He might even, in the peculiar circum-
stances of the time, have agreed with the Averroists that the general liberty
of speculation was summed up in the free study of Aristotle.
stances of the time, have agreed with the Averroists that the general liberty
of speculation was summed up in the free study of Aristotle.
Cambridge Medieval History - v5 - Contest of Empire and the Papacy
811 (#857) ############################################
The new Aristotle at Paris. The translations
811
the Latins, but during the whole of that period less had happened to dis-
turb the intellectual atmosphere than was now to be accomplished in a
single generation by the Aristotelian invasion of Paris. Customary and
right as it is to place the name of Aristotle in the foreground, it would
be idle to pretend that the mere recovery of his writings was enough to ac-
count for all the subsequent events. Without the organisation of studies
in the new universities, and without the intervention of the Friars in
educational and ecclesiastical politics, the story of the thirteenth century
must have been very different. And again, it is difficult to exaggerate
the importance of another fact, the conjunction of the new Aristotle with
an interpretation of him developed by a series of Muslim philosophers,
whose object had not been to keep on terms with Christian orthodoxy,
but to avoid open collision with the Koran. The fragments of Arabian
mathematics and medicine which had drifted from time to time into the
Latin world had brought no anticipation of the tumult immediately
aroused by the commentaries of Avicenna and Averroes. The roughly es-
tablished modus vivendi with Pagan philosophy was of no avail when
there suddenly appeared a new Aristotle, the author of a vast and com-
prehensive system, in which were contained, if the Muslims could be
trusted, many doctrines incompatible with the Christian position. And
most of this was brought about by the enterprise of a Christian, Arch-
bishop Raymond of Toledo, who had instituted, in the second quarter of
the twelfth century, a college of translators under the supervision of
Dominic Gundisalvi, himself the author of a De Divisione Philosophiae
and other philosophical works.
The unparalleled importance of translations in the Middle Ages was
not diminished by the prevalence of a single literary language among the
peoples of the West. Absence of linguistic barriers between the scholars
of different European countries may even have helped to strengthen the
frontiers dividing the larger units of culture denoted as the Arabs, the
Latins, and the Greeks. We cannot, however, pursue that complicated
question, but must be content to glance at the golden age of translators,
which began early in the twelfth century and lasted about a hundred and
fifty years. Visits of Western scholars to Byzantium had produced the
translations of the Organon and of John of Damascus; another centre
was the court of Palermo, where Greek and Arabic learning were united;
but the widest diffusion of Muslim knowledge came from Toledo, and it
is necessary to enquire how far the Latin Aristotelianism was affected by
the mediation of the Arabic language. The story, once lightly bandied
about, that the medieval Aristotle was only a Latin parody of an Arabic
version of a Syrian translation of a Greek original is little more than a
fable. It is true that the Muslims were first introduced to Aristotle by
Syrians, chiefly Nestorian Christians; it is true also that Arabic Aristote-
lianism was coloured to the last by the commentators, such as Alexander
of Aphrodisias, who had influenced the Syrians. But long before there was
CH. XXIII.
## p. 812 (#858) ############################################
812
Translations from Greek and from Arabic
any question of extensive Muslim influence on the Latins, direct trans-
lations of Aristotle from Greek into Arabic had been made in abundance.
The name of "philosophers,” in the Arabic transcription of the word, was
especially applied to those who had studied Greek originals; and among
these “philosophers” were the whole series of writers, beginning with Kindi
in the ninth century, whose names we encounter in the works of the Latin
schoolmen. Strange to say, the most famous of all (at least in Latin esti-
mation), Ibn Rushd or Averroes (ob. 1198), was an exception to the rule.
For it is said that he never thought it worth while to learn Greek. If
that be so, we must suppose that he saw no reason, after three centuries
of Aristotelian scholarship, to doubt the adequacy of the Arabic trans-
lations. It was left for his Latin critics to entertain that doubt.
While the relation of the Latins to the Arabs is, at first sight, analo-
gous to that of the Arabs to the Syrians, further scrutiny of the facts
does not strengthen the analogy. There never was a time when the Latins
depended entirely on translations from the Arabic; there never was a
time when the Muslim inferences from Aristotle were not disputed and
opposed; least of all was there a time when Christians could imitate
Muslims in taking Aristotle as an infallible authority. To adopt that
attitude was, in fact, to be an Averroist; and Averroism, as we shall see,
was a movement destructive of all that Christian philosophers were striving
to establish.
Now that the earlier researches of Jourdain have been supplemented
by Grabmann and other recent scholars, it is possible to speak with some
confidence about the translations of Aristotle used by the Latins. No
simple generalisation can be accurate, for the case of each of Aristotle's
works has to be separately considered. Yet on the whole it is safe to
maintain that translations from the Greek relieved the schoolmen of
undue dependence on the Arabs, and enabled them, thus far at least, to
form an independent judgment on the meaning of Aristotle. To illustrate
the facts from a few of the more important works, we find that the earliest
version of the Metaphysics (containing only Books I-III and a small part
of iv) came to Paris from Byzantium before 1210. Next to arrive (ap-
parently before 1217) was a translation from the Arabic ascribed to
Gerard of Cremona. This, too, was imperfect, for it omitted altogether
Books K, M, and N, and mixed up the first book with the second. With
this, however, the Latins had to content themselves until after 1260, when
a Graeco-Latin version of the first twelve books, probably by William of
Moerbeke, was put into circulation. Upon these twelve books St Thomas
wrote his commentary, the last two being still untranslated when he saw
a Greek manuscript of the whole fourteen in 1270. The history of the
Nicomachean Ethics is rather similar: first a Graeco-Latin version of
three books, disguised as four; then, in 1240, a paraphrase from the
Arabic by Herman the German ; lastly a full translation from the
Greek, often explicitly attributed to Robert Grosseteste (ob. 1253), but
## p. 813 (#859) ############################################
Character of medieval translations. Roger Bacon 813
more probably, in Grabmann's opinion, by William of Moerbeke. Both
the Physics and the De Anima were known first in Graeco-Latin versions,
while the Politics, a book neglected by the Arabs, was derived only from
the Greek. Evidently, then, it would be less than a half-truth to say that
the Latins depended on second-hand translations for access to those works
of Aristotle which most deeply affected their thought. It remains to ask
whether the quality of the translations was such as to debar them from
a sound understanding of the text.
To claim distinction of style for the medieval translations would
indeed be courageous. Their rudeness, however, was perfectly deliberate.
It was not due to inability to write Latin, but to a frank mistrust of
elegance where the sole object was to get an exact reproduction of the
original. This they imagined they would best secure by simply replacing,
so far as possible, every Greek word by its Latin equivalent. For reasons
then potent, but now no longer operative, they demanded the letter
rather than the spirit; not a transformation of idiom into idiom, but
a raw and formless text. The task of the translators may have been
wrongly conceived, but in its way it was faithfully done. The belief, still
extant in some quarters, that the medieval understanding of Aristotle
was hopelessly vitiated by faulty translations is unsupported by the facts.
The prime author of this libel was Roger Bacon, whose bitter denuncia-
tions, often repeated as oracles, were in truth the product of ignorance
and spleen. Bacon's judgments on the translation and study of Aristotle
range over a quarter of a century, from about 1266 to 1292. Starting
from the excellent principle that a translator requires both a knowledge
of the languages and an understanding of the sciences concerned, he re-
peatedly declares that only Boethius possessed the first qualification,
only Robert Grosseteste the second. And here at once we begin to sus-
pect him. For Grosseteste's scientific attainments, as Bacon knew, were
in mathematics and optics, neither of which would have helped him in
the least to understand the greater part of Aristotle.
The rest of the translators, Bacon continues, were ignorant of science,
of Greek, and even of Latin. The result of their labours was erroneous
and unintelligible; so great, indeed, was the consequent misapprehension
of Aristotle that it would have been better for all his works to be burnt.
In the Opus Tertium (cap. 25), composed not later than 1268, Bacon had
not yet heard of William of Moerbeke, but in the later Compendium Studii
Philosophiae he attacks him, under the name of William the Fleming,
with peculiar venom, and thinks him no better than Gerard of Cremona,
Herman, or Michael the Scot (the three chief translators from the
Arabic), or than any of the pretended experts in Greek. William of
Moerbeke (ob. 1286), Archbishop of Corinth during the last years of his
life, was actually the most important of the translators, if only because
so much of his work was instigated by Thomas Aquinas, when both were
attached to the court of Urban IV. His dated works, which include
CH. XXIII.
## p. 814 (#860) ############################################
814
The weaknesses of Bacon. Muslim influence
translations of Proclus, Simplicius, Galen, and Hippocrates, cover the
period from 1260 to 1280. As it happens, only one of his Aristotelian
translations (the De Partibus Animalium) is dated, and there is also some
uncertainty how far he made use of earlier versions. We know, however,
that he was the first translator in that age of the Politics, and we know
that a scholar of Susemihl's rank thought it worth while to print this
translation with his own edition of the text. Bacon's judgment on
William of Moerbeke has, in fact, no more value than a spiteful review
in a modern periodical of a book which the reviewer has omitted to read.
Not even on sheer questions of fact can Bacon be trusted. He invents,
for example, an intimacy between Gerard of Cremona and Herman the
German, though one of them was about eighty-five years senior to the
other. It is more than doubtful, too, if he is accurate in his account of
Robert Grosseteste, one of the very few among his contemporaries whom
he deigned to admire. Depreciation of other men was a passion with him,
almost a disease. He was out of sympathy with the whole Aristotelian
movement, and out of humour with all the world. As to the contemporary
interpretation of Aristotle, his verdict is yet more ludicrous than his con-
tempt for the translations. With all the disadvantages from which they
inevitably suffered, Albertus Magnus and his still more famous pupil were
two of the greatest Aristotelians the world has yet seen. Bacon himself
was incompetent to judge them, but he resented the intellectual dictator-
ship, as he thought it, of Albert, and attacked him with such animosity
that the great Dominican was moved at last to administer a weighty
rebuke. To Bacon, at least, he is thought to be referring, when he speaks
of those who seek a solace for their own indolence by looking only for
objects to attack; who resemble the humor fellis that spreads through a
body, by provoking all other students to bitterness and forbidding them
in dulcedine societatis quaerere veritatem'. As a critic of others Bacon well
deserves the rebuke; it is fortunate that, as an original thinker, he still
can deserve our respect.
The comparative freedom of the Latins in the matter of translations
by no means released them from conflict with the Muslim interpretation
of Aristotle. From the first, apparently, the trouble caused by the new
material was aggravated by the use of certain commenta, which were in-
cluded in the prohibition of Aristotle at Paris in 1210. Whether the
reference was to Avicenna or to Averroes, it is certain that the entire
history of Aristotelianism at Paris is bound up with the claim of the
Arabs to be the authentic exponents. Some indication, therefore, however
slight and meagre, must be given of the character and position of philo-
sophy in Islām. Why there should ever have been room for intellectual
complications in that system is much less obvious than in the case of the
Christian Church. The unitarian God of Mahomet could have a Prophet
but not a Son. He dwelt apart from His creatures, neither incarnate nor
1 Cf. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant, Part 1, p. 246.
## p. 815 (#861) ############################################
Character of Muslim philosophy
815
immanent, a lonely presence in the desert which no man could cross. Such
a creed might have continued to satisfy the Arabs of the peninsula, and,
if Islām had remained in that primitive condition, it would have made
no impression on the world. As soon, however, as it came into contact
with Syrian, Persian, and Byzantine civilisation, it had to choose between
adapting itself to a higher order of ideas and perishing altogether. Edu-
cated minds, when they began to reflect on the message of the Prophet,
were not slow to discover in the Koran and its contents sufficient material
for philosophic doubt. Was the sacred book itself created, or co-eternal
with the Creator? Did not the Word or Wisdom of God resemble the
Nous of the philosophers or the Logos of the Christians? Had God
eternal attributes, or would their existence be incompatible with His
absolute unity? Could the freedom of man be maintained against the
Divine Omniscience?
