"Every Valley Shall Be Exalted": The Discourse of Opposites in Twelfth-Century Thought 9781501716652

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"EVERY VALLEY SHALL BE EXALTED"

� "EVERY VALLEY SHALL BE EXALTED" The Discourse of Opposites in Twelfth-Century Thought

CONSTANCE BRITTAIN BOUCHARD

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS

ITHACA AND L O NDO N

Copyright © 2003 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For informatiún, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2003 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2017

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bouchard, Constance Brittain. Every valley shall be exalted : the discourse of opposites in

twelfth-century thought / Constance Brittain Bouchard. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexo ISBN 0-8014-4058-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-5017-1364-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Opposition, Theory of-History-To 1500. life-To 1500.

3. Twelfth century.

1. Title.

2. France-Intellectual

BC199.06 B68 2003 165---dc21

2002007133

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Every valley shall be exalted, And every mountain and hill shall be made low: And the crooked shall be made straight, And the rough places plain. -Isaiah 40:4

Contents

Preface ix List of Abbreviations xiii Introduction

1 CHAPTER ONE

Scholasticism: "The Last Shall Be First "

28 CHAPTER TWO

Romance and Epic: "Honor Abandoned Because of Love "

57 CHAPTER THREE

Conversion: "A Poor Man from a Rich Man "

76 CHAPTER FOUR

Conflict Resolution: "He Humbly Delivered Himself to Justice "

94

viii

Contents CHAPTER FIVE Gender: "Male and Female Created He Them 113 Conclusion 14 5 Appendix 1 51 Manuscripts Cited 1 55 Selected Bibliography 1 57 Index 169

11

Preface

The men and women of high medieval France saw the world around them as the product of tensions between opposites. Imbued with a Christian culture in which a penniless preacher was also the King of Kings, in which the last were explicitly expected to become first, they approached their philosophy, their literature, religious conversion, legal disputes, and their gender roles all through the medium of ex­ ploring and indeed maintaining opposing categories. Their very per­ ceptions of their physical and metaphysical existence, as being at the same time fleshly, erotic, and subject to decay, yet also spiritual, asex­ ual, and intended for etemity, were built on opposites that both de­ nied and required each other. This particular way of seeing permeated medieval thought, and yet it has never been the focus of a systematic historical study. Indeed many scholars, while recognizing the tensions inherent in twelfth­ century descriptions of their world and society-whether religious, philosophical, fictive, social, or legal-have either dismissed them as the sort of "imprecision one might expect in a premodem society, or "

else, by arguing that one half of the discourse should be privileged over the other, have sought to reconcile series of opposites into ulti­ mately unitary categories. In this book 1 shall discuss the medieval use of opposites as a way of seeing, explaining, and constructing real­ ity during the twelfth century and argue that it was a constitutive ele­ ment of the thought of that period, not the product of imprecision but a particular and deliberate form of organizing experience. A number of people to whom I have attempted at various times to explain this use of opposites have at first replied, "Oh yes, like yin and yang." But this was not a form of Taoism inexplicably appearing

x

Preface

in twelfth-century France. Nor was it sorne variation of Averroist "double truth" arising a good century before Averroes's own work was even known in western Europe. This was Christianity. 1 had been thinking about this mode of discourse for several years before beginning the present book, using the idea in medieval history classes whenever we discussed literature, raising it in reading semi­ nars until most of my graduate students internalized it. 1 have learned a good deal from my students' reactions to these ideas-not least of which is the difficulty of explaining a concept so foreign to modern thinking. 1 would especially like to mention Andrew Seagren, whose master's thesis at the University of Akron in 199 5, on the subject of role reversal in twelfth-century thought, produced a number of long discussions of the issues involved. 1 have presented material taken from this study in a different format as the plenary address to the Midwest Medieval History meeting (St. Louis, October 1996) and as talks to the history departments and medieval studies workshops of the University of Chicago, Kent State University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Colorado, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Kansas. 1 would like to thank all those who in­ vited me to share a work in progress and who raised pertinent ques­ tions and comments. Many scholars provided generous assistance in finding sources and shaping my arguments. Professors Karlfried Froehlich of Princeton Theological Seminary and E. Ann Matter of the University of Pennsyl­ vania first helped me track down information on the Glossa ordinaria. Professor Karl F. Morrison of Rutgers University reminded me of the influence of Greek philosophy on high medieval thought, which he had thought 1 had learned from him over twenty-five years ago. The librarians, archivists, and conservateurs at Trinity CoHege Cambridge, the Bibliotheque nationale de France, the Bibliotheque municipale of Troyes, the Bibliotheque de la Faculté de Médecine at Montpellier, and the Archives départementales de la Haute-Marne were uniformly courteous and helpful. Unless otherwise indicated, aH translations are my own. Thls book would not have been possible without a generous grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and a year­ long leave from the University of Akron, which allowed me time for reading, contemplating, traveling to the archives, and writing. The readers for cornen University Press helped me clarify what 1 really

