quarta-feira, 26 de junho de 2019

The reception of philosophy: West and East (Aristides Papadakis)


2. Changes in theological method: the West

Unlike the new manner of conceiving the government of the Church, the rise of scholasticism has seldom been viewed as a cause of schism. Besides, Byzantine intellectuals during this period were by no means immune to the attractions of critical theological analysis. The Byzantine philosophers, John Italus and Mich.ad Psellus, and the early scholastics, Peter Abelard and St Anselm, were actually near-contemporaries. Still, the fact remains that the emerging scholasticism of the West was another alarming symptom of the disintegration of the common Christian tradition-the intellectual counterpart to the ecclesiological evolution that has just been described; as with the issue of ecclesial authority, the Latins were before long to alter the rules of the game for the doing of theology as well. 42

Suffice it to say, the rapid rise of higher education in the West of which scholasticism is an expression should not be divorced from its larger historical context. In all essential respect the new interest in learning was part of the general social and political reawakening that characterized Europe after the anarchy and violence of the first feudal age. By the late eleventh century this new vitality was to lead to the rise of towns, the growth of population and a new merchant class, to say nothing of the new monasticism, the renewal in ecclesiastical discipline, and papal authority.43 In general terms, higher education in the central Middle Ages is best explained by the instructional tradition that developed first in the flourishing cathedral schools of the late eleventh century. Though many of these institutions could trace their origin back co the Carolingian period, it was not until the early twelfth century that they were to develop and mature into independent centers of higher learning. This intellectual vitality was due in part to the increasing number of wandering scholars who were all the while attaching themselves to the old schools. Before long, given the increasing mobility and prosperity of the age, the number of students also swelled in proportion. By the end of the century with an expanding enrollment and a more diversified teaching faculty, many of the cathedral schools had crystallized into universities. One of the most influential bequests of the Middle Ages to the modern world had become reality by 1200.

That this spectacular expansion in education affected theological study in various ways has already been implied. In the first place, henceforth all new ideas in theology were to come from these new institutions. Before long, the university of Paris, in point of fact, became the leading theological center in Europe. The setting of theology by 1200 had shifted permanently from the cloister to the classroom. The organized teaching and writing of theology, which had until then been confined primarily to the monk and the monastery, was to be done in the new city schools by secular urban teachers or masters. The prominent part played by the monastery in the preservation, creation, and diffusion of culture in the West since the sixth century was lost. By the end of the twelfth century, quite simply, its leadership of learning had passed over to the new universities situated in the areas of greatest urban development. Granted a number of abbeys continued to hold on to their intellectual primacy for some time, including Bee in the north of France under St Anselrn, and of course Cluny itself. But these were to prove the exception and did not survive the century as centers of learning and theological creativity.44 By 1200, theology was simply no longer the preserve of the rural and remote monastery.

More fundamentally, by then theology was also no longer liturgical, contemplative, or traditional. Henceforth it was to be shaped almost exclusively by deductive rational thought, or by the techniques learned from the study of dialectic. In its simplest etymological sense scholasticism has often been defined as the instructional methodology developed by the schools of medieval Europe. And yet scholasticism can also be characterized as a system of philosophical speculation in which theology is provided with a logical substructure or content; its essence could be said to lie in the urgent need felt by medieval thinkers to understand Christian doctrine rationally. Exploring the relationship between reason and revelation was always at the heart of the scholastic method. "Once the process had started, there was nothing to stop it, and by the end of the eleventh century the practice of scholastic debate was emerging as a central feature of the educational system."45 The pioneer of the movement was to be the well-known St Anselm (1033-1109), the famous abbot of Bec and later archbishop of Canterbury. Of course long before Anselm medieval thinkers were aware of the Augustinian argument chat theological disputation could be enhanced by the skillful use of philosophy and, indeed, dialectics, the method of rigorous logical analysis and deduction. As a matter of fact a limited knowledge of the latter was available during the early Middle Ages, thanks to Boechius' translations of some of Aristotle's logical treatises. Still, the attempt to organize the data of faith into a rational body of knowledge, to better fathom the mysteries contained in the Scriptures by means of disciplined rational argument is rooted in Anselm and his immediate disciples.46 Specifically, the movement has its beginning in the purely Anselmian conviction (shared by every subsequent scholastic) that rational reasoning could effectively illumine and deepen one's understanding of what is accepted by faith. True, Anselm's famous formula fides quarms intellectum - implied that revealed truth was to be the starting point. "I do no seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand: for this I also believe that unless I believe I shall not understand."47 For Anselm, nevertheless, the obvious priority possessed by faith or revelation did not in any way invalidate the use of human reason as a path to truth. Man's striving to understand his faith, to find logical consistency in what he believed, was, on the contrary, a wholly laudable, even essential, exercise. That Anselm was able to put his speculation to the test is well known. His tight logical investigation of such doctrines as the incarnation and atonement (in Cur Deus Homo?) were to earn him the title "founder of scholasticism." The high-medieval rationalism of the thirteenth century does indeed lead back in a straight line to St Anselm.

During the early stages of the movement an equally decisive contribution was to be made by the intellectually independent Peter Abelard (1079-1142). As his Sic et Non illustrates, Abelard was in part responsible for perfecting the scientific method and technique of scholasticism. His ruthless pursuit of theology as a rationalistic activity, in which he insisted that all inconsistencies and discrepancies found in the fathers and Scriptures were to be laid bare for the reader (his aim was to invite question bur not skepticism) was to influence theologians and canonists alike. Peter Lombard's Sententiae and Gratian's Decretum both demonstrate what could be achieved with the help of such techniques. Both authors were also to go beyond the restless Abelard by seeking to reconcile the apparent contradictions in the traditional authorities deliberately left unexplained in Sic et Non. Arguably, by mid-century, early western scholastics were well on the way to reducing the study of doctrine (to say nothing of canon law) to a rigorous and exact science. Granted opposition to this shift in theological method was not unknown. Both Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter Damian were convinced that the new rationalism was unnecessary and perhaps even harmful to salvation. "One knows God, insofar one loves him" was to be St Bernard's argument. And yet in the end such hostility (including the double condemnation of Abelard in 1121 and 1140 engineered by Bernard) was unable to arrest the growth of the new methodology. The desire to penetrate the content of Christian belief by means of logic enlightened by faith was off and running.

Although the creative contributions of the twelfth century scholars were obviously crucial, the full potential of scholasticism was not realized until the following century. For this maturation-the so-called "high scholasticism" of the thirteenth century-the recovery of the full corpus of Aristotle and the growth of the universities, as international degree-granting institutions, was essential. As it happened, the impact of the full translation into Latin of Aristotle on the new intellectual discipline of dialectics was revolutionary. For scholasticism, in particular, the age was one of synthesis and consolidation. The great systematic treatises, commentaries, and summas that were produced, make the century one of the most seminal and significant in the history of systematic theology. Of the great system-builders of the century no one was perhaps as important or gifted as the Dominican, Thomas Aquinas. That his elaborate all-embracing synthesis harked back to Anselm's initial position of faith seeking understanding is not surprising. He, too, was to insist on the autonomy and importance of reason.
Although the natural light of the human mind does not suffice for the manifestation of the things that are made manifest by faith, yet it is impossible that what is divinely taught to us by faith be contrary to the things with which we are endowed by nature. For the one or the other would then have to be false, and, since both come to us from God, God would be to us an author of falsehood, which is impossible. Rather, the situation is this. Since within the imperfect there is a certain imitation of what is perfect, though an incomplete one, in what is known through natural knowledge there is a certain likeness of what is taught to us by faith.
In sum, Thomism also begins from the conviction that an essential harmony exists between revelation and reason; both are compatible, even complementary. Ultimately the gift of grace does not destroy or remove nature but perfects it. After Albertus Magnus and his talented student, St Thomas, one could justifiably argue that the "christianization of Aristotle" had indeed been completed.

On the other hand, the period also produced other system-builders who were by no means always eager to concur with St Thomas. Scholastic theological speculation at any rate should not be equated with Thomism. There were other ways to approach the problems and issues raised in the schools, as the work of Albertus Magnus, Alexander of Halles and others, illustrate. Besides, in addition to the Aristotelian tradition, the Platonic tradition prospered equally at the same time. The latter system had its roots in Augustine, who had of course sought to christianize Plato and the Neoplatonists in the fourth century; one of its more eloquent representatives was the minister-general of the Franciscan order, St Bonaventure, a contemporary of St Thomas. These schools of thought were also at the center of a major medieval philosophical debate regarding the nature of "universals" or Platonic archetypes. But Thomism was frequently questioned in the fourteenth century as well. Time and again it was overtaken, although never altogether overturned, by the teaching of Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. In the western theological landscape Thomism evidently was not sovereign. Diversity instead tended to prevail. And yet, among the different western approaches to theology, Thomism possibly was more faithful to the eastern tradition than some of its opponents. The nominalist approach of the Franciscan Ockham, with its tacit denial of any real possibility of sanctification, for instance, has little in common with patristic teaching. The well-known admiration for St Thomas expressed by the fifteenth century Byzantine, Gennadius Scholarius, was, in the final analysis, not without basis.

Apart from its emphasis on logic, one of the more salient features of the scholastic method concerned its approach to the proof from authority, the so-called argument from biblical and patristic sources. The rejection, or at best deemphasis, of such proof was often at the heart of the transformation of theology into a rationalist activity. Granted, revelation always had precedence over reason. All scholastics, as we have seen, invariably used revealed truth as their point of departure; the authority of the Bible and the fathers governed all their activity. Logic, on the other hand, was supposed to be exploited much like a tool for understanding the content of revealed doctrine. (In the Divine Comedy, significantly, it was Beatrice, symbol of theology, who was destined to guide Dante to eternal beatitude rather than the poet Virgil, symbol of classical rationalism.) And yet, since the whole object was to grasp official theology philosophically, traditional authorities in the last analysis had to be dismissed or ignored in the process. All appeal to tradition had to be firmly excluded. Doctrine was to be defended and proven by intellectual argument only, without the support of biblical and patristic authority, and with "Christ aside"-Christo remoto--as Anselm had boldly phrased it in Cur Deus Homo?49 Indeed, the goal was to try to transcend the boundaries set by traditional theology, with its frequent simple restatement of old answers, by focusing on rational demonstration, on dialectical relationships, and on the definition, identification, and classification of doctrine. Theology was to become a formal academic subject or science-a university discipline. Significantly, it was with Abelard that the term "theology," used until then to designate scriptural studies (sacra pagina), first became identified with the new highly abstract scientific theology of scholasticism. 50 That the reconciliation and synthesis between Greek philosophy and revelation achieved in due time by the Latin world marked a radical shift away from the theological methodology preferred until then by both Churches is indisputable. Doctrine was "analyzed, defined and codified in a way for which there was no previous parallel" in either East or West.51 In the long run this unilateral change in the rules of the game on the part of the Latin world could not but affect the future of East-West relations. Logic-oriented theology at any rate was to widen the distance between the two worlds. 52

As noted earlier, the new dialectic was to affect canon law as well. Church law soon also became an influential discipline, even a science, much like the new systematic study of the evidence of divine revelation. More fundamentally, it was also to become a factor of great importance in the life of the papal revolution. That its great growth was due in part to Gregorian theologians is not surprising. Granted canonists were at first primarily interested in reconciling the conflicts and discrepancies of their authorities and in imposing order on their varied material. Before long, however, they were to become papal propagandists as well, thanks to the Gregorian reformers' need to assert the legislative authority of the pope in the new legal system that was being created at the time. Quite simply, the spectacular advance of this practical discipline is also linked to the reactivated papacy and its apologists who wished to give legal strength and solidity to their abstract assertions of papal sovereignty. It is by no means an accident that the new wave of canonical studies coincided with the rise of papal monarchy in Latin Christendom. It is in point of fact the canonists who were before long to make the Roman pontiff not only supreme judge but supreme legislator in Christendom. The sweeping law-making powers ascribed co the popes by canonists were in the end to give substance and muscle to the new papacy.

