Franciscan Soteriology at the University of Paris to 1300 MATTHEW THOMAS BECKMANN Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds Institute for Medieval Studies August, 2015 ii iii The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his/her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Matthew Thomas Beckmann to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2015, The University of Leeds and Matthew Beckmann.
iv v Acknowledgements The aid and assistance of many were needed to bring this work into being, in circumstances when it was doubtful it would ever appear. Rega Wood of Stanford University, Dr Erika Kihlman of Stockholm University and Dr Sophie Delmas of the Université de Lyon kindly provided advice, opinions and suggestions on technical points in this thesis and were generous in sharing their expertise and knowledge. My Franciscan brothers have been unwavering in their support, financing and resourcing my studies, consistently sharing fraternal encouragement during my time away and offering academic advice and opinions. I thank especially Drs Michael Cusato OFM and Michael Blastic OFM of the Franciscan Institute at St Bonaventure’s University, New York, and the library staff of the Pontificia Universitas Antonianum in Rome.
From the Franciscan Province in Australia-New Zealand, I thank particularly Campion Murray OFM, Peter Cantwell OFM and Theophane Rush OFM for their encouragement and support. My Minister Provincial, Paul Smith OFM, has been there for me in the dark days and the bright and first invited me to undertake these studies. This work would not have come to be without him. Comradeship, advice, company and sanity flowed unfailingly from the denizens of the Le Patourel room, particularly from those who were fellow members of ‘Team Franciscan’, particularly René Hernandez-Vera and Kirsty Day.
I appreciate especially the unbounded consilium et hospitium of those masters of the field, Richard and Charlotte Thomason. Deep and special thanks to my family for nurturing my first academic endeavours and for their vi support, even when they were not entirely certain what it was that I was writing! I thank most of all Drs William Flynn and Melanie Brunner who endured the production of this work with both good cheer and wise guidance. They often saw more in this project that I saw myself and their contributions made this work far more than it should have been. To the degree that in it is far less than it could have been, the fault lies with me.
Leeds, Solemnity of St Francis of Assisi, 2015 vii Abstract This work charts the evolution of soteriology among Franciscan friars working at the University of Paris up to 1300. It examines in turn each of their extant soteriological works from this period to demonstrate the development of a distinct and uniquely Franciscan approach to soteriology. This study considers the written forms in which these Franciscan theological opinions were expressed, the scholastic genres of commentaries upon the Book of Sentences along with quaestiones disputatae, quodlibets and summae. It situates those soteriological innovations and their genres of expression in their historical context, the developing engagement of the Franciscans with the University of Paris and the tensions that came with this, especially the secular-mendicant controversy of the 1220s to 1250s and the Aristotelian conflict with Stephen Tempier in the 1270s.
These three elements, Franciscan theological ideas, the literary forms in which they were articulated and the historical setting in which they were expressed, played upon each other to produce theology particular to the Franciscans. The friars discarded much of the soteriology inherited from Anselm of Bec and marginalised the significance of satisfaction and divine punishment for the fall. Figures like Bonaventure, Matthew of Aquasparta and Richard of Middleton gave greater emphasis to human fulfilment in a plan unrelated to the events of the fall. Despite obstacles to their theological work from both the university and the wider church, the Franciscans were not dissuaded from their ideas, adjusting the expression of those notions to ensure their acceptance.
viii This interplay of ideas, genres and events provides evidence that supports a claim for the existence of a distinctive ‘Franciscan school’ of theology in operation in Paris in the thirteenth century. This school recast the doctrine of redemption as more than the appeasement of a God angered by disobedience and demanding a suitable sacrifice. The Franciscans advocated instead for salvation as God generously furthering and advancing the final culmination of human creation. ix Table of Contents Franciscan Soteriology at the University of Paris to 1300.
vii Table of Contents. ix Notes on the text. xi 1 The Locus and Genres of Thirteenth-Century Theology in Paris.2 Studia among the Franciscans .3 University of Paris .4 A Friary with both Studium and University Chair.50 2 Alexander of Hales and the Legacy of Anselm of Bec .1 Anselm and Penal-Substitution .2 Alexander of Hales and the Incorporation of Anselm .3 The Works of Alexander of Hales .4 The Glossa in Quatuor Libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi .5 Quaestiones Disputatae ‘Antequam Esset Frater’ .6 The Role of Human Affectivity in Salvation .7 Summa Fratris Alexandri .8 The Role of the Human Nature of Christ. 77 3 Eudes Rigaud and the Secular-Mendicant Controversy .1 Secular-Mendicant Controversy .2 Franciscan Chairs at the University of Paris .5 The Role of Resurrection .6 Incarnation in the Absence of the Fall .7 The Reception of Eudes’ Theological Writing.
