The Influence of Anselm of Canterbury on the Summa Halensis’ Theology of the Divine Substance

Abstract

The influence of Anselm of Canterbury can be found in all four parts of the Summa Halensis. It is true that among the hundreds of quotations of Anselm, the majority occur in the third part, on Christology, but the Franciscan authors of the Summa also found Anselm to be very useful in the first part, as well. The authors of the Summa drew especially from Anselm’s Monologion and Proslogion when discussing God as the divine substance. After examining how infrequently scholastic theologians in the generation before the Summa appropriated Anselm in their discussions of God’s existence and attributes, the essay demonstrates that the authors of the Summa engaged Anselm on a much more sustained level and drew from a much wider variety of Anselmian sources than did their predecessors. The theology of Anselm of Canterbury, after an uneven reception in the 12 century, exerted considerable influence on early Franciscan theologians in the first half of the 13 century.1 Anselm’s prayerful reflections on God’s attributes and existence in the Proslogion, the Trinitarian Persons in the Monologion, and his Christology and soteriology in the Cur Deus Homo resonated with such authors as Alexander of Hales, John of La Rochelle, Odo Rigaldus, William of Melitona, and Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, some, or all, of whom contributed either directly or indirectly to the compilation of the Summa Halensis.2 Scholars have noted the role Anselm’s thought has played in the areas of early Franciscan arguments for God’s existence,3 Trinitarian theology,4  See Enzo Marigliano, Anselmo d’Aosta: La vicenda umana di un grande monaco del Medioevo (Milano: Ancora, 2003), 229.  See Victorin Doucet, ‘Prolegomena in librum III necnon in libros I et II “Summa Fratris Alexandri”,’ in Doctoris irrefragabilis Alexandri de Hales Ordinis minorum Summa theologica, vol. 4 (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1948), cxxxiv-ccxlvii.  See Scott Matthews, ‘Arguments, Texts, and Contexts: Anselm’s Argument and the Friars,’ Medieval Philosophy and Theology 8 (1999): 83– 104 and Scott Matthews, Reason, Community and Religious Tradition: Anselm’s argument and the Friars (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 35–9, 50–73, 111–43; and Rega Wood, ‘Richard Rufus’s Response to Anselm,’ in Anselm and Abelard: Investigations and Juxtapositions, ed. G.E.M. Gasper and H. Kohlenberger (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2004), 87– 102.  See Matthew Levering, ‘Speaking the Trinity: Anselm and His 13-Century Interlocutors on Divine Intelligere and Dicere,’ in Saint Anselm—His Origins and Influence, ed. John R. Fortin (Lewiston, NY: The Edward Mellen Press, 2001), 131–43. OpenAccess. © 2020 Lydia Schumacher, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110685022-012 soteriology,5 and Christology.6 Focusing on the theology of Alexander of Hales, Aleksander Horowski has noted that, in his Gloss on Peter Lombard’s Sentences and disputed questions, Alexander cites Anselm 314 times, especially in discussions of free will and Christology.7 It is no surprise, then, that Anselm’s theology is a significant source in the Summa Halensis. In fact, not only does Anselm’s theology play an even more significant role in the Summa than it does in Alexander’s Gloss on the Sentences, but it also influences discussions on a wider variety of topics than those that scholars have recently examined. The Quaracchi editors, in their index of cited authorities, noted over 500 direct references to Anselm in Books 1 to 3 (and there are many more if one both includes Book 4 and adds Eadmer of Canterbury’s Liber de similitudinibus to the list of Anselmian material).8 This quantity approximates or exceeds the number of references in the Summa to the works of such authors as Ambrose of Milan, Bede, John of Damascus, and Bernard of Clairvaux. Although the Summa draws much inspiration from Anselm’s Cur Deus homo in its Christology and soteriology, this essay will examine another theological subject on which Anselm’s theological and philosophical insight was brought to bear, namely God’s existence and attributes. Of course, the Proslogion plays a role here, but the Summa draws from a wide variety of Anselmian texts to explicate how God’s attributes should be understood.When one juxtaposes how the Summa treats God’s existence and attributes with how earlier theological texts do so, one notices that the discussion of what the Summa calls the divine substance not only contains many more  See Hubert Philipp Weber, Sünde und Gnade bei Alexander von Hales: Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklung der theologischen Anthropologie im Mittelalter (Innsbruck/Wien: Tyrolia Verlag, 2003), 100, 162, 363–4, 378–9; and Robert Pouchet, La rectitudo chez saint Anselme: Un itinéraire augustinien de l’ame à Dieu (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1964), 252–9.  See Walter H. Principe, The Theology of the Hypostatic Union in the Early Thirteenth Century, vol. 2, Alexander of Hales’ Theology of the Hypostatic Union (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1967), 41, 116–7, 184–8, 196–8; Michael Robson, ‘Saint Anselm, Robert Grosseteste and the Franciscan Tradition,’ in Robert Grosseteste: New Perspectives on His Thought and Scholarship, ed. James McEvoy (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), 233–56; Michael Robson, ‘The Impact of the Cur deus homo on the Early Franciscan School,’ in Anselm: Aosta, Bec, and Canterbury: Papers in Commemoration of the Nine-Hundredth Anniversary of Anselm’s Enthronement as Archbishop, 25 September 1093, ed. D.E. Luscombe and G.R. Evans (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 334–47; Michael Robson, ‘Anselm’s Influence on the Soteriology of Alexander of Hales: The Cur Deus homo in the Commentary on the Sentences,’ in Cur Deus Homo: Atti del Congresso Anselmiano Internazionale, Roma 21–23 maggio 1998, ed. Paul Gilbert, Helmut Kohlenberger, and Elmar Salmann (Rome: Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo, 1999), 191–219; and Michael Robson, ‘Odo Rigaldi and the Assimilation of St Anselm’s Cur Deus homo in the School of the Cordeliers in Paris,’ in Saint Anselm of Canterbury and His Legacy, ed. Giles E.M. Gasper and Ian Logan (Durham: Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies; Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2012), 155–73.  Aleksander Horowski, La Visio Dei come forma della conoscenza umana in Alessandro di Hales (Roma: Istituto Storico dei Cappuccini, 2005), 16.  See Doucet, ‘Prolegomena,’ xci. 172 Aaron Canty