Of course, the recovery and study of classical Roman law early in the twelfth century also inspired canonists in developing a corresponding ecclesiastical discipline. The task of systematizing and harmonizing the massive legislation of past councils, and of the precedents and pronouncements of various pontiffs and Church fathers into a single comprehensive collection, was accomplished first at Bologna, by the monk Gratian (1140). The result, his famous Concordance of Discordant Canons, or more commonly, Decretum, was to become the foundation of western canon law. Although manuals of Church law were known before 1140, none had been as complete as the new Decretum. Above all, in contrast with its partial predecessors, the new codification was furnished with a unified design; it was arranged not only topically but systematically, even logically. The entire manual was actually provided with a "dialectical" structure: all existing conflicting authorities, gaps, or discrepancies in the texts, were carefully lined up to be reconciled. As with the new logic-oriented science of theology, in brief, there was a rational weighing-up of arguments for and against, followed by their resolution. The work was at once a text of law and a commentary. This arrangement, as we should expect, was a great benefit to its users, including Gratian's immediate successors and subsequent commentators, the so-called Decretists, who were to continue his work of "harmonization." Why this initially purely private achievement soon became the authoritative text in western ecclesiastical courts and the foundation of all future canonical study in the schools of Europe is obvious.

But the Decretum Gratiani became an instrument of papal absolutism as well, to say nothing of its contribution to the growth of papal administrative unity and efficiency. To repeat, it was inevitable that Gregorians from the outset should turn to the canon lawyers for appropriate legal precedents, texts, and arguments, to support both their claims and deliberate aggressive centralization. In particular, their need to define the pope's supreme judicial authority over the Church-as iudex totius ecclesiae--soon became urgent. Indeed, if Gregory VII's Dictatus papae is a faithful guide, the entire canonistic activity of the early reformers was aimed at rediscovering and defining the supposedly forgotten privileges of the Roman pontiff. Gratian's definitive summary was to contribute to this enterprise in a fundamental way, both by the burst of legal scholarship that his codification was to generate and by the emphasis it was to place on papal authority. Quite simply, the reformers' promotion of the Church as a regnum or government, with the pope as monarch, was to become the foundation stone of Gratian's structure. For the monk of Bologna the pope's omnipotence as supreme judge in all ecclesiastical matters, and as the source of juridical authority in the Church, was at any rate never in doubt. For its part, the Roman Church by virtue of its authority was "alone able to judge concerning all men but no one is permitted to make judgment concerning it. "53 Indeed, in the end, the bishop of Rome was not even bound by the laws because he makes the laws.54 Such pronouncements, neatly summarizing the ideological progress made by the Gregorian movement in the period 1050-1150, were of course continued by Gratian's successors. They were helpful in the subsequent full unfolding of a separate law consisting of papal decretals-a new law that was both papal in origin and papal in spirit. Increasingly, in fact, the view of canonists was to be that papal decretals were both equal and superior to the canons of the ecumenical councils.55 Evidently papal authority had absorbed all other authority in the Church! To put it more bluntly, thanks to the decretists, by the end of the twelfth century, the popes were for all intents and purposes in possession of Justinian's sweeping law-making powers. It is a commonplace, but one worth repeating, that "it is in the sphere of canon law that the Gregorian reform strikes the reader as unmistakably revolutionary."56

Given these legal developments, it is not surprising that one of the more fundamental consequences of the Gregorian revolution should have been the transformation of the papacy into the most complex tribunal in Christendom. As early as the pontificate of pope Urban II, the expression curia, normally understood as a law court, was actually being used to describe the papal household. This is to say, in other words, the Curia Romana was beginning to be viewed as the ecclesiastical counterpart of the secular law court of a king or a feudal vassal (curia regis). The new legalism was beginning to affect the papacy deeply. In due course this was co lead co an unending flow of litigants to Rome and, necessarily, to an increase in the volume of legal business for the papacy. As a matter of plain fact legal rather than religious functions were to set the pattern of papal activity for the rest of the central Middle Ages. 57 Practically every papal incumbent in the period 1100-1300 was to be a lawyer. The Western Church was invaded by canonists and, for a time, even occupied by them. In the papal chambers, as St Bernard had once feared, more was being heard of the law of Justinian than of the law of Christ.58 Sadly, by the fourteenth century as we shall see, the papacy's legal involvements were to result in abuse and corruption as well. If the twelfth century satires on the Roman curia can be trusted, abuse was already a problem. This development was to prove tragic in the long run, both for the Western Church as a whole and for the papacy in particular.

3. Currents of thought: the East

Like the West, Byzantium was also attracted to Aristotelian logic and Platonic speculation. It was inevitable that this should be so, given the fact that the tradition of Greek antiquity was an essential element of Byzantine culture. The argument that Byzantine intellectuals felt comfortable and confident with this inheritance is a truism. As the polymath Psellus was to put it, the ancients were Byzantium's "own writers," the very source of its cultural chauvinism. After the Macedonian revival of the ninth century, the tradition of Greek learning was to continue virtually without interruption until the end of the empire. 59 In a very real sense, our present knowledge of Greek classical literature is largely dependent on this renewal in the age of Photius and Arethas of Caesarea. In the eleventh century the tradition was to gain further momentum with the reorganization of the imperial university of Constantinople and its two institutions of learning-the school of philosophy and the school of law. Inevitably, during this centralization of higher education, under the direction of such teachers as John Xiphilinus, John Italus, Michad Psellus, and their friends and pupils, legal and philosophical scholarship flourished. A fresh group of professional academics, a new urban intelligentsia, was emerging. No less inevitable perhaps was the fact that this age of intense intellectual activity and awakening was to be far more creative than its predecessor, the encyclopedic literary revival under the early Macedonians. The scholarly study of Plato and Aristotle, resumed again after centuries of neglect, was no longer purely antiquarian or imitative.

In some ways the renewed preoccupation with philosophy, law, and dialectic, which the more structured Byzantine institutions of higher education began to encourage in the mid-eleventh century, parallels the diverse achievements of the West, especially the growth of scholasticism and legal studies.60 Although the institutionalization of schools and the interest displayed by established law and philosophy faculties in both East and West did not develop in the same direction, the two worlds clearly mirrored each other. The promising "intimations of rationalism," to say nothing of the other changes of a socio-economic nature that occurred in eleventh and twelfth century Byzantium, were related to the broad transformation of the medieval world as a whole. 61 The common intellectual efforts and concerns of the two worlds at any rate indicate that neither was sealed off from the other. Mutual intellectual interchange and contact certainly did exist (to repeat), even if it was often unfriendly.

The prominent pan played by Michael Psellus (1018-79) in the educational innovations connected with the restoration of the university under Constantine IX is well known. Actually he was the first among Byzantium's new urban elite to be appointed professor of philosophy and to carry the title of hypatos ton philosophon. His productive career, vast literary output and, of course, teaching, were to influence a whole generation of scholars. Given his general penchant for philosophical inquiry, particularly Neoplatonism, it is not surprising that he was also a vigorous, even eloquent, supporter of dialectic for theological purpose. In defending himself against the attacks of his jurist-friend and subsequent patriarch, John VIII Xiphilinus (1064-75), Psellus maintained that such inquiry served a practical purpose. Syllogistic reasoning, invented and perfected by Hellenic wisdom, was indeed beneficial to both theology and philosophy. "To argue dialectically is not contrary to Church doctrine nor a method alien to philosophy, but rather only an instrument of truth and the means by which the answer to the question posed is discovered."62 As a hermeneutical tool of reason, at any rate, the device was entirely compatible with true piety and doctrine. On this point Psellus was certain, even immovable. "I may belong entirely to Christ, but I refuse to deny the wiser of our writers or the knowledge of reality, both intelligible and sensible."63 Overall, Psellus' support of syllogistic argument and more broadly of Hellenism, was similar in principle to the defense of dialectic espoused by western scholasticism. St Anselm was Psellus' slightly younger contemporary.

