CHAPTER XVII

THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD (1000–1200)

=The General Character of the Transitional Period.= The first century of the Transitional Period was as different from the last century of the Early Period in its intellectual attitude and emotional tone as can be imagined. It was the century of the new birth of Europe――a century when the beginning of political order was accompanied by a passion for inquiry. The spirit of pietism took possession of all institutions――and in the thirteenth century the mediæval system seemed to have reached its perfect form. The Transitional Period gives meaning to the Crusades. “If ever ideals were carried out in the world and gained dominion over souls, it happened then.”[55] “It was as if the world had cast aside its old garment and clothed itself in the white robe of the church.”[56] The ardor of the Crusades was the specific expression of this religious revival. All the pent-up energies of the previous mediæval life were passing through a rapid period of growth.

Philosophically this period is the time when neo-Platonic mysticism, as elaborated by Erigena, came into conflict with the Christian conception of the individual. These two motives had been held together without controversy in the Early Period; now they develop into controversy. The philosophical theories evolved by this controversy go by the name of scholasticism. While theoretically secular studies were supposed to be discarded and ancient literature was considered to be the temptation of the devil, yet practically one is surprised to find a trained skill in the use of dialectic, and the employment of many of the materials of antiquity as a means of culture and the refutation of heresies. There was a knowledge of the classics, of dialectic, of neo-Platonism, and of Augustine. The spirit of Platonic realism prevailed among the group of schoolmen of these two centuries. The problem before this group is different from that presented to the schoolmen of the next period. The scholastics or schoolmen of this period whom we shall consider in some detail are,――

Anselm, 1033–1109. Roscellinus, d. 1100 about. Abelard, 1079–1142.

=What is Scholasticism?= In a general sense scholasticism is philosophic thought, but historically the term is usually restricted to the philosophic thinking of the Middle Ages. It has been pointed out that scholastic philosophy does not differ from any other philosophy. It had its prejudices, its dependence on authority, its employment of deduction, its use of observation――like all philosophy. The scholasticism of this time, however, is distinguished by its general reference to church dogma as authority and its imperfect use of experience. The scholasticism of the Middle Ages may therefore be defined as the application of dialectic or logical methods to the discussion of theological problems. It was the attempt to present the doctrine of the church in a scientific system of philosophy. Sometimes such an attempt resulted in heresy when the result was a changing of dogma. Generally, however, the scholastic was not so ambitious, for he usually sought to keep within the authoritative doctrines of the church. He feared the anathema of the church. Scholasticism therefore, in general, had two characteristics: (1) It assumed that church dogma was unquestionable and infallible; (2) It tried to clarify dogma by rational explanation, or to show that dogma was at least not contrary to reason. Dogma may in some cases be explained by the reason. In some cases it may be so far above reason that the only thing the reason can say is, “The doctrine does not contradict me.” In the words of an eminent churchman, “Dogma says, _Deus homo_ (God became man). Scholasticism asks, _Cur deus homo?_ (Why did God become man?)” Revelation is assumed; scholastic philosophy is permitted; independent rational science is denied. The remainder of the history of the Middle Ages shows no conscious attempt to form a new body of doctrine for the church; and only here and there does there appear an effort to modify the existing doctrine. The thinkers are employed in this scholastic clarifying of the doctrine. In this period scholasticism takes the form of the logical problem of the relation of universals and particulars. In the period of Classic Scholasticism this logical problem changes into the metaphysical one of the respective scopes of reason and faith.

The problem of the relation of universal conceptions to particular experiences had become a central one to the Greeks after Socrates. (See summary, p. 103.) It was natural that the same problem should arise with the new mediæval man and should delight him as an enigmatical question. But conditions were less favorable for the mediæval scholastic than for the Greek. The mediæval had scanty literary materials, no opportunity of testing his discussions by empirical observations, and his mind was untrained. In the Early Period scholasticism had the character of a mental game in logic. It consisted, on the whole, in the subtle spinning out of logical questions with the few fragments of Aristotle as a guide. This was dangerous to faith, but the church could not prevent it, for it was the only mental diversion open to monks of the schools of Charlemagne. The arguments often reveal great mental acuteness, although they have the appearance of triviality. The schools of the ninth century were given over to barren formalism, and this threatened to submerge the vigorous movement inaugurated by Erigena. “Can a prostitute become a virgin again through divine omnipotence?” “Does a mouse that eats the sacrament eat the body of God?” “How many angels can stand on the point of a needle?” These are examples of the prevailing verbal gymnastics of that time, and such problems can be found even in the works of Peter Lombard, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus.