Preface wanted to say, and their highly divergent reactions to my text made me realize that this theme was more controversial than 1 had imag­ ined. Perhaps the very discrepancy of their anonymous reports was representative of an "opposition" that it is appropriate 1 embrace. 1 owe a special debt of gratitude to John G. Ackerman, director of Cor­ nell University Press, for having faith in this project through its long gestation.

xi

Abbreviations

BnF

París, Bibliotheque nationale de France

MGH

Monumenta Germaniae historica

PL

J. -P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina

"EVERY VALLEY SHALL BE EXALTED"

Introduction

"Many of the statements of the saints appear not onIy different from each other, but opposed to each other Abelard began the prologue to his

(invicem adversa)."! So Peter Sic et Non, a compilation of contra­

dictory statements by ancient Christian authorities on a number of theological questions. This work, put together in the first quarter of the twelfth century and tremendously influential on the development of scholastic logic in medieval universities, forms the starting point of this study of a key aspect of twelfth-century thought. Although Abelard was not the first to try to make sense out of a millennium of pronouncements on Christian doctrine, he was the first to try to make sense oi them by consistently organizing them into opposing an­ swers,

both

"y es" and "no." He not onIy recognized opposition, he

embraced it as a way of perceiving and reasoning about fundamental questions. He was emblematic, 1 shall argue, oi an approach that not only characterized twelfth-century scholasticism but also influenced how people of the time thought about re1igious conversion, literature, legal disputes, social status, and gender.

"Every Valley Shall Be Exalted" explores a particular way of thinking and categorizing that 1 term a "discourse of opposites." The title comes from the radical reversals of Isaiah, later picked up in the New Testament. The central theme is that the creation of opposing cate­ gories, long recognized in scholastic approaches to theology and canon law, was ubiquitous in this periodo This theme is developed

1 Peter Abelard, Sic et Non: A Critical Edition, oo. Blanche B. Boyer and Richard McKeon (Chicago, 19j'6), p.B9. . . . nonnulla sanctorum dicta non solum ab invicem diversa verum etiam invicem adversa videantur . . . "

"

2

Introduction through a close analysis of several different kinds of sources not usu­ ally treated together in order to suggest how widespread the use of discursive opposites was as a way of ordering experience. The ap­ proach here is primarily historical but with multidisciplinary aspects, including the history of philosophy and theology, literature, ecclesias­ tical institutions, and secular society. In each case, the heart of the dis­ cussion is a rereading of several texts with an emphasis on what they reveal about the writers' use of opposites. The focus is France in the twelfth century. Although the discourse of opposites had long roots in classical philosophy, 1 argue that the use of such a discourse reached a high point in the twelfth century. In this pe­ riod the discourse also spilled over into many other aspects of culture beyond philosophical reasoning. This high point was relatively short­ lived, as the schools of the thirteenth century increasingly sought uni­ tary answers to philosophical and theological dilemmas rather than embracing opposition, as they had done a hundred years earlier.2 Dur­ ing this period, the culture of France, home of the first universities and of courtly literature, was especially influential throughout westem Europe. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, French culture infused England's intellectual and social circles. The same was true, though to a lesser degree, in the Iberian Peninsula. Although German culture had long-standing traditions of its own, both its philosophers and its literary writers were heavily influenced by French models during this periodo Scholars have long characterized the culture of twelfth-cen­ tury France as a "renaissance" in which there was a triumphant pur­ suit of order. In this book 1 argue that in this flourishing and fruitful period "order" was found, if at aH, through a discourse of opposites.

