Hildebert of Lavardin

He didn't want the titles he got, he didn't write the things people said he wrote, he wasn't the saint that some said he was, he didn't get what he asked for from the pope.

Hildebert was born c.1055 to poor parents in Lavardin in central France. Intended for an ecclesiastical life, he was probably tutored at Tours, possible under Berengar of Tours. He became a master at the school of Le Mans, where possibly he crossed paths with Gallus Anonymus. Around 1096 or 1097 he became bishop of Le Mans, but was taken hostage by William II and carried to England for about a year as part of the frequent England-France conflict started by the 1066 Conquest.

Not all his clergy agreed with his management, and he went to Rome to ask Pope Paschal II if he could resign as bishop. Paschal refused. While he was in Rome, back in Le Mans trouble was brewing. A former Benedictine named Henry of Lausanne was in Le Mans preaching against church hierarchy. The people were attracted to his preaching and had admiration for his style: he went bare foot, slept on the ground, and lived on donations. Hildebert was able to force Henry out of Le Mans, but the population was still wary of church authority and willing to disregard it at will.

In 1125, against his will, Hildebert was made archbishop of Tours by Pope Honorius II. Now it was a French king he had to contend with: he and Louis VI clashed over ecclesiastical rights, a conflict Hildebert no doubt wished to avoid from all the way back when he asked to not be a bishop anymore.

He wrote, but he was given credit for many writings that were not his. Old editions of his writings ascribe to him things written by Peter Lombard and others. He was praised after his life for the work Tractatus theologicus, but this is now attributed to Hugh of St. Victor.

He was referred to as a saint by some writers, but there is no record of him being canonized. In fact, his familiarity with Latin classics like Cicero and Ovid give his writings a style more similar to pagan authors than Christian ones. The only two serious works that are still attributed to him are a life of Hugh of Cluny and of St. Radegunda. He was known for poems. The illustration shows a piece of a 12th-century edition of his poetry.

Hildbert remained archbishop of Tours until his death on 18 December 1133.

After he ejected Henry of Lausanne from Le Mans, Henry went elsewhere to preach. A different archbishop seized him and took him before the pope to deal with him. We'll see how that went tomorrow.

Clandestine Marriage

Peter Lombard (c.1096 - July 1160) was the Bishop of Paris and the author of Four Books of Sentences which became the standard theological textbooks for centuries. It was a compilation of sententiæ, authoritative statements on biblical passages. I'd like to talk about his conclusions on marriage.

Marriage customs varied among countries and cultures, and modern christian marriage requires an officiant (priest) and public statements about the intent to marry (banns) so that reasons why the marriage should not take place could be brought forth (such as a previous marriage, but yesterday's post made clear that more danico was not concerned about marriage being to only one person). Also, consummation was important, partially as a proof of the bride's prior status as a virgin.

Lombard had a different take on marriage, from his understanding of the Bible. Mary was married to Joseph, but she remained a virgin her entire life, rendering the need for consummation with a husband unnecessary. Pope Alexander III supported this notion.

Moreover, there was no priest to perform a ceremony in the Garden of Eden; it was sufficient for that marriage to take place in the sight of God. Therefore, what was the need for a priest? According to Lombard, the husband and wife need only profess their intent to marry. They could exchange the words "I take you as my husband" and "I take you as my wife" and their marriage ceremony was complete!

This was very liberating for young romantic couples (and older ones, I suppose), but this freedom was only to last for a couple generations. Innocent III would put a stop to it in 1215. Stay tuned.

St. Bonaventure

St. Bonaventure has been mentioned before, writing a biography of Francis of Assisi and disagreeing with Averroes' definition of the soul. He probably deserves his own entry.

He was born in either 1217 or 1221 as Giovanni di Fidanza in Bagnoregio (about 90 kilometers northwest of Rome). In his early 20s he became a Franciscan friar and studied at the University of Paris, quickly developing a reputation as a scholar. He was even made a lecturer on the Four Books of Sentences of Peter Lombard. He took his Masters degree in 1257 in the "same class" as Thomas Aquinas.

Bonaventure wanted to meld all forms of human thought in order to truly comprehend God:

He thought of Christ as the “one true master” who offers humans knowledge that begins in faith, is developed through rational understanding, and is perfected by mystical union with God. [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

Bonaventure was later declared a "Doctor of the Church" for his erudition and writings, but unlike his classmate Thomas Aquinas  he was called away from the academic life. In 1273 he was made a Cardinal by Pope Gregory X and given the task of reconciling Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox-Byzantine religions. This was to culminate in the Second Council of Lyons, where he died on 15 July 1274.

It is not possible in a brief blog post to do justice to the extent of his learning or the breadth of his career: he was made Minister General of the Franciscans in 1257 to try to overcome the growing disagreement over to what extent the order should embrace poverty. We will likely see more of him in the future.

Duns Scotus

I shocked myself the other day when I mentioned Duns Scotus in the post on St. Ivo and found that I had nothing in this blog to which to link! In 300+ posts I had somehow passed over Duns Scotus (c.1266-8 November 1308).

His contemporaries refer to him as Johannes Duns, and since there was a practice of using the Christian name plus place of origin, it is assumed that he came from Duns in Scotland (although a very late notation on a copy of his "final exam" on the Sentences of Peter Lombard claims he was from Ireland). We know that he was accepted into the Franciscans on 17 March 1291. Since the earliest age at which he could be accepted into the Order was 25, and since we assume he was accepted as soon as his age allowed, we surmise that his year of birth was 1265 or 1266. That encompasses most of what we "know" of the personal life of the figure who was called Doctor subtilis [Latin: Subtle doctor] due to his penetrating philosophical and theological insights.

