Philosophy and its background in the early medieval West
Philosophy and its background in the early medieval West
Rosamond McKitterick and John Marenbon
‘Libraries, schools and the dissemination of texts’ is by Rosamond
McKitterick; the ‘Introduction’ and ‘Philosophical themes’ are by John
Marenbon.
INTRODUCTION
The period from 800 to 1100 is even more neglected by historians of
medieval Western philosophy than the rest of the Middle Ages. The
neglect has not, however, been total. Two figures—John Scottus Eriugena,
who wrote between c. 850 and c. 870, and Anselm of Canterbury, whose
writings date from 1060 to 1100—have long been picked out for special
treatment. But Eriugena has most usually been regarded as a solitary
genius closer to Greek late antiquity or even to nineteenth-century
currents of thought than to his own time, whilst Anselm has been
conveniently seen as the precursor of a twelfth-century intellectual
awakening. In consequence, the attention received by these two thinkers
has done little to stimulate interest in their contemporaries. Eriugena
and Anselm are, indeed, the two outstanding philosophers of the time,
and their thought is discussed in detail in the following chapter. But
many of the problems they tackled and methods they used were common
to their contemporaries. This chapter is designed to fill in some of this
often forgotten background.
The names of some of those besides Eriugena and Anselm who
considered philosophical questions in the early Middle Ages are known:
for instance, Alcuin (the Englishman who became one of Charlemagne’s
main advisers in the 790s, and Alcuin’s pupils Candidus Wizo and
Fredegisus of Tours); Ratramnus of Corbie and Gottschalk of Orbais
(mid-ninth century); Remigius of Auxerre and Bovo of Corvey (late
ninth and early tenth century); Abbo of Fleury, Notker of St Gall and
Gerbert of Aurillac (end of tenth century); Berengar, Lanfranc and Peter
Damian (eleventh century). Yet much of the material from which a
history of philosophy during this time must be constructed is
anonymous, and an important part of it consists, not of independent
works or even free-standing commentaries, but of glosses written in
the margins and between the lines of the manuscripts of ancient or late
antique textbooks. Indeed, since a good deal of the philosophical activity
of these centuries consisted, not in original speculation, but in absorbing
the ideas of ancient texts, the best evidence for it is often not a particular
piece of writing, but information as to which centres of learning
possessed manuscripts of what philosophical and theological works at
which times. For these reasons, the study of manuscripts and their
transmission is fundamental to the history of early medieval philosophy.
The next section, therefore, presents an expert’s summary of the state
of knowledge in this area; it is followed by a brief survey of some of
the outstanding philosophical themes of the period.
LIBRARIES, SCHOOLS AND THE DISSEMINATION OF TEXTS
Sometime before 814, Archbishop Leidrad of Lyons presented a
comprehensive collection of philosophical treatises to his cathedral
library. The manuscript, now in Rome, Casa dei padri maristi A. II. 1,
is datable on palaeographical grounds to the late eighth or early ninth
century. It contains Porphyry’s Isagoge, the Ten Categories (a
paraphrase-cum-commentary of Aristotle’s Categories wrongly
attributed to Augustine), pseudo-Apuleius Perihermenias and Boethius’
first commentary on Aristotle’s On Interpretation ([5.17] 83, [5.20]
417, [5.75] 52–3). It was written for Leidrad and is the oldest surviving
collection of works on dialectic. Not only does it contain the ancient
texts; it also includes Alcuin’s verses dedicating the Ten Categories to
Charlemagne. In consequence, Bischoff linked this collection to the
court library ([5.31] 157). Similarly, the Frankish royal court in the
late eighth century and the cathedral library of Lyons are implicated in
the transmission of Plato’s Timaeus (in the translation by Calcidius).
Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale lat. 2164, for example, written in
north-east France c. 800, can be connected with the group of classical
manuscripts in the court library of Charlemagne ([5.32] 158 and [5.55]
89). Its textual twin Lyons 324 also contains the commentary on the
Timaeus by Calcidius and may have reached Lyons by the same route
as Bishop Leidrad’s philosophical and dialectical collection.
That Lyons, famous for its participation in the antique book trade,
a notable centre of learning in the seventh century and possessor of
many fifth-, sixth- and seventh-century codices in its libraries, should
play a role in the transmission of ancient philosophical texts is certainly
credible.1 Charlemagne’s remarkable collection of rare classical texts,
moreover, is usually identified as listed on spare leaves in a late eighthcentury
grammatical collection, Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek Diez
B.Sant. 66, emanating from the court circle. Such texts are now generally
regarded as the fruit of an appeal for copies of remarkable or rare
books sent out in about 780 ([5.32] 162–6, 154–6). In the case of the
books associated with Leidrad, and with other classical texts linked
with the court, the extant manuscripts are copies made from books
sent to the Carolingian court, or, at a further remove, copies of the
court transcriptions.
Although not all surviving manuscripts of philosophical and
dialectical works have court connections, it is certainly the case that
it is from the Carolingian period that our earliest copies of most of
the principal works survive. We have in fact very little with which to
fill the gap between late antiquity and the Carolingian period as far as
any classical texts are concerned. Certainly, knowledge of ancient
philosophy was also transmitted through the medium of patristic and
Christian writers such as Augustine, Maximus the Confessor and
Marius Victorinus, of whose work copies survive from the fifth to
eighth centuries in relative abundance. It is from Carolingian copies,
however, that most witnesses to classical literature and learning
descend ([5.22], [5.31]). Nevertheless, it would be unwise to assume
that no study was made of, or interest shown in, such texts in Italy or
Gaul between the sixth and the late eighth centuries. In the eighth and
ninth centuries we see classical texts, including those concerned with
logic and philosophy, that have gained a sufficient readership and
attracted enough interest for a copy or copies to be made of them. A
wider intellectual context must therefore be envisaged. We may
surmise indeed that Carolingian manuscripts containing philosophical
texts reflect not random survival but deliberate preservation. They are
the outcome of choices made in the eighth and ninth centuries in
relation to distinct intellectual preferences, even if the initial survival
of an ancient text beyond the fifth century had an element of chance
in it. Thus, as Marenbon has established, the difference in popularity
between the Ten Categories and Aristotle’s Categories can be
accounted for in that the former accords better with the intellectual
preoccupations of thinkers in the ninth and tenth centuries ([5.75]
and see also below, pp. 108–9).