Logically stated the problem is that of the relation of particulars to universals. It is usually called the problem of the reality of general ideas. The question was started by a passage in that universally used text-book of the time――the _Isagoge_ of Porphyry, which was an introduction to Aristotle’s _Categories_. (See p. 102.) Porphyry divides the problem into three parts: (1) Do genera and species exist in nature, or do they exist as mere products of the intellect? (2) If they are things apart from the mind, are they corporeal or incorporeal things? (3) Do they exist outside the individual things of sense, or are they realized in the latter? Upon the problem involved here the thinkers of the Middle Ages were divided into three schools,――realists, conceptualists, and nominalists.[57] The realist maintained that the general idea had reality, while the particular was only a defective imitation of it. The nominalist, on the contrary, held that the universal is only a name (_nomen_) or an abstraction derived from the real particular thing. The conceptualist tried to mediate between the two by showing that reality exists only in the particular. To use the mediæval phrases, realism is _universalia ante rem_; nominalism is _universalia post rem_; conceptualism is _universalia in re_. (See p. 103 for table of comparison with Protagoras, Plato, and Aristotle.) The question was of great practical importance to the church. Is the universal church real and therefore all its dogma authoritative, or are the particular churches real and authoritative? This was a vital matter to the churchman of that day who was trying to establish the primacy of Rome among the separate churches. Furthermore, to show that humanity was less real than the particular human beings would destroy the church doctrine of sin and redemption, for these dogmas depended on the assumption of the solidarity of the human race. The church universal and its universal dogma were not mere names to the schoolmen, and that is why the orthodox churchmen were nearly always realists. Religious principles were universals, while particulars were secular. Dogma had become fixed, with which traditionally the church had become identified. To emphasize particular experiences would mean the continual correcting of tradition and a substitution of private judgment for church decrees. When nominalism is completely worked out, it will be found to conflict with church dogma at every point. The result is skepticism. Still the churchman later saw that there is great danger also in a thorough-going realism like that of Erigena’s. It became pantheism. Both realism and nominalism were dangerous doctrines for the church if they were driven to their logical conclusions.

=Anselm (1033–1109): Life and Position in Mediæval Philosophy.= Anselm lived during the monastic revival which had begun in the tenth century. He was in fact the last of the monastic teachers, for during his declining years occurred the first of the Crusades, and the epoch following him witnessed the transference of learning from the monasteries to the universities. He was born of a noble family in Aosta, Lombardy, and entered in early life the monastery of Bec. Here he succeeded Lanfranc as abbot, and again he succeeded Lanfranc in the archbishopric of Canterbury. He was a man of genuine piety, of speculative bent, and of unswerving faith in the dogma of the church. As primate of England he resisted with much sagacity the encroachments of the secular power. His _Cur Deus Homo_ was a treatise on the doctrine of the redemption and atonement, and was one of the most important books of the Middle Ages.

Anselm brought about a great change in theological teaching. Berengar of Tours had but recently made an attack upon the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and was the immediate cause of the “storm and stress” period of scholasticism that followed. Anselm’s teacher and predecessor, Lanfranc, had defended the doctrine. The doctrine had not yet been settled, and each side claimed the basis of authority. Anselm was therefore a witness of the first attempt to apply philosophy to dogma, and he was the first to use dialectics with the serious purpose of defending dogma. From this time on, dialectics was no longer an intellectual diversion. He, the last of the monastic teachers, was the first to employ dialectics with the new purpose of instructing the believer. His entire life was animated by the desire to add knowledge to faith by the means of philosophy.

Anselm’s scholasticism therefore circulates about the Patristic theology as a centre; and his spirit and method is so similar to that of Augustine and the Apologists, that he has been justly called “the second Augustine” and “the last of the Fathers.” Beside the safe and traditionally centralized teaching of Anselm, the imaginative pantheism of Erigena seems like a body that had been loosened from its natural place and was floating away beyond control. Both Erigena and Anselm were inspired by the Platonism that until the year 1200 dominated the Middle Ages. That is, both were realists. The realism of Erigena, however, expressed in full the mystic element of Platonism. It destroyed all grades of reality below God, and made unnecessary the church and its offices. Erigena was an extreme realist; Anselm was consistent with the attitude of the church in being a moderate realist. The _credo ut intelligam_ (faith as the basis of intellectual belief) was the anchor which saved him and became the safeguard of all future orthodox scholastics. The world to Anselm is a hierarchy of universal reals, such as the sacraments, the church, and the Trinity. To such dogmas of the church he applied philosophy, not because they needed support, but in order to make them clear by analysis. Philosophy shall only clarify dogma.

