## 1. Historical Sources



Medieval philosophical texts have as their formal sources Greek
commentaries, Neoplatonic treatises, dialogues, and allegories, as
well as Aristotelian treatises, and the works of Augustine. Before the
formal development of universities and university curricula that
dictated the established forms for writing philosophical/theological
texts in the 13th century, medieval philosophical texts were written
in a wide variety of forms. From the 10th to the 12th century, writers
in the Christian, Jewish, and Arabic traditions composed dialogues,
allegories, axiomatic works, disputations, and summae, while the 13th
and 14th centuries in the Latin West were dominated by commentaries,
principally on Peter Lombard's *Sentences* and the works
of Aristotle, various forms of the disputed question, and the
summa.



The sources and history of these different forms will be discussed
under each of the forms considered. After the discussion of the
principal literary forms, the role of authoritative authors and
influence of concerns about censorship and persecution on the form and
rhetoric of medieval philosophical texts, the historical development
in these literary forms within the medieval period will be
considered.


## 2. Literary Forms


### 2.1 Allegory and Allegoresis



The models for allegorical writings and allegorizing of traditional
texts (*allegoresis*) come to the Middle Ages through
Neoplatonic sources and, for Jewish and Arabic thinkers, from
traditions of biblical commentary and the Qur'an itself (Shatz
2003; Ivry 2000). As Ivry puts it, the Qur'an effects "a
significant change in the Biblical legacy, treating individual persons
and events as universal types and symbols. This approach turns the
Qur'anic presentations of Biblical stories into allegories, the
persons involved into emblems of virtue or vice" (Ivry 2000,
155). Jewish philosophers themselves read the Hebrew bible and
rabbinic literature philosophically, interpreting its stories as
having another, esoteric meaning behind the literal one. The Jewish
philosopher Philo is the most important figure in the development of
this kind of philosophical allegorization, though his influence is
accepted to be greater on Christian than Jewish thinkers, most
significantly on Augustine. Nonetheless, Jewish philosophers regularly
allegorize scripture and are also influenced by allegorical readings
given in rabbinic and midrashic literature (Shatz 2003). Neoplatonic
writers developed allegorical readings of both Plato and classical
literature, finding in these diverse texts figures of the spiritual
journey from this world to the next. They also composed their own
allegories on similar themes.



The underlying presupposition of allegory is that things can come to
stand for something else. For the Neoplatonists this possibility is
based on the relationship of material things to the One from which
they have emanated. Because things come from the One, they are
fragmentary reflections of the fullness of that goodness. The
allegorical interpretation of whole texts rather than particular
episodes or images dates from the 3rd century. It is based on the idea
that the text as a whole reflects the "Neoplatonic ideology of
'organic' order" in which any part of the
composition or cosmos is a symbol of the One, from which everything
proceeds (Whitman 2000, 36). Aristotle has a role to play as well: his
distinction between demonstrative, dialectical, and rhetorical
reasoning is used to interpret the Qur'an and to justify
different types of writing for different audiences. Moreover,
Aristotle's *Poetics* is used by Avicenna to justify
writing in the form of stories (Whitman 2000, 47-8). For those
within the religious traditions of Judaism, Islam, or Christianity,
allegory is based on the inspired character of scripture into which
God has inserted many layers of meaning. Though Islamic philosophers
had an independent religious tradition of allegorical literature from
which they could draw, the allegories from medieval Islamic thinkers
tend to concern the same Neoplatonic themes of the ascent of the soul
and the Neoplatonic structure of the cosmos, allegorizing the stages
of emanation from and return to the One. The most common form of
Islamic philosophical allegory is on the theme of the heavenly ascent
or journey, a philosophical rather than prophetic rewriting of the
spiritual journey of the prophet Mohammed. Avicenna wrote two
allegories of this type, *Risalat at-tair* (*Treatise
of the Bird*) and *Hayy ibn Yaqzan*. (Heath 1992, has
also translated from Persian an allegory of Avicenna's,
*Mi'raj Nama*, *The Book of the Prophet
Muhammad's Ascent to Heaven*.) In the *Treatise of the
Bird*, a group of birds fly on a long journey in search of truth
over nine mountain ranges, each a dangerous and a tempting resting
place; in the second, the narrator, consulting Hayy, a sage, makes a
cosmic journey from west to east, ending in a vision of God (Avicenna
1980). Ibn Tufayl's *Hayy ibn Yaqzan* takes its
name from Avicenna's allegory and claims to reveal in it the
secrets of Avicenna's "Oriental philosophy"
(Avicenna 1980; Ibn Tufayl 2009). Ibn Tufayl's version may have
been one of the models for Daniel Defoe's *Robinson
Crusoe*. This story of a boy abandoned on an island and raised by
a gazelle recounts the boy's survival and progress in
understanding from what is necessary for survival, to a grasp of the
laws of the universe, culminating in a mystical experience. The
boy's progress symbolizes the path and powers of unaided human
reason, able to advance from complete ignorance to union with the
divine.



In the Latin West, philosophical allegory flourished in the 12th
century. Authors like Bernard Silvestris, Thierry of Chartres, William
of Conches, and Alan of Lille took up allegoresis and allegory as a
way of assimilating works and ideas from classical antiquity,
especially the creation myth and cosmology of Plato's
*Timaeus*. One of the most important, Bernard
Silvestris's *Cosmographia*, is an allegorical account of
the origins of the world, both narrative and structural. Bernard tells
the story of Natura asking Noys to bring some order to prime matter.
Book I traces the creation of the material world, and book II, the
creation of man (Bernard Silvestris 1973). Bernard's main source
for this myth of creation is Plato's *Timaeus* but his
myth making is combined with philosophical and scientific speculation.
Like Alan of Lille's allegories, *De Planctu Naturae* and
*Anticlaudianus*, Bernard's work is both allegorical and
encyclopedic, two forms which were also combined in an important
classical model for these works, Martianus Capella's *The
Marriage of Mercury and Philology*. What is remarkable about these
works is the combination of allegory with science and philosophy.
These writers do not think of the mythic and the scientific as
opposing discourses. Rather, the creation of new myths is associated
with the work of creation, linking the work of God as artifex with
that of the composer of allegory. Science and allegory are also linked
by the activity of de-allegorization, the process of extracting the
abstract and philosophical message hidden in the allegory. According
to Brian Stock, until the middle of the 12th century, it was taken as
a given that allegories contained hidden philosophical information
(Stock 1972, 31).



The controversial and difficult question is why these medieval
thinkers chose the allegorical form, and whether the text can be
understood without its allegorical form. Avicenna tells us that what
he purports to do by allegory is to convey one message to the
"many" in sensible imagery they can understand, while
conveying a different message to the philosophically minded few (Heath
1992, 150-153). Neoplatonic and Christian writers, although
citing the importance of not 'casting one's pearls before
swine', also cite the need to provide access through the senses
to a non-sensible reality and the need to use obvious metaphors so
that their language will not be taken for a literally true
representation of the divine. In the secondary literature, the most
common interpretation of the reason for the allegorical form is that
the allegory is an heuristic device that makes the difficult and
abstract message easier to understand. On this view, the allegorical
form can be stripped away without changing the meaning of the text.
Others have argued that for some writers, the allegorical form is
chosen because the mystical message or account of spiritual union with
the good exceeds what can be expressed in the literal language of
logic and argument (Sweeney 2006, 38-61, 157-175). Some
have argued, further, that the indirection of Maimonides'
*Guide*, for example, is based both on the inability to
represent the divine nature but also, failing that, designed to
transform the reader making his/her way to God (Whitman 2000, 51;
Harvey 1988, 69-71). On this view, the allegorical form is an
essential aspect of the text and, hence, cannot be excised without
detriment to the author's meaning. Lastly, some argue that the
motive for allegory is esoteric. On this view, most famously
propounded by Leo Strauss and his followers, writers fearing
persecution and misinterpretation decided to "hide" their
true views behind the facade of allegory, in order to protect
both themselves and their message. (For more on esotericism, see
section 4 below.)


### 2.2 Aphorism



This form is not terribly common in the medieval period. Two works
worthy of mention are Al-Farabi's political aphorisms and a text
attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, but thought to have been written in
the 12th century by a Christian Neoplatonist, called *The Book of
Twenty-Four Philosophers*. This text consists of twenty-four
definitions of God, the most famous of which is, "God is an
infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is
nowhere," quoted by Alan of Lille, Meister Eckhart, and others
(Hudry 1997). Al-Farabi's work, known as "Selected
Aphorisms", gets this title from its opening lines, in which
Al-Farabi says the work consists of selected aphorisms from the
ancients (Plato and Aristotle) "concerning that by which cities
ought to be governed and made prosperous..." (Butterworth 2001,
5-6). This "primer for politics" contains discussion
of the nature of the soul, virtue, the virtuous regime, and happiness.
Its disjointed character and the way in which Al-Farabi composes it
not from his own views but those of Aristotle and Plato make the form
of the work central to its meaning: Is Al-Farabi endorsing views but
without saying outright that they are his own because to hold them
might be dangerous? What are the principles of selection at work? What
is not being said? The aphoristic form seems to raise some of the same
questions about possible esoteric motivations as does the allegorical
form. In the case of *The Book of the Twenty-Four Philosophers*
the form seems to derive from the inaccessibility of the divine nature
to human intellection. Thus, one comes closer to avoiding
misrepresentation of the divine nature by using paradoxical or
metaphoric formulations rather than literal ones.



