SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES III, CHAPTERS 131-135:

A RARE GLIMPSE INTO THE HEART AS WELL

AS THE MIND OF AQUINAS

LAWRENCE B. PORTER

Seton Hall University

South Orange, New Jersey

Introduction

BERNARDO GUI, Saint Thomas's thirteenth-century biographer, relates in his Legenda S. Thomae the story of how once upon a time Saint Thomas was seated at the table of King Louis IX of France. Far removed from mere dinner conversation, the scholar was absorbed in profound rumination on no less a problem than the existence of evil. Suddenly in the midst of the meal Aquinas came to an insight and "he struck the table, exclaiming: ' That settles the Manichees!'" 1 More than a century later Fra Angelico presents us with a comparable image of the saint though in an appreciably different setting, not a royal dinner table but a cloister walk. If the reader were to walk in the cloister garden of the priory of San Marco in Florence, he or she would eventually come upon a portrait of Saint Thomas painted by Fra Angelico (in the lunette above the door to the right of the entrance on the south side of the cloister). The saint stands erect facing the viewer, holding open upon his chest a book with the pages facing us so that we might read them. Saint Thomas is looking off into space, not distractedly but with concentration, with arched eyebrows and fixed gaze. It is as though he sees directly what we can only read about in the text of his open book.

1 The Life Of Saint Thomas Aquinas by Bernard Gui," in The Life of St. Thomas Aquinas: Biographical Documents, trans. and ed. Kenelm Foster (London, 1959), pp. 44-45.

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The image of Saint Thomas presented in these hagiographic and iconographic traditions is distinctly that of an intellect--at one time engrossed in speculative thought, at another time in mystic contemplation--but it is always the mind that is foremost engaged. The image is always that of the intellectual genius entirely taken up with recondite or divine ideas, far removed from this-worldly concerns or domestic distractions. These images cannot be easily dismissed, nor indeed should we want to do such a thing, for there is much truth in these images. Certainly Thomas was at times a mystic, and his powers of abstraction and concentration were nothing less than extraordinary. His own writings are the best witness to this. The method displayed therein--the dispassionate obj ectivity, the unrelenting logic, the economy of expression, the precise and telling distinctions, not to mention his encyclopedic knowledge of scriptural, mystical, and philosophical sources--makes for the impression of an almost disembodied intellect at work. No wonder he was given the title

angelic doctor " ! However, the problem with such images and titles is that they never allude to the fact that Saint Thomas also had a human heart and human feelings, and that these, too, could at times have had an effect upon his thinking, especially when his feelings had been hurt.

To illustrate this thesis, I propose to examine the interplay between thought and emotion, history and analysis, in the Summa Contra Gentiles III, especially as concerns Chapters 131-135. Chapters 131-135 constitute a small treatise on religious poverty and as such appear as a peculiarly recondite consideration amid Aquinas's much more general treatment there of the themes of divine providence and human freedom. I believe this peculiar feature can only be understood in relation to an historical controversy of the times, namely, the attack upon the new mendicant orders by the secular clergy. Indeed, I believe the true nuances of this small treatise can best be understood when it is seen more as the heartfelt response of Aquinas to a slur upon his dignity rather than as his dispassionate or purely reasoned response to a contest of ideas. Aquinas was once personally embarrassed dur-

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ing his professorship at the University of Paris when a student demonstration broke in upon a Sunday sermon of his with pamphlet literature that poked malicious fun at his considerable body size and privileged social status. And I believe it is this more than any logical considerations that dictates the theme and character of the treatise on religious poverty in Chapters 131-135 of the Summa Contra Gentiles III.

In order to make clear the precise offense and the precise quality of emotion in Aquinas's response, we must first survey here several analytical and historical themes. First we shall consider the character of the Summa Contra Gentiles III in general and the position and character of Chapters 131-135 in particular; there follows a treatment of the novelty of mendicant poverty in Saint Thomas's time, the attack upon the mendicants, and Aquinas's larger, more general defense of the mendicant way of life; finally, the more personal attack upon Aquinas is investigated in order to gain insight into the precise emotion in his final response in the mendicancy debate.

