Medieval Exegesis, vol. 3: The Four Senses of Scripture

By Henri de Lubac

For many years biblical scholars were convinced that the Middle Ages was marked by a so-called pre-critical understanding of the Bible, with only a handful of isolated exceptions -- like Andrew of St. Victor -- popping up as precursors of the historical-critical method. Here, however, Henri de Lubac draws on extensive documentation to demonstrate that even among the Victorines traditional exegesis involving an interplay between the literal and spiritual senses of Scripture is a constant throughout medieval exegesis. The one exception -- a radically important one, de Lubac readily admits -- was Joachim of Flora, whose doctrine is considered in the final chapter of this volume.

This third English volume of de Lubac's monumental Medieval Exegesis covers volume 2, part 1 of his French volume and includes both the original Latin notes and an English version of the sources.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Sep 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781467466967

Henri de Lubac

(1896-1991) A leading figure in twentieth-century RomanCatholicism. He was named a cardinal by Pope John Paul IIin the mid-1980s.

Book preview

Front Cover of Medieval Exegesis, Volume 3

The middle years of the twentieth century marked a particularly intense time of crisis and change in European society. During this period (1930-1950), a broad intellectual and spiritual movement arose within the European Catholic community, largely in response to the secularism that lay at the core of the crisis. The movement drew inspiration from earlier theologians and philosophers such as Möhler, Newman, Gardeil, Rousselot, and Blondel, as well as from men of letters like Charles Péguy and Paul Claudel.

The group of academic theologians included in the movement extended into Belgium and Germany, in the work of men like Emile Mersch, Dom Odo Casel, Romano Guardini, and Karl Adam. But above all the theological activity during this period centered in France. Led principally by the Jesuits at Fourvière and the Dominicans at Le Saulchoir, the French revival included many of the greatest names in twentieth-century Catholic thought: Henri de Lubac, Jean Daniélou, Yves Congar, Marie-Dominique Chenu, Louis Bouyer, and, in association, Hans Urs von Balthasar.

It is not true — as subsequent folklore has it — that those theologians represented any sort of self-conscious school: indeed, the differences among them, for example, between Fourvière and Saulchoir, were important. At the same time, most of them were united in the double conviction that theology had to speak to the present situation, and that the condition for doing so faithfully lay in a recovery of the Church’s past. In other words, they saw clearly that the first step in what later came to be known as aggiornamento had to be ressourcement — a rediscovery of the riches of the whole of the Church’s two-thousand-year tradition. According to de Lubac, for example, all of his own works as well as the entire Sources chrétiennes collection are based on the presupposition that the renewal of Christian vitality is linked at least partially to a renewed exploration of the periods and of the works where the Christian tradition is expressed with particular intensity.

In sum, for the ressourcement theologians theology involved a return to the sources of Christian faith, for the purpose of drawing out the meaning and significance of these sources for the critical questions of our time. What these theologians sought was a spiritual and intellectual communion with Christianity in its most vital moments as transmitted to us in its classic texts, a communion that would nourish, invigorate, and rejuvenate twentieth-century Catholicism.

The ressourcement movement bore great fruit in the documents of the Second Vatican Council and deeply influenced the work of Pope John Paul II.

The present series is rooted in this renewal of theology. The series thus understands ressourcement as revitalization: a return to the sources, for the purpose of developing a theology that will truly meet the challenges of our time. Some of the features of the series, then, are a return to classical (patristic-medieval) sources and a dialogue with contemporary Western culture, particularly in terms of problems associated with the Enlightenment, modernity, and liberalism.

The series publishes out-of-print or as yet untranslated studies by earlier authors associated with the ressourcement movement. The series also publishes works by contemporary authors sharing in the aim and spirit of this earlier movement. This will include any works in theology, philosophy, history, literature, and the arts that give renewed expression to Catholic sensibility.

The editor of the Ressourcement series, David L. Schindler, is Gagnon Professor of Fundamental Theology and dean at the John Paul II Institute in Washington, D.C., and editor of the North American edition of Communio: International Catholic Review, a federation of journals in thirteen countries founded in Europe in 1972 by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Jean Daniélou, Henri de Lubac, Joseph Ratzinger, and others.

volumes published

Mysterium Paschale

Hans Urs von Balthasar

The Heroic Face of Innocence: Three Stories

Georges Bernanos

The Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma

Maurice Blondel

Prayer: The Mission of the Church

Jean Daniélou

On Pilgrimage

Dorothy Day

We, the Ordinary People of the Streets

Madeleine Delbrêl

The Discovery of God

Henri de Lubac

Medieval Exegesis, volumes 1-3: The Four Senses of Scripture

Henri de Lubac

Letters from Lake Como: Explorations in Technology and the Human Race

Romano Guardini

Divine Likeness: Toward a Trinitarian Anthropology of the Family

Marc Cardinal Ouellet

The Portal of the Mystery of Hope

Charles Péguy

In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

In the Fire of the Burning Bush: An Initiation to the Spiritual Life

Marko Ivan Rupnik

Love Alone Is Credible: Hans Urs von Balthasar as Interpreter of the Catholic Tradition, volume 1

David L. Schindler, ed.

Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Theological Style

Angelo Scola

The Nuptial Mystery

Angelo Scola

Book Title of Medieval Exegesis, Volume 3

Originally published as

Exégèse médiévale, 3: Les quatre sens de l’écriture

© 1961 Éditions Montaigne

English translation © 2009 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

All rights reserved

Published 2009 by

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505 /

P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K.

