The Fathers and Beyond: Church Fathers between Ancient and Medieval Thought (Variorum Collected Studies) 9780754659440, 9781138382381, 0754659445

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VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES

The Fathers and Beyond

Marcia L. Colish

Marcia L. Colish

The Fathers and Beyond

Church Fathers between Ancient and Medieval Thought

Routledge Taylor Si Francis Croup LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2008 by Ashgate Publishing 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX 14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business First issued in paperback 2018 Copyright © 2008 by Marcia L. Colish Marcia L. Colish has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Colish, Marcia L. The fathers and beyond: church fathers between ancient and medieval thought. - (Variorum collected studies series: 896) 1. Fathers of the church 2. Religious thought - Middle Ages, 600-1500 3. Religious thought - To 600 I. Title 270 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Colish, Marcia L. The fathers and beyond: church fathers between ancient and medieval thought / Marcia L. Colish. p. cm. - (Variorum collected studies series; 896) 1. Fathers of the church. 2. Philosophy, Ancient. 3. Philosophy, Medieval. I. Title. B631.C652007 2007030556 189-dc22

ISBN 978-0-7546-5944-0 (hbk) ISBN 978-1-138-38238-1 (pbk)

CONTENTS Introduction Acknowledgements I

The Neoplatonic tradition: the contribution of Marius Victorinus

vii-xi xiii 57-74

The Neoplatonic Tradition: Jewish, Christian and Islamic Themes, eds A. Vanderjagt and D. Päzold. Cologne: Dinter, 1991

II

St. Augustine's rhetoric of silence revisited Augustinian Studies 9. Villanova, PA, 1978

III

The Stoic hypothetical syllogisms and their transmission in the Latin west through the early Middle Ages

Res Publica Litter arum 2. Lawrence, KS, 1979

IV

Cosmetic theology: the transformation of a Stoic theme Assays 1. Pittsburgh, PA, 1981

V

Cicero, Ambrose, and Stoic ethics: transmission or transformation? The Classics in the Middle Ages, eds A.S. Bernardo and S. Levin. Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1990

VI

Classicism and catechesis in the patriarch treatises of Ambrose of Milan

Rivista di Storia della Filosofia 61:1. Milan, 2006 VII

Ambrose of Milan on chastity Chastity: Ideals, Perceptions, Opposition, Presenting the Past: ed. N. van Deusen. Leiden: Brill, 2008, pp. 37-60

VIII

Why the Portiana? Reflections on the Milanese basilica crisis of 386

Journal of Early Christian Studies 10:3. Baltimore, MD, 2002

15-24

19-26 3-14

95-112

9-42 1-22

361-372

vi

IX

X

XI

CONTENTS Carolingian debates over nihil and tenebrae: a study in theological method Speculum 59:4. Cambridge, MA, 1984 Mathematics, the monad, and John the Scot's conception of nihil Knowledge and the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy, eds S. Knuuttila, R. Työrinoja, S. Ebbesen. Helsinki: Publications of Luther-Agricola Society Series B 19, 1990 John the Scot's Christology and soteriology in relation to his Greek sources The Downside Review 100. Exeter, 1982

757-795

455-467

138-151

XII

Eleventh-century grammar in the thought of St. Anselm Arts Libéraux et Philosophie au Moyen Age. Montreal: Institut d'Études Médiévales, 1969

785-795

XIII

StAnselm's philosophy of language reconsidered Anselm Studies 1. White Plains, NY, 1983

113-123

XIV

The Stoic theory of verbal signification and the problem of lies and false statements from antiquity to St. Anselm Archeologie du Signe, eds L. Brind'Amour and E. Vance. Toronto: Pontifical Institue of Mediaeval Studies, 1983

XV

Rethinking lying in the twelfth century Virtue and Ethics in the Twelfth Century, eds I.P. Bejczy and R.G. Newhauser. Leiden: Brill, 2005, pp. 155-163

XVI

Sanza 'nfamia e sanza lodo: moral neutrality from Alan of Lille to Dante Alain de Lille, le Docteur Universel, eds J-L. Solere, A. Vasiliu and A. Galonnier. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005

XVII The virtuous pagan: Dante and the Christian tradition The Unbounded Community: Papers in Christian Ecumenism in Honor of JaroslavPelikan, eds W. Caferro andD.G. Fisher. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996, pp. 43-91

17-43

1-18

263-273

1-40

1-7

Index This volume contains xiv + 332 pages

INTRODUCTION The papers in this collection span my scholarly career from its earliest years to the most recent. Most of those included flowed into, or out of, three of my books: The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968; 2nd rev. ed., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983; paperback ed., 2004), The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, 2 vols. (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1985; paperback ed. with addenda and corrigenda, 1990), and Ambrose's Patriarchs: Ethics for the Common Man (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005). There is, therefore, a certain amount of overlap in the topics that these papers treat. Readers will also notice shifts in my handling of some of their themes and sources. This situation reflects both my ongoing interest in many of the issues treated in this collection and the fact that I have had the opportunity to revisit and revise earlier positions, in the light of new research or the new questions that I wanted to pose at a later time. Also tying together these papers is a theme flagged by my title, The Fathers and Beyond. The "beyond" of the patristic authors is a multi-directional one. It looks backward, and sideways, as they reflected on and made diverse applications of their classical and early Christian heritage. And it looks forward, to the ways in which the fathers themselves served as polyvalent sources and authorities, indices of the alternatives within the Christian tradition and hence as stimuli for critical thought to their high medieval successors. Rather than organizing this volume in the chronological order in which its contents were first published, I have chosen to present these papers under four subject-matter headings, despite the overlaps which this decision occasions. In the first group are eight studies that investigate Latin writers of the patristic age themselves, in terms of their sources and their uses of them. (I) "The Neoplatonic tradition: the contribution of Marius Victorinus" (1991) treats a figure honored in Augustine's Confessions as a role model and translator of "the books of the Platonists." His own achievements as a Latin Christian Neoplatonist, I thought, merited more attention. (II) "St. Augustine's rhetoric of silence revisited" (1978) extends the discussion of Augustine's linguistic theory presented in the first edition of Mirror of Language and criticizes a 1962 study by Joseph A. Mazzeo which views that theory as purely Platonic. I found, on the other hand, that Augustine's sources were far more diverse and included the school traditions

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INTRODUCTION

of rhetoric and music - the latter involving an Aristotelian aesthetic - as well as an original reflection on the relations between figured and blank space in pictorial art. The importance of school texts, summarizers, commentators, and encyclopedists in shaping patristic and medieval conceptions of the verbal and mathematical disciplines, along with their philosophical underpinnings, what one might call the period's inadvertent classicism, is a case for which I argued here and elsewhere. Related to my Stoic Tradition volumes, (III) "The Stoic hypothetical syllogisms and their transmission in the Latin west through the early Middle Ages" (1979) does so with respect to this aspect of the history of logic. In a different but related area, another study deriving from my research on Stoicism is (IV) "Cosmetic theology: the transformation of a Stoic theme" (1981). Here, my point is that, faced with the Stoic principle that it is immoral to alter one's natural appearance, Latin patristic authors were not mere nay-sayers, if dismissing the classics, or mere transmitters, if appropriating them, but rather adaptive transformers of tradition. That same thesis animates another paper deriving from my work on Stoicism and one that introduces an Ambrosian subset of four papers within this volume's first topical subdivision. In (V) "Cicero, Ambrose and Stoic ethics: transmission or transformation?" (1990) the title of the paper states my agenda. Dealing with the De officiis of Ambrose of Milan, a work overtly modeled on the De officiis of Cicero, it shows that Ambrose did not simply imitate his classical model but read across Cicero, and Cicero's sources, to obtain a far less eclectic understanding of Stoic ethics. The three other papers in this subsection on Ambrose are linked to a much later work, Ambrose's Patriarchs. (VI) "Classicism and catechesis in the patriarch treatises of Ambrose of Milan" (2006) presents a short version of the thesis developed in that book, on the theory of human nature and ethics Ambrose developed in his treatises on the Old Testament patriarchs, addressed to lay converts. In so doing he freely manipulated his biblical and exegetical no less than his philosophical sources. Having made that discovery, I wondered how Ambrose on the patriarchs squared with Ambrose as advisor to Christians in celibate vocations. This yielded (VII) "Ambrose of Milan on chastity" (2008) which compares his views on chastity in married people, widows, and consecrated virgins, revealing some striking similarities. Also a spin-off, constituting material that did not fit into my Ambrose book but which I encountered en route to that destination, was a study of his handling of another aspect of the classical tradition, law, in an episode famous in his episcopal career, his confrontation with the pro-Arian imperial court in its effort to commandeer a Milanese basilica for the Easter season in 386. In (VIII) "Why the Portiana? reflections on the Milanese basilica crisis of 386" (2002) I brought archeological, architectural, and urbanistic scholarship to bear on the question of why this particular basilica was the one in contention.