The first debates on these topics date from early times, even before
John of Damascus, as an official at the court of the Umayyads, provided
a curious link between Christian and Muslim thought. The great age,
however, both of translations and of philosophy began with the Abbasids
and the founding of Baghdad, where the patronage of Nestorian physicians
by Manşūr and Ma'mūn led to the institution of a school of medicine and
philosophy. The sect of the Mu´tazilites (once fanatical defenders of the
unity of God) now became prominent in speculation, and from their ranks
arose Kindī (ob. c. 873), the father of a notable line of philosophers, and
himself almost the only one of them who was an Arab by race. In him
we observe already the main characteristics which persisted down to
Averroes, the last of the line. The predominance of Aristotle had been
established from the first. From the first, too, the interpretation of
Aristotle had borne the stamp of Neo-Platonism. Perhaps the most sur-
prising example of this is the general reception of the Theology of Ari-
stotle as a genuine work. Actually an abridgment of Enneads iv-vi, it
was accepted as Aristotelian by Kindī, Fārābi, and many others, who must,
as it seems to us, have been blind to the enormous gulf between the minds
of Aristotle and Plotinus. Or were they, after all, so blind as we think?
Plotinus himself might have dissented. The interpretation of Aristotle
has always been determined by the interests and the methods of criticism
belonging to some particular age. It is a question of emphasis, of the
relative appreciation of his various works, of the special points selected
for discussion. All ages have recognised the great logician, but what a
vast difference it makes whether you take Aristotle as primarily an
astronomer, a theologian, a political thinker, or a biologist.
The Arabs, beginning with Kindī, fastened especially upon the theory
of the intellect in the De Anima. There, in a few brief and difficult
statements, they found the origin of all the disputes about the intellectus
agens and the intellectus possibilis, with other complications too technical
to mention. Here too was the most patent opportunity for fusing together
CH. XXIII.
## p. 816 (#862) ############################################
816
Fārābi and Avicenna
Platonist and Aristotelian doctrines. For Aristotle had certainly hinted
that mind or spirit in its highest manifestations might be independent of
bodily organs, perpetually active, immortal. Its energy was not a form
of motion, and therefore not inseparably linked with time. How, then,
could such an activity belong, like other psychical functions, to the life
of the individual? From this question it was but a short step to the
identification of the intellectus agens with the nous of Plotinus, understood
as the manifestation of God. The wisdom of man thus becomes a divine
illumination, undefiled and imperishable, indifferent to the accident of
death. Such, in roughest expression, was the line of thought along which
the Arabs advanced towards the denial of personal immortality, and
thus to conflict with the Catholic faith.
In the opinion of many Arabic writers and scholars, the most original
of the Muslim thinkers was Fārābi (ob. 950), who in the course of his life
is heard of in Egypt, at Damascus, and at Baghdad. Especially famous
for his commentaries on the Organon, with which the Arabs associated
(not without reason) the Rhetoric and the Poetics, he wrote also on almost
every part of Aristotle's system, on the Laws of Plato, on mathematics
and music. Though his view of the intellectus agens was similar in principle
to Kindi's, he is said to have regarded Aristotle's doctrine as a proof of
the immortality of the soul. And here we may note that, down to Fārābi's
time, there was no perceptible breach between the philosophers and
orthodox Islām. Plato and Aristotle were welcomed at first as a kind of
second revelation, harmonious with the official revelation of the Koran.
Yet the connexion of philosophy with sectarianism was early; the Shi'ites
were more given to speculation than the Sunnīs, and from the time of
Fārābi onwards there was a gradual tendency towards the conversion of
philosophy into an esoteric wisdom, remote from the orthodox profession
of faith.
The last of the Asiatic philosophers, and, next to Averroes, the most
notorious among the Latins, was Ibn Sinā or Avicenna (ob. 1036), who
passed through law and medicine to metaphysics, where he is said to have
owed his first understanding of Aristotle to Fārābī's books. Among other
things, he interested himself in the theory of universals, and formulated
distinctions between the genus ante res, in rebus, and post res. In the
main, however, he resembled the other Muslims in affecting the Christians
chiefly by his doctrine of the intellect. Before Avicenna's day the position
of the philosophers, in the special sense of followers of the Greek tradition,
had become decidedly ambiguous. Two other kinds of teachers had now
to be reckoned with, first the Sufis or mystics, secondly the orthodox
scholastics (as it is convenient to call them), who did not wholly contemn
philosophy but proposed to subordinate it strictly to the teaching of the
Koran. Upon the Sufis we can make only one observation, that they were
certainly touched by Neo-Platonistic influence. The other school, whose
aim might be loosely compared with Anselm's fides quaerens intellectum,
## p. 817 (#863) ############################################
Algazel, Averroes, Avencebrol
817
was represented first by Ashóarī, a contemporary of Fārābī, afterwards,
in the period between Avicenna and Averroes, by Ghazāli or Algazel
(ob. 1111). While the relation of Algazel's teaching to Islāmic orthodoxy
scarcely concerns us, there is a real significance for the later Western
scholasticism in his determined opposition to the professional philosophers.
As the author of the Destruction of the Philosophers (to which Averroes
afterwards replied with the Destruction of the Destruction), he not only
denounced as heretical certain specific doctrines, such as the eternity of
the world, but flatly refused to allow the independent status of philosophy.
Philosophy, he contended, could not be a mode of revelation; it could
not enunciate first principles at once explanatory of the origin of things
and compatible with orthodox beliefs. Reason could serve religion only
in the way of exposition, just as it might be of use to any special science,
or in the management of ordinary affairs.
Now this was the true battleground of philosophers and theologians
at Paris in the thirteenth century; and the character of the struggle was
predetermined much less by the old Latin antithesis of ratio and auctoritas
than by the defined antagonism between the school of Algazel and the
school of Averroes. Moreover, it was not the fear of Islām that worked
so profoundly upon the reasoning of Albertus Magnus and Aquinas, but
the fear of doctrines which Islām was on the verge of rejecting. For Aver-
roes in the West marked the decline of Muslim philosophy, already long
decadent in the East. He owes his fame, first to Jewish thinkers, who,
like the Christians and the Muslims, had their own problem of reconciling
philosophy with “ the book "; secondly to Latin universities, which both
accepted him as the supreme commentator on Aristotle and cherished, as
the most alluring of heresies, doctrines invented or renewed for the con-
fusion of Algazel's disciples. Averroes, therefore, is rightly studied in con-
nexion with Latin Averroism, to which we shall shortly return. As to the
Jews, by their active minds and roving habits they played an important part
as carriers of learning from place to place, but as philosophers they hardly
constitute a class distinct from the Arabs. The Fons Vitae of Avencebrol
(ob. 1058), a Neo-Platonist work in the Arabic style, translated by John
the Spaniard and Dominic Gundisalvi, was widely quoted by Christian
authors, not least by Duns Scotus, who perhaps took Avencebrol to be a
Christian, and openly adhered to his doctrine of matter. The other Jewish
name of high repute among the Latins was Moses ben Maymun (Maimo-
nides or Rabbi Moses), best known for his authorship of the Guide of the
Perplexed. He was contemporary with Averroes (outliving him by only six
years) and one of his warmest admirers. As may be seen in a treatise of
doubtful origin, the De Erroribus Philosophorum, the Latins came to
class his errors with those of Averroes, Algazel, and the rest of the Arabs? .
The stages in the development of Aristotelianism at Paris are marked
by some detinite dates. Precisely when the new books were first read in
1 Cf. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant, Part 11, pp. 21-24.
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. XXIII.
52
## p. 818 (#864) ############################################
818
Aristotelianism and the University of Paris
public we do not know, but in 1210 a provincial council formally inter-
dicted public or private study of the libri de naturali philosophia, with
commentaries thereon; and in 1215 the papal legate, Robert de Courçon,
renewed the prohibition in the words, non legantur libri Aristotelis de
metaphysica et de naturali philosophia, nec summae de eisdem. It is doubtful
here whether the mention of metaphysics implies a difference between the
first and the second decree. The term metaphysica would be unfamiliar
before the diffusion of Aristotle's book, and the older usage of physica or
naturalis philosophia would cover many questions afterwards called meta-
physical. In 1231, after the dispersion of the university, Gregory IX
repeated the prohibition, but at the same time entrusted William of
Auxerre and two colleagues with the task of expurgating Aristotle for
use in the schools. Nothing came of this impossible project, and the
prohibition remained formally valid, to be renewed once more by Urban IV
in 1263. Meanwhile practice moved more rapidly than law. Outside Paris,
to judge from the example of Toulouse in 1229, free study of Aristotle
had always been possible. At Paris itself some regulations of 1252
mention only the De Anima in addition to the Logic, but in March 1255
the Faculty of Arts laid down a course of study which boldly included
the Physics, the Metaphysics, and practically all the translated works.
This defiance of papal authority provoked no reply until 1263. Even
then we may safely presume that the action of Urban IV was only pro-
visional; for now he was reviving on a grander scale the attempt of
Gregory IX to produce a critical version of Aristotle, invoking to his aid
the greatest of Christian commentators, St Thomas Aquinas, who just at
this time was encouraging William of Moerbeke to produce his new
translations.
The history of Aristotelianism in the thirteenth century is, in one of
its aspects, the history of a political struggle in the University of Paris,
too intricate for analysis in this chapter. As a convenient simplification of
the facts, we may concentrate our attention upon the Order of Preachers,
a society which in its earlier phases was by no means inclined to champion
the cause of any Pagan philosopher. In libris gentilium et philosophorum
non studeant fratres. So says an ordinance of 1228, with the object of
confining the studies of the brethren to theology. The author of the
revolution which brought the Dominicans into the front rank of Aristo-
telians was the illustrious Albert of Cologne (ob. 1280), who taught at
Paris from 1245 to 1248, and was occupied for some forty years altogether
in the production of his monumental works. Except during his lifetime,
the fame of this great man has always been a little overshadowed by that
of his pupil Aquinas (ob. 1274), whose greater command of expository
method makes him easier of access. Rash indeed would it be to say that
Albert was the more remarkable of the two, but in the direction of
experimental science he went farther, and to him, as the pioneer, fell
the enterprise of making all parts of Aristotle intelligible to the Latins.
## p. 819 (#865) ############################################
Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, and Averroism
819
Impatient of the “brute animals” who attacked the use of philosophy and
blasphemed everything of which they were ignorant, he saw that the study
of Aristotle could not be prohibited, and already, perhaps, while teaching
at Paris, discerned the seeds of Averroism which he was afterwards (in
1256) invited by Alexander IV to refute.
Averroism it was again, not merely as a local phenomenon, but as the
climax of the whole Arabian interpretation of Aristotle, that moved
Aquinas to continue his master's work in his own deep and searching
exposition of the principal books. The task before him was one of un-
paralleled complexity, such as only a man of boundless courage, unfailing
candour, and exceptional powers of mind could have faced. Now for the
first time in the history of the Middle Ages, or indeed in the history of
the world, was it imperative to delimit the provinces of philosophy and
theology, and at the same time to vindicate the unity of truth. On the
one hand, St Thomas was perfectly convinced that no truth discoverable
by reason could be inconsistent with the Christian revelation; on the
other hand, he was equally assured that the truths of revelation were
accessible only to a mode of experience not commonly described as reason,
and inseparable from the history and authority of the Church. What he
had primarily to combat was not atheism, nor even any avowed heresy
in dogma, but the impudent sophism, borrowed by certain Christians
from the Muslims, that there can or must be two kinds of truth; so that,
when the voice of reason or philosophy conflicts with the voice of authority
and faith, we may legitimately hearken to both. Or if few quite professed
that absurdity, the alternative was to insinuate that reason would often
oblige us to believe one thing, were not its opposite enjoined on us by
faith.
Aquinas took a wide view of his problem. He did not restrict himself
to the Latin Averroists, against whom he wrote the De Unitate Intellectus
in 1270, but went back to the higher sources of the mischief. By one
of the most amazing accidents in history it had fallen to Aristotle, some
fifteen centuries after his death, to stand as the representative of human
reason. By another accident it was given to the Arabs to work out a
systematic interpretation, and then to hand it over to the Latins. Now
Aquinas, no less than Albert, was deeply interested in Aristotle, and not
in the least afraid of his opinions.