Printed in the United States of America

15 14 13 12 11 10 09 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lubac, Henri de, 1896-

[Exégèse médiévale. English]

Medieval Exegesis / Henri de Lubac; translated by E. M. Macierowski.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents: v. 3. The four senses of scripture.

ISBN 978-0-8028-4147-6 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Bible — Criticism, interpretation, etc. — History — Middle Ages, 600-1500.

I. Title.

BS500.L82513 1998

www.eerdmans.com

This volume is respectfully dedicated to the Most Reverend James P. Keleher Archbishop Emeritus of Kansas City in Kansas.

Nihil obstat

Imprimatur:

†Joseph F. Naumann

Archbishop of Kansas City in Kansas

January 16, 2007

Contents

Translator’s Preface

List of Principal Abbreviations

1. Berno of Reichenau

2. Subjectivism and Spiritual Understanding

3. A Lineage Stemming from Jerome?

4. Hugh of Saint Victor

5. The Victorine School

6. Joachim of Flora

Notes

Translator’s Preface

This third volume of the late Henri Cardinal de Lubac’s Medieval Exegesis is dedicated to the Most Reverend James P. Keleher, Archbishop Emeritus of Kansas City in Kansas, who has provided important moral support when it was most needed.

I should like to thank Mr. William B. Eerdmans, Jr. for his patience and prayers when our five adoptive children Jacob, Jeremiah, Janea, David, and Hailey joined Carol and me in the midst of this project. Perhaps readers of this book may continue to pray for our expanded family.

Special thanks are due to Benedictine College for providing a semester’s sabbatical leave in the spring of 2006, enabling me to resume focused work on this book, to Dr. Jean Rioux, Chair of the Department of Philosophy, Dr. Richard White, Chair of Theology and Head of the Division of Humanities (who also read all of volume 2 and a portion of volume 3), and Dr. Kimberly Shankman, Academic Dean of Benedictine College, for supporting my application for the sabbatical. Dr. Barbara Baumgartner, Professor Emerita of French, read through a draft of this volume, and my student Mr. Leven Harton provided a typed transcription of the Latin texts in volumes 3 and 4.

Finally, by happy accident, this volume is being completed just in time to contribute to the sesquicentennial celebration of the founding of St. Benedict’s Abbey, which, along with Mount St. Scholastica Monastery, is the co-sponsoring institution of Benedictine College.

E. M. MACIEROWSKI

Atchison, KS

List of Principal Abbreviations

1. Journals

2. Anthologies, Collections

Clement and Origen (Or.) are cited for the most part according to the editions of the Leipzig-Berlin Corpus: Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte; they are indicated only by the page of the volume containing the work cited. The same is true for certain Latin authors cited according to the editions of the Vienna Corpus: Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum.

3. Certain Frequently Cited Works

CHAPTER ONE

Berno of Reichenau

1. The Indignations of Berno

The pieces of evidence brought up toward the end of the preceding volume have surely not slipped past all historians of hermeneutics and exegesis. The Catholic historians are generally more attentive to them than the rest, and, if they were the only ones at issue, many pages of this work would be pointless. It is true that the undiscerning disrepute that the symbolic functions of thought have finally fallen into has not completely ceased to hide from us the extent and the quality of the immense field in which, in the twelfth century, symbolism developed as an organic expression of earlier ages. Father Chenu has asserted it again just yesterday. It is equally true that certain later blemishes, being added to certain original vices and certain ever-present faults, for many good minds compromise the intellectual value and even the Christian value of doctrines whose essence is badly disengaged.¹ Nevertheless, for some time, very great progress has been made in trying to understand as well as do justice to the ancient forms of Christian thought and especially to biblical exegesis. Day by day, the historical works of Dom Jean Leclercq, along with divers studies by Dom J. Gribomont, Father Jean Châtillon, J.-P. Bonnes, and many others, the vigorous syntheses by Father Louis Bouyer, the new interpretations of the evolution of medieval thought advanced by Father Chenu himself in writings where an open-minded receptivity often engenders an astonishing clarity of understanding, have happily begun to disturb the slumbers of our modern self-sufficiency. We are already a little bit less cocksure that the intellectual syntheses that have preceded our own could be merely childishness, as some would have us believe, particularly philosophers whose judgment spares none of the authentic forms of our faith. We are beginning to understand better that medieval symbolism is the evidence and the effect of a sense of the sacred in full flower² and that, in its application to Scripture, it manifests a deep understanding of the Christian mystery in continuity with the great patristic epoch. We are noticing that it is a complex affair and we are no longer tempted to reject it as something wholly irrational. We can from now on hope for this: that after sometimes allowing themselves to be annexed, in their judgments in sacred matter, by a narrowly secularist science, Christian scholars will succeed little by little at enlarging or setting this very science right. They will nevertheless have to resign themselves to the fact that not everything that touches on the history of their faith will ever be entirely grasped by historians whose mind has been shaped by an unbelieving society.

Today, in the history of exegesis as most scholars, even the most penetrating, usually reconstitute it, there is one point regarding which there seems to be at least some exaggerated emphasis. Something like two currents are generally distinguished among the numerous interpreters of the holy Books who lived between the seventh and the thirteenth centuries: the greater of these would display itself in broad daylight and flow in great torrents, whilst the other at first would be merely a thin trickle of water, hidden and almost subterranean. The first would be the river — or perhaps it might better be called the marsh — of common opinion; the second, the harbinger of promise, would just scarcely force its way along its bed in opposition to the spirit of the age.³ Toward the beginning of the twelfth century, this second current increased in power and amplitude and came to initiate a general change of orientation in exegesis. Accordingly, for the historian it would become a question not only of locating a certain number of isolated writers, distant precursors of the critical and purely literal exegesis of modern times, but also of establishing in a precise manner a transvaluation that came about in the relations between historia and allegoria. This reversal of value would take place particularly with Hugh of Saint Victor and in his school.

