A number of ecclesiastical factors influenced the intellectual revival of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
The peace movement associated with Cluny
Monastic reform efforts
Growth of the papal monarchy that drew clerics and lawyers to Rome
The Investiture Controversy that sparked the study of law and production of a pamphlet literature
Factors in society at large included:
The expansion of trade and commerce with the resulting development of urban life
Political stabilization that brought a greater degree of internal peace and easier communication
Increased prosperity that could pay for the copying of manuscripts and creation of works of art
Translations of philosophical and scientific works from Arabic and Greek resulting from contacts with Muslims and Greeks
While these factors set the context, intellectual movements can seldom be traced to external factors alone.
Monasteries had operated exterior schools in the liberal arts for those not entering the monastery, as well as interior schools for the training of their monks. The latter emphasized spiritual formation through the reading of the Bible and the church fathers and participation in liturgical life. The monasteries kept a glimmer of learning alive even in the most difficult of times.
Over time, cathedral schools for clerics developed a different approach to learning over against the monastic schools. The cathedral schools put relatively more emphasis on logic and philosophy.
Previously ethics was the ruling element in liberal arts teaching. By 1180, however, philosophy was no longer the practical discipline of virtuous living. Instead, philosophy had become a theoretical discipline concerned with dialectics and metaphysics. Whereas monastic theology was content to admire the divine, scholastic theology began to speculate.
As a result of these changes, the center of education had shifted by the twelfth century from monastic schools to cathedral schools and out of the latter came the universities.
The teacher in the cathedral schools was commonly known as the scholasticus, and the new learning that grew up has, therefore, been called Scholasticism. There was something new in the intellectual life of the eleventh and subsequent centuries, but the term “Scholasticism” has been used in so many ways that for the word not to be useless some careful definition of its different elements must be given.
I. ASPECTS OF SCHOLASTICISM#
The exposition of the books of the Bible was a staple of education in the schools. Annotations to the Latin Bible had been compiled by many since the Carolingian period, but these became standardized in the twelfth century as a textbook for basic courses in theology.
Central in this development was Anselm of Laon (d. 1117), who collected extracts from the church fathers arranged as marginal and interlinear glosses on the text of the Bible. The activity was continued Ordinaria in his school at the cathedral of Laon and resulted in the Glossa (“Ordinary Gloss”), which began circulating about 1130. Later revised by Peter Lombard (chapter 22), it became the standard medieval commentary on the Bible that was widely used as a work of reference.
Scholasticism was a text-based culture
Scripture was the primary text, because it put human beings into direct contact with the divine
Commentaries on Scripture, the writings of the church fathers, and the texts of Aristotle and commentaries on him were also authoritative
The making and studying of commentaries on texts were important for Scholasticism. These texts were so inexhaustibly rich that they defied human efforts to grasp them fully. Scholastic thinkers started with the premise of doctrinal unity. Apparent contradictions in the authoritative texts led to the exploration of the relation of authority and reason.
Scholasticism may be defined in relation to:
Attitude (confidence in reason)
Method (dialectical reasoning)
Content (the philosophical question of universals)
Form (collecting authorities and arguments pro and con on a question)
As to attitude, the Scholastics were characterized by great confidence in the powers of reason. They were convinced that there is no contradiction between faith and reason—Anselm more than most. He sought to demonstrate the propositions of faith—the existence of God, the Trinity, original sin, and the atonement—by the use of reason alone. Later thinkers were more chastened in their expectations of what reason could accomplish, but they were dedicated to the use of reason in exploring matters of faith.
Among some Scholastics a subtle shift occurred whereby the authority of reason assumed the position formerly held by the authority of the fathers on whom they commented.
As to method, the Scholastics employed dialectical reasoning, which historically meant oral discussion by question and answer. The scholastic method was a technique of interpreting texts and teaching that involved distinctions, definitions, and disputations. The method involved:
Presenting a problem (quaestio)
Stating arguments for and against (disputatio)
Proposing a solution (sententia)
Authorities were cited on opposite sides of questions, and some sort of reconciliation was sought.
The Scholastics were certainly not the first Christian thinkers to use reason, but they sought to demonstrate and to expound the truths of religion by logic. The study of dialectics or logic was the area where the intellectual revival first appeared. Scholasticism was characterized by the application of critical reasoning to matters of faith.
By reason the early Scholastics especially meant the relation between universals (class concepts, going back to the “Ideas” of Plato) and particulars (individual representatives of a class).
