Note 1.The outcome of the Christological and Trinitarian controversies is summed up in the so-called Athanasian creed, to be found in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer: ' . . . there is one person of the Father, another of the Son: and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead . . . is all one . . . So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods: but one God . . . our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man . . . perfect God, and perfect Man: of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting; equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead: and inferior to the Father, as touching his Manhood. Who although he be God and Man: yet he is not two, but one Christ; One; not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh: but by taking of the Manhood into God; One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person . . .'
Note 2.This was the situation in Boethius' time. He was Consul and later Senator in Rome, a Catholic subject of the Catholic emperor in Constantinople. But he was also for a time an official serving the Arian Gothic King Theodoric, who ruled Italy from Ravenna (not from Rome), nominally on the Emperor's behalf. Theodoric eventually executed Boethius, perhaps because he suspected him of conspiring to re-establish effective imperial control or perhaps in retaliation for the persecution of Arians in the east.
Note 3.There were similar developments later in England at the court of King Alfred [died 899 A.D.]. Alfred encouraged literacy in the vernacular [Anglo-Saxon] and personally translated a number of works from Latin, including Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy.
Note 4.Justinian's work had in fact not been much used in earlier times, and was not usable until the law teachers of Bologna made it accessible. 'Justinian . . . confidently asserted that no contradictions would be found which an acute mind could not reconcile, but there were in truth innumerable contradictions . . . In later centuries [viz. during the middle ages] many acute minds were to labour to reconcile these contradictions, but to the lawyer of his own time the task must have seemed impossible, and, as we shall see, the Digest was quickly laid aside'; Barry Nicholas, An Introduction to Roman Law (Oxford, 1962), p. 43. 'The great influence of Roman law derives . . . from the revival which began, as part of a wider renaissance of learning, at the end of the eleventh century. The Digest was rediscovered and for the first time thoroughly mastered . . . The main literary form which this work took was the note or gloss written in the margin or between the lines of the text to explain its meaning and to provide the cross-references and reconciliations without which the work was unusable'; ibid., p. 46 (emphasis added).
Note 5.Historians trace the beginnings of modern science to the fourteenth century schools, when observation and mathematical analysis were brought to bear on problems of Aristotle's philosophy of nature (Aristotle's prestige did not prevent criticism of his theories). Galileo was in this tradition: 'Here we have a case of a consistent body of teaching which arises in Oxford, is developed as a tradition by a school of thinkers in Paris, and is still being taught in Paris at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It has a continuous history - we know how this teaching passed into Italy, how it was promulgated in the universities of the Renaissance, and how Leonardo da Vinci picked it up, so that some of what were once considered to be remarkable strokes of modernity, remarkable flashes of genius, in his notebooks, were in reality transcriptions from fourteenth century Parisian scholastic writers . . . It is even known fairly certainly in what edition Galileo read the works of certain writers belonging to this fourteenth century Parisian school'; Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science (New York, 1961), pp. 8-9.
Note 6.For example: 'I make solemn declaration that in nothing I assert do I purpose anything against faith, good morals or sound doctrine, or against the reverence due to the person or office of pope. Should anything detrimental to any of them be found in my book either directly or indirectly I wish it to be withdrawn and I want it to be understood that this declaration applies to each and every individual argument I advance'; John of Paris, On Royal and Papal Power, tr. J.A. Watt (Toronto, 1971), pp. 73-4
Note 7.In fact that might be a pious thing to do. After criticising an argument purporting to show that the world began in time (as Christians believed) and did not always exist, Thomas Aquinas comments: 'Hence that the world began to exist is an object of faith, but not of demonstration or science. And it is useful to consider this, lest anyone, presuming to demonstrate what is of faith, should bring forward arguments that are not cogent; for this would give unbelievers the occasion to ridicule, thinking that on such grounds we believe the things that are of faith'; Summa theologiae, 1, q.46, art.2.
Note 8.The brothers who asked him to write the book 'prescribed . . . that nothing at all in the meditation would be argued on Scriptural authority, but that . . . rational necessity would tersely prove . . . whatever the conclusion of the distinct inquiries proved'; Preface to Monologion in Anselm of Canterbury, vol. 1, tr. J. Hopkins and H. Richardson (New York, 1974), p.3. The Proslogion is a reworking of the argument of Monologion.
Note 9.This book argues 'by necessary reasons (Christ being put out of sight, as if nothing had ever been known of him)'; Preface, in A Scholastic Miscellany: Anselm to Ockham, tr. E.R. Fairweather (London, 1956).
Note 10.On the plan of the work see the translator's introduction in St Thomas Aquinas, On the Truth of the Catholic Faith (Summa contra gentiles), vol. 1, tr. A.C. Pegis (New York, 1955), p. 26 ff.
Note 11.'For those who wish to get clear of difficulties it is advantageous to discuss the difficulties well; for . . . it is not possible to untie a knot of which one does not know. . . . Hence one should have surveyed all the difficulties beforehand . . . Further, he who has heard all the contending arguments, as if they were the parties to a case, must be in a better position to judge'; Aristotle, Metaphysics, III.1, 995 a23 - b5.
Note 12.In 1819 one of the pioneers of renewed interest in the middle ages, Henry Hallam, wrote: 'This scholastic philosophy, so famous for several ages, has since passed away and been forgotten . . . Few, very few, for a hundred years past, have broken the repose of the immense works of the schoolmen . . . Most of their works are unknown to me except by repute'; A View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages (London, 11th edition, 1856), p. 426. 'I have found no better guide than Brucker. But he confesses himself not to have read the original writings of the scholastics'; ibid., p. 425. In a note added to a later edition: 'Perhaps I may have imagined the scholastics to be more forgotten than they really are. Within a short time I have met with four living English writers who have read parts of Thomas Aquinas'; ibid., p. 427. Yet Hallam pronounces judgment in no uncertain terms on these writings that neither he nor anyone else of his acquaintance really knew: 'But all discovery of truth by means of these controversies was rendered hopeless by two insurmountable obstacles, the authority of Aristotle, and that of the church. Wherever obsequious reverence is substituted for bold inquiry, truth, if she is not already at hand, will never be attained. The scholastics did not understand Aristotle, whose original writings they could not read; but his name was received with implicit faith . . . The authority of the church did them still more harm. It has been said, and probably with much truth, that their metaphysics were injurious to their theology. But I must observe in return, that their theology was equally injurious to their metaphysics . . .'; ibid., p. 428.
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