The thirteenth century has often been considered, justly so, the golden age of medieval Catholicism.
Among the achievements of that century were the influence of the papacy on civil affairs and society, the effectiveness of the new mendicant religious orders in taking the Christian message to the people, the organization of universities, the great intellectual achievements in creating summaries of theology, and the construction of soaring Gothic cathedrals.
In Scholasticism and in architecture it seemed that all of reality had been encompassed in grand syntheses, all at the service of the church under the leadership of the pope. The thirteenth century began with Innocent III as pope, the one who most nearly realized the ideals and goals of the medieval papacy.
I. INNOCENT III (1198-1216)#
Innocent III was born Lothair of Segni to a noble family in 1160. He had the best of academic credentials, studying theology at Paris and law at Bologna. As a student he wrote in almost disgusting detail On the Misery of the Human Condition. His other early works were On the Mysteries of the Mass and On the Four Marriages.
A. View of the Papacy#
Rising rapidly in the papal service, Lothair became a cardinal deacon in 1189 and was elected pope in 1198 while not yet in priest’s orders. He proved himself an able administrator. Less a canonist than a theologian, Innocent demonstrated considerable pastoral concern, but this was subordinate to his goal of papal authority.
Instead of “vicar of Peter” (the previous papal title), he preferred “vicar of Christ” (previously used for any bishop or priest but now employed for the first time, it seems, by the pope of himself) as more indicative of his authority, and he based his policies on the powers this title gave.
Innocent saw himself (as he put it at his coronation) as the intermediary “between God and man, under God and over man, less than God but greater than man, judge over all and judged by no one (save the Lord).” He interpreted the papal miter (a tall cap) as the sign of his religious office and the papal tiara (a triple crown) as representing terrestrial dominion.
Innocent might be the “servant of the servants of God,” but he also considered himself the verus imperator (the true emperor). When the crusaders brought back the supposed seamless robe of Christ, Innocent placed it on his shoulders.
Innocent called himself “Melchizedek,” a priest-king (cf. Hebrews 7:1–4), who would bring a centralized Christian society into being. To this end he worked for reform of the church:
Advocating celibacy of the clergy
Opposing simony
Combating bribery by the curia and usury in society
Enforcing canon law
Insisting that bishops be irreproachable and that priests be resident in their parishes
Religious concerns and not ambition as a world ruler apparently motivated his efforts to secure the freedom of the church, promote Crusades, and achieve peace among nations.
The centralization of the government of the church progressed under Innocent III and his successors in the thirteenth century. During the thirteenth century the practice of the pope providing (appointing) bishops and other high ecclesiastical officials on his own authority, a practice that began in the twelfth century, accelerated greatly.
The papal court during the twelfth century had become the court of appeal in a wide variety of cases (marriage and divorce, wills, vows, patronage, elections), and papal delegates and legates carried papal justice and authority throughout western Europe.
Innocent III continued the policy of regaining the boundaries of the original papal territories, and he effectively established the papal states as they existed for the rest of the medieval period. In order to be spiritually free, he felt he must also be politically free, but he was uncomfortable in the narrowing vice about the papal states that resulted from the empire controlling southern as well as northern Italy.
B. Relations with the Empire and Frederick II#
In the bull Venerabilem Fratrum (1202) Innocent affirmed the right of the Roman church to transfer the empire from one dynasty to another, as had been done in transferring it from the Greeks to the Germans in the person of Charlemagne.
The bull did not dispute the right of electors to choose the ruler, but it affirmed the right of the pope to examine the qualifications of the candidate, decide disputed elections, and settle moral issues involved.
After the death of Henry VI, Innocent initially sided with Otto IV, but then backed Philip of Swabia. On the latter’s death, Otto received the imperial crown from Innocent, but when Otto pursued his own policy in regard to Sicily, the pope excommunicated him. Innocent now put forward his ward Frederick II, son of Henry VI, but he did not prove the kind of ruler Innocent would have wanted.
The confused state of affairs in Germany is reflected by his election as king in 1211 being confirmed in 1212 and his being crowned king twice, in 1213 at Mainz and again in 1215 at Aachen. The empire was secured for him when the French defeated Otto IV and his English allies at Bouvines in 1214.
Frederick II was crowned emperor in 1220 by Pope Honorius III (1216–27) in St. Peter’s basilica after he agreed to make laws against heresy a part of imperial legislation, to uphold the rights of the church, and to go on a Crusade. Frederick then proceeded to exalt his imperial rule as comparable to that of ancient Rome alongside the papal authority.
His Crusade, the sixth, was the only one that turned out to be cursed and not blessed by the papacy. To the consternation of many, Frederick II negotiated rather than won by force of arms a peace with the Muslims that allowed Christian control of Jerusalem (except for the mosque of Omar), Bethlehem, Nazareth, and pilgrim routes from the coast, but new Turkish rulers soon reoccupied the areas.
An accomplished linguist and learned in the sciences, Frederick II was a religious skeptic. He had stormy relations with the papacy, being twice excommunicated by Gregory IX—in 1227 and in 1239—and declared deposed by Innocent IV at the Council of Lyons in 1245, the Thirteenth Ecumenical Council and the first case of the implementation of Gregory VII’s Dictatus Papae 12.
