Aquinas's Summa: background, structure, & reception

IV The Literary and Doctrinal Milieu

  The Literary and Doctrinal Milieu N       Summa’s author and come to know its major features as well as the essential elements of its content, there remains the task of saying something about the milieu in which it was written. While suggestive, evoking Thomas’s experience at Orvieto is too fleeting and fragmentary to be helpful. That experience is situated against a historical and cultural background that will be useful to bear in mind.Thomas is a man of his time, a time that we cannot completely understand apart from the intellectual ferment of his century, with its knowledge, its discoveries, and its preoccupations.Without venturing to recreate the many excellent works that continue to expand our knowledge of this fascinating culture, we must nonetheless call to mind those things that can help us to understand the Summa theologiae better. Literary Panorama First of all, it is important to take note of the fact that the Summa corresponds to only one of four principal literary genres of the theological milieux of the Middle Ages.Three of them come directly from oral teaching: the commentary on the Bible, the commentary on the Sentences, and the disputed questions. The Aeterni Patris and its Consequences   Y various Summas, which are situated against this background, are not directly the result of oral teaching. In any case, Thomas’s Summa was not taught. It was only much later that it would become itself the object of commentaries. “” The “lectura” is the first kind of literary genre used in teaching. In every discipline, the basic method consisted in “reading” lineby -line the works of ancient and recognized authors, the “authorities ,” and in providing as needed the explanations necessary to understand them. The course was therefore called lectio and the explanation was called lectura. The noun “lecturer” used in certain languages has its origin in this practice. Whether the course concerned grammar with Priscian, philosophy with Aristotle , law with the two juridical corpus, or theology with the Bible and the Sentences, the procedure was always the same.To assist him, the teacher often used annotated copies in which were found the most important explanations of the preceding tradition. The best known example is that of the Bible, completely annotated by the school of Anselm of Laon at the beginning of the twelfth century but which had already given place much earlier to this kind of commentary. We find the origins of it in the patristic commentaries on the sacred text. The florilegia or “chains” of quotations from the Fathers, which appeared very early on, were the preferred materials for these annotations. While they were not always firsthand materials, they nonetheless contributed to the transmission of an important part of the heritage of the first centuries. In Thomas’s time, two kinds of this type of teaching were known.The first, the “cursive” reading, is what the bachelor of  Literary and Doctrinal Milieu biblical studies did. Rapid by definition, this method was but the first approach and often limited itself to indicating the divisions of the text and to a few literary explanations.This kind of commentary is not very satisfying to the modern reader, even when it comes to a work of quality such as the Super Isaiam.The other kind of reading, lectura or expositio, was reserved for the master, who provided a more in-depth commentary, drawing on diverse patristic authorities, whose differences he did not hesitate to point out and on the basis of which he often raised questions.    With the commentary on Scripture, the Question (which became little by little “disputed”) is the second major mode of university teaching. Its origins can be found in the middle of the twelfth century with authors such as Robert of Melun and Odo of Soissons. Initially, the Question simply took the form of a slightly fuller development within the context of the commentary on the Bible with respect to a given difficulty: “Here a question can be raised” [Hic oritur quaestio]. Toward the end of the century, with Simon of Tournai, the Question became a scholarly exercise in itself and took the place of a Master’s lecture. At the very beginning of the thirteenth century, we have the Questions of Stephen Langton. But the definitive appearance of this genre in the university did not occur until between  and . The Question quickly took the form of a regular exercise (the ordinary disputed...