The Intellectual Proportions of the Summa Contra

Gen tiles III

As a piece of moral literature, Book III of Saint Thomas's Summa Contra Gentiles can be considered among the foremost works of ethical analysis produced by Western culture. The reasons for this are the breadth of its moral vision and the thoroughness with which that vision is articulated. Book III of the Sum ma Contra Gentiles sets forth a comprehensive vision of moral order embracing God and the universe as well as humankind, and elaborates that vision with logical consistency and precision of detail. It does this as a work of apologetical theology, that is, it presents itself as a rational defense of a principal tenet of Christian faith, namely, the Christian belief that existence--the world

--is neither haphazard nor perverse but the creation of an intelligence and will that informs and gives meaning to all its movements.

To grasp something of the proportions of the task which Saint

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Thomas had set for himself in Book III of the Summa Contra Gentiles we can compare it with Dante's Co media. Dante's poetic vision of the three moral orders, heaven, hell, and purgatory, concludes with these lines:

High phantasy lost power and here broke off;

Yet, as a wheel moves smoothly, free from jars,

My will and my desire were turned by love,

The love that moves the sun and the other stars.2

What Dante proclaims with artistic genius in language and images that delight the senses and stimulate the imagination, Saint Thomas must explain by means of rationally comprehensible terms and intellectually cogent arguments. And this is a most vital task; otherwise for a Christian to preach that it is love that moves the sun and the stars will sound like little more than mere poetic fantasy.

Saint Thomas's method is first to place at the head of his treatise the thesis to be demonstrated. The thesis is presented there in the form of a selection of Old Testament texts illustrating the essential points in the doctrines of providence and creation:

"The Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods" (Ps. 94:3). "For the Lord will not cast off His people" (Ps. 93 :14). "For in His hand are all the ends of the earth, and the heights of the mountains are His. For the sea is His and He made it, and His hands formed dry land" (Ps. 94:4-5).3

These Scripture passages dictate the outline of the treatise. Chapters 1-63 might well be called "the morality of God," for as an exposition of Psalm 94:3, "The Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods," it sets forth an image of God as a sovereign of omnipotent power and universal rule, but a power and rule that are without arbitrariness or oppression. God indeed has the power to move all, but He does this with eminent justice, setting forth an appropriate end for all things. With re-

2 Dante, Paradise, trans. D. L. Sayers and B. Reynolds (London, 1962), Canto XXXIII, vs. 142-145.

3 Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III: Providence, trans. V. J. Bourke

(Notre Dame, 1956), Vol. I, p. 31.

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spect to the human person this means God has the power to move by being an object of desire, thus respecting human freedom. Chapters 64-110 might well be called Saint Thomas's essay on "the morality of the universe or nature," for here he must reconcile the apparent randomness of nature with the Biblical text

For in His hand are all the ends of the earth, and the heights of the mountains are His. For the sea is His and He made it, and His hands formed dry land" (Ps. 94:4-5). Here the moral question reaches something of a high point in the problematic posed by natural disasters or the irrational processes of nature. In response, Saint Thomas poses the concept of secondary causality, that is, not everything that happens in this world can be blamed on God. An earthquake, for Saint Thomas, is not necessarily an act of God (insurance agents take note). Rather it is due to natural, that is, secondary causes. Finally, Chapters 111-163 demonstrates the thesis of Psalm 93:4, " For the Lord will not cast off his people." Accordingly, its sections demonstrate the means which God has provided for human moral action: the moral law (chs. 114-129), moral precepts (chs. 130-138), and punishment of moral transgression (chs. 147-163).