Every student even in the “Dark Ages” studied the Isagoge (“Introduction” to the logic of Aristotle) written by Porphyry and translated into Latin by Boethius. The crucial passage that raised the question of universals was the following:
Next concerning genera [classes of objects with common characteristics] and species [manifestations of a larger class] the question indeed whether they have a substantial existence [Realism], or whether they consist in bare intellectual concepts [Conceptualism and later Nominalism] only or whether, if they have a substantial existence, they are corporal or incorporeal, and whether they are separable [extreme Realism] from the sensible properties of the things (or particles of sense), or are only in those properties [Moderate Realism] and subsisting about them, I shall forbear to determine. For a question of this kind is a very deep one and one that requires a longer investigation.
Indeed, the question occupied Scholastics for four centuries.
“Realism” (from the Latin res, “thing” or a reality) referred to the real existence of universal concepts (“Ideas” or “Forms”) and so is used differently from the term “realism” as used in later philosophy.
“Nominalism” (from the Latin nomen, “name”) referred to the position that a class concept was only the name given to the common characteristics of members of the class and had no real existence of itself.
The principal positions that emerged were three:
1. Extreme realism
This position is represented by Anselm and corresponds to Plato’s view, which said that universals have real existence apart from and prior to individuals. This position, dominant in early Scholasticism, was expressed by the Latin formula universalia ante rem (“universals are before the individual thing”).
2. Moderate realism
This position is represented by Thomas Aquinas and—following Aristotle—said that universals are real, but always exist in actual individuations, existing as form to matter. This position, which became dominant in the thirteenth century, was expressed by the formula universalia in re (“universals are in the individual thing”).
3. Nominalism
This position is represented by William Ockham, who said that universals are only inferences drawn from observing individuals. This position, dominant in the fourteenth century, was represented by the formula universalia post rem (“universals are after the individual thing”).
The form in which later Scholastics presented their arguments grew out of their methods, being much indebted to the disputations of the schools and then especially to Abelard’s arrangement of citations of authorities on different sides of a question.
From these methods of teaching derived literary genres.
In teaching, the lectio (reading, lecture) was the reading of an authoritative text followed by commentary on its meaning. The commentary expounded the literal meaning (littera), paraphrased it (sensus), and then gave the teacher’s view of the doctrinal issues (sententia).
In the disputatio the master posed questions, the students gave responses in favor or opposed, and the master gave a final determination.
Even as the lectio came to be recorded in commentaries, so the disputatio gave rise to the quaestio, the literary equivalent of oral disputations.
- In the quaestio two opposite views were juxtaposed. These views were discussed according to several distinctions so as to arrive at perspectives from which an element of truth was found in each or an ultimate synthesis was possible.
Questions came to be discussed as problems in their own right, independent of the texts that gave rise to them. Exegetical quaestiones arising out of the biblical text, especially from the letters of Paul, began to be debated separately, and from these disputations arose “theology” as a separate academic discipline.
II. THE SECOND EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY#
The first theological controversy in which the new dialectical reasoning of the schools had been employed was the eleventh-century eucharistic controversy.
The cause of the controversy was the teaching of Berengar, born at Tours about 1000 and educated under Fulbert at Chartres. He became Scholasticus at the cathedral of Tours, where he taught students to seek the literal, inner meaning of Scripture, not the allegorical meaning.
Since the ninth-century eucharistic controversy, the view of the physical real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the eucharistic elements had grown in popularity as a center of devotional piety.
The occasion of the outbreak of the second controversy was a letter Berengar sent in 1049 to Lanfranc, prior at Bec and later archbishop of Canterbury, unsuccessfully seeking his support in opposition to this materialist interpretation.
After raising the issue of the materialist interpretation of the elements, Berengar came to use grammar and logic in arguing against that viewpoint. Jesus’ statement “This is my body” cannot mean the substance of the body becomes the substance of the bread, as his opponents claimed, because grammatically the predicate nominative (“body”) must take its meaning from the subject of the sentence (“this,” that is the bread), not the reverse. Unless the substance of the bread continued, the proposition (“This bread is my body”) was meaningless because there was no referent for “body.”
Moreover, “qualities” or “accidents” (the sensible properties) of objects cannot exist apart from their substance (correct according to Aristotle), so the qualities of bread could not exist apart from the substance of bread. In addition, there is the obvious point that a change into a physical presence is contrary to the senses.
