§ 101. The Eleventh Century.During the 11th century, with the moral and spiritual elevation of the church, eager attention was again given to theological science. It was at first mainly prosecuted in the monasteries of the Cistercians and among the monks of Clugny, but afterwards at the seminaries which arose toward the end of the century. The dialectic method won more and more the upper hand in theology, and in the Eucharist controversy between Lanfranc and Berengar, as well as in the controversy between Anselm and Gaunilo about the existence of God, and between Anselm and Roscelin about the Trinity, Dogmatism obtained its first victory over Scepticism.
During the 11th century, with the moral and spiritual elevation of the church, eager attention was again given to theological science. It was at first mainly prosecuted in the monasteries of the Cistercians and among the monks of Clugny, but afterwards at the seminaries which arose toward the end of the century. The dialectic method won more and more the upper hand in theology, and in the Eucharist controversy between Lanfranc and Berengar, as well as in the controversy between Anselm and Gaunilo about the existence of God, and between Anselm and Roscelin about the Trinity, Dogmatism obtained its first victory over Scepticism.
§ 101.1.The Most Celebrated Schoolmen of this Century.Fulbertopens the list, a pupil of Gerbert, and fromA.D.1007 Bishop of Chartres Before entering on his episcopate he had founded at Chartres a theological seminary. His fame spread over all the West, so that pupils poured in upon him from every side.The most important of these wasBerengar of Tours, afterwards a canon and teacher of the cathedral school of his native city, and then again archdeacon at Angers. He died inA.D.1088. The school of Tours rose to great eminence under him.Lanfranc, the celebrated opponent of the last-named, was abbot of the monastery of Bec in Normandy, and fromA.D.1070 Archbishop of Canterbury (§96, 8). He died inA.D.1089. He wrote against BerengarLiber de corpore et sanguine Domini.BishopHildebert of Tours, who died inA.D.1134, famous as a writer of spiritual songs, was a pupil of Berengar. But he avoided the sceptical tendencies of his teacher, and, warned of the danger of dialectic and following the mystical bent of his mind, he applied himself to the cultivation of a life of faith, so that St. Bernard praised him astantam columnam ecclesiæ.The monastic school of Bec, which Lanfranc had rendered celebrated, reached the summit of its fame under his pupilAnselm of Canterbury, who far excelled his teacher in genius as well as in importance for theological science. He was born inA.D.1033 at Aosta in Italy, educated in the monastery of Bec, became teacher and abbot there, was raised inA.D.1093 to the archiepiscopal chair of Canterbury, and died inA.D.1109. As a churchman he courageously defended the independence of the church according to the principles of Hildebrand (§96, 12).As a theologian he may be ranked in respect of acuteness and profundity, speculative talent and Christian earnestness, as a second Augustine, and on the theological positions of that Father he based his own. Though carrying dialectic even into his own private devotions, there was yet present in him a vein of religious mysticism. According to him faith is the condition of true knowledge,Fides præcedit intellectum; but it is also with him a sacred duty to raise faith to knowledge,Credo ut intelligam. Only he who in respect of endowment and culture is not capable of this intellectual activity should content himself with simpleVeneratio. HisMonologiumcontains discussions on the nature of God, hisProslogiumproves the being of God; his three books,De fide Trinitatis et de incarnatione Verbi, develop and elaborate the doctrine of the Trinity and Christology; while the three dialoguesDe veritate,De libero arbitrio, andDe casu diabolitreat of the object, and the tractCur Deus homo?treats of the subject, of soteriology. The most able, profound, and impressive of all his writings is the last-named, which proves the necessity of the incarnation of God in Christ for the reconciliation of man with God.It was an epoch-making treatise in the historical development of the church doctrine of satisfaction on Pauline foundations.296Anselm took part in the controversy of the Greeks by his workDe processione Spiritus(§ 67, 4). He discussed the question of predestination in a moderate Augustinian form in the book,De concordia præscientæ et prædest. et gratiæ Dei cum libero arbitrio.In hisMeditationesandOrationeshe gives expression to the ardent piety of his soul, as also in the voluminous collection (426) of his letters.297Anselm of Laon, surnamed Scholasticus, was the pupil of Anselm of Canterbury. FromA.D.1076 he taught with brilliant success at Paris, and thus laid the first foundation of its university. Subsequently he returned to his native city Laon, was made there archdeacon and Scholasticus, and founded in that place a famous theological school. He died inA.D.1117. He composed theGlossa interlinearis, a short exposition of the Vulgate between the lines, which with Walafrid’sGlossa ordinaria(§ 90, 4), became the favourite exegetical handbook of the Middle Ages.William of Champeaux, the proper founder of the University of Paris, had already taught rhetoric and dialectic for some time with great success in the cathedral school, when the fame of the theological school of Laon led him to the feet of Anselm. InA.D.1108 he returned to Paris, and had immense crowds listening to his theological lectures. Chagrined on account of a defeat in argument at the hand of Abælard, one of his own pupils, he retired from public life into the old chapel of St. Victor near Paris, and there founded a monastery under the same name for canons of the rule of St. Augustine. He died inA.D.1121 as Bishop of Chalons.The abbotGuibert of Nogent, in the diocese of Laon, who died aboutA.D.1124, a scholar of Anselm at Bec, was a voluminous writer and, with all his own love of the marvellous, a vigorous opponent of all the grosser absurdities of relic and saint worship. He wrote a useful history of the first crusade, and a work important in its day entitled,Liber quo ordine sermo fieri debeat. His great work was one in four books,De pignoribus Sanctorum, against the abuses of saint and relic worship, the exhibition of pretended parts of the Saviour’s body,e.g.teeth, pieces of the foreskin, navel cord, etc., against the translation or distribution of the bodies of saints, against the fraud of introducing new saints, relics, and legends.