=Anselm’s Arguments for the Existence of God.= The so-called “Anselmic Arguments for the Existence of God” are the best known parts of Anselm’s teaching, and in the eyes of the churchman place his theodicy in the “status of a finished science.” To get their cogency we must remember the underlying thought of mediæval realism; the more universal a thing is, the more real it is――the more it exists and the more perfect it is. (See p. 352.) In his _Monologium_ he developed the so-called _cosmological argument_: A single perfect and universal being must be assumed as the cause of all lesser beings. God’s essence must involve his existence. Every other being can be thought as coming into existence from some external cause, while God alone exists from the necessity of his own nature. In his _Proslogium_ he elaborated his more famous _ontological argument_: Man has the idea of a perfect being; Perfection involves among other qualities that of existence, otherwise we could think of a more perfect being or one who did possess existence; Therefore God exists.

=Roscellinus= (d. 1100 about): =Life and Teaching=. Roscellinus, a canon of Compiègne, was the first scholastic to attempt to modify dogma by the dialectic,――not that there had not occurred throughout the history of the church many theological controversies. Before this time such controversies had on the whole arisen over doctrines that had not yet become dogma. The particular object of the attack of Roscellinus was the dogma of the Trinity, and the base of his attack was none other than philosophy. Roscellinus completely failed in getting the church to modify this particular doctrine, but he succeeded in a larger way than he could have imagined. He brought out into distinctness the issue between reason and revelation. The fundamental question thereafter was as to the rights of the human reason and the rights of divine revelation. Roscellinus supplied a powerful shock to faith and awakened the schools to the consequences of questions which had seemed before to be merely logical problems.

Roscellinus was a nominalist, and it was from the point of view of nominalism that he attempted to change the dogma of the Trinity. He made a life-long defense of the doctrine that the Godhead was three different substances, agreeing only in certain qualities. This is tritheism and not a Trinity. But this was only the most striking example of his application of the general principle of nominalism. In general, universals are only names and have an existence only in the human mind. _Universalia post rem._ Individuals alone exist. The groups formed out of many individuals by addition, or the parts of an individual formed by division, are mental affairs and have no reality. Roscellinus was opposed by Anselm, condemned by the church, and obliged to recant. He fled to England, returned to France, and again preached his doctrine.

=Storm and Stress.= After the issue was brought to a head by the nominalism of Roscellinus, the twelfth century was torn in battle over the reality of general ideas. The realists, on the one hand, tried to grade universals and to show how universals are related to particulars――all of which Anselm had left to faith. How do universals, such as the persons in the Trinity, the church, the sacraments, exist in one universal God? Grotesque explanations were offered, like the imaginative work of Bernard of Chartres and the symbolic number theory of his brother, Theodoric. William of Champeaux, a teacher of Abelard, almost reduced realism to a pantheism. Nothing exists but the universal; all individuals are accidental modifications of the universal. Pantheism was so inherent in the blood of realism that it was always appearing here and there.

Such pantheistic deductions by the realists brought out nominalism in opposition, in spite of the repression of nominalism by the authorities of the church. The nominalists sought protection and authority under the name of Aristotle, for his conceptualist doctrine was not known at this time. The few writings of Aristotle then known were very imperfectly interpreted. One of the most ironical situations in the history of the Middle Ages is that, up to the Period of Classic Scholasticism, Plato was the authority of the orthodox and Aristotle of the heterodox.

=The Life of Abelard= (1079–1142). Abelard had both Roscellinus and William of Champeaux as teachers. He quarreled with them both and set up a rival school of his own. He taught in various places and was, with some interruptions, in Paris from 1108 to 1136. The university did not exist until a generation after him, but he was its true founder, for he inaugurated the movement out of which the early universities sprang. His method was transferred from philosophy to theology and thence to all studies. It was a _didactic method_ of drawing conclusions after an empirical enumeration of the _pros_ and _cons_. Abelard was acquainted with no Greek writings except in Latin translations. His great talent as a teacher and his keen French intellect, that was impatient of all restraint, made him, however, the most brilliant of the schoolmen. Two synods condemned his teaching. Probably his modern popular reputation rests upon his unfortunate love-relations with Heloise.

