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  • The Historian and His Tools in the Workshop of Wisdom
  • Christopher O. Blum (bio)

Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their master.

psalm 122:2

When Pope Gregory IX wrote to the masters and scholars of the university at Paris in 1231, he likened the young institution to a jeweler’s shop, calling it an officina sapientiae, a workshop of wisdom.1 His phrase brings to mind an image of the liberal arts as so many fine tools—honed, oiled, neatly arranged, and ready at hand—and of craftsmen deftly using them while considering man’s nature and his end, the order of the universe, and the mysteries of God and of the divine economy. This is a most satisfying image of an institution rightly called “the glory of the middle ages.”2 Even if we were to decide that St. Thomas Aquinas did not so much typify the medieval university as he did exemplify the wisdom toward which its practices were meant to be ordered, even if, that is, we were to prescind from a definitive judgment in favor of the medieval university as the ideal institution of higher learning, it would nevertheless present for us one of the most important markers in our search to understand the task of education. As we look back upon it, one of [End Page 15] the aspects of the medieval university that strikes us is that it made no place in its ranks for the kind of craftsman we have come to call a historian. To one who practices the craft, this fact should be an occasion of wonder. And so it is with fear and hope intertwined that the historian inquires of the tradition what role he and his tools might fulfill in the workshop of wisdom.

In approaching the question, it would be difficult to find a better guide than the Blessed John Henry Newman. In the first place, Newman has been recommended to us by the late Pope John Paul II as a “sure and eloquent guide in our perplexity” and as one who achieved a “remarkable synthesis of faith and reason.”3 We can take additional confidence from Newman’s own description of what has been called the “intellectual custom” of the Church.4 “Catholic inquiry,” he wrote, in the final chapter of his Apologia, “has taken certain definite shapes, and has thrown itself into the form of a science, with a method and a phraseology of its own, under the intellectual handling of great minds, such as St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas; and I feel no temptation at all to break in pieces the great legacy of thought thus committed to us for these latter days.”5 In light of this beautiful statement of his fidelity to the mind of the Church, may we not suppose that Newman himself would wish to stand for us not so much as an authority in his own right, but as a witness to the Catholic intellectual tradition? His great value lies in his faithful and creative transmission of what he himself received, and so he is able not only to shed light on historical study, but also to exemplify the virtues that a Catholic historian ought to cultivate. As we attempt to learn from his example, let us first consider the role that historical study played in his conversion, then attend to his reflection upon the place of historical study within a liberal education, and, finally, sketch an answer to the question of the historian’s role in the workshop of wisdom today. [End Page 16]

Deep in History

As even a casual glance at his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine reveals, Newman’s historical erudition was immense. By the time of his conversion in 1845, he had been studying the Church Fathers for the better part of two decades; indeed, he tells the story of his conversion partially in terms of the progress of his historical studies and of the changes they wrought in his mind. The contrast between Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua and Augustine’s Confessions helps to underscore the importance of history to New-man’s...

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