PROGRAM
GROUP IN MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY
CATHOLIC
THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
2003 CONVENTION
Convener:
Michael Gorman, The Catholic University of America
Moderator:
David Williams, Belmont Abbey College
First Presenter:
Joan Mueller, Creighton University
"Vocation as Ultimate Authority: Clare of Assisi and Gregory IX"
suggested reading: Clare's
Letters to Agnes: Texts and Sources,
The Franciscan Institute, 2001, ISBN 1-57659-176-X. Available by calling (716) 375-2156 or emailing franinst.sbu.edu.
Second Presenter:
Ralph Norman, Canterbury Christ Church University College
"Abelard's Legacy: Disputation and Negative Theology"
The test of Clare's
theology came to a head when Agnes of Prague, daughter of Bohemian King, Otakar Přemysl I,
constructed a monastery and hospital and refused to endow the monastery. The Hospital of St. Francis, which Agnes had
established as a charitable institution for the poor of Prague, was well
endowed in order to bring stability to its ministry. Nervous about accepting an unendowed monastery of royal and noble
women under Roman authority, Pope Gregory IX attempted to force Agnes to place
her monastery juridically over the hospital, making her sisters heir to the
royal resources of the hospital.
Agnes's monastery was also to be free from any obligation for the paying
of taxes and tithes.
Seeing her ability to
live the essence of her Franciscan vocation slipping through her fingers, Agnes
of Prague wrote to Clare for direction.
Clare's response outlines her theology of vocational authority. According to Clare, one cannot go counter to
one's vocational identity in an effort to be obedient. Clare distinguishes between respect and
submission, and advises Agnes to be respectful, but not submissive to a papal
order that would undermine her vocational path. Rather, Agnes is to follow the advice of Brother Elias, who is
her true superior.
Agnes conferred not only
with Brother Elias but also with her brother, King Wenceslaus I. The royal Přemyslid family understood
and supported Agnes's Franciscan ambitions.
Wenceslaus I wrote a politically astute letter to Gregory IX, assuring
him of his allegiance to Rome, and offering even greater allegiance if the
requests of his sister were heeded.
Needing the support of the Kingdom of Bohemia, Gregory IX reluctantly
agreed. He gave Agnes her
"privilege of poverty."
The above case plays out
the tension that arises when the vocation of an individual or religious group
who loves the church encounters papal authority. Since Gregory IX's main agenda seems to have been protecting women
from the dangers of poverty—pillage, rape, hunger, malnutrition—it is also a
case study documenting the tension between the theologies of those whose are
called to a preferential option for the poor and those who are called to
institutional benefaction.
The paper will do three
things. It will briefly outline the
case described above. It will study
Clare of Assisi's theology of vocation as is outlined in her second letter to
Agnes of Prague. It will raise issues
for discussion concerning the implications of Clare's theology of vocation for
contemporary theology.
Ralph
Norman, Canterbury Christ Church University College
In his book on Anselm, Karl Barth identified the task of theology as one of Faith Seeking Understanding. This definition has since met with such approval that it is now difficult to find many professional theologians that would disagree with it. This is intriguing, because Anselm himself never used the word “theology” in any of his writings and was born a generation before the word began to be used in Europe. It was Abelard that introduced the word to the Latin west and gave it a professional and technical meaning, and it is clear that what he means by theology is not what Karl Barth means by it. This, I argue, has caused some confusion for those who study medieval theology, and has obscured the extent of Abelard’s contribution to the discipline.
Augustine was fond of writing crede ut intelligas; but he also argued that reason was as important as authority when the question of who or what is to be believed is being considered (De vera relig. xxiv, 45). Abelard also suggests as much in the Sic et Non. This does not make Abelard the sort of rationalist that he is sometimes suggested to be; it simply means that he recognised the problem of conflicts and contractions in the received faith. On the one hand this suggested that reason should be used to assist faith to best work out what is to be believed (hence theology); on the other it meant a new openness to a mystery which is beyond understanding. This explains that sense of negative theology in Abelard’s writings that fits ill with his reputation as a rationalist. He writes in the Theologia Christiana, ‘It should suffice for human reason to know that human intelligence cannot comprehend him who so far surpasses all things and completely exceeds the powers of human discussion and comprehension.’ (PL 178, 1124B).
Theology was adopted by the schools
and by the universities that grew out of them in opposition to the faithful lectio
of the monasteries. Yet it was distinct from rationalism, and, through the
mediation of Lombard’s Sentences , disputation became the fundamental
method pursued by medieval thinkers. So much is nothing new; but little
attention has been paid by scholarship to the relationship between the method
of disputation and the flowering of negative theology in the west in this
period. For just at the time when the Pseudo-Denys became one of the chief
authorities in the west, disputation became the dominant method. This raises
the question: does the “agnosticism” over authorities implied in disputation
reflect that Christian “agnosticism” beloved by negative theologians? Can a
case be made that the sense of uncertainty introduced by the uncovery of
tensions and contradictions in the tradition reinforce negative theology in the
period? Would, for instance, Aquinas have felt that there was something fitting
about the fact that tradition isn’t neat and tidy but must be disputed because
it is self-subverting, and that the simplest way of overcoming such disputes is
to point towards the infinite unknowability of God? The very method of
disputation would then become a form of mystical practice itself. Such, at
least, was hinted at by Josef Pieper in his book Scholasticism (section
XII), and such is the thesis that this paper intends to defend.