Some medieval works fall somewhere between aphorism and axiom in
genre, most significantly works connected to the important and
influential *Liber de causis*. The *Liber* circulated as
a work of Aristotle under the title *Liber Aristotelis de
expositione bonitatis purae* until the 13th century, when Thomas
Aquinas found its source in Proclus's *Elements of
Theology*. Like Proclus's theology, the work seems to
present its principles as axioms, but the principles and their
explanation/derivation is not really demonstrative and the principles
themselves are highly abstract Neoplatonic metaphysical principles
that are sometimes as paradoxical as they are self-evident.
Boethius's theological opuscule known as *De
Hebdomadibus* (this work is traditionally the third of five
theological tractates) and Alan of Lille's *Regulae Caelestis
Iuris* are presented as axiomatic but also esoteric, with the
express statement of the author that their principles are not
accessible to the many. (See section 2.3 below, on axiom, for more
discussion of these works.)


### 2.3 Axiom



There are two different sources for axiomatic works in the Middle
Ages: Euclid and Proclus. For Proclus the axiomatic form mirrors the
metaphysical structure of emanation. As all being emanates from the
One, all propositions are derived from axioms. In his commentary on
Euclid, Proclus contends that the scientific structure in which all
propositions are proved from first principles is peculiar to the
mathematical sciences, as befitting the middle status of mathematics
between metaphysics and physics. Two important axiomatic works,
Boethius' *De Hebdomadibus* and Alan of Lille's
*Regulae Caelestis Iuris*, seem to follow both Proclus's
*Elements of Theology*, taking Neoplatonic metaphysical
principles as their axioms, and the model of deriving conclusions from
those principles, the method Proclus attributes to Euclid and to
mathematics alone. The axiomatic form in Euclid is more complex,
relying not just on first principles (*communis animi
conceptio)*, the only type of principle used by Boethius and Alan,
but also on definitions, *petitiones*, theorems, etc. Euclid is
the model for Nicholas of Amiens's *Ars Catholicae
Fidei*. However, even when thinkers like Nicholas of Amiens use
the Euclidean axiomatic model, they are still relying on the
justification and principles of Neoplatonic metaphysics, grounding the
form in the metaphysics of emanation.



The influence of this form goes beyond 12th-century attempts to
compose axiomatic philosophical/theological works in the tradition of
Boethius's *De Hebdomadibus* (like Alan's
*Regulae Caelestis Iuris* and Nicholas of Amiens's
*Ars Catholicae Fidei)*. First, the form is taken up by Leibniz
in his axiomatic works. Second, early medieval notions of science are
indebted to these Neoplatonic models of science, models that continue
to be influential even after the reappearance of Aristotle's
*Posterior Analytics*. Further, the geometric methods of
"analysis" and "synthesis"
("*resolutio/compositio*"), which work to and from
first principles or axioms and is linked to axiomatic method in both
its Proclusian and Euclidean forms, is important not only for later
medieval thinkers like Aquinas, but also for Descartes, Newton, and
Galileo (Sweeney 1994).


### 2.4 Commentary



The ancient tradition of commentary on Aristotle begins with the
edition of Aristotle by Andronicus of Rhodes, although not much
survives from this period. The study of Aristotle became part of the
Neoplatonic school curriculum, which began with the
*Categories* and progressed through the *Organon* to the
*Physics* and *Metaphysics*. The curriculum culminated
in the study of the Platonic dialogues, ending with the
*Timaeus* and *Parmenides*. This school context for
commentaries became part of the commentary texts themselves in
introductory remarks to the Aristotelian corpus and to individual
works. Thus, authors covered a certain number of introductory
questions about the context for studying Aristotle and the particular
Aristotelian work under consideration, responses which assume the
Neoplatonic curriculum. (For more on the ancient commentary tradition,
see Sorabji 1990.) The greatest influence in the Middle Ages, both
Latin and Islamic, is the Neoplatonic tradition of commentary
beginning with Porphyry. Porphyry authored a work, no longer extant,
showing the ultimate harmony of Plato and Aristotle. In his commentary
on the *Peri Hermeneias*, Boethius repeated the same view and
the ambition to prove it through his work of translation and
commentary (Boethius *Com. in lib. Peri hermeneias*,
79-80). Porphyry also originates the view of Aristotle's
*Categories* as about words not things, and more specifically
as about words as they apply to sensible things, thus leaving open the
possibility that words might operate in a very different way when they
refer to Platonic forms (Marenbon 1999, 107-116). This view of
the categories as categories of words is also transmitted by Boethius
to the Middle Ages where it becomes standard. The larger view of
Aristotle's teachings enshrined in this interpretive shift is
that Aristotle and Plato's view can both be true, and hence,
harmonious, if they are understood as writing about different things,
Aristotle about the sublunary world and Plato about the world beyond
matter and change. Throughout the Middle Ages, there is some degree of
Neoplatonic distortion of Aristotle's teaching in commentaries
on his works. It tends to be less significant in the logical works and
in the non-theological portions of the *Physics* and greater in
*De Anima* and sometimes *Metaphysics* commentaries.



The placement of Aristotelian works in this kind of context is
transmitted to the Latin Middle Ages by Boethius. Boethius thus brings
to the medieval tradition of commentary both the obvious and more
subtle Neoplatonic distortions of the Aristotelian corpus. First,
Boethius's commentaries are highly indebted to Neoplatonic
sources. The thesis that Boethius simply copied his commentaries from
a single codex's collection of Greek commentators' remarks
is too extreme, but it is nevertheless clear that Boethius relied
heavily on Neoplatonic sources. We can see this in his commentary on
the *Categories*, where we have all of Boethius's
sources. Here Boethius uses Porphyry as his main source, while
supplementing this material with other Neoplatonic sources (Ebbesen
1990, 376-77). Had Boethius managed to get to the
*Physics* or *Metaphysics* for commentary, we might have
seen his own Neoplatonic interpretations of Aristotle emerge more
strongly. As it is, such leanings are evident, for example, in his
commentary on the *Peri Hermeneias*. In his discussion of
future contingents, Boethius follows the Neoplatonists, arguing for
the view that while there is real contingency in the sublunary world,
there is also necessity operating at other levels. Though he does not
argue for providence until writing his *Consolation*, he does
make room for such a possibility in his *Peri Hermeneias*
commentary. There he argues, following Alexander of Aphrodisias, that
some things are necessitated, some subject to human control, and some
are matters of chance; Aristotle is right that some things are
undetermined, yet the Stoics are also right that some things are
necessitated and all things, though not necessitated by it, are
subject to the divine will (Boethius 1880, 220-236, Sweeney
2006, 16-20; Chadwick 1981, 159-63). Thus, Boethius
follows the Neoplatonic strategy of placing Aristotle's view
into a larger philosophical context where it can be seen as part of
but not the whole truth.



Averroes (Ibn Rushd), who comes to be known as "the
Commentator" in the Latin West because of his magisterial grasp
of Aristotle, is another important influence on the medieval
commentary tradition. He declares on numerous occasions that his aim
in commenting on Aristotle is to explain the Aristotelian text, a task
he adheres to faithfully and with great success even though he lacked
any knowledge of Greek. He does not introduce non-Aristotelian
material to explain Aristotle; he does not even, for example, make
reference to Porphyry's introduction to the *Categories*,
the *Isagoge*, to help make sense of the *Categories*.
He does, however, add to the Aristotelian text in two ways. First and
most ubiquitously, he divides Aristotle's text into sections and
chapters, some of which follow the divisions we now have, some of
which he devises himself. The origin of the modern textual divisions
of Aristotle's work is not known and those divisions are not
authoritative. Averroes may have worked with a text that contained no
divisions at all; thus he would have had to supply them all
(Butterworth 1983, 6-8). Further, Averroes adds explanations of
aspects of Aristotle's text that are especially unclear or
terse, and adds references to other works in the Aristotelian corpus
to help explain particular texts. Averroes, like other ancient and
medieval commentators, assumed that there was no significant change or
development in Aristotle's views over time and therefore that
his different works are consistent with each other.



