QUESTIONING AUTHORITY IN MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY
LECTIO: an educational model inherited from the Roman Schools and
Hellenistic grammarians, which focussed scholarly activity and teaching
on texts, with the assimilative aim of mastering the letter of the text
and penetrating its deep meaning.
As practiced by Augustine in De doctrina Christiana, lectio has four
parts:
(i)Lectio, or reading aloud of the text, perhaps supplemented with
recitatio from memory of notable passages.
(ii) Next came emendatio, which took up questions of the accuracy of
the ms, the authenticity of the work, and analyzed the plan, faults,
achievements, and originality of the text.
(iii) Next was enarratio or literal commentary, in wch remarks on
definitions, etymologies, figures of speech, rhetorical techniques,
etc. led up to paraphrase.
The cumulative result was to rivet student-teacher attention on detail
and verbal precision.
(iv) Finally, there was iudicium which in ancient practice judged the
text by aesthetic criteria; in patristic practice by the dogmatic
criterion of the rule of faith and the pragmatic criterion of whether
or not the interpretation increased love of God and neighbor.
By the twelfth century Abelard's pupil Robert of Melun (1167) attacks
those who restrict lectio to recitation and glossing, and promotes the
goal of lectio as understanding the meaning of the text.
Lectio was centered on texts, which had the privileged status of
auctoritas:
(i) grammar--Donatus and Prician
(ii) logic--Porphyry's Isagogue, Aristotle's Categories & De
Interp, Boethius' commentaries
(iii) the Bible, Christian teachers
(a) glosses: Isidore of Seville's Etymologies;
Gregory's Moralia in Iob
(b) patristic authorities: Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine,
Hilary,Cassiodorus, Basil, Gregory, John Chrysostom,
etc.
(c) philosophical: Aristotle, Cicero, Boethius, Plato,
Chalcidius,
Marius Victorinus, Macrobius, Denis the Areopagite.
QUAESTIO: a natural outgrowth of the lectio, once emphasis shifted to
the meaning of the text. Obscure passages generated alternative
incompatible interpretations by different auctoritates, forcing both
lector and scholares into the more active role of weighing such
readings, increasingly in terms of the arguments offered for them. By
late twelfth century, Gilbert de la Poree could codify the genre as to
its form, by saying that a quaestio consists of contradictory
statements, each supported by arguments.
Originally tied to the lectio and occasioned by the explication du
texte as the quaestio was, its evolution into a separate classroom
exercize was a function of a number of interrelated variables:
(i) the shift of interest from the correct exegesis of, to the
theoretical issues raised by the texts;
(ii) the growing availability of dialectic as a tool for
processing disagreements;
(iii) the emergence of masters with competence and confidence
enough to count themselves among the authorities by
shouldering the task of "determining" the question; and
(iv) the organization of schools where a "critical mass" of
masters and students could gather to engage in such
teaching and research.
As intellectual work became more problem-centered, the demand to let
logical order supercede textual order mounted. This gave rise in the
twelfth century to the sententiae-collections in which auctoritates
from Scripture, the Fathers, even philosophers, were collected and
arranged around topical quaestions. The quotations were taken out of
their literary context, selected for their power to frame a discussion
and/or to suggest arguments pro or contra.
Once quaestiones became the favored method of packaging inquiry, they
were raised, not to signal uncertainty about the answers, but for
methodological and pedagogical reasons, in systematic surveys of their
subject matter.
DISPUTATIO: a classroom exercize in which two masters or a master and
a student debated a textual or doctrinal problem.