Even so, intellectual preferences and an apparent encouragement of
this type of intellectual activity and branch of learning cannot be
assumed to be the natural outcome of the Germanic groups establishing
successor states within the old Roman empire. Why should philosophy
and logic have become a focus of scholarly interest within early medieval
Western Europe, especially in light of the prevailing scholarly
preoccupations with Christian theology and exposition of the Bible?
Before attempting to answer this question, let us survey the evidence,
in terms of extant manuscript distribution, firstly, that philosophy texts
were more widely available throughout the eighth, ninth and tenth
centuries, and secondly, that philosophy was studied in the early
medieval schools.
In establishing the intellectual context for the study of philosophy
in the early Middle Ages principal considerations are what texts were
known and available, whether we can document the introduction of
particular texts to a wider audience or region, and how ideas could be
disseminated. Were particular centres noted for the study of philosophy
and how did they come to be in such a position? The principal texts in
question are: Plato’s Timaeus; Boethius’ On the Consolation of
Philosophy, logical writings and the Latin translation of Aristotle’s
Categories; the composite translation of the Categories with Boethius’
lemmata; the early medieval paraphrase of the Categories known as
the Ten Categories; pseudo-Apuleius’s Perihermenias; Macrobius’
commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio; the Topics of Cicero.
If the Lyons philosophical collection and the Lyons Timaeus highlight
the recognizable role played by the Carolingian royal court in the
dissemination of philosophical texts, other centres also played a role,
apparently independently of the court. Analysis of the textual tradition
of Latin versions of the Timaeus, for example, indicates a special role
for Ferrières and Corbie for the translation by Cicero, and for Rheims
and St Amand for Calcidius’s version (see [5.56]). Such specialization
of book production in terms of types of text copied is an observable
phenomenon of the Carolingian period, with classical literary texts
concentrated in the Loire, Picardy and Lake Constance regions, mass
books particularly associated with St Amand, Bibles and Gospel books
of a distinctive format with Tours and a remarkable preoccupation
with Augustinian theology at Carolingian Lyons (see [5.54]).
The earliest manuscripts of Boethius’ translation of the Categories
of Aristotle, whether complete or in fragmentary form, date from the
late tenth and eleventh centuries.2 They were produced at such centres
as Corbie, Fleury, St Gall, Echternach and St Vaast, and were
presumably based on earlier exemplars, or, conceivably, one common
ancestor. The date of these, whether sixth or ninth century, is a matter
for speculation. Three ninth-century manuscripts of the composite
translation are extant, apparently from regions as diverse as the Lake
Constance area, Picardy and northern Italy. Such distribution suggests
either originally widely-dispersed texts or else the consequence of
specific contacts between individuals in these areas in the ninth century.
The Ten Categories survives in no fewer than nineteen ninth- and tenthcentury
manuscripts, many of them with extensive glosses ([5.75] 116–
38, 173–206). Auxerre is an important centre of production, as is Fleury,
but there are examples also from St Gall and Corbie, from as far east
as Freising and as far west as Wales, with some French and Italian
representatives in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Examination of
the manuscript transmission of other key texts reveals a similar pattern.
Porphyry’s Isagoge in the translation by Marius Victorinus, for
example, survives in fragments, now Munich, Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek Clm 6403, written at Freising. In Boethius’ translation,
on the other hand, it is to be found in many copies of ninth and tenth
century date (including Clm 6403), often coinciding with the Ten
Categories. It is found, moreover, in such dialectical collections as the
Lyons corpus belonging to Leidrad ([5.75] 173). Marenbon,
furthermore, has ascertained that Ratramnus of Corbie, John Scottus
Eriugena, Heiric of Auxerre and Remigius of Auxerre knew the Ten
Categories. Thus Auxerre again figures very prominently, as indeed it
does in all branches of intellectual life in the Carolingian world, but
representatives of the Isagoge and Ten Categories are to be found in
other cultural centres within the Frankish kingdoms, north and east,
some of which had connections with Auxerre (see [5.24]). Again a
similar pattern emerges when the manuscript tradition of the Isagoge
and logical collections and Boethius’ two commentaries on the Isagoge
are considered. One ninth-century copy of the first commentary (in
dialogue form) is extant in BN lat. 12958 of the late ninth or early
tenth centuries used at Corbie, though not written there, in order to
compile BN lat. 13955. The commentary survives in five tenth-century
manuscripts whose origins indicate a wide dissemination of the text
thereafter, though not necessarily emanating from Corbie itself
(Aristoteles Latinus 1, 6–7, p. xxi). Pseudo-Apuleius’ Perihermenias,
too, has a largely Frankish circulation in the early Middle Ages ([5.66])
while Auxerre plays a particularly important role in the transmission
of Macrobius’ commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio ([5.22] 22–
32). BN lat. 6370, moreover, although from Tours, has corrections
written in the hands of Heiric of Auxerre and Lupus of Ferrières. Other
ninth-century manuscripts of Macrobius survive also from Tours, Fleury
and Corbie with dissemination thereafter into southern Germany and
southern Italy. Similarly, work on the ‘Leiden corpus’ of Cicero’s
philosophical works has established that Corbie, Ferrières and possibly
Rheims in the ninth century as well as Monte Cassino in the eleventh
are implicated in the transmission of Cicero’s Topics (see [5.25], [5.27]
and [5.22] 124–30).
The textual links among the Carolingian copies of the various
philosophical works studied in the early Middle Ages and between
these and descendants of later date from elsewhere are sometimes strong,
suggesting that individual contacts played a crucial role at some stage
in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, if not earlier. Equally, it is
remarkable, within the traditions of the texts, how many independent
lines of transmission there are. Although the evidence indicates a group
of centres in the early Middle Ages which concentrated much attention
on those philosophical texts, there is enough surviving from elsewhere
to suggest that study of philosophy was not confined to centres such as
Auxerre, Fleury or Corbie but that there were pockets of interest
scattered elsewhere, notably in southern Germany. Further, although
some of the later centres evincing interest in these texts in the tenth
and eleventh centuries are clearly connected with the older Carolingian
centres, others are not, and may therefore be the earliest extant witnesses
to a far more widespread interest in and study of philosophical texts in
Western Europe in the early Middle Ages than the available evidence
now permits us to reconstruct.