Categories of Opposition Historians have always recognized that scholastic arguments-or­ ganizing material into opposing categories as a first step to answering legal, philosophical, or theological questions-were fundamental in twelfth-century schools and early universities.3 Abelard's response to

2 See also Peter Godman, The Si/ent Masters: Latín Literature and Its Censors in the High Middle Ages (Princeton, 2000) , p. xiü. He argues against treating twelfth-century

scholasticism as no more than a forerunner of the more systematic and "orderly" scholasticism of the thirteenth century. , 1 do not intend to draw a distinction between twelfth-century "humanism" and thirteenth-century "scholasticism," as wisely wamed against by A.J. Minnis, Medieval

Introduction the

adversa that he found in a thousand years of Christian commen­

tary was to make opposition the centerpiece of his own theology. Rather than an approach unique to scholasticism, seeing the world in terms of opposition permeated high medieval thought in every sphere of life. Historians of scholasticism and

mentalités during the

twelfth century have commonly described the period as one in search of "resolution." In contrast, this book shall portray twe1fth-century thinkers as deliberately creating unresolved sets of opposites. Studies in several different areas have hinted at this dimensiono Karl Morrison's work on the concept of "mimesis," on refIection and imitation as fundamental in medieval thinking, was a seminal infIu­ ence on my own thinking. He has suggested that one should look at twelfth-century historians through their silences as well as their words, and that the gap or the refIection that surrounded what they said was also intended to be significant.4 Catherine Brown, whose work on "contraries" appeared as I was finishing the first draft of this book, has suggested that medieval authors may have employed con­ tradictions in their works specifically for teaching purposes. Sarah Kay, whose work on "contradictions" appeared as the present book was going to press, suggests that such contradictions were at least partialIy responsible for the continued success of medieval courtly lit­ erature.5 Studies of medieval monasticism, especialIy those by Bar­ bara Rosenwein and Stephen White, have concluded that creating cat­ egories of monastic friend versus monastic enemy, or of property ownership versus property alienation, is an attempt to separate op­ posing ideas from each other, whereas medieval thinkers did not make so unequivocal a distinction.6 Joan Ferrante has argued that the

Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Altitudes in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1984), pp. 3-4· Indeed, R. W. Southem links the terms in his treatment of the intellec­ tual life of the twelfth century; Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, vol. 1, Foundations (Oxford, 1995), esp. pp. 17-22, 60, 75. 4 Karl F. Morrison, History As a Visual Art in the TweIfth-Century Renaissance (Prince­ ton, 1990). 5 Catherine Brown, Contrary Things: Exegesis, Dialectic, and the Poetics of Didacticism (Stanford, 1998). Sarah Kay, Courtly Contradictions: The Emergence of the Literary Object in the TWeIfth Century (Stanford, 2001). Although the three of us independently reached the same conclusion, that opposition underlay much of the thinking of the High Middle Ages, our books are quite different: theirs are narrower, being primarily close literary readings of a handful of texts, and they neither discuss the Platonic ori­ gins of opposition, the point where 1 begin, nor the significance of opposition for me­ dieval ideas of gender, the point at which 1 end. 6 Barbara H. Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor of Saint Peter: The Social Meaning of Cluny's Property, 909-1049 (Ithaca, N.Y., 19&). Stephen D. White, Custom, Kinship, and

