When we think of all the manuscripts that witness to the period
spanning from the mid-thirteenth to the early fourteenth centuries – by most
accounts quite a short period of history – of those manuscripts whose primary
subject is theology, we are not often struck by the relationship between their
composition (if it is a collection, what reason lies behind the bringing
together of these texts?) and the person
who copied or brought together the collection (who was it? If they were of a
religious order, which?). So often we
look at texts and focus only on that part of the manuscript that interests us,
and so often our sense of the composition is undone by later rebinding. Looking into the relationship between
composition and the compiler (perhaps we want to say, to borrow Jacob Neusner’s
point about systematic thinking, that they are often ‘a composition, not merely a composite, held together
by an encompassing logic’ [Chapters in the Formative History of Judaism: Second Series: More
Questions and Answers (Lanham, MD, 2009), 79]) can
often yield some interesting information about the religious orders at work in
the universities: what figures were they interested in? what theological
questions were dominating the intellectual scene?
One of the many great things that Adolar Zumkeller has given us in
his various works on the Augustinian Order is a keen sensitivity to the
tightness of the community as it emerged in the thirteenth and early fourteenth
centuries. The constellation of the
students and teachers of the Order, at least initially, around Giles of Rome
(and of course, Augustine himself) served to show that the Order was keen to
establish itself through the strengthening of its members: Augustine and Giles
were not just particularly good people to study in order to become well versed
in theology; both figures were held up to support the spiritual growth of those
who were exercising their vocation to live according to the particular charism
of the Augustinian Order. Zumkeller
draws our attention to the focus of the Order on study, for ‘[t]he study of
sacred scripture was understood to be the most noble work of the friars, a kind
of divine service.’ (Adolar Zumkeller, Theology and History of the
Augustinian School in the Middle Ages, John E. Rotelle (ed), The Augustinian Series, vol. 6 (Villanova, PA:
Augustinian Press, 1996), 11) In fact, it was Giles’s
position that the ‘study of theology’, combined with ‘regular observance’,
would not only ensure the growth of the Order, but also the humility of the Order, as we read from
Giles in 1292: ‘Maintain and foster the study of theology with all your effort
because this, along with regular observance, is necessary for our Order to grow
and even to exalt in humility.’ (Analecta
Augustiniana IV (1911-1912) 203, as given in A. Zumkeller, Theology
and History of the Augustinian School (1996), 11). If the study of
theology were the means by which the Order would grow - not just in size, but
in spiritual formation - it shows that the interest shown in gathering together
reportationes of texts was key to
establishing a clear Augustinian
theology, as with the outstanding example of Vat. lat. 1086 where we find over 500
quaestiones from Paris compiled by
Prosper de Reggio Emilia in the second decade of the fourteenth century. This is to say, the development of a theology
that is informed by studying Augustine himself, under the direction and
guidance afforded by the works of Giles, which understands itself as
necessarily recording, preserving and even engaging with the theological
opinions of other, non-Augustinians in Paris.
Even though Zumkeller is keen to impress on us the seriousness with
which the Order was dedicated to forming students in Augustine through Giles of
Rome (ibid. 11-16), such an Augustinian
theology seems to demand of her students, not an attitude of being closed in
(an otherwise easy conclusion to draw), but an engagement with contemporary
intellectual debate – indeed a very Augustinian desire. It seems true also that this meant taking
particular note of those theologians who were espousing opinions which were
perceived to be, in some sense, Augustinian or of particular interest to
Augustinian theological concerns.
Meister Eckhart actually serves as a very good example of this: Vat.
lat. 1086 – certainly a manuscript that shows strong Augustinian principles - is
one of only two manuscripts that witness to Eckhart’s Parisian Questions, and
of all nine it contains six. Similarly,
the fragment of an otherwise unknown Eckhart text in Troyes found by P. Walter
Senner OP is given as a note to a Question by James of Viterbo – another
important and influential Augustinian. Clearly
Eckhart was considered important by the Augustinians by the early fourteenth
century. The other witness to Eckhart’s
Parisian Questions, Avignon Bibliothèque Municipale Ms. 1071, witnesses to the
first three, which have received much more attention for their content than any
of the others (notwithstanding the fact that Qq. VI-IX from Vat. lat. 1086 are
comparatively recently rediscovered), although this manuscript contains many
anonymous texts (some have been identified, see Alessandra Beccarisi’s note on
this manuscript in her article ‘Eckhart’s Latin Works’ in Jeremiah Hackett
(ed.) A Companion to Meister Eckhart
(Leiden: Brill, 2013): 85-124, here 91).
Perhaps Avignon, MS 1071 needs further exploration…
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