In 1922, and then in 1935, Father Mandonnet observed the birth, starting in the eleventh century with Berengar of Tours, and then the strengthening, during the first decades of the following century with Peter Abelard, of an intellectual movement that tended to replace the then-dominant symbolic theology with a theological science at last worthy of the name. This new movement appeared to him a healthy reaction against the unrestrained allegorism in the exegesis of the age. Saint Anselm, Abelard, and Hugh of Saint Victor have, he said, made their protest be heard: thus were opened the paths to the new theology as well as to the new exegesis which would soon impose themselves in a single decisive step.⁴ Taken in its generality, this historical epitome contains much truth. But instead of getting the additions and corrections that would have fine-tuned it, it seems itself to have been imposed to excess. The disputable parallelism between the developments of rational dialectic and the transformations of hermeneutics has been turned into a system. Some have tried to highlight the supposedly preponderant role of Hugh of Saint Victor, but without defining it exactly enough. A little after Father Mandonnet, Fathers Paré, Brunet, and Tremblay called attention to a detail which, though not entirely novel, at least deserves to be emphasized owing to its new importance: the fact that the founder of the Victorine school wanted us to begin by studying Scripture according to its letter.⁵ Soon Father Joseph de Ghellinck also wrote, as if there were a question of some paradoxical contrast, that Hugh bases his dogmatic synthesis upon the historical order of biblical history and the history of the world in depicting his strong tendencies toward symbolism.⁶ For Father Hughes Vincent, who, to be sure, is speaking chiefly as a reporter, it is Hugh of Saint Victor who will then more exactly define the attitude of the exegete toward Scripture: the literal sense lies at the base and is neatly distinguished from the spiritual, allegorical, or tropological sense.⁷ At the conclusion of more detailed analyses, Father C. Spicq presents an enlarged picture of the evolution that has been accomplished. He judges that Hugh, in fact much more precise than the majority, had made great progress toward this theory of the scriptural senses, which had been stagnant from the time of Rabanus Maurus, and he attributes this progress, of which the literal sense is the great beneficiary, to the fact that the Victorine master could deliberately commit himself no longer to the school of Saint Augustine or of Saint Gregory, as did almost all his predecessors, but rather to that of Saint Jerome. Such progress, he adds, was moreover being prepared for a long time. Little by little, since around the eighth century, the authority of Saint Jerome, patron of literal exegesis — Father Spicq seems to understand ‘literalist’ — had gained ground while that of Saint Gregory correspondingly fell back. One could follow in the trail of this line stemming from Jerome, a trail blazed with the names of Paschasius Radbertus, Christian of Stavelot, Berno of Reichenau, Bruno of Segni, Rupert of Deutz, making in-roads into the trend then most in favor. Finally, a bit before the middle of the twelfth century, notably in the school of Saint-Victor, there would come to appear in broad daylight that independence as regards the traditional method and that spirit of exegesis stemming from Jerome which were ultimately to triumph in the following century with Saint Thomas Aquinas.⁸ Such, too, in its large outlines, is the thesis of Miss Beryl Smalley, whose work is, in other respects, so valuable. In her less measured boldness, Miss Smalley does not even see the progress of the study of Scripture or of biblical science except in the abandonment of theological commentary and in the pure and simple rejection of the patristic distinction between the literal sense and the spiritual sense in favor of the literal sense alone.⁹

These judgments have made a sometimes excessive impression, it seems, even upon excellent specialists: Father R. E. Brown,¹⁰ for example; so too, quite recently, Father Roger Baron.¹¹ Further, here as elsewhere, it comes about that the masters serve as a warning, despite themselves, to disciples less respectful of the complexity of things. In that way one ends up with astonishing schemes in works whose particular erudition is not in dispute. For example, up to the twelfth century, we are told, allegory would be attached only to the words of the New Testament and to the properties of things; Hugh of Saint Victor was the first to advocate an allegory based upon the historical realities of the Old Testament as figures of those of the New; and again: The method inaugurated at Saint-Victor is characterized by solidly establishing the literal or historical sense before rising to the spiritual sense, and thus by a break with the purely spiritual explication of the ancient monastic commentaries.¹² Or else one alleges that the exegesis of the twelfth century differs toto caelo from that of the previous centuries, that it finally becomes purely literal in certain works of the Victorines Hugh and Richard, and, in the course of this century of transition, one even imagines a struggle between two doctrines of interpretation, the one characterized by the admission of three senses in all, the other by the admission of four, until the second finally carried it off to rule alone.¹³ We now find ourselves in a novel. Or again, after having spoken of a degradation and a rottenness of the symbolic exegesis in the times that precede Hugh of Saint Victor’s entry on the scene, one shows him coming at last to warn the theologian that he can propose an authentic explication of the divine mysteries only by respecting the historical sense of revelation.¹⁴ We are on the way to pamphleteering, to boot.