At first quaestiones were tied to the text (usually the Bible) as an
exegetical tool alongside enarratio. Abelard first uses the term for a
classroom exercize, and Odo of Soissons (at Paris ca 1164) made the
institutionally significant move of debating quaestiones in a separate
session from his lectiones. By the end of the twelfth century
disputatio had become institutionally entrenched as one of the
functions proper to, in thirteenth and fourteenth century universities
required of a master. In the first half of the thirteenth century, the
university standardized the form of the quaestio across subject-
matters, as well as a division of labor in disputatio between the
master who presides and determines, the opponent who raises
difficulties against the thesis, and the respondent who clarifies a
preliminary solution to the problem posed.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Quaestio and Disputatio in Some of Anselm's Works
(1) Auctoritates:
(a) De Veritate: school logicians, Holy Scripture, Anselm's
Monologion sol ratione results
(b) De Libertate Arbitrii: Scripture, St. Augustine
(c) De Casu Diaboli: Scripture used to formulate doctrinal
puzzles which are then pursued with philosophical tools
(d) De Grammatico: grammatical vs. philosophical auctoritates
raise the question, which is then examined for its own
sake
(2) Incipient Quaestio Format:
Cur Deus Homo
Pro and Contra (Patristic authors vs. Infidel Objectors)
[Bk I.iii-x]
Magister's Argument for his Negative Thesis [Bk.I.xi-xxv]
Magister's Argument for his Positive Thesis [Bk II]
Objections and Dubia raised by the Student from Scripture and
Doctrine with the Master's responses [interspersed]
De Concordia (a work consisting of three quaestiones, two of which are
structurally similar to later quaestiones)
Quaestion II
Arguments for the position the author will oppose
[II.1]
Explanatory Preliminaries [II.2]
The Author's Determination of the Main Issue [III.3]
Question III
Pro and Contra arguments from Scripture [III.1]
Explanatory Preliminaries [III.2]
[Article I:] the Author's case for Compossibility
[III.3-4]
the Author's Harmonization of Problem- Generating
Scriptures [III.5]
[Article II:] Two Dubia about the results of Article I
[III.6]
the Author's Response to the Dubia [III.6-7]
[Article III:] Raises and answers additional
quaestiuncula [III.9]
[Article IV:] Further Explanation of the Author's
Position [III.10-14]
(3) Praying the Proslogion: Inquiring with the Whole Self
Two Goals: (i) to see God's face; (ii) to understand God's Truth a
little bit
Stirring up the emotions and will (c.i)
Begins with (i) the higher goal but retreats to (ii) the lower
goal in view of his limited capacities for seeking.
Intellectual Inquiry with amazing positive results (cc.ii- xiii)
Stirring up the emotions and will (cc.xiv-xviii)
Intellectual results found wanting measured against (i) the
higher goal
Proof that God is permanently partially inaccessible (c.xv)
Intellectual Inquiry whose results emphasize the ontologial
incommensuration between God and creatures (cc.xviii- xxiii)
Stirring up the emotions and will, using both positive and negative
results to display God's overwhelming power to satisfy
(cc.xxiv-xxvi)
The Structure of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Century Quaestio
(1) In the Summa Theologica:
Question
Arguments Pro and Contra (unfavored opinion given more space)
Author's Response
Reply to the Initial Arguments
(2) In a Sentence-commentary:
Question
Arguments Pro and Contra
1st Opinion
Stated
Arguments for the First Opinion
Arguments against the First Opinion
2nd Opinion
Stated
Arguments for the Second Opinion
Arguments against the Second Opinion
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Author's Opinion
Stated
Arguments for the Author's Opinion
Objections to the Author's Opinion
Replies to Objections to the Author's Opinion
Replies to Arguments for the First Opinion
Replies to Arguments for the Second Opinion
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Replies to Arguments Pro and Contra
(3) In a Quodlibet
Question
Arguments Pro and Contra
Author's Response
Stated
Arguments for the Author's Opinion
Replies to Arguments Pro and Contra
Procedure for Installing a Master of Theology at the
University of Paris in the Thirteenth Century
Eight days before, the candidate brings copies of four questions to be
disputed to the home of all the masters and graduated bachelors.
All masters were obliged to attend the proceedings.
First Day
(1) The first question is debated between the candidate and the
respondent who was a bachelor, with a former teacher presiding.
All other bachelors raise objections to which there are no responses.
The respondent summarizes the first argument and responds to it.
(2) The second question is proposed by a senior master, who gives
the pro and contra arguments.
The candidate restates the question and argues for his position,
developing his own theological view.
The senior master raises three or four objections.
The candidate responds to the first three objections.
All senior masters propose objections to what has been said for or
against the candidate's view in two or three arguments.
The candidate replies twice.
(3) The presiding master ends with a commendation of Sacred Scripture.
He would close by announcing the date of the next phase (usually the
next day).
Second Day
(1) The inceptor receives the biretta and gives his inaugural lecture
commending Sacred Scripture (a lecture short and to the point).
(2) A student proposes the third and most important question.
A bachelor chosen in advance is the respondent. He presents a
scientific theological position with three conclusions proved along
with three corollaries.
The inceptor objects with three arguments and rebuts the response
twice.
(3) The fourth question was disputed by junior and senior masters. The
new master determined the third question with one conclusion and no
proof. (Full discussion was left for a later day, but the new inceptor
couldn't leave town until he had delivered his first lecture and given
his definitive response to the third question.)