He might even, in the peculiar circum-
stances of the time, have agreed with the Averroists that the general liberty
of speculation was summed up in the free study of Aristotle. It is ludi-
crous, however, to suppose that he took Aristotle to be infallible. Except
in the last decadence of scholasticism, the only people who ever did that
were the Averroists and the Muslims. For the most part St Thomas was
not occupied in proving the rightness or wrongness of Aristotle, but in
criticising the Arabian interpretation of him, relatively to such questions
as the eternity of the world, the individuality of the immortal intellect,
and the alleged subjection of the human will to planetary influences. Like
CH. XXIII.
52-2
## p. 820 (#866) ############################################
820
The merits and the limitations of Aquinas
a good Aristotelian, he perceived that in arguing contra Gentiles he must
conduct the discussion on a basis accepted by his opponents. There could
be no question of "authority”; for, as he says, mahumetistae et pugani non
conveniunt nobiscum in auctoritate alicuius Scripturae. . . unde necesse est ad
naturalem rationem recurrere, cui omnes assentire coguntur. Now by
“natural reason” the Muslims understood primarily, if not solely, the
philosophy of Aristotle; and from that philosophy they had extracted
inferences damaging to the Christian position; not indeed to the doctrines
of the Trinity and the Incarnation—for on these points Aristotle could
have nothing to say—but to the belief in moral responsibility and the
immortality of the soul. To St Thomas, therefore, the alternatives were
to reject the Muslim interpretation, or to prove that Aristotle himself
was wrong. He does not choose either course to the total exclusion of
the other, but to a large extent he argues that Averroes and Avicenna
had misrepresented the master of their allegiance.
Whether Aquinas proves his case to the satisfaction of modern critics
may be disputable, but he certainly marshals an array of arguments that
none of his contemporaries was likely to defeat. Along with his elucida-
tion of Aristotle he examines the still wider problem of the whole relation
of reason to faith; upholding in his own sense a duplex veritatis modus,
which yet avoids the duplicity of believing contradictory propositions on
different grounds, and is, in effect, a plea for the unity of truth. If, once
more, we may doubt whether the conditions of the age permitted him to
arrive at a final appreciation of all the difficulties, none can reasonably
doubt the candour of his intention, the subtlety of his intuitions, or the
astonishing range and lucidity of his mind. Similar merits and similar
inevitable deficiencies are revealed in his general understanding of Aris-
totle. He was no biologist, no physicist, no astronomer. He could not
discriminate between paths of science where Aristotle had gone hopelessly
astray,and other paths where he had advanced almost to the verge of modern
achievement. Like the commentators of all ages, not excluding our own,
he was strongest within the bounds of his own experience, and weakest
where his sympathy failed. To the last he was hampered by ignorance of
history. Often as he contested Neo-Platonist interpretations, he was far
from disengaging Aristotle from later accretions. He knew, for example
(with the help of William of Moerbeke), that the Liber de Causis, widely
received as Aristotelian, was in fact an excerpt from Proclus; and yet he
could make the almost staggering assertion that “Dionysius,” in contrast
to Augustine and others, fere ubique sequitur Aristotelem? . This, it is true,
he
says in an early work, and perhaps in later life he might have hesitated
to repeat it. But neither by Aquinas, nor by anyone else in that century,
was Aristotle fully divested of the Neo-Platonist garments in which the
I Summa contra Gentiles, 1, 2.
? Cf. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant, Part 1, p. 43, note 2.
## p. 821 (#867) ############################################
Averroism and Siger of Brabant
821
course of history had clothed him. Yet after all these criticisms, to
which others might be added, it remains incontestable that every modern
student of Aristotle has much to learn from the exposition of Aquinas.
Averroism proper, as distinct from the general influence of the Arabs,
is not heard of before the second half of the century. Moreover, when
Albert wrote his De Unitate Intellectus contra Averroem in 1256, he
appears to be attacking a tendency rather than actual teachers at Paris.
Siger of Brabant is first mentioned in 1266, and the first official condem-
nation of Averroism occurs in 1270. Before that date, either in the
autumn of 1268 or in the spring of 1269, Aquinas returned from Italy
to Paris, where he remained until 1272. The resumption of a professorial
chair by a Dominican (for Aquinas had taught at Paris for some years
before 1260) was so unusual that we must attribute it to the manifold
difficulties in which the Order was involved. Among these were the
constant hostility of the seculars to the regulars, differences with the
Franciscans and the "Augustinian” theologians, and finally the emergence
of Averroism, a movement complicated by the attempt to involve the
general credit of Peripateticism with the errors of Siger of Brabant. St
Thomas, accordingly, had both to publish his De Unitate Intellectus as an
answer to Siger's De Anima Intellectiva, and to protect the freedom of
Aristotelian study against critics who still, perhaps, might appeal to
Urban's decree of 1263. Evidence to the same effect is furnished by a
work discovered and printed by Mandonnet, the De Quindecim Proble-
matibus of Albertus Magnus, composed in answer to a letter of enquiry
by Giles of Lessines. Of these fifteen problems the first thirteen are
identical with the propositions condemned at Paris (10 December 1270),
while the last two suggest an attempt to involve Aquinas in the down-
fall of the Averroists.
From a survey of the thirteen condemned propositions we gather that
four main questions were prominent, the unity of the intelligence in all
men, the eternity of the world, the freedom of the will, the knowledge
and providence of God. A more drastic reduction might leave only the
first of the four as of primary importance in 1270; for it seems that this
had spread beyond philosophical circles, in its practical bearing on moral
responsibility and personal salvation. While it is impossible here to
discuss so intricate a problem, or to compare the Averroist and Dominican
readings of the De Anima, it is necessary to remark that Averroes had
advanced beyond the position of Avicenna and his predecessors. The
others had removed from human conditions only the intellectus agens,
which might even be identified with God; but Averroes converted also
the intellectus possibilis into a "separate substance," and declared it to be
unus in omnibus hominibus? Opposed as he was to both these interpre-
tations of Aristotle, St Thomas was aware that even Catholic doctors had
identified the intellectus agens with God, in which case it would rightly
1 Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, 11, 59 and 73.
CH. XXIII.
## p. 822 (#868) ############################################
822
Opposition to Thomism
be excluded from human personality. Averroes, however, was clearly
beyond the pale; for, since nothing in God can be merely potential, to
affirm the unity of the intellectus possibilis is to deny the individuality
of man.
Averroism was defeated, and Siger of Brabant, condemned again by
the Inquisition of France in October 1277, passed his last years in Italy,
as the prisoner of the Roman curia. There he perished, as the story goes,
by the hand of a half-insane assassin, and thereafter was honourably
translated to Dante's Paradiso. The subsequent fortunes of Averroism
we cannot pursue. More important for the moment was the renewed
attack on Aristotelianism in general, which gained a passing triumph in
1277. The mighty efforts of Albert and Thomas, with the favour of one
or two Popes, had checked but not destroyed the force of the opposition.
The currents of philosophical thought, not to say political faction, were
numerous. The secular clergy, always jealous of the friars, did not shine
in the use of intellectual weapons. If Roger Bacon, writing in 1271, can
be trusted, they had failed to produce a single theological or philosophical
treatise for the space of forty years. They merely took doctrinal questions
as a convenient pretext for attack. Against that kind of onslaught the
two Orders were united, but in other respects they tended to drift apart.
Bonaventura and Aquinas were so happily united by personal friendship
that they might have stood as models to an earlier Fra Angelico for the
meeting of Francis and Dominic. Yet it is Bonaventura who best ex-
presses the difference of temper between the two societies, when he says
that the Preachers principaliter intendunt speculationi, et postea unctioni,
the Friars Minor principaliter unctioni, et postea speculationi'. Even St
Thomas, who was far from devoid of sympathy with mysticism, would
hardly have written the Itinerarium mentis in Deum.
Something more, or less, than “unction” is required, however, to
account for the attitude of John Peckham, the Franciscan Archbishop of
Canterbury, who, besides attempting to implicate Aquinas with the
heresies of Siger, went to the length of protesting that nothing was
common to the two Orders but the bare foundations of the faith. So wide
a division could only be affirmed in so far as the Franciscans identified
themselves with the party sometimes called Augustinian. On the whole,
and with many reservations, it is true that the Franciscan doctors looked
askance at the Aristotelian movement. Roger Bacon, no doubt, falls
outside all generalisations. Much as he disliked the ascendency of Albert,
he was too much of an individualist to act merely as the partisan of one
society against another. But a general review of the most distinguished
Franciscan writers, from Alexander of Hales (who was not, it seems, the
author of the Summa which bears his name) to Duns Scotus, would justify
the opinion that by their influence alone Aristotle would never have
secured the supremacy among philosophers. That supremacy was claimed
1 Mandonnet, op. cit. Part 1, p. 98.
## p. 823 (#869) ############################################
England and Thomism. Philosophy and the Church 823
for him neither by the earlier Middle Ages, nor yet by the thirteenth
century as a whole, but only by the great Dominican masters, assisted
undoubtedly by the Averroists whom, on some vital points, they felt
bound to oppose. The delayed but eventual triumph of Thomism (never
perfectly accomplished, one might add, until the revival in the nineteenth
century) has too often cast back a false light on the age of St Thomas
himself. Opposition, not merely to him but to Aristotle, was then frequent
and bitter. A casual but interesting example is found in the Summa, of
unknown authorship, which Baur has printed in the same volume with the
works of Grosseteste. The writer, a man of strong intelligence and far
from ignorant of Aristotle, has some exceedingly sharp things to say about
him. In particular, he dismisses as ineffective the whole Aristotelian
criticism of the Platonic“ideas,” and hints pretty strongly that Aristotle
was often as much moved by prejudice as by rational judgment.
In England, and at Oxford, where this Summa may probably have
been composed, the Franciscans were especially strong. Encouraged by
Grosseteste (not himself a member of the Order) and by the example of
his writings, they gave more attention to mathematics and optics than to
the wider problems of philosophy that chiefly exercised the Dominicans
of Paris. But there must also have been something in the English air
inimical to Thomism. For not only the Franciscan Archbishop, John
Peckham, but his Dominican predecessor, Robert Kilwardby (author of
an interesting work on the Division of Philosophy), persuaded Oxford to
condemn a number of propositions maintained by St Thomas. His action
was a sequel to the larger affair at Paris in March 1277, when the various
forces opposed to the Dominicans united under Étienne Tempier, the
Chancellor of the University, to secure the condemnation of no less than
219 propositions, some of them imputable only to Siger and the Aver-
roists, others common to Aquinas and all the Peripatetics.
What was the meaning of this undiscriminating violence? Behind the
political struggle there was doubtless some genuine apprehension of a
fatal schism between philosophy and the authority of the Church. The
system of Catholicism, as it was slowly shaped and consolidated in the
Middle Ages, pointed to the indivisible union of all Christians in a single
society, ideally as wide as the world. To the realisation of such an ideal
the existence of Jews, Muslims, and Pagans was the most patent obstacle,
but also the most superficial. More serious was the breach between the
Greeks and the Latins, for that touched the internal principles upon
which the Christian society was founded. More vital even than doctrinal
unity was the maintenance of the claim by which alone the Church had
succeeded in absorbing into herself the finer essence of Graeco-Roman
civilisation. The substance of that claim was the possession of first
principles comprehensive enough to supersede Greek philosophy, and to
serve as the ultimate source of morality and law. Once allow the possi-
bility of explaining the world without reference to the propositions of the
CH. XXIII.
## p. 824 (#870) ############################################
824
The relation of reason to faith
Creed, or of governing mankind without reference to the lex divina, and
the whole structure of the Church must be threatened with collapse. The
liberty of the sciences, therefore, and the liberty of princes were on the
same plane; they were liberties conceded by the Church-liberties to
arrive at any conclusions and to take any administrative measures not in-
compatible with the Christian presuppositions.