A very informed historian of ideas, habituated to weighing the texts carefully, Father M.-D. Chenu, who has lately produced a multitude of extremely suggestive works on the change of attitudes and methods during the twelfth century, having collected what is essential in his magisterial work on Theology in the Twelfth Century, shows himself to be infinitely more circumspect. Nevertheless, he does not content himself with vigorously highlighting the historicist reaction of Hugh of Saint-Victor against the premature allegorization of the scriptural texts, as well as his major principle of founding historically all reflection on the biblical economy.¹⁵ He also believes that he can discern in this reaction a completely new orientation impressed upon exegesis at its encounter with the till-then predominant authority, and, in the affirmation of this principle, a requête, an appeal that might be appropriate to the théologiens victorins. These latter, not without struggles, would have ended by carrying it off. We shall have to accept the conclusions of Father Chenu, as well as those of some of his predecessors, at least in part. But before following the fortunes of the fourfold sense through the scholastic period and up to modernity, we must first of all examine one after the other, in their totality, the two conjoined theses relating to the lineage stemming from Jerome and to the innovations of the school of Saint Victor. Such will be almost the only object of the first volume of this second part (Chapters One to Five). In a final chapter (Six), we shall ask ourselves whether the work of Joachim of Flora, at the very end of the twelfth century, represents the supreme (and unfortunate) effort of the traditional allegorism, or if it might not rather have traced out some new and aberrant path.

Among the isolated precursors of the Victorine movement such as he believes he can reconstruct it, Father Spicq attaches major importance to the one who would perhaps be the most isolated of all: Berno, monk of Prüm, subsequently twenty-ninth abbot of Reichenau from 1008 to 1048, at the time of the apogee of this famous abbey which Walafrid Strabo had long ago celebrated.¹⁶ Hence we shall begin with him.

This Berno, who was in regular contact with the chief theologians of his age and who played an important role at the Council of Constance of 1043, has nevertheless not been judged worthy of the least notice in the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, nor again in the Dictionnaire de la Bible or its Supplément. This is a grave and unpardonable omission, if Father Spicq is right. For, he tells us, Berno, addressing himself to the exegete in one of his opuscula, formulates the prohibition (surprising for the epoch) against substituting one’s own personal sentiment for the meaning of the sacred text. Is that not to manifest in almost revolutionary fashion a more genuine concern with the literal sense against then almost unanimous tendencies?¹⁷ One will be unusually surprised, writes Berno’s historian once again, "to hear, in the eleventh century, Berno of Reichenau expressing this principle, which, unfortunately, he did not have occasion to put into practice: ‘O prudent reader, always beware of a superstitious understanding, so that you do not adjust the Scriptures to your own sense; join your sense to the Scriptures.’"¹⁸

Ought not the brief writing in which this golden maxim is found serve to inaugurate the critical method in exegesis — or at least to reconnect the chain after the barbarian ages that had interrupted it? No contemporary would have dreamed of prohibiting a reader to substitute his own personal sentiment for the sense of the sacred text. Father Spicq insists on it. Subsequently, ought we not then to regard this miraculous De varia psalmorum atque cantuum modulatione as the unique work of criticism, properly speaking, of the Middle Ages?¹⁹

Let us own up right away: I do not believe it. Neither in this opusculum in general nor in the two lines that have been cited from it do we discern such great originality. We scarcely find any critique in it, any more than we see all the other men of that time so smitten with their own personal sentiment. Berno is evidently putting his reader on guard against a certain sort of subjectivism in the manner of treating the sacred text. But what, according to him, does this subjectivism consist in? Does it consist in the search for, or at least in an excessive practice of, the allegoric sense? To understand him in this way, perhaps it is necessary to begin by committing oneself to the belief that all allegory is, to a greater or lesser degree, subjective fantasy. Now whatever be the factual basis for such a belief, it would seem in fact quite astonishing in a Benedictine abbot of the eleventh century. So if one admits provisionally with Father Spicq that Berno did not have occasion to put his principle into practice and thereby to clarify for us its true significance, one might legitimately doubt whether this significance is indeed the one that has been proposed to us. But let us examine things a bit more closely.

First of all it is necessary to make it clear that this De varia … modulatione is not in fact one treatise, but a mere collection, whose unique title ill befits its content. Someone acting under conditions that remain unknown has combined several of Berno’s little disquisitions on neighboring but different topics. To make it into something that looks like one work, one had to make certain adjustments in the conclusions and the incipitsof each disquisition. This is what appears from an unfortunately incomplete letter of Berno himself that was published by Dom P. Blanchard in 1912.²⁰ The abbot of Reichenau is sending, as was his custom, his latest productions to his friend the emperor Henry III.²¹ He tells him:

Here are a few series of accounts, which though they smack but little of the salt of wisdom, nevertheless I have put down, having been overcome by love of those who were anxious to ask about this matter, namely, on the dissonant interpretation of the Roman Psalter and the Gallican Psalter that we use; on some utterances of Isaiah the prophet; on verses less befitting their responses; on antiphons or responsories not regularly or fittingly corresponding to each other; on the alleluia intermission and the words of its chants….²²

Here we have five quite distinct titles. The first corresponds to Chapters I to V of the De varia modulatione as we actually have it. The second corresponds to Chapter VI; the third, to Chapters XII and XIII; the fourth, to Chapters IX and X; and finally, the fifth, to Chapter XI. There remain then Chapters VII and VIII, to which, at least at first sight, none of the five titles enumerated by Berno in his letter to Henry III would seem to belong. Perhaps they might complete the first of the five treatments. Perhaps, too, there might be a sixth little treatise that would be a little earlier or a little later than the five others. These two chapters might even have originally been independent of each other. For Chapter VII protests against the use of non-scriptural pieces in the liturgy or the use of the words of the Bible in a sense alien to them, whereas Chapter VIII is concerned with some corrections that some people wanted to bring to the sacred text under the pretext of grammar. The long initial sentence of this Chapter VIII — the one that chiefly held our attention just now — is a transitional sentence, which might therefore not even be, as such, by Berno himself.²³ In any case it seems to us to sum up clearly, on the one hand, the second of the two complaints laid out in Chapter VII, and on the other hand, the new complaint which now becomes the object of all of Chapter VIII. As we shall see, then, he is speaking of two distinct things, and it is in this sense fitting to take the conjunctive particle ‘et’ which we are about to emphasize. Nevertheless what restores the unity is the fact that, in the judgment of our abbot, the same men become guilty of the two different abuses that he denounces, and in both cases it is the same motive that drives them, namely, a desire for worldly wisdom:

And strangely, when certain men of this world want to seem and to be wise, they try to bend the words of sacred Scripture to their own sense, and (et) they chant the words that … the Wisdom of God itself brought forth through itself or that the Holy Spirit … foretold, in another manner — by changing them so as to follow Donatus and Priscian.²⁴

Let us now go back to the sentence that Father Spicq focuses on. It is found in the last paragraph of this same Chapter VIII. We note immediately that Berno had no desire to innovate or to express any bold opinion. Quite the contrary. Under the form of urgent advice, he recalls a principle that he does not at all regard as personal, a principle not of a new science, but rather of an ancient wisdom. For here is how he introduces it: Attendentes quod quidam sapiens admonet dicens: Prudens lector, semper cave, etc. ["Paying close attention to what a certain wise man (quidam sapiens) reminds us of, saying ‘O prudent reader, always beware, etc.’]. We shall look further on to find out what sort of person this quidam sapiens might be. In our opinion, there is nothing in the text, as it is presented, to show or even to insinuate that Berno might want to react against the insufficiently critical hermeneutics of his age or against the excessively allegorical exegesis inherited from the Bedes, the Rabanus Mauruses, and their numerous emulators. The particular object of the chapter as well as the general context of the opusculum, if we take it as a whole, rules out such a hypothesis from the start. For the author himself explains to us the precise intention that governs the citation of the quidam sapiens as clearly as one could hope for. Under the hypothesis that he may not be telling us everything that he means in this sentence, at any event he most clearly designates the sort of adversaries he has in mind all through this chapter. These adversaries are not just any commentators, any more than in the neighboring chapters. Here they are people who permit themselves, he says, to modify the text of Scripture, not for reasons of science or doctrine, but for simple reasons of grammar" or elegance. These are people who, having the weakness of wanting to appear wise in the eyes of the world, consequently submit to the school of Donatus and Priscian even in translating the Bible.

The authority that these two illustrious grammarians enjoyed is well known: the one, a pagan, a professor at Rome in the fourth century, and the other, a Christian, a professor of Latin at Byzantium toward the fifth-sixth centuries; the first more elementary and more practical, suitable for beginners,²⁵ the second, more erudite, fuller, a sort of Justinian of the grammatical code.²⁶ Their work was imposed upon everyone. Saint Jerome was proud of himself as a youth for having taken Donatus’s courses.²⁷ Cassiodorus, who saw grammar as the beautifier of the human race, had recommended these two authorities, and himself had written two commentaries on Donatus.²⁸ The Ars major [of Donatus] forms the foundation of the theoretical grammar of Isidore.²⁹ Both Donatus and Priscian were held in honor in the Celtic churches. Bede had composed an elementary grammar following step by step that of the old Roman master.³⁰ In the same way Saint Julian of Toledo’s Ars grammatica was entirely borrowed from Donatus and his disciples, notably from the commentary of Sergius.³¹ Ambrose Autpert had cited Donatus and Priscian in the list of the principal sages according to whom the majority of the Fathers of the Church were formed prior to undertaking the explication of the Scriptures, while adding that he himself owed nothing of his own first formation to them: Donatus brought me nothing; Priscian, nothing, any more than he did to Plato, Cicero, or Virgil. He was aware of the exceptional character of his own case, and he avowed it out of modesty.³²

The Carolingian renaissance, which was a renaissance of grammarians, i.e., of literary men and scholars, had increased the prestige of these two masters even more. The paganism of the one, the supposed apostasy of the other, did not shake this prestige. Sedulius Scotus had commented on both of them, associating Eutyches with them. Alcuin had particularly praised Priscian, the truest teacher of the grammatical art,³³ and the work of the one whom one could, along with Salomon of Constance, call our Priscian,³⁴ would remain justly famous; this work was even more esteemed than that of his rival, because it was more learned, perhaps also because it belonged to a more decadent period, an age more hospitable to the novelties of the moderns,³⁵ and finally because it was full of classical citations.³⁶ Meanwhile, Paul the Deacon had written an Ars Donati. Smaragdus, the learned abbot of Saint Mihiel, had composed a gloss on Donatus’s treatise De octo partibus orationis, a long very widely known gloss which was full of ingenious and sensitive remarks wherein a deep knowledge of the Latin language could be seen,³⁷ and in which, following a practice inaugurated by Bede, all the rules were illustrated by examples taken from Scripture and the Fathers. Theodulf of Orléans used to congratulate himself in his verses for having extensively practiced Donatus.³⁸ Rabanus Maurus had made an Excerptio de Arte grammatica Prisciani.³⁹ His disciple Lupus of Ferrieres did not cease to refer to the two distinguished grammarians. A bit later, Remigius of Auxerre (†908) had even given a Commentum on the two Artes of Donatus.⁴⁰ Before teaching others to cross the whirlpools of this world, as an expert pilot, Odo of Cluny, who was a student of Remigius, had traversed the immense sea of Priscian as a swimmer.⁴¹ Guitmond of Aversa, a contemporary of Berno, referred to Priscian as that most expert grammarian.⁴² Soon Thierry of Chartres would make a big place in his plan of studies, the famous Heptateuchon, for our two grammarians: of Donatus he will say: he taught with marvelous brevity, compendious technique, an extremely clever arrangement of teaching.⁴³ To signify that the cycle of studies opens with grammar, Godfrey of Saint Victor will write:

Donatus presides over the first bank of the river …

Priscian sits on its opposite side.⁴⁴

For Alan of Lille, Donatus will be not so much a grammarian as grammar itself, and the Anticlaudianus will associate with him our apostate, under which label we recognize Priscian.⁴⁵ Peter Helias’s commentary on Priscian, ca. 1140, will prove an enduring achievement, and the Byzantine master will inspire the grammatical section of the Doctrinale of Alexander of Villedieu (1199). Let us add that for a long time the job of grammarian did not belong only to professional literati. Thus, the great apostle Saint Boniface himself, drawing upon the same sources (Donatus, Chaminius, and Diomedes), composed an Ars grammatica; he considered this sort of activity an essential part of his missionary apostolate and he loved to give himself the title grammaticus germanicus.

Thus Priscian and Donatus reigned for a long time and were to reign still longer over the scholarship of the Middle Ages.⁴⁶ Their authority extended not only over grammar in the strict sense of the word, but also over rhetoric, i.e., at least nominally, even over dialectic, for, following the teaching of Isidore of Seville, all the arts depended upon the first: the arts are the hand-maidens of grammar.⁴⁷ They were not without a role to play even in theology — a more contested role, whose limits we shall soon discuss — as can be seen in a reproach that Hincmar of Reims once threw in the face of the unfortunate Godescalc regarding the Trinity: You have forgotten your Donatus!⁴⁸ Indeed it was the keenest reproach that was possible⁴⁹ in that age of extraordinary grammatical enthusiasm, whereas the praise of the greats of the world and of the Church ritually involved titles like grammaticae doctor or artis grammaticae summus sophista.⁵⁰ In short, the art of Priscian and Donatus was judged indispensable by everyone and no one could risk interpreting holy Scripture without being well versed in it. Donatus and Priscian occupied the lower floors of the palace of knowledge, dominated by the turret of theology.⁵¹

Now the rules of language signified by these two prestigious names had awakened here or there a certain number of scruples of divers nature and quality touching the Church. Here we have to consider first the most superficial case of it. On comparing their beautiful classical Latin to the humble Latin of the Church, some clerics, benighted a bit in their fastidiousness, felt themselves embarrassed or ill at ease. They were bothered by a slight inferiority complex, analogous to the more serious one experienced long ago by the Jeromes and the Augustines on their first contact with the Bible. Perhaps in some cases — literary history offers other examples⁵² — they were simply looking for a bit more euphony for the singing of their office. In short, they had attempted to correct some things in the usage of the Church, wishing to improve the Latin of their liturgical books. The place where these temerarious souls lived was doubtless near enough to Reichenau for Berno to be able to dread a contagion. Thus we see him rise up against them with the cry sacrilege.

So what sort of effronteries were they involved in? The abbot of Reichenau drew up a list of examples that leave no room for any serious ambiguity regarding the object of the conflict. In the text of the Gospel, these unfaithful clerics change alio into alii, defraudavi into defrudavi, exiebat into exibat. In the same way, at the offertory of the Mass for the dead, they chant de profundo lacu though the biblical usage requires laci. Taking up against them an ironic witticism employed long ago by Saint Ambrose against the Peripatetics,⁵³ then redelivered by Saint Jerome to Saint Hilary⁵⁴ — a witticism which had since then become proverbial⁵⁵ — Berno mocks their pretentiousness: they sing wearing a mental buskin.⁵⁶ Moreover, he is indignant; he protests vehemently. What a hare-brained effort, blindly to follow profane rules when it is a question of divine truth! There are, then, Christians who dare to subject the text of their Scripture to a treatment that the admirers of Terence, Virgil or Cicero do not permit anyone to inflict upon the text of their authors! Should we let ourselves treat the Word of God with such little respect? Shall we be more attentive to Priscian than to the truth, which is God himself? Rather than bow to any grammarian who wants to make us write lacus, ought we not instead to heed Isaiah who twice says laci — the self-same Isaiah whose lips had been purified by the heavenly fire?⁵⁷

It is at that point that Berno adds, so as to introduce the proposal of the sage quoted above: "We ought therefore firmly to hold to the sequence of sacred Scripture and to observe its tenor in all things inviolably, attending carefully to what a certain wise man (quidam sapiens) reminds us of." And again, immediately after the citation that we are already familiar with:

Therefore it is to be resolved that we should unchangingly keep, hold, guard…the sacred words of the gospels, the oracles of the patriarchs and prophets, the writings of the apostles, with complete fidelity and fitting devotion, just as they are found in the authentic books.⁵⁸

As we see, it is always a question of words, not of their explanation; and it is a question of maintaining, not of correcting. As to the authentic books, they are quite simply the approved or official books, those that are, as a consequence, in use and have authority. Such at that time was the usual meaning of the epithet authenticus, which was almost equivalent to canonicus, and which is found in such expressions as modus authenticus, designating a proof by authority, i.e., the authentici doctores.⁵⁹ Then, to end with, after a citation from the Apocalypse which there will be occasion to examine in the following chapter, Berno returns to his unworthy grammarians in one final sentence:

Therefore, if anyone should want to sharpen his wits through the rule of the grammatical art, let him practice in the schools; let him use Donatus and Priscian as his teachers, if he pleases, so long as he does not refuse to preserve due honor for the words, the integrity of the true interpretation being kept. But enough of this.⁶⁰