INTRODUCTION

ix

The second major group of papers in this collection, while connected to some of the issues already mentioned, all focus on Carolingian intellectual history. The theme of (IX) "Carolingian debates over nihil and tenebrae: a study in theological method" (1984) is based on a crux in Stoic linguistic theory, treated in my volumes on the Stoic tradition and given more attention in the revised edition of Mirror of Language, but here pushed forward chronologically. Since the Stoics taught that words naturally denote their referents, both understood to be real physical entities, what, for them, is the lexical meaning of words standing for non-existence? This question yields grammatical, and indeed metaphysical, difficulties, not ignored by Augustine, the leading patristic author to address the topic. But he is concerned above all with explaining creation ex nihilo in opposition to the Manichean view of the "nothing" out of which God created as an actual negative entity. My earlier paper on Augustine's rhetoric of silence had dealt tangentially with this issue under the heading of how silence, or blank space, can be deemed semantically meaningful. The nihil and tenebrae paper studies Augustine's handling of negative or privative language in more detail as background for the resurfacing of the problem in the teachings - sometimes original or even idiosyncratic - of a series of Carolingian thinkers. One of them was John Scottus Eriugena. Well before western Europe had adopted the conception of zero, he offered a mathematical analysis of the problem, which I treated in (X) "Mathematics, the monad, and John the Scot's conception of nihil" (1990). In another area, I considered John's dependence on, and independence from, the Greek church fathers in (XI) "John the Scot's Christology and soteriology in relation to his Greek sources" (1982). The third major subdivision of material in this volume includes papers that deal essentially or eventually with Anselm of Canterbury. This figure occupied chapter two in Mirror of Language, one that I was able to revise in that book's second edition. My successive treatments of Anselm's semantic theory, its sources, and its applications in (XII) "Eleventh-century grammar in the thought of St. Anselm" (1969) and (XIII) "St Anselm's philosophy of language reconsidered" (1983) reflect the ongoing development of my research and thinking in that area. Much broader, and more clearly related to my work on the Stoic tradition, is (XIV) "The Stoic theory of verbal signification and the problem of lies and false statements from antiquity to St. Anselm" (1983). The same problem that undergirds the meaning of "nothing" in Stoic linguistics underlies the question of how, given the Stoics' semantic presuppositions, one can tell lies and falsehoods. Here, too, there existed a rich classical background and an extensive and influential Augustinian discussion of the issue on which Anselm could draw. The theme of lying crops up again in some of my most recent work, appearing in one of the papers in the fourth and final subdivision of the contents of this

x

INTRODUCTION

book, all of which track the patristic legacy in the high Middle Ages. In (XV) "Rethinking lying in the twelfth century" (2005)1 recognized the fact, of which I - and others - had earlier been unaware, that Ambrose as well as Augustine played an important role in the post-patristic consideration of lying. Another shift is that, in this paper, I examined lying from a primarily moral rather than a semantic perspective. My book on Ambrose contributed substantially to this revision in my thinking. I was also interested the twelfth-century cultural setting in considering why some contemporary thinkers welcomed the Ambrosian alternative, approving of lying under some circumstances, over against the Augustinian doctrine that all lies are sins. In response to invitations to consider further the influence of Stoicism in the High Middle Ages in conference papers, I did some research on the ethics of that school in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. One of my findings was that Alan of Lille had produced a striking reformulation of the concept of moral indifference. For the Stoics, what is reasonable is good; what is unreasonable is evil; and everything else, a heading under which they placed the vicissitudes of life, is morally indifferent. This doctrine was rehearsed by church fathers whether they agreed with it or not. For Alan, however, there exists a category of moral neutrality that has nothing to do with the vicissitudes of life. He defines as ethically neutral the inner state of a moral agent whose behavior is defective with respect either to its intention and end or to its exercise. On encountering Alan's analysis and noting its later medieval influence, it occurred to me that it offered a theoretical explanation of a passage in the Divine Comedy that had stumped the Dantists. Dante appears in chapter four of my Mirror of Language and has been on my radar screen ever since. Originally written for an Alan of Lille conference, (XVI) Sanza 'nfamia e sanza lodo: moral neutrality from Alan of Lille to Dante" (2005) argues that Alan and his followers provide the source for the state, and fate, of the terminally uncommitted souls encountered by Dante the traveler in Inferno 3, who live without praise or blame. One of the questions raised by Alan of Lille on moral neutrality is whether an ostensibly virtuous non-Christian can be saved. The logic of his position yields a categorical "no." Does Dante follow Alan on that issue, too, and how typical or atypical are the views of Alan, and Dante, within the Christian tradition in general? This question is the one I addressed in the final paper in this collection, (XVII) "The virtuous pagan: Dante and the Christian tradition" (1996). It was written for a Festschrift honoring Jaroslav Pelikan on his seventieth birthday. This Festschrift accented ecumenism, a subject close to his mind and heart and a movement to which he made a distinguished contribution as a scholar and churchman. In that connection it seemed fitting to tackle a theme that had ecumenism built into it, both with respect to the universality of salvation, or not, and with respect to the multiple registers of high and popular Christian literature,

INTRODUCTION

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in Greek, Latin, and the vernaculars, in which it was discussed, and which borrowed freely from each other. The highly personal choices that Dante made from the complex and diversified menu provided to him by the Christian tradition reflect a historical reality which Pelikan documented in his extensive oeuvre with such towering command: the fact that the orthodox Christian consensus has never been monolithic. It was an honor, and a delight, at the time, to join in celebrating Pelikan's achievements, and to do so again in these concluding remarks. As commentators on the Divine Comedy have noted repeatedly, the last word of each of its cantiche is "stars." The physical stars that we see in the sky today began to emit their radiance many light-years ago. The illumination shed by Pelikan's star will continue to enlighten us, and those beyond us, for many years to come. To his memory this book is respectfully dedicated.

*** As this volume goes to press in the Variorum Collected Studies Series, it is my welcome pleasure to express my thanks to three people in particular who have facilitated its appearance, in ways that have all been very important to me. In order of time, the first is Gary J. Nederman. It was he who proposed to me and to John Smedley of Ashgate Publishing Ltd. that collecting my previously published papers would be suitable for the series. The result of his good offices in bringing us together has been the present volume, as well as its predecessor, Studies in Scholasticism, CS 838 (2006). Second, and much closer to the finish line, Arjo J. Vanderjagt graciously agreed to lend his personal copy of The Neoplatonic Tradition: Jewish, Christian and Islamic Themes (KQln: Dinter, 1991), which he co-edited with Detlev Patzold. My own author's copy of this book left my hands some time ago, and Arjo's timely generosity made possible the inclusion here of my paper of Marius Victorinus, which he initially published. His collegial assistance in this matter is only the most recent instance of his longanimity in support for my work. And, finally, but in fact from beginning to end, in preparing both The Fathers and Beyond wad Studies in Scholasticism for the press, I have profited richly and repeatedly from the encouragement, wise counsel, and good judgment of John Smedley. He has been an ideal publisher and it has truly been a privilege to work with him. MARCIAL. COLISH Guilford, CT 2007

PUBLISHER'S NOTE The articles in this volume, as in all others in the Variorum Collected Studies Series, have not been given a new, continuous pagination. In order to avoid confusion, and to facilitate their use where these same studies have been referred to elsewhere, the original pagination has been maintained wherever possible. Each article has been given a Roman number in order of appearance, as listed in the Contents. This number is repeated on each page and is quoted in the index entries.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following institutions and publishers for their kind permission to reproduce the papers included in this volume: Jtirgen Dinter Verlag, Cologne (for paper I); Augustinian Historical Institute, Villanova, PA (II); Res Publica Litterarum, Lawrence, KS (III); University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA (IV); Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, Binghamton, NY (V); Rivista di storia della Filosofia, Milan (VI); Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden (VII, XV); The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD (VIII); Speculum, Cambridge, MA(IX); Luther-Agricola Society, Helsinki (X); The Abbot of Downside and Downside Review, Exeter (XI); Institut d'Etudes Medievales, Montreal (XII); Thomson Gale, Farmington Hills, MI (XIII); Pontifical Institue of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto (XIV); Brepols, Turnhout (XVI); Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, New York, NY (XVII).

In Memoriam Jaroslav J. Pelikan 1923-2006

I

The Neoplatonic Tradition: The Contribution ofMarius Victorinus The most famous testimonium we have about Marius Victorinus, and the document which has done more than any other - more, indeed, than Victorinus' own writings - to delineate his place in intellectual history, is the well known passage in Book 8 of Augustine's Confessions, where Victorinus is brought forward as the translator of the 'books of the Platonists', who made them accessible to Augustine in Latin, and as a key role model whom he imitated in his tumultuous conversion to Christianity.1 As Augustine tells the tale, it was his study of Neoplatonism, which Victorinus facilitated, that weaned him away from Manicheism and paved his way to Christianity. Victorinus also served as a powerful exemplum virtutis for Augustine, on a professional level. Like Augustine, he was a professor of rhetoric. He was eminent in all the liberal arts, with a statue erected in his honor in the Roman forum by his fellow citizens. In his extreme old age (the 350s), he converted to Christianity, although this meant the loss of his professorship, since the government at the time barred Christians from public posts. Undaunted, Victorinus spent the rest of his life writing theology and exegesis, devoting his learning and eloquence to the Christian cause. This story, placed by Augustine in the section of the Confessions where he wrestles with his divided self over his own convictions, brings Victorinus forward not only as a model of what to do but also of how to do it, a model of how to 'spoil the Egyptians', the Egyptians in this case being the Neoplatonists as well as the authorities on the liberal arts, for Christian purposes. In this famous passage Augustine thus strikes two notes: Victorinus as a transmitter of Neoplatonism, and Victorinus as the forerunner of Augustine himself, a Christian Latin Neoplatonist. These same two notes have dominated modern approaches to Victorinus as well. Historians of philosophy have