Such being the remorseless logic of the situation, the search for means
of avoiding it persistently continued. After many makeshifts and evasions
of the issue, it became clear at last to the acuter minds of the thirteenth
century that only one solution was possible. If it could be shewn that the
work of reason in the whole field of science could be accomplished with-
out possible collision with the faith; if, in other words, there was a duplex
veritatis modus consistent with intellectual honesty, then intolerable
tyranny and disastrous revolution could alike be avoided. To make good
this solution was the policy of Aquinas. Sincerely convinced that human
reason could neither prove nor disprove the doctrines peculiar to Christi-
anity, he proceeded to infer that all arguments destructive of the faith
were spurious products of reason, which genuine philosophy could refute
without appeal to authority. At the same time he allotted a wide province
to reason, and believed it possible to demonstrate the principles of Theism
and of theistic morality by the arguments relative to God, freedom,
and immortality which Kant afterwards declared to be invalid. In the
age of Aquinas there was neither a Kant nor even a magnified Gaunilo,
but there were conservatives who mistrusted these new lines of division,
and who failed to see that a position tenable in the days of Augustine,
or even of Anselm, might be far from impregnable to the onslaught of
Averroes. With the conservatives were allied the alarmists, who held that
Aquinas himself was betraying the citadel by inviting reason to occupy
the outworks. In their eyes a Peripatetic was no better than an Averroist;
both alike deserved the penalty of traitors within the camp. The cleavage
of parties and the hardening of the distinction between theology and
philosophy must have been assisted by the organising of Faculties within
the University. The control of philosophy belonged to the Faculty of
Arts; the theologians, therefore, were clearly not philosophers. Hence,
when Albert the Great, as a friar, was attacked by the students of theology,
it was the artists who rushed in crowds to his support. So anomalous a
position could not long be maintained. Sooner or later the lines of
intellectual division would follow pretty closely the division of Faculties,
with results that, without returning to the Middle Ages, we can readily
imagine.
Among those swept away, a little ironically, with the 219 propositions
was the unfortunate Roger Bacon. If he was to be engulfed in the company
of so many Peripatetics, it seems a pity that, instead of railing at Albert,
he did not collaborate with him for the advancement of chemistry and
physics. We must beware, however, of misinterpreting either the position
## p. 825 (#871) ############################################
The fate of Roger Bacon. His philosophy
825
of Bacon or the causes of his downfall. It would be unhistorical to suppose
that advocacy of mathematics, or prophecies of flying-machines and other
marvels, would have brought him to captivity. Whatever the value of his
contributions to science (about which the specialists are a little frigid),
no school of thought then suspected that geometry or optics or the pro-
pagation of force by “multiplication of species” were going to undermine
the Church. Bacon, like Abelard, may have damaged himself by making
enemies, and by his monotonous dispraise of authority; but where he
seems definitely to have stumbled was in the field of astrology. The
state of astronomy at the time permitted it to be a quasi-scientific
question whether the fortunes and even the characters of men might not
be shaped by celestial impressions. Bacon himself agreed with Aquinas
and other educated men in denying that the freedom of the will could
thus be affected, and in avoiding the more childish superstitions. The
attack on him was probably no more intelligent than the refusal to
discriminate between Aquinas and the Averroists. In the hour of
triumphant faction a few rash or ambiguous expressions would be
evidence enough. Deplorable as the result was, we have no more right
to accuse the whole age of persecuting science than we have to argue from
Bacon's own effort to prove the utility of mathematics to theology that
he saw no intrinsic value in theoretical reasoning. In any case, it is an
anachronism either to look for a new philosophy of the world in the
scientific tastes of Bacon, or to interpret his overthrow as mere hostility
to the study of natural phenomena. A still greater absurdity would be
to suppose that Bacon's praise of experience and experiment brought
upon him the wrath of Aristotelians.
Rightly to estimate Bacon's worth as a philosopher is, however, a very
difficult task. The combative spirit which enraged his contemporaries
has endeared him, perhaps unduly, to modern readers with little
sympathy for the temper of the Middle Ages. Similarly, his references to
ctual or possible devices of mechanics and chemistry have won for him
more credit as an inventor than he would have claimed for himself. Our
concern, however, is rather with his general estimate of knowledge, and
with his broader relations to the intellectual attitude of his times. And
here we find that, in some respects, his mind was provincial, or even re-
actionary, while in others he certainly had a vision of the future sicut in
aenigmate, non facie ad faciem. His provincialism appears in his failure
to appreciate the higher contemporary thought, or to perceive the direction
in which minds really more critical than his own were moving. Much of
his criticism, as for example in the De Viciis contractis in studio Theologiae,
is singularly barren, if we suppose it to refer to such men as Albert the
Great or Thomas Aquinas. They in their turn might well have objected
that Bacon's whole conception of philosophy was obsolete. They would not
formally have disputed his statement that the chief and final intention
of philosophers was circa divinam et angelorum cognitionem. . . cum con-
CH. XXIII.
## p. 826 (#872) ############################################
826
Bacon's titles to fame
temptu bonorum istius vitae temporalis, ut pervenirent ad statum futurae
beatitudinis, but they might fairly have replied that amiable commonplaces
were no substitute for a real delineation of the provinces of theology and
human reason. Bacon is, in fact, reactionary in his extravagant subordina-
tion of philosophy to theology. He reverts to a position barely tenable
in the thirteenth century unless supported by fresh arguments, and he
appears to be imperfectly acquainted with the greatest controversy of his
age.
Again, his praise of “mathematics” as an aid to civil and religious
government is so mixed up with the puerilities of astrology and alchemy
that his pretence of superiority to his times in this respect is far from
convincing. On the other hand, there are many glimpses of genuine in-
sight in his enthusiasm for linguistic studies, in his anticipation of the
manifold uses of geography, and in his constant emphasis on the importance
of experimental method. Very often he speaks of scientia experimentalis
as a separate science rather than as a general method employed by natural
philosophy; and in the Opus Tertium he makes the significant statement:
naturalis enim philosophus narrat et arguit, sed non experitur. He main-
tains, nevertheless, that experiment or experience is required to verify all
the sciences; nor can we reasonably complain if he is not yet in a position
to discriminate between the more and the less experimental departments
of knowledge. What we clearly discern in Bacon, when we get behind his
peevishness, his superstitions, and his arrogance, is a profound discontent
with the existing state of knowledge, a conviction that no further advance
is possible except by a kind of intellectual return to Nature. In this he
was indubitably right, and in this, rather than in actual achievement, lies
his title to fame. At all times, too, he was hampered by his conflict with
authority. Many of his books have the character of an apologia. He is
desperately anxious to refute the slanders of his enemies, and to persuade
Pope Clement IV that his philosophy is orthodox and profitable. Had
he worked in a calmer atmosphere, and in harmony with the chiefs of his
Order, it is probable that he would have left us a higher impression of
his
The imprisonment of Bacon was a political incident, in the same sense
that the trials of Gottschalk, Abelard, and Gilbert de la Porrée, or the
prohibitions of Aristotle, Averroism, and Peripateticism were political
incidents. For the Church was, in theory and in fact, a political society
based on first principles, and pledged therefore to test every movement
of thought by its probable effect on the faith and conduct of Christians.
Liberty of opinion we now take to be the foundation of all other liberties;
interference with it we stamp as an act of tyranny or, at best, as a dangerous
experiment. But that is because we are governed by opinion and desire
no other master. The medieval Church, on the other hand, claimed to
be governed by knowledge, and that makes all the difference in the world.
That, too, is why the significance of the proposed division between theology
powers.
## p. 827 (#873) ############################################
The final aim of medieval philosophy
827
and philosophy was graver than even an Aquinas could suspect. The scope
of this chapter has excluded political thought in the more restricted sense,
but facts like the growth of Canon Law, the revival of Roman juris-
prudence, the rise of nations and communes, the struggle of Empire and
Papacy, and the appearance of such a book as Marsilius of Padua's De-
fensor Pacis are intimately connected with medieval philosophy. In the
last chapter of his Monarchia Dante supports his plea for an independent
Empire by the analogous independence of philosophy. To the Pope belong
revealed truths and the theological virtues; to the Emperor moral virtue
and the inventions of reason. That Dante grasped the whole possibilities
of his argument is improbable; for no such division could be effective
before the rise of the modern State, nor even then until the State had
renounced the care of theology, only to find that philosophy had likewise
vanished from its counsels. The heroic attempt of Aquinas to define a
sphere for philosophy without detriment to the sovereign rights of theology
was simply one expression of the whole medieval struggle so to adjust the
temporal power to the spiritual as to create a dominion of political freedom
within the higher sovereignty of the Church. The project, we may hold,
was impossible. It is certain, at least, that it failed.
Yet this failure was the last and greatest achievement of medieval
philosophy. Later developments, such as the rivalry of Thomists and
Scotists, with all their wrangles about matter and form, universals and
individuals, have their interest for students, but small importance for the
historical movement of the world. When we gaze on the solid line of
folios attributed to Duns Scotus (ob. 1308) it seems almost incredible that
his life can have lasted—according to a common estimate—no more than
thirty-four years. Even if the correct figure be a little larger, his youth
is perhaps a fact to be remembered in estimating the quality of his work.
For in Duns Scotus we cannot but recognise something of that joy in
destruction attributed by Plato to young men attacked by the first fever
of dialectic. It was his distinguished fate to found a school strong enough
for a time to divide the world with the Thomists. The Franciscans
adopted him as their champion and magnified his prestige. Modern
readers, however, who stand apart from medieval factions, will be slow
to recognise in Duns Scotus a serious intellectual rival to Thomas Aquinas.
In method, in perspicuity, in dignity and breadth of mind he is plainly
inferior. To charge him with insincerity would be uncharitable, but he
strikes us as a man determined at all hazards to take up original positions,
and therefore to seek with all his notorious “subtlety” for points of dis-
tinction between his own and other views. The result in most cases is
that his divergence from Aquinas and other doctors turns out to be
smaller than his statements would suggest.
On the fundamental question of the relation of philosophy to theology
he proposes a much sharper division than was approved by St Thomas.
When any truth is enunciated as an article of faith, it is inexpedient, he
CH. XXIII.
## p. 828 (#874) ############################################
828
Duns Scotus and his philosophy
says, to attempt a demonstration of it. The effect of your demonstration
on the faithful will be to deprive them of the merit of faith, while to the
infidel you will provide an opportunity of declaring that Christians are
driven by lack of faith to fall back on argument. It would thus be im-
proper to prove by reason that God exists, that God is one, or that the
soul is immortal. Duns Scotus fails, however, to work out the consequences
of his own hypothesis. He is far from meaning that faith is irrational,
but equally far from grasping the importance of philosophical monotheism
as a preparation for Christian doctrine, or from perceiving the danger of
sheer obscurantism involved in his own contention. Nor does he deal with
Aquinas' point that, since few men have leisure, or inclination, or ability
to be philosophers, the bulk of mankind will be obliged to receive in the
form of faith propositions which a few may be able to establish by
reasoning. On the other hand, Duns Scotus goes quite as far as Aquinas
in claiming for theology an interest in every branch of knowledge, not
excluding geometry, and also in exalting the power of the intellect for
the general purpose of arriving at truth. Theology, he maintains, is
practical rather than speculative, but the practical consequences of Chris-
tian dogmas, as he explains them, would never have been questioned by
Aquinas. In a word, Duns Scotus proposes a new division of provinces
but does not adequately defend it. He tends to exalt will above intellect,
but with the difficulties of their inter-relation he does not grapple half
so closely as Aquinas,
Perhaps the most conspicuous point of difference between Duns Scotus
and his contemporaries was his doctrine of matter. Entirely free from
materialism in any sense that would make matter independent of the
Creator, he insists, nevertheless, that all created beings, the spiritual no
less than the corporeal, have matter as well as form in their composition.
