Siger of Brabant, Anti-Theologian

SIGER OF BRABANT, ANTI-THEOLOGIAN I. STATUS 1.Toronto's distinguished Professor Armand Maurer has, in Mediaeval Studies (1988), presented a veritable sequel, entitled "Siger of Brabant and Theology," to a much earlier study of his. The earlier study, entitled "A Promising New Discovery for Sigerian Studies," was done with his colleague William Dunphy as co-author, and had itself appeared in Mediaeval Studies (1967). It was interesting as describing a newly discovered manuscript that contained long-lost writings of Siger's, and as bringing to light valued texts from that and a parallel manuscript. Yet, for the rest it was, I believe, misleading and almost useless, and I have ventured to criticize it, in a brief article in The New Scholasticism (1987). Fr. Maurer's new study, on the contrary, is in many ways a fine piece of work, and is to be recommended to the advanced student, especially for useful bibliographical information . On the whole it provides, too, a sound though brief view of thirteenth-century Latin theology, in particular that of Thomas Aquinas. Nevertheless, as regards the subject of its title, namely Siger on theology, it needs, as does so much that one recommends to advanced students, to be kontrolliert and even streng kontrolliert; and Kontrolle is what I should like to offer here. It may well be very important to do so, considering the astonishing influence, for so brief a writing, of the earlier, Maurer-Dunphy study.1 2.In most of his present study Fr. Maurer enlarges on a principal thesis of the earlier study, namely that the passages in Siger's Metaphysics that deal with "theologia" show Siger to be 1 Vol. numbers for the articles cited from Mediaeval Studies: 29 and 50. The title of my article in The New Scholasticism was "Siger of Brabant vs. Thomas Aquinas on Theology"; q.v., p. 25, on the "astonishing influence" of the MaurerDunphy study. 58THOMAS R. BUKOWSKI in agreement with St. Thomas on the subject. He contributes to that thesis by emphasizing and re-emphasizing, even more than he did along with Dunphy, that in the passages concerned, Siger takes a great deal of his material from Thomas's treatise on theology at the beginning of the Summa iheologiae (I,I).2 3.Newly in the present study Fr. Maurer makes much of another point: the use that theologians of Siger's milieu made of the term "scriptura sacra" or "sacra scriptum." He relates that point in a critical way to an understanding of Siger's passages, for he holds that by "sacra scriptura" Siger means theology; I disagree, believing that Siger does mean Scripture by the term, and that, where Thomas praises theology in Summa 1,1, Siger diverts that praise, turning it towards Scripture. In the admirable method of his study Maurer early defines terms ("a clarification of language is in order"—p. 258). He establishes, supposedly, that often enough the theologians used "sacra scriptura" not only as their ordinary term for the Scriptures, but also to mean theology of the kind that they practised. 4.Those two points, that Siger lifts massively from Summa 1,1 and that "sacra scriptura" may, among the theologians, mean theology, need not be in dispute here. The first is obviously correct, although it was very interestingly discovered, by Maurer and Dunphy, when these passages of Siger's existed only in medieval manuscript. As for the second, in a closely related respect I am far from disputing it: I virtually pointed it out in my reply to the Maurer-Dunphy study as Maurer and Dunphy had not. I observed that in Summa 1,1 "theology (sacra doctrina) is . . . equated, occasionally, with Scripture."3 And I cited, for a "general introduction to Thomas's idea of theology," M-D Chenu's La théologie comme science au XIIIe siècle: a work Fr. Maurer cites as a source of information on the term "sacra scriptura" as used by the theologians of Siger's day. 5.But we cannot agree when Fr. Maurer goes on to contend that Siger, in speaking of "sacra scriptura" and praising it, means the theology that his contemporaries practise. In a way our work...