Here for Medicine, There for Delight: The Ecclesial Mysteries of the Victorine Speculum Author: Samuel N. Keyes Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:108087 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2018 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. HERE FOR MEDICINE, THERE FOR DELIGHT: THE ECCLESIAL MYSTERIES OF THE VICTORINE SPECULUM Samuel Nelson Keyes A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the department of Theology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Boston College Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences Graduate School May 2018 © Copyright 2018 Samuel Nelson Keyes ii HERE FOR MEDICINE, THERE FOR DELIGHT: THE ECCLESIAL MYSTERIES OF THE VICTORINE SPECULUM Samuel Nelson Keyes Advisor: Boyd Taylor Coolman ABSTRACT The anonymous Speculum de mysteriis ecclesiae from the 12th century abbey of St. Victor has often been associated with the tradition of medieval liturgical commentaries, but this dissertation proposes reading it primarily as a general treatise on the spiritual life. Its unique Victorine emphasis on the combination of intellect and affect suggests a particular theology of the sign: the real ontological status of the sign relying not on Dionysian hierarchy but on ecclesial contemplation. Through the newly developed sacramental understanding of res et sacramentum, the Speculum suggests that signs have enduring value as signs that goes beyond their function as signifiers. The attainment of the signified, in other words, is only part of their gift. Their “sweetness” is found in an appreciation of their mode of signification — a signification that, the Speculum suggests, endures somehow even in heaven as a non-necessary gracious source of delight. That is, external and visible things in the Church have value not merely because they point us to particular invisible things (what the signs “mean”) but because they teach us the Church’s economy of grace. The Church, then, and her sacramental economy, are central not just to the practical life of individual salvation, but to the meaningfulness of all creation. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abbreviations .............................................................................................................. viii PART 1. MAPPING THE GROUND: THEMES, CONTEXT, AND GENRE Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: The Sweetness of Signs................................................................................ 12 Chapter 2: Attentive Holiness: Victorine Re-Formation and the Speculum .................... 41 Chapter 3: The Speculum as Liturgical Commentary ..................................................... 72 PART 2. ECCLESIA MYSTICANS Introduction .................................................................................................................103 Chapter 4: Trinity, Creation, and Church......................................................................105 Chapter 5: Incarnation and Salvation ............................................................................126 Chapter 6: Eschatology ................................................................................................150 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................175 Bibliography ................................................................................................................194 Appendix: Making the Liturgy Meaningful ..................................................................203 v vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work is dedicated to my children, James, Mary, and David: may your fascination with thuribles and colorful robes give growth to your love of God and his Church. To Gretchen: thanks for your patience and perseverance in teaching me how to love. I am also indebted to the various friends, colleagues, and mentors who have encouraged me to continue in this work through one complication after another. Thanks especially to the faculty and students of Saint James School, whose faithfulness and, at times, brutal honesty have preserved this priest, more than once, from flights of “hypersymbolistic fancy.” vii Abbreviations and Conventions CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina CCCM Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis PL Patrologia Latina VTT Victorine Texts in Translation Translations of scripture are either the Revised Standard Version (RSV) or Douay-Rheims (DR). Psalms referenced conform to the Vulgate numbering. Liturgical references, unless otherwise noted, refer to chants, collects, and other texts of Roman Rite in the codified form promulgated by Trent (1570). English translations of Office texts come from The Anglican Breviary (Long Island: Frank Gavin, 1955), itself an English translation of the Tridentine office. Additional medieval examples of the same texts can be found, with numerous manuscript references and images, in the online chant database, Cantus: cantus.uwaterloo.ca. viii PART 1 MAPPING THE GROUND: THEMES, CONTEXT, AND GENRE INTRODUCTION “The sacred liturgy does not exhaust the entire activity of the Church”: it must be preceded by evangelization, faith, and conversion. It can then produce its fruits in the lives of the faithful: new life in the Spirit, involvement in the mission of the Church, and service to her unity.1 The Catechism is careful to qualify its assertion of the liturgy’s central fruitfulness in the life of the Church with a reminder of its place in the whole Christian life. The liturgy’s fecundity — its ability to produce spiritual fruit — is not a given. It is not automatic or magical. If we can apply this principle to all the Church’s gifts, we will reach the main argument of this dissertation: that the Victorine Speculum ecclesiae gives a roadmap, so to speak, for utilizing the Church’s mysterious gifts to the end of personal and ecclesial growth, maturity, and spiritual delight. The Church’s mysteries, including not just her sacraments but her entire economy of signs, can produce fruit when we learn to appreciate them for what they are and how they are what they are. Investigation of these mysteries is not a tangential distraction from Christian discipleship but constitutes, rather, one of the primary means of spiritual growth. The Speculum text itself The Speculum de mysteriis ecclesiae, a brief nine-chapter treatise of roughly nineteen thousand words, if it is known at all, is familiar to theologians, liturgists, and 1 The Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2012), 1072, quoting Vatican II, Sacrosanctum concilium, 9. 1 historians by virtue of its inclusion among the works of Hugh of St. Victor in Jacques- Paul Migne’s Patrologia Latina.2 Apart from some obvious typographical and reference errors, Migne’s text seems basically reliable. I have provided a list of known manuscripts in the bibliography below, though it remains beyond the scope of this work to attempt any detailed comparison. The book’s short prologue is worth quoting in full: Your Love invited me to treat the ecclesiastical sacraments and explain to you their mystical sweetness. But since, by right of custom, I would throw back, more willingly because more easily and more boldly, opinions logical rather than theological, I began to hesitate — whether you should be opposed, or whether rather I preferred to write. Soon, recalling truly that every good thing shared begins to shine more beautifully when it is shared, I turned to what is to be written with a pen, having invoked that same help who opens and no one shuts, who closes and no one opens (Rev. 3:7).3 And so the desired book, which, because in it one may examine what each thing mystically represents in the Church, it pleases me to call “Mirror of the Church,” flowing with interior nectar just as honey of the honeycomb, I have handed over4 to your intelligence.5 Despite the warm tone towards the work’s commissioner (vestra dilectio), we do not have any further indication in the text as to who this anonymous sponsor is. The tone is, all the same, indicative of the book’s style and content. The author may claim to be a logician rather than a theologian, but he comes across in the prologue as more of a pastor — a 2 (Pseudo-)Hugh of St. Victor. Speculum de mysteriis ecclesiae, PL 177:335-380. 3 That is, the “key of David,” also found in the fourth of the Great O Antiphons leading up to Christmas. 4 propinavi is also a pun with nectar, since it can also mean to toast or to “give to drink.” 5 Speculum, PL 177:335A-B: “De sacramentis ecclesiasticis, ut tractarem, eorumque mysticam dulcedinem vobis exponerem, vestra rogavit dilectio. Cum autem libentius, quia facilius et audentius, logicas quam theologicas, jure consuetudinis, revolvam sententias: dubitare coepi, an contradicere, an potius scribere mallem. Mox vero illud recolens, quod omne bonum communicatum pulchrius elucescit, cum communicatur, consequenter stylum ad scribendum converti, ejus invocato auxilio, qui aperit et nemo claudit, claudit et nemo aperit (Apoc. III). Desideratum itaque libellum interno fluentem nectare, velut favum mellis, vestrae propinavi intelligentiae, quem quia in eo speculari licet quid mystice repraesentent singula in Ecclesia, Speculum Ecclesiae inscribi placuit.” 2 patient, sympathetic teacher who hopes that his words will be edifying