Here Saint Thomas's thought is, however, more than just an apologetics. It is also a theology of correlation, that is, a theology in genuine dialogue with sources other than revelation. Indeed, we would be misrepresenting Saint Thomas's thought here if we gave the impression that it was merely an exposition of Scripture. If this treatise can be understood as an exposition of the biblical texts cited in its prologue, we must also acknowledge there are long stretches of the Summa Contra Gentiles III that make little or no reference to Scripture and read more like a footnote to Aristotle's Physics. Even so, this fact requires careful qualification. Saint Thomas's appropriation of classical philosophy is no gross and simple importation or "baptizing" of pagan thought. The god of Aristotle and the God of the Sermon on the Mount have little if anything in common and Saint Thomas knew this. David Knowles observes:

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Aristotle, had he been restored to life to read the Summa Contra Gentiles, would have had difficulty in recognizing the thought as his. . . . While Aristotle, the empiricist, looked most carefully at the universe of being as it was displayed to the senses and intelligence, and explored in his Metaphysics the veins and sinews of substance, he became imprecise when he rose to consider mind and soul, and hesitant when he looked up towards the First Cause of all things. His God is a shadow, an unseen, unknown, uncaring force and reason necessary to give supreme unity to the Universe. . . . With Thomism, on the other hand, the infinitely rich, dynamic existential reality is God, the creator and source of all being by power and essence, holding and guiding and regarding every part of creation...4

Thus in Book III of the Summa Contra Gentiles, biblical faith is informed and rendered intellectually incisive by a raid upon, a selective appropriation of, the rich wealth of wisdom of pagans such as Plato and Aristotle.

But there is more to Book III than philosophy and theology; there is also history. Not everything here can be explained by recourse to philosophical or theological appraisal. For example, from the perspective of logical development, the subject matter of chapters 131-135 is quite gratuitous. Chapters 131-135 comprise a treatise on religiotis poverty. As a discussion of an appropriate Christian attitude toward material wealth they can stand on their own apart from their place in this treatise. But more importantly, for a reader contemporary with Saint Thomas, these chapters would have read more like a report on a contemporary debate, even a summary, erudite though it be, concerning one of the great social novelties of the day. For these chapters deal with one of the great, burning social issues of the time: whether there is any place for mendicancy, that is, pious beggars, in a Christian society.5

4 David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought (New York, 1962), pp. 257-258.

5 The English word "mendicant" comes from the Latin mendicant, mendicans which is the present participle of mendicare, "to beg," from mendicus, "beggar."

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Mendicant Poverty 6

The twelfth century in Europe witnessed the advent of something like a spiritual awakening in parts of the Church. A peculiar characteristic of this new spirituality was its emphasis upon evangelical or religious poverty, that is, a simplicity of life in imitation of the Sermon on the Mount's "Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap. . . ." The phenomenon exhibited itself in various and at times bizarre expressions. But two expressions--the Franciscan and Dominican orders--found not only legitimation but powerful approval from the highest authority within the Church. These were called mendicant or begging orders, because, unlike traditional religious orders (monastic communities), these new religious orders put aside manual labor, after the initial Franciscan venture, so as to dedicate themselves exclusively to evangelical work. Thus they depended upon the charitable support of others for their sustenance.

The Dominican Order to which Saint Thomas belonged had been originally conceived as a response to the Albigensian heresy, a medieval expression of dualistic Manicheism in the south of France. The Dominican order embodied a two-fold tactical response to the heresy: first, Dominic recognized the need for intelligent and articulate, well-educated preachers to combat the intellectual sophistries upon which the heresy was based--an elaborate, rationalistic explanation of the universe. However, Dominic also saw that intellectual arguments would not be enough. The Cathari or Albigensians were moral rigorists and thus had to be responded to not only on the level of ideas but also that of moral example. In fact, Dominic surmised that the failure of previous missionary efforts against the Albigensians had been in great measure due to the fact that the monks who preached against them represented the power and wealth of great monasteries, the intellectual refinement of a genteel culture. Thus Dominic formed the idea of a community of religious men who

6 For the history of the foundation of the Dominicans I have followed principally M. H. Vicaire, Saint Dominic and His Times, trans. K. Pond (New York, 1964).

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were not only well-educated, eloquent preachers, but whose personal lifestyle was one of austerity and discipline.