Of course Psellus was sensitive to the fact that the truths of Christianity could not be compromised. Any element in the pagan philosophical systems shown to be incompatible with official Church teaching had to be rejected. Nor could logical analysis be used methodically to resolve every doctrinal problem. Psellus' passionate denial that he was actually entirely under Plato's influence was grounded on such arguments. Doubtless the hypatos of philosophers managed to remain within the traditional boundaries of dogmatic theology. By cautiously formally avoiding any serious collision with the authorities, his religious loyalty never became a matter of public debate. His denials of apostasy or heresy, at any rate, were found convincing, even when his protests were so charged with insincerity and invention that they could not be taken at face value.64 Evidently, his disgrace in 1055, when he lost his faculty position, was temporary since, before long, he was back at the court as imperial tutor. Conceivably, the same would have been true of John ltalus, Psellus' pupil and successor to the chair of philosophy at the university, had he been more cautious. As it turned out, Italus was rather unfortunate in his efforts to interpret Christian doctrine in terms of rational principles. He was eventually brought before the patriarchal tribunal and condemned in two successive synodal proceedings (1076/77 and 1082).65 Not surprising, his errors, enshrined in the eleven anathemas added to the Synodicon by the synods, are virtually all doctrinal in nature. These include the assertion that the incarnation and the hypostatic union could be explained in terms of logic ( 1); perverse explanations or denials of the miracles of Christ and his saints (6); the conviction that the pagan philosophers (the first heresiarchs) were of greater importance than the Church fathers (5); the admission that ideas and matter were eternal (4 and 8); the denial of the bodily resurrection (9); the false belief in the pre-existence of souls (1 O); and the treatment of pagan literature as an independent source of truth rather than as a tool for educational purposes or instruction (7). 66

It is true, Italus' trial was partially politically motivated and reflected the tension between the new intelligentsia and the political establishment; it is likely that the new dynasty of Alexius I Comnenus, founded months before the last synodal proceeding involving John ltalus, was eager to give the appearance of being orthodoxy's protector.67 And yet, the propaganda value of this famous "show-trial" also should not be exaggerated. Although some of the details of the charges leveled against the accused may have been embroidered, there is apparently little reason to believe that he had been as circumspect as Psellus in his teaching. He resembled, it seems, the Latin Abelard both in his lack of caution and in his methodology. As such, he was quite capable of upsetting the authorities. "The vigor of the Orthodox reaction to the unorthodox ideas of the academics," it has been argued, "testifies to the strength of the rationalist threat to tradition ideology."68 No doubt, the Church also felt the need to respond to Italus' rational skepticism toward inherited doctrine in a direct way; it saw the trend as dangerous and, like its condemnation of past heresy, was anxious to make its position clear. As it happens, the notion-implied by many of the sanctions against Italus-that Christianity and Platonism are incompatible was not entirely novel. Actually, Italus' doctrinal deviations, condemned in the end as heretical by the synod, were virtually identical with Origen's own Platonism, anathematized five hundred years before by the fifth ecumenical council (553). Even the comparison between the ancient philosophers and the first heresiarchs was as old, if not older.

Significantly, the canonical sanctions of 1077/82 (the first to be added to the Synodicon since the final suppression of iconoclasm in 843) were before long supplemented by other decisions and condemnations. Italus' supporters were the first to feel the pressure by being denied any personal contact with their former teacher. This action was followed by the indictments of Theodore Blachernites and the monk Nilus. Then, in 1117 Italus' most famous pupil, Eustratius of Nicaea, the eminent commentator on Aristotle, was in turn condemned for his syllogistic approach to christological issues. According to his accusers he is said to have maintained that Christ had "reasoned in the manner of Aristotle," while Anna Comnena described him as more confident in his powers of rhetoric than the philosophers of antiquity. It was perhaps because of these powers that he had participated together with some of his later accusers in the Latin discussions of 1112. By mid-century the list of indictments was to grow longer as further synodal sanctions were added to the Synodicon. Apparently, despite official discouragement, interest in philosophy and dialectic persisted. The enthusiasm of literary circles for Neo-Platonism is in fact beyond question and is on the whole traceable to the earlier renaissance launched by Psellus and his circle. The well-known refutation of Proclus us by Nicholas of Methane, to say nothing of the polemic against the "Hellenizers" by the patriarch Michael III, must in part be explained by the study of Neo-Platonism by twelfth century Byzantine humanists.69 Indeed, most of the sanctions issued by the authorities were aimed it seems at prominent "liberal" intellectuals, including bishops (one of these was the patriarch-elect of Antioch, Sorerichus Panteugenus) as well as deacons. According to one recent estimate, there were some twenty-five such trials for "intellectual" heresy in the age of the Comnenoi. "And who knows how many do not appear in our patchy records. "70

To be sure, this "repression" should not be overstated. Apart from an occasional exile, brutal punishment was actually rarely used; none of Byzantium's independent-minded humanists was indeed ever condemned to death or burned at the stake. The campaign against them also did not involve the systematic censorship of Greek classical texts. In face, these continued to be read, copied, and studied, down to the breakup of the empire. Their use as school material was by no means discontinued. As sanction seven against Italus clearly implied, using pagan literature "for the sake of education," as opposed to adopting its "foolish" doctrines, was permitted. Official anathemas against "Hellenism" were never accompanied by book-burning. The attitude was characteristically Byzantine.71 To summarize, however high the number of "intellectual" heresy trials may have been, the goal of the Byzantine Church was never the total suppression of Hellenism. And yet, on the other hand, the reality of the opposition between conservative churchmen and secular scholarly humanists was undeniable. The complex cultural history of the age cannot in fact be adequately understood without chis fundamental tension and polarity between Greek thought and the Christian gospel - best symbolized by Italus' trial. Although the attitude of the Church was not inspired by outright suppression, its aim was in the end the practical elimination of Greek philosophy from the sphere traditionally reserved for theology proper. In the course of the Comnenian age, in more general terms, Orthodox Eastern Christendom increasingly argued that philosophy was not essential or indispensable for the solution of theological problems and the exposition of doctrine. Authentic knowledge of God and the truths of the catholic faith were to be grasped by means other than those offered by either Plato or Aristotle. On the whole, the canonical sanctions added to the Synodicon by the various councils of the eleventh and twelfth centuries against the Byzantine disciples of Greek wisdom find their significance in such arguments or convictions. To put it otherwise, the Christian East refused to enter into an alliance with philosophy in its attempt at doctrinal synthesis during this period. Its denunciation of the metaphysical systems of Byzantine intellectuals was, as such, quite consistent.

Arguably, in its rejection of Byzantine humanism, the Church was equally implicitly revealing its attitude towards Latin scholasticism as well. It was at any rate demonstrating that it could be far more hostile to Greek philosophy and the analytical approach to theology than the Latin West. Remarkably, "on the eve of the period when the West would commit its mind to the philosophy of the ancients and enter the great epoch of scholasticism, the Byzantine Church solemnly refused any new synthesis between the Greek mind and Christianity, remaining committed only to the synthesis in the patristic period. It assigned to the West the task of becoming more Greek than it was."72 As a consequence, the Orthodox world was by and large in the end to escape the negative effects of Aristotelian logic on both theology and canon law. In contrast with Latin Christendom the teaching and study of theology in the Christian East kept its religious status.73 Theology, conceived as an intellectual discipline, or as an investigation and systematization of revealed truth in the name of Aristotle, quite simply, remained outside of its theological field of vision.

Undeniably, the contrast between East and West on this issue is striking. By the late twelfth century western theologians by and large had ceased to speculate ad mentem patrum or to work in the same atmosphere of the fathers preferred until then by both Churches. Because of his attitude towards the proof from authority, the new professional Latin theologian was arguably willing to relativize the patristic inheritance. "Once the criticism of authorities has been introduced, even if it was for the sake of harmonizing them, the possibility of progressing beyond passive acceptance of them was suggested .... each of the fathers was situated, delimited, and characterized, with the effect of making his authority only relative."74 Oddly, this denigration of the patristic tradition apparently was furthered by the debate over the Filioque. Some western theologians it seems were soon convinced chat the Greek fathers were somehow not as authoritative as the fathers of the Latin church. Protest against Byzantine theology and the Greek language in the twelfth century was at any rate not uncommon. Robert of Melun, the successor of Abelard at Mount St Genevieve, was even willing to argue that it was unsuitable to use Greek in the exposition of Christian doctrine.75 To be short, increasingly, the Greek patristic heritage was deprived of its strength by the scholastic superstructure. By the thirteenth century, when a purely abstract systematic theology had emerged in the West, little of this legacy had survived. Latin theology was by then almost entirely dependent on human methods of argument, logic and philosophy. Still (to repeat what was said earlier of St Thomas), given the appreciation expressed by some Byzantine theologians for scholasticism, this western theological transition should not be distorted or exaggerated.

If the difference in theological perspective between the two Churches after the twelfth century is to be appreciated, an additional number of points need to be emphasized. In the first place, Byzantine Orthodox theology was never transformed into a school-theology; that is to say, it was never made either in schools or in universities. Genuine theological creativity was to be found far from such institutions as we shall see. Similarly, contrary to western practice, the subject was never studied or taught as a "science" with a formal academic methodology; exploring theology as a scientific discipline of higher education was simply unknown to the East. Finally, the professionalism that was to distinguish theology graduates of western universities everywhere, was altogether exceptional for Byzantium.76 The Orthodox theologian was actually never to know the structured theological training so characteristic of his western coeval. In the last analysis, the remarkable spiritual and theological maturity of such individuals as Theoleptus of Philadelphia, Nicholas Cabasilas or patriarch Gregory II of Cyprus (a contemporary of St Thomas Aquinas) was not the result of any formal theological training whatsoever. In the event, the theology of these and other gifted Byzantine theologians was very different from the theology familiar to Peter Lombard, Abelard, or St Anselm. Time and again the great theological system-builders of the West were to rely on philosophy to an extent incomprehensible for an Orthodox scholar. In contrast, to repeat, Byzantine theology was a continuation of the patristic legacy, and as such, was learned primarily by the reading and hearing of Scripture and of course by praying. It was never at any rate pursued as a purely rationalistic activity. Therefore, overall, it always remained a "kerygmatic theology, even when it was logically arranged and corroborated by intellectual arguments. The ultimate reference was still to faith, to spiritual comprehension ... [As such] it was not just a self-explanatory 'discipline' which could be presented argumentatively, i.e., aristotelikos [in the manner of Aristotle] without a prior spiritual engagement. This theology could only be 'preached' or 'proclaimed,' and not be simply 'taught' in a school-manner."78

Predictably, this fundamentally religious approach to theology was also shared by Byzantine contemplative monasticism. The position taken officially by the Church towards pagan philosophy always had the staunch support of monastics. All allegiance to the "foolish" secular wisdom of the ancients was automatically deemed as abomination by such circles. On the other hand, intellectuals were repeatedly expressing their reservations about monastic irrational mysticism.79 This opposition between Byzantine humanism and monasticism will, as we shall see in a later chapter, become especially obvious during the hesychast controversy in the fourteenth century. It was by no means accidental that the most original spokesmen of monastic theology and spirituality - Gregory Palamas and Symeon the New Theologian - were also adversaries of the secular humanistic currents prevailing during their lifetime. It is worth adding, in this connection, that in Byzantium the monastery remained a significant locus of theological creativity and productivity (in sharp contrast with the Latin cloister of the high Middle Ages). Real creativity, at any rate, was to be found largely in the monastery and not among Byzantium's secular humanist circles or among conservative churchmen. 80 The hesychast debates of the 1300s illustrate this in a forceful and impressive way. Doubtless the fact that the more dynamic theological current in late Byzantine thought was monastic might seem surprising. And yet in the end it is not. As it happens, "it is primarily because theological truth could be neither conceived as a system of concepts to be taught as a scholastic discipline, nor reduced to authoritative pronouncements of the magisterium that creative theologizing in medieval Byzantium was largely pursued in monastic circles."81

Needless to say, it follows from all the above that the change in methodology introduced in the West by scholasticism was to make theological exchange with the East rather difficult. Time and again the western complaint was to be that the Orthodox East was incapable of theologizing professionally or argumentatively. On the other hand, Byzantine churchmen could not understand how theology could be viewed as a rational discipline; listening to the logic-oriented Latin theologians in official debate (at Florence, for example) was for them often an incomprehensible, even loathsome exercise. To be short, the fundamental reorientation of western theology in the twelfth century, along with the papal Petrine claims, must be viewed as factors contributing to the disruption of Christendom. Both scholasticism and the Roman primacy, in a sense, changed the rules of the game and, as a consequence, destroyed the "living continuity with the common past of the Church universal. "82 The synchronous development of Latin scholasticism and schism at any rate was not a purely historical accident. 