3

4

In troduction

women in twelfth-century lyrics and romances can best be inter­ preted as mirrored reflections of their male lovers.7 And historians of women's roles in the High Middle Ages have for sorne time been de­ bating whether the Eve-Mary dichotomy, present in everything from art and literature to the liturgy, suggests that women's roles were im­ proving or worsening in this period o 1 have taken this analysis one step further, arguing that while me­ dieval thinkers did crea te sharp distinctions and dichotomies, they were perfectly willing to have two opposing things be true at the same time.8 Rather than stopping at saying that there could be oppo­ sites at work in medieval society and thought (for example, that two different people or institutions could at the same time be in sorne sense the owners of the same piece of property), 1 shall argue that me­ dieval thinkers in tended opposites. Although this tension between opposites in twelfth-century thought has often been noted, the most common explanations have been that medieval thinkers were only partially successful in integrat­ ing the diverse elements that influenced their culture, or that contra­ diction was only a temporary phenomenon and one side or the other of the contradiction would prevai1.9 My own reading of the sources suggests that twelfth-century thinkers were not nearly as eager as modern scholars to find resolution. Instead, they routinely con­ structed a reality balanced between deliberately unreconciled poles. Indeed, they might explain or express even a fairly unitary and un­ complicated phenomenon by invoking its opposite. Anselm of Canterbury provides an example of this tendency when he characterized his own sins in a prayer to Saint Paul not simply by saying they were numerous but by describing them in terms of what

Gifts to Saints: The Laudatio Parentum in Western France, 1 050--1 150 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 11)88). See also Constance Brittain Bouchard, Holy Entrepreneurs: Cistercians, Knights, and Economic Exchange in Twelfth-Century Burgundy (lthaca, N.Y., 1 99 1 ) . Joan M. Ferrante, Woman As l mage in Medieval Literature from the Twelfth Century to Dante (New York, 1975). 8 I first hinted at this in a study of the biographies of the twelfth-century bishops of Auxerre, in which all the biographers set out to describe their subjects in terms of an opposition between the ultimately irreconcilable roles of practical and conscientious administrator versus unworldly holy man; Constance Brittain Bouchard, Spiritua lity and Administration: The Role of the Bishop in Twelfth Century Auxerre, Speculum An­ niversary Monographs 5 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979). , For an overview of these positions, see Brown, Contrary Things, pp. 5-6; and Kay, Courtly Contradictions, pp. 3-11. 7

-

Introduction they were not: "There are not one or a few transgressions, but many. They are not small but enormous. There is no doubt about them, but instead certainty." 1O Similarly, Alan of Lille described how God in­ tended that "transitory things should be given stability by instability, endlessness by endings."11 Guibert of Nogent began his description of the famous riot that took place at Laon in the 11205 by saying, "As 1 al­ ready mentioned, 1 shall now treat the people of Laon, or rather 1 shall enact their tragedy." The opposition between "to treat" and "to enact," of minor significance in English, draws a distinction here be­ tween something one discusses fram the outside and something in which one is involved, highlighted by the Latin play on tracturi versus acturi.12 Such a delibera te creation of opposites certainly had rhetorical force, but it would be a mistake to treat it simply as a rhetorical de­ vice. The frequency of the use of such a device is instead indicative of a mode of thinking in which perception was aided by the creation of opposing categories. A few preliminary words are necessary on what this particular form of categorization was

noto It was not Manichaean dualism, either

the form that Augustine railed against in the fifth century or the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Albigensian version. Manichaean du­ alism postulated an absolute division between body and soul, be­ tween God and the devil, whereas orthodox twelfth-century thought discussed physical and spiritual aspects of humanity that required and reflected each other even while they denied each other.13 Indeed, an effort by twelfth-century thinkers to distance themselves fram the Albigensians may have strengthened their insistence that their "oppo­ sites" not be simplified into what was to be accepted versus what was to be rejected. Alternately, this form of categorization was far more than sorne sort of Averraist "double truth," especially since Averroes was not yet

10 Anselm of Canterbury, Prayer 10, Opera omnia, ed. Franciscus Salesius Schmitt, vol. 3 (Rome, 1946; reprint, Stuttgart, 1968), P·40' 11 De planctu naturae 8, ed. Nikolaus M. Haring, Sludi medievali, ser. }, 19 (1978): 840. For a fuller discussion of this passage, see chapter 1. 1 2 Guibert of Nogent, De vita sua p, ed. Edmond-René Labande, Aulobiographie, Classiques de l'histoire de France au Moyen Áge (Paris, 1981), p. 268. "De Laudunen­ sibus, ut spopondimus, iam modo tracturi, imo Laudunensium tragoedias acturi." B As the work of Caroline Walker Bynum has made clear, twelfth- and thirteenth­ century theology, far from rejecting physicality, embraced it; Holy Feasl and Holy Fasl: The Religious Significance of Food lo Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987), pp. 237-59.

