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The Summa Halensis and Augustine Lydia Schumacher The Summa Halensis and Augustine Abstract: Augustine of Hippo is, without adoubt,the authority that the Summa Ha- lensis invokes most frequently. This has led the editors of the Summa and many other scholars subsequentlytoconclude thatthis text and the earlyFranciscan tradition more generallyislittle but an effort to systematize the tradition of Augustine that had prevailed for most of the earlier Middle Ages. In turn, that assumption has led to atendency to downplaythe significance of earlyFranciscan thought and to its ne- glect in scholarship. This chapter will highlight some significant ways in which the Summa departs from Augustine in the process of innovation. In the first of three case studies, Iwill show how the Summa employs amethodology, in fact,scholastic methodology, which invokes invoking authorities likeAugustine with aview to ad- vancingits own opinionswhich are not necessarilyfound in Augustine himself. In two further studies, Iwill examine how the Summa departs from Augustine on two of its most fundamental theological doctrines concerning the nature of God as one and as Triune. Augustine of Hippo is, withoutadoubt,the authority thatthe Summa Halensis in- vokes most frequently.¹ Accordingtoits Prolegomena,this multi-volume Franciscan text which was initiallyoverseenbyAlexander of Hales cites over 100 works by Au- gustine, some spurious but most of them genuine. In total, it contains 4,814explicit and 1,372implicit quotations to Augustine, which amounts to more than one quarter of the texts cited in the bodyofthe Summa.² Although the Prolegomena acknowledge that ‘the whole Western Christian tradi- tion was nourished by his [Augustine’s] writingsuntil the introduction of Aristotle’,it describes the Summa Halensis as particularlysignificant in this regardfor one main reason, namely, ‘that bothits theologyand philosophycollatethe tradition of Augus- tine, and are ordained to its defense’,inaworld whereAristotle’srecentlyrediscov- ered works wererapidlyrising in popularity.For this reason, the Prolegomena con- See Victorin Doucet, ‘Prolegomena in librum III necnon in libros IetII“Summae Fratris Alexan- dri”,’ in Doctoris irrefragabilis Alexandri de Hales Ordinis minorum Summa theologica,vol. 4(Quarac- chi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1948), lxxxviii: ‘Patres Latini’;cf. Jacques-GuyBougerol, ‘The Church Fathers and auctoritates in Scholastic Theology to Bonaventure,’ in TheReception of the Church Fathers in the West,ed. Irena Backus(Leiden: Brill, 1996), 289–335, esp. 301. Formoreinfor- mation on the relationship between Alexander’sworks and the Summa,see Victorin Doucet, ‘ANew Source of the Summa fratris Alexandri,’ Franciscan Studies 6(1946): 403–17;Victorin Doucet, ‘The History of the Problemofthe Authenticity of the Summa,’ Franciscan Studies 7(1947): 26–41;Victorin Doucet, ‘The History of the Problem of the Authenticity of the Summa (Continued),’ Franciscan Stud- ies 7(1947): 274–312. Doucet, ‘Prolegomena,’ lxxxviii. OpenAccess. ©2020 Lydia Schumacher,published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative CommonsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110685022-005 34 Lydia Schumacher cludes,the Summa ‘is universallyand rightlyseen as the foundation of the Augusti- nian-Franciscan school in the 13th century’.³ Forthe authors of the Summa,its editors assumed, there was consequentlylittle major difference between the Augustinian and Franciscan schools otherthan that the latter was more systematicallyand comprehensively expressed. Thus, one of the first modernmedievalists, Franz Ehrle, defined the Franciscan school as ‘neo-Augustini- an’ in away that influenced manysubsequent scholars, to the present day.⁴ By most accounts, this schoolofthought is one that Alexander’sprizestudent Bonaventure articulated in its mature form.⁵ Moreover,itisthe school of thought from which later Franciscans like John Duns Scotus eventuallydeparted in favour of following the new Aristotelian—and modern—intellectual trends.⁶ Although prevalent and longstanding, scholarlyassumptions about the Augusti- nian character of earlyFranciscan thought have not been subjectedtothe test of sus- tained research, in part because this tradition of thought has been dismissed from the start as amere attempt to bolster an Augustiniantradition whose authority sup- posedlybegan to diminish in the times of earlyFranciscans themselves. In the proc- ess of researching the work of their school, however,significant reasons emerge to re-think theirrelationship to Augustine. Someofthese reasons pertain to the meth- odologythey employed in developing their arguments, which, on closer examina- tion, complicateastraightforward reading of quotations to Augustine as indicators Doucet, ‘Prolegomena,’ lxxxviii. Franz Ehrle, Grundsätzliches zurCharakteristik der neueren und neuesten Scholastik (Freiburgim Breisgau: Herder,1918). BernardVogtfollowedEhrle’sreading in an importantarticle, ‘Der Ursprung und die Entwicklungder Franziskanerschule,’ Franziskanische Studien 9(1922).