To support this doctrine he makes an important distinction between
metaphysical and physical matter. He supposed that Pythagoras and
some of the early Greek philosophers had thought of matter metaphysic-
ally, but he assigned to physics and natural philosophy, not the muteria
prima, but only the secundo prima, which is the substratum of generation
and corruption.
The new Aristotle at Paris. The translations
811
the Latins, but during the whole of that period less had happened to dis-
turb the intellectual atmosphere than was now to be accomplished in a
single generation by the Aristotelian invasion of Paris. Customary and
right as it is to place the name of Aristotle in the foreground, it would
be idle to pretend that the mere recovery of his writings was enough to ac-
count for all the subsequent events. Without the organisation of studies
in the new universities, and without the intervention of the Friars in
educational and ecclesiastical politics, the story of the thirteenth century
must have been very different. And again, it is difficult to exaggerate
the importance of another fact, the conjunction of the new Aristotle with
an interpretation of him developed by a series of Muslim philosophers,
whose object had not been to keep on terms with Christian orthodoxy,
but to avoid open collision with the Koran. The fragments of Arabian
mathematics and medicine which had drifted from time to time into the
Latin world had brought no anticipation of the tumult immediately
aroused by the commentaries of Avicenna and Averroes. The roughly es-
tablished modus vivendi with Pagan philosophy was of no avail when
there suddenly appeared a new Aristotle, the author of a vast and com-
prehensive system, in which were contained, if the Muslims could be
trusted, many doctrines incompatible with the Christian position. And
most of this was brought about by the enterprise of a Christian, Arch-
bishop Raymond of Toledo, who had instituted, in the second quarter of
the twelfth century, a college of translators under the supervision of
Dominic Gundisalvi, himself the author of a De Divisione Philosophiae
and other philosophical works.
The unparalleled importance of translations in the Middle Ages was
not diminished by the prevalence of a single literary language among the
peoples of the West. Absence of linguistic barriers between the scholars
of different European countries may even have helped to strengthen the
frontiers dividing the larger units of culture denoted as the Arabs, the
Latins, and the Greeks. We cannot, however, pursue that complicated
question, but must be content to glance at the golden age of translators,
which began early in the twelfth century and lasted about a hundred and
fifty years. Visits of Western scholars to Byzantium had produced the
translations of the Organon and of John of Damascus; another centre
was the court of Palermo, where Greek and Arabic learning were united;
but the widest diffusion of Muslim knowledge came from Toledo, and it
is necessary to enquire how far the Latin Aristotelianism was affected by
the mediation of the Arabic language. The story, once lightly bandied
about, that the medieval Aristotle was only a Latin parody of an Arabic
version of a Syrian translation of a Greek original is little more than a
fable. It is true that the Muslims were first introduced to Aristotle by
Syrians, chiefly Nestorian Christians; it is true also that Arabic Aristote-
lianism was coloured to the last by the commentators, such as Alexander
of Aphrodisias, who had influenced the Syrians. But long before there was
CH. XXIII.
## p. 812 (#858) ############################################
812
Translations from Greek and from Arabic
any question of extensive Muslim influence on the Latins, direct trans-
lations of Aristotle from Greek into Arabic had been made in abundance.
The name of "philosophers,” in the Arabic transcription of the word, was
especially applied to those who had studied Greek originals; and among
these “philosophers” were the whole series of writers, beginning with Kindi
in the ninth century, whose names we encounter in the works of the Latin
schoolmen. Strange to say, the most famous of all (at least in Latin esti-
mation), Ibn Rushd or Averroes (ob. 1198), was an exception to the rule.
For it is said that he never thought it worth while to learn Greek. If
that be so, we must suppose that he saw no reason, after three centuries
of Aristotelian scholarship, to doubt the adequacy of the Arabic trans-
lations. It was left for his Latin critics to entertain that doubt.
While the relation of the Latins to the Arabs is, at first sight, analo-
gous to that of the Arabs to the Syrians, further scrutiny of the facts
does not strengthen the analogy. There never was a time when the Latins
depended entirely on translations from the Arabic; there never was a
time when the Muslim inferences from Aristotle were not disputed and
opposed; least of all was there a time when Christians could imitate
Muslims in taking Aristotle as an infallible authority. To adopt that
attitude was, in fact, to be an Averroist; and Averroism, as we shall see,
was a movement destructive of all that Christian philosophers were striving
to establish.
Now that the earlier researches of Jourdain have been supplemented
by Grabmann and other recent scholars, it is possible to speak with some
confidence about the translations of Aristotle used by the Latins. No
simple generalisation can be accurate, for the case of each of Aristotle's
works has to be separately considered. Yet on the whole it is safe to
maintain that translations from the Greek relieved the schoolmen of
undue dependence on the Arabs, and enabled them, thus far at least, to
form an independent judgment on the meaning of Aristotle. To illustrate
the facts from a few of the more important works, we find that the earliest
version of the Metaphysics (containing only Books I-III and a small part
of iv) came to Paris from Byzantium before 1210. Next to arrive (ap-
parently before 1217) was a translation from the Arabic ascribed to
Gerard of Cremona. This, too, was imperfect, for it omitted altogether
Books K, M, and N, and mixed up the first book with the second. With
this, however, the Latins had to content themselves until after 1260, when
a Graeco-Latin version of the first twelve books, probably by William of
Moerbeke, was put into circulation. Upon these twelve books St Thomas
wrote his commentary, the last two being still untranslated when he saw
a Greek manuscript of the whole fourteen in 1270. The history of the
Nicomachean Ethics is rather similar: first a Graeco-Latin version of
three books, disguised as four; then, in 1240, a paraphrase from the
Arabic by Herman the German ; lastly a full translation from the
Greek, often explicitly attributed to Robert Grosseteste (ob. 1253), but
## p. 813 (#859) ############################################
Character of medieval translations. Roger Bacon 813
more probably, in Grabmann's opinion, by William of Moerbeke. Both
the Physics and the De Anima were known first in Graeco-Latin versions,
while the Politics, a book neglected by the Arabs, was derived only from
the Greek. Evidently, then, it would be less than a half-truth to say that
the Latins depended on second-hand translations for access to those works
of Aristotle which most deeply affected their thought. It remains to ask
whether the quality of the translations was such as to debar them from
a sound understanding of the text.
To claim distinction of style for the medieval translations would
indeed be courageous. Their rudeness, however, was perfectly deliberate.
It was not due to inability to write Latin, but to a frank mistrust of
elegance where the sole object was to get an exact reproduction of the
original. This they imagined they would best secure by simply replacing,
so far as possible, every Greek word by its Latin equivalent. For reasons
then potent, but now no longer operative, they demanded the letter
rather than the spirit; not a transformation of idiom into idiom, but
a raw and formless text. The task of the translators may have been
wrongly conceived, but in its way it was faithfully done. The belief, still
extant in some quarters, that the medieval understanding of Aristotle
was hopelessly vitiated by faulty translations is unsupported by the facts.
The prime author of this libel was Roger Bacon, whose bitter denuncia-
tions, often repeated as oracles, were in truth the product of ignorance
and spleen. Bacon's judgments on the translation and study of Aristotle
range over a quarter of a century, from about 1266 to 1292. Starting
from the excellent principle that a translator requires both a knowledge
of the languages and an understanding of the sciences concerned, he re-
peatedly declares that only Boethius possessed the first qualification,
only Robert Grosseteste the second. And here at once we begin to sus-
pect him. For Grosseteste's scientific attainments, as Bacon knew, were
in mathematics and optics, neither of which would have helped him in
the least to understand the greater part of Aristotle.
The rest of the translators, Bacon continues, were ignorant of science,
of Greek, and even of Latin. The result of their labours was erroneous
and unintelligible; so great, indeed, was the consequent misapprehension
of Aristotle that it would have been better for all his works to be burnt.
In the Opus Tertium (cap. 25), composed not later than 1268, Bacon had
not yet heard of William of Moerbeke, but in the later Compendium Studii
Philosophiae he attacks him, under the name of William the Fleming,
with peculiar venom, and thinks him no better than Gerard of Cremona,
Herman, or Michael the Scot (the three chief translators from the
Arabic), or than any of the pretended experts in Greek. William of
Moerbeke (ob. 1286), Archbishop of Corinth during the last years of his
life, was actually the most important of the translators, if only because
so much of his work was instigated by Thomas Aquinas, when both were
attached to the court of Urban IV. His dated works, which include
CH. XXIII.
## p. 814 (#860) ############################################
814
The weaknesses of Bacon. Muslim influence
translations of Proclus, Simplicius, Galen, and Hippocrates, cover the
period from 1260 to 1280. As it happens, only one of his Aristotelian
translations (the De Partibus Animalium) is dated, and there is also some
uncertainty how far he made use of earlier versions. We know, however,
that he was the first translator in that age of the Politics, and we know
that a scholar of Susemihl's rank thought it worth while to print this
translation with his own edition of the text. Bacon's judgment on
William of Moerbeke has, in fact, no more value than a spiteful review
in a modern periodical of a book which the reviewer has omitted to read.
Not even on sheer questions of fact can Bacon be trusted. He invents,
for example, an intimacy between Gerard of Cremona and Herman the
German, though one of them was about eighty-five years senior to the
other. It is more than doubtful, too, if he is accurate in his account of
Robert Grosseteste, one of the very few among his contemporaries whom
he deigned to admire. Depreciation of other men was a passion with him,
almost a disease. He was out of sympathy with the whole Aristotelian
movement, and out of humour with all the world. As to the contemporary
interpretation of Aristotle, his verdict is yet more ludicrous than his con-
tempt for the translations. With all the disadvantages from which they
inevitably suffered, Albertus Magnus and his still more famous pupil were
two of the greatest Aristotelians the world has yet seen. Bacon himself
was incompetent to judge them, but he resented the intellectual dictator-
ship, as he thought it, of Albert, and attacked him with such animosity
that the great Dominican was moved at last to administer a weighty
rebuke. To Bacon, at least, he is thought to be referring, when he speaks
of those who seek a solace for their own indolence by looking only for
objects to attack; who resemble the humor fellis that spreads through a
body, by provoking all other students to bitterness and forbidding them
in dulcedine societatis quaerere veritatem'. As a critic of others Bacon well
deserves the rebuke; it is fortunate that, as an original thinker, he still
can deserve our respect.
The comparative freedom of the Latins in the matter of translations
by no means released them from conflict with the Muslim interpretation
of Aristotle. From the first, apparently, the trouble caused by the new
material was aggravated by the use of certain commenta, which were in-
cluded in the prohibition of Aristotle at Paris in 1210. Whether the
reference was to Avicenna or to Averroes, it is certain that the entire
history of Aristotelianism at Paris is bound up with the claim of the
Arabs to be the authentic exponents. Some indication, therefore, however
slight and meagre, must be given of the character and position of philo-
sophy in Islām. Why there should ever have been room for intellectual
complications in that system is much less obvious than in the case of the
Christian Church. The unitarian God of Mahomet could have a Prophet
but not a Son. He dwelt apart from His creatures, neither incarnate nor
1 Cf. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant, Part 1, p. 246.
## p. 815 (#861) ############################################
Character of Muslim philosophy
815
immanent, a lonely presence in the desert which no man could cross. Such
a creed might have continued to satisfy the Arabs of the peninsula, and,
if Islām had remained in that primitive condition, it would have made
no impression on the world. As soon, however, as it came into contact
with Syrian, Persian, and Byzantine civilisation, it had to choose between
adapting itself to a higher order of ideas and perishing altogether. Edu-
cated minds, when they began to reflect on the message of the Prophet,
were not slow to discover in the Koran and its contents sufficient material
for philosophic doubt. Was the sacred book itself created, or co-eternal
with the Creator? Did not the Word or Wisdom of God resemble the
Nous of the philosophers or the Logos of the Christians? Had God
eternal attributes, or would their existence be incompatible with His
absolute unity? Could the freedom of man be maintained against the
Divine Omniscience?