There is in fact nothing like a principle of hermeneutics at stake here. Is there anything like criticism? Not up to this point, it seems. If Berno is so strongly opposed to taking the slightest liberty with the text of Scripture, it is not for any scientific motive; placing ourselves in his perspective, we can say it was motivated by faith. Again, it is not a question of the text, properly speaking, nor of a version universally accepted, but of the version in use at Reichenau. In his scrupulous respect, he considers that version as participating in the inspiration of the original text, or at least as so perfectly faithful that it is impossible to change anything in it without raising one’s hand against that sacred original: the oracles of the heavenly words ought to remain steadfast in their own rule.⁶¹ It is doubtless this that, in a daring piece of reasoning, permits him to invoke the divine authority in questions where the Latin language alone would seem to be at issue. Those whom he blames do not sin in his eyes owing to any human ignorance or lack of critical spirit: they sin by lack of respect for the sacred, by lack of the spirit of faith. They touch the untouchable. Those people, says he, want to pass for sages in the eyes of the world and in their own. He treats them as severely and according to the same criteria as those who compose liturgical chants and whose twofold temerity he has just condemned in the preceding chapter, drawing support from a decision of an African council.⁶² Against both groups he has no recourse to any scientific principle or human authority: what he puts forward is nothing less than the rule of faith. It is the authority of Scripture itself.⁶³ If we take the text of these two chapters as it presents itself, it even seems that the memory of those who borrow expressions from Scripture so as to give them a sense which is not proper to it and so as to fabricate their chant from such phrases had in part inspired Berno to choose his citation from the sage or perhaps to accommodate what he did with it. For him, it is almost one and the same sacrilege to dare to praise God with entirely human words, or to use the sacred text offhandedly, or finally, to alter the least syllable of it under any pretext whatsoever. He manifestly intends to assimilate these last two cases to each other. And this is how the two words sensus and verba seem to become confused⁶⁴ under his pen in a manner that can seem surprising. The principal object throughout this eighth chapter of the opusculum nonetheless remains just this correction of syllables.

2. Berno and Exegesis

Nothing, to be sure, was less unheard of in this first part of the eleventh century than the theme of the grammarians. A bit further on we shall gather abundant evidence about them. Berno takes it up in a very particular context, and for a rather flimsy quarrel, but he does oppose the authority of Scripture to that of Donatus in the most classic manner. Our polemicist consigns the latter to the schools: let it rule there as much as he likes, but let it not encroach upon the former. It ought rather to bow before her, since all worldly philosophy and all secular science have taken their origin from the authority of holy Scripture.⁶⁵ In addition, this is an argument which puffs up the debate a little but is still a commonplace characteristic of a common enough habit of thought,⁶⁶ and does not call for ranking its author among advanced thinkers. In all this, Berno shows well enough that he belongs to his age. Let us not transform him into a distant precursor of modern times. Let us not attribute to him an exceptional turn of mind. If textual criticism truly did make its appearance with him — or its reappearance — it would have been quite modest indeed.⁶⁷ By the passionate interest that he brings to such a dispute as well as by the manner in which he comports himself in it, he would rather appear as a belated heir of that renaissance or of that attempt at restoration of the Carolingian era — so careful about textual fidelity in the wake of men like Cassiodorus, Isidore, and Bede, so attached to the venerable senses of the Fathers⁶⁸ and at the same time so fond of problems of words and grammatical debates;⁶⁹ where one was everywhere talking about the order and rule of the art of grammar,⁷⁰ where writings dealing with the highest subjects of theology or morals were interlarded with reflections on verbal or syntactic curiosities,⁷¹ where men of action were often themselves determined grammarians, where one of the greatest praises that one could make of the great emperor consisted in saying:

There stands a shining teacher of the grammatical art.⁷²

Let us add that the Saints’ Lives that Berno has left us show him to be rather less critical in hagiography than many of his contemporaries. He is neither more nor less credulous than the average amongst them.⁷³ He is doubtless neither more nor less so than the good Saint Gregory, whom he loves to cite and whose marvelous stories from the Dialogues he, like everyone at that time, savors.⁷⁴

We find it hard to see in this little exercise — we might rather call it a diatribe — that constitutes Chapter VIII of the De varia modulatione, any concern of an exegetical order, despite the repeated use of the word sensus, or indeed any critical, textual, or historical rigor.

Three things might cause such an illusion. We have already drawn attention to the first: that allusion to the complaints of Chapter VII, coming to color the new reproach. Berno denies personal sentiment the right to appear in the liturgy by an arbitrary borrowing of the words of Scripture: nothing could be truer; but such an abuse, which he was not the first to denounce, had nothing to do with the traditional exegesis, that is to say, with the allegorical explication of the Scriptures; if this censor of ours denounces the abuses he speaks of as sacrilege, he would surely have denounced such assimilation as blasphemous. In the second place, one can be tempted to assign excessive importance to statements that, if we take them literally, manifestly surpass the actual — and scant — merits of the debate. Berno effects this transformation by the unique way in which he manages to transpose the themes of the doctrinal struggle with a view to magnifying the difference that, in other circumstances, would not have taken on such proportions. We shall discuss this in the following chapter. Finally, perhaps there is, right at the end of his Chapter VIII, an ambiguous word: the expression "salva verae interpretationis integritate [the integrity of the true interpretation being kept." Cf. n. 60, above.] On a quick reading, one might believe that he spoke there about the interpretation of Scripture, in the sense of explication or commentary. Hence it would involve exegesis. But the context, as has just been specified, as well as Berno’s own usage, are both opposed to adopting such a sense — which is, besides, neither the proper sense nor the then usual sense of interpretatio. Berno is simply repeating at the end of his chapter what he has not ceased saying from one end to the other: it is necessary to respect the integrity of the text, such as the tradition of the Church has handed down to us in its authorized version, without changing a jot in it.