We may have to envisage, moreover, a considerable survival of late
antique exemplars. Traces of their existence can sometimes be deduced,
as in the copy of Macrobius owned by Symmachus, whose subscription
in his book is transmitted in no less than ten of the later copies. Other
examples are the sixth-century geographical miscellany which travelled
from Ravenna to Gaul and provided the exemplar for the copy (Vatican
lat. 4929, fos 79v–159r) made in the circle of Lupus of Ferrières and
Heiric of Auxerre; the ancient papyrus codex of Boethius’ commentary
on the Topics of Cicero borrowed by Lupus of Ferrières from Tours,
the late antique texts of Terence and the Aratea copied at Rheims and
in Lotharingia in the ninth century such as BN lat. 7899 and Leiden
Voss. lat. Q79, and the famous Virgil texts thought to have been
possessed by St Denis and Lorsch in the Carolingian period.3 Certainly
if one augments the core texts denned in this chapter with texts of
related interest and content, as well as the evidence provided by library
catalogues of the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, the number of
centres possessing them is very considerably enhanced. The royal court
of the Carolingians, moreover, figures with some prominence (see [5.15]
1005, [5.18], [5.53]).
The scriptoria of the monasteries and cathedrals were, therefore,
obviously active in the provision of texts. From glosses and
commentaries on philosophical texts dating from the ninth century
onwards, moreover, it is clear that such provision was clearly related
to, and supplied the needs of, libraries and schools (see [5.30], [5.38],
[5.78]). Such specialized book production facilitated study and the
intellectual activity of individuals, as is evident from the occasional
indications we get of personal libraries, such as that of Gerward of
Lorsch or the books added to the library of Murbach by Abbot Iskar
(see [5.16], [5.21], [5.29]). Similarly the requirements of individuals
or even institutions stimulated copying activity, in that the network of
communications between the various centres established the canon of
texts necessary for a particular library to possess as well as furnishing
information about where exemplars of desired texts might be obtained
(see [5.53]). The personal interests of Hadoardus of Corbie, Lupus of
Ferrières and Murethach, Haymo, Heiric and Remigius of Auxerre
determined to a very considerable degree the direction of study at the
schools and within the groups of scholars with which they were
associated.4
Other Carolingian masters elsewhere were as active. At Laon, Martin
of Laon, as is evident from the number of school texts he annotated,
taught script, Greek, law, history, grammar and computus. One of his
most famous teaching compilations, Laon Bibliothèque Municipale
468, also used by his successors as masters of the school at Laon,
Bernard and Adelelm, includes texts on the life of Virgil and
commentaries on Virgil, on the liberal arts and ‘On philosophers, poets,
the sibylls and magicians’. The overriding emphasis of two of Martin’s
other teaching manuals, Laon Bibliothèque Municipale 444 and 464,
is on grammar (see [5.36], [5.38] and more generally [5.44]). At
Reichenau, among the many teachers there, one, Walafrid Strabo,
reveals his interests to us in his personal compilation of texts (St Gall
Stiftsbibliothek 878) (see [5.28]). It contains a rich miscellany of
grammatical texts, short treatises on metrics and computus, Bede’s On
the Nature of Things and works on time extracts from ecclesiastical
histories and an excerpt from a letter by Seneca. If we compare this
selection with the school texts listed at the end of the Reichenau library
catalogue for 821, there is a similar emphasis on grammar and computus
(see [5.18]). In very few Carolingian centres, notably Auxerre in the
ninth and tenth centuries and Rheims in the tenth century, was
philosophy in any sense formally part of the curriculum. Gerbert of
Rheims, for example, is said to have taught Porphyry’s Isagoge in the
translations of Marius Victorinus and Boethius, Aristotle’s Categories
and On Interpretation and Cicero’s Topics as well as to have provided
instruction in the arts of metrics, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry and
astronomy.5
In the tenth century at St Gall it was Notker III Labeo (950–1022)
who was the first to translate philosophical texts from the Latin into
German vernacular for the sake of his German-speaking pupils at the
school of St Gall. According to a letter written to Hugh, bishop of
Sitten, Notker translated Boethius, On the Consolation of Philosophy,
the Categories and On Interpretation of Aristotle (translated from
Boethius’ Latin version) and the first two books of Martianus Capella’s
On the Marriage of Mercury and Philology as well as the Quicumque
vult, the Psalter and the Book of Job. Notker III composed one treatise,
On Music, in German and wrote a number of others in Latin, such as
On the Art of Rhetoric, On the Parts of Logic, On Disputation and
Computus, which were subsequently translated into German. Not all
these have survived but among those that are extant are, in the literal
translation they provide, invaluable indications of pedagogical methods
in an early medieval school, with every assistance being offered to aid
understanding of the text, guides to rhetorical figures and dialectical
techniques and a wealth of miscellaneous general information about
etymology, history, zoology and astronomy.6 There are, moreover, some
fascinating witnesses to the dissemination of texts from Auxerre
mentioned above: to these translations, notably of the On the
Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius and Martianus Capella, were
appended commentaries, some of which were based on, if not actually
translations of, the expositions of Remigius of Auxerre.
The combination of Notker’s texts, as with the range of topics
addressed by Walafrid Strabo, Martin of Laon, Gerbert of Rheims and
other Carolingian masters, is in fact typical of the different emphases
within the school curriculum in the early Middle Ages. It is not feasible
to think in terms of philosophy playing a separate role within the school
curriciulum in the Carolingian period. Rather, elements of philosophy
and the discipline of logic would develop out of the emphasis on the
structure of language and grammar and be incorporated into the general
teaching of the artes as the foundation for a deeper understanding of
scripture and the teaching of the fathers (see [5.41], [5.46]). Thus Notker
translated texts relating to all aspects of the trivium (grammar, dialectic
and rhetoric), the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and
music) and to the Bible and liturgy.