Death came in 1250. The ambivalent reactions to Frederick II are captured by the opposing evaluations of him:
Stupor mundi (“wonder of the world”) by his admirers for his great learning and abilities
“Antichrist” or the forerunner of the Antichrist by supporters of the papacy
C. Relations with England#
A disputed election of the archbishop of Canterbury drew Innocent III into the internal affairs of England.
The monks claimed the right to elect their own prior
The suffragan bishops claimed their right, supported by the king
Innocent set aside both candidates and installed Stephen Langton, who is credited in the history of biblical studies with the division of the Bible into chapters.
When King John (brother of Richard the Lionheart) refused Stephen Langton, Innocent placed England under the interdict, which meant that no sacraments could be performed (a punishment that had originated as an archepiscopal power but extended to a papal one), and excommunicated John. Philip II of France threatened to depose John, who then acquiesced and issued a charter of ecclesiastical liberties in 1213 granting free clerical elections, but reserving some rights for himself. He then went further and placed his realms under papal protection as a papal fief and gave an oath of fealty to Innocent.
Because of the king’s debacle at Bouvines, the barons extracted from King John at Runnymeade in 1215 the Magna Carta, a basic document restricting the crown’s feudal and sovereign rights and so preparing for the development of the liberties of the English people. Stephen Langton was involved in the affair and may have been the author of the document. The pope put himself on the wrong side of history when he declared that, since John was now a papal vassal, what happened at Runnymeade was also rebellion against the pope.
D. Fourth Crusade#
The Fourth Crusade (1202–4) was a joint papal and Venetian venture. The Doge (Duke) of Venice promised to outfit the crusaders if they would capture the rival commercial city of Zara (Zadar, Croatia) on the Balkan coast on their way to the Holy Land. Then the crusaders were persuaded to restore the deposed emperor Alexius IV by capturing Constantinople (1203–4). In the outcome, the city was pillaged and burned by the crusaders, many of its treasures were carried to Venice, and its relics were eventually dispersed over western Europe.
A Latin patriarch and Latin emperor were chosen. The division between the Latin and Greek churches was completed only at this time, when the hatred for Western Christendom by the people and clergy of the Greek Church began. The excommunications of 1054 did not have the popular impact that the damage wreaked on Constantinople in 1204 had.
The Fourth Crusade failed to help the Latin states in the East, greatly weakened the Byzantine empire, and further alienated the Greek Church from the Latin West. It was in this context that the Byzantine emperor, needing all the allies he could muster, recognized the Serbian church as autonomous and in 1219 appointed Sava, a monk from Mount Athos, its archbishop.
The crusading idea was still alive, and in 1212 the tragic Children’s Crusade took place. The crusade was joined by thousands of teenage boys from France and Germany—some sent back home, some perishing in a storm at sea, and some sold into slavery in North Africa and Egypt.
Innocent III then turned the crusading idea against the Albigensians in southern France. The idea of crusades was applied not only in southern France, but also to European political warfare in the Baltics and against Frederick II in southern Italy. Although Innocent III tried to keep the purposes of the church foremost and to restrain political crusades, later popes were even less successful.
II. THE MENDICANT RELIGIOUS ORDERS#
Poverty was one of the standard vows assumed by earlier monks, but this was understood of the individual, not of the community. Some monastic establishments in fact became quite well-to-do, such as Cluny and eventually some of the Cistercian houses. The more diligent and pious the monastic communities were, the more they flourished and the more outsiders wanted to assist the monks. With increasing ease of life, these successful communities became laxer in their religious life, so new reform movements arose in order to return to stricter ideals.
The mendicant religious orders should be seen as an expression of a wider enthusiasm in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries for evangelical poverty as forming the essence of the spiritual life. Various groups sought to imitate the life of the apostles in poverty and wandering evangelism outside of traditional religious communities, but not all who were impressed with these qualities were part of religious communities.
The lay men and women who were officially recognized as saints in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had in common charity work in imitation of Jesus Christ. They often combined preaching and criticism of Catholic priests with loyalty to the church. Their elevation to sainthood was due to promotion by the secular clergy, and their recognition was limited to their local diocese.
In common with Francis of Assisi, they had a penitential spirituality, a desire to conform their lives to the example of Christ, an emphasis on humility and poverty, and attention to the needs of the marginalized in society by almsgiving and encouragement. They differed from Francis in choosing to remain strictly in the lay state.
The mendicant friars emerged as a third type of medieval religious order alongside the monks living in monasteries and the canons, who served cathedral and sometimes parish churches. They differed from earlier religious communities in seeking to impose poverty on the order itself and not just on the individual members. They formed a counterpart within the church to the enthusiasm for “apostolic poverty” manifest in heretical and schismatic movements of the late twelfth century. These orders also departed from the practice of a cloistered life in order to engage in preaching to the people.
A. Dominic (c. 1170-1221) and the Dominicans#
Dominic was born in the region of Castile (northern Spain). Zealous and with good theological training, he assisted his bishop Diego at Osma in working among heretics and from him developed a style of itinerant, mendicant preaching on the example of the apostles.
In 1215 Dominic established in the diocese of Toulouse a society of preachers who were to prepare themselves by theological studies and a life of asceticism for the care of souls and instruction in the faith. This Ordo Fratrum Praedicatorum (“Order of Preaching Brothers,” abbreviated O.P.) was the first religious community dedicated to preaching. Innocent III recommended that the preachers follow the Augustinian Rule, and in 1216 Pope Honorius III gave official confirmation to the new order.