His positive position may be described as dynamic symbolism: The consecrated elements do not become the body and blood, but produce the effects of Christ on the recipient.
Berengar was condemned at Rome in 1050. He received more favorable treatment at a hearing at Tours, where Hildebrand was present as the papal legate. In 1059 at Rome, Berengar was forced to read a grossly material confession and to consign certain of his works to the fire. The literary warfare continued, but a council at Rome in 1079 marked the final defeat of Berengar before Hildebrand, now Pope Gregory VII.
The advocates of a real physical presence who used dialectical reasoning in support of their position succeeded before the end of the eleventh century in establishing the theory of transubstantiation as the mode of sacramental change.
anfranc used the terms “qualities” and “essence,” not the Aristotelian terminology of “accidents” and “substance” that came to prevail. He spoke of the elements as “converted in their essence [essentiam] into the body of the Lord,” already the concept, but not yet the terminology, of transubstantiation (change of substance). Guitmund popularized the phrase substantialiter mutari (“to be changed in substance”).
The oath required of Berengar in 1079 included the first official use of the phrase “changed substantially” (substantialiter converti). The word transsubstantiatio for the change of the elements began to appear about 1140. The idea was that the substance of the bread and wine became the substance of the body and blood, but the “accidents,” the accidental qualities (appearance, taste, smell, touch), remained those of the bread and the wine.
Anselm and others in the twelfth century related the doctrine of transubstantiation to the rest of catholic theology, especially of the incarnation. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 used the word “transubstantiation” in its statement of the change of the bread and wine by divine power into the body and blood of Christ, but theologians of the time saw this usage by the council as only a rejection of a non-materialist interpretation, not as a definitive statement on the mode of the real presence.
Liturgical practices reflected the theological development. From the twelfth century, communion in one kind by the laity (the bread) was accepted
The whole Christ was communicated in one element
There was less danger of spilling or contaminating the wine if it was taken only by the priest
About 1200 the practice of elevating the host (hostia, “sacrificial victim,” used for the eucharistic breads) and the chalice became common, so the people would know the exact moment of consecration (spoken in Latin, not understood by most of the people).
III. THEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE CONTROVERSY OVER UNIVERSALS#
When the philosophical question of universals was applied to matters of faith, the issue became crucial for the doctrines of the Trinity, original sin, the incarnation, and the church.
One can see the potential for difficulty by considering the views of Roscellinus (1050–1120), the founder of Nominalism.
He held that universal substantia categories are names and do not have real existence.
He used (“substance”) in its old philosophical sense of individuation or hypostasis.
Thus, accepting Boethius’s definition of man as “rational substance,” he saw only individual human beings as really existing and “man” as only a name for their common features.
Applying this same thinking to the Trinity, Roscellinus said each Person (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) was a rational individual. He denied that the Trinity could be una res (“one thing” or “one reality”), but must be three individuals, in effect “three gods.” “Deity” is not a universal, and each of the Three Persons is omnipotent and not subordinate to the others.
Roscellinus was important because he helped Anselm formulate his own philosophical position of Realism, although the term was not used yet, shown in his treatise De fide Trinitatis et de Incarnatione Verbi (“On Faith in the Trinity and on the Incarnation of the Word”) written in answer to Roscellinus. The ancient church had a philosophical corpus not available in the Middle Ages, so the problem of the One and Three had to be worked out anew. By way of Augustine, the western Middle Ages was the heir of Platonic Realism and this was reappropriated in saying that the universal is “Being,” hence all Three are One, who “is.”
The realist interpretation of universals provided a helpful way to explain various doctrines.
The transmission of original sin can be accounted for if there is a real human nature—corrupted by the first sin—that exists apart from individual human beings.
In the incarnation the Son of God took on this universal human nature.
The church as the body of Christ has a reality beyond the individuals who are its members.
IV. ANSELM OF CANTERBURY (1033-1109)#
The outstanding intellectual figure of the late eleventh century and turn of the twelfth century was Anselm. His Life was written by his devoted disciple Eadmer, of doctrinal importance as an early advocate of the immaculate conception of Mary.
Anselm has been called the “Father of Scholasticism,” but it is difficult to assign a singular paternity to such a multiform development as Scholasticism. The use of dialectical reasoning and the renewed exploration of the problem of the one and the many preceded Anselm, and the distinctive form of later Scholastic treatises derived from Abelard’s approach.
