Accessus Ad Lombardum: the Secular and the Sacred in Medieval Commentaries on the Sentences

ACCESSUS AD LOMBARDUM: THE SECULAR AND THE SACRED IN MEDIEVAL COMMENTARIES ON THE SENTENCES Steven J. LIVESEY Abstract From the early thirteenth century, when Alexander of Hales began to use his lectures on Peter Lombard’s Sentences as a vehicle that provided a comprehensive treatment of theological doctrine to his Parisian students, commentaries on the Sentences began a gradual metamorphosis that transformed their use within the theological faculty. By the 1320s, commentaries on the Sentences had ceased to provide a comprehensive treatment of all four books, at the same time they were becoming ever longer. Part of the transformation included an increasing injec- tion of philosophical content into the commentaries, which in turn altered both the theological enterprise and the philosophical foundation on which it rested. This paper provides a preliminary picture of this transformation by looking at some of the issues that excited late-medieval lecturers on the Sentences. On or about the 10th of October, 1317, the Franciscan John of Read- ing began his obligatory lectures on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, reading the first line of the Lombard’s text, «Cupientes aliquid de penuria…». By the time he finished his year-long exercise, perhaps around July 5th or 6th, he had compiled a text that in the almost con- temporary hand of the sole-surviving copy, Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Conv. Soppr. D.iv.95, extends to 279 folio pages, a massive work of erudition that displays familiarity with the positions of his contemporaries and predecessors, and especially those of his mentor, Duns Scotus, confronts the views of rivals like William of Ockham, and dresses all of this in the language of scholastic discourse of the early fourteenth century1. Yet if one turns 1. Steven J. LIVESEY, Theology and Science in the Fourteenth Century: Three Questions on the Unity and Subalternation of the Sciences from John of Reading's Commentary on the ©RTPM 72,1 (2005) 153-174 154 S. J. LIVESEY to folio 279, one finds that at the end of this enormous work, John has only addressed the first five distinctions of book I, that is, perhaps only about 3% of the Lombard’s comprehensive work. One hundred seventeen folios are devoted to the prologue to the Sen- tences, which in Brady’s modern edition covers only 2 printed pages! What is going on here? It would, perhaps, be sanctimonious of me to suggest that John exemplifies a serious problem with course management. After all, many have been the times in August when my pedagogical ambi- tions outstripped my skills and the willingness of my students to maintain a relentless pace. But three percent? Perhaps it was just inexperience. But we have evidence that this wasn’t John’s first assignment to lecture on the Sentences, because it seems that his arguments against Ockham were aimed at Ockham’s own responses to John2. Perhaps it was reduced class time, because medieval universities divided the teaching day into the same number of ‘hours’ even though the available daylight was reduced in the winter; but on that score, one might expect book I to suffer most, because Michaelmas term experienced a noticeable shortening as December approached. Nor does it seem that this should be attributed to youthful exuberance, because by our nearest calculations, in 1317 he would have been about 45. In fact, as William Courtenay3 and others have observed, John’s experience was hardly atypical. By the 1320s, commentaries on the Sentences had long ceased to provide a comprehensive treatment of all four books, just at about the time that for various reasons the stan- dard lecture course on the work was reduced from two years to one. More often than not, commentaries on book I received the most detailed reading, followed by commentaries on book IV. Books II and III, by contrast, were given relative scant attention. The Domini- can, Robert Holcot, who read the Sentences about a dozen years later, devoted only one question to book III, and that may have been added after the course was completed. Sentences, Leiden 1989, esp. ch. 1; E. LONGPRÉ, «Jean de Reading et le bienheureux Duns Scot», in: La France franciscaine 7 (1924), pp. 99-109; S. BROWN, «Sources for Ockham’s Prologue to the Sentences», in: Franciscan Studies 26 (1966), pp. 37-51. 2. BROWN (note 1 above), pp. 36-37. 