書評 Philip Rosemann, The Story of a Great Medieval Book

Kuni君がRosemannについてツィットしていたので、以前書いた書評をのせてみる。

Philipp W. Rosemann, The Story of a Great Medieval Book: Peter Lombard's Sentences. Rethinking the Middle Ages v. 2. Peterborough, Ont: Broadview Press, 2007. 248 pp.

Rosemann’s concise overview of the reception history (Wirkungsgeschichte) of Lombard’s Sentences analyzes various abbreviations, glosses, and commentaries of the Sentences from the twelfth up to the fifteenth century. Since the Sentences elicited, next to Scripture, the largest number of commentaries, Rosemann’s attempt to offer a survey of its reception history in mere 193 pages seems to raise some suspicion. Nonetheless, Rosemann is not an incompetent scholar. He has written extensively on the subject of scholasticism (a major work on Peter Lombard in 2004), and he is also the main editor for the second volume of Mediaeval Commentaries of the Sentences of Peter Lombard: Current Research (Brill), which is to come out later this month. Rosemann’s vast knowledge in the field surprisingly but pleasantly resulted in the mixture of accessibility and comprehensiveness of the present volume.

The chapters are organized chronologically, starting from Lombard’s own period and ending with Luther’s commentary on Sentences in 1509-11. Rosemann’s objective is to describe the historical developments of Lombard’s work in terms of “a dialectical movement of expansion and contraction” (18). This notion of the tradition is derived from Denys the Carthusian (191-92). The Western Christian tradition expands as the Fathers comment on Scripture, and it contracts as Lombard writes Sentences. The tradition expands again as theologians comment on Sentences, and it, in turn, contracts again as Luther, along with the humanists, redefines it with the new understanding of the gospel.

The book begins with the intellectual background of the Sentences. Due to the growing professionalization of theology with the rise of universities, the style of reading Scripture shifted from a contemplative manner to a more systematic way. Rosemann regards Lombard’s work to be a transitional one in this process, “standing at the threshold between older approaches to theological writing and the developing movement of scholastic theology” (26). Lombard still utilizes many metaphors from Scripture rather than “the precise conceptual language of the scholastic master” (ibid.). Another aspect that Rosemann emphasizes is Lombard’s indebtedness to essentially Augustinian conception of thing and sign. The whole work is organized as a dialectical process of things (God in the book 1 and Christ in book 3) and signs (the Creation in the book 2 and the sacraments in the book 4). Lombard’s work resulted in various abbreviation and gloss. The initial attempt was to simply reiterate briefly the massive work so that students can learn and memorize it (Martin Bandinus and Filia Magistri). But the simple regurgitation soon developed into glosses that discussed somewhat dialectically with Lombard’s theological opinions (Pseudo-Poitiers, 41-51).

In the thirteenth century, Alexander of Hales began to use the Sentence as the textbook for ordinary lectures, which entailed the careful exegesis of the given work (61). This became the standard format in the medieval universities. The subsequent theologians all followed this format. Later in this century, Bonaventure and Thomas began to define to the nature of theology more scientifically. Bonaventure hesitantly conceived theology as scientific inquiry, havng three subjects: God, Chris, and the object of belief (75). Thomas pushed this tendency further by more consistently applying Aristotelian notion of science to theology. Thomas moreover attempted to do away completely with not only the contents of Sentences but also with its form, but he was not able to finish this project, and the subsequent generations still affirmed Sentences as the useful venue of theology.

The fourteenth and fifteenth century developments became much more complex as the nominalistic principles are being applied to theological science. In order to secure the freedom of God and his knowledge, Ockham and his followers tried to separate the knowledge of God, which can only be known through His revelation and theology as human science that requires a rigorous application of Aristotelian scientific method. The Christian tradition, as a result, diversified, and its expansion reached its apex. Following this expansion, theologians such as Marsilius of Inghen began to return to the core of the tradition. John Capreolus attempts a synthesis of Thomist with nominalism. Gabriel Biel tries to synthesize the whole scholastic tradition from a nominalistic perspective. This tendency leads to Luther’s reading of Sentences and his subsequent “discovery” of the principle that made an attempt to do away with the ever-growing diversities of the tradition.

Rosemann’s work is an ambitious one, for it tries to capture accessibility with comprehensiveness by offers a clear thesis of expansion and contraction of the western Christian tradition. G.R. Evans’ Mediaeval Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (Brill, 2002) and its second volume (Brill, 2009), which deals primarily with the receptions by Scotus and Ockham, should function as necessary further readings as this present work does not intend to be exhaustive.