I been concerned above all with determining which Neoplatonic philosophers and doctrines he transmitted, whose Nachleben in the tradition he promoted. They have done so largely by finding passages in Victorinus' Latin works that can be read as translations or paraphrases of parallel texts drawn from the writings of this or that Greek Neoplatonic author. In some quarters, this effort has degenerated into an exercise in Qttellenforschung rather than being an act of interpretation, in the attempt to show that some one Neoplatonist was Victorinus' source, as opposed to some other Neoplatonist. The two leading contenders in this single-source Quellenforschung sweepstakes have been Plotinus and Porphyry. This particular assignment, and the methodology associated with it, stress what Victorinus preserved, rather than why it appealed to him and what he did with it. Proponents of this approach are not interested in the question of whether he changed or added anything to the Neoplatonic tradition. They see him merely as packaging it in plastic and putting it on the Latin conveyor belt, untouched by human hands.2 For their part, the church historians have viewed Victorinus not just as a transmitter but as a pioneer and a forerunner. They credit him with being the first Latin Christian Neoplatonic theologian, and emphasize the ways in which he forecasted ideas, notably in the fields of Trinitarian theology and psychology, that were later developed by Augustine.3 Some, not content to cast him as a proto-Augustine on those points, go on to treat him as a Martin Luther avant la lettre, especially because of the doctrine of justification found in his commentaries on the Pauline epistles.4 Now, to put my cards on the table at the outset, I will have some occasion to draw on the findings of both groups of scholars. However, I would like to take a rather different line on Victorinus, emphasizing aspects of his thought which I think are important and which have been ignored or undervalued. In the first place, with respect to his relation to the Neoplatonic tradition, I will argue that Victorinus is far more than a mere transmitter or translator, preserving ideas of Plotinus, or Porphyry, or whomever, and getting them in the Latin pipeline. He has indeed some real opinions as a Neoplatonist. He makes personal choices in handling this tradition, as well as reinforcing what we know about it in his century. In particular, he supplies some very useful information about one of its best known traits, eclecticism. Neoplatonists in this period certainly felt free to incorporate ideas from rival schools, especially the Aristotelians and Stoics, sometimes annexing them as is and sometimes reinterpreting them in Neoplatonic terms. Victorinus is a rich source for this practice. At times he follows the line of other Neoplatonists, recent and current. But he also makes his own raiding missions into neighboring philosophical terrain, and uses his booty his own way. We can find evidence of this tendency in both his pre-Christian and Christian writings, so it indicates a general 58

I intellectual proclivity. Victorinus' combinations of Neoplatonism with the doctrines of other schools thus provides us with an additional and independent witness of this wider practice within the fourth-century Neoplatonic movement in general. Another dimension of Neoplatonic history which emerges from a study of Victorinus is the fact that, in his day, members of this school were not necessarily the slavish devotes of any one teacher in the school. Nor were they necessarily interested in abandoning the earlier phases in its development in favor of the most recent elaborations of the Neoplatonic tradition. Victorinus is quite selective in his appeal to the ideas of individual Neoplatonic philosophers. For example, he makes no reference whatsoever to lamblichus, the one closest in time to himself. Indeed, his writings suggest that he found the lamblichan move from contemplation to theurgy profoundly antipathetic. In approaching Neoplatonism as a spiritual system, or as a therapy of liberation, Victorinus adheres rigorously to the cooler intellectualism of its Plotinian stage, although without the slightest trace of the mystic or ecstatic element. We will consider how he expresses this taste below. But the point to be made here is that he is an index of contemporary trends within the Neoplatonic school. He shows not only an interest in developing some, and not all, of the themes in the tradition, a disinclination to repeat dogmatically what someone else in the school had said earlier, as a norm of orthodoxy, but also the tendency to shop around, to draw on ideas from different Neoplatonists and to combine them at will in new contexts, to detach them, at times, from the other ideas with "which they had initially traveled, and to associate them with non-Neoplatonic ideas as well. There is also the question of Victorinus' adaptations of Neoplatonism when he applied it to Christian theology. Here, the traditional view of him as a pioneer or forerunner grants him both too much and too little. For, given the fact that he was eclectic, he succeeded in conveying into the Christan tradition more than just Neoplatonism. He plays an important role in the Christianizing of Stoicism at the same time. Further, Victorinus turns out to be just as independent in his selection of models and strategies of argument from his Christian compeers, Greek and Latin, as he is in his address to the Neoplatonic tradition. Although certain affinities can be detected in the fact that he translated the works of Origen, he feels perfectly free to abandon the standard Greek patristic arguments for defending Nicene Christology against the Arians. He comes up with a different, and a highly original, argument of his own, and one more Neoplatonic than theirs. In this connection, while his Trinitarian theology definitely does influence Augustine's, there is much more to the story. For Augustine returns to the standard Greek patristic strategy, combines it with the elements of Victorinus' argument that he perpetuates, and 59

I also changes that argument in striking and important ways. So, the relationship between Victorinus and Augustine is more complex, and more finely nuanced, than the role model or forerunner image of Victorinus would suggest. Finally, with regard to Victorinus as a pioneer, I would agree that he was an extremely creative theologian. But, he was not the first thinker to apply Neoplatonism to Christian doctrine in Latin. The very reason why he was inspired to do so was because he was responding to another contemporary application of Neoplatonism to Christan doctrine on the part of the Latin Arians, who were using it to bolster their own heretical Christology.5 Since he was a rhetorician, Victorinus naturally entered the debate, a debate he had not created, in the terms in which it had been put by his opponents. He had to address, and refute, the Arians on their own ground. This point has rarely been given the emphasis it deserves, either by church historians or historians of philosophy. What it suggests is a twofold point. First is the fact that the Arians themselves were a wily, well educated, and dextrous group, perfectly capable of shifting their strategy of argument from a purely Scriptural one, as with Arius himself, to a new strategy incorporating Neoplatonism and other philosophical arguments. The second point, and one of greater importance to historians of philosophy, is a methodological one. As we seek to trace the post-classical fortunes of Neoplatonism, we need to consider both the heretics and the orthodox Christian writers. The losers as well as the winners play a role in this history. One of the cliches repeated by the anti-intellectuals in the Christian tradition has always been that philosophy is dangerous because it will seduce believers into heresy. We can, and should, turn this ancient topos on its head and view it as a scholarly opportunity, an opportunity to recognize that some of the most powerful and innovative "ways of harnessing Neoplatonism to the Christian plow were made by Christians banished from the mainstream by the orthodox church. This is certainly the case with Victorinus' Arian antagonists. With these interpretive and methodological considerations in place, I would like to offer some reflections on how Victorinus used his Neoplatonism, drawing on examples from three areas of his work: his studies in the classical liberal arts, his commentaries on the Pauline epistles, and his anti-Arian theology of the Trinity. The areas of Victorinus' thought to be treated will be presented in that order, which is also the order of ascending importance. Let us begin with the philosophical ideas of Victorinus as they occur in his works on the disciplines of the trivium. He was a professional rhetorician, and so, not surprisingly, he wrote a commentary on Cicero's De inventione. But Victorinus contributed to grammar and logic as well. He wrote a De grammatica, which is of no philosophical interest; commentaries on Aristotle's Cate60

I gories and Perihermeneias, as well as a translation of the Categories; a work on the hypothetical syllogism; a De definitionihus; and a translation of Porphyry's Isagoge. Not all of these works have survived, although we have indirect testimony about the ones that have not come down to us.6 The first point I would like to make is simply directed to the fact of this syllabus in itself. Like other Neoplatonists of this time, Victorinus felt perfectly free to teach Aristotle's logic and he did not regard this assignment as in any way bizarre for a Neoplatonist. Porphyry, after all, had done it. And, while Victorinus clearly wanted to put his Isagoge into circulation in Latin, it is also clear that he did not think Porphyry had done the job as it needed to be done, otherwise he would have not bothered to produce his own translation and commentary of Aristotle's logic. As a logician, then, he is not a 'mere transmitter' of Porphyry. Next, it is worth noting that Victorinus did not hesitate to annex into his project as a logician the hypothetical syllogism, an invention of the Stoics, which offered a mode of syllogistic reasoning not adequately dealt with by Aristotle's logic. In his day, Aristotelians as well as Neoplatonists had freely taken over this doctrine, to the point where Boethius was later to credit it to the Peripatetics. Victorinus' On the Hypothetical Syllogism is one of his works that has not survived but we have evidence of by way of Cassiodorus' Institutes.7 What is striking, in Cassiodorus' account, is that Victorinus, on whom he draws, most likely, for his own understanding of the hypotheticals, went farther than anyone else up to his time in repatriating them within the discipline of logic, redeeming them, so to speak, from rhetoric, where Cicero had put them and where he had sought to naturalize them by passing them off as Aristotelian enthymemes. Victorinus also recovered more of the Stoic forms of these syllogisms than anyone else in late antiquity. Despite the no doubt indirect manner in which he acquired his information on the hypotheticals, Victorinus was able to grasp and interpret their true Stoic sense and restore them to their original Stoic context. This point illustrates well the obverse side of his philosophical eclecticism: Victorinus was capable of gaining an integral understanding of ideas that had been conflated or blurred with ideas from other sources, or misinterpreted by the authorities from whom he derived them. At the same time, in his works on the disciplines, we can observe Victorinus placing Stoicism and Aristotelianism alike at the service of his prevailingly Neoplatonic outlook, in a manner more typical of his school. I will give only one example from his commentary on Cicero's De inventions, although a number of others could serve as well.8 In this work Victorinus takes up Aristotle's doctrine of opposites. As he accurately notes, Aristotle says that opposites can be distinguished as contrary (contrarium), disparate (disparatum), 61