The first debates on these topics date from early times, even before
John of Damascus, as an official at the court of the Umayyads, provided
a curious link between Christian and Muslim thought. The great age,
however, both of translations and of philosophy began with the Abbasids
and the founding of Baghdad, where the patronage of Nestorian physicians
by Manşūr and Ma'mūn led to the institution of a school of medicine and
philosophy. The sect of the Mu´tazilites (once fanatical defenders of the
unity of God) now became prominent in speculation, and from their ranks
arose Kindī (ob. c. 873), the father of a notable line of philosophers, and
himself almost the only one of them who was an Arab by race. In him
we observe already the main characteristics which persisted down to
Averroes, the last of the line. The predominance of Aristotle had been
established from the first. From the first, too, the interpretation of
Aristotle had borne the stamp of Neo-Platonism. Perhaps the most sur-
prising example of this is the general reception of the Theology of Ari-
stotle as a genuine work. Actually an abridgment of Enneads iv-vi, it
was accepted as Aristotelian by Kindī, Fārābi, and many others, who must,
as it seems to us, have been blind to the enormous gulf between the minds
of Aristotle and Plotinus. Or were they, after all, so blind as we think?
Plotinus himself might have dissented. The interpretation of Aristotle
has always been determined by the interests and the methods of criticism
belonging to some particular age. It is a question of emphasis, of the
relative appreciation of his various works, of the special points selected
for discussion. All ages have recognised the great logician, but what a
vast difference it makes whether you take Aristotle as primarily an
astronomer, a theologian, a political thinker, or a biologist.
The Arabs, beginning with Kindī, fastened especially upon the theory
of the intellect in the De Anima. There, in a few brief and difficult
statements, they found the origin of all the disputes about the intellectus
agens and the intellectus possibilis, with other complications too technical
to mention. Here too was the most patent opportunity for fusing together
CH. XXIII.
## p. 816 (#862) ############################################
816
Fārābi and Avicenna
Platonist and Aristotelian doctrines. For Aristotle had certainly hinted
that mind or spirit in its highest manifestations might be independent of
bodily organs, perpetually active, immortal. Its energy was not a form
of motion, and therefore not inseparably linked with time. How, then,
could such an activity belong, like other psychical functions, to the life
of the individual? From this question it was but a short step to the
identification of the intellectus agens with the nous of Plotinus, understood
as the manifestation of God. The wisdom of man thus becomes a divine
illumination, undefiled and imperishable, indifferent to the accident of
death. Such, in roughest expression, was the line of thought along which
the Arabs advanced towards the denial of personal immortality, and
thus to conflict with the Catholic faith.
In the opinion of many Arabic writers and scholars, the most original
of the Muslim thinkers was Fārābi (ob. 950), who in the course of his life
is heard of in Egypt, at Damascus, and at Baghdad. Especially famous
for his commentaries on the Organon, with which the Arabs associated
(not without reason) the Rhetoric and the Poetics, he wrote also on almost
every part of Aristotle's system, on the Laws of Plato, on mathematics
and music. Though his view of the intellectus agens was similar in principle
to Kindi's, he is said to have regarded Aristotle's doctrine as a proof of
the immortality of the soul. And here we may note that, down to Fārābi's
time, there was no perceptible breach between the philosophers and
orthodox Islām. Plato and Aristotle were welcomed at first as a kind of
second revelation, harmonious with the official revelation of the Koran.
Yet the connexion of philosophy with sectarianism was early; the Shi'ites
were more given to speculation than the Sunnīs, and from the time of
Fārābi onwards there was a gradual tendency towards the conversion of
philosophy into an esoteric wisdom, remote from the orthodox profession
of faith.
The last of the Asiatic philosophers, and, next to Averroes, the most
notorious among the Latins, was Ibn Sinā or Avicenna (ob. 1036), who
passed through law and medicine to metaphysics, where he is said to have
owed his first understanding of Aristotle to Fārābī's books. Among other
things, he interested himself in the theory of universals, and formulated
distinctions between the genus ante res, in rebus, and post res. In the
main, however, he resembled the other Muslims in affecting the Christians
chiefly by his doctrine of the intellect. Before Avicenna's day the position
of the philosophers, in the special sense of followers of the Greek tradition,
had become decidedly ambiguous. Two other kinds of teachers had now
to be reckoned with, first the Sufis or mystics, secondly the orthodox
scholastics (as it is convenient to call them), who did not wholly contemn
philosophy but proposed to subordinate it strictly to the teaching of the
Koran. Upon the Sufis we can make only one observation, that they were
certainly touched by Neo-Platonistic influence. The other school, whose
aim might be loosely compared with Anselm's fides quaerens intellectum,
## p. 817 (#863) ############################################
Algazel, Averroes, Avencebrol
817
was represented first by Ashóarī, a contemporary of Fārābī, afterwards,
in the period between Avicenna and Averroes, by Ghazāli or Algazel
(ob. 1111). While the relation of Algazel's teaching to Islāmic orthodoxy
scarcely concerns us, there is a real significance for the later Western
scholasticism in his determined opposition to the professional philosophers.
As the author of the Destruction of the Philosophers (to which Averroes
afterwards replied with the Destruction of the Destruction), he not only
denounced as heretical certain specific doctrines, such as the eternity of
the world, but flatly refused to allow the independent status of philosophy.
Philosophy, he contended, could not be a mode of revelation; it could
not enunciate first principles at once explanatory of the origin of things
and compatible with orthodox beliefs. Reason could serve religion only
in the way of exposition, just as it might be of use to any special science,
or in the management of ordinary affairs.
Now this was the true battleground of philosophers and theologians
at Paris in the thirteenth century; and the character of the struggle was
predetermined much less by the old Latin antithesis of ratio and auctoritas
than by the defined antagonism between the school of Algazel and the
school of Averroes. Moreover, it was not the fear of Islām that worked
so profoundly upon the reasoning of Albertus Magnus and Aquinas, but
the fear of doctrines which Islām was on the verge of rejecting. For Aver-
roes in the West marked the decline of Muslim philosophy, already long
decadent in the East. He owes his fame, first to Jewish thinkers, who,
like the Christians and the Muslims, had their own problem of reconciling
philosophy with “ the book "; secondly to Latin universities, which both
accepted him as the supreme commentator on Aristotle and cherished, as
the most alluring of heresies, doctrines invented or renewed for the con-
fusion of Algazel's disciples. Averroes, therefore, is rightly studied in con-
nexion with Latin Averroism, to which we shall shortly return. As to the
Jews, by their active minds and roving habits they played an important part
as carriers of learning from place to place, but as philosophers they hardly
constitute a class distinct from the Arabs. The Fons Vitae of Avencebrol
(ob. 1058), a Neo-Platonist work in the Arabic style, translated by John
the Spaniard and Dominic Gundisalvi, was widely quoted by Christian
authors, not least by Duns Scotus, who perhaps took Avencebrol to be a
Christian, and openly adhered to his doctrine of matter. The other Jewish
name of high repute among the Latins was Moses ben Maymun (Maimo-
nides or Rabbi Moses), best known for his authorship of the Guide of the
Perplexed. He was contemporary with Averroes (outliving him by only six
years) and one of his warmest admirers. As may be seen in a treatise of
doubtful origin, the De Erroribus Philosophorum, the Latins came to
class his errors with those of Averroes, Algazel, and the rest of the Arabs? .
The stages in the development of Aristotelianism at Paris are marked
by some detinite dates. Precisely when the new books were first read in
1 Cf. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant, Part 11, pp. 21-24.
C. MED. H. VOL. V. CH. XXIII.
52
## p. 818 (#864) ############################################
818
Aristotelianism and the University of Paris
public we do not know, but in 1210 a provincial council formally inter-
dicted public or private study of the libri de naturali philosophia, with
commentaries thereon; and in 1215 the papal legate, Robert de Courçon,
renewed the prohibition in the words, non legantur libri Aristotelis de
metaphysica et de naturali philosophia, nec summae de eisdem. It is doubtful
here whether the mention of metaphysics implies a difference between the
first and the second decree. The term metaphysica would be unfamiliar
before the diffusion of Aristotle's book, and the older usage of physica or
naturalis philosophia would cover many questions afterwards called meta-
physical. In 1231, after the dispersion of the university, Gregory IX
repeated the prohibition, but at the same time entrusted William of
Auxerre and two colleagues with the task of expurgating Aristotle for
use in the schools. Nothing came of this impossible project, and the
prohibition remained formally valid, to be renewed once more by Urban IV
in 1263. Meanwhile practice moved more rapidly than law. Outside Paris,
to judge from the example of Toulouse in 1229, free study of Aristotle
had always been possible. At Paris itself some regulations of 1252
mention only the De Anima in addition to the Logic, but in March 1255
the Faculty of Arts laid down a course of study which boldly included
the Physics, the Metaphysics, and practically all the translated works.
This defiance of papal authority provoked no reply until 1263. Even
then we may safely presume that the action of Urban IV was only pro-
visional; for now he was reviving on a grander scale the attempt of
Gregory IX to produce a critical version of Aristotle, invoking to his aid
the greatest of Christian commentators, St Thomas Aquinas, who just at
this time was encouraging William of Moerbeke to produce his new
translations.
The history of Aristotelianism in the thirteenth century is, in one of
its aspects, the history of a political struggle in the University of Paris,
too intricate for analysis in this chapter. As a convenient simplification of
the facts, we may concentrate our attention upon the Order of Preachers,
a society which in its earlier phases was by no means inclined to champion
the cause of any Pagan philosopher. In libris gentilium et philosophorum
non studeant fratres. So says an ordinance of 1228, with the object of
confining the studies of the brethren to theology. The author of the
revolution which brought the Dominicans into the front rank of Aristo-
telians was the illustrious Albert of Cologne (ob. 1280), who taught at
Paris from 1245 to 1248, and was occupied for some forty years altogether
in the production of his monumental works. Except during his lifetime,
the fame of this great man has always been a little overshadowed by that
of his pupil Aquinas (ob. 1274), whose greater command of expository
method makes him easier of access. Rash indeed would it be to say that
Albert was the more remarkable of the two, but in the direction of
experimental science he went farther, and to him, as the pioneer, fell
the enterprise of making all parts of Aristotle intelligible to the Latins.
## p. 819 (#865) ############################################
Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, and Averroism
819
Impatient of the “brute animals” who attacked the use of philosophy and
blasphemed everything of which they were ignorant, he saw that the study
of Aristotle could not be prohibited, and already, perhaps, while teaching
at Paris, discerned the seeds of Averroism which he was afterwards (in
1256) invited by Alexander IV to refute.
Averroism it was again, not merely as a local phenomenon, but as the
climax of the whole Arabian interpretation of Aristotle, that moved
Aquinas to continue his master's work in his own deep and searching
exposition of the principal books. The task before him was one of un-
paralleled complexity, such as only a man of boundless courage, unfailing
candour, and exceptional powers of mind could have faced. Now for the
first time in the history of the Middle Ages, or indeed in the history of
the world, was it imperative to delimit the provinces of philosophy and
theology, and at the same time to vindicate the unity of truth. On the
one hand, St Thomas was perfectly convinced that no truth discoverable
by reason could be inconsistent with the Christian revelation; on the
other hand, he was equally assured that the truths of revelation were
accessible only to a mode of experience not commonly described as reason,
and inseparable from the history and authority of the Church. What he
had primarily to combat was not atheism, nor even any avowed heresy
in dogma, but the impudent sophism, borrowed by certain Christians
from the Muslims, that there can or must be two kinds of truth; so that,
when the voice of reason or philosophy conflicts with the voice of authority
and faith, we may legitimately hearken to both. Or if few quite professed
that absurdity, the alternative was to insinuate that reason would often
oblige us to believe one thing, were not its opposite enjoined on us by
faith.
Aquinas took a wide view of his problem. He did not restrict himself
to the Latin Averroists, against whom he wrote the De Unitate Intellectus
in 1270, but went back to the higher sources of the mischief. By one
of the most amazing accidents in history it had fallen to Aristotle, some
fifteen centuries after his death, to stand as the representative of human
reason. By another accident it was given to the Arabs to work out a
systematic interpretation, and then to hand it over to the Latins. Now
Aquinas, no less than Albert, was deeply interested in Aristotle, and not
in the least afraid of his opinions.