Averroes wrote three different kinds of commentaries, which have come
to be known as "short," "middle," and
"long" commentaries. Scholars have now shown that these
terms, though used to describe various kinds of commentary by Averroes
or his editors, are often very fluid and do not mark off clear cut
genres (Gutas 1993, 31-42). Nonetheless, it is clear that
Averroes composes different kinds of commentaries to serve different
pedagogical goals. He writes summaries or synopses of
Aristotle's works, as well as full-blown commentaries. Some
commentaries work toward an explanation of the letter of the text; in
these the source text is first cited and then interpreted virtually
word for word. This is done sometimes in the form of a continuous
text, other times in the form of marginal notations to the main text.
Still other commentaries, the type traditionally known as
"middle" commentaries, are explanations of the sense
rather than the letter, paraphrasing rather than commenting thoroughly
on the source text (Gutas 1993, 33-5).



In the Latin West during the 12th and 13th centuries the goal of
commentary was to explain the author's intention. However, until
the end of the 13th century, commentators worked on the assumption
that the author intended to express the truth; thus every effort was
made to bring an author's text into harmony with the truth as
the author understands it from what he takes to be authoritative
sources. This attitude toward texts is generally thought to emerge
from the tradition of biblical exegesis, where the biblical text is
assumed to be true, to be in accord with the basic articles of faith,
and, hence, as needing to be interpreted from within those parameters.
Moreover, as interpreters began to collect different interpretations
of biblical texts, they tended to deal with conflicts between
authorities by attempting to harmonize different opinions rather than
simply keeping some and discarding others. So, in an analogous way,
for example, Aquinas supports Aristotle's astronomy even in the
face of conflicting mathematical evidence from Ptolemy. He argues that
Ptolemy's account "saves the appearances" but may
not in fact be true since the phenomena could be saved in some other
way (Aquinas 1964, I, lec. 3; Lohr 1982, 93-94). Also, Aquinas
tries to save Aristotle from unambiguously holding the position that
the world is eternal, arguing that Aristotle's argument for the
eternity of motion might be merely hypothetical (Aquinas 1964, Bk. I,
lec. 29). In general, medieval Latin commentators through the 13th
century rarely abandon the principle that the text makes some kind of
sense. Thus, even when the Aristotelian text is extremely cryptic,
corrupt, or terse, commentators make every effort to give the text a
clear and consistent sense, even if it must be almost completely
constructed. A very striking example of the commentator's art in
this regard is Aquinas's commentary on Aristotle's *De
Anima*, especially his commentary on the very difficult passages
on the workings of the intellect (*De Anima* III, 5; Aquinas
1994, III, lec. 7-10). As Kenny and Pinborg note, Ockham
justified a less literal reading of Aristotle by asserting that
Aristotle often speaks metaphorically; at the other extreme, Latin
Averroists offered views that might be seen as contrary to Church
teaching by maintaining that they were only interpreting Aristotle,
not developing their own view (Kenny and Pinborg 1982, 29-30). A
less dramatic but nonetheless important change introduced by medieval
commentators, continuing in commentaries after 1300, is making
divisions of the text and adding descriptions of the overall structure
and forward progression of its arguments. These divisions and outlines
of the text serve to give unity and coherence to a text even if it
might lack these features on its own.



Starting in 1255, study in the work of the arts faculty at Paris was
officially centered around the works of Aristotle. Further, the
commentaries of the masters of arts rather than of theology brought a
different hermeneutic to the interpretation of Aristotle. No longer
committed to Aristotle as a source for the truth (the truth was
possessed by theology), the masters of arts did not try to bring
Aristotle into harmony with other authoritative sources and felt free
to expose rather than try to save Aristotle from holding what they
took to be erroneous positions. Because Aristotle was no longer
considered an essentially error-free authoritative source,
commentaries shifted to an emphasis on questions arising from the text
rather than the exposition of text (Lohr 1982, 95-6). This shift
is heralded by most scholars as marking an important development
toward modern notions of both science and commentary.



Nonetheless, even with this change in the status of the Aristotelian
works, Aristotle remained an authority in the sense that his texts
were still the starting point for discussion, and medieval philosophy
in general remained centered on authoritative texts and, hence, on
their commentaries. This emphasis on the commentary points to two
important differences between medieval and much contemporary
philosophy. First, medieval philosophical writers understood their own
work as emerging out of a tradition of authorities rather than in
abstraction from or in opposition to a tradition (see below section 3,
"Role of Authorities"). Second, their work emerges out of
an encounter with texts rather than in unmediated contact with ideas,
problems, or arguments. (On the assumptions and characteristics of a
commentary-based notion of philosophy see Smith 1991, 3-7.)
These ways of doing philosophy do not mean that medieval philosophers
were incapable of originality, only that their original thought comes
out of an acknowledged connection with what went before. Nor does it
mean that medieval philosophers were not engaged with ideas but only
words and texts. For, they would argue, we can only confront ideas
through the language in which they are expressed.



The use of the commentary form expanded beyond its use in biblical
exegesis and ancient authors (primarily Aristotle) to commentaries on
Medieval texts treated as authoritaties to be commented on, for
example Peter Lombard's *Sentences* and Maimonides
*Guide for the Perplexed*, and in the second scholastic period
the *Summa theologiae* of Thomas Aquinas (See below, section
2.8 on commentaries on Peter Lombard's *Sentences* and
also recent work on the tradition of commentary on Maimonides
*Guide,* De Souza 2018).


### 2.5 Dialogue



The classical source for medieval writers of dialogue should have been
Plato; but Western writers had no direct access to Plato's
dialogues, with the exception of the first half of the
*Timaeus*. The number and diversity of dialogues from the
medieval period is, hence, surprising, with instances among the works
of writers from Augustine to Ockham and Nicolas of Cusa, and across
different religious traditions. Though it has been argued that
dialogue as a philosophical form dies off in late antiquity,
especially in the Christian tradition, this is clearly false in the
medieval period (Goldhill 2008, 5-8). Not only are philosophical
dialogues plentiful but, perhaps because they were not overwhelmed by
Plato as a model, medieval dialogue writers came up with many
variations on the form. While a good number use real or
realistically-described characters, there are also many where the
participants are allegorical figures, like Boethius's Lady
Philosophy in the *Consolatio* or "Reason" in
Augustine's *Soliloquies*. A number of 12th century
writers also imitated more specifically the prosimetrum of
Boethius's *Consolation* combining prose dialogue with
poetry, exploring the hybrid of physical and spiritual in the cosmos
and body and soul in human nature (Balint 2009). While some instances
of this form, for example Boethius's commentary in dialogue form
on Porphyry's *Isagoge*, simply make use of the form as a
vehicle for straightforward exposition, others make the dialogue form
intrinsic to the argument. And while the standard form of a
philosophical dialogue is between a teacher and student figure, a
number of medieval dialogues ignore this convention. Abelard's
*Dialogue between a Philosopher, a Jew, and a Christian*
(*Collationes*), for example, traces a dispute between three
equal partners, none of whom is the "teacher" whom the
others more or less meekly follow. Abelard's dialogue is
essentially a dispute without a master to resolve it. Even if, as many
scholars think, the dialogue is unfinished and Abelard meant to add a
resolution of the dialogue in the form of a final adjudication by
someone playing the role of master, it is noteworthy that, unlike in
most philosophical dialogues, the magisterial point of view is absent
until the end rather than being the one that directs the
discussion.



Other dialogue writers like Gilbert Crispin, Petrus Alphonsi, Raymund
Lull, and Nicolas of Cusa also write dialogues in which the
participants are representatives of the major religions: Christian,
Jew, Muslim, pagan, or philosopher. While some take care to give the
victory to the Christian, even transforming the other participants
into converts to Christianity, Gilbert, Petrus, Abelard, and Raymund
Lull all opt for subtler conclusions. Abelard's dialogue sets up
a "judge" for the debate who never proffers a judgment.
Even if Abelard had added this final judgment, the dialogue would
still not indicate a clear winner. Dialogue is a favorite form in the
growing *Adversos Iudaeos* literature of the late 11th and 12th
centuries. And insofar as the dialogue form was especially prevalent
in this period, it is part of a growing rationalism. Writers composing
dialogues between Christian and Jewish (or pagan) spokesmen are at the
same time shifting the grounds of those arguments from proof texts
from scripture to arguments grounded in the notion that the truths of
the faith were self-evident and could be convincing even to those not
sharing common beliefs or authoritative texts (Cohen 1999,
167-218; Palmen and Koskinen 2016). There are dialogues
by Jewish thinkers in which philosophical and different religious
perspectives debate, partially in response to Christian polemical
dialogues, most famously Judah Halevi's dialogue known as the
*Kuzari*. The work is a dialogue between a pagan king, who
speaks as a philosopher, and a Jewish sage, and includes the
appearance of representatives of Islam and Christianity working to
convert the king. Though the dialogue form continues to be used in the
Latin West after the 12th century, its place as *the* form for
rational argumentation is overtaken by the more formal and elaborate
school form of disputation in the 13th (Novikoff 2012, 341-343,
349).