I and relative (ad illiquid). He then goes on to interpret this idea in a Stoic sense, observing that opposites can be viewed as species of the same genus, the genus of being (esse). His remarks thus far are designed to lead up to an explanation of being as the supreme genus of all things, in the context of the Neoplatonic chain of being. As a hypostasis of the divine essence, Victorinus notes, esse is, to be sure, a homonym of esse, as that term applies to beings in the phenomenal world and to the lesser spiritual emanations. But esse, in those two contexts, is not a univocal term. There are three things interesting about this example, which is why I selected it. First, as with other Neoplatonists, Victorinus borrows from other schools, here refining an Aristotelian logical distinction in terms of Stoicism and then applying the resultant idea to the interpretation or elucidation of an expressly Neoplatonic doctrine. Aside from showing that he is likely to assimilate other philosophical notions into a Neoplatonic view of reality, this example suggests why historians of late ancient philosophy ought to study ostensibly non-philosophical works, such as Victorinus' commentary on Cicero's rhetoric, to document the philosophy of the time. Second, it is interesting to observes the segue Victorinus makes from the rhetorical text he is discussing, first to logic, then to physics, and then to metaphysics. As a thinker, he is primarily fascinated by metaphysical questions. He is quick to see, to accent, or even to create, a metaphysical dimension in just about anything he is talking about. It might not be immediately apparent why, or if, there is any connection between Cicero's rhetoric and the Neoplatonic chain of being. But for Victorinus, the transition from one to the other is perfectly natural. My third and last gloss on this example is a sequel to the second. It is certainly true that, when Victorinus addressed himself to Christian theology, the range of metaphysical issues on his agenda was expanded. As we will see below, in that connection as well he will be deeply concerned with the question of how the term esse applies to the supreme being. Yet, as the example we have considered from his De inventions commentary indicates, Victorinus certainly had this question on his mind as a pagan Neoplatonist, well before he was confronted with any Christian imperatives. And, as we shall see, when he did move to Christianity, he felt just as comfortable recasting Aristotelian and Stoic ideas and placing them at the service of his preeminently Neoplatonic Christian metaphysics. The second area of Victorinus' work, which yields important information about his place in the Neoplatonic movement, is his Pauline exegesis. Although the precise dating is a matter of dispute, he commented on the epistles to the Ephesians, Philippians, and Galatians between the late 350s and the mid 360s, in the same period when he was writing his anti-Arian works.9 Despite the simultaneity of these two projects, there is a remarkable contrast between 62

I these two subdivisions of his theological oeuvre. The Pauline exegesis, and in particular the commentary on Ephesians, reflects Victorinus' purest and most dramatic Neoplatonizing of Christian doctrine. In addition, it positions him quite clearly vis-a-vis other Neoplatonists on some strictly Neoplatonic issues. Both of these aspects of his Ephesians commentary emerge from a consideration of his handling of the related themes of human nature, the human dilemma, how man can be freed from that dilemma, and Christ's saving work in that connection. 10 On these questions, I would argue that Victorinus stands out as less a Pauline theologian and more a Plotinian, although, to be sure, he edits Plotinus in several respects as well. From the beginning, Victorinus envisions the entire question 'What is man? How did he get into his present difficulties? And what can be done about it?' from the Neoplatonic perspective of the procession of being from its source, and the return of being to that source. The being of prime interest here is the soul of man, which he treats as the essential definition of human nature. Victorinus agrees with Plotinus, with other Neoplatonists, and with Plato that this human soul, the essence of man, preexisted its combination with a body, or rather its incarceration in matter. He regards this idea as the logical pendant to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Following Plotinus, he thinks that there was a 'fall of the soul'. In sharp contrast to St. Paul's understanding of original sin, this fall is a cosmic event, not the consequence of an exercise of human free will in succumbing to pride or misdirected love.H Having suffered the cosmic fall, here man is, living in a body which is the source of human error and vice. Although it does not impose total depravity on his soul, or snuff out the soul's built-in desire to return to God, the body constitutes man's problem. It is not involved in the solution of that problem in any constructive way. For, in order to be saved, and to achieve the return to God, man must learn to dissociate himself from the body as much as he can, 'breaking the chains' (rumpenda vincula) that bind the soul to matter.*2 The key point, for Victorinus, is that it is man's soul, alone, that gets redeemed. The body is not redeemed, in any way; it is, rather, to be cast aside. And, far less than Plotinus, does he argue that material things can be treated as rungs on a ladder of ascent to the deity, or as adumbrations of the splendor of the deity, which yield a partial but helpful knowledge of Him that is to be used even as it is transcended. Having dissociated himself from this doctrine, how, for Victorinus, does man overcome the flesh? By flesh he means, literally, the material body, which alone is the source of the human dilemma. Even though the flesh cannot destroy the capacity of the soul to return to its souce, it is still capable of dragging man down, and man needs help in finding out how to minimize the impediment it constitutes. This help is provided by Christ. For Victorinus, Christ's role as savior is 63

I understood in an essentially intellectualistic way. His role is one of intellectual enlightenment. By His word and example, Christ imparts a correct knowledge, the knowledge of how to separate the mind from the senses, how to transcend the physical world and live a spiritual life, and how to contemplate God and integrate the life of the mind with Him. For Victorinus, the knowledge that Christ imparts conveys with it, automatically, moral power. In this connection, it is instructive to note that the divided self, the context in which Augustine introduces Victorinus in the Confessions, simply has no existence whatever for Victorinus as a psychological phenomenon. Correct knowledge itself, ipso facto, liberates and empowers the soul morally. Victorinus stresses the point that, in order for man to tap into Christ as the source of saving knowledge and power, man must have faith. He regards faith as a state of intellectual conviction, the assent to the claims and teachings of Christ as true. As an epistemic state, faith, for Victorinus, is neither pararational, infrarational, or suprarational. The lexicon he adopts for talking about faith draws on such verbs as capere, intellegere, and cogitare. He uses these verbs with no sense that any epistemological qualifications need to be made on their employment in this context. !3 In any event, he holds that faith, in the sense just described, alone saves, because faith is an exercise of the mind. His objection to works is that nothing physical can save. This is the sense in which Victorinus understands and advocates 'justification by faith alone'.14 His soteriology, like his anthropology, is a consistent application of his fundamentally dualistic metaphysics. This consideration of Victorinus' commentary on Ephesians, brief as it is, suggests why it is a mistake to regard him as an early Martin Luther lookalike.15 Luther would doubtless have regarded Victorinus' reading of Paul's text as dangerously Pelagian, if not schizophrenic. The same analysis suggests why some stringent limits need to be set on the view of Victorinus as a theological forerunner of Augustine. As for Plotinus, we can see that, while he is Victorinus' chief inspiration in this work, our author is not merely recycling or reiterating his mentor. He does not go the full distance with Plotinus. Victorinus edits out the suprarational, mystic element in the return of the soul to God. There is no flight of the alone to the alone here. Nor does the strategy of negative theology ever enter in, either. Victorinus does not treat the phenomenal world with as much optimism as a source for the knowledge of the higher, spiritual world as Plotinus does. These departures aside, however, the Plotinian character of the layout, the problematique, and the solution are remarkably strong. So strong, indeed, that an orthodox Christian might be tempted to label Victorinus' theology of redemption as Gnostic, rather than as Pauline. These Pauline commentaries have been neglected by historians of philosophy as a source for Victorinus' Neoplatonism. This, quite obviously, is a 64

I serious oversight, once again reminding us that, in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, philosophy is not only to be found in overtly philosophical works. Rich veins of philosophy can often be mined in fields where we might not immediately think to look for it. If that is the case, historians of philosophy have had no difficulty focusing on Victorinus' anti-Arian treatises as philosophical sources, largely because the themes they treat draw on just the sort of materials that the Quellenforscher like to use as a litmus-paper test in deciding whether to award the palm to Porphyry or Plotinus as his Urquelle. This brings me to the third and last part of this paper, and to the largest and most important subdivision of Victorinus' works. For it is here that he displays most clearly his originality as a speculative theologian and it is here, as well, that he makes a creative contribution to the development of Neoplatonic metaphysics. To some degree, this creativity and originality were forced upon him. Dissident theologians had been attacking orthodox Christology for some time. In this field, the Arians had come early and had stayed late. And, given the nature of the Arian theology in the 350s, none of Victorinus' predecessors or contemporaries offered a model of argument adequate to their refutation. Hilary of Poitiers, the most famous of the Latin defenders of Nicene Christology to date, had written early in the fourth century, when the Arians were still basing their teaching on largely Scriptural grounds. Hilary, quite plausibly, responded in kind. The Greek theologians, from the third century onward, reacting against what they held was Tertullian's too-materialistic analogy of filiation and procession seen as a stream of light flowing from a source of light with which it is consubstantial, had developed a different analogy. They had called upon, quite successfully, the Stoic distinction between the Aoyoy svdia— Qeros, or inner word in the mind, and the Aoyoy npotpopiicos or outer, spoken word, to describe the eternally generated and unmanifested Christ in the mind of God and the incarnate Christ manifested to men, likewise consubstantial with God the Father. This creative adaptation of Stoic linguistic theory to Trinitarian theology by the Greek fathers was one destined to return to the west in Augustine's De trinitate, and to remain in the mainstream of Latin theology after Augustine's time.16 But Victorinus was confronted by an antagonist to whom this argument would not have been responsive. He was therefore forced to regroup, a move that inspired him to seize on a different Stoic idea, to combine it with an Aristotelian doctrine, and to use these tools to reformulate the Neoplatonic understanding of the supreme being. In grasping the state of play when Victorinus took to the field against the western Arians of the mid fourth century, we must keep in mind that it was these Arians who had been first in line, in taking over from Neoplatonism the triadic structure

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I of the emanation of being from the One. They had been the first to use this teaching as the conceptual scaffolding for their heterodox Trinitarian doctrine. Since the spokesman of this Arian community, Victorinus' antagonist, was the first Latin Christian Neoplatonist, we need to take a closer look at him. His name is Candidus, and we have preserved both his own treatise and Victorinus' response to it, in a series of works in which he attacked Candidus's position and offered his own alternative. Let me note in passing that some scholars doubt the historicity of Candidus, viewing him as a pseudonymous character invented by Victorinus for the purpose of staging the debate. According to this theory, he wrote both the treatise ascribed to Candidus and those directed against him. This claim is difficult to prove either way.*7 In my view, the historicity of Candididus is irrelevant. Even if he were a sheer invention, 'Candidus' would have to have represented what the Arians of this time and place were actually saying, in order to have had any rhetorical utility in these works. Candidus begins by asserting that a prime attribute of God is the fact that He is unbegotten. This attribute is a function of His immutability, which all Christians agree in ascribing to Him. If He is unbegotten, Candidus continues, God must also be unbegetting. For, just as anyone begotten undergoes change, so anyone begetting undergoes change. If someone is begotten, he has undergone change, and he is consequently not-God. Therefore, Christ is not-God. Candidus brings both Stoic dynamism and the triadic Neoplatonic mode of viewing the supreme being to the defense of this thesis. Since He is being itself, the cause of His own existence, Candidus argues, God is, at the same time, being, life, and thought (esse, vivere, intellegere). These three divine traits are correlative. They exist and function in and through each other. Thus, God or, as the orthodox Christian would say, God the Father - in Himself is three and one. A one-person God, triune in this manner, is the only God there is, Candidus concludes. His attributes cannot inhere in teings that engender or are engendered, processes which necessarily involve change, limitation, and temporal sequence, from which God is exempt, since He is infinite, eternal, and immutable.1** This by no means exhausts what Candidus has to say. But what I have summarized here is the shank of his argument insofar as it draws on Neoplatonism, with a critical injection of the Stoic view of the deity as the dynamic Adyos, an idea that helps Candidus to redefine Aristotle's concept of the deity as well. Since he is a Christian, Candidus has to go beyond Aristotle's idea of God as static, immobile, and totally at rest. What he does, therefore, is to shift to the principle of activity as the key to the alternative theology he proposes. Using Stoic dynamism to rethink Aristotle's God as pure act, he emerges with