At other schools in France, Germany and Italy a similarly rich mixture
within the school curriculum is to be observed. In the episcopal schools
of Germany, such as those of Trier, Augsburg, Eichstätt and Utrecht,
Würzburg, Regensburg, Cologne and Liège, and many more, the
Carolingian school curriculum was taught, with only occasionally the
instruction in philosophy being noted (see [5.39], [5.60]). Ohtrich of
Magdeburg, for example, was noted as one of the famous philosophers
of his day.7 Bruno of Cologne, instructed at Utrecht under Bishop
Balderich, kept abreast with the newest developments in ‘history,
rhetoric, poetry and philosophy’.8 Even at Auxerre, where philosophy
is such a major part of the intellectual activity of its leading scholars, it
is important to remember that this was also the centre which produced
the Deeds of the Bishops of Auxerre, Miracula, homiliaries, biblical
exegesis of lasting importance, and lives of saints.
Nevertheless it would appear, in fact, that philosophy became a more
dominant part of the school curriculum in the course of the tenth
century, and became still more important in the schools of the eleventh
and twelfth centuries, at least in France. In the later ninth and tenth
centuries, moreover, there is a discernible increase in the importance of
cathedral schools in both the West and the East Frankish kingdoms,
notably, by way of example, at Rheims and Liège and the German
episcopal schools mentioned above. The lines of institutional continuity
between the cathedral and monastic schools of the East and West
Frankish kingdoms in the ninth and tenth centuries to the schools of
Paris in the twelfth century are clear [5.60]. It is no surprise that we
find in the teaching of the schools of Laon, Chartres and Paris in the
eleventh and twelfth century the same mixed curriculum, designed
according to a similar structure, and methods of teaching which have
their roots in the early Carolingian period. At Chartres, for example, it
was possible to study medicine, geometry, computus, music and logic;
a manuscript from Fulbert of Chartres’ time, Chartres Bibliothèque
Municipale 100, was a compilation of familiar texts, namely, the
Isagoge, the Categories, the Topics of Cicero and other related texts,
including a poem by Fulbert on the difference between rhetoric and
dialectic [5.60]. In the glossing methods employed by Anselm of Laon,
of Peter Lombard, or Hugh of St Victor, the development of distinctive
layout of text and gloss to accommodate these new developments, and
in the philosophical discussion of such authors as Thierry of Chartres,
we witness a similar blend of older curriculum and scholarly methods
with a response to the new influences in learning and currents of
thought, wonderfully elucidated long since by Southern ([5.63], [5.64]).
No doubt this was due in part to the availability of a greater variety of
classical texts, especially by Plato and Aristotle but to these should be
added the work of the contemporary authors, discussed in the various
chapters in this volume. The extant library catalogues of the twelfth
century and the reconstruction of twelfth-century libraries such as those
of Zwiefalten, demonstrate more clearly than any other sources the
extent both of the Carolingian foundations of the school curriculum
and their intellectual emphases and the innovations of the eleventh
and twelfth centuries (see [5.17], [5.23]). Corbie’s library, for example,
although including a large corpus of philosophical works, with many
of Boethius’ works, a commentary on Martianus Capella by John
Scottus Eriugena, the Timaeus, and the philosophical works of William
of Conches, and the library of Cluny with its copies of the Isagoge,
Martianus Capella, the Categories of Aristotle, Boethius’ commentary
on Cicero’s Topics, Calcidius and many more, still contain an
overwhelming preponderance of patristic texts and biblical exegesis.
The primary focus of intellectual endeavour remained the Bible, but
philosophy had a secure place in the intellectual activities of many of
the leading scholars of Europe.
That learning, including the study of philosophy, enjoyed such a
prominent position within the life of the monasteries and cathedrals of
Western Europe in the early Middle Ages is a phenomenon to which
we have become accustomed, even though the preoccupation with
scholarship within a monastic context might appear anomalous (see
[5.44], [5.52] 19). The acceptance of intellectual endeavour as an
essential part of a society’s activity and the primary focus of its culture
is nevertheless a remarkable characteristic of early medieval culture
and merits some discussion.
Let us consider, therefore, the role of the royal court signalled at the
beginning of this chapter in order to explore, first, the political
dimensions of the promotion of education and learning and, second,
the implications of patronage—royal, aristocratic, episcopal and
monastic—not only in promoting education and the study of philosophy
but also in helping to shape particular cultural imperatives that became
an accepted part of a society.
Within the Germanic kingdoms Lupus of Ferrières offers a clue, in
that he laments, in a letter to Einhard, the passing of Charlemagne:
within your memory there has been a revival of learning,
thanks to the efforts of the illustrious emperor Charles to
whom letters owe an everlasting debt of gratitude. Learning
has indeed lifted up its head to some extent… In these days
[c. 836] those who pursue an education are considered a
burden to society…men have consequently shrunk from this
endeavour, some because they do not receive a suitable
reward for their knowledge, others because they fear an
unworthy reputation.9
Lupus lauded the activities of Charlemagne’s grandson Charles the
Bald and his support of scholarship in many of his other letters. Further,
such authors as Notker Balbulus of St Gall testify to the extent to
which the Carolingian rulers actively promoted scholarship.10 We may
add to this the emphasis on correct texts of the Christian liturgy, canon
law and the Bible, education and learning in Carolingian legislation
and directives from the king to his abbots and bishops, such as the
Admonitio Generalis of 789 and the De litteris colendis of c. 800.11
Although the main aim of such learning was a fuller understanding of
the Christian faith, and the provision of an educated administrative
class of clerics and lay magnates, sufficient latitude is provided to those
responsible for carrying out the wishes of the ruler with respect to
teaching and the provision of correct texts for all Christian learning to
benefit. Certainly, the subsequent production and dissemination of all
kinds of text, apparently in response to the ruler’s initiative, is well
documented (see [5.54]).