When the convention of composing a dialogue between a teacher and
student is used, usually the author can be identified more or less
with the "teacher." In Ibn Gabirol's (Avicenbron)
dialogue, best known by its Latin title, *Fons vitae*, the
student is mostly restricted to asking the teacher for explanations
and demonstrations. Anselm's dialectical partner in *Cur Deus
Homo* is the student Boso who as a Christian asks the questions
that a non-Christian monotheist would ask about the Incarnation.
Boethius, however, casts himself as student rather than teacher in the
*Consolatio*. Of those who compose dialogues between teacher
and student a good number, such as those of Augustine, Eriugena,
Anselm, Boethius, and Nicolas of Cusa expect and trace a conversion or
transformation in the "student" figure of the dialogue in
a way that Plato's dialogues do not. Anselm explicitly makes of
his interlocutor a partner in the dialogue who is supposed to
anticipate conclusions and implications and/or who more truly
motivates the entire discussion (Sweeney 1999). Like Anselm, other
medieval dialogue writers play with the convention that the teacher
takes the lead in the discussion, in effect asking as well as
answering questions. In Eriugena's *Periphyseon*, it is
sometimes the student, sometimes the teacher who moves the discussion
forward. In William of Conches' dialogue, *Dragmaticon
philosophiae*, the 'Prince' asks questions of the
'philosopher' who represents William's views. In an
interesting variation, William of Ockham's *Dialogus* has
the student ask the questions while the teacher responds reluctantly
and almost objectively without any attempt to transform or convert the
student.



The variety of ways in which the dialogue form is taken up in the
medieval period alone is enough to make the form as such quite
interesting. In addition, as Jacobi points out, because the dialogue,
unlike the disputation and commentary, is not a school form, it was
always taken up as a choice and with some degree of self-consciousness
on the part of the writer (Jacobi 1999, 10). They chose this form over
some other for a reason that affects the argument and the position
they take. (For bibliographical listings for some 160 dialogues
written from the 4th century to the 15th as well as essays on the
dialogues of 19 different medieval dialogue writers, see Jacobi
1999.)



Goldhill's contention that there is something in Christianity
inhospitable to dialogue is literally false but gets at a more
difficult question about how and whether dissent is tolerated in
medieval Christianity, with parallel questions that have and should be
asked about medieval Jewish and Muslim culture. (See below, sections 3
and 4.) While neither medieval philosophical dialogues nor the forms
of disputation which grew out of them can be reduced to catechism-like
question and answer (Goldhill 2009, 5), it is a complex matter to
determine whether the rational form of dialogue and disputation foster
real open discussion and dissent or control it within strict and
non-threatening limits. The same question could, of course, be
meaningfully asked about dialogue in antiquity, in non-Christian
religious traditions, and in the modern era. In an important sense, it
is often too much rather than too little faith in reason in the Latin
West, expressed in medieval dialogue and disputation, which leads some
to the notion that reason can prove the truth of Christianity over
Judaism or Islam, and, then, to condemnation of resistance to
Christianity as irrational (Cohen 1999; Sweeney 2012a,
324-5).


### 2.6 Disputation, *Quaestio*, Quodlibetal Question



In the Latin West, as the universities developed in the 13th and 14th
centuries, two forms for philosophical and theological speculation
were incorporated into the curriculum, the disputed question and the
*Sentences* Commentary. The *De Fallaciis* attributed to
Aquinas defines a disputed question as a set of syllogistic arguments
on different sides of a question to be resolved (Bazan 1985,
22). Bazan gives a more complete definition as follows:
"a disputed question is a regular form of teaching,
apprenticeship and research, presided over by a master, characterized
by a dialectical method which consists of bringing forward and
examining arguments based on reason and authority which oppose one
another on a given theoretical or practical problem and which are
furnished by participants, and where the master must come to a
doctrinal solution by an act of determination which confirms him in
his function as master" (Bazan 1985, 40). Disputations
took place both privately between a master and his students, and
publicly or "solemnly" at an event that replaced regular
classes at the university and was attended by the larger university
community. The latter practice was eventually codified by university
statute, which prescribed that masters would hold a certain number of
disputations at various times of the year, sometimes as frequently as
once a week. Most scholars agree that the process came to be divided
into two sessions. In the first session, supporting and opposing
arguments for a given thesis or question were brought forward, and, in
a preliminary way, clarified and determined by a student serving as
the *respondens* under the supervision of the master. During
the second session, the master himself would make the determination,
give his answer and respond to all the opposing arguments. Some
disputed questions we have in written form are clearly taken from the
different stages in this process, either a *reportatio* of the
first day's session, some abbreviation of the debate, or one
reflecting the master's answer and response to opposing
objections, redacted after the second day's debate.



Disputation arises out of and is an academic formalization of the
philosophical dialogue (Novikoff 2012) and comes into the classroom as
an outgrowth of the *lectio*, the careful reading and
commentary on authoritative texts (Kenny and Pinborg 1982,
20-25). This type of reading involved the consultation of
authoritative sources on those texts. From the differences among
sources came the need to resolve such differences, a process
eventually formalized into the posing of a question. A question is
tied to a specific textual problem or conflict, but has, like the
disputation, arguments on opposing sides and the response or
resolution and replies to opposite objections by the master. The
disputation is centered around a systematic rather than a textual
question, and the supporting and opposing arguments are supplied by
students.



A special form of disputation, quodlibetal (*quodlibet* = any,
whatever) questions, differed from ordinary disputations in that they
were open to the broader public -- other masters, students from
other schools, other church and civil authorities -- and took
place only during Advent and Lent. The questions were not set by the
master but could be posed by any member of the audience and without
any prior notice to the master who would determine the question. These
questions might reflect contemporary controversies or might be
designed to pose a question that brought to the fore a difficulty for
the particular master of whom it was asked because of his other stated
views. The popularity of these public spectacles shows the importance
and influence of scholastic disputation on the larger culture.
(Novikoff 2012, 2013).



An important function of the master in both quodlibetal and disputed
questions is the *determinatio*, in which the master ordered
the various smaller questions into articles of a given question. Like
the division of the text that is part of the work of commentary, this
strategy involves both making distinctions, for which medieval
scholastics are well-known, but also a synthesis, finding the unity of
a text and the unity of a set of diverse questions under larger
questions in the disputation. The collections that have been made of
the quodlibetal literature show how diverse the questions posed were
and how much less unified the treatment (Glorieux 1925-35;
Schabel 2006-7). We can also see, by contrast, how much more a
matter of literary art the more unified and organized disputed
questions are that are based on questions set by and organized in
sequence by a master.



All of these forms, disputation, *quaestio*, and quodlibetal
question, represent what has been called "the
institutionalization of conflict" in medieval intellectual life.
Raising questions or objections about anything from basic matters of
Christian belief -- the existence of God, the coherence of the
doctrine of the Trinity -- to important contemporary
controversies -- the power of the papacy or secular princes,
ecclesiastical corruption -- was not only permitted but
encouraged as part of the structure of university life. Thus, there
was an important kind of intellectual and academic freedom enshrined
in these practices of formal and public debate. On the other hand,
those questions were also in some ways controlled exactly because they
were brought into an existing institution and structured in a
particular way. Thus, the questions, even though asked, were in
another way made less dangerous and subversive by being posed and
controlled from within the university, which itself operated under the
watchful eye of the Church. (For a study of the ways in which medieval
philosophical disputation made its way out of the university,
affecting the larger culture, see Novikoff 2013.)



The disputation also develops in a different direction within the
universities, into forms whose function was training in argumentative
techniques in which the goal is besting an opponent. Different forms
developed, with different rules for the opponent and respondent. In
the better known *ars obligatoria*, the opponent poses a
question and the respondent answers, while in another form, the
opponent constructs arguments to refute something held by the
respondent, and the respondent must react to the opponent's
claims (Angellelli 1970; Perez-Ilzarbe 2011, 130-1). (See
below, section 2.9.)


### 2.7 Meditation, Soliloquy



'Meditation' as a term for a form of medieval
philosophical writings belongs most properly to Anselm and most
famously to his *Proslogion* and *Monologion;* it is
closely related to soliloquy and Augustine's
*Confessions*, as well as some of the works of Bonaventure.
(Anselm calls his *Proslogion* an "address" instead
of a meditation or soliloquy. The *Proslogion* is addressed to
God, but its method for understanding God is similar to the
*Monologion*, which Anselm calls a meditation.) In all these
works, the form is that of an introspective search, often in the
explicit form of an internal dialogue. While sentence collections and
disputed questions make very explicit the different sources and
vocabularies that clash with each other and with that of the author of
a question, meditation and soliloquy show no particular reliance on
authoritative sources.



