John of Damascus in the Summa Halensis

Abstract

This chapter examines the quotations from John of Damascus’ De fide orthodoxa contained in the Summa Halensis, specifically in its section on the assumption of human nature in the Incarnation. Starting from contextual observations, the paper moves, in a first step, to an analysis of citations from the Damascene in Peter Lombard’s Sentences. The authoritative role of the latter writing meant that its often idiosyncratic use of the Damascene was passed on to later scholastics, such as the authors of the Summa. A detailed consideration of ten quotations from the Damascene in the Summa, which makes up the second part of the paper, reveals a complex pattern of reception. Passages from De fide orthodoxa were often taken out of context, truncated, or both, in order to serve as building blocks in the Summa’s own, dialectical presentation of a theological topic. In conclusion, the paper cautions against the conventional assumption equating the number of references to an authority in the Summa with their conceptual influence. The reader of the Summa Halensis is not only confronted with the extraordinary quantity of its literary achievement. Equally intimidating is the number of references made in this work of the early Franciscan school to a vast number of authorities: pagan, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian authors from antiquity up until their own time are cited, often with precise or seemingly precise references to the passages from which these citations have been taken. Among this huge number of intertextual references, quotations from the 8-century Greek-Arabic theologian John of Damascus make up a not inconsiderable part. According to the comprehensive index of citations which the Quaracchi editors of the Summa have prepared, there is a total of 591 references to the work of the Damascene.1 Almost all of them are taken from one book, his ̓́Εκδοσις ἀκριβὴς τῆς ὀρθοδόξου πίστεως.2 This summary of Greek Patristic theology had been translated into Latin under the title De fide orthodoxa by Burgundio of Pisa in the mid 12 century.3 Its impact on Western scholasticism was nearly  Doctoris irrefragabilis Alexandri de Hales Ordinis minorum Summa theologica: Indices in tom. I-IV (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1979), 148–50.  John of Damascus, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, vol. 2, Expositio Fidei, ed. Bonifatius Kotter (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1973).  Saint John Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa:Versions of Burgundio and Cerbanus, ed. Eligius M. Buytaert (St Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1955). In what follows, I use this title to refer to both the Greek and the Latin versions of John’s treatise. 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/10.1515/9783110685022-008 immediate not least because Peter Lombard made heavy use of this work in his four books of Sentences, a work of unrivalled influence in subsequent centuries. It is immediately evident that both the Lombard and 13-century writers, such as the author of the Summa Halensis, considered John a great authority. His work is cited alongside the most respected Patristic and medieval authorities, such as Augustine or Anselm of Canterbury even though these two thinkers and Augustine especially, admittedly, outrank the Greek theologian. Yet how influential was the Damascene on doctrinal and conceptual developments during this period? This question is much more difficult to answer than might first appear from the massive number of quotations from his work that were incorporated into the writings of his medieval readers. Part of the reason for this lies in the particular citation technique employed by early scholastic authors in which it is often far from evident what the function of a particular authoritative quotation is within a given argument. One way to address this difficulty is to pay closer attention to individual references within their context.What is quoted? Are quotations faithful to their original context (and indeed their original text, as far as we can make it out)? How are the quoted texts used in their new textual environment? My chapter will contribute to this study which, as far as I can see, has not so far been extensively undertaken, certainly not for the quotations in the Summa Halensis. For practical reasons, I could only analyse a small selection of citations. It is thus inevitable that more general conclusions can only be drawn with caution. Yet I hope that the tendencies emerging from my research may nonetheless be enlightening. As the basis for my investigation, I have chosen the section in Part 3 of the Summa which deals with the Incarnation. More specifically, I have focussed on those passages in which the Franciscan author deals with the notoriously difficult problem of Christ’s assumption of human nature and the character of the ensuing divine-human union. There are obvious reasons for this selection. These problems were at the heart of Eastern doctrinal debate and development between the 5 and the 8 centuries.4 John of Damascus’ magnum opus offers an excellent summary of the systematic outcome of these debates, at least on the Chalcedonian side. In the Latin West, Christology emerged as a major doctrinal problem during the 12 century.5 The amount of sophisticated Christological literature that existed in Latin up until that point which could be utilised in the ensuing discussions was limited.6 Nat Andrew Louth, ‘Christology in the East from the Council of Chalcedon to John of Damascus,’ in The Oxford Handbook of Christology, ed. Francesca Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 139–53.  Lauge Olaf Nielsen, Theology and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Gilbert of Porreta’s Thinking and the Theological Expositions of the Doctrine of the Incarnation during the Period 1130– 1180 (Leiden: Brill, 1982), 193–361.  The Christological controversy of the first millennium was essentially an Eastern affair in which some Latin theologians participated. Most of the latter, however, were thinkers with deep roots in the Greek intellectual tradition, such as Boethius or Facundus of Hermiane. 92 Johannes Zachhuber