§ 101.2.Berengar’s Eucharist Controversy,A.D.1050-1079.—Berengar of Tours elaborated a theory of the eucharist which is directly antagonistic to the now generally prevalent theory of Radbert (§ 91, 3). He taught that while the elements are changed and Christ’s body is really present, neither the change nor the presence is substantial. The presence of His body is rather the existence of His power in the elements, and the change of the bread is the actual manifestation of this power in the form of bread. The condition however of this power-presence is not merely the consecration but also the faith of the receiver. Without this faith the bread is an empty and impotent sign. Such views were publicly expressed by him and his numerous followers for a long while without causing any offence. But when he formally stated them in a letter to his friend Lanfranc of Bec, this churchman became Berengar’s accuser at the Synod of Rome inA.D.1050. The synod condemned him unheard. A second synod of the same year held at Vercelli, before which Berengar was to have appeared but could not because he had meanwhile been imprisoned in France, in an outburst of fanatical fury had the treatise of Ratramnus on the eucharist, wrongly ascribed to Erigena, torn up and burnt, while Berengar’s doctrine was again condemned. Meanwhile Berengar was by the intervention of influential friends set at liberty and made the acquaintance of the powerful papal legate Hildebrand, who, holding by the simple Scripture doctrine that the bread and wine of the sacrament was the body and blood of Christ, occupied probably a position intermediate between Radbert’s grossly material and Berengar’s dynamic hypothesis. Disinclined to favour the fanaticism of Berengar’s opponents, Hildebrand contented himself with exacting from him at the Synod of Tours inA.D.1054 a solemn declaration that he did not deny the presence of Christ in the Supper, but regarded the consecrated elements as the body and blood of Christ. Emboldened by this decision and still always persecuted by his opponents as a heretic, Berengar undertook inA.D.1059 a journey to Rome, in order, as he hoped, by Hildebrand’s influence to secure a distinct papal verdict in his favour. But there he found a powerful opposition headed by the passionate and pugnacious Cardinal Humbert (§ 67, 3). This party at the Lateran Council in Rome inA.D.1059, compelled Berengar, who was really very deficient in strength of character, to cast his writings into the fire and to swear to a confession composed by Humbert which went beyond even Radbert’s theory in the gross corporeality of its expressions. But in France he immediately again repudiated this confession with bitter invectives against Rome, and vindicated anew against Lanfranc and others his earlier views. The bitterness of the controversy now reached its height. Hildebrand had meanwhile, inA.D.1073, himself become pope. He vainly endeavoured to bring the controversy to an end by getting Berengar to accept a confession couched in moderate terms admitting the real presence of the body and blood in the Supper. The opposite party did not shrink from casting suspicion on the pope’s own orthodoxy, and so Hildebrand was obliged, in order to avoid the loss of his great life work in a mass of minor controversies, to insist at a second synod in Rome inA.D.1079 upon an unequivocal and decided confession of the substantial change of the bread. Berengar was indiscreet enough to refer to his private conversations with the pope; but now Gregory commanded him at once to acknowledge and abjure his error. With fear and trembling Berengar obeyed, and the pope dismissed him with a safe conduct, distinctly prohibiting all further disputation. Bowed down under age and calamities, Berengar withdrew to the island of St. Come, near Tours, where he lived as a solitary penitent in the practice of strict asceticism, and died at a great age in peace with the church inA.D.1088. His chief work isDe Cœna S. adv. Lanfr.—Continuation, §102, 5.§ 101.3.Anselm’s Controversies.On the basis of his Platonic realism, Anselm of Canterbury constructed the ontological proof of the being of God, that there is given in man’s reason the idea of the most perfect being to whose perfection existence also belongs. When he laid this proof before the learned world in hisMonologiumandProslogium, the monk Gaunilo of Marmoutiers, who was a supporter of Aristotelian realism, opposed him, and acutely pointed out the defects of this proof in hisLiber pro insipiente. He so named it in reference to a remark of Anselm, who had said that even theinsipienswho, according to Psalm xiv. 1, declares in his heart that there is no God, affords thereby a witness for the existence of the idea, and consequently also for the existence of God. Anselm replied in hisApologeticus c. Gaunilonem. And there the controversy ended without any definite result.Of more importance was Anselm’s controversy withRoscelin, the Nominalist, canon of Compiègne. He in a purely nominalistic fashion understood the idea of the Godhead as a mere abstraction, and thought that the three persons of the Godhead could not beuna res, οὐσία, as then they must all at once have been incarnate in Christ. A synod at Soissons inA.D.1092 condemned him as a tritheist. He retracted, but afterwards reiterated his earlier views. Anselm then, in his tractDe fide Trinitatis et de incarnatione Verbi contra blasphemias Rucelini, proved that the drift of his argumentation tended toward tritheism, and vindicated the trinitarian doctrine of the church. For more than two centuries Nominalism was branded with a suspicion of heterodoxy, until in the 14th century a reaction set in (§113, 3), which restored it again to honour.
