Addressed to the bishops of the Catholic Church, Aeterni Patris lays out an argument for the Pauline view of the superiority of Christian wisdom over the false wisdom of the world, provides a sketch (quite ahistorical) of the development of Christian philosophy, argues for Thomas Aquinas as the supreme form of scholastic philosophy, and calls upon the Catholic world, especially its educators, to return to the teaching of Thomas as “the invincible bulwark of faith” (para. 24). Leo’s case is based on a conviction of the inherent unity of the “solid doctrine of the Fathers and the scholastics, who so clearly and forcibly demonstrate the firm foundations of the faith, … and its perfect concord with reason” (para. 27). Although many patristic authors are mentioned in paragraphs 3 to 13, aside from brief references to Bonaventure and Albert the Great, Thomas represents the scholastic philosophy that Leo holds out as the ideal for Christian education. The argument given is primarily based on authority and tradition—Thomas has been recognized as the supreme doctor by all the best teachers, the religious orders, the universities, and the popes and councils (paras. 14–23). Revived Thomism, Leo says, will not only be a safeguard against modern error, but will also benefit the church at large, civil and domestic society (paras. 23, 28), as well as the arts and the physical sciences (para. 29). Just as there can be no real contradiction between the truths of faith and those attained by reason, Leo says there is no conflict between “the conclusions of modern physics and the philosophical principles of the schools” (para. 30). Although the pope makes clear the need for a return to “the golden wisdom of St. Thomas,” he does not specify what interpretation of that wisdom is to be preferred, beyond insisting that “the doctrine of Thomas be drawn from his own fountains, or at least from those rivulets which, derived from that very fount, have thus far flowed, according to the established agreement of learned men, pure and clear” (para. 31). The story of Neothomism was to show that there was no such agreement.
What Leo had in mind with regard to “the rivulets derived from [Thomas’s] very fount” was the view of Thomism put forth by his advisors, especially Kleutgen and Liberatore.8 It is interesting that neither of these scholars wrote a commentary on the Summa theologiae, but rather expressed their Thomism in monographs, more philosophical in the case of Liberatore, more theological with Kleutgen. This is not to say that the era of lengthy commentaries on the Summa was totally over, because the twentieth century was to see some examples of this genre among the Dominicans. Nevertheless, if the preferred genre of Second Thomism had been the commentary, the standard genre of Neothomism was the monographic analysis of some aspect of the thought of Thomas, primarily of a philosophical nature.
Liberatore’s philosophical appropriation of Thomas emphasized the Dominican’s realist epistemology based on abstraction from sense knowledge as opposed to the empiricism of Locke and the idealism of many German philosophers. He also denied that there was any direct intuition of the divine being, as some Catholic philosophers, such as the condemned Antonio Rosmini (d. 1855), had argued. Liberatore’s vindication of Thomas’s epistemology set forth in his Della conoscenza intellettuale (1857–58) and Institutiones logicae et metaphysicae (1860) set the groundwork for the Neothomistic attack on the Cartesian search for absolute certitude. Although the Italian’s epistemology did reflect aspects of Thomas’s views on knowing, he had little grasp of Thomistic metaphysics and its teaching on the importance of the act of existence. Kleutgen’s two major works were Die Theologie der Vorzeit (The Theology of Former Times, i.e., before Descartes), five volumes published between 1853 and 1874, and Die Philosophie der Vorzeit, two volumes put out between 1860 and 1863. Kleutgen’s view of the historical continuity of Catholic theology from its patristic roots down through the Middle Ages and culminating in Thomas was influential on Aeterni Patris. The German Jesuit’s use of the history of theology gave Catholic apologists the sense that they had an effective argument against those who attacked the continuity of Catholic teaching over the centuries. Like Liberatore, Kleutgen contended that the great advantage of Thomist thought against modern error was the way the Angelic Doctor (as he was usually now referred to) was able to combine epistemology, anthropology, and metaphysics into a seamless whole. The core problem with Liberatore, Kleutgen, and other forms of what has been called “monumental Thomism” is that they were really replacing Thomas’s Summa by rewriting it in a different historical context.9
The Growth of Neothomism
