§ 102.3.

  1. The Mystic Side of the Gulf.—Abælard’s most famous opponent was St. Bernard of Clairvaux (§ [98, 1]), born in A.D. 1091 at Fontaines near Dijon in Burgundy, died in A.D. 1153, a man of such extraordinary influence on his generation as the world seldom sees. Venerated as a miracle worker, gifted with an eloquence that carried everything before it (doctor mellifluus), he was the protector and reprover of the Vicar of God, the peacemaker among the princes, the avenger of every wrong. His genuine humility made him refuse all high places. His enthusiasm for the hierarchy did not hinder him from severely lashing clerical abuses. It was his word that roused the hearts of men throughout all Europe to undertake the second crusade, and that won many heretics and schismatics back to the bosom of the church. Having his conversation in heaven, leading a life of study, meditation, prayer, and ecstatic contemplation, he had also dominion over the earth, and by counsel, exhortation, and exercise of discipline exerted a quickening and healthful influence on all the relations of life. His theological tendency was in the direction of contemplative mysticism, with hearty submission to the doctrine of the church. Like Abælard, but from the opposite side, he came into conflict with the theory of Anselm; for the ideal of theology with him was not the development of faith into knowledge by means of thought, but rather the enlightenment of faith in the way of holiness. Bernard was not at all an enemy of science, but he rather saw in the dialectical hair-splitting of Abælard, which grudged not to cut down the main props of saving truth for the glorification of its own art, the overthrow of all true theology and the destruction of all the saving efficacy of faith. Heart theology founded on heart piety, nourished and strengthened by prayer, meditation, spiritual illumination and holiness, was for him the only true theology. Tantum Deus cognoscitur, quantum diligitur. Orando facilius quam disputando et dignius Deus quæritur et invenitur. The Bible was his favourite reading, and in the recesses of the forest he spent much time in prayer and study of the Scriptures. But in ecstasy (excessus) which consists in withdrawal from sensible phenomena and becoming temporarily dead to all earthly relations, the soul of the pious Christian is able to rise into the immediate presence of God, so that “more angelorum” it reaches a blessed vision and enjoyment of the Divine glory and that perfect love which loves itself and all creatures only in God. Yet even he confesses that this highest stage of abstraction was only attained unto by him occasionally and partially through God’s special grace. Bernard’s mysticism is most fully set forth in his eighty-six Sermons on the first two chapters of the Song of Solomon and in the tract De diligendo Deo. In his controversy with Abælard he wrote his Tractatus de erroribus Petri Abælardi. To the department of dogmatics belongs De gratia et libero arbitrio; and to that of history, the biography of his friend Malachias (§ [149, 5]). The most important of his works is De Consideratione, in 5 bks., in which with the affection of a friend, the earnestness of a teacher, and the authority of a prophet, he sets before Pope Eugenius III. the duties and dangers of his high position. He was also one of the most brilliant hymn writers of the Middle Ages. Alexander III. canonized him in A.D. 1173, and Pius VIII. in A.D. 1830 enrolled him among the doctores ecclesiæ (§ 47, 22 c).—Soon after the controversy with Abælard had been brought to a close by the condemnation of the church, Bernard was again called upon to resist the pretensions of dialectic. Gilbert de la Porrée (Porretanus), teacher of theology at Paris, who became Bishop of Poitiers in A.D. 1142 and died in A.D. 1154, in his commentary on the theological writings of Boëthius (§ 47, 23) ascribed reality to the universal term “God” in such a way that instead of a Trinity we seemed to have a Quaternity.At the Synod of Rheims, A.D. 1148, under the presidency of Pope Eugenius III., Bernard appeared as accuser of Porretanus. Gilbert’s doctrine was condemned, but he himself was left unmolested.[300]

§ 102.4.