The source for Anselm's meditations is the practice of monastic
meditation on texts from scripture or on one's own spiritual
condition. Anselm takes these techniques for focusing the mind and
uses them as mode of inquiry into problems of speculative theology and
philosophy. Anselm's meditations make no direct reference to
outside sources, either scriptural or philosophical, but represent
Anselm's own thought process as he struggles with what he cannot
quite understand or prove. In monastic style, he has so thoroughly
'ruminated' on his source texts, scripture and
Augustine's *De Trinitate,* that they are essentially
invisible to contemporary readers. This independence from authority
and emphasis on internal exploration also characterizes
Augustine's *Soliloquies*, a 'dialogue'
between Augustine and 'Reason', as well as Abelard's
*Soliloquium*, a 'dialogue' between
"Peter" and "Abelard" on the meaning and
overlap between the names 'Christian',
'philosopher' and 'logician'. In his
*Itinararium mentis in Deum,* Bonaventure draws on a
particularly Franciscan form of contemplation, following the path of
St. Francis's mystical ascent to God, based on Francis's
vision of the six-winged seraph. In Bonaventure, as in Anselm,
meditation is connected to the mystical project of achieving union
with God.



Anselm retains the personal and intimate nature of meditation also
characteristic of Augustine's *Confessions*. It is worth
noting that among the other works that Anselm labels
'meditations' are a "meditation on lost
virginity" and a "meditation on redemption." These
are highly personal works, concerned with the existential conditions
of sin and salvation. The *Proslogion* and *Monologion*
share with them this personal or existential character. As Anselm
Stolz points out, each step of Anselm's argument in the
*Proslogion* either takes the form of or concludes in prayer
(Stolz 1967, 198-201). According to scholars who take the form
of the *Proslogion* as meditation seriously, that form makes it
impossible to understand the argument as a "proof" for
God's existence designed to convince an agnostic or atheist on a
purely rational level. Rather, they argue, the text is an attempt by
Anselm to address and approach God and is thus written by and for a
believing Christian trying to understand and achieve union with God.
On the other hand, other scholars take as most significant in the form
not Anselm's prayers but his complete reliance on his own reason
without apparent recourse to authority, making the form itself an
important model for independent and truly philosophical discourse.
Both the introspective element and independence from authority are
retained in Descartes' *Meditations*, about which similar
questions have been raised concerning its form. In the Middle Ages,
the importance of the form shows the continuation of philosophy or
philosophical theology as what Pierre Hadot has called a "way of
life." On this view, until the high scholasticism of the 13th
and 14th centuries, philosophy was essentially a spiritual and
personal project of self-discipline and self-transformation, rather
than an abstract and school-based problem-solving set of techniques
(Hadot 1995, 269-70). Christianity before the 13th century,
Hadot argues, presented itself as a philosophy, a way of life, and
Christian monasticism and its practices of meditations were meant to
be a path into this spiritually transformative experience (See Hadot
1995, 126-141, for the links between ancient "spiritual
exercises" and "Christian philosophy".)


### 2.8 Sentences and Sentences Commentaries



*Sentences* as a genre is a development of earlier collections
of sayings or citations of the church fathers. Such collections, known
as *florilegia*, were collections of citations organized around
the order of scripture. The development of the scholastic sentences
collection can be attributed jointly to Anselm of Laon, Abelard, and
Peter Lombard. Anselm of Laon and his school, so famously criticized
by Abelard in his *Historia Calamitatum*, can be credited with
developing a critical approach to the authorities they cited; they
sometimes disregarded or criticized opinions rather than always
seeking to preserve them all (Colish 1994, 42-46). The next
significant development is in the organization of these collections,
from an organization following the order of scripture to an
organization based on systematic questions of theology. Such a change
brings speculative and philosophical questions to the fore, questions
concerning the divine nature and metaphysics, and anthropological and
ethical problems. Peter Abelard's *Sic et Non* opposes
authoritative quotations from church fathers on particular questions
arranged in an order and on topics that are systematic rather than
narrative. What Abelard attempted in the various versions of
*Theologia* but did not ever manage successfully to do was to
gather those various questions into a systematic organization and
division of theology as a discipline. This was the achievement of
Peter Lombard.



Peter Lombard's *Sentences* was by far the most
successful instance of the form. Commenting on it became an academic
requirement for the master of theology in the 13th century, a status
it retained until the later 15th century, with new commentaries still
appearing in the 18th (Silano 2007, xxx). (The nature of these
commentaries varies quite a bit, early commentaries tending to be line
by line glosses, and later ones more often a series of
*quaestiones* on more or less selected topics raised by Peter.
See Evans 2002 and Rosemann 2009.) Though Peter claims in his prologue
merely to have made a collection of the views of Church Fathers and
most historians have taken him at his word, his advance lies in the
organization of particular questions into a unified plan, based on
Augustine's distinction between things to be enjoyed (God alone)
and things to be used (everything else). Secondly, Peter offers his
own responses to questions, engages and refutes the opinions of
contemporaries when necessary, and in many cases, uses the form to
articulate, justify, and create a consensus view. Besides giving
theology an organization and making a place for all questions to be
considered, Peter often explicitly leaves some questions open. Peter
thus invites others to join in the debate and conversation rather than
simply accept or reject his views. All of these features made his work
especially fruitful for later commentary. Further, Peter Lombard,
unlike Abelard, attempted to give substantive and metaphysically based
rather than merely verbal solutions to theological problems, a method
more in tune with the 13th century curriculum focused on Aristotle,
than the 12th, organized around the trivium arts, also positioning
Peter's *Sentences* for the preeminence it achieved in
the 13th century.



The great mystery about the Lombard's *Sentences* is how
a book so important for centuries has been so greatly neglected by
scholars, even by those interested in and sympathetic to medieval
scholasticism. One intriguing suggestion is that it is tied to the
genre of the work and the different notion of authorship thereby
implied. Giulio Silano argues that the work is most analogous to a
modern legal casebook, and that Peter, as the casebook author, is
governed most directly not by his views but those of the authorities,
and the pedagogical goal is not the expression and promulgation of his
views, or even the mere learning of the authorities' views but
rather the initiation of the student into a discipline, as in
jurisprudence, a way of thinking and applying past authorities to
present questions or conflicts (Silano 2007). Thus we discount and
misunderstand Peter Lombard's achievement if we evaluate it in
light of modern notions of authorship and originality.


### 2.9 *Sophismata*, *Insolubilia*, *Obligationes*



As the disputed question as a form began to fade in importance in the
theological faculty, it was replaced by variations on the disputation
form in the arts faculty, focusing on questions of logic and natural
philosophy. Of these three types of literature which become more
significant in the 13th and 14th centuries, *obligatio* is the
only one that unambiguously refers to a form of argument.
*Sophismata* and *insolubilia* can refer either to the
propositions that might be discussed in a debate or treatise or other
form, or a form of argument for discussing these types of
propositions. The literature concerning these kinds of problems ranges
from formal disputes on the propositions which attempt to solve or
avoid the problem posed by the statements to treatises or rules about
how to solve the puzzles the disputes over them reveal. As a type of
proposition, *sophismata* are ambiguous propositions about
which arguments might plausibly be given both that they are true and
that they are false. They are, as Ashworth puts it, "the
medieval ancestor of 'the morning star is the evening
star'," that is, a proposition epitomizing a larger
problem (Ashworth 1992, 518). *Insolubilia* are propositions
that are either very difficult or impossible to hold as true or false.
These propositions are usually self-referential paradoxes such as the
liar paradox (e.g., 'everything I say is false'). The
influential view of William Heytesbury was that insolubles should be
resolved in the context of an *obligatio*, a specialized form
of disputation, and Heytesbury proposes rules for solving
*insolubilia* as well as *sophismata* in this way (Spade
1982, 252). (For a catalog of *insolubilia* literature, see
Spade 1975).



*Sophismata* discussed in the form of a disputation usually
involve the offering of arguments both for the truth and for the
falsity of the proposition, resolved by a master. The resolution might
only be a statement about whether the sophism is true or false; then,
more elaborate replies to objections to the master's view might
be discussed. This form can be complicated by the addition of a
response offered and defended and then further attacked, and then once
again defended by responses to the new set of opposing arguments. Oral
disputations on sophisms, the origin of much of the
*sophismata* literature, were an important part of the school
curriculum (see Courtenay 1987). Students would serve as opponent and
then respondent in a series of disputations under the direction of a
master. Ashworth notes that some sophismata, such as those by
Kilvington and Heytesbury, were original compositions, not edited
versions of live debates (Ashworth 1992, 519). (For more about
Kilvington's *sophismata*, see the edition with
translation and commentary by Kretzmann and Kretzmann 1990.) The
discussion of sophisms occurs in three different settings in the
medieval literature: first, sophisms which are discussed in works on
different topics where the sophism raises certain questions germaine
to that topic; second, works by a single author which examine a series
of sophisms (e.g., the *sophismata* of Albert of Saxony or John
Buridan), and third, collections of sophisms discussed by diverse
authors (Read 1993).