5

6

Introduction known in the twelfth century. Even for the thirteenth century, scholars have argued that no one would have made such a simplistic duality as true faith against true philosophy.14 Sorne positions were clearly false and to be rejected, even while the true ones were often described­ and indeed reached-through a discourse of opposites. Here it is also worth stressing that 1 am not discussing the categories of "good" ver­ sus "evil," categories that were rarely drawn this crudely in the twelfth century. Rather, the categories under discussion here were ones in which both halves of the tension structure, whether body and soul, chivalrous warrior and humble convert, or man and woman, were both to be valued. Perhaps one of the clearest statements of the necessity of such op­ posites for medieval thinkers comes not in a scholastic work but in lit­ erature, in the Roman de la rose compiled in the thirteenth century. The narrator comments, And so it goes with contrary things, sorne are glosses on the others. Therefore someone who wishes to define one of them must always re­ member the other, or, no matter how hard he tries, he will not be able to give a definition.15

The author makes explicit something inherent in virtua1ly all defini­ tions created at the time: one cannot understand something without understanding what it is not, but this establishment of paired oppo­ sites does not mean a rejection of the other, for it too must always be "remembered." The twelfth century, with its rapid development of universities, urban culture, the legal profession, banking, govemment bureaucra­ des, and vemacular literature, can too easily be seen as "modem," analogous to Westem sodety at the beginning of the twenty-first cen­ tury. On the contrary, those who founded many of the institutions we now take for granted need not on that account have perceived the world around them in the same way as do their descendants eight or

14 J. M.M. H. Thijssen, Censure and Heresy at the University of Paris, 1 2 00-1 400 (Philadelphia, 1998), P . 41 . 1 5 Le roman de la rose, e d . Félix Lecoy, 3 vols. (Paris, 1965--70), lines 2 1 , 543-52, 3=148. See also Brown, Contrary Things, pp. 2-3·

Introduction nine centuries latero Part of my purpose, then, is to restore the funda­ mental strangeness of the twelfth century. 16 Much of the strangeness (to us) of this period lies in its willingness, indeed eagemess, to accept two opposite answers at the same time. Social and legal distinctions during the High Middle Ages, and the lit­ erature that society created both to reflect and to meditate on those distinctions, can be better understood if modern views of a single "correct" answer are not imposed on an inherently polysemous vi­ sion. If scholastic logic and theology embraced opposition, it should not be surprising that a discourse between opposites is also found in other spheres of thought. One of the most fundamental concepts in medieval theology was the relationship between soul and body, as­ pects of the human that were opposed to each other, and y et required each other, for identity was assumed to lie in the body as much as in the soul.17 There was a very strong assumption in the twelfth century that sensory experience at some level indicated or reflected a coherent cosmology,18 and hence an ordering device that made theological sense could also provide the best way to approach other experiences and perceptions. That particular device or vision is what 1 term a "construction of re­ ality." While 1 have no intention of being drawn into theoretical de­ bates on the existence of objective reality-and here assume its exis­ tence without further discussion-members of different societies do make different assumptions about the organizing principIes that shape this reality. Given that no one is ready to accept the exterior world as a series of unrelated, random events-from a practical standpoint it would be impossible to do so-it is alway s necessary to create categories to order and understand experience. Each society's

16 See also Paul Freedman and Gabrielle M. Spiegel, "Medievalisms Old and New: The Rediscovery of Alterity in North American Medieval Studies," American Histori­

cal Review 104 (1998): 6¡¡-'704. " Caroline Wallcer Bynum, TIre Resurrection 01 the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (New York, 1995). 18 Morrison, His tory As a Visual Art, pp. xiü-xxiv. See also Stephen G. Nichols, Ir., Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and lconography (New Haven, 1983), pp. 1-14· These two books, both focusing on historical narrative, explore from quite different standpoints the relationship in the High Middle Ages between the belief that there was an overall order or plan and attempts to read and interpret human events to make sense of this cosmology.