  1. Bridging the Gulf from the Side of Mysticism.—At the school of the monastery of St. Victor in Paris, founded by William of Champeaux after his defeat at the hands of Abælard, an attempt was made during the first half of the 12th century to combine mysticism and dialectic in the treatment of theology. The peaceable heads of this school would indeed have nothing to do with the speculations of Abælard and his followers which tended to overthrow the mysteries of the faith. But the mystics of St. Victor made an important concession to the dialecticians by entering with as much energy upon the scientific study and construction of dogmatics as they did upon the devout examination of Scripture and mystical theology. They exhibited a speculative power and a profundity of thought that won the hearty admiration of the subtlest of the dialecticians. By far the most celebrated of this school was Hugo of St. Victor. Descended from the family of the Count of Halberstadt, born in A.D. 1097, nearly related to St. Bernard, honoured by his contemporaries as Alter Augustinus or Lingua Augustini, Hugo was one of the most profound thinkers of the Middle Ages. Having enjoyed a remarkably complete course of training, he was enthusiastically devoted to the pursuit of science, and, endowed with rich and deep spirituality, he exerted a most healthful and powerful influence upon his own and succeeding ages, although church and science had to mourn their loss by his early death in A.D. 1141.In his Eruditio didascalica we have in 3 bks. an encyclopædic sketch of all human knowledge as a preparation to the study of theology, and in other 3 bks. an introduction to the Bible and church history.[301] His Summa sententiarum is an exposition of dogmatics on patristic lines, an ecclesiastical counterpart of Abælard’s Sic et Non. The ripest and most influential of all his works, and the most independent, is his De sacramentis christ. fidei, in 2 bks., in which he treats of the whole contents of dogmatics from the point of view of the Sacraments (§ [104, 2]). His exegetical works are less important and less original. His mysticism is set forth ex professo in his Soliloquium de arrha animæ and in the series of three tracts, De arca morali, De arca mystica, and De vanitate mundi. He makes Noah’s ark the symbol of the church as well as of the individual soul which journeys over the billows of the world to God, and, by the successive stages of lectio, cogitatio, meditatio, oratio, and operatio reaches to contemplatio or the vision of God.—Hugo’s pupil, and from A.D. 1162 the prior of his convent, was the Scotchman Richard St. Victor, who died in A.D. 1173. With less of the dialectic faculty than his master—though this too is shown in his 6 bks. De trinitate, a scholastic exposition of the Cognitio or Fides quæ creditur—he mainly devoted his energies to the development on the mystico-contemplative side of the “Affectus” or Fides qua creditur, which aims at the vision and enjoyment of God. This he represents as reached by the three stages of contemplation, distinguished as mentis dilatatio, sublevatio, and alienatio. Among his mystical tracts, mostly mystical expositions of Scripture passages, the most important are, De præparatione animæ ad contemplationem, s. de xii. patriarchis, and the 4 bks. De gratia contemplationis s. de arca mystica. These are also known as Benjamin minor and B. major. In Richard there appears the first indications of a misunderstanding with the dialecticians which, among the late Victorines, and especially in the case of Walter of St. Victor, took the form of vehement hostility.

§ 102.5.

  1. Bridging the Gulf from the Side of Dialectics.—After Abælard’s condemnation theological dialectics came more and more to be associated with the church doctrine and to approach more or less nearly to a friendly alliance with mysticism. Hugo’s writings did much to bring this about. The following are the most important Schoolmen of this tendency.
    1. The Englishman Robert Pulleyn, teacher at Oxford and Paris, afterwards cardinal and papal chancellor at Rome, who died about A.D. 1150. His chief work is Sententiarum Ll. VIII. Though very famous in its day, it was soon cast into the shade by the Lombard’s work.
    2. Petrus [Peter] Lombardus [Lombard], born at Novara in Lombardy, a scholar of Abælard, but powerfully influenced by St. Bernard and Hugo St. Victor, was Bishop of Paris from A.D. 1159 till his death in A.D. 1164. He published a dogmatic treatise under the title of Sententiarum Ll. IV.; of which Bk. 1 treated of God, Bk. 2 of Creatures, Bk. 3 of Redemption, Bk. 4 of the Sacraments and the Last Things. For centuries this was the textbook in theological seminaries and won for its author the designation of Magister Sententiarum. He himself compared this gift laid on the altar of the church to the widow’s mite, but the book attained a place of supreme importance in mediæval theology, had innumerable commentaries written on it and was officially authorized as the theological textbook by the Lateran Council of A.D. 1215. It is indeed a well arranged collection of the doctrinal deliverances of the Fathers, in which apparent contradictions are dialectically resolved, with great skill, and wrought up together into an articulate system, but from want of independence and occasional indecision or withholding of any definite opinion, it falls behind Hugo’s Summa and Robert’s Sentences. It had this advantage, however, that it gave freer scope to scholars and teachers, and so was more stimulating as a textbook for academic use. The Lombard’s works include a commentary on the Psalms and Catenæ on the Pauline Epistles.
    3. The Frenchman Peter of Poitiers (Pictaviensis), one of the ablest followers of the Lombard, was chancellor of the University of Paris toward the end of the century. He wrote 5 bks. of Sentences or Distinctions, which in form and matter are closely modelled on the work of his master.
    4. The most gifted of all the Summists of the 12th century was the German Alanus ab Insulis, born at Lille or Ryssel, lat. Insulæ. After teaching long at Paris, he entered the Cistercian order, and died at an advanced age at Clairvaux in A.D. 1203. A man of extensive erudition and a voluminous writer, he was called Doctor universalis. He wrote an allegorical poem Anticlaudianus, which describes how reason and faith in union with all the virtues restore human nature to perfection. His Regulæ de s. theologia give a short outline of theology and morals in 125 paradoxical sentences which are tersely expounded. A short but able summary of the Christian faith is given in the 5 bks. De arte catholicæ fidei. This work is characterized by the use of a mathematical style of demonstration, like that of the later school of Wolf, and an avoidance of references to patristic authorities, which would have little weight with Mohammedans and heretics. He is thus rather an opponent than a representative of dialectic scholasticism. The Summa quadripartita c. Hæreticos sui temporis ascribed to him was written by another Alanus.