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I a deity marked by vitality, not by rest. Candidus treats vitality and activity as hallmarks of the divine perfection, not as indices of unrealized capacity. As with the threefold attributes of being, life and thought, Candidus has derived this idea from Neoplatonism, although, in comparison with his Neoplatonic sources, he emphasizes the vitalistic element.19 For Plotinus, to be, to live, and to understand describe the Nous, the first hypostasis of the One. For Porphyry, in some hyper-infinitive way, to be, to live, and to understand describe the One, and not any of his emanations, although in a manner radically different from the way in which these terms can be used to describe lesser beings. What Candidus has done here is to pay homage to the perspectives of both of these thinkers. With Porphyry, he attaches the property of being to the ultimate level of being, above whom there is no One beyond being. With Plotinus, at the same time, he insists on the utter transcendence and incomparability of the deity. It is easy to see why Victorinus found in Candidus a formidable opponent, formidable especially to a person who, like Victorinus, was a Neoplatonist himself. How, staying on the Neoplatonic terrain where Candidus had positioned his thesis, could he be refuted? This was no mean assignment. The strategy Victorinus adopts is a bold one. He takes over Candidus' Neoplatonic description of God as possessing three reciprocal attributes, defined in dynamic terms, so as to guarantee the equality and consubstantiality of the Trinity. He then - and let me underscore this point - changes the definition of the Neoplatonic triad, so that he can identify the three terms with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, without subordinating one to another, while at the same time providing a sufficient distinction among the three as Persons so that they are not conflated with each other. Once Victorinus had laid that foundation, it is possible for him to show that filiation and procession do not necessarily entail change, or imperfection, or a hierarchy of substance among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as Candidus had argued. The first move Victorinus makes is a critical one, and, to the best of my knowledge, one that has eluded the attention of previous commentators. As we have seen, the triad of Candidus, like the triads of Plotinus and Porphyry, was the triad of esse, vivere, intellegere. On the other hand, in Victorinus' account, esse, being as such, is not part of a group of divine attributes. It is the fundamental, ultimate level of being, the divine nature as such, possessed by the Godhead. It therefore cannot serve as an attribute exclusive to any one of the Persons of the Trinity. There is, he argues, a triadic manifestation of esse in the three Persons of the Trinity. But it is not the triad of Candidus, or Plotinus, or Porphyry. Rather, it is a triad which he defines as moving, thinking, and acting (movere, intellegere, agere). Each Person of the Trinity is being as such. And that principle defines the unity of the Godhead, since the Persons 67

I of the Trinity all possess this attribute in a totally identical way. At the same time, each Person of the Trinity manifests being as such in a different way, through motion, thought, and action, each of which functions is specific to one of the divine Persons alone.2^ Before proceeding, let me accent what this Latin redefinition of the Neoplatonic triad accomplishes. One thing it does is to heighten the energetic or dynamic understanding of the deity, in all three of His Trinitarian manifestations. It permits Victorinus to argue that the three manifestations of the deity truly are functional correlatives of each other, since they are all on the same metaphysical level, unlike the triad of Candidus. He can also avoid subordinationism, since each attribute is equally a manifestation of esse. Victorinus clearly shares with Candidus the idea that being can be understood as action, and that the highest state of being is not perfect rest but unbounded energy. And, it is just this common idea, as he redefines it, that Victorinus uses to argue that action and motion, as divine attributes, are manifestations of being as such. The model developed by Victorinus thanks to his new triadic definition enables him as well to account for the filiation of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit, as distinct and equal divine Persons, without entailing change, temporal sequence, or hierarchies in the divine nature. Having seized the initiative in this manner, Victorinus goes on to argue that action is central to existence and intelligence. For this reason, the engendering of the Son by the Father and the procession of the Spirit are all on the same metaphysical plane, both with each other and with the Father's own selfengendered activity. The action and motion involved in these processes, he stresses, is metaphysical action and motion, which has existed from eternity. It is indepedent of time and space. It should therefore not be confused with local motion on earth, cause-effect relationships in physics, or with passion, corruption, diminution, and growth in the phenomenal order. In God's case, motion, action, and thought are the reflexive, self-induced, internally and eternally operative functions of being itself. God's self-moving life is His very substance, in each of these three manifestations.21 As he concludes his analysis, Victorinus observes that a good analogy to the doctrine of the Trinity which he has presented can be found in the inner life of intelligent created beings, such as human souls. In the case of the human soul, too, intelligence, action, and motion can be distinguished from each other as different functions of the soul. At the same time, the function in question, although it operates in and through the others, is the expression of the life of a single, central, animate being. All three of the functions are mutually co-inherent yet distinct, in terms of both their division of labor and mode of operation. As an analogy, thus, the soul of man helps us to understand a deity

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I who is, in Victorinus' terms, tridynamos; vitality and energy, in the forms of motion, thought, and action, are His prime attributes.22 In the formulation of both this Trinitarian doctrine and its attendant psychology, Victorinus has made a signal contribution to theology and philosophy alike. From the perspective of the Christian tradition his redefinition of the triadic Neoplatonic model, as Candidus had appropriated it, enables him to supply a Latin Neoplatonic rationale for a doctrine of God that avoids subordinationism, the chief difficulty, for Christian theology, that was borne in the wake of Neoplatonic metaphysics. Aside from guaranteeing the equality of the Persons of the Trinity, his account makes them understandable primarily from a relational and functional standpoint, rather than in terms of their constitution or substantive make-up. This permits him to develop a theology of God as agency, without sacrificing a theology of God as essence. Victorinus has also taken a step in the direction of viewing the Trinity from the standpoint of the relations of the Trinitarian Persons in se, not ad extra. This emphasis came to be typical of the western approach to the Trinity, especially in the classic formulation of Augustine. Augustine will retain and develop this legacy from Victorinus, reuniting it with the inner word - outer word argument for the relations between the Father and the Son. Further, Victorinus' analogy of the Trinity to the psychology of intelligent created beings is a major step in the devepment of functionalist psychology itself. This contribution can stand as an independent one. But, for the Christian tradition, it provided a critically helpful model for explaining how man can be said to be the image of God, a model based not on a similarity or identity of man's substance or metaphysical composition with God's, but one that locates the analogy instead in their modes of operation.2-* This psychological argument will also be absorbed by Augustine, and altered, substituting memory, intellect, and will for Victorinus' motion, thought, and action, and recognizing the fact that one of its advantages lies in the ease with which it permits the theologian to delineate the limits of the analogy, no less than its powers of explanation. Some of these contributions are important to Neoplatonic thought as well. In placing Victorinus' anti-Arian works in the Latin Neoplatonic tradition, we must, of course, recognize the move away from that tradition which he makes in his new triadic definition, reflecting his need to describe a different kind of supreme being. In this respect, it is Candidus, assuming he was a real person, who is the more faithful exponent of Plotinus and Porphyry. And it was Candidus whose Arianism enabled him to make the first creative Latin transference of the three interrelated attributes of esse, vivere, and intellegere to the Christian deity. In comparison with Candidus, Victorinus is even more original. He adds something new to Latin Neoplatonic metaphysics. I think it fair to say that a pagan Neoplatonist might well appreciate the force and plausibili69

I ty of Victorinus' substitution of movere, intellegere, and agere for esse, vivere, and intellegere, within the framework of the Neoplatonic system itself. Whether one sides with Plotinus, and ascribes esse, vivere, and intellegere to the vow, as the first hypostasis, regarding the One as beyond being, or with Porphyry, and ascribes the triad to the One, in a super-infinitive sense, there is a problem embedded in this triad, which Candidus retains, but which Victorinus eliminates. At whatever level in the metaphysical chain of being one places the triad, one programs in a hierachy within the hierarchy. For esse, in a real sense, must be seen as metaphysically prior to vivere and intellegere. To be sure, subordinationism, as between one level of emanation and another, is an intrinsic, and non-problematic, feature of Neoplatonic metaphysics as such. But, to introduce another mode of subordinationism, one that is deemed to exist within one and only one of the levels of the chain of being, whether it is the highest or the next to highest level, introduces a lack of symmetry within the whole system. Victorinus' triad avoids this difficulty, a difficulty which later Neoplatonists, pagan as well as Christian, continued to grapple with, unsuccessfully, in the sequel.24 Another advantage of Victorinus' triad is that it addresses the Neoplatonic concern for mutually interrelated activities as a description of the supreme being, incorporating Stoic dynamism, purged of Stoic materialism, into the Neoplatonic view of God. Victorinus certainly goes much farther than Candidus in responding to this Neoplatonic desideratum. He is also able to go farther in purging Aristotle's pure act of its static connotations, without letting this concept denote an unconsummated state of being, reaching this goal more fully than other Neoplatonists who had moved in that direction. And, his ability to combine a metaphysics of operation with a metaphysics of essence is a contribution fully as valuable to pagan Neoplatonism and fully as geared to its concerns as it is useful for Christian theology. In sum, Victorinus is an important source for the Neoplatonism of his time in three ways. He enlarges what we already know about this movement, providing good examples of its eclectic tendencies. Sometimes he makes the same kinds of choices as those found in other Neoplatonists, as in his willingness to teach Aristotelian logic. He shows himself capable of grasping the positions of other schools in an integral manner, however the doctrine may have come down to him. The Stoic hypotheticals are the best case in point. But he is most typically inclined to reinterpret the teachings of other schools in a Neoplatonic light, and to put a metaphysical gloss on them. In addition, Victorinus reminds us that the fourth-century Neoplatonists were not necessarily interested in being up-to-date. They did not automatically rush to embrace the latest stages in the development of their school's tradition. Victorinus' preference for Porphyry and Plotinus over lamblichus is an expression of this tendency, an independence with regard to the tradition that 70