Anselm certainly typified the Scholastic confidence in the powers of reason, and he employed dialectics and formal logic to demonstrate the truths of the faith. But his use of reason must be set in the context of the intellectual circumstances of his time. His approach was a response to the situation that in the schools ancient texts were being treated less as authorities to be repeated and more as beginning points for further inquiries.
The second eucharistic controversy had exposed the difficulty of debating over the meaning of authoritative texts. The way around this impasse was through a careful consideration of words and their meaning: Logic could provide a demonstration of truths beyond simply citing authoritative texts on different sides of an issue.
Anselm was born at Aosta in Italy and was a religiously sensitive youth.
He went in 1060 to Bec in Normandy, famous for the teaching of another Italian (from Pavia), Lanfranc.
Anselm became prior at Bec in 1063, during which time he wrote the Monologion and Proslogion, and became abbot in 1078.
He continued to follow in the steps of Lanfranc, succeeding him as archbishop of Canterbury in 1093.
In a quietly courageous pontificate, Anselm defended the church against the royal control of William Rufus (d. 1100), son of William the Conqueror.
Conflict between the king and the archbishop came to a head at the Council of Rockingham (1095) over the recognition of Urban II as pope over against the imperial antipope favored by Rufus. Most of the clerics were with the king, but Anselm won over the barons to his side. The real issue was the spiritual rights of the church. Anselm took Urban’s pallium from the altar, not the pallium in the hand of the king. The king came to recognize Urban, but he fabricated charges against Anselm that forced him to leave the country.
Anselm went to Rome in 1097 and then to Capua, where he wrote Cur Deus Homo and worked out his formulation of transubstantiation (Letter 54). Chosen as a theologian for the Council of Bari in 1098, he wrote against the Greeks:
On the Procession of the Holy Spirit
On the Eucharist
On Unleavened Bread
At Bari Anselm met Ivo of Chartres (chapter 20), who worked out the basis for the settlement of the Investiture Controversy adopted in 1122 but first implemented by Anselm in England.
The new king of England, Henry I, recalled Anselm in 1100, but Anselm’s refusal to do homage to the king led to another exile in 1103. When he returned in 1106, he worked out a compromise recognizing the rights of the church and the crown respectively in appointments to church office.
Anselm did not claim that reason by itself could discover the truths of Christian revelation, but once these truths were made known by revelation and accepted by faith, reason could demonstrate them. This approach shows that in the Middle Ages fides (“faith”) had become an intellectual, almost a philosophical, term (as was one of its uses in classical antiquity).
Anselm was a man of gentleness and goodness who has remained one of the best respected thinkers in church history. He himself was so full of the traditional authorities for Christian thought and so humble that he was unaware of the originality of his own thought.
Two aspects of Anselm’s thought deserve attention as particularly influential:
His arguments for the existence of God
His satisfaction theory of the atonement
Both represent his approach of “faith seeking understanding.”
Anselm’s Monologion seeks to prove God’s existence from the characteristics of nature.
The presence of good in ascending degrees of goodness leads to the one supreme Good.
Being points to a first cause, the supreme Being (a form of the cosmological argument).
The hierarchy of perfections climaxes in the perfections of God, the Trinity.
In the Proslogion (also titled “Faith Seeking Understanding,” as noted above), Anselm sought to combine these arguments into one embracing argument—the ontological argument.
Ever since Gaunilo, the ontological argument has been controversial in philosophy. Does the argument’s formal logical validity correspond to reality, or is the argument only a playing with words, a mental construct? Thinkers as diverse as Descartes, Spinoza, and Hegel have followed Anselm; others as varied as Aquinas and Kant have not accepted the argument.
Anselm also made a major contribution to explaining the atonement, the central doctrine of Christianity, but also its least authoritatively transcribed doctrine (never the subject of conciliar definition). Cur Deus Homo (“Why the God-Man”) offered a logical proof for the satisfaction theory of the atonement. An epoch-making treatise, it is the most coherent statement of what has been the dominant Western explanation of the basis of Christian faith.
Anselm drew his imagery from feudalism, but his theory was not simply a reflection of Germanic legal theory. As a student of Augustine, Anselm employed motifs older than feudalism. More of the conceptual basis of his theory was due to a shift that had occurred in sacramental doctrine.
In the ancient church the principal point in a person’s religious life and the means by which forgiveness was obtained was baptism. Baptism gave the imagery of victory in the water over the forces of evil that contributed so powerfully to the classical theory of the atonement as a victory won over the Evil One.