He might even, in the peculiar circum-
stances of the time, have agreed with the Averroists that the general liberty
of speculation was summed up in the free study of Aristotle. It is ludi-
crous, however, to suppose that he took Aristotle to be infallible. Except
in the last decadence of scholasticism, the only people who ever did that
were the Averroists and the Muslims. For the most part St Thomas was
not occupied in proving the rightness or wrongness of Aristotle, but in
criticising the Arabian interpretation of him, relatively to such questions
as the eternity of the world, the individuality of the immortal intellect,
and the alleged subjection of the human will to planetary influences. Like
CH. XXIII.
52-2
## p. 820 (#866) ############################################
820
The merits and the limitations of Aquinas
a good Aristotelian, he perceived that in arguing contra Gentiles he must
conduct the discussion on a basis accepted by his opponents. There could
be no question of "authority”; for, as he says, mahumetistae et pugani non
conveniunt nobiscum in auctoritate alicuius Scripturae. . . unde necesse est ad
naturalem rationem recurrere, cui omnes assentire coguntur. Now by
“natural reason” the Muslims understood primarily, if not solely, the
philosophy of Aristotle; and from that philosophy they had extracted
inferences damaging to the Christian position; not indeed to the doctrines
of the Trinity and the Incarnation—for on these points Aristotle could
have nothing to say—but to the belief in moral responsibility and the
immortality of the soul. To St Thomas, therefore, the alternatives were
to reject the Muslim interpretation, or to prove that Aristotle himself
was wrong. He does not choose either course to the total exclusion of
the other, but to a large extent he argues that Averroes and Avicenna
had misrepresented the master of their allegiance.
Whether Aquinas proves his case to the satisfaction of modern critics
may be disputable, but he certainly marshals an array of arguments that
none of his contemporaries was likely to defeat. Along with his elucida-
tion of Aristotle he examines the still wider problem of the whole relation
of reason to faith; upholding in his own sense a duplex veritatis modus,
which yet avoids the duplicity of believing contradictory propositions on
different grounds, and is, in effect, a plea for the unity of truth. If, once
more, we may doubt whether the conditions of the age permitted him to
arrive at a final appreciation of all the difficulties, none can reasonably
doubt the candour of his intention, the subtlety of his intuitions, or the
astonishing range and lucidity of his mind. Similar merits and similar
inevitable deficiencies are revealed in his general understanding of Aris-
totle. He was no biologist, no physicist, no astronomer. He could not
discriminate between paths of science where Aristotle had gone hopelessly
astray,and other paths where he had advanced almost to the verge of modern
achievement. Like the commentators of all ages, not excluding our own,
he was strongest within the bounds of his own experience, and weakest
where his sympathy failed. To the last he was hampered by ignorance of
history. Often as he contested Neo-Platonist interpretations, he was far
from disengaging Aristotle from later accretions. He knew, for example
(with the help of William of Moerbeke), that the Liber de Causis, widely
received as Aristotelian, was in fact an excerpt from Proclus; and yet he
could make the almost staggering assertion that “Dionysius,” in contrast
to Augustine and others, fere ubique sequitur Aristotelem? . This, it is true,
he
says in an early work, and perhaps in later life he might have hesitated
to repeat it. But neither by Aquinas, nor by anyone else in that century,
was Aristotle fully divested of the Neo-Platonist garments in which the
I Summa contra Gentiles, 1, 2.
? Cf. Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant, Part 1, p. 43, note 2.
## p. 821 (#867) ############################################
Averroism and Siger of Brabant
821
course of history had clothed him. Yet after all these criticisms, to
which others might be added, it remains incontestable that every modern
student of Aristotle has much to learn from the exposition of Aquinas.
Averroism proper, as distinct from the general influence of the Arabs,
is not heard of before the second half of the century. Moreover, when
Albert wrote his De Unitate Intellectus contra Averroem in 1256, he
appears to be attacking a tendency rather than actual teachers at Paris.
Siger of Brabant is first mentioned in 1266, and the first official condem-
nation of Averroism occurs in 1270. Before that date, either in the
autumn of 1268 or in the spring of 1269, Aquinas returned from Italy
to Paris, where he remained until 1272. The resumption of a professorial
chair by a Dominican (for Aquinas had taught at Paris for some years
before 1260) was so unusual that we must attribute it to the manifold
difficulties in which the Order was involved. Among these were the
constant hostility of the seculars to the regulars, differences with the
Franciscans and the "Augustinian” theologians, and finally the emergence
of Averroism, a movement complicated by the attempt to involve the
general credit of Peripateticism with the errors of Siger of Brabant. St
Thomas, accordingly, had both to publish his De Unitate Intellectus as an
answer to Siger's De Anima Intellectiva, and to protect the freedom of
Aristotelian study against critics who still, perhaps, might appeal to
Urban's decree of 1263. Evidence to the same effect is furnished by a
work discovered and printed by Mandonnet, the De Quindecim Proble-
matibus of Albertus Magnus, composed in answer to a letter of enquiry
by Giles of Lessines. Of these fifteen problems the first thirteen are
identical with the propositions condemned at Paris (10 December 1270),
while the last two suggest an attempt to involve Aquinas in the down-
fall of the Averroists.
From a survey of the thirteen condemned propositions we gather that
four main questions were prominent, the unity of the intelligence in all
men, the eternity of the world, the freedom of the will, the knowledge
and providence of God. A more drastic reduction might leave only the
first of the four as of primary importance in 1270; for it seems that this
had spread beyond philosophical circles, in its practical bearing on moral
responsibility and personal salvation. While it is impossible here to
discuss so intricate a problem, or to compare the Averroist and Dominican
readings of the De Anima, it is necessary to remark that Averroes had
advanced beyond the position of Avicenna and his predecessors. The
others had removed from human conditions only the intellectus agens,
which might even be identified with God; but Averroes converted also
the intellectus possibilis into a "separate substance," and declared it to be
unus in omnibus hominibus? Opposed as he was to both these interpre-
tations of Aristotle, St Thomas was aware that even Catholic doctors had
identified the intellectus agens with God, in which case it would rightly
1 Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, 11, 59 and 73.
CH. XXIII.
## p. 822 (#868) ############################################
822
Opposition to Thomism
be excluded from human personality. Averroes, however, was clearly
beyond the pale; for, since nothing in God can be merely potential, to
affirm the unity of the intellectus possibilis is to deny the individuality
of man.
Averroism was defeated, and Siger of Brabant, condemned again by
the Inquisition of France in October 1277, passed his last years in Italy,
as the prisoner of the Roman curia. There he perished, as the story goes,
by the hand of a half-insane assassin, and thereafter was honourably
translated to Dante's Paradiso. The subsequent fortunes of Averroism
we cannot pursue. More important for the moment was the renewed
attack on Aristotelianism in general, which gained a passing triumph in
1277. The mighty efforts of Albert and Thomas, with the favour of one
or two Popes, had checked but not destroyed the force of the opposition.
The currents of philosophical thought, not to say political faction, were
numerous. The secular clergy, always jealous of the friars, did not shine
in the use of intellectual weapons. If Roger Bacon, writing in 1271, can
be trusted, they had failed to produce a single theological or philosophical
treatise for the space of forty years. They merely took doctrinal questions
as a convenient pretext for attack. Against that kind of onslaught the
two Orders were united, but in other respects they tended to drift apart.
Bonaventura and Aquinas were so happily united by personal friendship
that they might have stood as models to an earlier Fra Angelico for the
meeting of Francis and Dominic. Yet it is Bonaventura who best ex-
presses the difference of temper between the two societies, when he says
that the Preachers principaliter intendunt speculationi, et postea unctioni,
the Friars Minor principaliter unctioni, et postea speculationi'. Even St
Thomas, who was far from devoid of sympathy with mysticism, would
hardly have written the Itinerarium mentis in Deum.
Something more, or less, than “unction” is required, however, to
account for the attitude of John Peckham, the Franciscan Archbishop of
Canterbury, who, besides attempting to implicate Aquinas with the
heresies of Siger, went to the length of protesting that nothing was
common to the two Orders but the bare foundations of the faith. So wide
a division could only be affirmed in so far as the Franciscans identified
themselves with the party sometimes called Augustinian. On the whole,
and with many reservations, it is true that the Franciscan doctors looked
askance at the Aristotelian movement. Roger Bacon, no doubt, falls
outside all generalisations. Much as he disliked the ascendency of Albert,
he was too much of an individualist to act merely as the partisan of one
society against another. But a general review of the most distinguished
Franciscan writers, from Alexander of Hales (who was not, it seems, the
author of the Summa which bears his name) to Duns Scotus, would justify
the opinion that by their influence alone Aristotle would never have
secured the supremacy among philosophers. That supremacy was claimed
1 Mandonnet, op. cit. Part 1, p. 98.
## p. 823 (#869) ############################################
England and Thomism. Philosophy and the Church 823
for him neither by the earlier Middle Ages, nor yet by the thirteenth
century as a whole, but only by the great Dominican masters, assisted
undoubtedly by the Averroists whom, on some vital points, they felt
bound to oppose. The delayed but eventual triumph of Thomism (never
perfectly accomplished, one might add, until the revival in the nineteenth
century) has too often cast back a false light on the age of St Thomas
himself. Opposition, not merely to him but to Aristotle, was then frequent
and bitter. A casual but interesting example is found in the Summa, of
unknown authorship, which Baur has printed in the same volume with the
works of Grosseteste. The writer, a man of strong intelligence and far
from ignorant of Aristotle, has some exceedingly sharp things to say about
him. In particular, he dismisses as ineffective the whole Aristotelian
criticism of the Platonic“ideas,” and hints pretty strongly that Aristotle
was often as much moved by prejudice as by rational judgment.
In England, and at Oxford, where this Summa may probably have
been composed, the Franciscans were especially strong. Encouraged by
Grosseteste (not himself a member of the Order) and by the example of
his writings, they gave more attention to mathematics and optics than to
the wider problems of philosophy that chiefly exercised the Dominicans
of Paris. But there must also have been something in the English air
inimical to Thomism. For not only the Franciscan Archbishop, John
Peckham, but his Dominican predecessor, Robert Kilwardby (author of
an interesting work on the Division of Philosophy), persuaded Oxford to
condemn a number of propositions maintained by St Thomas. His action
was a sequel to the larger affair at Paris in March 1277, when the various
forces opposed to the Dominicans united under Étienne Tempier, the
Chancellor of the University, to secure the condemnation of no less than
219 propositions, some of them imputable only to Siger and the Aver-
roists, others common to Aquinas and all the Peripatetics.
What was the meaning of this undiscriminating violence? Behind the
political struggle there was doubtless some genuine apprehension of a
fatal schism between philosophy and the authority of the Church. The
system of Catholicism, as it was slowly shaped and consolidated in the
Middle Ages, pointed to the indivisible union of all Christians in a single
society, ideally as wide as the world. To the realisation of such an ideal
the existence of Jews, Muslims, and Pagans was the most patent obstacle,
but also the most superficial. More serious was the breach between the
Greeks and the Latins, for that touched the internal principles upon
which the Christian society was founded. More vital even than doctrinal
unity was the maintenance of the claim by which alone the Church had
succeeded in absorbing into herself the finer essence of Graeco-Roman
civilisation. The substance of that claim was the possession of first
principles comprehensive enough to supersede Greek philosophy, and to
serve as the ultimate source of morality and law. Once allow the possi-
bility of explaining the world without reference to the propositions of the
CH. XXIII.
## p. 824 (#870) ############################################
824
The relation of reason to faith
Creed, or of governing mankind without reference to the lex divina, and
the whole structure of the Church must be threatened with collapse. The
liberty of the sciences, therefore, and the liberty of princes were on the
same plane; they were liberties conceded by the Church-liberties to
arrive at any conclusions and to take any administrative measures not in-
compatible with the Christian presuppositions.