What should also be reckoned with is the personal interest of the
rulers themselves in matters of higher learning and the degree to which
they actively promoted scholarship, the liberal arts and philosophy by
means of patronage. From the books associated with the Carolingian
rulers it is apparent how they gathered together scribes and artists,
not only to produce books which reflect the personal piety and private
interests of the king but also as a strategy of royal piety and largesse
(see [5.31], [5.32], [5.43], [5.53], [5.55]). As Lupus implies in the
extract from his letter to Einhard quoted above, the king’s patronage
held the promise of material reward. It is clear from the surviving
evidence of scholarly activity associated with the court, and the
dedications of many works to the king, that many sought such
patronage. The essential material support for learning, in other words,
was provided by secular rulers as well as by the Church to satisfy
particular as well as general goals.
The role of the king in creating the social imperatives that made an
exercise of secular patronage in this particular sphere of activity so
acceptable is all important. We are not observing merely the
consequences of personal intellectual and aesthetic predilections.
Certainly the presence of early Carolingian manuscripts with court
connections, such as the Lyons dialectical collection or Plato’s Timaeus,
seems to testify to the gathering of rare classical works, and suggests
that there are deeper motives in royal patronage to be discerned. What
is apparent above all is the sheer organization and determination behind
the dissemination of particular texts to do with the Christian faith and
learning, and the explicit association of this activity with the exercise
of Christian kingship made by the rulers. Thus it is not simply that
King Charles the Bald enjoyed his lessons with Walafrid Strabo and
derived intellectual pleasure and stimulus from the presence of such
scholars as Manno of St Ouen, Lupus of Ferrières or John Scottus
Eriugena in his kingdom, or even at his court. Nor is it that scholars
who enjoyed royal patronage were thereby able to pursue their
intellectual activities; and many had considerable influence on
succeeding generations of pupils and scholars. Among them were Alcuin
of Tours, Hrabanus Maurus of Fulda and Mainz, John Scottus Eriugena,
or Lupus, who was part of the dynamic intellectual milieu focused on
Auxerre and Fleury in the mid-ninth century. What is essential is that
intellectual activity was recognized to be a fundamental part of the
spiritual and cultural goals of all Christians; the king as Christian ruler
therefore had a duty to foster this as much as he enlarged the kingdom,
promoted the administration of justice and the use of agreed weights
and measures or guaranteed the stability and value of the coinage.
The example of the high priority given to intellectual activity and
culture set by rulers to future generations, moreover, is not to be
underestimated. Of course, the Carolingians were not the first to
exercise patronage in this way. Nevertheless, they were arguably the
first to take such an effective interest in the correctness of the Christian
texts in use in the churches, chapels and monasteries of their kingdoms,
and the first whose patronage was more than an occasional interest in
benefactions. The Carolingian rulers actually sustained groups of artists,
scribes and craftsmen over a long period of time in order to create
artefacts or carry out their particular cultural objectives (see [5.55]). It
was an example, if not actually followed, then certainly emulated by
other rulers, and by lay and ecclesiastical magnates. In Anglo-Saxon
England, for example, Asser’s Life of King Alfred recounts the great
interest the king took in learning and how he himself translated, as
well as commissioning translations from others, many crucial texts,
not least Boethius’ On the Consolation of Philosophy (see [5.34],
[5.48]). Cnut is also attested as a patron of some stature (see [5.43],
[5.51]). If in the tenth and eleventh centuries on the Continent the
Carolingian, Capetian and Saxon kings of the West and East Franks
were rather less active in the promotion of scholarship and patronage
of learning, the baton fell above all to the bishops. The bishops of
Liège, Trier and Hildesheim are cases in ponit. Liège was celebrated
for its learning under Bishops Ebrachar and Notker but they were
following a tradition established in the time of Bishop Hartgar, who
acted as patron and offered a refuge to the Irish scholar Sedulius Scotus
(see [5.42], [5.50]). Many manuscripts, ivories and some remarkable
pieces of metalwork have been associated with Egbert, bishop of Trier
from 977 to 993, and Bernward of Hildesheim, which were produced
in ateliers both in their own dioceses and elsewhere (see [5.43]). Mayr-
Harting has highlighted these bishops’ acknowledgement of their
reflection of kingly rule, and the way in which they visibly manipulated,
or commanded, spiritual power by commissioning book covers and
reliquaries wrought in gold and studded with bright jewels, and
manuscripts resplendent with fine painting, decorated initials and
beautiful script (see [5.59] 57–97).
The display of wealth that was one obvious outcome of the patronage
of culture and learning was also a demonstration of power and might.
It is of crucial importance for our understanding of the intellectual
culture of the early Middle Ages to see that patronage operated so
effectively and constructively in the cultural as well as in the political
and military spheres. Indeed, these various activities were seen to
interlock and to be many facets of one society. Thus social and political
imperatives from the pinnacle of authority, displays of wealth and
power, the enhancing of authority, and the incorporation of a further,
cultural, dimension within the ideals of political and social leadership
had repercussions for the particular cultural preoccupations and
intellectual aspirations of early medieval society. Patronage played a
crucial role in establishing such preoccupations within the intellectual
horizons and educational traditions of Western Europe. We thus observe
an essential interplay between political authority, economic resources
and intellectual endeavour.
PHILOSOPHICAL THEMES
There were three main fields of philosophical activity in the early medieval
period: the study of logic, the reading and reaction to ancient and late
antique philosophical texts and the analytical discussion of problems
about Christian doctrine. The manuscript background to the first two
has been explored in the previous section; the following paragraphs
offer a quick sketch of some of the main themes in each area.
Logic
The earliest evidence for medieval interest in and use of logical
techniques is found in the Libri Carolini, the statement of the Western
position on the worship of icons prepared at Charlemagne’s court c.