The order in 1220 renounced property and fixed incomes, but it maintained closer connections with the older orders and interpreted the obligation to poverty less strictly than the Franciscans. The order was to own only its actual houses and churches and be supported by alms—not by fixed revenues and income from properties.
Dominic’s own practices set the pattern for the order: strict life, poverty, fasting and other abstinences, prayer, penitence, and enthusiasm for intellectually informed preaching. Under the next general of the order, Jordan, the activities that became characteristic of Dominicans were further developed: preaching, care of souls, missions, combating heresy (Pope Gregory IX entrusted the Inquisition almost exclusively to the order), and training in theology (especially in the universities).
The order grew rapidly in the thirteenth century, gaining about 15,000 members in 557 houses by the end of the century. In the fourteenth century the Dominicans actively cultivated mysticism in Germany.
While Dominic lacked the warmth of religious feeling and the personality of Francis, he surpassed him in keenness of intellect, training, and practicality. Dominic was austere, systematic in his approach, a disciplinarian, and possessed of the qualities of an ecclesiastical statesman—in each respect the opposite of Francis.
B. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) and the Franciscans#
Francis, unpretentious and gentle, has been the best-loved (even by Protestants) of the medieval saints. This outstanding representative of medieval piety had an unpromising beginning as a dissolute youth, the son of a wealthy cloth merchant in Assisi (central Italy) whose affections for things French prompted the name for his son.
A lengthy illness led to the conversion of the high spirited, gallant youth and Francis’s decision to marry “Lady Poverty”. Notable steps in the redirection of his life included:
Exchanging his clothes with those of a beggar whom he met while on pilgrimage in Rome
Breaking with his father over his charity to the poor
Devoting himself to the repair of the church of San Damiano
Responding to the reading of Matthew 10:5–16 in the little church of the Portiuncula by adopting its directions literally for his life
Francis gave himself to bringing the message of the gospel in popular preaching to the masses. Interested also in preaching to non-Christians, Francis joined the Fifth Crusade in 1219 and gained permission to preach in Muslim lands before returning to Italy in 1220.
Francis was conspicuous for his humility, and as like-minded men joined him he named them the Ordo Fratrum Minorum (“Order of Little Brothers” or “Friars Minor,” abbreviated O.F.M). His first rule (Regula primitiva) for them, now lost, was written in 1209. In 1210 Pope Innocent III gave oral permission for the group to continue, with the condition that Francis and his companions receive tonsure and that Francis swear obedience to the pope and his companions swear obedience to Francis.
Not given to administration, Francis resigned as the group’s head in 1220, but he participated in the drawing up of a new rule in 1221 (Regula non bullata or Regula prima) in order to adapt the contents to the needs of a growing order. The Scripture citations and pious, edifying outpourings of the heart from the first rule were included, but more definite regulations were added.
The third rule of 1223 (Regula bullata), when Honorius III gave papal approval, was still less Francis’s work and provided for a more carefully arranged life to replace the freedom of the old wandering life of apostolic poverty and simple-hearted devotion.
The concern for nature and animals also found expression in his making a Christmas crib in 1223, beginning the still popular custom of manger scenes at Christmas.
Early on Francis was associated with Clare (c. 1193–1253), and in 1212 he invested her with the Franciscan habit and so instituted the “Poor Clares,” the “Second Order” of Franciscan nuns.
Clare settled at the church of San Damiano outside Assisi, where she was joined by other young noble women, forming the only women’s house “founded” by Francis.
She was the first woman to write a rule approved by the papacy (in 1253), and Innocent III exempted her community from the decree of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) that required new religious houses to follow one of the old monastic rules.
Like Francis, Clare refused to accept possessions and regular income for her community, resolving that they would live on alms and earnings from their own work. Such dependence on divine providence for day-to-day needs was especially daring for a group of women dedicated to the religious life.
Whereas for Francis and Dominic asceticism was a means of attaining inner freedom, Clare (and after her other female Franciscans and Dominicans) valued extreme abstinence as fundamental to Christian perfection. She was canonized in 1255, two years after her death.
Francis founded in 1221 the Third Order, “The Brothers and Sisters of Penance,” a lay community that tried to carry out the fundamental principles of the Franciscan life while continuing married life in the world.
The most unusual incident in Francis’s life was his receiving the stigmata on September 14, 1224. After a period of forty days of fasting, prayer, and contemplation on Mount La Verna, he had a vision in which a seraph flew toward him and filled him with unutterable pleasure. At the center of the vision was a cross with the seraph nailed to it. When the vision disappeared, Francis felt sharp pains in his body and then saw the signs of the wounds of the crucifixion of Christ on his own body. His closest disciple, brother Leo, is the principal source for the story of the stigmata, but other contemporaries indicate they had seen the wounds.
Exhausted from his sojourn on the mountain, Francis had to be carried back to Assisi, and he remained in ill health until his death on October 3, 1226. He was canonized two years later by Gregory IX. In 1230 his remains were transferred to the new double basilica at Assisi built in his honor (Romanesque lower basilica, 1230–32; Gothic upper basilica, 1232–39), adorned with works by several artists, including twenty-eight frescoes (painted 1296–98) depicting scenes from his life by Giotto, who marked the transition from Medieval to Renaissance painting.
Characteristic features of Francis and the Franciscan movement were poverty, humility, and simplicity. The Franciscans united an austere renunciation of the world with an evangelical mission to it. This combination introduced a basic tension into the movement.
