Medieval Thought and Popular Piety

Question 1

Guinefort the Holy Greyhound

Answer 1

• folklore tale of a faithful dog that in its master’s absence protected his child by killing a serpent
• a cult of St. Guinefort develops in the Dombes region of France sometime before 1200
• traces of the devotion right down to the 19th century
• Was this conflated with another St. Guinefort?
• Question raised: What was ‘magic religion’ and what was theologized religion with physical aids to survival in this world and the next?

Question 2

Anselm

Answer 2

• early medieval monk, archbishop, and theologian
• 11th century
• Normandy and England
• popular Prayers and Meditations
• develops the “ontological argument” for God’s existence: God is that being than which no greater can be conceived
• develops a “satisfaction” theory of atonement in Cur Deus Homo (Why God became man)
• “I do not seek to understand so that I can believe, but I believe so that I may understand.”

Question 3

Bonaventure

Answer 3

• Major Franciscan theologian and Minister General of the order
• 13th century
• Italy (though studied in Paris)
• wrote the most important life of Francis of Assisi
• Major work: The Mind’s Road to God
• mystical in ethos, drawing on Augustinian priority of love
• less sympathy with Aristotle than Aquinas

Question 4

Thomas Aquinas

Answer 4

• Dominican philosopher and theologian
• considered one of the leading theologians of the Catholic church: Doctor Angelicus (the angelic doctor)
• 13th century
• Italy (and Paris)
• major work (from among a vast number of writings): Summa Theologiae, treating more than 500 questions, considering objections, and distinguishing what can be known by reason and faith
• a synthesis of classical and Christian learning, making much use of Aristotle
• provides a series of arguments for God’s existence based on the impossibility of an infinite regress
• spent last years in silence: “I can write no more. I have seen things which make all my writings like straw.”

Question 5

William of Ockham

Answer 5

• Franciscan, theologian, philosopher, and polemicist
• 13th and 14th century
• England
• A “nominalist” who believed “universals” (such as beauty) were names only (nomen)
• stressed the priority of divine will more than divine reason
• “Ockham’s razor”: the simplest explanation to fit all the facts is the one that ought to be preferred
• influential for the rise of science and political reform movements
• associated with the break-up of the “medieval synthesis”

Question 6

The Seven Sacraments

Answer 6

1. Baptism
2. Confirmation
3. Confession
4. Eucharist
5. Ordination
6. Marriage
7. Extreme Unction

Question 7

Abelard

Answer 7

• philospher and theologian
• late 11th and 12th centuries
• France
• associated with the “new logic” and the rise of scholasticism
• tragic love affair with Heloise
• an early nominalist (see William of Ockham)
• taught a moral influence view of atonement
• wrote an autobiography, Historia Calamitatum (History of my Calamities)
• wrote Sic et Non, setting contradictory authorities side by side, inviting application of logic to reconcile these
• condemned by Bernard of Clairvaux and councils of the church

Question 8

Peter Lombard

Answer 8

• 12th-century bishop of Paris and “master of the Sentences”
• Lombard’s Sentences (divided into four books) the standard textbook for middle ages
• one of first formally to set out the seven sacraments

Question 9

Cathars

Answer 9

• popular medieval heretical movement, sometimes called Albigensians or the “pure ones”
• esp. 12th and 13th centuries
• esp. southern France and Italy
• dualist teaching of the flesh and material world as evil
• sharp critique of existing church order, sacraments, and teaching
• regarded by many simply as “Good Christians” or “Good men” for their moral lives
• Dominicans and inquisition directed against the movement