§ 102.6. The Controversy on German Soil.—The provost Gerhoch and his brother, the dean Arno of Reichersberg in Bavaria, were representatives of the school of St. Victor as mediators between dialectics and mysticism. In A.D. 1150 Gerhoch addressed a memorial to Eugenius III., De corrupto ecclesiæ statu, and afterwards he published De investigatione Antichristi. He found the antichrist in the papal schisms of his times, in the ambition and covetousness of popes, in the corruptibility of the curia, in the manifold corruptions of the church, and especially in the spread of a dialectic destructive of all the mysteries of the faith. The controversy in which both of these brothers took most interest was that occasioned by the revival of Adoptionism in consequence of the teaching of French dialecticians, especially Abælard and Gilbert. It led to the formulating of the Christological doctrine in such a form as prepared the way for the later Lutheran theories of the Communicatio idiomatum and the Ubiquitas corporis Christi (§ [141, 9]).—In South Germany, conspicuously in the schools of Bamberg, Freisingen, and Salzburg, the dialectic of Abælard, Gilbert, and the Lombard was predominant. Its chief representatives were Folmar of Triefenstein in Franconia and Bishop Eberhard of Bamberg. The controversy arose over the doctrine of the eucharist. Folmar had maintained like Berengar that not the actually glorified body of Christ is present in the sacrament, but only the spiritual substance of His flesh and blood, without muscles, sinews and bones. Against this gross Capernaitic view (John vi. 52, 59) Gerhoch maintained that the eucharistic body is the very resurrection body of Christ, the substance of which is a glorified corporeity without flesh and blood in a carnal sense, without sinews and bones. The bishop of Bamberg took offence at his friend’s bold rejection of the doctrine approved by the church, and so Folmar modified his position to the extent of admitting that there was on the altar not only the true, but also the whole body in the perfection of its human substance, under the form of bread and wine. But nevertheless both he and Abælard adhered to their radical error, a dialectical dismemberment of the two natures of Christ, according to which the divinity and humanity, the Son of God and the Son of man, were two strictly separate existences. Christ, they taught, is according to His humanity Son of God in no other way than a pious man is, i.e. by adoption; but according to His Divine nature He is like the Father omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient. In respect of His human nature it must still be said by Him, “My Father is greater than I.” He dwells, however, bodily in heaven, and is shut in by and confined to it. Only His Divine nature can claim Latria or adoratio, worship. Only Dulia, cultus, reverence, such as is due to saints, images, and relics, should be given to His body and blood upon the altar. Gerhoch’s doctrine of the Supper, on the other hand, is summed up in the proposition: He who receives the flesh of the Logos (Caro Verbi) receives also therewith the Logos in His flesh (Verbum carnis). Folmar and Eberhard denounced this as Eutychian heresy. A conference at Bamberg in A.D. 1158, where Gerhoch stood alone as representative of his views, ended by his opponents declaring that he had been convicted of heresy. In A.D. 1162 a Council at Friesach in Carinthia, under the presidency of Archbishop Eberhard of Salzburg, reached the same conclusion.

§ 102.7. Theologians of a Pre-eminently Biblical and Ecclesiastico-Practical Tendency.

  1. Alger of Liège, teacher of the cathedral school there, was one of the most important German theologians in the beginning of the 12th century. He resigned his appointment in A.D. 1121, to spend his last years in the monastery of Clugny, in order to enjoy the company and friendship of its abbot, Peter the Venerable; and there he died about A.D. 1130. The school of Liège, in which he had himself been trained up in the high church Cluniac doctrine there prevalent, flourished greatly during his rule of twenty years. His chief works are De Sacramentis corporis et sanguinis Domini in 3 bks., distinguished by acuteness and lucidity, and a controversial tract on the lines of Radbert against Berengar’s doctrine condemned by the church. In his De misericordia et justitia he treats of church discipline with circumspection, clearness, and decision.
  2. Rupert of Deutz, more than any mediæval scholar before or after, created an enthusiasm for the study of Scripture as the people’s book for all times, the field in which the precious treasure is hid, to be found by any one whose eyes are made sharp by faith. He was a contemporary and fellow countryman of Alger, and died in A.D. 1135. Though he refers to the Hebrew and Greek texts, he cares less for the literal than for the speculative-dogmatic and mystical sense discovered by allegorical exegesis. In his principal work, De trinitate et operilus ejus, he sets forth in 3 bks. the creation work of the Father, in 30 bks. the revealing and redeeming work of the Son, from the fall to the death of Christ, and in the remaining 9 books the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, from the resurrection of Christ to the general resurrection. He maintains in opposition to Anselm (who was afterwards followed by Thomas Aquinas) that Christ would have become incarnate even if men had not sinned (a view which appears in Irenæus, and afterwards in Alexander Hales, Duns Scotus, John Wessel, and others).In regard to the Lord’s Supper he maintained the doctrine of consubstantiation, and he taught like pope Gelasius (§ 58, 2) that the relation of the heavenly and earthly in the eucharist is quite analogous to that of the two natures in Christ.[302]
  3. The Benedictine Hervæus in the cloister of Bourg-Dieu, who died about A.D. 1150, was distinguished for deep piety and zealous study of Scripture and the fathers. He wrote commentaries on Isaiah and on the Pauline Epistles, the latter of which was ascribed to Anselm and so published among his works.

§ 102.8.