After Francis’s death different tendencies among his followers came more into the open.
Some wanted the literal observance of the rule in the spirit of Francis’s original intentions, reaffirmed in his Testament toward the end of his life; they became the Spirituals
Others wanted more accommodation to traditional monastic orders according to the practice of the Dominicans, a position promoted by Elias of Cortona (Minister General 1232–39); these became the Conventuals
A middle party represented by the popular miracle-worker Anthony of Padua and the Minister General Bonaventure (see below) held the movement together for a time.
By 1300 the number of Franciscans was estimated at between 30,000 and 40,000, but the tensions over the interpretation of apostolic poverty produced sharp conflict in the fourteenth century.
C. New Features of the Mendicant Orders#
1 Mendicancy, or corporate poverty
With the return of a money economy to western Europe, poverty was exalted as a great virtue. Previously, the monks had opposed pride and gluttony by exalting obedience and chastity. Now with new wealth by commercial classes in the cities, existing alongside great poverty of the masses, the mendicants emphasized again the virtue of poverty, in part in response to the “apostolic poverty” advocated by heretical movements and critics of the church.
The Franciscans saw poverty as an end within itself and so were plagued with controversy over the subject, whereas the Dominicans viewed it (as they did learning) as a means to effective preaching and fighting against heretics.
2. Popular preaching
Another new feature of the mendicant orders was preaching to the common people by Francis, and to others by Dominic. At this first crisis presented by urbanization to the Western church, the friars responded with a pastoral concern for all strata of society, primarily in the cities, attempting to reach people by the example of virtuous lives and by communication of the gospel on the people’s level.
3. Education, especially university teaching
The rise of universities presented new challenges, and the mendicant orders had greater freedom to move into these new centers of learning. The Franciscans were not far behind the Dominicans in responding to the opportunities.
4. Third orders, or lay brotherhoods
The mendicant orders promoted a renewal of piety among the laity who responded to their preaching and were encouraged to translate their ideals into everyday life.
5. Immediate subjection to the Roman see
Several monasteries already enjoyed this status, but now the whole order was placed in this relationship. The centralized organization of each order with the relative autonomy of the provinces of each gave the papacy an efficient instrument to meet challenges facing the church.
6. Mobility
The friars were not bound to the old requirement of “stability,” staying in one’s “monastic place.” In the days of Benedict of Nursia “stability” was necessary in order to bring order and discipline to the monastic life. Now it was necessary to go to where the people were to bring the Christian message to them.
7. An order of friars
This was anticipated in some respects by the Cistercians, but now was developed more fully. The organizational structure instituted by the mendicants and their itinerant preaching meant that new recruits, unlike earlier monks, entered an order rather than an individual monastery and professed obedience to the order’s superior rather than to the head of a local house.
Other mendicant orders include the Carmelites (the “Order of the Brothers of Our Lady of Mount Carmel,” begun as hermits in the Holy Land in the twelfth century before they became mendicants and were recognized by Innocent IV in 1247), the Hermits of St. Augustine (recognized by Alexander IV in 1256), and the Servites (beginning as a lay brotherhood but adopting the Augustinian Rule in 1240 and recognized as a mendicant order by Martin V in 1424).
III. THE ORGANIZATION OF UNIVERSITIES#
The roots of the development of universities belong in the intellectual revival of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but the decisive period for their formation came in the latter half of the twelfth century, and their institutional organization was not defined until the thirteenth century.
Factors contributing to the emergence of universities as separate organizations were:
The increase in scholarly literature
The specialization in subject matter at certain places
The increase in the number of students
The internationalization of students and teachers
Traditional settings for education could no longer accommodate the situation. Students went to places where the subjects they wanted were taught. In education the teacher always matters more than the place, however famous its name.
Although the intellectual ferment out of which universities arose was most evident in cathedral schools, sometimes neither the teachers nor students were formally attached to either the cathedral, collegiate, or monastic schools—unlike the earlier situation. The chancellor of the cathedral chapter (as, for example, at Notre Dame in Paris) or the archdeacon (as at Bologna), however, did give teachers a license to teach.
In addition to the chancellor’s supervision, the teachers began to unite in order to control admission to their membership. They took as their model the craft and trade guilds, whose initiation ceremonies influenced the academic ceremonies.
At Bologna the students also formed a guild with strict regulations of the teaching by the professors (the Italian students were often in their thirties and forties and so were more mature).
The teachers at the schools in Paris formed a corporation to secure their rights and privileges.
That corporation became a model for many northern universities.
The universities became a third force in Christendom alongside the imperium (empire) and the sacerdotium (priesthood).
The word universitas first meant a legal corporation, in this case an organization of teachers and students. It was used this way for a gathering of teachers, of students, or of both, first attested in 1215. Its modern institutional sense of “university,” the whole community of students and masters, came into use at the end of the fourteenth century. “College” referred to the group of those persons who lived together; only later did it refer to the house itself.
Although the traditional seven liberal arts continued to be taught, a threefold classification prevailed:
Rational philosophy (grammar, rhetoric, logic)
Natural philosophy (metaphysics, mathematics, and physics)
Moral philosophy (ethics)
By the twelfth century the study of medicine was concentrated at Salerno (where there was already a long-standing fame in this field) and at Montpellier, the study of law was concentrated at Bologna, and by the end of the century philosophy and theology were the focus at Paris and Oxford.
