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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
The twelfth century witnessed a memorable conflict between rationalism and authority, in the persons of Peter Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux. It is, of course, erroneous to exaggerate these two extremes; by the one, reason was ultimately accepted as the servant of personal faith, and by the other, authority was founded on a basis of mystical devotion. None the less it remains true that both, in different directions, were guilty of the same dangerous tendency, that of abstracting one element from the wholeness of human personality, and of confining religion to the sphere of that one element; Abelard was too exclusively concerned with matters of the intellect, while Bernard directed an almost equally exclusive attention to the will; and the factor neglected and suppressed by both, which breaks through in Bernard's Sermons on the Song of Songs, and overwhelms Abelard in his affair with Heloise—the factor of emotion, of personal experience, of the deep springs of affection in the human heart—it was this forgotten factor which another school of theologians had the distinction of restoring to its proper place. The great Victorines took a saner and more balanced view of human nature. They studied man in his totality, and were willing to derive or at least expound their doctrine on the level of practical experience. They occupied a mediating position from which, with exaggerating either, they could give due weight to the claims of both reason and faith.
page 38 note 1 Cf. Ottaviano, C. in R. Accad. dei Lincei, VI, 1931Google Scholar, Memorie della Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche, Vol. iv, p. 412.
page 39 note 1 Philosophie au Moyen Age, 1952, p. 306.
page 39 note 2 A good bibliography will be found in Chatillon, J. and Tulloch, W. J., Richard de Saint-Victor, Sermons et opuscules spirituels inédits, vol. I, 1951Google Scholar; to this must be added Dumeige, G., Richard de Saint-Victor et l'idée chrétienne de l'amour, 1952Google Scholar, and Kirchberger, C. (transl.), Richard of Saint-Victor, Selected Writings, 1957.Google Scholar
page 40 note 1 The latter name, referring to mystical rapture, is derived from the false Vulgate and Septuagint rendering cf PS. 67.28 (68.27 in English versions)— ‘Benjamin adolescentulus in mentis excessu’.
page 44 note 1 His biblical authority is the Vulgate rendering of Cant. 2.4: ‘Ordinavit in me charitatem’.
page 46 note 1 The name is interpreted with reference to mystical rapture, as explained above, p. 40, note 1.
page 48 note 1 P.L. 196, 986–7; see Ethier, A. M., ‘Le “De Trinitate” de Richard de Saint-Victor’ in Etudes médiévales d'Ottawa, LX, 1939, pp. 113 and 119.Google Scholar
page 49 note 1 Greg. Magn., Homil, in Evang., XVII (P.L. 76, 1139 A); see Guimet, F., ‘Notes en marge d'un texte de Richard de Saint-Victor’ in Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age, XIV, 1943, p. 376.Google Scholar
page 50 note 1 Aquinas, , Summa Theol., I 27Google Scholar arst. III, IV et al., distinguishes generation as being sectundum octionem intelligibilem from procession as being secundum Operationen voluntatis.