Page 261

Page 261

281 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Scholasticism

of theology from the close of the eleventh century was the forerunner arrived with the middle of the twelfth. Intellectual activity, hitherto only ecclesiastical, now turns also to the nat¢. Awaken- ural life and benefits. Laymen enter

ing of the upon literature. The world picture Twelfth becomes richer and broader, and in Century. sight into human life deeper. History supplants chronicle. Understanding makes place for the unity of development and for human individuality. Poets present real human characters; interest in nature awakens. The thirst for reality craves first-hand inquiry and knowledge. Free spirits with a daring criticism and independent judgment, even toward ecclesiastical offices and institutions, are to be found now in the Church. In the wider movement the question of the time was whether the former unity of the ecclesiastical and the secular philosophy could be longer maintained. To do this theology laid an extensive lien upon philosophy (Aristotle) in order to satisfy the new interests and perchance to win them to the confines of the ecclesiastical point of view. As of old, so now, with the rise of the universities, theology was to be the queen of the sciences. Monasticism under took preaching and the advancement of science. A wealth of new material and a power of method were afforded by the study of Aristotle and his Ara bian commentators. Then there was Augustine, rich in metaphysics and psychology, and versatile in his fine observations of life. His smoothly chiseled and opulent formulas, the spiritual vigor of which now first attained to appreciation, lured to imita tion. A host of well-disciplined churchmen, of in defatigable industry and brilliant endowment, sprang up to make the Church supreme in every de partment as in no other era.

At first only Aristotle's writings used from antiquity were in evidence, as that on the categories and De interpretatione (dialectica vetus).

S. Revival Then, in the twelfth century the whole of Aristotle. organon (dialectica nova) came into use, introduced by the translation of Bollthius (q.v.) and later by John of Venice (c.1128). But it was through the Arabian philosophers that the rest became known, from the beginning of the thirteenth century. The Arabian commentaries and amplifications brought with them a plethora of prob lems, but many also in the pantheistic form of the Neoplatonists (see NEOPLATOmsM) of the unity of the active intellect in humanity, the eternity of mat ter, and the denial of individual immortality, ren dering the reconcilement of positive religion with secular philosophy ever more difficult and ultimate ly impossible. Although Avicenna and Averrhoes (qq.v.) had asserted that science did not abolish but rather sustained practical views of religion, yet orthodox theology had condemned it. In this occa sion the tide of Eastern philosophy again set in, in the West. This had to coordinate itself on Western ground with church dogma and the Augustinian spirit, finding in these, on the one hand, more flesh of its own flesh than in the doctrines of the Koran; and, on the other, the narrower limitations of ex actly formulated dogma. Besides, the new influ ences were afforded many starting-points in the

dialectic spirit for the particular and the newly awakened interest in elementary problems, in the construction of cosmic views, and in the knowledge of nature. The consequence as a whole was the eager resort to the dialectic art of Aristotle, and gradually his methodical physics, psychology, metaphysics, and theory of knowledge adapted themselves. Of importance to this influx of Greek philosophy was the De divisione philosophice (c. 1150) of Dominicus Gundissalinus, including all those Aristotelian branches in the circle of necessary school studies. Wide theological circles, however, held themselves aloof from many articles of the new system. This is not surprising in view of the recurrence of the entire movement hostile to Abelard. A provincial synod at Paris (1210) condemned the writings of Amalric of Bena (q.v.), consigned those of David of Dinant (q.v.) to the flames, and prohibited the private or public reading of Aristotle's natural philosophy and the comments of Averrhoes thereon under threat of excommunication. The legate Robert forbade the reading of the metaphysics and natural philosophy and the comments on the same at the University of Paris in 1215; but as early as 1231, Pope Gregory IX. recommended expurgated copies, and twenty-four years later they were adopted by resolution of the faculty of arts, .so rapidly did Aristotelian study snake headway in science and purely formal interests. Theology, also, gradually followed. Indeed, the great theologians before Alexander and Albert regarded the intellectualism and the logical analysis of the concepts of Aristotle as profane. They held to the older theology of a realistic world of divine ideas, according to the Augustinian formulas, which would become manifest to spirit living in fellowship with God, which were illumined from above. The spirit of Anselm and Hugo rather than the method of Abelard guided -theology till the middle of the thirteenth century. But its scientific character was to be maintained. The entering wedge was the admission of the method of Abelard, and led to farther advance in the direction of the particular. A negative result was frequently the wrangling over words and the art of confusing the subject by hair-splitting distinctions. Yet it served as a tutelage for method of thought and the minor work for the approach of the most complex problems with Aristotelianism and its new questions and tools. The signal of wavering is already apparent in the writings of the stanch orthodox William of Auvergne (bishop of Paris, after 1228); but pronounced is the dialectic practise and interest to solve everything in the Summa aurea of William of Auxerre (d. 1231 or 1237).

III. The Scholastic Period of the Thirteenth Century: 1. The Franciscan Advance: The originator of scholastic theology in the narrower sense of the term was the Franciscan, Alexander of Hales (q.v.), author of the Summa universce theologise. This is neither a commentary nor a citation of Lombard, but a broadly outlined systematic work. A mass of material is collected which is arranged, criticized, and logically elaborated with untiring industry. The questions and problems raised by him and also many of his solutions became the proto-