790, probably by Theodulf of Orleans. The longest logical passages
here borrow material from Boethius and Apuleius on semantics and
on the relations between the truth-values of differently quantified
sentences (see [5.10] IV 28, pp. 216–21). It was Alcuin, who apparently
established himself as Charlemagne’s leading intellectual in the 790s,
who gave early medieval logic its twist towards metaphysical and
theological concerns. In his De dialectica (‘On logic’), the first medieval
logical textbook, Alcuin gives pride of place to the doctrine of the ten
categories, as expounded in the Ten Categories, attributed at this time
to Augustine. Aristotle’s discussion of the categories is less a piece of
logic than an exercise in fundamental metaphysics, an analysis of the
different types of entity (universal and particular substances, universal
and particular accidents). Augustine had already put the doctrine to
theological use in his On the Trinity, and Alcuin borrowed and
emphasized this theme in his On the Faith of the Holy Trinity.12 The
Ten Categories became the most eagerly studied logical textbook in
the ninth and tenth centuries, and the question of whether God could
be fitted into them, already raised by Alcuin, was taken up by his pupils
and explored in depth by Eriugena (see [5.6]; cf. [5.75] 50–3, 72–86).
The glosses to the Ten Categories, which vary from manuscript to
manuscript, show a definite pattern of development. The late ninthcentury
glossators tended to use the text as a springboard for Eriugenainspired
metaphysical and theological comments, only loosely related
to the logical subject-matter. Tenth- and eleventh-century glossators
became less and less interested in such speculation and more concerned
to reach an understanding of basic Aristotelian ideas such as the
distinctions between substance and accident, and between univocal
and equivocal words, or the nature of space and time.13 Gradually, a
translation of Aristotle’s own text came to replace the pseudo-
Augustinian paraphrase, giving scholars the chance to use Boethius’
commentary and, through it, to master the argument of the text and
consider the difficult problems about the status of Aristotle’s discussion
(is it about words, or things, or what?) which would concern twelfthcentury
logicians.14
The Isagoge (‘Introduction’) by Porphyry, a short guide to the notions
of genus, species, differentiating property (differentia), distinguishing
characteristic (proprium) and accident, long regarded as an introduction
to Aristotle’s Categories, was also known from the time of Alcuin.
Glosses to the Isagoge—at least those so far investigated—draw heavily
on Boethius’ commentaries.15 Porphyry’s famous allusion to the
disputed status of universals, which became the focus for medieval
debates from the twelfth century onwards, seemed to excite no
controversy. One of the few early medieval writers to discuss universals,
Ratramnus of Corbie, exponent of a somewhat inchoate conceptualism,
turned, not to the Isagoge, but the first of Boethius’ commentaries on
it and also to Boethius’ Theological Treatises.16 Aristotle’s On
Interpretation, although known, was found forbiddingly difficult by
most logicians until the eleventh century: glosses are rare and derivative
(see [5.78] 101). But, by about 1000, Abbo of Fleury, Notker of St
Gall and Gerbert of Aurillac included it within their teaching, and
Abbo compiled his own introduction to syllogistic reasoning, drawing
on Boethius’ textbooks.17
Aside from Anselm’s De grammatico, there is disappointingly little
direct evidence for logical studies for most of the eleventh century itself.18
Material dating from 1100 or just before shows a sophistication in
dealing with the Isagoge, Categories and On Interpretation, and a
facility in handling syllogisms and topical inferences which cannot have
been suddenly acquired; this is a surmise strongly supported by the
confident use in doctrinal controversy and discussion of notions from
both the Categories (as in the dispute between Lanfranc and Berengar)
and On Interpretation (as in Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo and Peter
Damian’s Letter on God’s Omnipotence).19
Reading Ancient Philosophy
Although some early medieval writers criticized logic as a distraction
from religious devotion, no one could claim that the ancient logical
textbooks were themselves a challenge to the faith; and, indeed, in his
Theological Treatises (much read and glossed in these centuries)
Boethius had shown how logical techniques could be used against heresy
in support of orthodox doctrine. By contrast, Latin texts of ancient
philosophy posed what might seem as a direct challenge to Christian
belief, by proposing a view at least in some respects incompatible with
them. Yet it was not, in fact, any of the three main pagan philosophical
books available from the ninth to the eleventh centuries that became
the focus of controversy. Plato’s Timaeus (in Calcidius’ partial
translation) was found too difficult for sustained discussion; the two
introductory books of Martianus Capella, preceding the handbooks
to the individual disciplines, were too obviously an allegory to cause
problems; and Macrobius’ commentary on Cicero’s Dream of Scipio
tended to be looked on as a source of information about natural science,
especially astronomy, to which further information of like nature should
be appended by glossators. And so, strangely, it was in connection
with the work of a Christian author that scholars from the ninth to the
eleventh centuries considered most carefully how to react to ancient
philosophy. After writing his logical translations, commentaries and
translations, and his Theological Treatises, Boethius, in prison and
awaiting execution, wrote his final work, On the Consolation of
Philosophy. The Consolation not only avoids any explicit reference to
Christian revelation. It also contains passages which present ancient
Platonic ideas which, taken literally, are incompatible with Christianity.
In particular, the ninth metrum (or verse passage) of Book III, a prayer
incanted at the very climax of the argument, is an epitome of the
Timaeus, and it refers both to the idea of reincarnation and to that of
the World Soul.
What should the Christian reader make of such passages?20 The most
forthright reaction was that of Bovo (d. 916), a monk of Corvey, who
recognized clearly that, although Boethius had written elsewhere on
Christian doctrine, he was setting out here to present Platonic and not
Christian teaching ([5.5]). Using Macrobius—he seems not to have
known the Timaeus itself—he gives a clear explanation of the ideas
behind the compressed phrases of Boethius’ poem. Although this
approach had its followers, it was not the most common one. At much
the same time as Bovo, Remigius of Auxerre had composed his
commentary ([5.14]), not just to this metrum, but to the whole
Consolation, drawing on earlier glosses (just as he would do in his
extensive commentary on Martianus Capella) but developing them in
his own way. His effort was to find an explicitly Christian meaning
hidden in the apparently Platonic phrases of Boethius.21 About a
hundred years later, Adalbold of Utrecht pursued a similar
Christianizing line in his commentary on Book III, metrum 9 ([5.1]),
although he allegorized less thoroughly than Remigius and ended with
an unintendedly strange amalgam of orthodox Christianity and Platonic
teaching.22 Twelfth-century scholars, especially William of Conches,
would follow and sophisticate the approach pioneered by Remigius
and Adalbold, applying it to genuinely pagan texts as well as to the
Consolation.23
Problems Raised by Christian Doctrine
From the twelfth century onwards, much of the best philosophical
thinking took place in the context of theology, the systematic
investigation of Christian doctrine which would be typified in the
universities by the commentaries on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard.