In the obligational form of disputation, an opponent puts something
forward to a respondent. The respondent then 'obligates'
himself to take a certain position on the case put forward by the
opponent throughout the dispute. There are different types of
obligations based on the type of claim the opponent proposes and the
stance the respondent adopts towards it. (On the different types, see
Stump 1982, 319-323.) The goal of the opponent is to trap the
respondent into a contradiction and the goal of the respondent is to
avoid the contradiction. The setting of the discussion is crucial
since the obligation often involves the evaluation of statements that
depend on the disputational context. So, for example, the respondent
is often obligated to take a position on propositions which make
reference to their granting or denying something within the
disputation (e.g., 'that you are in Rome must be granted [by
you]') (Stump 1982, 327). In other cases, the difficulty is
caused by reference to the passage of time within the dispute. So it
is posited that something is true at A, but it becomes false and
impossible that it be true later in the disputation since the instant
A has passed (Stump 1982, 328). Often, the dispute between the
opponent and respondent is set up to result in a paradox. In such
cases, the solution must happen outside the debate between the two
parties, in which there is a further distinction or disqualification
of something originally granted in the disputation.



Although it has usually been supposed that medieval interest in
*sophismata* and *insolubilia* came from medieval
scholars' exposure to ancient sources, like Arisotle's
*Sophistical Refutations*, rediscovered in the Middle Ages,
Angel D'Ors has suggested that their origins might instead be
found in earlier medieval sources concerned with the problem of
skepticism, like Augustine's *Soliloquia*, and *Contra
Academicos*, as well as Anselm's *De Veritate*,
*Proslogion* and so forth (D'Ors 1997). Ashworth ties
their origin to the 12th c. practice of adducing counter-examples to
point out the flaws in reasoning for an apparently plausible thesis
(Ashworth 1992, 518). D'Ors further suggests that discussions of
sophisms which continue in theological texts show not the interest in
sophisms bleeding over into theology, but theological contexts as the
impetus for interest in logical sophisms (D'Ors 1997).


### 2.10 *Summa*



The aspiration of the *summa* form is two-fold: first, to
completely emancipate the subject matter, whether logical,
theological, or philosophical, from the structure dictated either by
scripture or authoritative sources; and second, to cover completely an
entire discipline, often but not always, in summary form.



The *summa* form was invented by Peter Helias. His *Summa
super Priscianum* was written around 1150, more than a century
before Peter of Spain composed his logical *summa* and Thomas
Aquinas his theological *summa*. Peter Helias's
*summa* combines a commentary on Priscian's text with a
systematic consideration of all the aspects of grammar (Reilly 1993,
16).



What Peter Lombard's *Sentences* are to the sentences
genre, Thomas Aquinas's two great *summae*, the *Summa
Contra Gentiles* and *Summa Theologiae* are to the
*summa* form. As with sentences collections, there are two
aspects of the form to be considered: the overall organizing structure
and the method of confronting individual problems or questions. In
terms of overall structure, the *Contra Gentiles* is a
reflection of Aquinas's distinction between those things which
can be known by reason alone (e.g., that God exists) and those things
which cannot be arrived at without revelation (e.g., the Trinity and
Incarnation). Hence, the first three books of the *Summa Contra
Gentiles*, dealing with God and creation, use arguments which
depend only on reason to reach and support its conclusions. The fourth
book is concerned with those things that are known only through
revelation, in which revelation offers the principles from which the
conclusions are drawn. The form for handling individual issues and
problems in the *Contra Gentiles* is not the *quaestio*
but a more affirmative defense of specific positions and against
specific heresies. And though it is unclear whether the title
*summa* is original (Jordan 1986, 182-3), the work fits
the *summa* form in its systematic arrangement of topics and
its attempt to include all possible arguments for a given position and
against its contrary. It has been argued that the *Contra
Gentiles* is not a polemical but a protreptic work, addressed to
Christians, calling on them to deepen their understanding of the
faith, specifically about how to persuade others to Christian belief
(Jordan 1986, 190, 194). On this view the *gentiles* in the
title are not Muslims and Jews but the "pre- or extra-Christian
man, and metaphorically, the human mind under the tutelage of
nature" (Jordan 1986, 184).



The *Summa Theologiae* by contrast, uses an abbreviated form of
the disputed question. The questions are, however, artificial,
carefully composed imitations of disputations, not tied to any actual
oral debate as true disputed questions are. This gives Aquinas the
opportunity to arrange the objections and authorities so as to achieve
a rhetorical as well as a logical effect. Thus, Aquinas's
*Summa Theologiae* is different from Peter Lombard's
*Sentences* in two ways. The gathering of authorities around a
given question is for Peter one of the main purposes of his work, to
some degree an end in itself, while for Aquinas those citations serve
the end of constructing an answer to the question. Further, while
Peter dispenses with the question format when he finds an issue
uncontroversial or largely settled by consensus, Aquinas always places
issues in the format of a question, always finding arguments on both
sides of an issue. For Peter, the question format is more a means to
an end, and when the authorities he surveys are in agreement, he
treats the matter like settled case law. But what Aquinas wants to
teach beginning students of theology, for whom he says the work is
composed, is that speculation, not fixed answers, is at the heart of
the philosophical and theological enterprise. What he passes on to
those students is not information so much as training in a certain way
of thinking.



At the macro level, the *Summa Theologiae* is organized into
three parts; first, a consideration of God; second, the rational
creature's movement toward God; and third, of Christ as the way
to God. (For a recent discussion of and summary of the debates over
how to understand this organization, see Johnstone 2000.) In his
prologue, Aquinas claims that the main contribution of his work is in
its organization of topics and questions, following the order required
by the subject instead of a book or a particular disputation. In this
sense, both Aquinas's *summae* represent a further and
almost complete emancipation from a textual order to a logical order.
Within that logical structure, Aquinas devotes long passages to
scripture, to the Genesis account of creation (Part I, qq.
67-74), Hebrew scripture considered as the "Old Law"
(Part II, first part, qq. 98-106) and the life of Christ (Part
III, qq. 27-59). Moreover, the work retains its tie to texts in
individual questions which, as individual systematic questions are
addressed, interpret authorities according to their response,
ultimately harmonizing rather than simply discarding discordant
voices.



After Aquinas, the *summa* remains a form for the systematic
organization of an entire area of study, though often it becomes a
summary, a collection of answers, a manual in which to look up answers
to particular questions rather than a series of questions.
Ockham's *Summa Logicae* shares with the *summa*
genre in theology the attempt to organize an entire discipline
systematically. Ockham's principle of organization is first to
divide logic into terms and propositions and then to consider the
various types of terms and propositions. Ockham's form for
considering particular types of terms or propositions is generally
straightforward exposition occasionally mixed with a presentation of
opposing positions and responses to the arguments for that position.
John Buridan's *Summulae de Dialectica* from the mid-14th
century begins as a commentary on Peter of Spain's *Summulae
Logicales* (written between 1220-1250). While Peter's
immensely popular text (used into the 17th century) was a
"summa" in the sense of short summaries of the topics of
logic, Buridan's important and also popular *Summulae*
based on Peter's text gives much more systematic explanations
not just assertations of definitions and propositions; thus it is a
"summa" in the sense of a complete set of explanations,
given in the author's own voice (Zupko 2003, 9). Though clearly
a teaching text, Buridan reconfigures the discipline of logic using
the "new logic" (or *logica moderna*) to explain
the basic concepts in Peter's text, and, where necessary (e.g.,
in the account of demonstration) composes both a base text and the
explanatory commentary on topics not covered by Peter (Zupko, 2003,
100). As Zupko concludes, Buridan's "*Summulae* is
essentially a compendium of methods, a 'how-to' book for
the philosopher" (Zupko, 2003, 135). In form, Ockham's and
Buridan's works show a progression toward the modern treatise,
such as that of Hume or Locke on human nature or understanding,
because their exhaustive consideration of their topic and the
presentation of the single voice of the author, rather than a dialogue
or set of authorities from the tradition.