The principal forms of teaching were by lecture and disputation
“Ordinary” lectures were on the fixed syllabus for the course of study and were compulsory
“Extraordinary” or “cursory” lectures were given by less prominent teachers and older students on less important subjects
Copies of the textbooks had to be made by hand or their contents obtained by notes on the teacher’s lectures. University cities became centers of a thriving book business.
Supervised by the church and administered by the professors, the early universities had a certain independence. The Third Lateran Council (1179) under Pope Alexander III decreed that each cathedral church was to provide a benefice to support a teacher, who was forbidden to collect fees from poor boys, and whose license to teach was to be granted without charge and was to be granted to any qualified candidate.
In Bologna the teachers depended for support on students’ fees. Students enjoyed the status of a cleric (clerk), receiving the tonsure (shaved head) to distinguish them from the laity but without receiving clerical orders (although in Italy laymen as well as clerics went to school).
Agreements with communal, ecclesiastical, or royal authorities gave a legal basis that was regularized from about 1200. Often these regulations were a codification of earlier customs. In cases of disputes with local authorities, the universities could generally count on the support of the papacy to ensure their independence.
At Paris the professors and students were exempted from civil jurisdiction by King Philip II Augustus in 1200 and within the next two decades from the jurisdiction of the bishop. The papacy issued a statute in 1215 maintaining its supervision of the “university,” which by 1222 had its essential organization in place.
There were four faculties in Paris
Theology (the first to attain autonomy, 1219)
Medicine
Liberal arts
Canon law
The professors and students were grouped according to four nations (French, Picard, Norman, and English, which included Germans and Scandinavians). The arts faculty was the largest and took the lead in disciplines other than theology, and its rector became the true head of the university. It moved increasingly to become a faculty of philosophy. In 1245 the pope gave the university its own seal and thus full legal existence.
The origins are obscure, but in the eleventh and twelfth centuries the study of law at Bologna experienced a growth in scope and importance.
Three systems of law contributed to the formation of western legal codes—Roman, Germanic, and ecclesiastical law—but before the eleventh century Germanic practices had been integrated into Roman law so that the two branches of study were based on Justinian’s compilation of civil law (but containing much pertaining to religion) and on the church’s canon law.
At Bologna the students were organized as guilds (universitates) according to their region of origin (“nations”). The Holy See established its control of the university from 1224 by subordinating professors and students, whether clerical or lay, to the local bishop, who appointed the chancellor. Each universitas of students elected its own rector, to whom was given the oath of obedience that incorporated the student into the university.
At Oxford the papal legate in 1214 granted privileges to the studiumwhich was placed under the bishop of Lincoln, who selected the chancellor from the professors of theology. The bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosseteste, himself a former chancellor, gave the statutes to the university in 1252–53.
In the early centuries of the church most theological thought was produced by bishops (apart from some outstanding teachers like Justin and Origen). In the early Middle Ages it came especially from monks (who in some cases were also bishops, as Anselm and Peter Lombard). From the twelfth century onwards theology came from the professors in the universities.
The peak of medieval intellectual culture attained in the thirteenth century, then, was due to three factors:
1. The development of universities
As “iron sharpens iron” (Proverbs 27:17), the proximity and contact of keen minds stimulates learning and remains the basic component of university intellectual life.
2. The presence of the mendicant orders
The friars, not bound by the limitations of traditional monastic orders, were available to move their best minds into new situations and immediately saw the opportunities that universities provided for their preaching mission. Dominicans were at Paris by 1217, and Franciscans two years later. There were sharp conflicts between representatives of the older orders and the friars over teaching prerogatives at the universities, but the mendicants established themselves as permanent and formidable participants in intellectual life.
3. The availability of the entire corpus of Aristotle
Some of Aristotle’s writings on logic had been available throughout the Middle Ages, but the complete corpus became available to western Europe in the thirteenth century. Some became known by a circuitous route—translated from Greek into Syriac in the early Christian centuries, then into Arabic after the Muslim conquests of the Near East, and then introduced to Latin scholars in southern Italy and Spain where there was direct contact with Arabic learning.
Translations from Arabic into Latin, as well as contacts between Western Christians and Muslims, had begun well before the Crusades, but these accelerated in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The philosophy of Arabic thinkers like Avicenna and Averroës and Jewish thinkers like Maimonides (chapter 22), all of whom sought to interpret faith in revealed religion in relation to the philosophy of Aristotle, had a significant influence on Christian intellectual life. The works of Aristotle were also translated directly from Greek into Latin.
The presence of a formidable non-Christian system of thought, especially as it was incorporated into Muslim philosophy, stimulated the thinking of Scholastic theologians.
IV. THOMAS AQUINAS (1225-74)#
Other thinkers produced summae in the thirteenth century, but this enterprise reached its summit in the work of Albert the Great and his greater student Thomas Aquinas, who produced a synthesis of faith and reason, of science and sanctity, that still today in principle, if not in details, has its appeal.
Thomas was the youngest son of the count of Aquino.
At five he was sent to school at nearby Monte Cassino.
When Frederick II expelled its monks in 1239, Thomas went to Naples, which had the first university independent of the church (founded by Frederick II in 1224) to finish his arts course.
There he resolved to pursue an intellectual career and enter the Dominican order, which he did in 1244.
His family, strongly opposed to this, held him prisoner for fifteen months before relenting.