Had Aeterni Patris merely announced a program with no follow-up it would not have amounted to much. Pope Leo, however, caught the spirit of the time. His own efforts toward reviving Thomism were significant, but had these not been met by the fervor of Catholic intellectuals throughout the world, little might have been achieved. Neothomism rapidly became a popular movement, though a full explanation for its triumph remains unclear. Part of its success was due to the dissemination of Thomism throughout the Catholic seminary system.10 Although the Summa theologiae itself appears not to have been much used as a class text outside Dominican universities and houses of study, the philosophical and theological manuals employed in seminaries circa 1880–1960 were generally based on Thomas, or at least purported to be secundum mentem S. Thomae, whatever that was taken to mean. A student of the North American College in Rome reflected the institutional triumph of Thomas in 1881 when he wrote to his bishop, Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, “every tongue has learned to lisp the new slang phrase in Rome: ‘Ut ait Sanctus Doctor’ [‘as the Holy Doctor, i.e., St. Thomas, says’].”11 Although Thomism had become institutionally fashionable, there is no question that many also found it intellectually compelling. Of course, Thomas (unlike the writers of seminary manuals) was a major thinker, both philosophically and theologically, a point realized even by those who did not share his views. The American philosopher Josiah Royce (1855–1916) hailed the revival of Thomas in 1903 by remarking, “Pope Leo, after all, let loose a thinker among his people—a thinker, to be sure, of unquestioned orthodoxy, but after all a genuine thinker whom the textbooks had long tried, as it were, to keep lifeless, and who when once revived, proves to be full of suggestions of new problems and an effort toward new solutions.”12
Along with Aeterni Patris, Leo XIII moved rapidly to implement the revival of Thomism. A papal letter of October 15, 1879, set up the Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas, one of whose tasks was to look into preparing a new edition of the works of the Angelic Doctor. On January 18, 1880, another papal document, Placere nobis, established what came to be called the Leonine Commission to undertake this task. Two other editions of the works of Thomas were produced in the nineteenth century, the twenty-five volume Parma edition of 1852–73, under the direction of Giovanni Maria Allodi, canon of the cathedral of Parma, and the thirty-four volume edition of Paris, the work of Louis Vivès and his collaborators (1871–82).13 Neither of these editions, however, pretended to be a critical text; both were dependent on the original Piana edition of 1570 with a few corrections and emendations. The Leonine Edition had greater ambitions and an official role. Leo’s Commission consisted of three cardinals, the Dominican Tommaso Zigliara, Antonio de Lucca, and Giovanni Simeoni. Their task was to produce a new version of the whole of Thomas’s Opera, but the question soon emerged, what kind of an edition was this to be?
On this issue there was a difference of viewpoint between Pope Leo and the members of the commission.14 Leo appears to have been emulating his predecessor Pius V in his desire to produce a sumptuous papal version of the Opera Omnia to further his program for the revival of Thomism. The members of the commission and their collaborators, however, were influenced by modern conceptions of critical editing that aimed at producing a text as faithful to the author’s original as possible. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, German scholars connected with MGH (Monumenta Germaniae Historica) had worked out the philological and diplomatic skills for producing critical editions of medieval texts. The cardinals on the commission were not trained in these methods, but they enli
sted the help of priests versed in editing, including the Dominican, Constantius Suermondt. The original plan was to begin with Thomas’s philosophical works. Three volumes of these were published between 1882 and 1886, though these were scarcely of a critical character. Leo XIII, however, was not pleased. He wanted the Summa theologiae—the summit of Thomas’s thought and the answer to modern errors—and he wanted it quickly. As Louis-Jacques Bataillon summarized, “The first concern of the editors was quality, but the pope’s was celerity.”15 Leo ordered the editors to make use of the Piana text as the basis of the edition and utilize only manuscripts of the Summa found in the Vatican Library for corrections and variants. The harried editors got to work and managed to produce a defective edition of the Prima Pars in two large folio volumes published in 1888–89, as well as two volumes of the Prima Secundae in 1891–92. By that time Suermondt and his collaborators had begun to work out effective criteria for doing a more or less critical text of Thomas’s works (not easy when there were more than four thousand manuscripts!). They also silently disregarded Leo’s orders. Thus, the edition of the Secunda Secundae published 1895–99 marks a definite advance. The Tertia Pars and the Supplementum appeared in two volumes between 1903 and 1906. The Leonine edition of the Summa theologiae, therefore, is a kind of mélange—defective in its first half, somewhat better in the second. The Summa still lacks a rigorously critical text. The Leonine Commission, of course, has gone on to become one of the most distinguished of all medieval editing projects, producing meticulous editions of the other works of Thomas over more than a century. Its work looks to stretch on for decades to come, but it is not assured that the editors will come back to redo the Summa.