## 3. Role of Authorities



If there is one formal characteristic found in medieval philosophical
texts of every relevant period and among all the religious
affiliations of its practitioners, it is the citation of authoritative
texts, whether scripture, Plato, Aristotle, or other revered teachers.
To contemporary readers, such references seem to show a slavish
deference to authority and lack of autonomy or originality in the
writer. The explanation of this phenomenon is, of course, a good deal
more complex. The main way of approaching authoritative sources used
by medieval writers was to find ways to forge agreements with and
among authorities by reinterpreting them. Besides the strategies we
might recognize in modern practices of interpretation, there are
number of ways in which medieval authors make a greater effort to
bring an author's view into conversation and agreement with
contemporary discussions. This sometimes involves placing an
author's claims in a larger context, such as supporting
Aristotle's metaphysical claims but in a limited way, as valid
only for the sublunary world. So, for example, Maimonides argues that
Aristotle's account of the eternity of motion makes perfect
sense as an inference from the world as we now experience it, but is
limited to that context. Just as a boy reared on an island without
women would have difficulty imagining how children might be conceived
and born, Aristotle, Maimonides argues, might simply have had an
experience too limited to allow him to develop any other accounts of
the origin of things (Maimonides 1974, 295). Maimonides'
handling of Aristotle in this example is more colorful and explicit
than other medieval thinkers, but the principle he uses is common.
Alternatively, medieval interpreters often take a given citation out
of context and assign it a new context. Hence, for example, Aquinas
cites Augustine in support of his claim that theology is a science
analogous to an Aristotelian science as described in the *Posterior
Analytics;* however, Aquinas does not note that Augustine uses the
term 'science' in a much older and less technical way
(Aquinas 1981, I, q. 1, a. 2). Alan of Lille supports the Pauline
claim that the "invisible things of God are known through the
visible things that are made" only after arguing that the kind
of knowledge in question is the knowledge of faith (Alan of Lille
1954, 135-6). While Aquinas cites and supports the
categorization of sin in terms of Gregory the Great's scheme of
the seven deadly sins, he clearly subordinates Gregory's
classification to his own way of organizing notions of sin (Sweeney
2012b). Though these examples are chosen to show the difference
between modern and medieval interpretive practice, we cannot attribute
such interpretations to bad faith on the part of writers like Aquinas
or Alan of Lille or Maimonides. That is, they are not deliberately
misinterpreting their sources. Rather their strategies for harmonizing
authorities discordant with each other and with their own views are
part of a hermeneutic whose basic assumption is that these authorities
are all seeking and attempting to express part of a single truth. It
is not a distortion or disservice to an authoritative source to put
its views in a new context, making them appropriate to contemporary
issues and fitting that source into the picture of the truth as it is
presently known. The underlying concordance of all authorities is
taken as a given and interpreters work toward showing how it might be
operative in particular cases. As Silano notes, many of the tensions
and even outright contradictions between authoritative sources would
have disappeared had the compilers, commentators, and masters
determining a question placed those authoritative claims in their
historical/cultural context rather than simply set them against each
other. But they would also, thereby, deprive these sources of their
normative status, in the same way in which a judicial decision
interpreted in terms of its historical/cultural context is no longer
binding (Silano 2007, xxv-xxvi). Silano points out that the task
of the 12th and 13th centuries in the Latin West is the establishment
of authorities which will form the parameters within which discussion
and dissention can take place, rather than their dethronement through
historical relativization (Silano 2007, xxv-xxvi).



The way in which scripture is cited is somewhat different from the way
Aristotle or even church authorities like Augustine are used. First,
scripture is a language in which these authors are thoroughly fluent.
They cite scripture from memory, almost proverbially. Further, when
scripture is cited in argumentative forms like the disputation, most
often it does not carry the weight of the argument. Either scripture
is cited in opposing arguments on one side or the other, in which case
scripture passages seem to articulate a limit or boundary the opposing
view seems to transgress. But the positions or arguments articulated
pro or con on a given question are not the final word but something
the master may accept or reject, which will require an interpretation
of the passage from scripture which accepts, rejects, or qualifies its
relevance and apparent position on the question. When scripture is
cited in the master's own answer, it functions as a support for
something for which independent arguments are given. Scripture is also
sometimes used to give a position moral and spiritual weight, to
reiterate the moral and spiritual center of a writer's thought.
It thus can act as an almost existential reminder of why these
arguments matter and what is at stake in them.



If these are strategies that in general characterize the Latin
tradition until the 13th century, there is a different strategy at
work in some philosophers in the Arabic and Jewish traditions. While
these authors also attempt in many cases to show the deep concordance
between, for example, scripture and the philosophers, they also at
times use authoritative texts to put forward views which they
themselves would like to promulgate even as they leave them in the
mouths of those other authors, like Aristotle or Plato.



As is clear from the development of the sentences collection,
*summa*, and commentary, there are significant changes over
time in the ways in which authorities were used and cited (see the
discussion of these individual forms above). It is possible to see the
evolution of the treatment of authoritative sources as growing
positively toward a more modern 'scientific' attitude
towards interpretation and commentary, one which is neutral, critical,
and historically informed rather than dedicated to finding the
'truth' in a given author no matter how hidden. But while
there is considerable development toward modern standards of
scholarship in the 13th and 14th centuries, there are also virtues in
the earlier types of approach to authoritative sources. These earlier
authors are highly sophisticated interpreters of biblical and
philosophical texts, finding levels of conflict and concord among
different authors that modern interpreters would tend to miss.


## 4. Esotericism, Censorship, and Polemics



Many late classical and medieval philosophical texts contain esoteric
elements. The desire to hide the real message of a text in its earlier
forms springs from some form of gnosticism. Gnostic sects, needing to
protect their knowledge from dissemination among non-initiates, hid
their true message in ways that could only be deciphered by those who
possessed the secret knowledge. Leo Strauss makes the additional
argument that the motives for esotericism in Jewish and Islamic
medieval thinkers are political. Revelation in Judaism and Islam deals
fundamentally with law, with the correct social order, whereas in
Christianity it is the revelation of a creed or set of dogmas, Strauss
argues. Hence, to interpret revelation in Judaism and Islam is always
a political act. Interpreting law is much further from the task of
philosophy than interpreting dogma, placing philosophy on the
periphery of Islamic and Jewish society as opposed to being an
integral part of the official training of students as it was in the
Christian West. The inherently marginal character of philosophy in
these societies makes it politically dangerous to be a philosopher.
Further, Strauss argues, for these thinkers human nature is
essentially and inevitably divided between "the few" who
are capable to doing and understanding philosophy, and "the
many" who were not capable of digesting the truths of philosophy
and who must be protected from philosophy. Exposure of the many to
philosophy tends to undermine the authority of revelation and the
religious and political authority given the power to explain and
promulgate the revealed law. For Strauss, the difference between
Jewish and Islamic thinkers, on the one hand, and Christian thinkers,
on the other, is also exemplified in the different literary sources on
which they relied. For Christian thinkers, the models are Aristotle
and Cicero, for Jewish and Islamic thinkers, the models are the
dialogues of Plato, especially the *Republic* and the
*Laws*. Strauss's thesis is that these writers hid in
their exoteric teaching an esoteric teaching to be discerned by
reading between the lines. In practice, this means taking small
inconsistencies and other discrepancies in the text as indicative of a
deeper or hidden view, looking for the author's
"real" views in the mouths of characters in a dialogue or
allegory who are otherwise presented unfavorably, etc. Strauss's
views on how to interpret the literary form of medieval philosophical
texts are controversial, but they have made the literary form and
hermeneutics applied to these texts a question that must, especially
for Islamic and Jewish writers, be confronted. For Maimonides, for
example, an esoteric or 'dualist' reading would claim that
Maimonides holds Aristotelian positions on the eternity of the world,
the possibility of miracles and on other matters which would bring him
into conflict with Judaism but must hide such views from political and
religious authorities, signalling them only obliquely to the few in
the *Guide for the Perplexed* but expressing non-Aristotelian
views in his work commenting on Jewish law and scriptures. Daniel
Frank (2003, 144-5) argues against this view that Maimonides
"may best be understood philosophically as engaged in critical
dialogue with Aristotle, almost invariably disagreeing with him, but
indebted to Aristotle for his mode of discourse, argument forms, and
philosophical vocabulary." Moreover, Frank points out that the
plausibility of extreme esotericism in Islamic and Jewish
philosophical texts may be exaggerated by an unhistorical dichotomy
between Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism (also discussed above,
section 2. 4) (Frank 2003, 142-3). That is, because we see a
conflict between and author's Aristotelian and Neoplatonic
views, we speculate that one view is their 'real' view,
and the other, their 'cover' view, while thinkers in this
context would have seen Aristotelian and Neoplatonic positions as
quite compatible. (On Maimonides and esotericism, see also Ravitsky
2005).



While rejecting the extreme position Strauss takes on medieval
philosophical texts, many scholars have noted the esoteric elements
present in some medieval texts by Christian as well as Islamic and
Jewish writers (see Butterworth 2001). Boethius, for example, presents
his theological views not to the many but to his trusted teachers and
advisors, writing in a highly dense and technical language in his
*De Hebdomadibus* accessible only to the learned (Boethius
1973, 38-41). As late as the end of the 12th century, Alan of
Lille writes in theological texts of the need to protect the sacred
truths of theology from the incursions of uneducated students in the
liberal arts (Alan of Lille 1981, 119-122), and, in the 11th
century, Anselm complains of the work he intended only for his fellow
monks in the *Cur Deus Homo* being disseminated without his
consent and in a form he did not approve of (Anselm 1998,
261-2). Like many medieval authors, he expresses great concern
that his work will be misunderstood and strives to protect himself
from misinterpretation. Just as writers chose certain forms and
rhetoric for philosophical texts for learned and elite audiences, so
different literary forms were chosen for works intended for a wide and
popular audience, using the forms of encyclopedia and instructional
manuals, but also poetry, sermons, biblical exegesis and mystical
writings to introduce philosophical ideas to a wide audience (See
Abram, Harvey, and Muelethaler 2022).



