Theologizing Friendship. Nathan Sumner Lefler
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it instructs the reader of the arts, in the second, the reader of the Sacred Scripture” (Didascalicon, preface): hence, two different readers. Again: “The integrity of human nature, however, is attained in two things—in knowledge and in virtue and in these lies our sole likeness to the supernal and divine substance” (ibid., chapter 5). However ancient may be the distinctions between intellect and will, and between knowledge and virtue, the latter has become conspicuous by the early twelfth century, particularly in the schools—so much so that the two habits would appear to be quite separable (See, e.g., Aquinas, ST, I–II, q. 12, a. 1, to cite only one of many significant contexts.). If the grounds for this separation are already present in Aristotle, the chasm has undoubtedly deepened by the High Middle Ages.
84. Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 209–11, 218–20.
85. Ibid., 212.
86. Ibid.
87. Ibid., 213.
88. Ibid.
89. Ibid.
90. Ibid., 196.
91. Ibid., 197.
92. Ibid., 199.
93. It was, after all, precisely the egregious imbalance of scholarly attention, in conspicuous favor of scholastic theology, that propelled Leclercq into his life’s work in the first place. Should the suspicion lurk that a similar bias informs the current author’s perspective, it is sufficient to observe that, in that author’s opinion, Leclercq’s corrective enterprise, salutary and inspiring though it was, by no means accomplished a full righting of the vessel. There is, moreover, the gravest need in the academy for intellectual—and psychological—honesty with respect to one’s own presuppositions, notwithstanding the perennial need for such an “objectivity” as may adequately, one hopes, correct for one’s overweening prejudices.
94. I.e., “style biblique”: Leclercq, Aux Sources de la Spiritualité Occidentale, 276. Cf. also Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 62, as well as the whole of chapter 5 (“Sacred Learning”), 71–88.
95. “And, just as in music and in poetry, art consists in making ‘variations’ on simple yet rich themes, so the true worth of monastic language lies in its evocative powers. This could not be otherwise, since it is a biblical language, concrete, full of imagery, and consequently poetic in essence. But, although not abstract, these modes of expression must not be taken any the less seriously” (Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 54–55). Cf. also, e.g., 55, 59, 75, 134, 173, etc.
96. See ibid., 142, 175, 200, etc. We ought also to note here that monastic theology is profoundly liturgical, while scholastic theology is not. Of the monastic liturgy, Leclercq writes that “the liturgy . . . is the medium through which the Bible and the patristic tradition are received, and it is the liturgy that gives unity to all the manifestations of monastic culture” (Leclercq, The Love of Learning, 71). Leclercq’s complete silence regarding liturgy in the scholastic milieu, in a chapter entitled “The Poem of the Liturgy” (ibid., 236–54), is fairly deafening. Further inquiry into this elusive, yet enormously important distinction is beyond the scope of this dissertation. It warrants a study all to itself.
97. See ibid., 29–32, 67–68. Note that Leclercq does not use the term “erotic,” in this context, though there is no reason to avoid it in its strict denotation. Indeed, the monastic debt to Augustine, and through him, to Plato, argues strongly in favor of explicit scholarly consideration of the “erotics” of the Christian theological enterprise.
98. One need only thumb through the ST of St. Thomas to demolish the curious notion that the methodological hypothesis of scientific neutrality is invented by the thinkers of the seventeenth-century Enlightenment. This is not at all to deny that Thomas clearly acknowledges his own Christian presuppositions: on the contrary. Yet the methodological stance assumed at every stage of inquiry is one of a strict logical relationship between the various propositions adduced in constructing an argument.
99. Cf. the Latin verb forms suadeo and persuadeo, as well as the related noun forms suasio and persuasio.
100. For a thorough treatment of the argument from the Augustinian side, see Cavadini, “The Sweetness of the Word,” 164–81.
101. Leclercq offers a comparable, though not identical, set of criteria for “monastic culture” in Aux Sources de la Spiritualité Occidentale: “Tout d’abord, il y a des constantes culturelles monastiques. Lesquelles? Quels sont ces caractère déterminants et intrinsèques au monachisme? Il suffira ici de les énumérer. Il faut citer d’abord la liturgie, qui exerça une influence capitale sur le style de vie des moines de partout, par conséquent sur leurs préoccupations et sur leur style littéraire. Il faut nommer ensuite le culte de la Bible: la lectio divina est pratiquée dans les monastères plus qu’ailleurs et y fait apparaître un certain ‘style biblique.’ De plus un certain sens traditionnel fait que les moines se tournent spontanément vers le passé du monachisme, y compris celui de l’Orient, vers le passé de l’Eglise et les écrits des Pères: d’où un certain ‘style patristique.’ Enfin une certaine tendance ascétique et spirituelle, plus accentuée que dans les milieux de laïcs ou de clercs séculiers, se manifeste, par exemple, en une production poétique plus exclusivement religieuse, moins ‘mondaine’” (276–77).
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