Former posts on this topic:
Before leaving Leclercq's Introduction, I wanted to note some of the distinctions he makes between scholastic and monastic culture in the 12th century. As he has mentioned in his preface, because of the nature of his topic and the form in which he is addressing it, he can only sketch or outline themes and topics that would deserve book length treatment in themselves.
Leclercq was a notable scholar of medieval history, who investigated primary source material throughout his life, and of course had read the work of many other scholars, both religious and secular. And he was a monk himself.
In order (I would suppose) to get across his thesis briefly and yet clearly and with avenues left open for further investigation, he frequently uses a "parallel lives" or at least "parallel texts" method of laying two sources alongside each other to illustrate a point.
When Leclercq refers to the flowering of monastic theology and the parallel burgeoning of scholastic theology in the 12th century, he brings up an enormous topic. The scholastic use of the quaestio is another large topic. His use of specific illustrations is helpful because they act as a sort of window, or a paradigm of what he is trying to communicate. They aren't meant to be thought of as conclusive treatments of the topics brought up, though. That is not his intention, as he has said in the preface.
Leclercq puts the scriptural commentaries of Peter Lombard and St Bernard of Clairvaux alongside each other. Peter Lombard most famously wrote 4 books of Sentences, a kind of compilation of Scriptural and Patristic sources on systematically arranged doctrinal topics. It apparently became the standard textbook on doctrine for 4 centuries. St Bernard of Clairvaux is better known, at least to me, and Jean Leclercq's scholarly pursuits included some definitive work on him.
Basically, the context of what Leclercq is saying in the Introduction is to do with the development of medieval monastic schools. Literacy was important for monks (the nuances of this are the topic of the book, so will be developed later) but it was also important in medieval times for clerics to be educated. So there developed distinctively different modes of schooling: one to prepare young aspirants to the monastery for the cloistered, contemplative life, and one to prepare for the active religious life, basically the priesthood and some minor orders.
The scholae for clerics developed and furthered to the first universities, such as the one in Paris where St Thomas of Aquinas taught. But we are not there yet.
Leclercq lists the characteristics of these early "exterior" schools briefly. They were usually built near a cathedral, so in city settings, they were preparatory for the active life, so they included the liberal arts -- grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, and the sciences as they were known in that time. They employed the quaestio, and disputations on topics.
In contrast, the "interior" schools were to prepare for a contemplative life centered around the liturgy. The monks weren't so much taught in a classroom by a magister, as talked to individually or in conference by the abbot or someone he appointed -- a more individual, guided instruction, directed towards life in the cloister. The knowledge of letters, of reading and understanding, was directed towards the Word of God, above all. There will be far more on this topic later in the book -- the purpose of the introduction is to sketch a case that monastic theology was not simply "prescholastic" -- that it had an identity of its own.
The prologue of Peter Lombard's commentary on the Epistles of Paul, as an example of the early scholastic method (I couldn't find an online source, here is an abstract of a scholarly article), is described by Leclercq as follows:
To begin with, a clear distinction is introduced in absolutely impersonal terms, followed, as each term is defined and new divisions are proposed, by a series of other distinctions. The purpose of the procedure is indicated; the aim is to acquire knowledge: Sciendum quod.... and the way to obtain it is the quaestio: Quaeritur quare... St Paul's epistles are subjected to the same type of investigation as might be applied to any other historical document. Problems of authenticity, of dating, of situation and form are examined in succession. For each problem, the solutions of preceding authors (auctoritates) are presented first, and then from among these the teacher chooses one solution. Thus the purpose of the commentary and of its Prologue is to resolve the problems which arise in objective history.
St Bernard's Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles are very different. This article on The Experience of God may provide a kind of sample of his voice. Leclercq goes into more detail here, too much to quote outright. St Bernard is talking as a father to his spiritual children; he holds that it is God who is ultimately doing the teaching. Leclercq sums up:
Bernard evokes the labors, the "daily wars", but also the joy of hope, the promised treasures, future rewards, which are just so many ways to say God. .... the important word is no longer quaeritur, but desideratur; no longer sciendum, but experiendum. Bernard never tires of emphasizing this in musical, rhythmical, consistently beautiful expressions whose depth cannot be rendered in translation.
Leclercq's focus is the monastic culture. So the last part of his introduction sums up the purpose of his book.
"Theology, spirituality, cultural history: these three elements were not separated in the real life of the monks, and they can never be disassociated. Thus the plan which seems to be imposed on the study undertaken here consists in describing in a concrete way, with the aid of a few examples, the genesis, the deevelopment, and the constants in the cultural current which links St Benedict to St Bernard and to his sons. And the only purpose of these pages is to awaken a desire for the reading of the monastic authors."
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