From the book 'The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy' by Aristides Papadakis

terça-feira, 25 de junho de 2019

Gregorian Reforms as rupture: The rising tide of papalism (Aristides Papadakis)


The rising tide of papalism

In addition to the demand for libertas and spiritual renewal, however, a determined effort had been made by the papacy to see that its claims to a universal jurisdiction throughout Christendom were everywhere acknowledged. The reformers in fact resolved to reorganize the Church along monarchical lines. From the outset it was agreed that this was to be accomplished by the systematic promotion of the pope's ancient primacy and authority everywhere. The vigorous interventionist policy initiated by Leo IX was almost certainly inspired by such sentiments. In brief, from the beginning the pioneers of the reformation were convinced that an independently powerful papacy exercising direct jurisdictional control over Christendom was an indispensable preliminary condition to renewal. The idea that the reform was to be founded on the restoration of papal authority was soon standard sentiment. Any concession or compromise on the pope's alleged constitutional status in the Church universal was conceived as a threat to the movement as a whole: Roman primatial centralism could alone guarantee ecclesial unity and renewal. Evidently, the papal reform movement was never exclusively limited or restricted to spiritual or moral renewal.

Without doubt the reign of Gregory VII is the best vantage point from which to examine this important feature of the Gregorian platform. It is of course true that Gregory's ideology owed a great deal to some of his predecessors. Many of his views were already forged during his years as a subordinate papal bureaucrat and archdeacon. His understanding of lay investiture (to say it once more) was often a faithful reflection of Humbert's own theories, while one of his more controversial texts, the Dictatus papae, contains sentiments and beliefs already present in the papal curia of Leo IX. On the whole, the conclusion that Gregory was more a resolute man of action than a man of incisive ideas is certain. It was not his deep learning but actions that were to leave the world "breathless. "64 At the same time, nevertheless, his tenure as pontiff was also the high point of the rising Roman tide of the eleventh century, when the theme of papal primacy was to achieve a degree of practical and theoretical development unknown to the first reform pioneers. The principles and foundations of Roman reform ecclesiology are best observed in his reign. 65 The mystical identification with St Peter occasionally cultivated by the popes of the early Middle Ages first acquired its more extreme and indeed bizarre interpretation under Hildebrand/Gregory. The Petrusmystik dominates his reign.

The Dictatus papae, a collection of twenty-seven short statements dealing with the Roman primacy, is without doubt one of the most synoptic manifestos in existence on the subject. To be sure, some of its notions, in terms of origin, pre-date the eleventh century. For instance, number nineteen (see below) is actually directly traceable to the sixth century Symmachian forgeries. Still the arbitrary terms in which the fullness of Roman universal power is described. is unparalleled. The fact that the original text was inserted in the official register of Gregory's correspondence does not of course tell us much about its purpose or origin. Such matters are hidden in obscurity. On the other hand, the suggestion that the list was intended as an index or a list of sorts-a table of contents or chapter headings-for a lost collection of canon law on the primacy has much in its favor. As it happens, except for five of its capitula dealing with Rome's relationship to the temporal power, the list is concerned exclusively with the divine origin and practical consequences of the pope's primatial rights and prerogatives.

1. That the Roman Church was founded by God alone.
2. That the Roman pontiff alone is rightly to be called universal.
3. That he alone can depose or reinstate bishops.
4. That his legate, even if of lower grade, takes precedence, in a council, of all bishops and may render a sentence of deposition against them.
7. That for him alone it is lawful to enact new laws according to the needs of the time, to assemble together new congregations, to make an abbey or a canonry; and, on the other hand, to divide a rich bishopric and unite the poor ones.
8. That he alone may use the imperial insignia.
9. That the pope is the only one whose feet are to be kissed by all princes.
11. That his title is unique in the world.
12. That he may depose emperors.
16. That no synod may be called a general one without his order.
17. That no chapter or book may be regarded as canonical without his authority.
19. That he himself may be judged by no one.
21. That to this see the more important cases of every Church should be submitted.
22. That the Roman Church has never erred, nor ever, by the witness of Scripture, shall err to all eternity.
23. That the Roman pontiff, if canonically ordained, is undoubtedly sanctified by the merits of St Peter.
26. That he should not be considered as Catholic who is not in conformity with the Roman Church.

Considering the shadowy status of the papacy before 1046, the forceful and outspoken character of these claims is remarkable. Despite its brevity, the document is actually a comprehensive summary statement of the reorganized Church under papal sovereignty as conceived by the Gregorian reformers of the eleventh century. The pope is throughout represented as an absolute monarch, as the supreme authority over bishops, councils, clergy, and all temporal rulers. Simultaneously, papal authority is everywhere deemed preeminent, especially in administration and legislation, as Rome's arbitrary right to review petitions, authorize canon law, convene ecumenical councils, and deliver judgments (from which there is no appeal) illustrate.

Invariably, in order to explain the unaccountability and supremacy of the pope, the Dictatus implicitly insists on the old proof from apostolicity. This argument was rooted in the familiar Petrine texts of Matthew 16: 18-19, Luke 22:32, and John 21:15-17 and, especially, in the peculiar "Roman" exegesis with which the reforming popes chose to invest them.68 Specifically, the promise and commission of Christ to the apostle Peter (enshrined in these texts) was thought to refer to the Roman see alone. The sweeping powers they imply were apparently bestowed by Christ exclusively on the Roman Church. The sole heir of the promises given to Peter by the Savior was indeed the Roman pontiff. This papalist reading is obviously behind the claim of the Dictatus that the see of St Peter is divinely-instituted or as "alone founded by God". In obvious contrast to all other sees and patriarchates, it is actually incapable of error and infallible. Remarkably, St Peter's trustees are even promised personally the gift of salvation. All canonically ordained papal incumbents, by virtue of their Petrine or apostolic authority, at any rate, are deemed "sanctified." The apostolicity argument was ultimately also the basis for the self-identification with St Peter found often among the reformers. Gregory VII was even willing to argue that Peter's Roman representative was the literal incarnation of the apostle. As he was to note in one of his letters, eius vicarius ... qui nunc in carne vivit.

Suffice it to say, Roman papal claims reached their pinnacle with such arguments. Reformers were actually being redundant in transforming obedience to the pope into virtual dogma, or in declaring conciliar legislation invalid, just because it contradicted papal decrees.70 Arguably, their twelfth century successors were conscious of the repetition, as their search for new formulas and titles seems to suggest. It was then for the first time in fact that the label "Vicar of Christ" (normally used of the emperor) was moved center stage as a replacement of sorts for the pope's inherited personal sanctity and mystical identification with Jesus' disciple.71 By the end of the century, Innocent III was even ready to discard the old formula "Vicar of St Peter" altogether for the more comprehensive "Vicar of Christ." As he was to emphasize, "we are the successor of the prince of the apostles, but we are not his vicar nor the vicar of any man or apostle, but the vicar of Jesus Christ himself."72 Parenthetically, in connection with this terminological evolution, it is interesting to note that the word ecclesia was also to undergo a transformation of sorts at the same period. By then the word had come to be identified almost exclusively with "churchman" or ecclesiastical government; it was quite common in fact to speak of ecclesiastical hierarchy or authority as the Church-to the exclusion of the laity. In other words, the meaning of the biblical term ecclesia, embracing as it has always done the entire body of the faithful, was obscured or forgotten. "Language like this is a sign of a very profound revolution in the way men thought about the Church. What is uppermost in their minds when they think of the Church is a juridical entity. One speaks of the 'body of the Church' as one does of any corporation. Looked at in terms of a juridical organization, the Church is seen essentially as a hierarchical, governmental structure."73 It goes without saying that the clerical separatism enshrined in this definition of ecclesia is linked not only to a rising papalism but to a rising clericalism. Everywhere in the West by the twelfth century, in contrast with the more accessible monogamous clergy of Eastern Christendom, sacerdotal celibacy had become an enduring reality.

In all essential respects, the metamorphosis of the papacy into a highly centralized monarchy was to result in the transformation of the western episcopate as well. The excessive centralization of Latin Christendom under papal authority was indeed to leave very little room for an independent hierarchy. Papal intrusion in diocesan affairs (already evident under Leo IX) was to become commonplace by the end of the century. It is by no means a surprise that the subordination of the episcopate to Rome is also a principal subtext of the Dictatus papae. Actually virtually half of its chapters deal with the proper relationship between pope and bishop; this is always described in terms of dependence. Throughout the document, at any rate, the ancient apostolic office of bishop is presented as an auxiliary adjunct agency of the papacy. 74 Direct, even unlimited, supervision of every diocese by Rome is viewed as the norm. Virtually all traditional episcopal and metropolitan primatial rights are set aside in order to make room for papatus, the new rank or order superior to episcopatus. In the end, in fact, St Peter's successor on the papal throne assumes not only the functions and powers of the episcopacy within each diocese, but the responsibilities of the provincial synod as well. The power to translate, reinstate, and depose a bishop is, in fact, characterized as a papal prerogative (whereas of course until then it had belonged to the local synod). Inevitably, all papal legates are dignified with similar powers. As duly authorized papal agents, their right of intervention is virtually identical to that of the pope; they are given precedence over all local authority. Although they may themselves be actually in inferior orders, if neccessary, they are empowered to depose and even excommunicate bishops.