I extended to his selective use of those masters within it whom he preferred. Victorinus' treatment of man's nature, the human dilemma, and its solution in his Ephesians commentary, in relation to Plotinus' handling of this constellation of ideas, is an excellent index of Victorinus' simultaneous loyalty to Plotinus and his willingness to dispense with the aspects of his teachings which he found unsympathetic. Finally, Victorinus' combination of independence from, and commitment to, the Neoplatonic tradition can be seen, above all, in his redefinition of the metaphysical triad of esse, vivere, intelkgere into the triad of movers, intellegere, agere. This redefinition constitutes a genuinely original contribution to Latin Neoplatonic metaphysics. It is responsive to the concerns of Neoplatonists, well apart from the help it gives to Christian theologians. As I have mentioned, however, despite the usefulness of the movere, intelkgere, agere formula, later Neoplatonists appear to have ignored it. Perhaps Victorinus' former pagan confreres disdained to take seriously the work of a defector, especially since they were after bigger game among the Christians. What is more surprising is the fact that Christian Neoplatonists also ignored his major innovation, and tended to read him as a source for the older triad of esse, vivere, intelkgere, which he expounded only to reject. The exception to this rule is, of course, Augustine. His own creative deployment of Victorinus' new triadic formula ensured it a durable legacy in Augustine's own theology. None the less, from what has been said already, I hope I have succeeded in offering a corrective to the image of Victorinus the mere transmitter and to the image of Victorinus the mere forerunner. He may have been a prophet in his own country, but he was an authentic, and individual, exponent of Neoplatonism in his own time. Notes * I would like to thank E.J. Brill for permitting me to use material on Marinus Victorinus which appears, in a different form, in Marcia L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, II: Stoicism in Latin Christum Thought through the Sixth Century, Studies in the History of Christian Thought 35, Leiden 1985, 131-41, on which Brill holds the copyright. 1. Augustine, Confessiones 8.2.3-4, ed. Lucas Verheijen, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina27, Turnhout 1981, 114-16. 2. Leading examples of the pro-Plotinus trend are Paul Henry, Plotin et I'accident: Firmicus Matemus, Marius Victorinus, Saint Augustin etMacrobe, Louvain 1934, 19, 23, 44-62, 140, 209-10, 235, and his 'TheAd-uersusArium' of Marius Victorinus, the First Systematic Exposition of the Doctrine of the Triniy', Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 12 (1950), 42-50; and Mary T. Clark, 'The Earliest Philosophy of the Living God: Marius Victorinus', Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 41 (1967), 87-93. The chief defender of Victorinus as a transmitter of Porphyry is Pierre Hadot, Porphyre et Victorinus, 2 vols., Paris 1968, who also gives a review of previous debates 71

I on this subject, vol.1: 11-31; he is joined by Mary T. Clark, in the introduction to her translation of Marius Victorinus, Theological Treatises on the Trinity, Washington 1981, 10-40. Anton Ziegenaus, Die trinitdrische Ausprdgung der gottlichen Seinsfiille nach Marius Victorinus, Munich 1972, 13, 16-17, 19, 86-88, 175, 178, 357, 363, 365, treats Victorinus as more eclectic in his sources. 3. The single most influential argument in support of this view is undoubtedly Adolf von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 3 vols., Tubingen 1909-10, vol.3: 33, 158 ff. A sample of more recent adherents of this view includes Robert A, Markus, 'Marius Victorinus and Augustine', Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A.H. Armstrong, Cambridge 1967, 333-40; Pierre Courcelle, Les Confessions de Saint Augustin dans la tradition litteraire, Paris 1963, 69-74; Eugene TeSelle, Augustine the Theologian, New York 1970, 43-55; Pierre Hadot, 'L'Image de la Trinite dans Tame chez Victorinus et chez Augustine', Studio, Patristica 6, ed. F. L. Cross, Berlin 1962, 409-42. 4. An excellent survey of the literature on this subject is provided by Werner Erdt, Marius Victorinus Afer: Der erste lateinische Pauluskommentator: Studien zu seinen Pauluskommentaren im Zusammenhang der Wiederentdeckung des Paulus in der ahendlandischen Theologie des 4. Jahrhunderts, Frankfurt 1980, 25-26. 5. For the use of philosophy by western Arians in the fourth century, see Michel Meslin, Les Ariens d'occident, 335-430, Paris 1967, 356-64. An excellent account of the debates in the theological field when Victorinus entered it is found in Pierre Hadot, introduction to his translation of Paul Henry's edition of Marius Victorinus, Traites theologiques surla Trinite, Sources chretiennes 68-69, Paris 1960, vol.1: 18-60. 6. The best overall study of Victorinus' writings in general is Pierre Hadot, Marius Victorinus: Recherches sur sa vie et ses oeuvres, Paris 1971. 7. On this subject, see Cassiodorus, Institutionum 2.1.2, ed. R.A.B. Mynors, Oxford 1937; Hadot, Marius Victorinus, 22-25, 172-73, 197-98, 310, 347; Joseph de Ghellinck, 'Reminiscences de la dialectique de Marius Victorinus dans les conflits theologiques du XIme et du XIIme siecle', Revue neo-scolastique de philosophic 18 (1911), 432-35; Marcia L. Colish, 'The Stoic Hypothetical Syllogisms and Their Transmission in the Latin West through the Early Middle Ages', Res Publica Litterarum 2 (1979), 19-26. 8. Marius Victorinus, Explanationum in Rhetoricam M. Tulli Ciceronis, ed. Carolus Halm in Rhetores latini minores, Leipzig 1863, p. 232. Hadot, Marius Victorinus, 93-94 has commented briefly on this passage. For a fuller analysis, which gives additional examples drawn from this work which also reflect Victorinus' philosophical eclecticism and his tendency to understand ideas from other schools in a Neoplatomc light, see Stephen Gersh, Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism: The Latin Tradition, 2 vols., Notre Dame 1986, vol.2: 719-27. 9. On the dating of these works, see the literature discussed by Erdt, Marius Victorinus, 79-81 and Franco Gori, introduction to his edition of Marius Victorinus, Opera exegetica, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 83: 2, Vienna 1986, p. viii. 10. The key passages are Marius Victorinus, In Epistolam Pauli ad Ephesios 1:4, 2:8, 2:14, 3:12, 3:18-20, 4:23 in Opera exegetica, ed. Gori, 6-12, 33-34, 37, 50, 53-55, 69. A thorough analysis is provided by Erdt, Marius Victorinus, 121-82. 11. On this issue, viewed from the Augustinian perspective on the Plotinian doctrine, see Ernest Fortin, 'Saint Augustin et la doctrine neoplatonicienne de Fame', Augustinus Magister, 3 vols., Paris 1954, vol.3: 371-80; Robert J. O'Connell, 'The Plotinian Fall of the Soul in Augustine', Traditio 19 (1963), 1-35. O'Connell argues that Augustine's

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12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

20.

understanding of this doctrine remained Plotinian in his early works. In tracing the theme from Plato to the twelfth century, Pierre Courcelle, 'L'ame en cage', Parusia: Studien zur Philosophic Platans und zur Problemgeschichte des Platonismus. Festgabe fur Johannes Hirschberger, ed. Kurt Flasch, Frankfurt 1965, 103-16, also accents similarities, but as a consequence of his methodology of decontextualized topos research. On the other hand, Etienne Gilson, 'Regio Dissimilitudinis de Platon a Saint Bernard de Clairvaux', Mediaeval Studies 9 (1947), 108-30 shows how Augustine Christianizes this theme and how twelfth-century writers connect it with monastic contempalation, while J.C. Didier, 'Pour la fiche Regio dissimilitudinis', Melanges de science religieuse 8 (1951), 205-10, shows that, by that time, it had become a commonplace not confined to any one group of Christian authors. The most recent author to treat this theme, who seconds Gilson on Augustine and Didier on the twelfth century and who extends her inquiry into the vernacular spiritual writers of the later Middle Ages, is Margot Schmidt, 'Regio dissimilitudinis: Ein Grundbegriff mittelhochdeutscher Prosa im Lichte seiner lateinischen Bedeatungsgeschichte', Freiburger Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und Theologie 15 (1968), 63-108, with a good bibliography p. 64, n. 4. None of these scholars has noted or considered the treatment of the fall of the soul in Victonnus. In ep. Pauli ad Ephesios 1:4, p. 9 In ep. Pauli ad Ephesios 1:4, pp. 10, 12. In ep. Pauli ad Ephesios 2:8, 2:14, pp. 33-34, 37. This is an issue which has, understandably, clouded the judgments of scholars on the accuracy of Victormus' treatment of Paul himself. A good summary of the literature is provided by Erdt, Marius Victormus, 60-78. Michael Schmaus, Die psyckologische Trinitatslehre des hi. Augustinus, Munster 1927, 40-48, 51-52, 54-67; Alfred Schindler, Wort und Analogic in Augustins Trinitatslehre, Tubingen 1965, 104-18; Ziegenaus, Die trinitdrische Auspragung, 27, 35, 42, 201; Clark, 'The Earliest Philosophy of the Living God', 87-93; 'The Psychology of Marius Victorinus', Augustinian Studies 5 (1974), 149-66. See also the summary in Colish, Stoic Tradition, vol.2: 134-35, 196-98, 199-200. On the other hand, David N. Bell, 'Esse, Vivere, Intelligere: The Noetic Triad and the Image of God', Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale 52 (1985), 13-25, misses the changes Victorinus rang on the Neoplatonic tradition and treats Augustine's position as a more radical departure from Victorinus' than it was. Hadot, Marius Victorinus, 272-75, thinks Candidus is a fiction; Ziegenaus, Die trinitarische Auspragung, 54-55, thinks he was a real person, and also provides the most recent review of the literature on this subject, 74-76. Candidi Arriani ad Marium Victorinum rhetorem de generations di-vina 1.1-9, in Marius Victorinus, Opera theologica, ed. Paul Henry and Pierre Hadot, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 83: 1, Vienna 1971, 1-11. The quotation is at 1.3.: p. 4. On this notion in Plotinus and Porphyry and later Neoplatonists, see Pierre Hadot, 'Etre, vie, pensee chez Plotin et avant Plotin', Les sources de Plotin, Fondation Hardt: Entretiens sur 1'antiquite classique 5, Vandoeuvres-Geneva 1960, 107-57; Porphyre et Victorinus, 299, 308 ff.; Stephen Gersh, From lamblichus to Eriugena: An Investigation of the Prehistory and Evolution of the Pseudo-Dionysian Tradition, Leiden 1978, 51-52, 126-29, 143-51; Bell, 'Esse, Vivere, Intelligere', 5-12. Marius Victorinus, Ad Candidum Arrianum 19, ed. Henry and Hadot, 36-37. Victorinus uses the same redefined triad, here described as movere, intellegere, vivere, in

