Teacher in Faith and Virtue: Lanfranc of Bec's Commentary on Saint Paul (review)

Following the revamped dissertation tradition, Collins acknowledges previous scholars, here Margaret Gibson and H. E. J. Cowdrey, before launching her own maiden voyage. Ports of call include Bec, the manuscripts of Lanfranc's Pauline glosses, his use of the artes, the theology extracted from the text, and his treatment of patristic authorities. Her venture yields fresh and valuable discoveries. But her revisionist stance is not always vindicated.

Most significant is Collins's analysis of the manuscripts. She adds one, first noted by Wilfried Hartmann, to Gibson's list, agreeing that the fullest and best is the earliest, Canterbury Cathedral Archives Add. MS. 172. It should serve as the base text for a new critical edition. And evaluations of Lanfranc's Pauline exegesis should be confined to it, since later manuscripts amplify or condense Lanfranc's comments or convert his glosses into a continuous commentary. Collins also illustrates and clearly explicates several types of Lanfranc's marginal glosses.

Other proposals of hers are less convincing. Collins treats the Vita Lanfranci, written by Milo Crispin, prior of Bec in the mid-twelfth century, as largely reliable, although Gibson and Cowdrey show, by cross-checking with other sources, that Crispin retrojects into the eleventh century the kind of Bec, and the kind of Lanfranc, he wants. In the absence of evidence, and despite countervailing evidence, Collins dates Lanfranc's Pauline glosses to the 1040s, just after he arrived at Bec, although the work required the library he began to assemble only after becoming prior in 1045. Lanfranc's earliest documentable work, his debate with Berengar of Tours, dates to the late 1050s. Gibson's and Cowdrey's dating of the Pauline glosses to ca. 1055–60 remains persuasive.

Collins accepts the VL's claim that Lanfranc, in embracing monastic life, exchanged the artes for sacred literature. She estimates that he applies them to Paul only to explicate the apostle's own use of them. This assertion, however, depends on which passages of Lanfranc one cites. Both Gibson and Cowdrey show that he sometimes reformulates as logical syllogisms arguments not framed that way by Paul. Collins also narrows Lanfranc's audience and his Pauline theology, in comparison with these predecessors. Her citations focus on fundamental doctrine, as taught only to monks; Gibson and Cowdrey note Lanfranc's interest as well in church reform and practical ethics relevant to a broad Christian public. Even ignoring the evidence identifying many of Lanfranc's extern students as secular clerics destined to interact with lay people, this wider theological program is visible within Lanfranc's text.

Collins repeatedly describes Lanfranc as an exegetical neophyte, who yet improves in moving from Romans to Paul's other epistles. Increasingly sure-footed, he also gives increasing support to the anti-Pelagian Augustine—via the florilegium of Florus of Lyons—in relation to Ambrosiaster, his other major patristic authority. Here, Collins overlooks one of her own most original findings as an interpretive strategy. She argues that Lanfranc seeks to understand each Pauline epistle in its historical context, attentive to the situation and composition of the apostle's local audience. If, indeed, Lanfranc could make these discriminations, it is likely that he could also discriminate among the patristic insights that he thought would apply, selectively, to Paul's message in each case. This interpretation is just as plausible, on Collins's own reading of Lanfranc, as her own developmental and increasingly late-Augustinian view of him. Collins's innovative presentation of Lanfranc the historical critic of the Pauline epistles, coupled with a Lanfranc lacking analogous discernment in handling his authorities, signals the highs and lows of her contribution.