When we come to Saint Thomas however, we are now at least two generations removed from Saint Dominic's historical situation. The Dominicans are no longer a strategic missionary effort but a more general phenomenon in the church. In addition to disputing with heretics in the hinterland, they had now come to the great cities and were making a name for themselves as theologians in the great universities. But their general success had been much wider than this. At first these itinerant preachers were welcomed by bishops and local clergy for the assistance which they provided in the general ministry of preaching and cure of souls. But soon after these mendicants settled in a place problems arose: as preachers and counsellors, their learning made them more attractive than their diocesan or parochial counterparts; secondly, their mendicant or begging status meant they needed financial support which their numerous clientele were willing and grateful to supply. But this was support which normally would have gone into the local churches to the benefit of the local clergy. Such a situation was volatile and bound eventually to find a response. The response came from one who was both a university professor and a secular priest.

Attack upon the Mendicants 7

Guillaume de Saint-Amour was a priest of Grenville and a regent master at the University of Paris. When Guillaume became regent master, that is, full professor, in 1250, the Dominicans held two professorial chairs in the university faculty, one more than the early statutes of the university had allowed. Guillaume set about to amend this situation. But his aim proved to be more than just that of controlling the number of mendicant professors in the university. Rather he worked up a polemic that challenged

7 For the history of the controversy I have followed the chronology in

J. A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino (New York, 1974) A. J. Heinan, "William of Saint-Amour" in The New Catholic Encyclopedia 14 (New York, 1977), pp. 936-937; and D. L. Douie, The Conflict between the Seculars and the Mendicants (London, 1954).

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the very right of such religious orders to exist, arguments that portrayed these friars as a threat to the organizational structure of the entire church.

On February 4, 1254, the university, at Guillaume's instigation, declared the two Dominican professors suspended for not having participated in a general strike the previous year. The Dominicans had been able to contintie teaching because their order conducted private studia or " colleges " at the university for the training of their own men. These studia, though within the university environs, were administratively independent, and thus during a general strike they could continue their schedule unimpeded. About the same time as this formal expulsion, Guillaume produced his Liber de Antichristo et eius ministris, written ostensibly against the radical " Spiritual Franciscans," an apocalyptic and arguably heterodox offshoot of Francis of Assisi. But Guillaume's Liber was written in such a way that the "false teachers" and "false prophets" which he railed against bore an amazing likeness to contemporary Dominicans and Franciscans, the mainline mendicant orders.

In March of 1256, Guillaume followed up his first, oblique attack with a more precise and direct indictment in his De periculis novissimorum temporum. Here he argued quite openly and directly that these mendicants were a threat not only to the ecclesiastical order but to the general social order as well. These mendicants were interlopers in the vineyard usurping the proper functions of bishops and pastors. Guillaume argued that the office of preaching was given to bishops and pastors and that hearing confessions is of paramount importance to a pastor if he is to know his flock and their needs. However, Guillaume's most lethal shot was reserved for last. He argued that only those who have no other means to sustain themselves should be allowed to beg; any who are able should work for their living. Such reasoning, quite correct in itself, could only lead to the death of a religious order that depended upon the charity of the people for its sustenance and its labors. Guillaume's arguments were not without effect. They could not help but raise the thought on the part of bishops and parochial clergy that perhaps their prerogatives were

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indeed being usurped, their authority undermined; what place was there in the community for a group of men with such a lifestyle and ministry? Moreover, if one's own ministry was failing or less than it should be, here to hand was an easy explanation.

Within a few months of its publication, King Louis IX forwarded a copy of the De periculis to the papal curia for scrutiny of its arguments. However, mendicant representation at the curia was strong and Guillaume's work was condemned on October 5, 1256. The papacy was too convinced of the value and achievement of the mendicant orders to allow them to be impeded, much less suppressed. Even so, this did not stop Guillaume. In Paris, he continued to preach against the mendicants until in early 1257 the king exiled him from the city to his native village. Throne and papacy together were too much to battle and so the polemic subsided for several years until a change in the occupant of the papal throne seemed to proffer new hope.