7

8

Introduction version of the organizing principIes that make sense of reality is somewhat different. Indeed, so is every individual's, but as most people adopt a major proportion of the expectations and presupposi­ tions of the society around them, it is possible to speak in at least broad terms about how a society organizes and structures experience and hence perceives reality. This categorization I term a "construction of reality," and I shall discuss both the particular form it took in the twelfth century and the impact this had on approaches to legal, social, religious, and philosophical questions. A few simple examples will demonstrate the very significant im­ pact that perceptions about categories can have. In the modem United States, one's accent tells the listener one's regional origins but very little about one's social or economic status; in modem Britain, in con­ trast, one's accent tells both and thus can influence how one will be treated. More fundamentally, every society makes assumptions about gender that go far beyond the basic biological givens that women but not men can bear and nurse children, and that men on the average are larger and have more upper-body strength. Distinctions such as who wears skirts or trousers, who wears more jewelry, and who wears their hair longer are often assumed to be as "natural" as the differ­ ences in genitals, even though there is no particular connection, and even though every society draws the lines somewhat differently. This book discusses gender in the context of a broader way of look­ ing at opposites, where a concept or object is defined at least in part as a negation of its obverse. Thus, something may reflect-in reverse­ its opposite, deny ing it, and y et at the same time requiring it for its own definition. If an emphasis on a discourse between opposites sug­ gests that the hidden cosmology with which thinkers were try ing to come to terms was also one of discursive opposition, then the rela­ tionship between the seen and the unseen was itself a product of two opposing categories that reflected, even as they denied, the other. Although the creation of opposites was certainly not the on1y cate­ gorization that took place in the twelfth century, it was a crucial, if hitherto unappreciated, method of making sense both of abstract ideas and of the exterior world. The discourse of opposites will be presented as a "theory " in the scientific sense of the term: that is, as an explanatory device that makes sense of the existing evidence and which is to be tested by seeing whether it continues to be useful when presented with new evidence.

Introduction In the following chapters the English word "opposites" will be used as 1 have been using it so far, in a perhaps rather imprecise way. The reason for this imprecision is that the medieval thinkers dis­ cussed here might use a fluid vocabulary even when they were quite clear that they were discussing a single concepto Both to these thinkers and in my own analysis, "opposites" include sorne things that were completely different, what one might term ''binary opposites," and also polar opposites, the two ends of a continuum. The English "op­ posites" may translate the Latin terms opposita, contraria, or adversa, a11 of which carry the meaning of something put up against or turoed against something else. The Old French the

contreres (contraries), used in

Roman de la rose passage cited above, conveys a similar meaning. (contraria) were a subset

According to Martianus Cape11a, contraries

of opposites, so it seems preferable to use the broader term.19 In addition, when one thing is defined explicitly as else,

not something non ... sed, this too is treated as an example of opposition.20 Such

contradictions could be established between binary pairs or between polarities. Deconstructionist theory argues that in fixed oppositions even the rejected term remains central because it is required for the definition of the other termo Medieval thinkers would not have had much use for poststructuralist theory in general, but here they would have had little difficulty-indeed, probably less than many modero readers.21 Examples of categories that were defined by what they de­ nied will be seen most clearly when discussing conversion, where the new convert's status and position were normally phrased in terms of what he or she had rejected. Other examples may be found, more sim­ ply, in the use of language that invoked opposition, as in Anselm's prayer mentioned above. Fina11y, even when

opposita or a similar

word is not used, 1 shall speak of "opposites" where, especially in ver19 Brown prefers the tenn "contraries" for general purposes, saying that it evokes "logical outrageousness," an evocation that 1 myself do not find necessary; Contrary Things, P. 13. :ro See also Godman, Si/ent Masters, P . 297. 21 For an application of modem theory to the thought of Aristotle and Augustine, see Stephen Gersh, Concord in Discourse: Harmonics and Semiotics in Late Classical and Early Medieval Platonism (Berlín, 1996). For the applícation oí deconstructionist theory specificalIy to gender, the most influentiaJ work remains that oí Joan WaJlach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988), see especially p. 7. As a medievalíst 1 find much poststructuralíst theory more íoreign than the maJe abbots with breasts and wombs discussed in chapter 5, but there is no use in ignoring parallels staring one in the face.

