The Summa Halensis: Sources and Context

Abstract

The Franciscan intellectual tradition as it developed before Bonaventure, and above all, Duns Scotus, has not been the subject of much scholarly attention over the years. By most accounts, Bonaventure’s forebears, and even Bonaventure himself, worked primarily to systematize the intellectual tradition of Augustine that had prevailed for most of the earlier Middle Ages.1 In contrast, Scotus is supposed to have broken with past precedent to develop innovative philosophical and theological positions that anticipated the rise of modern thought. Thus, Scotus and his successors have been the focus of many studies, while his predecessors are deemed largely insignificant for the further history of thought.2 This volume and another that accompanies it will make a case for the innovativeness of early Franciscan thought, which the editor has also advanced elsewhere.3 The contributions are based on proceedings from four conferences which were held over the course of 2018 and sponsored by the European Research Council. While these conferences concerned the early Franciscan tradition in general, their more specific focus was the so-called Summa Halensis, a massive text that was collaboratively authored by the founding members of the Franciscan school at Paris between 1236 and 1245, in an attempt to lay down a distinctly Franciscan intellectual tradition for the very first time. Although some final additions to the text were made in 1255–6, the Summa was mostly composed during the second quarter of the thirteenth century and thus within first 50 years of the existence of the University of Paris, which was founded around 1200 and served as the centre for theological study at the time. In countless respects, it laid the foundation for the further development of the Franciscan intellectual tradition The need for a text like the Summa was precipitated in part by the rapid growth of the Franciscan order—from 12 members in 1209 to as many as 20,000 by 1250—the