In 1265 a Frenchman, Guy Foulques, cardinal archbishop of Narbonne, succeeded to the papal throne as Clement IV. Guillaume obviously felt a pope who was a native Frenchman might be more receptive to a complaint from native French clergy. In October of 1266 he sent the pope a new work entitled Collationes catholicae et can onicae Scripturae. It was really not so much a new work as a revision of Guillaume's De periculis though now expanded with more canonical and Scriptural citations. The work failed to convince, however, even with a French pope. But more importantly, the battle back in Paris had not been left leaderless. Gerard d'Abbeville, likewise a secular priest and professor at Paris, attacked the mendicants in a public disputation at about the same time that Guillaume was appealing to the new French pope. But the real battle did not begin until after Clement's death in November of 1268. A three year interregnum passed before the election of another pope and the anti-mendicant forces seized upon the opportunity which this vacuum of power seemed to create. In December of 1268, Guillaume railed against the mendicants in his sermons while Gerard d'Abbeville drew up his attack in another academic disputation in Paris. From

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here on, however, it was really Gerard who carried the brunt of the battle. And he did this with bold determination.

On New Year's day, 1269, Gerard preached from the pulpit of the Franciscan church in Paris. Before the assembled Franciscan community, which probably included Saint Bonaventure, Gerard proceeded to defend the wealth of the church in the face of what he claimed was a prominent and pernicious theory of evangelical poverty. The theory of poverty which he denounced was one of several interpretations given to religious poverty after the death of Francis and a subject which was hotly debated among his followers. It is obvious that Gerard hoped to stir up controversy among the Franciscans and defeat his enemies by dividing them against themselves.

Gerard's efforts soon turned literary. A few months later he published Contra adversarium per fectionis christianae, arguing that mendicant spirituality denigrated the status of laity and regular clergy. Gerard had written it twelve years earlier in the first phase of the conflict, but decided not to publish it at that time because of the condemnation of Guillaume's work. But now with no pope reigning, he could publish it with impunity. The work renewed the earlier polemic regarding the place of the mendicants in the church, repeating much of Guillaume's arguments from De periculis. However, it was innovative in two senses. It dropped the attempt to identify the mendicants with kindred though heretical spiritualist movements, only to add a new argument against them. While the Dominican constitution of the day had forbidden the reception of young men under the age of eighteen, the popularity of the mendicant vocation had become such that boys younger than this were in fact being admitted. But there were papal decrees, and recent ones at that, restricting the age at which a youth might take religious vows. Gerard accused the mendicants of gross violation of papal directives.

Defense of the Mendicants

The mendicant orders responded to all this with the considerable intellectual talents which were theirs, the most important

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contributions being made by Bonaventure and Aquinas. Guillaume's De periculis was published in March of 1256, at about the same time as Thomas's promotion to full professor of theology. Within weeks of Guillaume's publication, in April or May of 1256, Thomas chose the topic De opere manuali religiosorum for his first academic disputation as full professor. In this work he refuted Guillaume's contention that mendicants should perform manual labor like monks instead of preaching and teaching like secular clerics. A few months later, between September and October of that same year, Thomas produced his more formal reply to Guillaume's work.

Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem 8 was the work of a young professor who had arrived only recently in his academic position, a self-conscious work adhering strictly to proper academic style. Thomas was careful to restate all of Guillaume' s arguments, after which he proposed possible counter arguments, and finally delivered a lengthy determination to the question, much in the manner of a master deciding an academic debate. The work is full of very careful distinctions, for Thomas was attempting to do two things at once: to make a place for the mendicants in the church while at the same time not appreciably altering the existing structure. Thus he conceded the point that no one has a right to preach without permission of the bishop, but at the same time he insisted this does not prevent the bishop or the pope from extending this privilege to others.

When the second phase of the assault broke out in 1268, Thomas was no longer at Paris. He was at Viterbo, Italy, working on the first part of the Summa Theologiae. He had been assigned there just the year before when the Dominican general chapter decided there should be a suitable group of friars in residence at the papal curia (Pope Clement and his curia resided at Viterbo). But the master general of the order decided the trouble brewing in Paris required nothing less than the talents

8 English translation in J. Proctor, An Apology for Religious Orders (Westminster, Maryland, 1950).

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of Thomas, and thus he returned. For the next three years (1269-1272), the term of his second professorship in Paris, Saint Thomas would be much taken up with the anti-mendicant controversy. In fact, the principal burden of the controversy would be borne by the Lenten and Advent disputations between Thomas and Gerard d'Abbeville. This time, however, Saint Thomas was a much more self-confident and seasoned scholar.