=Abelard’s Conceptualism. Universals exist in the Particulars.= Abelard formed the storm-centre of the strife over the technical relations between particulars and universals. His position has been misunderstood because he, the pupil and opponent both of Roscellinus and of William of Champeaux, fought each with the weapons of the other. He was repelled from pantheism, which appears to him to be the logic of realism, and he recoiled equally from the sensualistic outcome of nominalism. Universals are the indispensable forms of knowledge, and they must therefore have some existence in the nature of the things which we know. This existence consists of the similarity of the essential characteristic of things. This likeness is not a numerical identity, but a unity which makes our knowledge of the particular things possible. This likeness or similarity between things is the same as the types created by God. Thus the universal has no independent objective existence, and on the other hand it is not a mere word out of all relation to things. The universals exist in three ways: (1) they exist before the things only as Ideas in the mind of God; (2) they coexist with the things as the essential likenesses of things; (3) they exist after the things in the human mind, when it has knowledge of things. Abelard developed his theory only polemically and never worked it out systematically. On the technical side of this question the preceding lines of thought come into an unsystematic unity. His theory was accepted by the Arabian philosophers and is practically that of Aquinas and Duns Scotus. With Abelard the problem was not solved indeed, but it came to a preliminary stop in this statement――universals have an equal significance, _ante rem_ in the mind of God, _in re_ in nature, _post rem_ in human knowledge.

=Abelard’s Rationalism.――The Relation between Reason and Dogma.= The proud, self-reliant, self-conscious Abelard could be nothing else than a rationalist. He was the type of the controversial metaphysician. He was the fighting dialectician,――intolerant of restraint, devoid of respect for authority, seeking the prize of victory at any cost. Erigena, as a mystic, harmonized reason and dogma because they are equal; Anselm, as an orthodox scholastic, harmonized them because reason is subordinate to dogma and conforms to it; Abelard, as a rationalist, harmonized reason and dogma because dogma is subordinate to reason and conforms to reason. To Anselm reason merely clarifies dogma; to Abelard “dogma is only a provisional substitute for reason.” Anselm never questions dogma, while Abelard calls dogma before the bar of the reason and then acts as dogma’s advocate. We must try all dogma in court, and, contrary to modern legal practice, we must doubt it until it proves its innocence. For “it is through doubt we come to investigation, and through investigation to the truth.” A good example of Abelard’s attitude appears in his _Sic et Non_, a treatise in which he sets the views of the Fathers over against one another so that the reason may decide upon the truth. Another example of his method appears in his examination of the doctrine of the Trinity, and in the third book of _Christian Theology_ he cites twenty-three objections and in the fourth book answers them. This rationalizing spirit led him to advocate the doctrine of free-will, to place the responsibility of moral conduct and theoretical belief upon the individual, to regard Christianity as the consummation of all religions and not as the presentation of anything new.

If in these discussions he was more brilliant than profound, if he wrote upon many questions without solving any, if the weight of his personality could not prevail in his controversies, it was because the science of the twelfth century offered him little empirical support against the actual power of the church and the mighty inward strength of faith of the people. What means had Abelard to support his position that rational science should determine faith? Nothing but the hollow methods of scholastic logic and the traditions of the church――the very things against which he was rebelling. Abelard set for himself a problem, but he lacked the means of its solution. It was, however, a problem that has never vanished from the memory of the European peoples.

The unrest in Abelard’s teaching is representative of the last century of this period, which he brought to a close. There was growing a general revolt from the unfruitful methods of the scholastic dialectic, coupled with feverish desire for knowledge. There was, on the one hand, a great reaction toward mysticism with the Victorines, Bernard of Clairvaux and Bernard of Tours, and toward eclecticism with John of Salisbury and Peter the Lombard. On the other hand, there was an interesting growth in empirical science. But these theoretical interests were but eddies in the great current of events. For Jerusalem and the Holy Land, the memorials in earthly form of all the ideals sacred to the mediæval mind, had fallen into the hands of the infidel! The western world was preparing for the rescue, and the Crusades were the last and the frenzied expression of the Platonic idealism of the Middle Ages. They bring the first two periods to a spectacular climax. Is it a mere coincidence that Abelard brings to a close the dominance of idealism on the theoretic side at the time when earthly symbols of that idealism were being destroyed?