Predictably, the pope's superior status vis-a-vis the episcopate was before long defined in even greater detail by western canonists. By the twelfth century Rome's interventionist-supervisory powers on the local diocesan level were routinely portrayed as expressions of the papal plenitudo potestatis. 75 St Peter's representative was apparently alone called to this fullness of jurisdictional power, whereas the bishop's authority was more confined within definite limits. As St Bernard was to insist, the plenitudo potestatis (a phrase first used in the fifth century by pope Leo I) was a unique papal privilege. "Therefore he who resists this power, resists the ordinance of God ... [The apostolic see] can degrade some [bishops] and exalt others, as its judgment dictates ... It can summon the most eminent churchmen from the ends of the earth and compel them to her presence not once or twice, but as often as it seems fit. Moreover it is quick to avenge every act of disobedience if anyone tries to resist. "76 Given the pronounced emphasis placed on the Roman primacy by the reformers of the eleventh century, it is not surprising to find that canonists were explicitly called upon to support it. How canon law became an instrument of papal absolutism will be described in a subsequent page. It will suffice at this point only to note that by the late eleventh century-thanks to Gregorian initiative-numerous new canonical manuals were available to the knowledgeable ecclesiastic. The fact that many of them began with a chapter entitled de primatu romanae ecclesiae was by no means unusual or uncommon. It had become by then almost standard practice.

Since the powers of the papal monarchy were deemed comprehensive in every way, they were obviously meant to include Orthodox Eastern Christendom. Actually the new papalism had as its goal the transformation of the pope's legitimate primacy of honor and authority within the ancient system of patriarchates into "a real power of jurisdiction, universal in scope and absolute in nature." The intention, quite simply, was to elevate Rome over and above all the other patriarchates, to make the papal throne into something more than one apostolic throne among others. It has indeed often been stressed that the aim was to reduce authority in Christendom to one. No longer would the constitutional center of the Church be based on a multiplicity of individual sees, on conciliarity and collegiality, but on Rome alone--the caput et cardo of papal decrees and pronouncements. It is worth adding that this vision of the pope's constitutional standing in the Church was also known to the author of the familiar forgery, the Donation of Constantine. "And we ordain and decree that he [the Roman pontiff] shall have rule as well over the four principal sees, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Jerusalem, as also over the Churches of God in all the world. And the pontiff who for the time being shall preside over the most holy Roman Church shall be the highest and chief of all priests in the whole world, and according to his decision shall all matters be settled. " In its negotiations with Constantinople in 1054, Rome was to appeal inter alia to this forged donation as a prized "authority" for its claims.

Any synopsis of Rome's superior status in the Church universal (as conceived by the Gregorians) must also necessarily emphasize its relationship to the temporal power. Again, Pope Gregory's pontificate has a direct bearing on the matter. As it happens, the Dictatus contains numerous sentences on the subject. The most famous assertion undeniably concerns the pope's right to depose emperors. As we have seen, this tenet (that kingship is a removable office) was actually put into practice in 1076 during Lent, when Gregory, in addition to absolving the German aristocracy from their oaths, stripped Henry IV of his right to rule and then excommunicated and deposed him. Gregory justified his actions in a letter to Hermann of Metz by arguing that the spiritual power was essentially superior to the secular power, since it presumably alone performed a higher function in society. To support his thesis, the pope was actually even willing to suggest that Ambrose of Milan and Pope Gelasius of the early Middle Ages had said as much. But Gregory probably also relied on the Advesus simoniacos, in which Humbert of Silva Candida had argued against the sacred nature of kingship by maintaining that "just as the soul excels the body and commands it, so too the priestly dignity excels the royal."79 Whatever the case, in their attempt to transform the Roman primacy into a genuine monarchy over the Church, the reformers of the eleventh century (and in particular, Gregory VII) eventually also laid claim to a jurisdictional authority superior to the secular power. Increasingly, emancipation of the Church and its clergy from the feudal net of the lay ruler--enshrined in the cry libertas ecclesiae to mean primarily clerical domination over the laity. In time, indeed, this reaction to imperial tutelage was to result in the "imperialization of the Church" itself, to borrow the label made famous by E. Kantorowicz.80 By the twelfth century, as a recent specialist argues, the vocabulary of western canonical collections used to describe papal authority, "became virtually indistinguishable from that of imperial authority. "81 That the papal claims to the imperial purple were frequently also inspired by Constantine's forged donation goes without saying. In this connection, it bears repeating that the imperial formula "Vicar of Christ" became a papal monopoly under Innocent III.

In the last analysis, needless to say, pope Gregory's theories and logic were seriously flawed and equivocal. And of course both his actions and arguments lacked historical precedent. Even his contemporaries were surprised at his radical reinterpretation of the historical facts as described in the sources. Neither Gelasius nor Ambrose had of course actually ever made the claims that Gregory repeatedly made on their behalf. In particular, they never implied by their actions or writings that a pope had the right to depose kings and emperors, or absolve subjects from their oaths, merely because priestly responsibility was supposedly greater. 82 And of course no pope had ever actually deposed an emperor. Even Theodosius was never deposed by St Ambrose. Ironically, historical precedent exists only for the opposite process (as the depositions of 1046 by Henry III illustrate). On the other hand, it seems certain that Gregory and the reformers in general were unmoved by such counter-arguments, however scrupulously argued. It was apparently much easier to regard their assertions and actions as a simple practical exercise of the papacy's Petrine power of binding and loosing-the so-called potestas ligandi et solvendi entrusted to St Peter and all his successors. 83 For their part, extending this power directly to the secular sphere was altogether legitimate.

To summarize, the western concept of papal primacy over the Church in toto orbe had achieved an astonishing degree of theoretical practical development by 1100. The Dictatus papae was entered into Gregory's Register perhaps a mere twenty years after the death of Pope Leo IX. In terms "of ecclesiological doctrines in general and of the notion of authority in particular,"84 the new juridical understanding of primacy as supremacy was, arguably; the most decisive chapter in the entire history of the Roman patriarchate. Sadly, the fact that it was also a threat to Church unity and Christian tradition was not appreciated by the Gregorian reformers. It is at any rate safe to assume that the ancient practice of conciliarity, in which the Church was conceived as koinonia regulated by episcopal collegiality or a synodal structure, was for them no longer important. For the high papalist, at any rate, the historical Church had always been ruled by the inspired judgment of the Roman pontiff and not by bishops or councils.85 Scripture itself was on this point all too clear: as a result of his Petrine powers, the pope had direct authority to dispense and to modify both Christian tradition and institutions. As Peter's successor he could act unencumbered without the consent or approval of his brother bishops and the Church's councils.

Remarkably, any suggestion that these claims were at best exaggerated was hidden from the reformers. Most of them were in actual fact content to accept the promotion of the Roman primacy as an authentic restoration of the past. The new legal authority in the Church advanced with such breath-taking speed did not, for their part, constitute a serious breach in Christian historical continuity and tradition. As a modern apologist explains, "tel sera precisement le but de la reforme gregorienne qui apparaitra du meme coup non pas comme une revolution, mais oomme une restauration des usages anciens. La tradition sauvera l'Eglise."86 Although this scholarly interpretation is unambiguously sincere, it is also strictly speaking unconvincing. Ecclesiologically, at any rate, the rapid transformation of the Western Church in the eleventh century was a revolutionary development. Fundamentally, the term reform is "a serious understatement, reflecting in part the desire of the papal party itself-and of later Roman Catholic historians-to play down the magnitude of the discontinuity between what had gone before and what came latter. " 87 To an unusual degree, to put it otherwise, the idea that the Gregorians were rigorous traditionalists is a serious oversimplification. Its historical basis is slight. It is quite possible to argue, for instance, chat the high papalist exegesis of Matthew 16: 18 was ancient. On the other hand, it was by no means ever universal. St Augustine himself preferred a non-papalist reading. The "rock" for him was not Peter but Christ. Actually, it has even been suggested by one of the most learned scholars of the period that the Dictatus was itself composed because Rome could not justify its actions in the traditional law books. "The Dictatus papae can be understood simply as proof that it was impossible to defend Gregory VII's legal demands by means of received law: the canonists could not follow the pope and his 'guiding principles' with a compilation of papal rights. "88 

It is worth repeating again that the men responsible for this fundamental "discontinuity" were initially almost all members of the German episcopate. The aggressive self-confidence which inspired them, as we have seen, was rooted in the northern monastic reform movement. They were the heirs to Carolingian theology and civilization. As "ultramontane" churchmen, they were often at the same time uninformed of the papacy's ancient Mediterranean orientation. This inexperience automatically meant ignorance of Eastern Christendom. To cite the late Francis Dvornik, such regrettable innocence explains their determination "to extend everywhere the direct right of intervention of the papacy-even in the East where the Churches had enjoyed a good deal of autonomy in running their internal affairs according to their own custom. In wishing to extend celibacy of the clergy which they were enforcing in the West, they forgot the practice of the East that priests were married. They also forgot that there were no churches under lay ownership in the East and that no reform was necessary in this matter. In preaching obedience to Rome and in enforcing observance of Roman customs they took no account whatever of the fact that the East had different customs and different rites." Typically, their predecessors in the eighth century, despite the opposition of both Rome and Constantinople, had adopted a similar attitude towards the medieval Christian East. Like their Carolingian forerunners, certainly, the Gregorians were for the most part unaffected by ancient ecclesiology or by the Greek patristic tradition. In geopolitical terms, when they thought of the Church, they thought of Rome-centered Latin, Western, Christendom. As the Dictatus papae (c.26) neatly emphasized, whoever disagreed with the Roman Church was not to be regarded as a catholic--quod catholicus non habeatur, qui non concordat Romanae ecclesiae. Obedience to Rome, in the last analysis, was the ultimate test of orthodoxy.

Strictly speaking, a detailed summary of the schism of 1054 lies outside the chronological limits of this survey. Still, failure to mention it in the context of the papal reform movement would be indefensible. A true appreciation of the schism, broadly considered, has actually always been dependent on a precise knowledge of the Gregorian reform. It is surely not pure accident that this "extraordinary powerful movement from which, without exaggeration, may be dated the definite formation of Latin Christianity, was [also] the very moment of the final separation between the Eastern and Western Churches. Indeed, as has been argued, reform ideology was meant to be comprehensive and, as such, Eastern Christendom was seldom omitted from papal designs. The tension that this was to generate in the Byzantine world will be discussed in its proper context. It is sufficient here only to note that Rome was denounce with cool certainty by Constantinople for assuming a monarchy which did not belong to its office (to cite the sober assessment of one Byzantine theologian). The Orthodox were by no means found "asleep at the switch" once the papal claims became known. In point of fact the reform intensified the already existing East-West rivalry and this in the end brought permanent schism. As for the more precise coup de theatre of 1054, the blame has at times been place much too squarely upon Humbert's shoulders. Granted he was an important architect of the reform movement, and as one of its bolder players was certainly familiar with arm-twisting. Besides, the papal letters he had brought with him to the Byzantine capital were partly his own compositions. Still, in a very real sense, placing all responsibility for what occurred on his radicalism or combativeness is a mistake, precisely because his posture cannot be isolated. The unconditional obedience he demanded of Orthodox Christendom would have been insisted on by the papacy as well. Then again, it is unthinkable that his actions or letters would have been disowned by any of the reformers. (They were not in fact rejected until 1965.) To put it otherwise, the history of the Roman primacy and the ecclesiology his posture implied was Gregorian, not Humbertian.91 If his intransigence and hostility were the result of his own temperament, the universal episcopacy and expansionist ecclesiology he tried to advance were not. 