He got into some trouble in June 1303 while lecturing at the University of Paris. King Philip IV "the Fair" of France (previously mentioned here) was taxing church property. Understandably, he was being opposed by Pope Boniface VIII. Scotus sided with the pope and was expelled from France with about 80 other friars. They were back about a year later.

Although he never wrote a giant compendium of all his thought the way others like Thomas Aquinas did, he is known for numerous commentaries in which he untangled many of the theological controversies of the day. Hence the title "Subtle doctor." His argument for the existence of God "is rightly regarded as one of the most outstanding contributions ever made to natural theology." [source] It has numerous details, but boils down to:

(1) No effect can produce itself.
(2) No effect can be produced by just nothing at all.
(3) A circle of causes is impossible.
(4) Therefore, an effect must be produced by something else. (from 1, 2, and 3)
(5) There is no infinite regress in an essentially ordered series of causes.
(6) It is not possible for there to be an accidentally ordered series of causes unless there is an essentially ordered series.
(7) Therefore, there is a first agent. (from 4, 5, and 6)

Both (5) and (6) have several sub-arguments, and after (7) he moves on to further details. His underlying assumption that makes much of his thought work is that God is infinite.

He also championed the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, quoted in 1854 by Pope Pius IX in his declaration of that dogma.

Pope John XXIII (1881-1963) recommended Scotus' writings to theology students. In 1993, Pope John Paul II (1920-2005) beatified him.

There was a movie made about him in Italy in 2011, available on Amazon.

William of Ockham

The goal of Daily Medieval is to present a sampling of the infinite array of information about the Middle Ages in small, digestible amounts. It offers a taste of the thousand years of people, events, and ideas that don't get covered in the streamlined history books of standard academic courses. To that end, it tries to avoid those things that people "already know" and focus on the lesser-known lights that shone at the foundation of modern civilization. Sometimes, however, the obscure overlaps the well-known, and I find myself "forced" to write about something or someone that I worry is known well enough that the daily entry won't give the reader anything "new." My goal then becomes to broaden the reader's knowledge in unexpected ways.

Which brings us to William of Ockham. I would be surprised if readers of Daily Medieval had not heard of Occam's (or Ockham's) Razor, a guiding principle that says one should not make more assumptions than absolutely necessary to try to explain something.

William of Ockham (c.1285-1349) was responsible for so much more, however. Believed to have been born in Ockham in Surrey, England, he wrote about metaphysics, logic, theology, politics, and more. All this writing, however, happened when he left Oxford University in 1320 without a degree in theology. The prevailing theory for this unexpected departure is that he would not acquiesce to changing his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, a common part of the final examination for university students.

The basis for the theory is how the situation blew up years later. Ockham was summoned to Avignon to appear before Pope John XXII and a committee that would examine his writings. The committee, chaired by John Luttrell (an ex-chancellor of Oxford) found 51 heresies among William's commentary on the Sentences. It is believed that William escaped punishment by appealing to the Holy Roman Emperor (at the time, Louis IV), who was not always on good terms with the pope, saying to him "You defend me with the sword and I will defend you with the pen." In effect, he placed at the disposal of the Emperor his intellectual gifts, which (if this story is true) must have been known to be considerable for this ploy to work.

How did William earn his intellectual reputation? Between leaving Oxford in 1320 and arriving in Avignon in 1324, he spent three years in a Franciscan monastery, writing prolifically. One of the topics he put his mind to was whether priests should be allowed to own property. Franciscans believed priests should live a life of poverty. This put them into conflict with Pope John XXII, so the summons to Avignon and condemnation may have had more to do with that question than his Oxford writings.

Besides challenging the Church's ideas about material wealth, he was also challenging the ideas of people like Thomas Aquinas that reason was sufficient to determine everything we needed to know about the world.

But that's a story for another day.

Final Exams

Early copy of the Sentences

In the Middle Ages, The Bible was recognized as the most important book in existence. No book was more discussed and commented upon. Many of the commentaries themselves, such as those of the Early Church Fathers, became only slightly less significant objects of study. The Early Church Fathers did not always agree, however, which led to confusion, and (if you weren't careful in your reading and expounding on what they said) to heresy. Into this dilemma stepped Peter Lombard.

Peter Lombard (c.1095-1160) was born in Italy. He studied at Reims and Paris, and taught for ten years in the cathedral school at Notre Dame where he would have met some of the greatest theologians of the time. He was ordained by 1156, and was made bishop of Paris in 1159.

At some point he found time to write. Although he wrote commentaries of his own, his great work was the Libri Quatuor Sententiarum (Four Books of Sentences), in which he attempted to cover the entirety of biblical scholarship and knowledge by laying out passages from the Bible with relevant commentary from the Early Church Fathers and others. He tries to show where there is agreement among the commentators; where there is disagreement, he tries to reconcile the opposing viewpoints.

The four books covered the Trinity, Creation (and the world), Christ and salvation, and the Sacraments. The Sentences became the standard theology textbook for the next 400 years, and formed the basis for understanding the Bible and Christianity.

Because of the fundamental position the Sentences takes in theology, it was at the center of most theological study. Therefore, students were given a simple task: write your own commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Your masters would read your commentary to see if you understood the Bible and its learned analyses properly. If you did not, you were told to correct your commentary. If you corrected your commentary, all was well and good. If you decided that you were right and that you should argue with your masters, you ran the risk of (at the very least) not having your degree conferred, or (at worst) being declared heretical.

...and that's what one of the most famous medieval thinkers—the one whose name everyone today knows—did, and it got him expelled from Oxford University.

But that's a story for another day.