Upon arrival in Paris, Thomas set about composing his reply to Gerard's Contra adversa riu m perfectio nis ch ristianae. Thomas's answer was no cautious point by point review and criticism but a formidable and organic treatise setting forth a complete theology of Christian perfection. For Thomas, "perfection" is nothing else than charity, and he was quick to insist this perfection is demanded of all Christians clergy and laity alike. However, he argued, there are some who freely vow themselves to such perfection by professedly denying themselves such things in life as make the attainment of perfection difficult, namely, wealth, the concerns of spouse and family, and one's own will-fullness: the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Thomas was careful to note that the Lord counseled these; he demanded them of no one. Those who take such vows are considered to be in the " state of perfection," not that they have attained it but that they are formally bound to it. Not only was Thomas's conception thoroughly conceived and well argued, but it was also very generous: " Thus it is evident that some people are perfect, who do not have a state of perfection, while others have the state of perfection, but are not perfect " (ch. 15).9

Chenu rightly judged this work to be "the most important and best constructed document of the whole debate." 10 But not only was it a work of serene intelligence and high theology, it was also as clever and calculated a ploy as Gerard's sermon with its intent to divide the Franciscans. The great part of the treatise is given over to an exposition of a theology of perfection, but in the final

9 Leonine edition of the Opera Omnia, Vol. 41, B (Rome, 1969).

10 M. D. Chenu, Toward Understanding St. Thomas, trans. A. M. Landry and D. Hughes (Chicago, 1964), p. 342.

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section Thomas, by a maneuver arguably more politic than theological, grants that bishops, too, are in a state of perfection. Such a thesis, with its omission of any reference to the secular clergy, could not help but be seen by Gerard as a provocation. And sure enough Gerard grabbed at the bait. In a rapidly written reply, Gerard labored theologically to claim the perfection of the secular clergy. And thus with a stroke of the pen Thomas had put his enemies on the defensive and diverted attention from the mendicants.

This method of diverting attack away from the medicants seems to have been the tactic which Saint Thomas decided to pursue from that point on. At the beginning of Lent. 1271, in the academic disputation De ingressu puero rum in religione, Saint Thomas gave his answer to the question of admitting young boys to religious life before puberty. In this work he never mentions the mendicant orders but instead considers the " immemorial custom of the Benedictines " by which he himself had been entrusted by his parents to the monks as a child. However, Thomas was not trying to win solely by means of diversion or changing the subject; quite the contrary, during this second phase he followed up his " serenely " theological works with vehemently polemical replies.

In January or February of 1270, Thomas came out with a new edition of his De per fectione spiritualis vitae. This time six new chapters had been appended in response to Gerard's criticism of the first edition. Here Saint Thomas's style was thoroughly polemical, as was the case in his Contra doctrinam retrahentium11 of summer 1271, wherein he answered specifically and point-for-point Gerard's accusations regarding the admittance of boys under-age to the mendicant communities. Here Thomas even resorts to the sort of tactics he might have seen in Jerome's Contra Jovinianum, labelling his enemies derisively as "the Gerardines" and suggesting that Gerard himself was a corruptor of youth by poisoning their minds against the mendicants.

11 See Proctor, An Apology for Religious Orders.

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Popular Hostility 12

If we stopped here in our account of the secular/mendicant controversy at the University of Paris we would be telling but half the story. The controversy was not fought solely in the academic arena, and the disputants were not limited to professors armed with treatises. The secular clergy pursued an assault upon the friars from several strategic points at once. We have seen something of the intellectual and legal aspects of this assault in the appeals to reason and authority (the hierarchy). But there was yet a third point of attack: an attempt was made to arouse popular hostility against the friars, and for this effort there was ready to hand a man of appropriate talents.