To comment on a text, to clarify its sense through one’s own explications, is to expound it, to explicate it, to explain it: exponere, explicare, explanare. A commentary is an expositio, an explicatio, an explanatio. A commentator is — and this is the usual word — an expositor. Let’s call up a few examples.

Saint Jerome designates the books of his commentaries as libros explanationis,⁷⁵ and he observes that by many the work of the commentaries is denominated ‘explanation.’⁷⁶ Speaking of those, whether speakers or writers, who have commented on the Bible, Saint Gregory used to say: "Sacred Scripture is being explained to us by the mouths of mortals in the expositions;⁷⁷ he called his own commentary on the Book of Job nostra expositio,⁷⁸ and Saint Paterius said of Saint Gregory himself: He was compelled by the need to explain things to expound the whole sequence of the Old and New Testament, or again: and he strove to discuss that testimony by the additional explanation of an exposition.⁷⁹ This was the language of Origen, of Rufinus,⁸⁰ and of Cassiodorus.⁸¹ It was also that of Isidore,⁸² of Bede,⁸³ and others. It will be maintained as such after Berno’s time, for example, in Saint Bruno, Saint Bernard,⁸⁴ Hugh of Saint Victor,⁸⁵ and Aelred of Rievaulx.⁸⁶ Godfrey of Saint Victor will make mention of certain ancient expositors of sacred Scripture.⁸⁷ Each of the Fathers, about to expound a book, John of Salisbury will write.⁸⁸ They readily spoke of the expositions of the orthodox Fathers.⁸⁹ They sometimes even spoke, in the neuter, of an expositum,⁹⁰ or a commentum: these are the two names that Paschasius Radbertus gives to the commentary he had undertaken on Saint Matthew.⁹¹ Or again, one commentary on the Psalms that stems from an anonymous author of the twelfth century contains three parts for each Psalm, borrowed respectively from Cassiodorus, from Bede, and from Manegold: a short argumentum is followed by a longer explanatio, which itself in turn is developed into a commentarium.⁹² When one explained Scripture to the people under the form of tractatus or homilies,⁹³ the commentator received the name tractator: like Saint Augustine in his sermons on Saint John’s Gospel, or his sermons on the Psalms, which the manuscripts designate by various names: tractatus, or expositiones, or commenta, or explanationes;⁹⁴ or again, according to the monk of Sankt Gall, like Gregory and Bede.⁹⁵ Origen, the most expert treater of sacred Scriptures, said Sulpicius Severus;⁹⁶ an explainer and treater of the prophecies, writes Aimo;⁹⁷ Scripturarum tractatores, Rupert⁹⁸ will say; sacrarum litterarum tractatores, Herbert of Bosham⁹⁹ will say, and others as well. Catholici tractatores is practically synonymous with catholici doctores. The term enarratio," a bit rarer, deriving from classical antiquity, also designated the explication of a text, along with its various phases.¹⁰⁰

On the other hand, in the vast majority of cases, an interpretatio is a translatio, i.e., a translation or version. According to the Vulgate, Saint Paul had written to the Corinthians: Let him who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret.¹⁰¹ Saint Hilary had spoken of the Latin interpretation of the Bible.¹⁰² Saint Jerome had given his principles of translation in a little work entitled De optimo genere interpretandi;¹⁰³ he had noted that certain biblical words, such as alleluia and amen are simply transliterated from the Hebrew without translation;¹⁰⁴ on the difficulty of translating from Greek into Latin, he had said in his preface to Eusebius’s Chronicle "that if anyone does not think that the style of language is changed in translation (interpretatione), let him render Homer word for word into Latin;¹⁰⁵ on a passage from Isaiah, he had nicely distinguished the two phases of translation and explication, saying: Let us first talk about the translation (de interpretatione), and afterwards we shall discuss what has been written (quae scripta sunt).¹⁰⁶ Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion for him were the interpreters" of the Bible.¹⁰⁷ Having translated a Paschal Epistle of Theophilus of Antioch, he presented it in these terms: "in which I declare that I have labored to match the elegance of its words with the beauty of the translation (interpretationis).¹⁰⁸ Rufinus kept the same language: when in a preface he was announcing that he was going to interpret" the Peri Archôn, this was not a way of implying that his translation would be unfaithful; he was vouching for the fact that he could not compete with Jerome, who, even in translating the work of another, used a style so personal, "that he seemed to be the father rather than the translator (interpres) of the word."¹⁰⁹ In the De doctrina christiana, that charter of biblical studies, Saint Augustine had admired how the divine Scripture … was so well able to be disseminated throughout the world through the various languages of the translators, and he had indicated the translation that he preferred in these terms: "Among the translations, however, the Itala is preferred over the rest, for it sticks closer to the words while keeping the sense clear";¹¹⁰ in the Contra Faustum, regarding passages that seem to be unintelligible, he had laid down this rule: It is not permissible to say ‘the author of this book did not hold to the truth’; but rather: ‘either the manuscript is faulty, or the translator (interpres) went astray, or you yourself do not understand’;¹¹¹ he had written to Jerome on learning that he was setting about to translate the Bible into Latin according to the Hebrew: I should much rather want you to translate (interpretari) for us the canonical Greek Scriptures;¹¹² as regards certain Psalms, he had