The Beauty of God

THE BEAUTY OF GOD THEOLOGICAL literature is not greatly concerned with divine beauty. The familiar manuals of dogmatic theology limit their treatment of this subject to a few paragraphs in ·the tract on the divine attributes, and in some texts even this casual treatment is omitted. The older works in theology take no great pains to present a complete development of the subject. Among the works of St. Thomas there is little in the nature of an ex professo treatise on the beauty of God. His one effort in this line is contained in a portion of one chapter of the Exposition of the Divine Names of the Pseudo-Denis. Throughout the Opera Omnia there are other references to beauty which contain the principles of the Thomistic esthetic, but these are scattered passages which are not presented as an orderly synthesis. In this article an: endeavor will be made to integrate these various references and to present the teaching of St. Thomas on the divine beauty. I. SoURcEs An obstacle to the synthesis of the true doctrine of St. Thomas' esthetics has existed since 1869. In that year Uccelli, an authority on the works of the Angelic Doctor, published a portion of a Commentary on the Divine Names of the PseudoDenis under the title, De Pulchro et Bono, and ascribed it to St. Thomas. The original text of this commentary was thought to be a manuscript in the handwriting of St. Thomas, and the discovery was hailed as a boon to the Thomistic esthetic. The interesting history of this manuscript is given by Pere Mandonnet: At the time of the French occupation, the convent of St. Dominic at Naples possessed a manuscript reputed to be the autograph of 185 186 THOMAS C. DONLAN St. Thomas Aquinas. It was kept in the cell of the saint and was offered for veneration on his feast-day, mounted in a precious reliquary . When the Occupation laid the heavy hand on objects of value, the reliquary was stolen, and the manuscript was thrown among the books of the library which were sold. At the sale, the Reverend P. Andres, a Jesuit, recognized its value,. bought it for fifty sous and presented it to the king, Joachim Murat, who put it in the National Library where it yet remains. The manuscript is written on parchment in the hand, as they think, of the Angelic Doctor in a barely legible cursive scripU The opusculum De Pulchro et Bono is ascribed to St. Albert the Great by Mandonnet and by Grabmann. H it is really the autograph of St. Thomas, it only proves that St. Thomas attended the school of St. Albert where he undertook to study and copy the works of his master.2 Mandonnet and Grabmann cop.cur in placing the opusculum De Pulchro et Bono among the spurious works wrongly ascribed to St. Thomas. Their opinion is thus summed up by Grabmann: The only explanation left is that St. Thomas transcribed in his own hand the commentary of Albert the Great on the works of the pseudo-Areopagite. William of Tocco reports that St. Thomas in his student days had listened to lectures on the writings of the pseudo-Areopagite at the feet of Albert the Great.8 Futher on he states: ". . . the actuality of De Pulchro et Bono as a statement of the Esthetic of St. Thomas must be firmly rejected. Mandonnet has also rejected this Commentary as being pseudo-Thomistic." 4 Earlier authors, such as Vallet, 1 P.. Mandonnet, 0. P., Des Ecrits Authentiques de S. Thomas D'Aquin (Fribourg : 1910), p. 154, nos. U7-180. • Ibid. Si le manuscrit en question est reellement de saint Thomas, nous aurions une preuve directe de !'etude que le disciple a faite des oeuvres de son mai~, et il aurait vraisemblablement copie ces ecrits pendent qu'il etait a son ecole. • M. Grabmann, Die Echten Schriften Des Hl. Thomas Von Aquin. (Munster: 19!20), p. !281: Es bleibt dann nur die eine Erkalarung dass Thomas mit eigener Hand die Kommentare Alberts d. Gr. zu den Werken des Pseudo-Areopagitica abgeschreiben hat. Wilhelm von Thocco berichtet, dass Thomas in seinen Lemjahren zu den Flissen Alberts d...