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21. 22. 23.

24.

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Commentarium in Epistolam Pauli ad Philippenses 2:6-8, p. 188. This redefinition has been missed by Bell, 'Esse, Vivere, Intelhgere,' 13-18, 25, who equates Candidas' version of the triad with the position of Victorinus himself. Marius Victorinus, Adversus Arrium 1.4, 1.43, 1.52-53; DeHomoousio 3, ed. Henry and Hadot, 59-60, 133-34, 148-51, 281-82. Adversus Arrium 3.4, 3.7-11, 3.17, 4.13-15, 4.21-22, pp. 197-99, 202-11, 222-24, 243-48, 256-59. The term tridynamos occurs at 4.21, p. 257. The innovative quality of Victorinus has been noted by Clark, 'The Earliest Philosophy of the Living God', 87-93 and 'The Psychology of Marius Victorinus', 149-66, the latter of which supersedes Ernest Benz, Marius Victorinus und die Entwkklung der abendlandischen Willensmetaphysik, Stuttgart 1932. Gersh, From lamblichus to Eriugena, 126-29, 143-51, 153-77. Bell, 'Esse, Vivere, Intelligere', 24-43, has traced some of the applications of this formula from the patristic period to the twelfth century. See also Pierre Hadot, 'Marius Victorinus et Alcuin', Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire du moyen age 21 (1954), 5-19.

II

ST. AUGUSTINE'S RHETORIC OF SILENCE REVISITED

N 1962 Joseph A. Mazzeo published a paper entitled 'St. AugusIrestoring tine's Rhetoric of Silence' in which he credits Augustine with to Latin rhetoric a Platonic conception of language in rela-

tion to truth.1 According to this conception, res are enduring, intelligible realities while verba are merely their sensible and transitory signs. Men perforce use a rhetoric composed of words; but it is to be transcended at length by the unmediated apprehension of intelligible truths. Thus, in Mazzeo's words, "true rhetoric culminates in silence, in which the mind is in direct contact with reality."2 Mazzeo goes on to document this Platonic contrast between speech and silence in Augustine's thought, relying primarily if not exclusively on passages selected from the Confessions and the De doctrina Christiana. Despite the relative narrowness with which Mazzeo has cast his net, he concludes that Augustine regarded all rhetoric, all dialectic, and indeed, all thought itself as the effort "to reascend to that silence from which the world fell into the perpetual clamor of life as fallen men know it"3 Previous studies have already indicated some of the limits of Mazzeo's interpretation. He has been criticized for neglecting Augustine's conception of redeemed rhetoric and the role that it plays in the Christian life as a pastoral extension of the Incarnation.4 He has also been taken to task for ignoring the contribution made to Augustine on this point by St. Paul, who associates speech with the life of faith, a state to be superceded by silence and the direct vision of God in the next life.5 But Mazzeo's interpretation of Augustine on silence requires 1 J. A. Mazzeo, 'St. Augustine's Rhetoric of Silence,' Journal of the History of Ideas 23 (1962) 175-96. A similar interpretation is given by V. Capanaga, 'El silencio interior en la vision agustiniana de Ostia,' Studia Patristica 9 (Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 94 Berlin 1966) 363-76, 387-92. 2 Mazzeo 187. 3 Ibid. 192. 4 M. L. Colish, The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge (New Haven 1968) ch. 1. 5 Ibid.; G. Wille, Musica Romana: Die Bedeutung der Musik im Leben der Romer (Amsterdam 1967) 615-23.

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still further modification and correction, and from a different perspective. There are two other contexts in which Augustine analyzes silence, contexts completely bypassed by Mazzeo, where Augustine assimilates silence to speech rather than contrasting silence with speech. One of these contexts is his discussion of lying in his De mendacio and Contra mendacium and the other is his discussion of musical rests in his De musica. In these works Augustine applies the same criteria to silence as he applies to speech and to musical sound. In the case of both of these topics, also, his handling of the subject reflects his dependence on rhetorical sources grounded in Stoic or Aristotelian philosophy rather than in Platonism or in Pauline theology. The De mendacio and Contra mendacium have excited very little attention on the part of Augustine scholars. Written in 395 and in ca. 420, respectively, they contain Augustine's most detailed analysis of the semiotic significance and ethical import of lying. Augustine's larger aim in both works is a polemical one. In the De mendacio he takes issue with St. Jerome's interpretation of the Epistle to the Galatians and in the Contra mendacium he opposes simultaneously the Priscillianist heresy and the tactics being used by certain Catholics to combat it.6 In each of these treatises he raises the question of whether one can tell a lie by remaining silent. In each case he asserts that this is indeed a possibility, and argues, further, that a silent response can be understood in exactly the same semiotic and ethical sense as a verbal statement. Silence is, of course, not always mendacious. In the De mendacio Augustine recognizes the fact that silence may be an alternative to lying, a way to respect the truth or a way to avoid twisting the truth as a means of pleasing one's hearers.7 However, the main point that he wants to make in this connection is that one tells a lie or bears false witness if one remains silent when one is asked a question to which one knows the answer. A silent response of this kind departs from truth and goodness in the same way that a spoken response might do so, inasmuch as it fails to correspond with the truth. Even more important,

6 For the historical background and Augustine's intentions in these works see St. Augustine, Retractionum libri duo 2.60 (PL 32); M. S. Muldowney, intro. to her trans, of De mendacio in The Fathers of the Church (ed. R. J. Deferrari, New York 1932) 48-49; H. B. Jaffe, intro. to his trans, of Contra mendacium, ibid. 113-16. The only detailed treatment of these two works is E. R6ce]'ac, De mendacio quid senserit Augustinus (Paris 1897), which is an attack on the Jesuitical doctrine of mental reservation and which ignores Augustine's sources and the problem of silence as lying. 7 St. Augustine, De mendacio 11.18 (ed. I. Zycha, CSEL 41).

II St. Augustine's Rhetoric of Silence Revisited

17

it fails to correspond with goodness, since it springs from the desire to deceive or mislead the questioner. One example that Augustine gives is that of the silent liar who refuses to disclose the whereabouts of a criminal fleeing the law. In this case he commits the sin of injustice as well as the sin of deception since he shirks his moral responsibility to the wider community.8 In another example Augustine observes that one may lie silently by failing to speak out in order to correct a erroneous opinion that one man holds about another which, if uncorcorrected, would lead to the defamation of his character. In exploring this second example Augustine goes on to note that men may lie in their interior speech as well as in their outward speech. Here as in a number of his other works he views speech as an internal mental activity, a function of man's inner verbum mentis, and not merely the external expression of his ideas. Thus, he says, a man may lie silently in his thoughts, with the interior mouth of the heart, as well as by declining to speak outwardly.9 In such a case, as in Augustine's other examples, the silent liar couples a deceptive or malicious intention with a response that fails to correspond with the truth as the liar knows it to be, exactly the same criteria which Augustine uses to define lying statements. Augustine draws a still more elaborate distinction between lying and concealing the truth in the Contra mendacium. As in the De mendado, so here as well he observes that one does not invariably tell a lie when one conceals the truth through silence. His example of this sort of silence is quite specific. In the Gospel of John, he notes, Christ informs His disciples that He has many things to tell them which they are not yet capable of receiving (John 16:12), a statement which Augustine interprets in the light of the doctrine of God's progressive revelation of His message through time in Holy Scripture. Thus, Christ's partial withholding of His teachings from His disciples on this occasion does not constitute a lie.10 On the other hand, Augustine stresses in the Contra mendacium as he had in the De mendacio that one may indeed tell a lie when one withholds information by remaining silent, just as one tells a lie when one deliberately makes a false statement or when one falsely claims to be ignorant, even if one remains silent in order to spare someone else's feelings.11 Augustine's point here, as in the De mendacio, is that silence conveys an understood message in certain kinds of interpersonal situations. Silence, like 8

Ibid. 13.24. Ibid. 16.32-33. 10 St. Augustine, Contra mendacium 10.23-24 (ed. I. Zycha, CSEL 41). 11 Ibid. 18.36. 9