Thomas went to Paris, where he came under the influence of Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus). Albert’s gifts were more in natural science than philosophy and theology, but he introduced Thomas to Aristotle and to a program of reconciling Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology. Thomas accompanied Albert to Cologne in 1248; he then returned to Paris as a lecturer (1252–59) and received his Master of Theology in 1256.
As a theologian to the papal court in Italy (1259–68), Thomas studied Aristotle especially, and then he returned to Paris (1268–72). While teaching in Naples (1272–74), Thomas was sent as a theologian to the Council of Lyons (chapter 24), but died on the way.
The Augustinians who defended the old methods in theology and enemies of the mendicant orders both opposed Thomas, who was caught up in the controversy over the adoption of Arabic philosophy by some professors in the arts faculty. Attacks on various teachings by Thomas both before and after his death evidence both a confusion of faith with its traditional defense and “guilt by association.”
The extent of Thomas’s writings is immense. His philosophy is expounded in a series of commentaries on Aristotle and others. Much of Thomas’s theology and spirituality is contained in exegetical commentaries on the Bible, which for him was the only source of revelation.
The culmination of Thomas’s literary work came in:
Summa contra Gentiles, an apologetic work synthesizing Christian arguments against non-Christian views
Summa Theologiae, a systematic theology left unfinished at his death but completed by his students from his other works
Thomas wrote his Summae in the form of the Scholastic quaestio, a written dialogue. The four parts of his Summa Theologiae are divided into articles (statements of a question), and the discussion of each article has five segments:
The statement of the issue in a “yes” or “no” form
A list of objections to the position he will adopt
A statement of Thomas’s own viewpoint
Arguments for this position
An answer to each of the objections raised to his position
Thomas’s great achievement was to place Aristotle at the service of the church, completing a task begun by Albert. Christian theology from the patristic period had been built up in a Platonic (specifically Neoplatonic) philosophical framework. It was the achievement of Thomas to reconstruct Christian theology according to Aristotle, although there is a lot of Plato in him as well. He aimed at a philosophical and theological synthesis of his inherited Christian ideas with the new Greek, Jewish, and Arabic sources now available to him in Latin translations.
Central to Thomas’s use of theological language was his principle of the analogy of being. Words used of God that are also used of human beings do not have the same meaning (univocity), nor do they have different meanings (equivocity). Rather they have similar meanings, because they have something in common; they are analogous.
The basic approach of Thomas was to make a clear distinction but not a separation between reason and faith, between nature and grace, and between the corresponding natural theology and revealed theology.
Thomas said reason could demonstrate the existence of God. He formulated five proofs for the existence of God, building on Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover. These “five ways” are different formulations of the cosmological argument, reasoning from observable effects back to a First Cause.
Thomas rejected Anselm’s ontological argument as only applicable for a purely intelligent being; but human beings as both body and mind must begin with sense perception. Here he follows Aristotle’s epistemology, that the basis of knowledge is information received through the senses that the mind then organizes and generalizes.
One can learn of the existence of God by the use of the reason, but the Trinity, in contrast, is a matter of revelation. Revelation is necessary even for truths that can be learned by reason, for such truths otherwise “would be known only by a few, and that after a long time, and with an admixture of error.”
This principle was applied in various areas.
In ethics, the four virtues of classical antiquity—prudence, courage, moderation, and justice—are supplemented and completed by the three revealed virtues of Christian teaching—faith, hope, and charity—to give the seven cardinal virtues.
In the field of law, there is a natural law that can be discerned by reason to which all human beings are subject. Human governments establish positive laws in addition to this for their subjects. There is also a revealed law (the Mosaic and the gospel) that applies to believers. Natural law serves as a standard for evaluating positive laws.
Thomas’s theology shows a special interest in the incarnation and the sacraments. He noted that the incarnation would not have occurred without the fall. The incarnation came about through the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was not herself, however, immaculately conceived.
Thomas also set forth the basic doctrine of the sacraments, but this part of his Summa was incomplete at his death. The sacraments are channels of God’s grace, which is thought of—in Roman Catholic theology generally in contrast to Protestantism—not so much as God’s attitude toward human beings, but as a kind of substance that can be infused into human beings.
Thomas employed the Aristotelian distinction between substance (what something really is) and accidents (outwardly perceived qualities) to explain transubstantiation and argued from the presence of the whole Christ in each of the elements of the eucharist to justify communion in one kind (the bread) by the laity.
Thomas also set forth the basic doctrine of the pope as the successor of Peter who personifies the church, defines what the faith is, and has fullness of authority that must be obeyed in order to receive salvation.
The Dominicans officially imposed Thomas’s teachings on the order in 1278. The Church of Rome:
Canonized him in 1323
Declared him a “doctor of the Church” in 1567
Enjoined his study on all students of theology in 1879
Made him the patron of all Catholic universities in 1880
Only in recent years has the dominance in Catholic theology and philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, the “Doctor Angelicus,” weakened.
In recent times the question has been raised whether the influence of Thomas’s distinction between reason and faith, and between philosophy and theology, led to secularization. If so, it was far from his intention and was a long time in coming.
V. FRANCISCAN ALTERNATIVES TO THOMAS AQUINAS#
The Franciscan counterpart to Thomas Aquinas was Bonaventure (c. 1217–74), born Giovanni di Fidanza and known as the “Doctor Seraphicus.”
