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Excerpts from
The Medieval Record: Sources of Medieval History (1997)
edited by Alfred J. Andrea
A large body of evidence supports the conclusion that the High Middle Ages
was an era of tremendous intellectual and artistic flowering, and much of that
efflorescence drew its initial inspiration from classical Greek and Roman
models . . . [Rather] than slavishly imitating the ancients, medieval Europeans
adapted Greco-Roman patterns of thought and artistic creativity to express the
ideals and aspirations of a civilization that differed radically from classical
antiquity.
By the late twelfth, some urban cathedral schools had evolved into Europe’s
(and the world’s) first universities: chartered corporations, or guilds, of masters
and students that offered standardized curricula leading to recognized teaching
licenses, or degrees, in certain core disciplines, namely, the liberal arts, theology,
canon and civil law, and medicine. Although we cannot date their precise
beginnings, by 1200 Europe already had three universities—Bologna, Paris, and
Oxford—and many more would be established within the next several
centuries . . .
The most influential early champion of dialectic was Peter Abelard (1079-1142) a
teacher of logic and theology at Paris and elsewhere, whose life and loves were
filled with contradictions. Abelard was one of a handful of early twelfth-
century thinkers who turned logic to the service of theology, thereby offering
Western Europe a new and revolutionary approach to religious truth.
The following selection comes from the preface to a textbook that Abelard
compiled sometime after 1120. Entitled Sic et Non (Yes and No), this work
presented Abelard’s students with 158 theological issues, such as “Should human
faith be based on reason, or no?” and “Is God the author of evil, or no?” Each of
these deliberately provocative titles was followed by groups of apparently
conflicting texts culled from the Bible and other authoritative sources, which
seemed to support (sic) or deny (non) the proposition under consideration.
Abelard’s students were then expected to apply the rules of logic and reason to
resolve the apparent quandaries . . .
Among the many words of the holy Fathers some sayings seem not only to differ
from one another but even to contradict one another. Hence it is not presumptuous
to judge concerning those by whom the world itself will be judged, as it is written,
“The saints shall judge nations,”i and, again, “You shall sit and judge.”ii We do not
presume to rebuke as untruthful or to denounce as erroneous those to whom the
Lord said, “He who hears you hears me; he who despises you despises me.”iii
Bearing in mind our foolishness we believe that our understanding is defective
rather than the writing of those to whom the Truth Himself said, “It is not you
who speak but the spirit of your Father who speaks in you.”iv Why should it seem
surprising if we, lacking the guidance of the Holy Spirit through whom those
things were written and spoken, the Spirit impressing them on the writers, fail to
understand them? Our achievement of full understanding is impeded especially
by unusual modes of expression and by the different significances that can be
attached to one and the same word, as a word is used now in one sense, now in
another . . .
We must also take special care that we are not deceived by corruptions of the
text or by false attributions when sayings of the Fathers are quoted that seem
to differ from the truth or to be contrary to it . . . and even the texts of divine
Scripture are corrupted by the errors of scribes. That most faithful writer and true
interpreter, Jerome, accordingly warned us, “Beware of apocryphal writings . . .”v
If in the Gospels themselves some things are corrupted by the ignorance of scribes,
we should not be surprised that the same thing has sometimes happened in the
writings of later Fathers who are of much less authority . . .
It is no less important . . . to ascertain whether texts quoted from the Fathers may
be ones that they themselves have retracted and corrected after they came to a
better understanding of the truth as the blessed Augustine did on many occasions;
or whether they are giving the opinion of another rather than their own opinion . . .
Or whether, in inquiring into certain matters, they left them open to question rather
than settled them with a definitive solution . . .
If, in Scripture, anything seems absurd you are not permitted to say, “The
author of this book did not hold to the truth”—but rather that the codex is
defective or that the interpreter erred or that you do not understand. But if
anything seems contrary to truth in the works of later authors . . . the reader or
auditor is free to judge, so that he may approve what is pleasing and reject what
gives offense, unless the matter is established by certain reason or by canonical
authority (of the Scriptures) . . .