Étienne Gilson argues that Aquinas critiqued aFranciscan rendering of Augustine in his landmark article, ‘Pourquoi saint Thomas acritique saint Augustin,’ Archivesd’histoiredoctrinale et littéraireduMoyen Age 1(1926–7): 5–127. More recent scholars whohavesupported the Augustinian reading of earlyFranciscans in- cludethe following: A.-M. Hamelin, L’écolefranciscaine de ses debuts jusqu’àl’occamisma,Analecta mediaevalia Namurcensia, 12 (Louvain: Nauwelaerts,1961); Leone Veuthy, ScuolaFrancescana:filo- sofia, teologia,spiritualia (Rome: Miscellanea Francescana, 1996): LeonardoSileo, ‘Iprimi maestri francescani di Parigi ediOxford,’ in Storia della teologianel Medioevo,ed. G. D’Onofrio (Casale Mon- ferrato:Piemme,1996), 645–97. Étienne Gilson, ThePhilosophy of St Bonaventure (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1938); Joshua Ben- son, ‘Augustine and Bonaventure,’ in TheT&T ClarkCompanion to Modern Theology,ed. C.C. Peck- nold and Tarmo Toom (London: T&T Clark, 2013). Bonaventurenames Alexander of Hales as his ‘mas- terand father’ and claims to add nothingnew to what he learned from his teacher in Doctoris Seraphici S. Bonaventurae operaomnia,10vols (Quaracchi: Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1882–1902), 2:1–3. Olivier Boulnois, Être et representation: Une généalogie de la métaphysique moderne àl’époquede Duns Scot (Paris:PressesUniversitaires de France, 1999); Hans Blumenberg, TheLegitimacyofthe Modern Age (Cambridge,MA: MITPress, 1985): Ludger Honnefelder, Scientia transcendens: Die for- male Bestimmung der Seiendheit und Realität in der Metaphysik des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit (DunsScotus,Suárez, Wolff,Kant, Peirce) (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag,1990); Michael Allen Gilles- pie, TheologicalOrigins of Modernity (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 2008). The SummaHalensis and Augustine 35 of exactallegiancetohis opinions. Other reasons concern certain key theological concepts they developed, which clearlydiverge from Augustine’sown views. Although Icannot discuss all the methodological or conceptual movesthe Sum- mists make thatcall for the reconsideration of their relationship to Augustine, Iwill present threecase studies, which collectively provide abasis for doing so in the many cases where they use Augustine. The first will illuminatetheir methodologyinways that requireustothink more critically about the meaning they attribute to quotations from Augustine.⁷ The second and third will assess the doctrines they endorse con- cerningthe one God and the Trinity, which represent two clear cases—and arguably the most central aspects of earlyFranciscan theology—in which they depart from Au- gustine in obvious ways. The Summa’sMethodology The period in which Alexander and his colleagues worked was one in which the scholastic method, as high medievalscholars came to employ it in the 13th century particularly, was onlybeginning to develop. As manyreaders will be aware, this method required scholars to marshalauthoritiesfor and against acertain position before developing their own opinion about it,alsoinconversation with authorities. Although it was the common methodfor advancingbothwritten and oral arguments in the medieval university, the wayinwhich the scholastic method was deployed— and how to interpret its uses of authoritative sources—has rarelybeen the subject of extensive research, especiallyfor the earlyperiod in question. This maybebecause scholars of medieval thoughthavesimplytended to assume that scholastic thinkers quoted authorities in much the same waythat scholars do so today, thatis, in the effort accuratelytopresent and interpret their views. As we have seen, this assumption has led scholars to conclude that earlyFranciscans operated in aprimarilyAugustinian cast of mind. Although modernscholars have admittedlyrec- ognizedother influences and nuances as relevant in the case of different thinkers, they have drawnasimilar inference about earlier figures like Anselm and Hugh of St Victor,bothofwhom have been called an alter Augustinus, and even Peter Lom- bard, around half of whose Sentencesare quotations to Augustine.⁸ What the ‘Augustinian’ readingofsuch thinkers neglects to appreciate is the ex- tent to which every scholar at this time was constrained on some level to position themselveswith reference to the key representative of the Western Christian tradi- Formoreonthis see Lydia Schumacher, ‘The EarlyFranciscanDoctrineofthe Knowledge of God: Between Augustine’sAuthority and Innovation,’ TheMedieval Journal 6(2016): 1–28. See
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