Such being the remorseless logic of the situation, the search for means
of avoiding it persistently continued. After many makeshifts and evasions
of the issue, it became clear at last to the acuter minds of the thirteenth
century that only one solution was possible. If it could be shewn that the
work of reason in the whole field of science could be accomplished with-
out possible collision with the faith; if, in other words, there was a duplex
veritatis modus consistent with intellectual honesty, then intolerable
tyranny and disastrous revolution could alike be avoided. To make good
this solution was the policy of Aquinas. Sincerely convinced that human
reason could neither prove nor disprove the doctrines peculiar to Christi-
anity, he proceeded to infer that all arguments destructive of the faith
were spurious products of reason, which genuine philosophy could refute
without appeal to authority. At the same time he allotted a wide province
to reason, and believed it possible to demonstrate the principles of Theism
and of theistic morality by the arguments relative to God, freedom,
and immortality which Kant afterwards declared to be invalid. In the
age of Aquinas there was neither a Kant nor even a magnified Gaunilo,
but there were conservatives who mistrusted these new lines of division,
and who failed to see that a position tenable in the days of Augustine,
or even of Anselm, might be far from impregnable to the onslaught of
Averroes. With the conservatives were allied the alarmists, who held that
Aquinas himself was betraying the citadel by inviting reason to occupy
the outworks. In their eyes a Peripatetic was no better than an Averroist;
both alike deserved the penalty of traitors within the camp. The cleavage
of parties and the hardening of the distinction between theology and
philosophy must have been assisted by the organising of Faculties within
the University. The control of philosophy belonged to the Faculty of
Arts; the theologians, therefore, were clearly not philosophers. Hence,
when Albert the Great, as a friar, was attacked by the students of theology,
it was the artists who rushed in crowds to his support. So anomalous a
position could not long be maintained. Sooner or later the lines of
intellectual division would follow pretty closely the division of Faculties,
with results that, without returning to the Middle Ages, we can readily
imagine.
Among those swept away, a little ironically, with the 219 propositions
was the unfortunate Roger Bacon. If he was to be engulfed in the company
of so many Peripatetics, it seems a pity that, instead of railing at Albert,
he did not collaborate with him for the advancement of chemistry and
physics. We must beware, however, of misinterpreting either the position
## p. 825 (#871) ############################################
The fate of Roger Bacon. His philosophy
825
of Bacon or the causes of his downfall. It would be unhistorical to suppose
that advocacy of mathematics, or prophecies of flying-machines and other
marvels, would have brought him to captivity. Whatever the value of his
contributions to science (about which the specialists are a little frigid),
no school of thought then suspected that geometry or optics or the pro-
pagation of force by “multiplication of species” were going to undermine
the Church. Bacon, like Abelard, may have damaged himself by making
enemies, and by his monotonous dispraise of authority; but where he
seems definitely to have stumbled was in the field of astrology. The
state of astronomy at the time permitted it to be a quasi-scientific
question whether the fortunes and even the characters of men might not
be shaped by celestial impressions. Bacon himself agreed with Aquinas
and other educated men in denying that the freedom of the will could
thus be affected, and in avoiding the more childish superstitions. The
attack on him was probably no more intelligent than the refusal to
discriminate between Aquinas and the Averroists. In the hour of
triumphant faction a few rash or ambiguous expressions would be
evidence enough. Deplorable as the result was, we have no more right
to accuse the whole age of persecuting science than we have to argue from
Bacon's own effort to prove the utility of mathematics to theology that
he saw no intrinsic value in theoretical reasoning. In any case, it is an
anachronism either to look for a new philosophy of the world in the
scientific tastes of Bacon, or to interpret his overthrow as mere hostility
to the study of natural phenomena. A still greater absurdity would be
to suppose that Bacon's praise of experience and experiment brought
upon him the wrath of Aristotelians.
Rightly to estimate Bacon's worth as a philosopher is, however, a very
difficult task. The combative spirit which enraged his contemporaries
has endeared him, perhaps unduly, to modern readers with little
sympathy for the temper of the Middle Ages. Similarly, his references to
ctual or possible devices of mechanics and chemistry have won for him
more credit as an inventor than he would have claimed for himself. Our
concern, however, is rather with his general estimate of knowledge, and
with his broader relations to the intellectual attitude of his times. And
here we find that, in some respects, his mind was provincial, or even re-
actionary, while in others he certainly had a vision of the future sicut in
aenigmate, non facie ad faciem. His provincialism appears in his failure
to appreciate the higher contemporary thought, or to perceive the direction
in which minds really more critical than his own were moving. Much of
his criticism, as for example in the De Viciis contractis in studio Theologiae,
is singularly barren, if we suppose it to refer to such men as Albert the
Great or Thomas Aquinas. They in their turn might well have objected
that Bacon's whole conception of philosophy was obsolete. They would not
formally have disputed his statement that the chief and final intention
of philosophers was circa divinam et angelorum cognitionem. . . cum con-
CH. XXIII.
## p. 826 (#872) ############################################
826
Bacon's titles to fame
temptu bonorum istius vitae temporalis, ut pervenirent ad statum futurae
beatitudinis, but they might fairly have replied that amiable commonplaces
were no substitute for a real delineation of the provinces of theology and
human reason. Bacon is, in fact, reactionary in his extravagant subordina-
tion of philosophy to theology. He reverts to a position barely tenable
in the thirteenth century unless supported by fresh arguments, and he
appears to be imperfectly acquainted with the greatest controversy of his
age.
Again, his praise of “mathematics” as an aid to civil and religious
government is so mixed up with the puerilities of astrology and alchemy
that his pretence of superiority to his times in this respect is far from
convincing. On the other hand, there are many glimpses of genuine in-
sight in his enthusiasm for linguistic studies, in his anticipation of the
manifold uses of geography, and in his constant emphasis on the importance
of experimental method. Very often he speaks of scientia experimentalis
as a separate science rather than as a general method employed by natural
philosophy; and in the Opus Tertium he makes the significant statement:
naturalis enim philosophus narrat et arguit, sed non experitur. He main-
tains, nevertheless, that experiment or experience is required to verify all
the sciences; nor can we reasonably complain if he is not yet in a position
to discriminate between the more and the less experimental departments
of knowledge. What we clearly discern in Bacon, when we get behind his
peevishness, his superstitions, and his arrogance, is a profound discontent
with the existing state of knowledge, a conviction that no further advance
is possible except by a kind of intellectual return to Nature. In this he
was indubitably right, and in this, rather than in actual achievement, lies
his title to fame. At all times, too, he was hampered by his conflict with
authority. Many of his books have the character of an apologia. He is
desperately anxious to refute the slanders of his enemies, and to persuade
Pope Clement IV that his philosophy is orthodox and profitable. Had
he worked in a calmer atmosphere, and in harmony with the chiefs of his
Order, it is probable that he would have left us a higher impression of
his
The imprisonment of Bacon was a political incident, in the same sense
that the trials of Gottschalk, Abelard, and Gilbert de la Porrée, or the
prohibitions of Aristotle, Averroism, and Peripateticism were political
incidents. For the Church was, in theory and in fact, a political society
based on first principles, and pledged therefore to test every movement
of thought by its probable effect on the faith and conduct of Christians.
Liberty of opinion we now take to be the foundation of all other liberties;
interference with it we stamp as an act of tyranny or, at best, as a dangerous
experiment. But that is because we are governed by opinion and desire
no other master. The medieval Church, on the other hand, claimed to
be governed by knowledge, and that makes all the difference in the world.
That, too, is why the significance of the proposed division between theology
powers.
## p. 827 (#873) ############################################
The final aim of medieval philosophy
827
and philosophy was graver than even an Aquinas could suspect. The scope
of this chapter has excluded political thought in the more restricted sense,
but facts like the growth of Canon Law, the revival of Roman juris-
prudence, the rise of nations and communes, the struggle of Empire and
Papacy, and the appearance of such a book as Marsilius of Padua's De-
fensor Pacis are intimately connected with medieval philosophy. In the
last chapter of his Monarchia Dante supports his plea for an independent
Empire by the analogous independence of philosophy. To the Pope belong
revealed truths and the theological virtues; to the Emperor moral virtue
and the inventions of reason. That Dante grasped the whole possibilities
of his argument is improbable; for no such division could be effective
before the rise of the modern State, nor even then until the State had
renounced the care of theology, only to find that philosophy had likewise
vanished from its counsels. The heroic attempt of Aquinas to define a
sphere for philosophy without detriment to the sovereign rights of theology
was simply one expression of the whole medieval struggle so to adjust the
temporal power to the spiritual as to create a dominion of political freedom
within the higher sovereignty of the Church. The project, we may hold,
was impossible. It is certain, at least, that it failed.
Yet this failure was the last and greatest achievement of medieval
philosophy. Later developments, such as the rivalry of Thomists and
Scotists, with all their wrangles about matter and form, universals and
individuals, have their interest for students, but small importance for the
historical movement of the world. When we gaze on the solid line of
folios attributed to Duns Scotus (ob. 1308) it seems almost incredible that
his life can have lasted—according to a common estimate—no more than
thirty-four years. Even if the correct figure be a little larger, his youth
is perhaps a fact to be remembered in estimating the quality of his work.
For in Duns Scotus we cannot but recognise something of that joy in
destruction attributed by Plato to young men attacked by the first fever
of dialectic. It was his distinguished fate to found a school strong enough
for a time to divide the world with the Thomists. The Franciscans
adopted him as their champion and magnified his prestige. Modern
readers, however, who stand apart from medieval factions, will be slow
to recognise in Duns Scotus a serious intellectual rival to Thomas Aquinas.
In method, in perspicuity, in dignity and breadth of mind he is plainly
inferior. To charge him with insincerity would be uncharitable, but he
strikes us as a man determined at all hazards to take up original positions,
and therefore to seek with all his notorious “subtlety” for points of dis-
tinction between his own and other views. The result in most cases is
that his divergence from Aquinas and other doctors turns out to be
smaller than his statements would suggest.
On the fundamental question of the relation of philosophy to theology
he proposes a much sharper division than was approved by St Thomas.
When any truth is enunciated as an article of faith, it is inexpedient, he
CH. XXIII.
## p. 828 (#874) ############################################
828
Duns Scotus and his philosophy
says, to attempt a demonstration of it. The effect of your demonstration
on the faithful will be to deprive them of the merit of faith, while to the
infidel you will provide an opportunity of declaring that Christians are
driven by lack of faith to fall back on argument. It would thus be im-
proper to prove by reason that God exists, that God is one, or that the
soul is immortal. Duns Scotus fails, however, to work out the consequences
of his own hypothesis. He is far from meaning that faith is irrational,
but equally far from grasping the importance of philosophical monotheism
as a preparation for Christian doctrine, or from perceiving the danger of
sheer obscurantism involved in his own contention. Nor does he deal with
Aquinas' point that, since few men have leisure, or inclination, or ability
to be philosophers, the bulk of mankind will be obliged to receive in the
form of faith propositions which a few may be able to establish by
reasoning. On the other hand, Duns Scotus goes quite as far as Aquinas
in claiming for theology an interest in every branch of knowledge, not
excluding geometry, and also in exalting the power of the intellect for
the general purpose of arriving at truth. Theology, he maintains, is
practical rather than speculative, but the practical consequences of Chris-
tian dogmas, as he explains them, would never have been questioned by
Aquinas. In a word, Duns Scotus proposes a new division of provinces
but does not adequately defend it. He tends to exalt will above intellect,
but with the difficulties of their inter-relation he does not grapple half
so closely as Aquinas,
Perhaps the most conspicuous point of difference between Duns Scotus
and his contemporaries was his doctrine of matter. Entirely free from
materialism in any sense that would make matter independent of the
Creator, he insists, nevertheless, that all created beings, the spiritual no
less than the corporeal, have matter as well as form in their composition.
To support this doctrine he makes an important distinction between
metaphysical and physical matter. He supposed that Pythagoras and
some of the early Greek philosophers had thought of matter metaphysic-
ally, but he assigned to physics and natural philosophy, not the muteria
prima, but only the secundo prima, which is the substratum of generation
and corruption.