3. William J. COURTENAY, Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England, Princeton 1987, ch. 9: «Theologica Anglicana». ACCESSUS AD LOMBARDUM 155 University statutes themselves provide evidence that those in authority were well aware of the problem. Lecturers were routinely and universally admonished not to read too slowly, in response to students’ inability to transcribe authoritative texts viva voce. More- over, masters of theology were instructed to avoid philosophical sub- tleties in the course of their lectures on the Sentences4, a measure perhaps aimed as much at moving teachers through the curriculum as avoiding theologically dangerous tangents. But why was this the case? What was so profoundly attractive about the philosophical material that inspired generations of young (and not so young) theologians to inject material that had marginal theological import into the central theological textbook of the university? And finally, how did this change both the theological enterprise and the philosophical foundation on which it rested? These are significant, and quite obviously unanswerable questions in the amount of time permitted today — were I to try, I would fall into the same trap that held John of Reading seven centuries ago. But perhaps we can tease a few conclusions from the material by looking at some of the issues that excited late-medieval lecturers on the Sen- tences. I propose to do this by borrowing an idea from a good friend, the late George Molland, and a technique familiar to most medieval- ists, the accessus ad auctores5. At its core, the accessus typifies scholastic culture because it sug- gests that knowledge derives from books and authorities and because it asserts that one must analyze the text in a conventional and uniform way. In its original form, this introductory device explained who, what, why, in what manner, where, when, and by what means. But under the influence of Aristotle’s terminology, many of these explanatory categories were subsumed under the four causes: material (that is, what was written), formal (that is, the mode and order of treatment), efficient (that is, the author) and final (that is, the intention or utility of the work). By way of intro- 4. Heinrich DENIFLE, Emile CHATELAIN, Charles SAMARAN, Emile-A VAN MOÉ, Chartu- larium Universitatis Parisiensis, 4 volumes, Paris 1889-1897. vol. 2, p. 698, no. 1189. 5. A. George MOLLAND, «The quadrivium in the universities: four questions», in: Ingrid CRAEMER-RUEGENBERG (ed.), Scientia und ars im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter. Albert Zimmermann zum 65. Geburtstag (Miscellanea mediaevalia 22), Berlin 1994, pp. 66-78. On the accessus in general, see Edwin Alphons QUAIN, «The Medieval Accessus ad Auc- tores», in: Traditio 3 (1945), pp. 215-264. 156 S. J. LIVESEY ducing some of the basic issues of this commentary tradition, let us look briefly at these four causes, which, for purposes of explanation I will reorder. 1. Efficient At 45, John of Reading was certainly not the youngest student to lecture on the Sentences, but neither was he the oldest: after a long arts career at Paris and then Heidelberg, Marsilius of Inghen completed his degree in theology by lecturing on the Sentences in 1393 at about age 63. We know the identities of some 896 commentators on the Sentences6, hailing from virtually every part of Western Europe, more from France and England (22% and 21%, respectively), followed by Italy (19%), Germany (15%), the Low Coun- tries (7%), and the remaining 16% from the remainder of Europe. The majority (72%) of these commentators were members of religious orders, with the Franciscans and Dominicans constituting more than half of the total. But if one looks at the subset for whom we know birthdates, there is an interesting shift observable: while the numbers born before and after 1300 are roughly the same (79 and 83, respectively), the orders preferred by the younger pool are Franciscans (54%), Dominicans (20%) and Augustinians (14%); those born after 1300 preferred the Augustinians (29%), Domini- cans (19%), Franciscans (16%) and Carmelites (16%). Clearly, this is a tremendous gain for the Augustinians and a dramatic loss for the Franciscans, probably reflecting the rise of covenantal theology, combined with recruitment problems among Franciscans in the 1320s and 1330s — caused by the controversy over apostolic poverty — and unequal effects of the Plague on religious orders in the 14th century. 6. The quantitative data in this section has been extracted from my database of medieval commentators on the Sentences and Aristotle’s works, http://www.ou.edu/class/ med-sci/Commbase.htm. Portions of these biographical entries are being reformated as part of the International Encyclopaedia for the Middle Ages-Online, A Supplement to LexMA-Online. Turnhout: Brepolis 2004-. [http://www.brepolis.net/info_iema_en.html], and the relational database itself will eventually be available on the Brepolis site. ACCESSUS AD LOMBARDUM 157 At least for those who entered religious orders early in life, intro- duction to non-theological disciplines took place within the schools of the order, at studia artium or naturalium. This might occupy between four and six years, after which, depending on the needs and resources of the order, the scholar might move on to a studium par- ticulare theologiae (or a provincial school) for at least two years prior to completing his training at a studium generale, for example, at Oxford, or Paris, Cologne, Bologna or the like.

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