9

10

Introdllctíon nacular literature, the author makes it clear that a choice must be made, say between love and honor, and that one cannot try to hold onto one while seeking the other. Exploring twelfth-century thought through the discourse of oppo­ sites is particularly fruitful because it may open up an understanding of aspects of that thought that have previously been troublesome or obscure. Throughout, my argument shall be that to understand the medieval use of opposites one must realize that they were always meant to remain separate, even if refleeting ea eh other in inverse, rather than to have either one ultimately domina te or to have the two meet somewhere in the middle.

Philosophical and Theological Origins

The construction of reality through the discourse of opposites was not unique to the twelfth eentury, for it had very long roots and eon­ tinued to be influential in subsequent eenturies, even if its fullest flourishing was in the High Middle Ages. The two major sourees of the twelfth-eentury discourse of opposites were the Neoplatonism that became thoroughly integrated into early medieval theology, in which creation grew out of a union of opposites, and the radical re­ versals found in the New Testament. The coneept had first been set forth explicitly in several of Plato's dialogues. Although the scholars of the twelfth century had not read these dialogues-only the Timaells was available before the thirteenth century, and that in somewhat fragmentary form (the available Latin translation included only sections 17- 5 3)-their content had perme­ ated the writings of the Neoplatonie thinkers of early Christianity, who in tum influenced twelfth-century theologians and philoso­ phers.22 In the twelfth century, the appellation "The Philosopher" was still given to Plato, not to Aristotle, as it would be in the thirteenth eentury. Modem historians of philosophy usually stress Plato's distinetion between the Ideal and its reflection, between being and becoming-a

22 For an overview of the impact of Neoplatonic thought, see M. -D. Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society in the Twe1fth Century, transo Jerome TayJor and Lester K. LittJe (Chi­

cago, 1968), pp. 49-98.

Introduction distinction crucial t o the in

Timaeus.23 His polítical philosophy, a s set out

The Republic, also receives its share of modern attention-though

this was unknown in the twelfth century. But another theme in his works, and one with great impact on twelfth-century thought, was that of finding harrnony in dissonance. As the following examples il­ lustra te, he did not argue that opposites had to lose their contradic­ tions in order to meet in concordance

(concordia in Latin). Rather, for

Plato and those who followed him, opposition reached concordance through the mediation of love. In the

Timaeus, the sharpest duality was found in humans' very na­

ture, the distinction between body and soul. This distinction, an en­ tirely comfortable concept to the Christian West, was for Plato a bringing together of opposites, "weaving together mortal and immor­ tal."24 TweIfth-century thinkers, however, rejected Plato's discussion of

how this happened. Plato had had multiple gods crea te humans'

double nature at the orders of the Demiurge, rather than have a single supreme God create humanity, and had the material part of human nature derived from preexisting and eternal matter.25 But while they disagreed with Plato on the details, Christian thinkers found it easy to reconcile his view of human nature as compounded of opposites with the Genesis account of humans as made of both dust and spirit. While a basic duality was one of the key aspects of the

Timaeus, the

theme of harmony from dissonance was developed in other Platonic dialogues that were not directly known in the tweIfth century. In the

Symposium, Plato placed the

discourse of opposites in the context of

music. He had Socrates begin by quoting Heraclitus, "Regarding the One, he said that in its opposition to itself it is brought together with itself, as in the attunement of a bow or a lyre." This sentence was as muddy to Socrates' listeners as it is to modern readers, so Plato had Socrates continue: Now, it is quite absurd to say that harmony consists in opposition, or even that it results from things being in opposition. He probably in­ tended to say instead that harmony is created in the musical art by

" Plato, Timaeus 27-28. 24 Plato, Timaeus 41. 1 here use the translation of John Warrington (London, 1965), P· 38 . 25 Chenu, Nature, Man, and Society, pp. 56-59.

