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'Franciscan Augustinianism' chapter 5 ‘Franciscan Augustinianism’ Musings about Labels and Late Medieval School Formation Those who are not specialists in late medieval scholasticism but nevertheless try to understand the important developments in theological school formation and the major trends in theological thinking face a challenge. On the one hand, many modern works dealing with the scholarly production of later medieval theologians and philosophers are, to put it mildly, rather impenetrable. Moreover, they frequently do not allow non-specialists to evaluate the wider significance of the medieval scholastic enterprise in late medieval society.1 On the other hand, more accessible introductory surveys of late medieval scholas- tic thought tend to hide complicated intellectual trends under suggestive labels with misleading explanatory characteristics. While I do not wish to offend the many learned colleagues working on late medieval Franciscan scholastic authors, the world of Franciscan studies is far from immune to this tendency. Most of the available handbooks on the Franciscan theological tradition accessible to a wider public are either overly swift in their identification of ‘essential’ Franciscan elements of thought or in labelling Franciscan theological currents as ‘voluntarist’ or ‘Augustinian’.2 At the other end stand many highly specialized studies on a few individual think- ers (such as Scotus and Ockham), or on intricate metaphysical and epistemo- logical issues. Many of these latter works are very hard to read for ‘mere’ historians. Moreover, many of these works do not excel in explaining why and how these issues were important within or beyond the scholarly world in which they were conceived. There are not many examples of works that suc- ceed in both doing justice to the complexity of the scholastic theological dis- cussions and opening up such discussions to relative outsiders of the field.3 1 Instead, these works are frequently more concerned with making connections with modern philosophical and theological issues and concepts. 2 This is, I am afraid, also true for several contributions in The History of Franciscan Theology, ed. K.B. Osborne (St. Bonaventure, ny: Franciscan Institute Publications, 1994). 3 Among the most successful examples, I reckon some of the works by the late Heiko Oberman, Tachau’s magisterial Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham: Optics, Epistemology and the Foundation of Semantics, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 22 (Leiden etc.: Brill, 1988), several essays and monographs by William Courtenay and James Halverson (including Courtenay’s Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England (Princeton, Princeton up, 1988) and Halverson’s Peter Aureol on Predestination: A Challenge to Late Medieval Thought, Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 83 (Leiden etc.: Brill, 1998)) © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2015 | doi 10.1163/9789004280731_006 112 chapter 5 As an historian of Franciscan life and thought, but with an interest in the larger picture, and a conviction that the study of intricate medieval intellectual phenomena makes sense (and gains validity) when placed in a larger context, my sympathy clearly lies with those who try to make matters available to non-specialists. At the same time, I do not believe in recycling the existing essentialising and partly misleading labels without further scrutiny. As a tiny prelude to a more in-depth (and possibly book-length) engagement with late medieval and Renaissance Franciscan intellectual traditions, I therefore would like to present the reader with a first tentative approach towards one of the more enduring labels attached to Franciscan scholastic theology, namely its ‘Augustinian’ character. In the process, I hope to find a form of exposition and a level of interaction with the issues at hand that are neither completely inadequate to their complexity nor overly hermetic and discouraging to those who have not made scholastic philosophy and theology the focus of their aca- demic life.4 The Problem of a ‘Franciscan school’ Theological traditions in the Latin West privileged the patristic authority of Augustine. This privilege solidified in twelfth-century collections of patristic doctrinal statements or ‘sentences’ for use in scholastic teaching. In Peter Lombard’s Sentences, for instance, Augustine is very dominant throughout. Looking at the authorities cited and the solutions offered, Augustine is by far the most important theological authority.5 Lombard’s Sentences became the standard textbook in the theology faculties of Paris and elsewhere from the 1230s onwards, a tradition inaugurated by the Parisian regent master Alexander and Chris Schabel’s Theology at Paris, 1316–1345: Peter Auriol and the problem of divine fore- knowledge and future contingents, Ashgate Studies in Medieval Philosophy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). 4 This essay starts from my much more succinct remarks on school formation in the fourth chapter of Bert Roest, A History of Franciscan Education, ca. 1220–1517 (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2000), and tries to make sense of the use and abuse of labels such as Augustinianism and Voluntarism with regard to Franciscan theological thought. 5 Cf. the Prolegomena to Magistri Petri Lombardi parisiensis episcope sententiae in iv libros dis- tinctae, ed. Ignatius Brady et al. 3rd Edition (Grottaferrata: Collegium Sanctae Bonaventurae, 1971). See also Eric L. Saak, ‘Augustine in the Western Middle Ages to the Reformation’, in: A Companion to Augustine, ed. Mark Vessey (Mississauga etc.: John Wiley & Sons, 2013), 465– 476: 468: ‘The Sentences are in essence a compendium of Augustine, with other patristic authorities added…’ <UN>.
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