In the ninth to eleventh centuries, it is difficult to talk of ‘theology’ in
this sense. But philosophical discussion still arose in connection with
various types of writing concerned primarily with Christian doctrine:
sermons and biblical exegesis were inclined to be unargumentative
(though Eriugena’s are an exception), but other works about doctrine,
stimulated by controversy or responding to particular questions, often
contain interesting material for the historian of philosophy.
One of the fiercest controversies in the ninth century was instigated
by Gottschalk, a monk first of Fulda, then Reichenau, then Orbais.24
In a series of writings from the 830s onwards, Gottschalk championed
the idea, which he claimed (with some justice) to be Augustine’s, that
God’s predestination is dual: of the good to bliss and of the wicked to
damnation. He found many well-educated supporters, but others in
the Church feared that his teaching would discourage people from
trying to act well by making them think that, regardless of anything
they did, they were from eternity predestined to hell or to heaven. Two
important churchmen—Hrabanus Maurus, archbishop of Mainz and
prolific scriptural exegete and encyclopaedist, and Hincmar, archbishop
of Rheims—wrote against Gottschalk; and they also commissioned an
attack from a scholar attached to the court of the emperor, Charles the
Bald; this would be John Scottus Eriugena’s first treatise, his On
Predestination.25 Although Hrabanus’ and Hincmar’s pieces (not,
however, John’s) amass patristic quotations, all three involve argument
and analysis, and together they provide the earliest medieval attempt
to explore notions such as free will, evil and punishment.
All three writers challenged Gottschalk’s formula of dual
predestination by saying that God predestines in one way alone—the
good to salvation—but he foresees both the salvation of the good and
the damnation of the wicked. Only those predestined to salvation can
be saved, because for salvation God’s grace is needed. Yet God cannot
be said to ‘predestine’ the wicked; rather, he fails to predestine them.
Eriugena also adds the argument ([6.4] 62:27–65:123), based on the
Platonic view that evil is not a thing but a deficiency, that God could
not possibly predestine anyone to a wicked life or to eternal punishment
because, as evils and therefore deficiencies, they have no cause. (This
last is a particularly silly argument: the emptiness of my glass is just as
clearly caused by my having drunk the wine as its fullness was caused
by my having poured wine into it from the bottle!) So far all three
writers have hardly distanced themselves more than verbally from
Gottschalk, since on their view people will still be damned, whatever
they do, if God fails to predestine them. Hrabanus and Hincmar are
aware of this problem but try to dodge it, stressing God’s inscrutability
or, in the case of Hincmar, suggesting that God withholds grace from
those whose future misuse of their wills he has foreseen. Eriugena does
not resolve the central issue: how can an individual human being be
held responsible for the evil actions which, without the help of grace,
he cannot but perform? Rather, he concentrates on relieving God of
any responsibility for unjustly punishing those who are not responsible
for their wickedness by an astonishingly bold move. He claims that
God does not punish anybody ([6.4] 63:42–66:155). Sinners are
punished (through ignorance, or through the knowledge that they lack
beatitude, or through the frustration of their desire to become nothing
at all), but not by God, who is merely the framer of just laws.
There were various doctrinal controversies in the two following
centuries which stimulated philosophical discussion, most notably the
dispute in the mid-eleventh century between Lanfranc and Berengar
over the eucharist.26 But even more interesting for the history of
philosophy is a work written at much the same time (c. 1067), as part
not of a public controversy but of a private debate. Peter Damian was
unwilling to accept Jerome’s statement, put to him by a friend, that
‘whilst God can do all things, he cannot restore a virgin after she has
lost her virginity’ and he wrote his Letter on Divine Omnipotence
([5.11]) to explain why not. Damian is known as an ascetic,
contemptuous of pagan philosophy, and historians have often
interpreted his rejection of Jerome’s position in this light: as an extreme
manifestation of his anti-philosophical stance, according to which he
claims that God can undo the past, making what has happened not
have happened and thus violating the fundamental logical law of noncontradiction.
On a careful reading, however, the argument of the letter
is seen to be quite different.27 Damian contends that, by nature, it is
impossible to restore her virginity to a virgin who has lost it. By this he
means that there is no way of repairing the ruptured membrane. The
only way, then, that by nature a non-virgin could become a virgin
would be if the past were changed, so that her virginity never had been
lost. But, Damian goes on, this—changing the past—is impossible
absolutely, even for God and certainly by nature. Making a non-virgin
into a virgin by repairing her virginity (not by changing the past) is
possible, however, for God, though it is impossible by nature. Here,
then, Damian seems to be distinguishing between the physically
impossible, which is possible for God, and the logically impossible,
which even for God is impossible. But, at one point ([5.11] 619A–
620C), he asks whether God could make it that Rome had never existed
and answers that God could. He goes on to explain that, since God
lives in an eternity which is timeless, to say that God could now make
it that Rome never existed is equivalent to saying that God could have
from the beginning shaped a providence which did not include the
existence of Rome. Damian’s position is defensible, though when
clarified it becomes less bold than it at first seems. He makes two
arguable claims: (1) that God might have chosen a providence other
than the one he has in fact chosen—a providence in which, for instance,
Rome never existed; (2) that God’s choice of providences does not
take place at any moment in time, but in timeless eternity. (1) would be
accepted by most Christian thinkers; the meaningfulness of (2) can be
queried, but the position has had many adherents, from Boethius’ time
until now. Taken together, (1) and (2) lead to the conclusion that God
could make it (tenseless) that Rome never existed. Since God exists
timelessly, any verb which is applied to him is timeless: the apparently
paradoxical ‘God is able to make it that Rome never existed’ is no
different in meaning from the straightforward ‘God was able to make
it that Rome never existed’.
NOTES
1 See Cavallo [5.35], Kleberg [5.49] 44, Lowe [5.19] and cf. Eddius Stephanus,
Life of Bishop Wilfrid, Cambridge, 1985, ch. 6.
