Petrus Alfonsi and His Medieval Readers (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 295 underscore God's existence sola ratione actualizes the biblical narrative, not by requesting personal satisfaction as he hopes to find the sought-after argument, but, in good monastic-penitential fashion, by having this very argument command redemption for all of humanity. Risking far more than personal disappointment, Anselm's quest for God sola ratione merges prayer and proof to such an extent that any distinction must forthwith be abandoned. Schufreider approaches the Proslogion as a mixture of prayer and proof, but he is not ready to abandon their distinction. Consequently, he not only isolates chapters 2-4 from chapter l, but also from chapters 5-26. On 2o8ff. he speaks of Anselm's "theologizing" of the ontological reality of GOd in those later chapters. In a recent article Stephen Gersh has suggested that the earlier and later parts of the Proslogion are connected by the following unstated premiss: "when two terms are compared as greater and lesser, then God corresponds to the greater.''1 Whether or not one accepts this premiss, it suppresses in Anselmian fashion the distinction between prayer and proof in favor of an approach sola ratione. In the concluding chapter (24o-3o9), Schufreider positions Anselm's "rational mysticism" between the unsystematic but intuitive argumentation of Augustine and the systematic reasoning which expressly lacks vision of Aquinas (244). Although Schufreider is painting with rather large brushstrokes here, his follow-up analysis of Anselm's argument as a "theographic image" or "rational icon" adequately depicts for his (post)modern audience how far from the mark the traditional characterization of Anselm's argument as "ontological" really is. In its visual presentation the Latin text of the Proslogion closely follows Anselm's stylistic modulations and the translation is done well. The bibliography has a few omissions, notably the proceedings of the 1982 conference at Le Bec and the article by Gersh, but otherwise offers a useful survey of the literature. ~ WILLEMIEN OTTEN Boston College John Tolan. Petrua Alfonsi and His Medieval Readers. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Pp. xv + 288. Cloth, $34.75. Paper, $16.95. A doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Chicago in 199~ has been broadened here by a number of postdoctoral projects. Literary work (to paraphrase Tolan) is "dialogal': those who read, and what they make of their reading, are integral to a Stephen Gersh, "Anselm of Canterbury," in Peter Dronke, ed., A Historyof Twelfth-Century WesternPhilosophy(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, x988), 255-78. The premiss is found on 276. 9Raymonde ForeviUe, ed., Les mutations socio-culturellesau tournant des xi-xiie sikcles:l~tudes anselmiennes (1Ve session). Abhaye Notre Dame du Bec, Le Bec-Hellouin, Il-a6 juillet 198z, colloque organis6 par le CNRS sous la direction de Jean Pouilloux (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1984). 296 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:2 APRIL 1996 rounded estimate of what has been read. Petrus Alfonsi and what he wrote would be incompletely perceived should we know nothing of how his contemporaries responded. Alfonsi, as our author prefers to name him (xv), travelled widely in two senses: from Muslim Spain to Christian Aragon, to England, and to France; from Judaism to Christianity. His learning in Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish, and Latin, despite limitations indicated with candor by Tolan (55-61, 71), was extensive by any standard, especially by that of the Christian West of his day. Neither Alfonsi's birth nor his death can be dated, but the date of his baptism as an adult by the Bishop of Huesca is given with all possible precision in the prologue of Alfonsi's D/a/ogi contraIudaeos. This occurred on the 29th of June, A.D. 1lO6, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul; Alfonso I of Aragon was his godfather. Alfonsi was careful to add the Spanish Era date, 1144, and to account for his full Christian name, "Petrus Alfonsi," by the circumstances of his baptism (9)- The title Dialogicontraludaeos emphasizes Alfonsi's effort to refute his former coreligionists and the role of this work as source of a new anti-Jewish literary genre, but can make a skewed impression on those who do not read the whole work: Dia/ogus V opposes Islam, VI...