"Rustebeuf" is the pseudonym of a French medieval trouvère (fi. 1245-85). A characteristic element in his work was the incisive and often humorous depiction of the various social classes. In his satirical works his principal theme was the iniquities of the friars. Therein, he not only championed the cause of the university but he defended Guillaume of Saint-Amour when he was condemned and driven into exile. Nine of his poems were directly connected with the quarrel and may well be described as political pamphlets: La Discorde de l'Université et des Jacobins, La Dit de Guillaume de Saint--Amour, Du Pharisien, Com plainte de Guillaume, Des Règles, La Dit de Sainte Eglise, La Dit d'Hypocrisie, La Bataille des Vices con tre les Vert us, and Des faco bins.

These poems were copied as handbills and distributed at the taverns in and about the university. There they were read to the amusement of students and non-university people alike. That they were effective in their appeal is obvious:

The winter of 1255-56 was the severest the Dominicans at Paris had to endure. William and his colleagues ... had aroused not only the secular students of the university, but a section of the laity as well, to physical violence. No sooner was a friar caught sight of, wrote Humbert of Romans in April 1256, than he was surrounded

12 For the description of Rustebeuf and his poetry I am indebted to N. F.

Regaldo, Poetic Patterns in Rustebeuf (New Haven, 1978).

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by the human swarms that poured forth from every house and hostel in the narrow street, hurrying as if to a spectacle. Instantly the air was full of the "tumult of shontings, the barking of dogs, the roaring of hears, the hissing of serpents," and every sort of insulting exclamation. Filthy rushes and straw off the floors of the dwellings were poured upon the cowled head from above; mud, stones, and sometimes blows greeted him from below. Arrows had been shot against the priory, which had henceforth to be guarded day and night by royal troops.13

Thomas himself was not free from such harassment. We have a letter of Pope Alexander IV written on June 26, 1259, to Reginald Mignon of Corbeil, Bishop of Paris, wherein the pope condemns recent turbulence and scandal among the students of Paris prompted by "wretched little pamphlets, renowned for their infamy and slandering these same friars . . . both in literary and vernacular language, in indecent rhymes and songs."14 The pope singled out for censure a student leader, one Guillot of the Picard Nation (the French and Italian contingent of the University), who got up in the middle of a Palm Sunday (April 6, 1259) sermon by Saint Thomas and started to peddle pamphlets against the mendicants right there in the church.

Henry Denifle, in his edition of the letter, notes at this point that it is not easy to say precisely which pamphlet was distributed. However, there is one poem of Rustebeuf's which if it had been distributed that day would have been a particularly indicting one as regards the preacher. And since the leaflet was distributed so as to interrupt the sermon it might be argued there was some personal affront to Thomas intended.

The poem Des Règles,15 written early in 1259, has as its theme how the friars have enriched themselves at the expense of the parish priests. The poet illustrates his theme by means of a comparison of the library of a devout curé with that of the friars.

13 Weisheipl, p. 93.

14 H. Denifle and E. Chatelain, Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis (Paris, 1889), pp. 391: "alios libellos famosos in infamiam et detractationem eorundum fratrum ab eorum emulis in letterali et vulgari sermone necnon rismis et cantilenis indecentibus."

15 See Oeuvres Com plètes de Rustebeuf, Vol. I, ed. A. Jubinal (Paris, 1874), pp. 224-232.

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It is a scene of high melodrama: the one little book the devout curé needs to say his evening prayers is denied him, while the friars, who do not labor long at pious tasks, have many and well-edited texts. The curé must struggle just to get enough bread to eat, while the friars have fat bellies below their plump and rested faces. Rustebeuf exclaims, so as to be sure no one misses the point, "Without work they have wealth!

The portrait drawn of the friars certainly would not apply to all--not all would have books, not all would be fat--but it is a portrait that would have applied all too accurately to the preacher that Palm Sunday. Surely every effort was made to supply Thomas with whatever texts he needed and his corpulent physique of ample proportions was well known. But Rustebeuf's poem becomes even more pointed when he proceeds to develop his contrast of friar and parish priest by a description of the visit of one of the fat friars to the home of a poor parish priest.