Although a great deal is known individually about the so-called schism of 1054 and the Dictatus of Gregory VII, the fact that the two are occasionally linked together is not common knowledge. Presumably many of the prepositions of the Dictatus were also written with the Eastern Church in mind. The argument has actually been made that the Dictatus papae was a draft of the preliminary conditions for union, which Rome wished to impose on Constantinople after 1054. Apparently some twenty years later, when the text was composed, the papal embassy to Constantinople was still a live issue for its author. Thus, it has been suggested that the emphasis on the pope's title "universal" was a reference to the Byzantine formula "ecumenical patriarch" used by the see of Constantinople since the sixth century. That the reformers disliked the Orthodox usage is well known. Humbert even saw it as a usurpation of a papal title and was accordingly scandalized; not surprising, he also (mistakenly) thought that it had been created in the eleventh century by patriarch Michael Cerularius. Predictably, it has also been proposed that the assertions regarding Rome's right to convoke ecumenical councils and confirm their decisions (tasks traditionally undertaken by the Byzantine emperor) were aimed primarily at Byzantium. Then, too, the text's redefinition of Church-state relations (the papal right to depose emperors and wear the imperial insignia, inter alia) may have had as its target both the German and Byzantine sovereigns.92 Admittedly the evidence for associating Humbert's embassy with the later Dictatus is not always convincing or conclusive. Western circumstances it would seem were the text's main concern. On the other hand, the suggestion that there is a connection and that the text may be a list of conditions for union is intriguing.

From the book 'The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy' by Aristides Papadakis

sábado, 22 de junho de 2019

Scholastic "Analogia Entis" (Christos Yannaras)



Analogia entis 

The most important application of the relationship of analogy, with regard to historical consequences, was that which was undertaken in the field of ontology. This was the analogical relation between beings and Being, or beings and essence, known in the Middle Ages as "analogia entis." 

The origins of this lie again in Aristotle. He began with the statement: "There are many ways in which a thing may be said to 'be,' but they are related to one central point, one definite kind of thing, and are not homonymous." To define being we use the verb "is" (esti), which affirms onticity, or participation in Being — and we use it to define being "in many ways": as quality, quantity, place, time, relation. We say the horse is white, the horse is two meters tall, the horse is here, etc. It is evident that in defining the horse "in many ways" we always use the verb "is" analogically in relation to a principle: the horse is white in analogous relation to whiteness as such; the tree is tall in analogous relation to tallness as such. Consequently, the knowledge we have of the onticity of a specific horse or of a specific tree is analogous. It relies on the analogy of its attributes — the analogy of quality, quantity, place, time and relation ("analogia attributionis," as the Scholastics were to call it). 

But even if we use the verb "is" to define "in many ways," the onticity of the subject on the basis of the analogy of its attributes, the primary determination of the onticity of being is still always made with reference "to one thing," that is, with reference to what the specific subject "is." We say primarily that this is a horse and this is a tree. We define the specific subject by reference to the one horse and the one tree, that is, to the essence of horse and the essence of tree: "While 'being' has all these senses, obviously that which is primarily is the 'what,' which indicates the essence of the thing" — "the essence of each thing is one." And the reference of the specific subject to the "first one," that is, to the essence, is also analogous. Every specific subject participates "according to the same logos" in the common essence. It has the same logos as the essence — "for it is in virtue of the logos of the essence that the others are said to be ... for all will be found to contain the logos of the essence."

It is evident that determining the subject not only on the basis of the analogy of attributes but also with reference to the logos of its essence exhausts analogous relation as a possibility of defining or knowing being. Aristotle uses the concept of analogy to safeguard the unity of the subject. He does not extend analogy to mean a relation of ontological identity, the participation of beings in Being as such. The relation of beings to Being is for Aristotle a relation of cause and effect — a relation of transition from potential being (dynamei on) to actual being (energeiai on), a relation of moved and mover ("whence comes movement," — not a relation of analogical participation in Being. The regressive sequence of effect and cause, moved and mover, refers the Being-as-such of nature to a principle which transcends nature, to the "first unmoved mover," "which moves without being moved, being eternal, essence and actuality?" 

The Scholastics were the first to use the analogical relation of beings and Being to define Being in itself, or God, the "first mover," the transcendent First Cause of Being. Every being participates in Being. It is an "ens per participationem," whereas God, the "first and ultimate" being, the "eternal and best," does not participate in Being but constitutes Being in itself, "ens per essentiam," self-existence, in analogy to which whatever is, is.

The relation of beings to the Being-as-such of nature, and the relation of the Being-as-such of nature to God, the Cause of Being, can, in the scholastic view, lead to the analogical knowledge of God, since relation itself is analogous, with only one unknown term, namely, God. The Being-as-such of nature occupies the position of the "third of the comparison" between beings and God. The Scholastics used as their model the mathematical analogy a:b=c:d (2 : 3 = 4 : 6), in which when one term is unknown it can be defined by the productive combination of the remaining three. If the unknown term is 4 we have the relation a:b=c:x (2 : 3 = 4 : x, 2.x = 3.4, x = 3.4/2 = 6).

Thus the relation between beings and Being, and between Being and God, may be expressed according to the Scholastics with the precision of mathematical analogy: beings: Being = Being : x, where x represents the Cause of Being, namely, God. In this case, the analogical participation of beings in Being is the key for understanding the analogical participation of the Being of beings in its divine Cause, and God, the Cause of Being, is defined analogously in relation to Being, the cause of beings. 

We have seen that the participation of beings in Being was defined by Aristotle as the subject's analogical reference to its essence, and as the analogy of the attributes of the subject to the attributes of Being-as-such.

In the former case, the subject "is spoken of" (is known) according to the logos of its essence. The participation of the subject in Being is defined as an analogical participation in its essence. On the basis of this definition of the relation between subject and essence, we can say by analogy that in God this relation is a relation of identity: the subject that participates in the essence is the essence itself. The Being of God is God himself, and the essence of God is his very existence. 

In the latter case, the subject "is spoken of" (is known) "in many ways," on the basis of the analogy of its attributes to the attributes of Being-as-such (quality, quantity, place, time and relation). The analogical participation of the subject in the attributes of Being-as-such necessarily exhausts the knowledge of Being within the limits of experience in the world — since the experience of quality and quantity, of place, time and measurable relation always refers to the sensory reality of the world. It is nevertheless possible for us to recognize in beings that are partial and incomplete certain attributes which transcend the Aristotelian categories of being. These attributes can, through an intellectual ascent to the absolute ("regressus in infinitum"), disclose the perfections of Being. That is to say, they can make known to us by analogy the transcendent attributes of God. Thomas Aquinas and Albert the Great summarized these attributes, which can be the foundation of a transcendent analogy, in the predicates: "unum, verum, bonum, res, aliquid" (one, true, good, thing, something). Being in itself is real, a reality ("res"). By transcending the partial and incomplete, it is always one ("unum"). In contrast with the other beings, it is something ("aliquid"). With regard to the knowledge we have of it, it is true ("verum"). And with regard to its willed intentionality, it is good ("bonum"). The Scholastics called these five predicates of being "transcendentals" ("transcendentalia"). Their reference to God constitutes not an experiential analogy, but a transcendent analogy, an intellectual extension ("extensio") of these predicates beyond the limits of experience in the world, in the space of the transcendent absolute. Thus we can come to know the attributes of God's essence, namely, unity, goodness, truth, supreme onticity and supreme otherness, with the aid of the intellect ("per lumen intellectus"), through the analogical elevation of the perfections of beings to the absolute and transcendent perfection of God, which is the Cause of every perfection. 


Scholastic analogy as theological epistemology 


We can draw two basic conclusions from this brief account of scholastic teaching on analogy as an epistemological path and method. 

1. The knowledge of God by analogy, as established by the Scholastics, is confined to an intellectual approach to the essence of God, which is a transcendent but nevertheless ontic essence — a transcendent object ("objectum") of the intellect. Scholastic analogy ignores the personal existence of God, the Triad of the divine persons, the mode of existence of the divine essence, which is personal. They thus introduce into the field of Christian theology not only the "poverty" of Judaic monotheism, but a conception of God which is incomparably inferior. For the personal God of biblical revelation and ecclesiastical experience they substitute the impersonal conception of a transcendent "object," a logically necessary absolute cause and origin of beings.

This transcendent "object" is accessible only through the subject's ability to rationalize. It is understood solely in the context of the antithesis between the absolute and the relative, the infinite and the finite. God is separated from the world by the sharpest possible contrast between the transcendent and the immanent, the empirically existent and the empirically non-existent, sensible reality and intellectual conception. 

Consequently, the analogy of the Scholastics established an ontology of exclusively ontic categories. It left the existential problem untouched, the problem of the mode of exis-tence of God, humanity and the world. It accepted existence a priori as logically determined. Matter remained ontologically unexplained, and the origin or principle of what exists was transferred to the necessity of the things that determined essence, not to the freedom of the person, not to triadic love as the self-determination of the mode of existence. 

2. Scholastic analogy ignored the personal mode of existence, not only as an ontological reality but also as a means of cognition. It ignored the cognitive power of personal relation, the disclosure — the unmediated knowledge — of the person through the energies of the essence, which are always personal. It ignored the immediacy and universality of the knowledge, beyond any conceptual signification that accompanies erotic "astonishment," the unexpected revelatory cognition of personal uniqueness and dissimilarity that arises in the relationship of love. 

Thus for the Scholastics even the knowledge of God was not a universal (rather than just intellectual) cognitive experience of the revelatory disclosure of the person of God within the limits of a dynamic interpersonal relationship between God and humanity. For them it was not the eros of God for humanity and humanity for God that reveals unutterably and discloses indefinably the uniqueness and dissimilarity of the mystery of personal existence. But it was the human intellect ("la raison seule") which objectifies God's existence as the logical necessity of an impersonal principle and cause of the world. 

Consequently, the Scholastics established an epistemology that exhausted the possibility of cognition in the conventional categories of objective syllogisms and restricted the truth to the coincidence of the concept with the object of thought, or opened up the way to a mysticism of essence, a contemplation of an impersonal absolute, which precisely because it is impersonal permits no solution other than pantheism or agnosticism.

terça-feira, 18 de junho de 2019

The theological presuppositions of technocracy (Christos Yannaras)



What interests us here is to note, even if briefly, the cultural expression of a different cosmology, equally theological but at the opposite pole to the Byzantine, which completely negated Byzantine culture as a mode of life and approach to using the world. This was the cosmology that arose from Western theology and was embodied historically in the technological culture of the West.