That imagery derived from baptism as an individual’s decision to renounce a former way of life was no longer meaningful, however, in an age when baptism was a routine act administered to infants. Access to the altar where communion with the death and resurrection of Christ was obtained came now by penance, which was the sacrament where persons were conscious of having their sins declared forgiven.
The eleventh and twelfth centuries saw the doctrinal formulation of the sacraments of eucharist (transubstantiation) and of penance (satisfactions and “redemptions”). Hence, sacrifice and satisfaction became key categories and provided the imagery for Anselm’s theory of the atonement.
With the view that the eucharist is consubstantial with Jesus Christ, it offered more of a participation with Christ than was associated with baptism, and this participation was not with the victorious Christ of early Christian baptism but with the sinless humanity that went to the cross. The center of interest now was Christ on the cross.
Three of the major theories of the atonement popular in the West were present in the early twelfth century.
The ransom theory (variously formulated), according to which Jesus Christ paid the ransom to release mankind from the slavery to the devil that resulted from sin, was the most popular theory in the church fathers and so has been called the “Classic” theory of the atonement. It continued to be maintained by Bernard of Clairvaux, who lived intellectually in patristic theology (chapter 22).
The moral-exemplary theory of the atonement has had fewer champions throughout history, but it was advanced in the twelfth century by Abelard (below).
The sacrificial or satisfaction theory had an initial statement by Tertullian, but found its classic formulation in Anselm. It was the view that eventually won the largest following.
As a rational demonstration of the atonement, Anselm’s exposition seems to allow God merely to acquiesce in turning the benefits of Jesus Christ’s death over to the world, but Anselm affirms this is an act of the divine mercy. As with any rational theory of the atonement, God is operative in only a minimal way so that the whole transaction is almost impersonal.
The very personal aspects of the ransom theory of the atonement declined not only because baptism and its earlier imagery had lost its significance, but also because of philosophical Realism. It made a real personal devil almost impossible, for in Realism evil is the absence of the good. Even as the divine mercy has a more formal appearance, so too does the devil.
On the positive side, Realism made possible an abstract “humanity” that Jesus Christ could assume. This too, however, had its down side, for the identification of Christ with his brothers and sisters is not so evident with a “God-Man.”
The expression of human involvement and human feelings in redemption formerly given to Jesus was now given to Mary. Mary at the cross and at the tomb became two favorite pictures of the later Middle Ages.
V. PETER ABELARD (1079-1142)#
Abelard came from a knightly background that perhaps contributed to his sense of superiority. He studied under
Roscellinus (a Nominalist)
William of Champeaux (an exaggerated Realist who introduced dialectic argument into his instruction in metaphysics and theology)
Anselm of Laon
After giving a brilliant refutation of William’s Realism, Abelard began lecturing to enthusiastic classes at Paris with no qualification except his genius. He became head of the school of Notre Dame in 1113 and decided to turn from philosophy (dialectics) to theology.
Abelard’s career was cut short, however, in 1118 by the tragic issue of his love affair with one of his students, Heloise, niece of Fulbert, a canon of Notre Dame. When Heloise became pregnant and their affair was discovered, they secretly married, although Heloise attempted to dissuade Abelard from this step, willing to be his mistress rather than his wife so as not to impede his clerical career.
Having been mutilated at the instigation of Fulbert, Abelard decided to dissolve their union by placing Heloise in a convent and becoming a monk at the monastery of St. Denis (Denys).
Heloise, after later receiving the monastery of the Paraclete as a donation from Abelard, became its abbess and made it (with its six daughter houses) one of the foremost women’s religious houses in France. She was known for her intelligence, interest in education for all nuns, and competent administration.
Attacks on Abelard’s doctrine of the Trinity as Modalist led to his being condemned unheard at a council at Soissons in 1121. His criticism of the legend that the patron saint of St. Denis was Dionysius the Areopagite, Paul’s convert at Athens, forced him to flee from there. He established a small oratory called the Paraclete near Troyes, and in 1127 he became abbot of St. Gildas. He resumed teaching in Paris in 1136.
Bernard of Clairvaux secured Abelard’s condemnation at Sens in 1140, a condemnation confirmed by the pope in 1141. The errors charged against him, in addition to his Trinitarian doctrine, were:
An exaggerated optimism about creation
Nestorian leanings in regard to Jesus Christ
A latent Pelagianism on grace
Transforming the atonement into a lesson in charity
Neglecting the objective element in morality by an excessive insistence on the subjective element (the motive)
The conflict between Bernard and Abelard was more than a theological controversy. Theirs was a clash of two kinds of education:
Bernard represented the older education based on Scripture, monastic exegesis, and loyalty to tradition and oriented toward prayer and contemplation.
