Facing History: A Different Thomas Aquinas by Leonard E. Boyle, O. P. (review)

154 BOOK REVIEWS Facing History: A Different Thomas Aquinas. By Leonard E. Boyle, 0. P. With an Introduction by J.-P. Torrell, O.P. Textes et Etudes du Moyen Age, 13. Louvain-La-Neuve: Federation Internationale des Instituts d'Etudes Medievales, 2000. Pp. xxxiv + 170 (paper). As the great Dominican medievalist Leonard Boyle struggled against the ravages of cancer at the end of his life, the project that was dearest to him was the compilation of his writings on Thomas Aquinas. While he did not live long enough to see that dream come to fruition, we are fortunate enough to see the fruits in this collection from the International Federation of Institutes of Medieval Studies (of which Boyle was the founding President). The chronologically arranged essays span some twenty-five years (1974-1999) and specialists in Aquinas have probably already read them along the way. Nevertheless, their collection into one volume provides a whole that illuminates the parts in new ways, especially with the aid ofJean-Pierre Torrell's masterful "Introduction." Taken as a whole, Boyle's studies shed light on the meaning of his life as a medievalist and a Dominican, the mission and spirituality of the Dominican Order, the Church in the thirteenth-century, and especially the thought of Thomas Aquinas. As the title indicates, what emerges from Boyle's essays is a different picture of Thomas Aquinas from the one often presupposed by his interpreters. Instead of an isolated, insulated, abstract, university intellectual, Boyle discloses to us the historical Thomas Aquinas: a Dominican friar whose theological work was animated and finalized by the Order's charge from the Church to engage in the cura animarum through the preaching of the Word and the hearing of confessions. The earliest essay, "The De regno and the Two Powers," is a study in how to read a medieval work in context, both internal and external. In the respectful way characteristic of all his work, Boyle takes issue with I. T. Eschmann's claim that the De regno cannot be an authentic work of Aquinas because it contradicts the Sentences on the relationship between the spiritual and temporal powers. According to Eschmann, whereas the Sentences reflects the broadly Gelasian dualism whereby the secular and the ecclesiastical have original imperia in their own orders regarding distinct ends (the civic good and eternal salvation respectively), the De regno supposedly argues for theological Gregorianism because it attributes both the potestas sacerdotalis and saecularis to the Church. Boyle's case against Eschmann is based on reading the apparently problematic text of chapter fourteen of the De regno against the larger context of the work. When read in this way, and taking into consideration that the question at issue in the De regno is not the same as in the Sentences (the former concerns the limits of secular power by spiritual power while the latter considers the problem of conflicting obediences), the De regno reflects the consistent teaching of Aquinas: the secular power has its own intrinsic end and potestas, but it is always subordinate to the spiritual power and so must defer to papal power when it comes to what pertains to salvation. Boyle concludes by showing that his own reading of Aquinas has external corroboration in John of Paris. BOOK REVIEWS 155 "The Quodlibets of St. Thomas and Pastoral Care" emphasizes one of the central themes in Boyle's oeuvre: pastoral care of souls as the motivation for theology. Quodlibetal sessions were academic free-for-all debates held biannually in Advent and Lent. They tested first the bachelors in the disputatio, and then the masters in the determinatio; what we have in written form are refined determinatios. What interests Boyle primarily is how these works reflect the contemporary concerns ofthe audience posing the questions. A survey of the quodlibetal literature contemporaneous with Aquinas reveals a surprising preoccupation with the pastoral care of souls. Boyle provides copious and intriguing examples of the contents of quodlibets, showing that they often look more like casus books on practical theology than speculative treatises. An examination of the Quodlibets of Aquinas reflects that same pastoral concern; nearly all of his sessions contain some pastoral questions, especially during his second...