 The development of a different cosmology in the West appears to be founded on the Byzantine teaching of the human person as a microcosm.[86] This teaching was transferred to the West in the ninth century through John Scotus Eriugena's Latin translations of Maximus the Confessor and Gregory of Nyssa. [87] But it only became widely disseminated in the first decades of the twelfth century, that is, with the renaissance of learning that accompanied the appearance of scholasticism in the West (the rediscovery of classical antiquity, the entry of Aristotelian epistemology into the field of theology, the rationalistic organization of human knowledge, and the utilitarian objectivizing of truth).[88] It is the century of the "awakening" of Western theologians to the potentiality of logic and of their appreciation of the first rationalistic conclusions of scientific observation and the systematic organization of knowledge.

Early scholastic thought set the doctrine of man-microcosm and world-macroanthropos in the context of the cognitive possibilities of the analogous syllogism, that is to say, it interpreted the microcosm-macrocosm relationship with the help of a rationalistic comparative epistemology. [89] The world was treated as an object along the lines of the human microcosm as mental concept, sensory observation and measurable size. Its objective truth was defined, measured and subjected by the human intellect and its material embodiment to human tools.[90]

Thus the doctrine of man as microcosm was developed in the West as a basis for the construction of an anthropocentric world-view, a humanism,[91] which saw in the human microcosm and its "interior life" the possibility of an intellectual and mechanical influence on the macrocosm.[92] Within the context of the mental concept, the sensory observation and the measurable relations, knowledge of the world becomes autonomous, is a knowledge with its own structure and organization, which is no longer expressed by the "semantic" terminology of aesthetic theory and personal relationship, but by an objectively articulated scientific method, which can predict events in nature and account for them causally. [93]

The objectivizing of the truth of the world and its subjection to the understanding of the individual, and also more generally the introduction of intellectualism into Western theology, is not an isolated symptom in the general development of Western Christianity. In the first place, one should note that in the context of historical phenomenology, the rationalistic structuring and systematization of knowledge in the medieval West is drawn primarily from jurisprudence, and is first introduced into theology, and then from there into cos-mology and the natural sciences [94] — without in consequence there failing to be a reverse influence: on theology from the natural sciences. [95] But the historical causes which provoked the generation of theological rationalism are much deeper, and should rather be sought in the need for the objective imposition of the authority of the Roman Church on the peoples of the West — a need which appears to have its roots not only in purely historical and sociological [96] conditions but also in the underlying monarchianism of Roman theology, from as early as the time of Sabellius [97] and Augustine. [98]

The objective strengthening of truth, which a clear and unambiguous authority lent to its institutional bearer, the Church, led Western theologians to separate faith from theology [99] and to organize the latter as an independent science [100]. This organization of theology as a science demands an apodictic methodology which objectifies the truth under examination and subjects it to the thinking and principles ("regulae, axiomata, principia") of the human intellect. [101]An apodictic theological methodology took shape largely in the second half of the twelfth century, when the logica nova, the second part of the Aristotelian Organon,[102] appeared in the West. This became the basis of a theory of knowledge and a technique of probability. [103]

The next step was the transfer of Aristotelian methodology from systematic theory to experiential reality, that is, to cosmology and physics — and it seems to be the naturalist doctor-philosophers of Toledo who led the way.[104] Science thus opened up a path for the systematic organization of knowledge in all fields of rational enquiry, that is, for the restriction of knowledge to the bounds of mental conception and intellectual expression, leading finally to the subjection of truth to the human intellect, and consequently to the subjection of the world to human will and human desire.[105]

When theology, as an apodictic methodology, objectified knowledge, when it took truth to be an object of the intellect and excluded truth as a fact of personal relation, it also excluded the possibility of a personal approach to the world. It ruled out a personal relation with the logos of things, with the disclosure of God's personal energy in creation. (The rejection of the distinction between the essence and the energies of God by Western theologians in the fourteenth century was the formal consequence of an intellectualist theology and completed the exclusion of truth as personal relation.) And when knowledge of the world is not realized as personal relation, when it does not aim at the reception and study of the logos of things, the only motive that can stimulate human interest in knowledge of the world is its usefulness.

And the criterion of usefulness implies the subjection of the world to humanity's will and desire. Thus the knowledge of nature began to serve technology alone. The criterion of usefulness transformed the world into an impersonal object. It forced nature to subject it to human need and desire.[106] The world lost its personal dimension. The world's logos ceased to be the disclosure of God's personal energy. God was radically set apart from the world by the boundary that separates created ontic essence from uncreated ontic essence, the experientially known from the experientially unknown, sensible and measurable reality from intellectual hypothesis (suppositio). The field was left clear for humanity's endeavor to secure sovereignty over as much of the realm of truth as was accessible to it through its intellectual and technical abilities, to interpret and subject the reality of the world to its individual mental capacity.

The theological presuppositions of technocracy 

This subjection of the world to man's intellectual and technical capacity (what we call today our technological culture) finds its first expression as early as the Middle Ages in Gothic architecture. The builders of Gothic edifices were not interested in the logos of the material of the construction. They did not seek to coordinate and harmonize this logos to bring out its expressive possibilities. On the contrary, they subjected the material to given forms, and gave the stones a deliberate a priori shape with the intention of realizing the ideological objective that was envisaged by the construction. [107]

Erwin Panofsky, in his very interesting study, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism,[108] has drawn attention to the attempt of both scholastic thought and Gothic architecture [109] to explore the truth intellectually and to the fact that both arose at the same time: [110] "It is a. connection ... more concrete than a mere `parallelism' and yet more general than those individual 'influences' which are inevitably exerted on painters, sculptors or architects by erudite advisors: it is a real relationship of cause and effect." [111] Gothic architecture, following soon after scholasticism, is the first technological application of scholastic thought. It sets out in visible form the scholastic attempt to subject truth to the individual intellect, drawing on the new logical structures introduced by scholastic theology. In the thirteenth century, for the first time a truth is arranged and discussed systematically, under a num-ber of sub-divisions. A complete work is divided into books, the books into chapters, the chapters into paragraphs, and the paragraphs into articles. Each assertion is established by the systematic refutation of objections, and phrase by phrase, the reader is gradually brought to a full intellectual clarification of a given truth. [112] It is "a veritable orgy of logic," as Panofsky says of Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologiae.[113]

In an analogous manner the technique of Gothic architecture is based on a structure of small cut stones of uniform shape. The stones form columns, and the columns are sub-divided into ribbed composite piers, with the same number of ribs as those in the vaulting above them.[114] The arrangement of the columns and the division of the ribs create a rigid skeleton which neutralizes the weight of the material by balancing the thrusts of the walls. Here again, thesis is reinforced by the systematic refutation of antithesis, "the supports counter the weights placed on them," and the weight of the material is neutralized by balances arranged on rational principles.

 This technique conceals "a profoundly analytic spirit, relentlessly dominating the construction. This spirit considers the forces, analyzes them in terms of static diagrams and petrifies them in space" [115] forming a unity which is not organic but mechanical, a monolithic framework. "Our sense of stability is satisfied but we are perplexed, because the parts are connected no longer organically but only mechanically: they look like a human frame stripped of flesh."[116] We see here technology, i.e., human will and logic, taming matter. The structure manifests the intellectual conception and will of the craftsman rather than the potentialities of the material — the moral obedience of matter to spirit, not the "glory" of matter, the revelation of God's energies in the logos of material things. 

Gothic architecture is historically the first striking example of the cultural and, more specifically, the technological extensions of the anthropocentric cosmology of European theologians in the Middle Ages. On this cosmology was founded the whole structure of Western technological culture. However strange it may seem, the principle which refers the genesis of technocracy to theology is not an arbitrary one.[117] The development of technology in the West is not simply a phenomenon of steady scientific progress. At the same time it is also the specific embodiment of a particular attitude towards the world, which recapitulates all the phases of Western man's evolution: the subjection of truth to the intellect, the denial of the distinction between God's essence and energies, and consequently the sharp divide between the transcendent and the immanent, the transformation of the personal relation with the world into an attempt to dominate nature and historical reality. The development of Western technology expresses a particular ethos, that is, the principles of a specific cosmology (since, as we have seen above, humanity's relation with the world is the fundamental moral problem), [118] both as a phenomenon of the organic detachment of humanity from the whole rhythm of the world's life, and as a phenomenon of history's being caught up in a nexus of threatening impersonal powers, which make it impossible for the uniqueness of personal human existence to be presupposed — such as the appearance of the capitalist system and its socialist counterparts, which alienate human life within the context of an impersonal economy trapped in the rationalistic balancing of production and consumption. 

This is not the place for an extended discussion of all the historical consequences of Western cosmology and the problems surrounding each of them. Perhaps the most important stage in the historical evolution of the new relationship of humanity with the world initiated by the scholastic theology of the Middle Ages is the problem of the pollution of the environment, which in our time has become an increasing threat. The poisoned atmosphere of industrial zones, lands turned to desert wastes, waters made toxic, and the assertions of statisticians that in twenty-five years or less large areas of the globe will be rendered uninhabitable — all these reveal in a direct way some fault in humanity's relation with the world. They demonstrate the failure of humanity in its effort to subject the reality of nature to its individual needs. This subjection has been achieved by the power of the human mind materialized in the machine, but proves today to be the tormenting of nature and its corruption, which is unavoidably also a tormenting of human kind and the threat of death. For human life and human truth cannot be separated from the life and truth of the world which surrounds us. The relationship is a given and is inescapable. Any falsification, any violation of this relationship is destructive of the existential roots of human kind. 

Within the context of today's technological culture, the culture not of relation or use but of consumption of the world, which is imposed on the multitude with systematic tech-niques of persuasion and the total subjection of human life to the ideal of an impersonal and individualistic comfortable life - within the context of this culture the Orthodox theological view of the world does not represent simply a truer or better theory of nature, but embodies the converse ethos and mode of existence, the potentiality for a culture at the opposite pole to consumerism. Orthodox cosmology is a moral struggle which aims at bringing out, by the practice of asceticism, the personal dimensions of the cosmos and humanity's personal uniqueness. Within the context of Western culture this could become a radical program of social, political and cultural change. With the proviso that such a "program" cannot be objectivized in terms of an impersonal strategy. The possibility always remains of personal revelation, that is, of repentance, as also the content of the Church's preaching and the practice of Orthodox worship. In opposition to the messianic utopia of consumer "happiness," which alienates humanity, turning people into impersonal units, and which is organized in accordance with the needs of the mechanistic structures of the social system, the Church sets the personal uniqueness of the human person, as attained in the fact of an ascetic, that is, a personal, relationship with the world. 


