Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/39

CH. I understanding which make his works creative; Peter Damiani through intensity of feeling has become the embodiment of Christian asceticism and the grace of Christian tears; and Hildebrand has established the mediaeval papal church. Of a truth, the mediaeval man was adjusting himself, and reaching his understanding of what the past had given him.

The twelfth century presents a universal progress in philosophic and theological thinking. It is the century of Abaelard, of Hugo of St. Victor, and St. Bernard, and of Peter Lombard. The first of these penetrates into the logical premises of systematic thought as no mediaeval man had done before him; St. Bernard moves the world through his emotional and political comprehension of the Faith; Hugo of St. Victor offers a sacramental explanation of the universe and man, based upon symbolism as the working principle of creation; and Peter Lombard makes or, at least, typifies, the systematic advance, from the Commentary to the Books of Sentences, in which he presents patristic doctrine arranged according to the cardinal topics of the Christian scheme. Here Abaelard's Sic et non had been a precursor rather carping in its excessive clear-sightedness.

Thus, as a rule, each successive mediaeval period shows a more organic restatement of the old material. Yet this principle may be impeded or deflected, in its exemplifications, by social turmoil and disaster, or even by the use of further antique matter, demanding assimilation. For example, upon the introduction of the complete works of Aristotle in the thirteenth century, an enormous intellectual effort was required for the mastery of their contents. They were not mastered at once, or by all people who studied the philosopher. So the works of Hugo of St. Victor, of the first half of the twelfth century, are more original in their organic restatement of less vast material than are the works of Albertus Magnus, Aristotle's prodigious expounder, one hundred years later. But Thomas Aquinas accomplishes a final Catholic presentation of the whole enlarged material, patristic and antique.

One may perceive three stages in this chief phase of