Thomas Becket. Father John S. Hogan

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       5

       Paris

      As Thomas was romping around Sussex, his father, Gilbert, was planning how to prepare his only son for a life of work. His mother, Matilda, also harbored dreams of greatness for him, while growing ever more concerned for his well-being. Ambitious for Thomas, and perhaps all too aware of his inherent laziness and his new love for the privileged life, they plucked the young man from his life of pleasure, with all its attendant foibles and dangers, and packed him off to Paris to continue his education, most likely in the fall of 1139. Less fortunate contemporaries were already engaged in earning a living, perhaps married and struggling to raise families; Thomas had had a much easier life.

      Paris was the ideal place for an ambitious father to send a bright and promising son.¹ Even in medieval times, it was a glamorous city. A cosmopolitan hub, it attracted people from all over Europe for business and pleasure. Among the most fascinating institutions within the city were the emerging schools where scholars took up positions to teach the brightest minds in Europe. The University of Paris would become one of the most renowned academic institutions in the world and a major theological center for the Church for many centuries. It would educate vast numbers of young men — popes, theologians, saints, and royalty among them. Among its greatest teachers would be Saint Albert the Great and his student Saint Thomas Aquinas, who would write much of his Summa contra Gentiles during his first stint as a master in the university in the middle of the next century. When Thomas of London arrived in Paris, the formal foundation of the university was still sixty years away; what he found was a constellation of renowned schools, some centered on an individual master, situated in various places around the city and suburbs and educating about 2,500 students.

      The schools and the eventual university were ecclesiastical foundations, so their students came under the direction of the Church. Those attending them were tonsured, not to indicate that they had entered the clerical life, though many of them would, but to signify that they were now under the protection of the Church. It is not certain whether the tonsure applied as early as Thomas’s sojourn, but his experience of education in Paris was certainly ecclesiastical, and many of his teachers would have been priests. The quality of the education was second to none, and the academic life of the city was exciting and innovative, though not without controversy. Teachers, or masters, were theologians in their own right, developing their ideas in lectures and composing treatises that were read throughout the Church. Many of these thinkers would become highly influential not just in their day but for centuries, and the writings of a number of these masters laid the foundations of many of our theological positions today.

      Among those educating the future leaders of Europe were Peter Lombard, the compiler of the Sentences, which formed the basis of theological education for centuries; and Peter Abelard, a theologian whose personal life is now more famous than his theories. Lombard arrived in Paris in 1134 and was teaching at the cathedral school of Notre Dame; he was renowned as a theologian by 1144. He would be elected bishop of Paris in 1159. Peter Abelard was a very different sort of man. As Lombard progressed in the ecclesiastical life and was renowned for his innovative orthodoxy, Abelard’s life and genius were mired in scandal and accusations of heresy. He had arrived in Paris in 1100 and was taught in the cathedral school of Notre Dame before teaching in various places in France. He had returned to Paris in 1108 to take up a position as master at the cathedral school. From there, he engaged in a number of disputes. It was his affair with a young woman, Hélöise, that led to his downfall. Scandal surrounded their torrid relationship, which produced a child, and even greater infamy awaited Abelard as he faced trial and condemnation for his theological positions. Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was involved in the formal process that eventually led to Abelard’s excommunication in 1141. Abelard would die in 1142, but not before the excommunication was lifted and he was reconciled with Bernard.

      It is not known where Thomas studied or under which teachers, but it is unlikely that he studied under Peter Lombard, and he certainly did not study under Abelard, though Paris would have been abuzz with news of his trial. It would have been unusual to study in Paris at that time and not seek out the great lights, so even if he was not studying there, Thomas may have gone to the cathedral school to hear Lombard, who was gaining a reputation for his singular method of teaching. But there were other great teachers of note, and if Thomas had had the wit to realize it, he could have attained in Paris all the knowledge, influence, and contacts he needed to carve out a successful and profitable career. One of his early biographers, Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence, a writer known for his meticulous research who wrote his life of Thomas in French and published it four years after the martyrdom, maintains that Thomas did not study theology but rather took courses in the arts.² Of the four academic areas in the schools — arts, medicine, law, and theology — arts was considered the lowest. Anne Duggan suggests that Thomas went to Paris not to study the arts curriculum in its entirety, but rather to “cherry pick” some of the advanced courses.³ Biographers indicate that he may have studied under the great Robert of Melun;⁴ his later recommendation for Robert’s elevation as bishop could be offered as evidence to suggest that he did. Robert’s career would prove interesting and influential for Thomas.

      Little is known of Robert’s origins, though it is known that he was born in England around 1100. The title he bore, Melun, refers to the town in France where he taught between 1142 and 1147. He was in Paris for most of his career and was considered one of the great disputatores of the time.⁵ A student of the Parisian schools himself, Robert had studied under Peter Abelard; while he admired Abelard, Robert was strictly orthodox in his writing and teaching. Hugh of Saint Victor, the theologian of the mystical life, had also taught Robert and would influence his work. In 1137, Robert succeeded Peter Abelard as a teacher in the school on Mont Sainte-Geneviève on the Left Bank of the Seine; there he taught and influenced a number of scholars, Thomas’s future friend John of Salisbury among them.⁶

      Robert was in great demand as a theologian, and because of his orthodoxy and brilliance, he was trusted to adjudicate the questionable works of other scholars. In this role, he opposed the teaching of the bishop of Poitiers, Gilbert de la Porrée, who in his commentary on the work of the early sixth-century Roman theologian Saint Severinus Boethius offered an interpretation of the mystery of the Holy Trinity that seemed to contradict Church teaching. Peter Lombard had raised the alarm about this work, with Saint Bernard of Clairvaux sharing his concerns; the matter was referred to the pope. In 1148, when Pope Eugene III came to Reims to preside over a council — one that Thomas would also attend with Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury — Robert, Saint Bernard, and others were called to a consistory to contest Gilbert’s theology. Saint Bernard already had his suspicions about Gilbert, since he had been a defender of Peter Abelard; indeed, he regarded Gilbert as a heretic. Robert was just as vociferous in his opposition to Gilbert’s writing. However, while Gilbert was required to recant and change the offending passages in his work, he was not formally condemned as a heretic, much to Robert and Saint Bernard’s chagrin, and he returned to his diocese with his reputation unsullied.

      Robert would teach in France for forty years, after which he was recalled to England to take up the position of bishop of Hereford in 1163, an appointment in which Thomas was instrumental. Robert would become an uneasy ally of Thomas’s in the disputes that lay ahead; but apart from his support, wavering as it would prove to be, there was something vital in one of his works that may have proved valuable for Thomas, though the student may not have noticed it until he was archbishop. His Quaestiones de Epistolis Pauli, a СКАЧАТЬ