In the Latin, Christian world, though philosophy and speculative
theology is accepted as a legitimate endeavor, enshrined by the 13th
century in the university curriculum, philosophical writers were
sometimes censured by theological authorities, and some views were at
various times condemned as false and contrary to the faith, most
famously in what is known as the Condemnation of 1277 (Thiessen 1998;
Aertsen, Emery, et al. 2001; and Bianchi 2003). This threat, some have
argued, influenced some writers to pull their punches, to make
concessions or professions of ignorance or humility that were not
authentically part of their views. Hence, for example, some have
argued that Abelard's statement in his theology disclaiming any
ability or pretense to address the issues necessary for salvation or
to give anything more than verisimilitudes about the divine, is a
concession to his persecutors more than a sincere statement of his
view of his own work (Abelard 1987, 123, 201; Sweeney 2006,
90-3). Christian writers operating before the formation of the
universities and the development of acceptable university forms of
writing, i.e., commentaries on Aristotle, on the *Sentences* of
Peter Lombard, disputed questions, etc., need to justify their
writing, to explain the nature of its audience, to show the
author's submission to the proper authorities. Readers must
consider whether these kinds of statements can simply be disregarded
as obligatory but not sincere, and whether they affect the
presentation of the philosophical and theological arguments in the
text. While it might be tempting to see them merely as *pro
forma*, it is clear that complete disregard of such remarks is
anachronistic. Such views, for example, contributed to the now
thoroughly rejected view of Abelard as pure rationalist and as a rebel
against church authority. Nonetheless, concern about avoiding conflict
or censure is real among these writers. For example, after the
condemnation of many Aristotelian positions in 1277, authors take care
to note when they are simply citing or describing a point of view in
order to consider it or argue against it, signaling with a phrase like
*"dico recitative"* that they are not subscribing
to that position.



Parallel to the highly formalized and structured debate of the
disputations in the later Middle Ages, there are also highly
formalized ways of engaging in debate with one's contemporaries
that shift to some degree over time. In the 12th and 13th centuries,
for example, while it is acceptable to attach names of church teachers
and authorities from earlier generations to opposing positions, even
to positions opposed by the contemporary writer of a text, one's
contemporaries or from the recent past were never directly named but
merely referred to as "someone" or "certain
people" who might hold a given position. However, this should
not be interpreted as deference to one's contemporaries or as an
attempt to quell controversy, since authors became adept at signaling
their opponents without actually naming them, paraphrasing or
parodying their views or catchphrases as modes of ridicule or play. In
the late 13th century, Duns Scotus begins to give partial references
to the contemporary thinkers and texts with which he is in
conversation; Peter Aureol in the 14th century gives full and accurate
citations. Gregory of Rimini (d. 1358) begins to develop something
closer to a "historico-critical approach to theology,"
carefully citing authoritative texts.



This development parallels one in some medieval sermons, where the
writers find ways of referring (often by puns) to themselves as author
of the sermon. The shift is from an interest in the arguments to
interest in the individual thinkers. One cause for these changes might
be the internationalization of the writers and texts. In a more
parochial world, everyone would know who held certain positions; but
in a wider context, those at Oxford, for example, might not be known
and needed to be named in Paris. These changes might have also been
caused by the growing self-consciousness and sense of individuality
historians have noticed in other aspects of medieval academic and
social life.


## 5. Development in the Literary form of Medieval Philosophy



The Islamic and Jewish traditions, as well as the Latin tradition
until the 13th century, can be characterized by the diversity of
literary forms for philosophical texts. A good deal of the
philosophical creativity among these writers goes into the form in
which they choose to write. The genres that dominate the 13th and 14th
century in the Latin West, the *Sentences* commentary, the
disputed question, and the logical developments of these forms in
*obligationes* and *sophismata*, are academic, highly
choreographed forms. In contrast to the earlier period, these forms do
not allow an author much creative latitude. It is possible to read the
development and waning of various forms and the movement toward
standard forms in medieval philosophy in different ways. From one
point of view, the variety of forms which flourished from the 10th to
the 12th century can be seen as the high point from which the
narrowing into the academic forms of the 13th and 14th centuries seems
like a loss, not only in variety but from the connection to the larger
spiritual and existential concerns treated in, for example, the
allegories of Boethius or Avicenna and the meditations of Anselm. Both
in the Byzantine world and in the Latin Renaissance, there is a
rejection of scholastic forms in preference for the richer rhetorical
and literary form of dialogue (see Buron, Guerin, and Lesage
2015; Cameron and Gaul 2017). From another point of view (the more
prevalent assumption of the secondary literature), the disputed
question and other forms of high scholasticism are that toward which
the earlier centuries made somewhat uneven but steady steps. In these
forms, some might argue, philosophy finds its center in arguments for
and against different positions. (See Kretzmann 1997, 301, where he
argues that issues of style and rhetoric are not relevant to
Aquinas' "unadorned, straightforward, pellucid way of
expounding, analyzing, and arguing -- [which is] ideal for
philosophy".) The assumption, one arguably bequeathed to the
Western philosophical tradition through Latin Medieval school forms,
is that "straightforward argument" is not itself a style,
rhetoric, and/or genre but the pure form of rationality and, hence,
philosophy. Arguably, at least in the Latin tradition, this way of
seeing philosophy as having only one form, the form of reason, was
prompted by the reception of Aristotle's *Posterior
Analytics* with its model of demonstration as the standard for
science. Syllogistic arguments comprised of certain and necessary
premises yield certain and necessary conclusions, making demonstration
a higher form than dialectic, which yields only probable conclusions,
or rhetorical forms and methods, designed to persuade particular
audiences. John of Salisbury, making his way through the *Posterior
Analytics,* writes in his *Metalogicon* (1159) that unlike
other dialectical or rhetorical forms of arguments, only demonstration
does not concern itself with those to be persuaded and is thus in
direct relationship to things. (John of Salisbury 1955, 79) In effect
this is the articulation of the standard of objectivity - that
which is simply true independent of the time, place, or audience to
whom it is addressed, as opposed to that which is designed to persuade
in a particular context. Thus, John makes scientific discourse -
and the pursuit of truth - the opposite of rhetorical and
literary discourse, giving reason (and, hence, philosophy) its ideal
form. John notes that Aristotle is called "the
Philosopher" because of his development of the science of
demonstration. (John of Salisbury 1955, 213) As Aristotle's
ideal of scientific demonstration and the Aristotelian corpus as a
whole forms university curriculum, philosophy also becomes the
discipline we recognize as 'philosophy', an enterprise of
reason alone and begins to function autonomously in the arts faculty,
which were earlier seen as only preparatory to theology, law, or
medicine. We can also see different medieval forms for philosophy as
indebted to either Plato or Aristotle as philosophical models.
Aristotle's influence we see in the culture and writings of the
university. Even though they lacked access to the Platonic dialogues,
the influence of Plato through Neoplatonism is evident in the forms
that flourish before the 13th century, in allegory, meditation, and
dialogue. These forms emphasize both the spiritual character of the
highest truths philosophical/theological discourse strives to discover
and reveal, and the difficulty, both intellectual and moral, of
achieving insight.



Much more work needs to be done on the literary forms of medieval
philosophy. There are so many forms instantiated in so many ways in
different periods and from within different religious traditions.
Consideration of these forms is especially important for a more
complete understanding of medieval philosophical texts because so many
of these forms are foreign to contemporary readers. Sometimes the form
is important because an author was constrained by practice or academic
statute to use it, as with disputations and *Sentences*
commentaries; hence, how an author comes to use or manipulate a given
form for his own ends is a significant part of understanding the text.
When an author uses a non-standard form, that form is self-consciously
chosen and thus in a different way a significant part of an
author's meaning. It would be helpful to have studies of
particular authors who have used different forms, and more studies
tracing the development of a given genre through different authors and
periods (as in Jacobi 1999 on dialogue and Whitman 2000 on allegory,
Evans 2002 and Rosemann 2009 on *Sentences* commentaries).
Finally, more historical work needs to be done by individual scholars
equipped to look at the different genres across different periods and
from within and across works arising out of Christian, Jewish, and
Arabic religious traditions. (See Hughes and Robinson 2019 on literary
forms in Medieval Jewish Thought.). For Hughes and Robinson philosophy
is never without literary form, nor (which comes to the same thing)
does it have only one; they work to challenge the narrow conception of
philosophy that would divide the study of 'philosophical'
texts from those that fall into the domain of "Jewish
studies" that have more diverse literary forms. In the same way,
we have seen those studying the philosophical work of early Modern
women make the case that we will miss this work if we restrict
ourselves to texts that take the form that is expected in contemporary
academic philosophy. Expanding the canon entails interrogating and
broadening the sense of what counts as a philosophical work, they
argue.