III

When asking in what manner the mental habit induced by Early and High Scholasticism may have affected the formation of Early and High Gothic architecture, we shall do well to disregard the notional content of the doctrine and to concentrate, to borrow a term from the schoolmen themselves, upon its modus operandi. The changing tenets in such matters as the relation between soul and body or the problem of universals vs. particulars naturally were reflected in the representational arts rather than in architecture. True, the architect lived in close contact with the sculptors, glass painters, wood carvers, etc., whose work he studied wherever he went (witness the “Album” of Villard de Honnecourt), whom he engaged and supervised in his own enterprises, and to whom he had to transmit an iconographic program which, we remember, he could work out only in close cooperation with a scholastic adviser. But in doing all this, he assimilated and conveyed rather than applied the substance of contemporary thought. What he who “devised the form of the building while not himself manipulating its matter” Note 10 could and did apply, directly and qua architect, was rather that peculiar method of procedure which must have been the first thing to impress itself upon the mind of the layman whenever it came in touch with that of the schoolman. This method of procedure follows, as every modus operandi does, from a modus essendi; Note 11 it follows from the very raison d’être of Early and High Scholasticism, which is to establish the unity of truth. The men of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries attempted a task not yet clearly envisaged by their forerunners and ruefully to be abandoned by their successors, the mystics and the nominalists: the task of writing a permanent peace treaty between faith and reason. “Sacred doctrine,” says Thomas Aquinas, “makes use of human reason, not to prove faith but to make clear (manifestare) whatever else is set forth in this doctrine.” Note 12 This means that human reason can never hope to furnish direct proof of such articles of faith as the tri-personal structure of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the temporality of Creation, etc.; but that it can, and does, elucidate or clarify these articles.

First, human reason can furnish direct and complete proof for whatever can be deduced from principles other than revelation, that is, for all ethical, physical, and metaphysical tenets including the very praeambula fidei, such as the existence (though not the essence) of God, which can be proved by an argument from effect to cause. Note 13 Second, it can elucidate the content of revelation itself: by argument, though merely negatively, it can refute all rational objections against the Articles of Faith—objections that must of necessity be either false or inconclusive; Note 14 and positively, though not by argument, it can supply similitudines which “manifest” the mysteries by way of analogy, as when the relation between the Three Persons of the Trinity is likened to that between being, knowledge and love in our own mind, Note 15 or divine creation to the work of the human artist. Note 16

Manifestatio, then, elucidation or clarification, is what I would call the first controlling principle of Early and High Scholasticism. Note 17 But in order to put this principle into operation on the highest possible plane—elucidation of faith by reason—it had to be applied to reason itself: if faith had to be “manifested” through a system of thought complete and self-sufficient within its own limits yet setting itself apart from the realm of revelation, it became necessary to “manifest” the completeness, self-sufficiency, and limitedness of the system of thought. And this could be done only by a scheme of literary presentation that would elucidate the very processes of reasoning to the reader’s imagination just as reasoning was supposed to elucidate the very nature of faith to his intellect. Hence the much derided schematism or formalism of Scholastic writing which reached its climax in the classic Summa Note 18 with its three requirements of (1) totality (sufficient enumeration), (2) arrangement according to a system of homologous parts and parts of parts (sufficient articulation), and (3) distinctness and deductive cogency (sufficient interrelation)—all this enhanced by the literary equivalent of Thomas Aquinas’s similitudines: suggestive terminology, parallelismus membrorum, and rhyme. A well-known instance of the two latter devices—both artistic as well as mnemonic—is St. Bonaventure’s succinct defense of religious images which he declares admissible “propter simplicium ruditatem, propter affectuum tarditatem, propter memoriae labilitatem.” Note 19

We take it for granted that major works of scholarship, especially systems of philosophy and doctoral theses, are organized according to a scheme of division and subdivision, condensable into a table of contents or synopsis, where all parts denoted by numbers or letters of the same class are on the same logical level; so that the same relation of subordination obtains between, say, sub-section (a), section (1), chapter (I) and book (A) as does between, say, sub- section (b), section (5), chapter (IV) and book (C). However, this kind of systematic articulation was quite unknown until the advent of Scholasticism. Note 20 Classical writings (except perhaps for those that consisted of denumerable items such as collections of short poems or treatises on mathematics) were merely divided into “books.” When we wish to give what we, unsuspecting heirs to Scholasticism, call an exact quotation, we must either refer to the pages of a printed edition conventionally accepted as authoritative (as we do with Plato and Aristotle), or to a scheme introduced by some humanist of the Renaissance as when we quote a Vitruvius passage as “VII, I, 3.”

It was, it seems, not until the earlier part of the Middle Ages that “books” were divided into numbered “chapters” the sequence of which did not, however, imply or reflect a system of logical subordination; and it was not until the thirteenth century that the great treatises were organized according to an overall plan secundum ordinem disciplinae Note 21 so that the reader is led, step by step, from one proposition to the other and is always kept informed as to the progress of this process. The whole is divided into partes which—like the Second Part of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae—could be divided into smaller partes; the partes into membra, quaestiones or distinctiones, and these into articuli. Note 22 Within the articuli, the discussion proceeds according to a dialectical scheme involving further subdivision, and almost every concept is split up into two or more meanings (intendi potest dupliciter, tripliciter, etc.) according to its varying relation to others. On the other hand, a number of membra, quaestiones, or distinctiones are often tied together into a group. The first of the three partes that constitute Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, a veritable orgy both of logic and Trinitarian symbolism, is an excellent case in point.  [Note 23]

All this does not mean, of course, that the Scholastics thought in more orderly and logical fashion than Plato and Aristotle; but it does mean that they, in contrast to Plato and Aristotle, felt compelled to make the orderliness and logic of their thought palpably explicit—that the principle of manifestatio which determined the direction and scope of their thinking also controlled its exposition and subjected this exposition to what may be termed the POSTULATE OF CLARIFICATION FOR CLARIFICATION’S SAKE.