11

12

Introductíon bringing a prior opposition of high and low notes into attunement. It is c1ear that harmony does not come from the opposition of the high and low notes. Harmony is concord, and concord is a kind of agreement. That agreement should consist in the opposition of things that are in op­ position is impossible. Things that are in opposition and not in agree­ ment are not in harmony. Rhy thm, for example, results from bringing the fast and the slow, which are at first in opposition, into agreement. . . . [H]ere it is music that introduces agreement between aIl these opposites by engendering mutual love and harmony.26

In this passage Plato expresses the fundamental idea that would flourish in the Middle Ages: that opposites, "things that are in opposi­ tion," may still find "agreement" even while maintaining their sepa­ rate status, as in the example of high and low notes. This idea devel­ oped in new directions in medieval thought, but its roots are clearly in Plato. He used this same set of images, of finding harmony in dissonance, when discussing the crucial question of life and death in the

Phaedo.

Socrates, knowing that his death is coming very soon, takes the op­ portunity to discuss the relationship between life and death, the most diametrically opposed human conditions, and argues that they re­ quire each other. He begins by discussing processes, the way that something larger, for example, comes from something smaller, or something hotter from something cooler. "Is it necessary that what­ ever has an opposite comes to be only from its opposite?" The correct answer is, "Certainly."27 Then Socrates derives the principIe that would have appeared sen­ sible and obvious to the thinkers of the twelfth century: " . . . between the members of every pair of opposites, since they are two, aren't there two processes of coming-to-be, from one to the other, and back again from the latter to the former?" He illustrates this by the example of increasing and decreasing, from better to worse or worse to better, from larger to smaller or vice versa, separating and combining, heat­ ing and cooling. On the basis of these analogies, he then addresses the fundamental issue of life and death:

26 Plato, Symposium 187. 1 here use the translation of William S. Cobb, The Sympo­ sium and the Phaedrus: Plato's Erotie Dialogues (Albany, 1993), pp. 26-27. 27 Plato, Phaedo 70. 1 here use the translation of David Gallop (Oxford, 1993), p.18.

Introduction My couple [set of oppositesl is sleeping and being awake: being awake comes to be from sleeping, and sleeping from being awake . . . . Now it's for you to tell me in the same way about life and death. You say, don't you, that being dead is opposite to living? 1 do. And that they come to be from each other? Yeso Then what is it that comes to be from that which is living? That which is dead. And what comes to be from that which is dead? 1 must admit that it's that which is living. lB

Here Plato makes clear that even such radical opposites as life and death require each other, just as do the categories of larger and smaller. It may be noted here that Plato, like his philosophical succes­ sors in the twelfth century, considered what might be called binary opposites and polar opposites as analogous. Life and death may seem to have nothing in common, Socrates states, but just as sleeping and waking can be understood only in terms of the other, so living and dy ing are comprehensible only if there is sorne agreement between them in spite of their undeniably enormous differences. This dia­ logue, then, lay s out the principIe of required opposites that would be so influential in twelfth-century thinking. Plato's use of opposition as a means of understanding the cosmos was joined for medieval thinkers with a form of disputation, derived ultimately from Plato's pupil Aristotle. Aristotelian dialectic entailed two participants, each of whom upheld as true one of the two oppo­ site sides of a proposition. T he proposition was put in the form of a question, which could be answered either "yes" or "no." Each partici­

pant in the dialectical debate tried to make the other agree by devel­ oping a logical argument, to which the conclusion would be the thesis he was seeking to establish. To reach the conclusion, a participant would put forward premises with which, he hoped, his opponent would be forced to agree, leading inevitably to his thesis. Dialectic, then, was as much a part of logic as it was of rhetoric.29 Aristotle's logic was summarized in his

Categories,

which set forth

ten classes by which, he maintained, anything couId be described: its quantity, quality, time, place, and so on. Modem scholars have de­ bated whether these ten classes can be treated as a complete set of log-

,. Plato, Phaedo 71, transo Gallop, pp. 18-19. 29 Eleonore Stump, Dialectic and Its Place in the Development of Medieval Logic (Ithaca, N.Y., 198