After joining the Franciscan order in 1243, Bonaventure studied theology under Alexander of Hales in Paris and received his doctorate (1253–54). He was a professor in Paris until 1257 when he was elected Minister General of his order. He took an active part in the Council of Lyons, dying shortly after the reunion with the Greek church was proclaimed.
A theologian, a mystic, and a philosopher, Bonaventure showed himself a great systematic mind with clarity and comprehensiveness of analysis. One of his major theological writings is the Breviloquium (1256–57).
Faithful to the Augustinian tradition, Bonaventure made the love of God rather than the truth or knowledge of God the goal. Although the contrast may be exaggerated, the Dominicans sought to enlighten the mind whereas the Franciscans aimed at changing the heart.
Bonaventure gave priority to the study of the Scriptures as the foundation of theology: “The whole of Scripture is the heart of God, the Hexaemeron mouth of God, the tongue of God, the pen of God” (Collationes in 12.17). Order to guide the interpretation of the Scripture:
The councils of the church
The writings of the fathers
The teachings of more recent masters
Bonaventure’s greatest work of mystical theology, the Mind’s Journey to God, was written as a guide to contemplation and sets forth his view that all learning is directed toward the love of God.
Bonaventure’s doctrine of divine illumination provides the foundation of his philosophy. The simplest act of knowing requires something more than a knowable object and a knowing mind; there must be light by which the perceiver perceives what is perceived.
The natural light makes possible sense perception
The interior light of reason makes possible the grasping of philosophical truths
The light of grace makes possible the reception of the revealed truths of faith
There is a continuity between natural knowledge and “supernatural” illumination, but the difference in degree between human reason and faith becomes a difference of kind.
The cosmological argument is valid only in virtue of the actual presence of God to the human mind as the light of its understanding; the ontological argument is not really an argument at all but an interpretation of God’s immediate presence in the soul. The existence of God really needs no demonstration, being self-evident as a matter of direct observation. Religious knowledge is not a mere inference but the interpretation of experience.
Every object in the universe, according to Bonaventure, speaks to us of God (the doctrine of exemplarism).
Some objects are only a shadow of God’s existence
Others, having a more distinct resemblance, are a trace of the divine
Others, as in the case of the soul, are an image of God.
When we seek God within, we turn towards him, for there is a small spark (scintilla) of pure divine light within the soul. The ordinary person of good will, as easily as the learned scholar, can see God clearly.
Roger Bacon (c. 1220–c. 1292) was an Englishman, a Franciscan, and a student and teacher at Oxford (where he came under the influence of Grosseteste) and Paris. He could be sharply critical of those with whom he disagreed, including Thomas Aquinas, but he never constructed an alternative philosophical system.
He complained of the practice of the faculty of theology at Paris in giving preference to lectures on the Sentences of Peter Lombard over lectures on the Scriptures. His interests in nature and in the wider world scene (especially Islam, with an emphasis on the need to learn Arabic), so that he conceived a plan for evangelizing the world, were reflective of the broader intellectual interests possible by the thirteenth century, but the extent of his influence at the time appears to have been minimal.
John Duns Scotus (c. 1265–1308), called the “Doctor Subtilis” as the sharpest thinker of the Middle Ages, represents the climax of Franciscan Augustinism. He was born in Scotland and joined the Franciscans there, studied and taught in Oxford, completed his doctorate in Paris, and died in Cologne—such was the international character of scholarship in the Latin West.
Duns Scotus became the master theologian of the Franciscan school. Continuing the work of Bonaventure, he differed from the latter in being primarily a philosopher without his predecessor’s mysticism.
In the philosophical issues of the day Duns took a mediating position between
The Aristotelianism of Thomas
The Augustinism of Henry of Ghent
holding against the former that the intellect can have an intuitive knowledge in addition to the knowledge of universal ideas abstracted from sense experience and against the latter that necessary principles can be known by natural knowledge and are not limited to the certitude that only divine illumination can bring.
He rejected both negative theology (humans can only affirm what God is not, since language about God and humanity is equivocal) and Thomas’s philosophy of analogy and instead affirmed univocity, arguing that analogy indeed implies (if only in a limited way) univocity.
One of Duns’s characteristic emphases is voluntarism, the thesis that the will is primary and independent with regard to the intelligence. God is primarily will, not the union of will and intellect that he is in Thomas.
Christ’s coming, as the supreme manifestation of God’s love, is not made dependent on the fall. Duns was the first major theologian to defend the immaculate conception of Mary.
Like other Scholastic theologians of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Duns Scotus saw a harmony of reason and faith but he separated them more than Thomas Aquinas did. Whereas Thomas rested theology on philosophy, Duns placed a gap between them. His criticisms of Thomas’s system provided a basis for the distinct Franciscan theological tradition into the eighteenth century.
VI. POPULAR PIETY#
The spirit of the age that produced the great syntheses in theology found expression in an encyclopedic collection of saints’ lives designed to encourage devotion to the saints by the laity. As Aquinas’s Catena aurea compiled a commentary on the Gospels from patristic comments, James of Voragine about the same time (in the 1260s) collected saints’ lives in the Legenda aurea (Golden Legend). James was a Dominican and later (1292 to 1298) archbishop of Genoa. Arranging his accounts according to the dates of saints’ days in the liturgical calendar, he employed simple language and added miracle stories. His popularizing work was successful, for his compilation became the most copied text of the Middle Ages, surviving in more than 1,000 manuscripts and translated into nearly all the vernacular languages of western Europe.
