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Nicholas of Lyra (And Paul of Burgos) on the Pauline Epistles

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Nicholas of Lyra (And Paul of Burgos) on the Pauline Epistles NICHOLAS OF LYRA (AND PAUL OF BURGOS) ON THE PAULINE EPISTLES Ian Christopher Levy Nicholas of Lyra was one of the most skilled and productive of the late medieval commentators on the Pauline Epistles, drawing together as he did significant strands of the tradition. Born in Normandy c. 1270, he entered the Franciscan Order in 1300. His most famous work was a com- mentary on the entire Bible known as the Postilla Litteralis begun in 1322 and completed by 1331. Popular as his work certainly was over the next two hundred years, Lyra did face some tough criticism. Many printed editions of his work circulated with corrective remarks in the form of the Additiones ad Postillas Nicolai Lyrani by Paul of Burgos (d. 1435), a converted rabbi who criticized Lyra’s use of Hebraic sources as well as Lyra’s reading of Thomas Aquinas. Yet fellow Franciscan Matthias Döring of Thuringia (d. 1469) came to Lyra’s aid when he countered Paul’s criti- cisms with his own Defensarium Nicolai Lyrani seu Replicationes contra Paulum Burgenssem.1 Paul of Burgos was right in detecting Lyra’s debt to Aquinas. Although Lyra’s Postilla was not intended to be a work of systematic theology, he did call upon Thomas’s Summa Theologiae to assist his biblical exege- sis. Lyra followed Thomas on the question of the Law as outlined in the Summa but, as Paul of Burgos pointed out, he would alter Aquinas when summarizing him in the Postilla, thereby simplifying his predecessor’s more complicated theological explanations. None of this is to say that Lyra was a mere disciple of Thomas. In fact, he went his own way on a number of points. Like the fifth-century Antiochene exegete Theodore of Mopsuestia, whose theories Thomas rejected, Lyra also limited the num- ber of Psalms that speak of Christ and treated many of them as pertinent to David or Solomon. Nevertheless, Lyra still believed that the prophets had foreseen the coming Messiah. On this point, Lyra maintained that 1 For an overview of Lyra’s life and career see the introduction to Nicholas of Lyra: The Senses of Scripture eds. Philip D. W. Krey and Lesley Smith (Leiden: 2000), 1–18. See too: Nicolas de Lyre: Franciscain du XIVe Siècle, Exégète et Théologien, ed. Gilbert Dahan (Paris: 2011). 266 ian christopher levy he was actually following the great Jewish exegete Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac, otherwise known as Rashi (d. 1105). Lyra contended that the Jews were in fact denying their own Scriptures when they refused to accept Jesus Christ, for he thought that they were missing the very literal sense of the Old Testament, which proclaims the Messiahship of Christ.2 That Lyra could maintain both the historical and the prophetic value of these texts depended upon his conception of a “double literal sense” (duplex sensus litteralis) found in those Old Testament texts that are cited by the New. This also enabled Lyra to meet the charges of Jewish scholars who said that Christians distort the meaning of biblical texts.3 We will examine Lyra’s handling of the various senses of Scripture in greater detail further on in this essay. 1. The Book of Life Before proceeding to Lyra’s Pauline commentaries it will be helpful to get a sense of Lyra’s general conception of Holy Scripture and the basic principles of exegesis that he employed to understand it. In his various prologues to the Bible, Lyra provided his readers with important insights into his entire exegetical approach. He adopted Sirach 24:32 as his guide: “Haec omnia liber vitae.” Scripture, for Lyra, was the very Book of Life— Liber Vitae—the key to true life for all who believe. To this end he cited Gregory the Great’s comment that, “temporal life as compared to eternal life is more fittingly called death than life.” Thus Lyra points out that the science of the philosophers is ordered to mundane ends, concerned as it is with this present life alone. Lyra then extols Holy Scripture as a unique book that is ordered toward happiness in the life to come and thereby surpasses the human sciences of the philosophers. In comparison to the books of Holy Scripture, therefore, those of the philosophers are more fit- tingly designated books of death. “The book containing Holy Scripture— although divided into many partial books and yet contained under one book—which is designated under the general name of the Bible, is prop- erly called the Book of Life.” Holy Scripture can itself be identified with the science of theology, according to Lyra, since it is the sole text of this 2 Philip D. W. Krey, “‘The Old Law Prohibits the Hand and not the Spirit’: The Law and the Jews in Nicholas of Lyra’s Roman Commentary of 1329,” in Nicholas of Lyra: The Senses of Scripture, 251–66. 3 Ceslaus Spicq, Esquisee D’Une Histoire de L’Exégèse Latine au Moyen Age (Paris: Vrin, 1944), 335–41. .
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