Scholars have long agreed that, however powerful the thought of twelfth-century Cistercians, they have no place in the history of philosophy. Such great French monastic scholars as Étienne Gilson in 1940 and Jean LeClercq in 1961 firmly resisted any claim to the contrary. Gilson wrote in The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard “[The Cistercians] reduced the School to the Cloister..., just as faith takes the place of philosophy and dispenses with it,” and “St. Bernard’s anti-philosophism...is very widespread in the ancient Cistercian school.” [1] In The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, Leclercq distinguished between “scholastic theology” and “monastic theology,” declaring that for the latter, “The important word is no longer quaeritur, but desideratur; no longer sciendum, but experiendum.” [2]
It is therefore surprising--and even exhilarating--to see the equally distinguished contemporary French scholar, Christian Trottmann, Research Director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, professor at the Université de Bourgogne, and author of many important books and articles about medieval and renaissance philosophy, take up the gauntlet in the seven hundred pages of his latest book, defining Bernard of Clairvaux and nine other Cistercian writers of his time as philosophers.
Trottmann is entirely conscious that his position contradicts general assumptions about Cistercian thought. In his Avant-Propos, “Paradoxes and Aporias concerning the Philosophy of Saint Bernard and the Cistercians,” he acknowledges that “presenting Bernard of Clairvaux as a philosopher already appears an impossibility [gageure]” (17; translations mine). He takes on that gageure syllogistically, explaining that while the traditional view of philosophy as grounded in Aristotle and moving forward through Aquinas and Descartes excludes Cistercian thought, if the point of departure is instead Socrates, the twelfth-century Cistercians were part of a legitimate philosophical tradition.
Trottmann’s argument is this: if philosophy is understood as essentially Aristotelian, then indeed the Cistercians were not philosophers. But if one understands philosophy as Socratic, then the Cistercians were certainly philosophers, seeking to know the Good. This approach reconciles Gilson’s opposition between faith and philosophy while resolving Leclercq’s distinction between scholastic and monastic theology--and it makes sense of those Cistercians like Geoffrey of Auxerre, who, despite their education in the Schools of twelfth-century France, hearing Bernard preach, followed him to the cloister.
After articulating his argument in the Avant-Propos, Trottmann explores the topic by focusing on the opposition between Aristotelian and Socratic traditions. The book has two large divisions, concluding with a bibliography but, unfortunately, no index. The first part contains an introduction and four chapters considering whether Bernard was a philosopher, beginning with a close examination of his On Consideration, then moving to The Steps of Humility and Pride. The book’s second part, which is nearly three times as long as the first, has three chapters and an Epilogue, considering nine other twelfth-century Cistercian writers as constituting “A Cistercian School.” The first of its three chapters (V) examines the three Cistercians whom Trottmann defines as “closest to Bernard”: Aelred of Rievaulx, Guerric of Igny, and Geoffrey d’Auxerre. The second (VI) concerns “the most philosophical of the Cistercians of the twelfth century,” including Isaac of Stella (who receives the most attention of the group, and whom Trottmann defines as “the most speculative” [341]), but also the little-known Garnier de Rochefort, and Hélinand de Froidmont.
The book’s final chapter (VII), “Satellites,” begins by acknowledging the difficulty in determining whether either its authors or their works can really be considered Cistercian, given that all three became Cistercian monks only very late in life, if at all. A further indication of hesitance appears in that each of the three sections is titled with a question: William of Saint-Thierry (“A false twin?”), Alain de Lille (“Cistercian in extremis?”), and Joachim de Flore (“A divergent eschatology?”).The book concludes with an Epilogue and a Conclusion, again cautiously titled, “A Socratism of Cenobites?”
Trottmann carries out a close reading of selected works of each of the authors, usually necessarily relying on their surviving chapter discourses (i.e., sermons). In the case of authors who have left numerous treatises, such as Bernard, Aelred, William, and Alain, he attends to one treatise at a time, so focusing first on Aelred’s Speculum caritatis, then De spiritali amicitia, and finally De anima, rather than trying to establish the thematic and philosophical constructs running throughout each author’s works. The careful analysis of the works is nonetheless insightful and provocative, with regular substantial quotations from the works under consideration. The book is highly readable and consistently interesting, with frequent tables showing the logical relationships of ideas already presented discursively.
The support that the analysis receives from secondary literature, however, is uneven, and is particularly light on Anglophone scholarship, as is evidenced by the lengthy bibliography. One result is the occasional unfortunate error that could easily have been avoided. Trottmann first refers to the Northumbrian Aelred as “the Scotch abbot” (235), then a little later declares that he was born in Scotland, says that he studied in Durham (a view often asserted and never shown), and credits him with thirty-two sermons De oneribus instead of the correct 31 (236). Again, the page and a half of speculation about the life and career of Isaac of Stella (343-44) are flush in the language of probability and hypothesis and punctuated by numerous questions; that uncertainty could have been informed if not entirely eliminated by reading the recent careful work on Isaac in English of Dom Elias Dietz, ocso.
Of course, Anglophone scholars far too often neglect scholarship in German, Italian, and French (not to mention Japanese, Dutch, and Hebrew), so there is real benefit in reading a book so immersed in continental monastic scholarship. The heft of the book witnesses to the time its author devoted to meticulously studying and exploring both primary and secondary sources. And it’s not as though either he or his readers wished that the book were longer. Further, Trottmann’s focus on non-Anglophone scholarship is beneficial in introducing English and American scholars to many works that they might normally miss. Nonetheless, the absence of important English voices in the argument, body, and bibliography is noticeable.
As the book’s acknowledgments make clear, its author is familiar not only with the thought of twelfth-century Cistercians, but also with twenty-first century Cistercian life. He has undertaken a valiant attempt to resist Gilson and Leclercq’s rejection of the idea of twelfth-century Cistercians as philosophers, understanding Bernard’s warnings against curiositas--vain erudition--not as a rejection of philosophy but as evidence of the Socratic roots of Cistercian philosophy. Whether readers accept the thesis embedded in the book’s title depends above all on whether they accept the major premise, that those who follow Socratic rather than Aristotelian thought are philosophers. What is certain, though, is that Christian Trottmann’s book makes a significant contribution to contemporary thinking about the goals and methods of twelfth-century Cistercian writers.
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Notes
[1] Étienne Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. A. H. C. Downes, Cistercian Studies series120 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1990), 63, 229 n. 75.
[2] Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, trans. Catherine Misrahi (New York: Fordham University Press, 1961), 3-4, 7.