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speech, is eloquent. Its power to communicate rests similarly on the prior relationship that exists between the man who makes a silent response and the people who make up his audience. This sensitivity to the expressive character of silence would probably not have occurred to a thinker who was not himself a rhetorician, and a rhetorician of the Ciceronian-Aristotelian school, attuned to the importance of the ethical relationship between a speaker and his audience as a critical factor affecting the didactic and persuasive efficacy of his speech. Augustine's analysis of lying also harks back to Stoic semantics and linguistic theory. The Stoics taught that words are natural signs of their referents. Words, further, are corporeal and sensible entities both in their production and in their reception. The universe, for the Stoics, is itself composed of material entities. Thus, material words have an automatic corelation with their material significata.12 Among the ancient philosophers the Stoics were the staunchest defenders of the natural conception of verbal signification over against the theory that words acquire their denotations by convention, although they were not the originators of the former position. Our earliest source for the debate between the natural and conventional conceptions of linguistic denotation is Plato, who gives it a classic exposition in his Cratylus. In this dialogue Cratylus expounds the theory of natural verbal signification and he is challenged by Hermagoras, who objects that it would be impossible to tell a lie or to make a false statement if words always signified their referents with an automatic truth.13 Plato himself does not take a stand on this controversy in the Cratylus. His main goal, instead, is to underline the epistemological limits of language as such, whether it signifies naturally or conventionally. Since language is a transient, sensory form it ultimately falls short in signifying abstract and transcendent objects of knowledge. 12

H. F. A. von Arnim, ed., Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, 4 vols. (Leipzig 1903-24) I, 85, 87, 89-90, 102, 153-54, 159-62, 493, 495; II, 299-328, 341, 346a, 358-59, 467, 526, 665, 797, 848; III, 84; Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 7.57-58 (trans. R. D. Hicks, London 1925). For further discussion of Stoic linguistic theory see K. Barwick, Probleme der stoischen Sprachlehre und Rhetorik, Abhandlungen der sachsischen Akademie der Wissenschaft zu Leipzig, philologisch-historische Klasse 49[3 (Berlin 1957); A. C. Lloyd, 'Grammar and Metaphysics in the Stoa,' in Problems in Stoicism (ed. A. A. Long, London 1971) 58-74; A. A. Long, 'Language and Thought in Stoicism,' ibid. 75-113; M. Pohlenz, 'Die Begrilndung der abendlandischen Sprachlehre durch die Stoa,' Kleine Schriften (ed. H. Dorrie, Hildesheim 1965) I, 39-86; R. H. Robins, Ancient and Medieval Grammatical Theory in Europe with Particular Reference to Modern Linguistic Doctrine (London 1951) 25-36; R. Schmidt, Stoicorum grammatica (Halle 1839). 13 Plato, Cratylus 429b ff. (trans. B. Jowett, 4th ed. Oxford 1953).

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19

Now the Stoics were monists; they therefore found this particular Platonic concern irrelevant. At the same time, they were faced with the problem of explaining how lies and falsehoods could be told within the framework of their own ruling metaphysical presuppositions and in the light of their own commitment to the theory of natural verbal signification. A number of ancient authors tried to solve this problem. Most of them were grammarians or rhetoricians who may or may not have subscribed to Stoicism in other respects. The first of them was Nigidius Figulus, a polymath of the 1st century B.C. Nigidius agrees with the Stoic principle that words are natural signs. He wrestles with the linguistic significance of lies, distinguishing them from false statements by explaining that the liar intends to deceive while the person making a false statement is merely laboring under a misapprehension. Still, given the natural truth of words, Nigidius fails to explain how a false statement can be made at all.14 In the 1st century A.D. Quintilian shifts his attention away from the semantic side of this question and focuses exclusively on its ethical implications. Quintilian asks whether a lie is ever morally justifiable. He agrees with Nigidius' definition of the speaker's good or bad faith as the ethical criterion of his statements and concludes that the ends justify the means. An orator may be excused for telling a lie when he does so for rhetorical purposes or in order to shield a hearer's sensibilities.15 In the 2nd century A.D. Aulus Gellius seeks to resolve the difficulties raised but not fully dealt with by Nigidius and Quintilian by observing that the Stoics themselves provide an explanation for the ambiguities inherent in language, even within their system of natural verbal signification. According to the Stoics, Gellius points out, words can signify two things at the same time. They express the speaker's inner intellectual intention as well as the objective natural realities to which they refer. There is, to be sure, no hiatus between words and their natural referents. On the other hand, different speakers may intend different meanings by the same words. The inner intentions of speakers, unlike words themselves, have no necessary correspondence with objective reality.16 Gellius' treatment of this question is picked up in turn by Augustine and is discussed with even more incisiveness in his early work, the 14 Publius Nigidius Figulus, Operum reliquae frags. 4, 5, 49 (ed. A. Swoboda, Vienna 1889) 67-68, 76-77, 78. 15 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 12.1.37-38 (ed. M. Winterbottom, Oxford, 1970). 16 Aulus Gellius, Noctes atticae 11.12.1 (ed. P. K. Marshall, Oxford 1968).

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De dialectica, where he expressly states the Stoic distinction between a speaker's word and his inner intention, here called the verbum and the dicible respectively. Augustine uses this distinction to explain the ambiguities that attach to language despite its natural derivation and significance.17 Augustine thus shows himself to be conversant with the Stoic theory of semantics. He draws upon it as well as on the Aristotelian-Ciceronian principle that verbal communication is affected by the ethos of the speaker and the expectations of the hearer in his analysis of lying in the De inendacio and Contra mendacium. His conception of silence as eloquent in these two works reflects his borrowings from both of these ancient traditions. A similar blending of rhetorical and philosophical insights informs Augustine's handling of the topic of silence in his De musica. In this case, however, the philosophy involved is more consistently Aristotelian and the position that Augustine develops is a more creative adaptation of his materials. Augustine wrote the first five books of the De musica in 387 as part of a series of treatises on the liberal arts which he projected shortly after his conversion. He tacked on the heavily Platonic sixth book in 391. Most of the commentators on the De musica fall into one of two camps. They either dismiss the first five books as a jejune rehash of ancient Greek rhythmics18 or else they read the main body of the De musica as a preface to the final book, treating the entire work as a systematic application of Platonism to music theory in which musical sound is understood as a moving shadow of an abstract,

17

St. Augustine, De dialectica 5, 9 (ed. J. Pinborg, trans. B. D. Jackson, Dordrecht 1975) 86-90, 106-12. Authors who have noted the Stoic content of this work include B. Fischer, De Augustini disciplinarian libra qui est de dialectica (Jena 1921) 32, 36-39; B. D. Jackson, 'The Theory of Signs in St. Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana,' in Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays (ed. R. A. Markus, Garden City, N. Y. 1972) 123-25; A. LeBoulluec, 'L'allegorte chez les Stoitciens,' Poetique 23 (1975) 307; J. Pepin, Saint Augustin et la dialectique (Villanova 1976) 72-98, 216; J. Pinborg, 'Das Sprachdenken der Stoa und Augustins Dialektik,' Classlca et mediaevalia 22 (1962) 158-74; comm. on his ed. 123 n. 2, 124 n. 3, 125 n. 4, 126 n. 7, 131 n. 2; A. Schindler, Wort und Analogic in Augustins Trinitdtslehre, Hermenuetische Untersuchungen zur Theologie 4 (Tubingen 1965) 76-77, 104; E. TeSelle, Augustine the Theologian (New York 1970) 225; M. L. Uhlfelder, '"Nature" in Roman Linguistic Texts,' Transactions of the American Philological Association 97 (1966) 588. 18 See in particular F. Amerio, II "De musica" di San Agostino (Torino 1929) 87-89, 100-06, 192-94; H.-I. Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique (4th ed. Paris 1958) 267, 270-73; A. Scharnagl, ' Aurelius Augustinus' "De Musica",' Musica 8/11 (November 1954) 481-83.

II St. Augustine's Rhetoric of Silence Revisited

21

silent reality.19 It is true that Augustine argues in Book 6 that musical sound can and should be transcended by an abstract, intellectual appreciation of the mathematical ratios that it expresses, just as corporeal things can and should be transcended by the incorporeal.20 Yet, even here, he conceives of silence, in the form of musical rests, as part of the sensible sounds that makes up the content of music,21 an idea that he analyzes much more extensively in the earlier portion of the work. Augustine discusses the musical rests, or silentium, in the context of the topic of musical meters and rhythm. Rests, he observes, have several functions. They are a musical form of punctuation, indicating that a metrical foot or a musical phrase has ended. They may also be used to lengthen a musical foot or to effect a transition from one musical meter to another. Rests, he adds, can be measured in terms of time, the same unit of measurement that defines the long and short syllables that make up a metrical foot. He illustrates this point with copious examples drawn from a host of poetic meters. Thus, he concludes, rests are an integral part of musical meters themselves. The aesthetic function of a rest depends on the quality and quantity of the particular meter with which it is associated. A rest may have a two-fold "time" when a spondee is placed after a choriamb; it may have a six-fold "time" when a bacchius is placed after a choriamb, and so on. The human ear perceives the "time" of a rest in precisely the same way that the ear perceives the "time" of a musical note. Both the rests and the notes are used to produce the same aesthetic effect.22 In this respect, according to Augustine, silence is sensible, just as sound is sensible. He does not contrast silence with sound but analyzes the contribution that they both make to the aesthetics of a musical phrase in the same terms. The 19 See in particular E. J. Dehnert, ' Music as Liberal in Augustine and Boethius,' Arts liberaux et philosophic: Actes du IVe congres international de philosophic medievale, Montreal, 27 aout-2 septembre 1967 (Montreal-Paris 1969) 987-91; H. Edelstein, Die Musikanschauung Augustins nach seiner Schrift "De musica" (Ohlau 1929) 46-118; W. Hoffmann, Philosophische Interpretation der Augustinussehrift de arte musica (Marburg 1931); J. Hur