“Books of Hours,” giving devotions for the daily hours of prayer, began in the thirteenth century. These were often beautifully decorated with miniature paintings.
VII. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AND ART#
The extensive building programs of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are indicative of the devotion of the people as well as of the increasing prosperity of those times. Churchmen and cities vied for the prestige of building the tallest and largest buildings. One means of encouraging financial support was the granting of indulgences to those who contributed, so that money that once went to support crusades went to the construction of religious buildings.
They and their art offered a “model” of the cosmos, a summary of history, a mirror of the moral life, and an image of the heavenly city. Reflective of all reality, many of the Gothic churches included sculptures of kings, common people, and even demons in addition to saints. Romanesque churches looked like fortresses for refuge in troubled times; Gothic churches, on the other hand, were characterized by openness and harmony, corresponding to Scholasticism’s emphasis on rationality and the reconciliation of opposites. As indicative of the prominence of the cult of Mary in the later Middle Ages, most Gothic cathedrals were dedicated to her.
Three other external characteristics of the developed Gothic style are easily observed in contrast to its Romanesque predecessor:
Pointed instead of rounded arches
Cross-ribbed instead of groin vaults
Flying buttresses (first used in a Gothic cathedral at Notre Dame, Paris)
All had been used before, and such stylistic and technical features, although characteristic, are less important than the overall conception of architectural space. Gothic represented an integrated, unified design in contrast to the modular design of a combination of parts in Romanesque. Two aspects of this coordinated effect that were without precedent are their proportions and their luminosity. The characteristic elements of Gothic were brought together in order to achieve soaring height and to open up space.
The proportions may be seen both in horizontal and vertical dimensions. As in Romanesque architecture, the use of transepts gave to Western Gothic churches the shape of a T, the Latin cross. They were constructed in segments of three, each unit of equal size.
The choir on the east end was three units in length, the third unit intersected by the transepts, each one unit in width.
The nave was six units long, ending at the west entrance.
If “massive” is the word for Romanesque, “verticality” is the word for Gothic architecture, which seems to defy, or even reverse, gravity. The flying buttresses made possible higher and thinner walls. The verticality was emphasized by the use of spires instead of the squat towers of Romanesque buildings.
Since the walls were higher and thinner, much greater use became possible of windows, which had the appearance of transparent walls. Stained glass came into its own and after the mid-twelfth century replaced frescoes in the decoration of wall surfaces. Window glass with colored figures was a development of the medieval West. Stained glass refers to molten glass colored by the addition of metallic oxides, then hardened, cut into pieces, painted, and set into a design.
Subjects depicted in stained glass included Christological scenes, biblical history, and saints’ lives. Glass was expensive, ranking with gold and silver in preciousness. Economic prosperity, therefore, and not a new interest in the theology of light, which was always present in the Christian tradition, made possible the stained-glass triumphs of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but the theology of light was invoked to justify the luminosity that stained glass made possible. As the glory of Christian art in the late antique and Byzantine periods was walls and domes covered with mosaics and in the Romanesque period was illuminated manuscripts, its glory in the high Middle Ages was stained glass.
In the art of the medieval West, devotion to Christ and Mary moved from judgment to passion. The Christ in glory or in judgment shown in the tympanum of Romanesque churches continued to be present in Gothic churches, but instead of an emphasis on the threat of damnation more space was given to the hope of salvation. The program was much enlarged:
Angels holding instruments of the passion
The Virgin Mary and St. John as intercessors
The angel Michael weighing souls
The resurrection of the dead
Other frequently appearing subjects in medieval sculpture are the apostles, prophets, angels, the wise and foolish virgins, and personifications of virtues and vices.
This supplementing of Christ as judge with scenes of Mary as queen of heaven and virgin mother has been interpreted as a shift from the potentially frightening concern with eschatological themes to an expression of a more forgiving aspect of the Virgin as intercessor.
Besides the stone carving on the outside and occasionally on the inside of churches, wood carving found expression on the inside on choir screens, choir stalls, crucifixes, and free-standing statues of the Virgin.
Churches were used for burial of prominent people. By the beginning of the thirteenth century the shallow effigies set into the floor of churches began to be replaced by figures in high relief resting on free standing tombs or recessed into niches.
The theme of the suffering Jesus had appeared in art as early as the eleventh century, but it now became more pronounced. This cult of the human Jesus has been related to the crusaders’ interest in Jesus’ homeland, but the attention to the body of the dying Christ was especially promoted by the concerns of the Franciscan Order.
This shift in the artistic and devotional tradition is evident in the way the crucifix began to change in the thirteenth century. Christ on the cross was no longer the draped and passionless figure “ruling from the cross” but was now shown more realistically as naked except for a loin cloth, legs crossed, in a twisted pose showing the writhing agony. The Romanesque royal Christ was being replaced by the Gothic “Man of Sorrows.”
VIII. SUMMARY#
The thirteenth century witnessed some of the greatest accomplishments of medieval Western Christianity: the influence of the papacy, the growth of the friars as a new expression of monasticism, the development of universities as independent intellectual centers, great systems of thought in philosophy and theology, and splendid Gothic cathedrals as triumphs of piety and technical skill. Not all was a story of success, however, and there were at work other forces and movements that would bring about the dissolution of the medieval synthesis in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.