Concentrating the story of Neothomism on Rome does not give a full sense of the rapidity of the spread of Neoscholasticism/Neothomism throughout the Catholic world. A brief glance at some of the other centers of the Thomist revival, as well as at the new journals on Thomas and scholasticism can provide some sense of this. At the University at Louvain, one of the foremost centers of Catholic thought since the fifteenth century, a chair of Thomist philosophy was established in 1882 by the secular priest Desiré Joseph Mercier (1851–1926), later to become a cardinal. Mercier was interested in the relation between Thomism and modern philosophy and science, questions that were pursued at the Institute for Philosophy he established at Louvain in 1894. Thus, the Louvain form of Neothomism had a different tone from what was found in Rome. In France the Dominicans at both Paris and Toulouse returned to the study of Thomas in the 1880s, while in 1889 a Catholic faculty of theology was established at Fribourg in Switzerland and given to the Dominicans, who introduced a Thomist curriculum. Another measure of the success of Neothomism can be seen in the journals devoted to the study of Thomas and Neoscholasticism in general. These proliferated in the period between the first appearance of Divus Thomas in 1880 and the beginning of the American journal the Thomist in 1939. Another important step was the conversion of the Dominican House of Studies in Rome into a full-fledged papal university, the Angelicum (today the University of Saint Thomas) in 1909. In roughly a quarter century Neothomism had become the teaching of modern Catholicism.
Not everyone was happy with the triumph of Neoscholasticism and its ahistorical and antimodern mode of thought. The period 1890–1910 saw the growth of resistance to the regnant Neoscholasticism that sought to open Catholic philosophy, theology, and Biblical studies to contemporary thought, or at least to enter into dialogue with critical history, modern Biblical studies, and new philosophical currents. During these decades Catholic thinkers in France, England, Italy, and Germany sought a different approach to modernity. These scholars and thinkers were a varied lot engaged in many disciplines—for example, Alfred Loisy, Maurice Blondel, and Lucien Laberthonnière in France; George Tyrrell and Friedrich von Hügel in England; Romolo Murri and Ernesto Buonaiuti in Italy; Franz Kraus and Josef Sauer in Germany. As different as they were in temperament and viewpoint, they came to be grouped together as “Modernists” by the reaction they provoked in Rome under the pontificate of Leo’s successor, Pius X (1903–14).
The Modernists were too different in their interests to be described as constituting a movement with a single point of view.16 “Modernism” was the creation of its opponents (Pius X and his ghostwriters). The Modernists were accused of many errors, such as (1) abandoning an objective and realist view of God for an agnostic, immanentist, and subjective philosophy; (2) an adherence to a historical outlook that saw the Bible as a merely human document and the evolution of Christian doctrine as only a reflection on religious experience; and (3) a consequent denial of the truth of many basic Christian beliefs, such as the divinity of Christ, in favor of a “symbolical” interpretation. The extent to which different Modernists did or did not hold these views remains under review. In 1907 Pope Pius issued a stinging condemnation of Modernism, first in a July 3 decree of the Holy Office titled Lamentabili, and then in the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis of September 8, mostly written by the Oblate priest Joseph Lemius. Pascendi described Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies … whose system means the destruction not of the Catholic religion alone, but of all religion.” In 1910 Pius issued a decree that all the clergy would henceforth be obliged to take an oath against Modernism, the Iusiurandum antimodernisticum, which remained in force until Vatican II. Soon after, repressive measures were instituted throughout the Catholic world to identify, proscribe, and excommunicate not only the Modernist authors who may have held some of the positions attacked by the pope, but also all who might be conceived to have sympathized with them. An ecclesiastical reign of terror ensued, which, although it only lasted about fifteen years, rivaled later twentieth-century political witch hunts in its level of dishonesty and duplicity, though fortunately the Vatican no longer possessed any machinery of physical coercion, imprisonment, or worse. Among those secretly denounced, but not condemned, were Cardinal Mercier, the whole Dominican faculty at Fribourg, and the young priest Giuseppe Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII.
