Reason and Belief in the Age of Roscelin and Abelard (review)

Reviews 259 Parergon 20.1 (2003) The synthesis of reason and Scripture, detailed in the Hortus Deliciarum of Herrad of Hohenbourg, offers a useful comparison to the more visual Speculum, but the Hortus may also have drawn on aspects of the Speculum as Fiona Griffiths (Chapter Ten) points out in an excellent article on the intellectual activity of women in the twelfth century. The book is prefaced by a comprehensive introduction, and concludes with useful translations by Barbara Newman of key sections. These well-argued and subtle pieces are an essential addition to studies of the Speculum virginum and should only stimulate further research into this fascinating work. Rosemary Dunn School of Humanities James Cook University Mews, Constant J., Reason and Belief in the Age of Roscelin and Abelard (Variorum Collected Studies Series 730), Aldershot, Ashgate, 2002; cloth; pp. xviii, 332; RRP £57.50; ISBN 0860788660. In this volume Constant Mews brings together ten previously published essays which focus predominantly on Peter Abelard, his teacher Roscelin of Compiègne, and Anselm of Canterbury. The aim of the whole collection is to situate early nominalism within the context of the changing intellectual climate of early twelfth-century Europe, with particular emphasis on the relationship between faith and reason. In the first chapter Mews explores a shift in the twelfth-century schools towards the authority of the written word. Tracing the development of some of Abelard’s texts, he illustrates the way in which, under increasing pressure to buttress arguments with textual support, orally presented ideas developed into a literary form that incorporated extensive commentary on patristic works. In Chapter Two Mews offers a survey of philosophy and theology in the early twelfth century, moving deftly through the thought of Anselm, Roscelin, Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers, Bernard of Clairvaux and Hugh of St-Victor, among others. Drawing attention to the new interest in Aristotle and the continuing BoethianAugustinian influence, he argues that instead of seeking to consign twelfthcentury thinkers to simple philosophical categories, we should seek to appreciate their several unique attempts to synthesise sacred and secular learning. Chapter Three provides a textual study of a fragment of Guibert of Nogent’s 260 Reviews Parergon 20.1 (2003) Monodiae that sheds light on the development of new religious communities in the early twelfth century, and Chapter Four discusses an anecdote about Thierry of Chartres and Abelard which offers insight into the latter’s reputation among his contemporaries as a master of the quadrivium. Chapter Five (in French) traces in detail the history of the transmission of Abelard’s writings in the library of the Paraclete abbey from the thirteenth century to the French Revolution. In the second half of the volume, Mews explores several texts relating to the central features of Roscelin’s theology. In Chapter Six, one of the most interesting papers in the collection, Mews discusses a previously unknown draft of Anselm’s De incarnatione verbi. The draft, when examined against the final version of this work, illuminates the process by which Anselm struggled to respond clearly to Roscelin’s question: if the divine persons are not three separate things, why did not the Father become incarnate with the Son? Mews shows that the ‘smooth, deceptively simple philosophical style of Anselm did not spring automatically from his pen’, but, rather, it emerged ‘only from careful pruning of initially elaborate and complicated reflections’ (Ch. 6, p. 64). In Chapter Seven, Mews contextualises Roscelin’s notorious assertion that the three divine persons are separate things (res).Anselm had denounced Roscelin as holding that universals are no more than the breath of an utterance, and this denial of universals was, according to Anselm, particularly pernicious when applied to trinitarian doctrine. By examining the way an eleventh-century grammatical text distinguishes between ‘words’ and ‘things’, Mews seeks to correct Anselm’s reductive but influential account of early nominalism, and to show that Roscelin’s principal concern was not with the reality of universals, but with the function and meaning of words. Any characterisation of the conflict between Anselm and Roscelin as a simple matter of realism against nominalism is thus inadequate. Mews develops this argument further in Chapter Eight by exploring the politico-ecclesiastical...