103 4 Bonaventure and an Alternative to Penal-Substitution .1 The Commentary on the Book of Sentences .1 The Absolute Freedom of God in Salvation .2 From Necessity to Fittingness .3 Pseudo-Dionysius and Hierarchies .4 Locus of Suffering .5 Passion and Compassion .6 The Secular-Mendicant Controversy and Bonaventure .1 A New Role for Satisfaction.2 Christ as Middle, Medium and Mediator .3 Remedy by Opposites .3 Collationes in Hexaëmeron .1 ‘Moral-Legal’ or ‘Physical-Mystical’ Soteriology.2 Non-Christian Authors in Theology. 149 5 Richard Rufus of Cornwall and the Revival of the Secular-Mendicant Controversy .1 The Works of Richard Rufus.2 The Secular-Mendicant Controversy Revives .3 Franciscan Schools of Oxford and Paris .5 Richard’s Soteriological Writing in the Franciscan School .173 6 Matthew of Aquasparta and the Reworking of Anselm .1 The Works of Matthew of Aquasparta .2 Quaestiones Disputatae de Christo .3 Christ’s Obligation to Die .4 Quaestiones Disputatae de Incarnatione .5 The Benefits of Salvation Through the Incarnate .6 Matthew the Scholastic .7 Quaestiones Disputatae de Gratia. 198 7 Richard of Middleton and the Episcopal Condemnations of the 1270s .1 The Tempier Decrees .2 Paris at the Arrival of Richard of Middleton .3 The Writings of Richard .4 The Wills of Christ .5 Distinguishing Redemption and Salvation.7 The Congruity of Salvation for God. 231 8 Roger Marston, Peter Falco and the Physical Consequences of the Fall .1 Quaestiones Disputatae de Statu Naturae Lapsae .2 Peter Falco and the Source of Human Suffering.4 Incarnation in the Absence of the Fall .5 If Adam Had Resisted Temptation.6 The Salvific Role of Christ’s Death.
281 Appendix 1 Comparative Table of Sentence Commentaries. 317 Appendix 2 Excerpt from the Sentence Commentary of Eudes Rigaud. 329 Appendix 3 Excerpt from Sententia Parisiensis of Richard Rufus. 397 xi Notes on the text 1.
All English Biblical quotations are drawn from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (NRSV), The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (London: Harper Collins, 1998). Where the text of the Vulgate in use in the Middle Ages differs materially from the NRSV, the Douai- Rheims translation has been preferred: The Holy Bible: Douay-Rheims Version (Charlotte, NC: Saint Benedict Press, 2009). The names of historical figures have, wherever possible, been anglicised. Thus, for example, the usage of ‘Eudes Rigaud’ and ‘Stephen Tempier’ has been preferred to ‘Odo Rigaldis’ and ‘Étienne Tempier’.
Unless otherwise noted, translations are the author’s own. xii 1 1 The Locus and Genres of Thirteenth- Century Theology in Paris The last words in the life of Francis of Assisi were, according to Thomas of Celano, directed to his brothers. ‘I have done what was mine to do, now do what is yours to do’.1 The friars gathered around his expiring body certainly took that injunction to heart. Whatever Francis may have done in his life, in short order the Friars Minor forged new directions and developments in his order that Francis himself had neither anticipated nor even, in some instances, desired.
The account of how his group of ill-educated wandering lay preachers observing strictest poverty transformed, in the space of scarcely a generation, into an urban order of clerics and scholars making use of property has been told in other places and with far greater detail.2 This work looks rather at intellectual changes in theology among the Franciscans and specifically at how those changes developed in the context of this reorientation by the disciples of Francis. It does so through a consideration of their soteriology, the Christian theories of salvation, and it explores how soteriology changed and how such changes occurred. In tracing those theological developments, it considers whether it is truly possible to speak in the thirteenth century of a 1 Thomas of Celano, ‘Memoriale Desiderio Animae de Gestis et Verbis Sanctissimi Patris Nostri Francisci’, in Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, ed. Wayne Hellman and William J.
Short, 3 vols (New York: New City Press, 1999), II: The Founder, pp. 2 This change in the direction of the Franciscans has been subject to many studies. See, for example, Théophile Desbonnets, From Intuition to Institution: The Franciscans (Chicago IL: Franciscan Herald Press, 1988); Lawrence C. Landini, The Causes of Clericalization of the Order of Friars Minor, 1209-60, in the Light of Early Franciscan Sources (Chicago: Pontifica Universitas Gregoriana, 1968); Neslihan Şenocak, The Poor and the Perfect: The Rise of Learning in the Franciscan Order 1209-1310 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012) and Rosalind B.
Brooke, Early Franciscan Government: Elias to Bonaventure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959). 2 ‘Franciscan school’ of theology. Such a school would need a stable, institutionalised continuity making it possible for ideas to pass and develop among its members even across generations. Members of such a school would manifest a shared and identifiably common approach to particular topics.
In later centuries, the Franciscan assertion that Christ did not become incarnate for the salvation of humanity was a distinctive element of their teaching. An examination of the initial shift in their understanding of the doctrine of salvation thus is a useful area to test for such a school and also to observe how Franciscan theology was shaped and fashioned by the time and setting in which it took place. The thirteenth century saw the first flowerings of the Friars Minor but it was equally a time that brought about great upheaval in Franciscan life. The friars were beleaguered with internal issues around their own identity, such as whether to be itinerant or sedentary, clerical or lay and seeking a common understanding of poverty.3 Similarly, external issues came to bear upon them such as their corporate engagement with the universities, the episcopal condemnations against teaching or employing certain ideas of non- Christian thinkers and the secular-mendicant controversy, a coalition of opponents arrayed against the order and agitating for its suppression.
Much of what has later been identified as particular to Franciscan theology, such as the unfettered sovereignty of God, the intrinsic goodness of creation, Christ’s 3 For an overview of this, see John Moorman, A History of the Franciscan Order from its Origins to the Year 1517 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), Maurice Carmody, The Franciscan Story (London: Athena Press, 2008). 3 absolute primacy and the relationship of the will and freedom, arose from these struggles.