The Encyclical Pascendi condemns the Modernists for wishing to relegate scholastic philosophy to the history of philosophy and teach modern philosophy in its stead in seminaries.17 It also endorses Thomas Aquinas as the touchstone of truth, especially in metaphysics. There is no question that the major figures traditionally seen as Modernists identified the Neoscholasticism of Aeterni Patris as a key source of their complaints. Shortly after the publication of Pascendi, the Irish Jesuit George Tyrrel (1861–1909), soon to be excommunicated, wrote an open letter to the Times on September 30, 1907, in which he stated, “When the Encyclical tries to show the modernist that he is no Catholic, it mostly succeeds only in showing him he is no Scholastic, which he knew.” Tyrrell’s book Medievalism (1908), a response to Cardinal Mercier’s attack on Modernism, amply demonstrates the opposition between the abstract, deductive, ahistorical mode of Neoscholastic thinking, on the one hand, and the historically minded, non-Aristotelian modes of philosophizing explored by many Modernists. But if Neoscholasticism was abhorrent to the Modernists, what did they think about Thomas himself?
The Modernists’ views of Thomas were complicated, in part because the Modernists themselves were so different. Alfred Loisy (1857–1940), whose critical studies of the Bible and early church history made him perhaps the most prominent representative of Modernism, had read Thomas’s Summa as a seminarian in the late 1870s and hated it. The same was true of the Modernist philosopher and theologian Lucien Laberthonièrre (1860–1932). The layman Friedrich von Hügel (1852–1925) also had little sympathy for Thomas. Tyrrell, on the other hand, read Thomas on his own as a seminarian in the 1880s and expressed his debt to the clarity and rigor of his thought, although under Von Hügel’s influence he seems to have qualified this admiration late in his short life. The Dominican scripture scholar, Marie-Joseph Lagrange (1855–1938), long under a cloud as a Modernist but never condemned, was deeply formed by his Thomist education. The lay philosopher Mau
rice Blondel (1861–1949), also not formally condemned, appreciated the role that Thomism had served in its day, but worked toward finding a new more dynamic philosophy that would address the concerns of the present world. In general we can say that the Modernists disagreed with the program set out in Aeterni Patris regarding the revival of Scholasticism and its stress that a return to the “pure springs” of St. Thomas was the answer to all the problems of the day. Writing in the wake of Pascendi, Ernesto Buonaiuti (1881–1946) summarized this view in his The Program of Modernism: “Whence it is clear that it is impossible to impose religious experience on the modern mind in the same forms as were adapted to the utterly different mediaeval mind. The Church cannot, and ought not to, pretend that the Summa of Aquinas answers the exigencies of religious thought in the twentieth century.”18
Pius X and his program of repression crushed Modernism—the movement that never was. Some Modernists voluntarily left the church or were driven out; others remained in the fold but kept a low profile. What did the crisis mean for the evolution of Thomism in the twentieth century? One effect seems to have been to expose how difficult it was for even the centralized modern papacy to control what kind of philosophy was to be taught in seminaries and especially in Catholic colleges. This is evident from the fact that for about a decade (1914–24), in part in reaction to the Modernist crisis, the Roman authorities issued document after document stressing that Thomism was the common teaching of the Church.
In a decree of June 29, 1914, titled Doctoris Angelici, Pius X insisted, once again, that “scholasticism” meant the teaching of Thomas Aquinas and that “all teachers of philosophy and sacred theology should be warned that if they deviated so much as one iota from Aquinas, especially in metaphysics, they exposed themselves to grave risk.” Pius even went on to make the extraordinary claim that any commendation he or former popes had made of the doctrine of other writers and saints was true only to the extent that these writers had agreed with “the principles of Aquinas.” Pius mandated that the Summa theologiae be used as the fundamental textbook in pontifical faculties. On July 27, 1914, the Sacred Congregation of Studies issued a list of twenty-four Thomistic theses in philosophy that must be adhered to in Catholic teaching. This list, which today appears slightly bizarre, was basically designed to de-legitimize the Suarezian reading of Thomas still favored by some Jesuits.19 The twenty-four theses provoked a strong reaction on the part of the members of the Society of Jesus who still favored Suarezian Thomism. On March 7, 1916, another document from the Congregation of Studies backed off and declared the twenty-four theses to be only “sure directional norms.” On March 19, 1917, Pius X’s successor, Pope Benedict XV (1914–22), sent a letter to the Jesuit Superior General basically allowing the Jesuits to teach what they wanted to as long as they paid lip service to Thomas as the established teacher. “Twenty-Four-Thesis Thomism,” however, remained a force in some Catholic philosophical institutions for decades.
Thomas Aquinas's Summa theologiae Page 14