From the book Person and Eros by Christos Yannaras


87 See M. A. Schmidt, "Johannes Scotus Eriugena," in Die Religion in Geschichte and Gegemvart, vol. 3, cols. 820-21; Chenu, La theologie au XIIe siècle, 40, 50; also Gilson, La Philosophie au Moyen Age, 202. 

88 "It is in this context of renaissance — where inspiration takes precedence over imitation, where also the resources of antiquity nourished new spiritual initiatives — that there developed the literary, aesthetic and doctrinal theme of the relations of humanity with nature: the human being is a 'microcosm" (Chenu, La theologie au XIIe siècle, 37). See also Gilson, La Philosophie au Moyen Age, 327-28; Chenu, La theologie comme science au XIlle slick, 101: "Between the two great crossroads of the Carolingian renaissance and that of the Quattrocento, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries mark a stage characterized by the recovery of the capital of Antiquity." 

89 "the first attempts at a microcosm-macrocosm parallelism were of a rational, we might even say of an early scientific, type" (Chenu, La theologie au Xlle siecle, 41). See also Gilson, La Philosophie au Moyen Age, 327: "... reasoning by analogy, which consisted of explaining a being or fact by its correspondence with other beings or other facts. A method this time legitimate and which all science makes use of .... The description of the human person as a universe in miniature, that is to say, as a microcosm analogous to a macrocosm, is a classic example of this kind of reasoning." 

90 "Confronted by the universe, the human person not only accepts the exterior world, but changes it, and seeks with its tools to compose a human world .... The thinking of the men of the twelfth century ... perceived all that art, in forcing nature, could reveal about humanity" (Chenu, La theologie comme science au XIIIe siecle, 49). 

91. See ibid., 40. 

92 "The 'interior life' calls in the microcosm, in the very name of its nature, for the intellectual and mechanical domination over the macrocosm" (ibid., 42). 

93 See ibid., 314: "There is an autonomous knowledge of this world and of the human person, valuable in its own order, actually helpful for speculation and action, which is transferable to theological science."And on p. 48: "The order is no longer simply the schema of an aesthetic imagination or a religious conviction; it is proved, sustained by a method." 

94 See ibid., 16: "In its earliest state, theology is normally a commentary, and throughout the course of its development it evolves in constant reference to structures related to the teaching of law. In the Middle Ages above all, canonists and theologians work in constant collaboration in analogous and interchangeable forms." Further research would be useful on the historical development of the legal-juridical spirit of the Roman Church even from the time of Tertullian and Augustine (who were both very well versed in legal matters). The same legal-mindedness calls for the objectivizing of particular cases, and the monarchical understanding of objective authority. 

95 See ibid., 315: "In the organic construction of its wisdom, theology takes account of objects which furnish it with rational disciplines, sciences of the universe and its laws, sciences of humanity and its faculties." And on p. 51: "It is the same Alan of Lille (d. 1203), this master of nature, who is also the theoretician of the 'rules of theology,' that is to say, of the method by which, as in every mental discipline, the knowledge of faith is organized and built up, thanks to internal principles which give it the appearance and value of science." 

96 The Roman Church is the only Western Medieval institution which preserves an unbroken cultural tradition and can meet the need for unity of the various nations living together in Western Europe. The exploitation of the need for such an institution had already arrived at a complete religious organization of the Western communities by the tenth and eleventh centuries. For the religious structures of the Western Medieval communities and their expression in the religious art of the eleventh century, see the extremely interesting study of Georges Duby, Adolescence de la chretrenté occidentale (Geneva: Skin, 1967). See also Robert Fossier, Histoire sociale de  l'Occident medieval (Paris: Colin, 1970), esp. 43-44, 54-56; Jean Chelini, Histoire religieuse de I 'Occident medieval (Paris: Cohn, 1968; and J. Le Goff, La civilisation de l'Occident medieval (Paris: coll. "Les grandes civilisations," 1964). 

97 "The West made the unity of God (one God) a clear and firm basis (for the dogma of the Trinity) and tried to conceive of the mystery of his threeness. A fundamental formula was 'one substance, one hypostasis.' From such a formula there was a danger of arriving at one person (Monarchians, the monarchianizing bishops of Rome Victor, Zephyrinus and Callixtus). The formula favored monarchianism and assisted in the battle against Arianism" (Basil Stephanidis, Ekklesiastike Istoria, 169). The monarchian spirit of the West was revealed very clearly by the rejection of the distinction between Essence and Energies and by the relevant works which tried to support this rejection, mainly in the fourteenth century. The pro-Latin opponents of St. Gregory Palamas defined the hypostasis as a referential essence which "differs from the simple essence because the one is referential, the other detached .... The detached differs from the referential only conceptually" (John Kyparissiotes, How the Hypostatics in the Trinity Differ from the Essence, ed. E. Candal, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 25. [1959]: 132, 140, 142). St. Grego-ry Palamas judged from the beginning that the denial of the uncreated Energies of the Trinity conceals a hidden denial of the hypostases and their identification with the essence (see On the Divine Energies 27 [ed. P. Chrestou, 2:115]). And Matthew Blastares accuses the antipalamites of wanting "to contract the divine nature into one hypostasis," introducing into Christianity the Jewish "poverty," that is, Jewish monotheism (see On the Divine Grace or On the Divine Light, Cod. Monac. 508, fol. 150, cited by Amphilochios Rantovits, To mysterion tes Agias Triados kata ton agion Gregorion Palaman [Thessalonica, 1973], 25, 27). 

98 See Stephanidis, Ekklesiastike Istoria, 198-99n: "In the West the (monarchianizing) phraseology of Western Theology has through the influence of Augustine endured to the present day." See also F. Loofs, Dogmengeschichte (1906), 363ff. Also Chenu's conclusion (La theologie comme science au XIIIe siecle, 95): "Augustine's theology ... is a fine piece of intellectualism" in conjunction with Stephanidis' observation (Ekklesiastike Istoria, 166): "The solution the Monarchians gave was based on rational argumentation, such that given the premises those were the ideas they would arrive at." See also N. Nissiotis, Prolegomena eis ten theologiken Gnosiologian (Athens, 1965), 178-79. 

99 "Theology is decidedly distinct from faith (and Scripture) in the leading scholarly circles" (Chenu, La theologie comme science au XIIIe siecle, 26; see also 55, 79, 83). 

100 See ibid., 26-27: "The 'scientific' regime which now established itself ... was the right of reason to install itself at the heart of the deposit and light of faith, and work there according to its own laws." See also 85-86: "Faith admits of ... a capacity for rational elaboration, exposition and proof, according to the philosophical sense of the word argumentum .... Even the definition of faith opens itself from now on, as if on a smooth horizon, to a rational expansion of a scientific nature." 

101 See ibid., 42: "... to accept the objectivizing of the knowledge of faith in theology ..."; and 20: "Gilbert de la Porrée (1076-1154) vigorously enunciated the principle of the transfer to theology of the formal procedures (regulae, axiomata, principia) customary in every rational discipline." See also 51: "Like every intellectual discipline, the knowledge of faith was organized and built up thanks to internal principles which gave it the appearance and value of science." 

102 The first part comprised the Categories, the De interpretation and the Prior analytics, the second part the Posterior analytics, the Topics, and the Sophistical refutations. In some editions of the Organon the treatises On generation and corruption and On the universe were added. 

103 See Chenu, La theologie comme science au XIIIe siecle, 20. 

104 Ibid. 

105 "Man's encounter with nature was only accomplished in such a way that man seized this nature and put it to work for him .... To set up Nature in fact put paid to a certain Christian conception of the universe" (ibid., 44, 50). 

106 "In this mechanical universe, man ... depersonalized his action, be-came sensitive to the objective density and the articulation of things under the domination of natural laws ... Human science embraced the knowledge of this mastery of nature" (ibid., 48).

107 Byzantine and post-Byzantine architecture expresses a radically opposite attitude to the material of construction. A comparison of Gothic to Byzantine buildings gives us perhaps the clearest illustration of two diametrically opposed cosmological views which lead to two diametrically opposed technical approaches. See Christos Yannaras, E eleutheria tou ethous (Athens: Ekdoseis Athena, 1970), ch. 13, "To ethos tes leitourgikes technes," 183ff.: "Every piece of Byzantine architecture is a personal exploration of the potentialities of the physical material .... In Byzantine architecture we not only find a personal use of the material of construction, but also a personal dialogue with the material, the personal encounter of humanity with the logos of God's love and wisdom, which is revealed in the material creation. This dialogue, which is embodied in Byzantine architecture, conveys the measure of the truth of the entire natural world as communion and Ecclesia .... The material creation is 'shaped' as person, the Person of the Logos ...." [Cf. the ET of this work by Elizabeth Briere, The Freedom of Morality (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984; based on the Greek of the 2nd ed., 1979), ch. 12, "The Ethos of Liturgical Art."] See also Olivier Clement, Dialogues avec le Patriarche Athenagoras (Paris: Fayard, 1969), 278-83; P. A. Michaelis, Aisthetike theorese tes byzantines technes, 2nd ed. (Athens, 1972; ET of 1946 ed., An Aesthetic Approach to Byzantine Art [London, 1955]), esp. 85-98; Christos Yannaras, "Teologia apofatica e architettura bizantina," in Simposio Cristiano (Milan: Ediz. dell' Istituto di Studi teologici Ortodossi, 1971), 104-12; and Marinos Kalligas, E aisthetike tou chorou tes Ellenikes Ekklesias sto Mesaiona (Athens, 1946). 


108 Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (Latrobe: Archabbey Press, 1951).

109 Ibid., 27ff. 

110 "... this astonishingly synchronous development ..." (ibid., 20). See also the diagrams later in the book. 

111 Ibid. 

112 the construction of a knowledge within faith. From this, theology is established as a science" (Chenu, La theologie comme science au XIIIe siècle, 70). 

113 Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism, 34. 

114 See Michaelis, Aisthitike theorese, 89-90. 

115 Ibid., 90. 

116 Ibid. See also Worringer, Formprobleme der Gotik (Munich, 1910), 73 (cited by Michaelis).

117 "Theology is the first great technical science (technique) of the Christian world .... The men who built the cathedrals [also] constructed the summae" (Chenu, Introduction a l'etude de Saint Thomas d'Aquin [Paris: Vrin, 1974], 53, 58). 

116 "For according to whether we use things rightly or wrongly we become either good or bad" (Maximus the Confessor, First Century on Love 92 [Palmer-Sherrard-Ware]).