The friar is haughtily condescending while the anxious parish priest does his best to serve up the meal in style. The friar's regal arrogance is contrasted with the truly apostolic if involuntary poverty of the priest. Is this an even more pointed satire of Thomas's noble lineage and the fact that even now as a mendicant friar he was the table guest of wealthy and powerful men such as the King of France? This portrait of a friar makes for an interesting contrast with Bernardo Gui's anecdote of Thomas's visit with King Louis for supper. Could Gui's stress upon Thomas's unwillingness to go--" Thomas wished to decline the invitation on the plea that he was busy with study and writing; but his prior, on behalf of the king, made him accept "--and the Saint's mental abstraction from the dinner be the hagiographer's attempt to repair the portrait of Saint Thomas popularized by Rustebeuf? Perhaps I am playing these materials for more than they will allow; however, there is evidence that Thomas was aware of the applicability of such a caricature to himself.

Thomas's pamphlet war with the secular priests on the faculty at the University of Paris was not limited in its significance to the small body of minor Thomistic literature which we have sur

262 LAWRENCE B. PORTER

veyed thus far. For example, Thomas's writings during the second phase of the conflict (1269-72), in the words of Chenu, "came to a serene conclusion" 16 in the articles of the Sum ma Theologiae dealing with the religious and pastoral states (2a2ae, 185-189). But the earlier phase of the conflict (1252-59) also had its ultimate fruition in high theology, namely in the treatise on religious poverty, chapters 131-135, of the Summa Contra Gentiles III.

The title of Chapter 131 is " On the error of the attackers of voluntary poverty." And the catalogue of objections to evangelical poverty listed there is identical with that which Saint Thomas employs in his Contra impugnantes in response to Guillaume's De periculis. However, the other chapters of this section also betray that earlier historical conflict in a less obvious though perhaps more telling way.

In Chapters 131-135 Saint Thomas is as disciplined and unemotional as ever. Here reason reigns supreme. In reviewing the various defenses given throughout history for a religious sense of poverty, Saint Thomas concedes nothing to history. Instead of listing the arguments in the sequence of their historical development, he lists them according to their intellectual character. Thus he gives first consideration to the arguments of cenobitic monasticism of the patristic era because these are speculative, and he considers Saint Paul's arguments last because they argue purely from convenience and practical concerns. Nor does Thomas concede anything here to authority, dismissing Paul's argument in II Thessalonians (3 :8) with the remark, "this way of living does not seem to be appropriate." Nor does Saint Thomas hesitate to quote Scripture against itself, as when he quotes Paul's "the Lord ordained that they who preach the gospel should live by the gospel" (I Cor. 9:13) as a defense of evangelical poverty.

Thomas himself in his own answer to the problematic appeals only to reason, arguing that riches in themselves are neither good

16 Chenu, p. 342.

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nor bad, rather it is in how we use them that morality resides. Thus discretion is the important virtue here.

However, the most important point here is that when these passages are read in the historical context we have described, certain words and phrases take on an emotion otherwise not recognizable. For example, in Chapter 132, "On the ways of life of those who practice voluntary poverty," at one point Saint Thomas makes reference to:

those who have devoted themselves to the pursuit of wisdom, but who have been reared in wealth and comfort, which they have left behind for the sake of Christ.

It is an obvious autobiographical reference, a rare occurrence in Saint Thomas's work! Admittedly, however, it is hardly obtrusive to a modern day reader. Indeed it appears to us so oblique that we might pass it over, except that when the passage is read in the context of the historical drama we have recognized as its background the passage takes on a great precision not only of meaning but emotion.

The moral example offered in chapters 131-135 to illustrate Saint Thomas's teaching regarding human discretion in matters which do not fall under precise moral law is entirely gratuitous. Saint Thomas could have illustrated his point here by many other examples. However, he chose to illustrate it with the example of religious poverty. This was an eloquent tactical response to his enemies' derision of his ideal of religious poverty by means of satirical tavern rhymes. In response, Saint Thomas chose to enthrone, as it were, the doctrine of religious poverty amid his most serious ethical analysis of the human situation. There it stands alongside his doctrines of God and the universe, at the high point of his treatise on the morality of the human person. One can conclude there is poetry and not mere logic or calculation in this design. Indeed, it can be called nothing less than poetic justice. It is something like reparation for injured pride. It shows as much Saint Thomas's heart as his mind.