“Sacra Doctrina” Revisited: The Context of Medieval Education

"SACRA DOCTRINA" REVISITED: THE CONTEXT OF MEDIEVAL EDUCATION T ROMAS GILBY COMPARES the Summa Theologiae to " a palimpsest, on which the original has been recast but not completely rubbed out." 1 His point, the components of the medieval lectio-disputatio method, is a guide to a reading that is attentive to the language and issues that the Summa borrows and incorporates into its discourse. The comparison to a palimpsest suggests the task, not of a recovery of texts, as though the Summa were a kind of Ephraem rescriptus1 but of a reading that is alert to how the underlay may shape the surface, the actual Summa text. That is not an exercise of precious erudition, but quite often the only way of grasping the plain sense of the text.2 The kind of reading required is not an original, historical exegesis of every word, but a reading informed by the historical research already done on the methods, language, and status of problems in the age of the Summa.3 In particular, specific difficulties occasioned by the 1 Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Latin Text and English Translation. Introductions, Notes, Appendices, Glossaries, 60 vol. (London, New York, 196476 ), Vol. 1, T. Gilby, ed., Christian Theology, p. xxii (hereafter cited as ST EngLat, with volume number, editor, title, page). •See, for example, ibid., Vol. 7, T. C. O'Brien, ed., Father, Son and Holy Ghost, p. 66, n. e; Vol. 14, idem, Divine Government, p. 82, n. c; pp. 65-66, n. l-r, with pp. 176-181; Vol. 31, idem, Faith pp. 205-218. •Such readily available works as: M.-D. Chenu, La theologie au xii• siecle (Paris, 1957); idem, La theologie comme science au xiii• siecle, 3d ed. (Paris, 1957); idem, Toward Understanding St. Thomas, tr. A. Landry, D. Hughes (Chicago, 1964), esp. pp. 79-96; Yves M.-J. Congar, History of Theology, tr. Hunter Guthrie (Garden City, 1968), esp. pp. 69-143; David Knowles, Evdution of Medieval Thought (pa., New York, 1962); Fernand van Steenberghen, Aristotle in the West (Louvain, 1955); also in A. Fliche, V. Martin, Histoire de l'Eglise (Paris, 1935-), Vol. 18; James A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino: His Life, Thought and Work (New York, 1974). Also the less accessible but invaluable prefaces of R. A. Gauthier, ed. Sententia Libri Ethicorum and Tabula Ethicorum, in S. Thomae 475 476 T. C. O'BRIEN occurrence of terms unusual in St. Thomas's vocabulary, or by a passage where a literal reading simply yields no sense,4 demand reckoning with what has not been " completely rubbed out." Question One of the Summa is surrounded by an embarrassment of rich commentary. The claim of these pages, however, is that Question One calls for a first, surface reading that is guided by its historical, academic setting; that such a reading lessens the perplexities admitted by commentators, past and present.5 Yet another effort to interpret this opening Question i.s not a vain exercise, for the Summa Theologiae stands as a classic, and its introductory Question is " at once one of the keys to St. Thomas's thought, and one among the admissible conceptions of theological knowing." 6 The first and unmistakable indicator of the setting and purpose of Question One is the Prologue to the Summa, wherein the author immediately acknowledges his office as catholicae veritatis doctor, having the charge of teaching in a way suited ad eruditionem incipientium. The setting of the whole work, then, is the university lecture hall, the procedures of which Aquinatis, Omnia Opera, vol. 47 (Rome, 1969), esp. 1: pp. 179*-201*, and Vol. 48 (Rome, 1971), esp. pp. xiii-xxv. • Such an awareness would have prevented the birth of the hybrid English lexicon of St. Thomas Aquinas that takes its definitions of Latin terms from Lewis and Short, its citations (some without conversion to its own form of reference) of occurrences from L. Schlitz: Thomas Lexikon, 5 James A. Weisheipl, "The Meaning of Sacra Doctrina in the Summa Theologiae I, q. I," The Thomist 88 (1974): 49-80 provides a complete bibliographical background for understanding the problems and interpretations. His own thesis-signalled in such a statement as: " Sacra doctrina is not...