§ 101.1.The Most Celebrated Schoolmen of this Century.
§ 101.2.Berengar’s Eucharist Controversy,A.D.1050-1079.—Berengar of Tours elaborated a theory of the eucharist which is directly antagonistic to the now generally prevalent theory of Radbert (§ 91, 3). He taught that while the elements are changed and Christ’s body is really present, neither the change nor the presence is substantial. The presence of His body is rather the existence of His power in the elements, and the change of the bread is the actual manifestation of this power in the form of bread. The condition however of this power-presence is not merely the consecration but also the faith of the receiver. Without this faith the bread is an empty and impotent sign. Such views were publicly expressed by him and his numerous followers for a long while without causing any offence. But when he formally stated them in a letter to his friend Lanfranc of Bec, this churchman became Berengar’s accuser at the Synod of Rome inA.D.1050. The synod condemned him unheard. A second synod of the same year held at Vercelli, before which Berengar was to have appeared but could not because he had meanwhile been imprisoned in France, in an outburst of fanatical fury had the treatise of Ratramnus on the eucharist, wrongly ascribed to Erigena, torn up and burnt, while Berengar’s doctrine was again condemned. Meanwhile Berengar was by the intervention of influential friends set at liberty and made the acquaintance of the powerful papal legate Hildebrand, who, holding by the simple Scripture doctrine that the bread and wine of the sacrament was the body and blood of Christ, occupied probably a position intermediate between Radbert’s grossly material and Berengar’s dynamic hypothesis. Disinclined to favour the fanaticism of Berengar’s opponents, Hildebrand contented himself with exacting from him at the Synod of Tours inA.D.1054 a solemn declaration that he did not deny the presence of Christ in the Supper, but regarded the consecrated elements as the body and blood of Christ. Emboldened by this decision and still always persecuted by his opponents as a heretic, Berengar undertook inA.D.1059 a journey to Rome, in order, as he hoped, by Hildebrand’s influence to secure a distinct papal verdict in his favour. But there he found a powerful opposition headed by the passionate and pugnacious Cardinal Humbert (§ 67, 3). This party at the Lateran Council in Rome inA.D.1059, compelled Berengar, who was really very deficient in strength of character, to cast his writings into the fire and to swear to a confession composed by Humbert which went beyond even Radbert’s theory in the gross corporeality of its expressions. But in France he immediately again repudiated this confession with bitter invectives against Rome, and vindicated anew against Lanfranc and others his earlier views. The bitterness of the controversy now reached its height. Hildebrand had meanwhile, inA.D.1073, himself become pope. He vainly endeavoured to bring the controversy to an end by getting Berengar to accept a confession couched in moderate terms admitting the real presence of the body and blood in the Supper. The opposite party did not shrink from casting suspicion on the pope’s own orthodoxy, and so Hildebrand was obliged, in order to avoid the loss of his great life work in a mass of minor controversies, to insist at a second synod in Rome inA.D.1079 upon an unequivocal and decided confession of the substantial change of the bread. Berengar was indiscreet enough to refer to his private conversations with the pope; but now Gregory commanded him at once to acknowledge and abjure his error. With fear and trembling Berengar obeyed, and the pope dismissed him with a safe conduct, distinctly prohibiting all further disputation. Bowed down under age and calamities, Berengar withdrew to the island of St. Come, near Tours, where he lived as a solitary penitent in the practice of strict asceticism, and died at a great age in peace with the church inA.D.1088. His chief work isDe Cœna S. adv. Lanfr.—Continuation, §102, 5.
§ 101.3.Anselm’s Controversies.