Abelard represented the new scholastic philosophy that put the curiosity and investigative power of logic at the service of faith.
The career of Abelard marks the birth of the kind of person who is at home in the modern university, the professional academic.
At the end Abelard was received at Cluny by Peter the Venerable and was reconciled to the church and to Bernard. With a nice touch of French romantic sentiment, when Heloise died, she was buried beside Abelard at the Paraclete; their remains were taken to Paris after the French Revolution and now rest in the Père Lachaise cemetery.
Abelard anticipated Thomas Aquinas in his approach to theological language. Abelard recognized that there is a lack of agreement between human language and the divine nature. They have enough in common to make meaningful communication possible, but there are enough differences that all talk of God, who is unique, is ambiguous and subject to misunderstanding. The task of the theologian is to find answers as close to the truth as possible.
The most significant of Abelard’s many works was Sic et Non (“Yes and No”) in which he arranged statements from the Bible and the church fathers on opposite sides of 158 questions. The object was not to discredit the authorities of the church, but to stimulate study. This method exercised a decisive influence on the form of Scholasticism: the citing of authorities pro and con became the pattern of study.
Not only citing the fathers disparately, Abelard (without attempting a reconciliation of viewpoints), suggested five ways to treat differences in their texts, an elaboration of comments by Augustine:
One text was not authentic.
A given statement was only a summary of an opponent’s position to be refuted by the Father.
A given opinion had only local significance, later superseded by the opinion of popes or councils.
Shifts of meaning due to translation or an author’s peculiar use of language required that semantic distinctions be made.
If there remain real contradictions, then one must appeal to a determination of authorities according to the scale of the Bible first, Augustine second, and others third.
Abelard’s treatment introduced the disputation into university study, made for more care in the use of patristic authorities, and led to a greater use of dialectics.
Abelard stated his moral influence theory of the atonement in his Commentary on Romans. In contrast to Anselm’s doctrine of an objective theory of atonement, Abelard had a subjective theory
God sent his Son as a revelation of his love and as a teacher and example.
In Jesus Christ the love of God was made manifest.
This love awakens a loving response in human beings, and this love is the basis of forgiveness.
Abelard’s view of ethics, set forth in Know Yourself (Scito te ipsum), emphasized that right action is determined by motive alone, the intention of doing the will of God. Abelard did not deny, however, that the intention must be informed by a knowledge of right and wrong that was dependent on revealed truth.
On the question of universals, Abelard began nearer Nominalism and opposed Realism, but he moved to an intermediate position, Conceptualism.
Universals are conceptions, useful but neither real nor mere names
Concepts in the mind agree with external reality; names or words correspond to the understanding that exists in the mind of God.
His formulation proved too vague, but prepared for Aquinas’s Moderate Realism.
The great influence of Abelard was not as a writer but as a teacher. Of his students, one became pope, twenty-five became cardinals, and fifty became bishops. Abelard was not the medieval representative of liberal rationalism he is sometimes made out to be, for he saw himself as a faithful servant of the church. He did mark out new lines of approach and identify new issues, once people caught up with him and the problems he recognized.
The career of Abelard is a striking illustration of how today’s “heretic” may mark out the lines on which tomorrow’s orthodoxy will be defended. On the other hand, Abelard was an unstable person — self-willed and arrogant, as too many brilliant persons are — not the kind an institution depends on.
VI. THE LATER HISTORY OF SCHOLASTICISM#
Scholasticism continued to be a vital educational curriculum in the fourteenth and subsequent centuries and has had a modern revival in Neoscholasticism. The philosophy of Thomas Aquinas became the official Catholic philosophy and until the mid-twentieth century was equated with Catholic orthodoxy.
Neoscholasticism made a clearcut distinction between the philosophy and theology of the thinkers studied, although this was not the way the latter saw their work. Diversity among scholastic theologians is now better recognized, and the form and content of their writings is seen as integrally related.
Moreover, Neoscholastics omitted the mystics from their concern, although nearly all the scholastic thinkers had an element of mysticism in them. The role of Cistercian monks in the creation and dissemination of the Glossa Ordinaria shows that contemplative (monastic) learning and scholastic (in the nascent universities) learning were intertwined.