 (1952): 29-42. Twenty Canonsfrom the Trinity Hirmologium. Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, Transcripta, iv. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1952. The Hymns o f the Hirmologium. Part III, 2. The third plagal mode transcribed by Agla'ia Ayoutanti; revised and annotated by H.J.W. Tillyard. Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, Transcripta, viii. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1956. “The Byzantine Modes in the Twelfth Century.” A nnual o f the British School at Athens 48 (1953): 182-90. “Byzantine Music about A.D. 1100.” The Musical Quarterly 39 (1953): 223-31. “Gegenwärtiger Stand der byzantinischen Musikforschung.” Die Musikforschung 7 (1954): 142-49. “Recent Byzantine Studies.” Music and Letters 35 (1954): 31-35· The Hymns o f the Pentecostarium. Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, Transcripta, vii. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, I960. “The Rediscovery of Byzantine Music.” In Essays Presented to Egon Wellesz, edited by Sir Jack Westrup, pp. 3-6. Oxford: Clarendon, 1966. L e t t e r s a n d Pa p e r s
Tillyard s letters and papers are housed at the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae Archives at Copenhagen University’s Institute for Greek and Latin. His correspondence with Wellesz is housed in the Wellesz archives at the National Library in Vienna.
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Sources Dragoumis, Markos. “Ευας Βαθύς Μ ελετη τή ς τής Βυζαντινής Μ ουσικής.” Μνοίττλαις (November 1968): 3-4. Fleischer, Oskar. Neumen-Studien: Abhandlungen über mittelalterliche Gesangs-Tonschriften. Theil III. Die spätgriechische Tonschrift. Berlin: Reimer, 1904. Gaïsser, Dom Ugo. “Les Heirmoi de Pâques.” Oriens Christianus (1905). Gastoué, A. Catalogue des manuscrits de musique byzantine de la Bibliothèque N ationale de Paris et des bibliothèques publiques de France. Paris: Fortin & Cie, 1907. Rebours, J.-B. Traité de psaltique: théorie et pratique du chant dans l ’Éelise çrecque. Paris: Picard, 1906. Riemann, Hugo. Die byzantinische Notenschrift im 10. bis 15. Jahrhundert. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hartei, 1909. Schiodt, Nanna. “Tillyard, H[enry]. J[ulius]. W[etenhall].” In The New Grove Dictionary o f Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie, vol. 18, p. 822. London: Macmillan, 1980. Stefanovic, Dimitrije. “Zum Andenken an den englischen Musikologen H.J.W. Tillyard.” Welt der Slaven 13: 3 (Wiesbaden, 1968): 327. Strunk, Oliver. “The Byzantine Office in Hagia Sophia.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 9-10 (1956): 175-202. ---------, ed. Specimina Notationum Antiquiorum. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1966. ---------. Hirmologium Sabbaiticum. 2 vols. Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1968-70. Thibaut, Jean-Baptiste. Origine byzantine de la notation neumatique de l'église latine. Paris: Picard, 1907. “Tillyard, H[enry]. J[ulius]. W[etenhall].” In Musik Geschichte und Gegenwart, edited by Friedrich Blume, vol. 13, cols. 414-15. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1966. Velimirovic, Milos, ed. Studies in Eastern Chant 1 (1966): xv xvi. ---------. “H.J.W. Tillyard, Patriarch of Byzantine Studies.” The Musical Quarterly 54 (1968): 341-51. Wellesz, Egon. “Das Problem der byzantinischen Notationen und ihrer Entzifferung.” Byzantion 5, fase. 2 (Bruxelles, 1930): 556-70. ---------. “H.J.W Tillyard: In Memoriam.” Studies in Eastern Chant 2 (1971): 1—4.
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Milos Velimirovic
Egon Wellesz, one of the leading musicologists of the twentieth century, whose work in the area of musical composition makes him a significant figure in contemporary music as well, was born in Vienna on 21 October 1885, the son of Samuel Josef Wellesz, a Fabrikant (textile manufacturer), and Ilona Loveney. The names (and spellings) suggest fairly recent Hungarian origin, though there are indications that the family of at least one of his parents lived in Moravia. While the family was of Jewish origin, Egon was to be a faithful Roman Catholic. Wellesz’s early education followed the pattern of the well-to-do Viennese in the quarter in which they lived. He was educated at the wellknown Gymnasium on Hegel Street (therefore called the Hegel-Gymnasium but before 1918 called Franz Josefs Gymnasium), in which the training in classical languages (Greek and Latin) was an established tradition, as it was in a number of schools of the period and in Austria in general. Since it was the family’s expectation that he should aim for a civil service job or assist in his father’s enterprise, at the request of his parents he enrolled to study law at the University of Vienna; yet he preferred to spend his time at the relatively nearby Conservatory of Music and music libraries. It appears that his talent for music came from his mother’s side, and by the time he completed Gymnasium he was already conducting a small amateur choir in the Schwarzwald School where he was to meet Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) and Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) and the famed German poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). By 1905 Wellesz—not yet twenty—started taking lessons in counterpoint and harmony from Schoenberg, at about the same time that two other pupils of Schoenberg began their studies as well, namely, Alban Berg (1885-1935) and Anton von Webern (1883-1945). For reasons never spelled out in writing (his 1968 autobiography in Die Musik in Geschichte 165
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