Herbert of Bosham and the Horizons of Twelfth-Century Exegesis

HERBERT OF BOSHAM AND THE HORIZONS OF TWELFTH-CENTURY EXEGESIS By DEBORAH L. GOODWIN The twentieth century witnessed an efflorescence of interest in medieval exegesis, sparked by scholars across a wide spectrum of intellectual, methodological , and confessional commitments. Thanks in large measure to the work of Beryl Smalley (1905-1984) and Henri de Lubac (1896-1991), to name only two major exponents, the modern study of medieval exegesis achieved a depth and significance that fittingly complements the attention earlier generations had paid to scholastic theology. Contemporary scholarship has focused chiefly on the place of medieval exegesis in the history of interpretation. The study of medieval interpretive practices has often addressed the means by which exegetes distinguished amongst the "senses" of Scripture, typically enumerated as literal and spiritual , with the latter further divided amongst the allegorical, tropological, and anagogical. Scholars have considered how the medieval author's intellectual commitments and milieu contributed to the relative weight and importance the author accorded to any one of the senses, which also varied with a work's genre, occasion, and audience. As a result, the study of medieval exegesis embraces the evolution of the schools, the use of dialectic, the elaboration of philosophical linguistics, interaction between Jewish and Christian exegetes, and the adoption of Aristotelian literary theory, among other topics. In her long and fruitful career, distinguished by the publication (in three editions) of The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, Beryl Smalley traced the development of "scientific" scriptural exegesis in the Latin West.1 She classed as scientific those exegetes who exhibited an interest in textual criticism of the Bible and who grounded their interpretations, as far as possible , in a study of the Bible's original languages. While she acknowledged that these exegetes represented a minority within the Latin Christian tradition , she asserted that the contributions of such scholars as Jerome, Hugh of Saint Victor, Robert Grosseteste, Thomas Aquinas, and others represented 1 Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1941; 2d ed., Oxford, 1952; 3d ed., Notre Dame, 1983). All subsequent references are to the third edition, hereafter SBMA. The author wishes to thank Michael A. Signer, Joseph P. Wawrykow, Theresa GrossDiaz , E. Ann Matter, and Eva de Visscher for their thoughtful and generous comments on, and contributions to, aspects of this article. 134TRADITIO fundamental advances in both biblical scholarship and theological sophistication . This essay addresses the contributions of Herbert of Bosham (1 120?—1 194?), a scholar and exegete associated with the circle of Thomas Becket and the school of Saint Victor at Paris. Interest in Herbert's major surviving exegetical work, his Psalterium cum commento? was sparked by Beryl Smalley's study of the work in 1951.3 Smalley hailed Herbert and his probable teacher, Andrew of Saint Victor (d. 1175), as twin "peaks" of a development in scholarly scriptural exegesis that reached a plateau in the thirteenth century.1 Herbert, whose pioneering literal commentary on the Psalms was attempted in consultation with Jewish exegesis and which exhibits considerable facility in Hebrew, epitomized Smalley's scientific scholar. He shared the category's other hallmarks: a desire to establish an accurate text of Scripture and to interpret it from a historical perspective rather than allegorically or spiritually. But Herbert's exegesis bears other marks as well: it was strongly influenced by a theology of history derived from that of Augustine and the "Augustine of his age," Hugh of Saint Victor.0 As this paper seeks to demonstrate, such affiliations make him more traditional and less innovative than Smalley had judged. Yet Herbert was a traditionalist who rethought the boundaries of his tradition, particularly its view of history . Whether that rethinking is recognizably "scientific" is less significant than its effects: the horizons of Herbert's exegesis were considerably broader, and radically more inclusive, than those of his predecessors. Smalley's pathbreaking recognition of the prototypes of historical-critical method, while widely admired today, was not universally well received in her time. One can detect in Henri de Lubac's monumental study Exegese Médiévale a sustained critique of Smalley's assertions concerning the significance and sway of scientific scriptural exegesis and of medieval...