2 See Minio-Paluello’s introduction to his edition of the Categories in Aristoteles
Latinus (I, 1–5), Bruges and Paris, 1961, pp. xiv, xxiii, xxxii, xxxv.
3 See Reynolds [5.22] 225 and Bischoff [5.33]; for Lupus’s borrowing, see the
edition of his letters by L.Levillain, Paris, 1964, pp. 214–15.
4 See Bischoff [5.27] (Hadoardus), Beeson [5.25] and Gariépy [5.40] (Lupus), and
on Heiric see [5.24] as well as the editions of his Collectanea by R.Quadri, Fribourg,
1966, and of his excerpts from Valerius Maximus by D.Schullian, Memoirs of the
American Academy in Rome 12 (1935): 155–84.
5 See Marenbon [5.75] and Richer’s History of France, ed. R.Latouche, Paris, 1967,
II, p. 46.
6 See P.Piper, Die Schriften Notkers und seiner Schule, Freiburg and Tübingen,
1882–3, I, pp. 859–61 for Notker’s letter, and cf. J.Knight Bostock, A Handbook
on Old High German, 2nd rev. edn, Oxford, 1976; see also below, Chapter 6, p.
132, for Notker.
7 Life of St Bernward, ch. 1 in H.Kallfelz (ed.) Lebensbeschreibungen einiger
Bischöfe des 10.–12. Jahrhunderts, Darmstadt, 1973.
8 Ruotger, Life of Bruno, ch. 5, in H.Kallfelz (ed.) Lebensbeschreibungen einiger
Bischöfe des 10.–12. Jahrhunderts, Darmstadt, 1973.
9 Translated in G.W.Regenos, The Letters of Lupus of Ferrières, The Hague, 1966.
10 Notker, Gesta Karoli, ed. H.Haefele, Berlin, 1959, 1.1.
11 Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Capitularia, ed. A.Boretius, Hanover, 1830, I,
nos 22, 29, 30, 53, 79–81.
12 De dialectica is printed in [5.2] 101, cols 951–76 and On the Faith of the Holy
Trinity at cols 13–54; see esp. col. 22; cf. Marenbon [5.75] 31 and the additions
and corrections to this view in J.Marenbon, ‘Alcuin, the Council of Frankfort
and the beginnings of medieval philosophy’, in Dos Frankfurter Konzil van 794,
ed. R.Berndt, Mainz, 1997, II, 603–15.
13 [5.75] 116–38; for some additions and corrections, see Marenbon [5.78] 100.
14 See L.Minio-Paluello, ‘Note sull’Aristotele latino medioevale: xv—Dalle Categoriae
Decem pseudo-Agostiniane (Temistiane) al testo vulgato aristotelico Boeziano’,
Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica 54 (1962) 137–47, reprinted in Minio-Paluello
[5.83] 448–58; and, for glosses and commentaries to Categories see Marenbon
[5.78] 82–3, 100–1, 109–10 and 26–7. A paraphrase/commentary of the Isagoge
and Categories from the early eleventh century has been edited by G.d’Onofrio:
Excerpta Isagogarum et Categoriarum, Turnhout, 1995 (CC c.m. 120). See also
Marenbon [7.67].
15 The Isagoge glosses from one manuscript have been edited by C.Baeumker and
B.von Walterhausen: Frühmittelalterlichn Glossen des angeblichen Jepa zur Isagoge
des Porphyrius (BGPMA 24,1), Münster, 1924; for a list of glossed manuscripts
and their relations, see Marenbon [5.78] 99.
16 See Ratramnus [5.12] for the text and cf. Marenbon [5.75] 67–70.
17 For bibliography and further discussion of Abbo, Notker and Gerbert, see below,
Chapter 6.
18 For Anselm’s De grammatico, see below, Chapter 6.
19 Peter Damian’s Letter is discussed below, pp. 112–13; for the use of Aristotle
here and by Anselm, see also Marenbon [5.79].
20 For a survey of the influence of the Consolation, see Courcelle [5.68]; see also
Troncarelli [5.82], [5.83].
21 Useful extracts are printed in Remigius [5.14]; cf. Courcelle [5.68] 278–90, and
Marenbon [5.76] 78–9.
22 See T.Gregory, Platonismo medievale: studi e ricerche (Istituto storico Italiano
per 51 medioevo, studi storici 26–7), Rome, 1958, pp. 1–15.
23 See below, Chapter 7, pp. 172–3.
24 On Gottschalk, see esp. Jolivet [5.74]; on the predestination controversy, see Ganz
[5.70] and Schrimpf [5.81]. For Gottschalk’s theological works, see [5.8].
25 See also below, Chapter 6, p. 120 on the background and reaction to On
Predestination. Hrabanus puts his views in letters to Bishop Noting of Verona
(MPL 112, cols 1530–53) and to Count Eberhard of Friuli (Monumenta
Germaniae Historica, Epistolae Karolini Aevi III, pp. 481–7). Hincmar’s
contribution before Eriugena entered the controversy was a letter to his
parishioners, ed. W.Gundlach, ‘Zwei Schriften des Erzbischofs Hinkmar von
Reims’, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 10 (1889):258–309. For a full account
of Hincmar’s part in the controversy and his various writings connected with it,
see J.Devisse, Hincmar, Archevêque de Reims, 845–882, Geneva, 1975–6, pp.
115–79.
26 This is well discussed in Holopainen [5.73] 44–118; cf. also Gibson [5.72].
27 This is the reading proposed by Holopainen [5.73] 6–43. See also the discussion
of the modal notions involved in this discussion in Knuuttila [1.21] 63–7.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Original Language Editions
5.1 Adalbold of Utrecht, Commentary on Book III, metrum 9 of Boethius, On the
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5.2 Alcuin, Works in MPL 100–1.
5.3 Anonymous glosses to Ten Categories, in Marenbon [5.75] 185–206.
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5.5 Bovo of Corvey, Commentary on Book III, metrum 9 of Boethius, On the
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5.15 Becker, G. Catalogi bibliothecarum antiqui, Bonn, 1885.
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5.31 ——‘Panorama der Handschriftenüberlieferung aus der Zeit Karls des Grossen’,
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1981, pp. 49–70.
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