Volume 16 — Review of Vaughan's Life Of S. Thomas.2

Review of Vaughan's Life Of S. Thomas.2

It is but too seldom that the reviewer has to welcome a work like that which we have already had the pleasure of introducing to our readers, and to which we now desire to render more fitting honors. An original life of a saint, and of an epoch-making saint like Thomas of Aquin, treated on a scale adequate to its importance, in the English tongue, by an English Benedictine monk, is a refreshing novelty to those who, like ourselves, have so much to say to what is slight, or frivolous, or common, or hostile. The contemplative reviewer, looking at the two thick volumes of the English edition, feels inclined, like a man who guesses before he opens a letter, to conjure up fancies as to what he will find in this new life of S. Thomas of Aquin. Two volumes, each consisting of more than 800 pages, are a great deal, in these days, for one saint. They are a great deal to write, and what is perhaps of more importance, they are a great deal to read. But no one can suppose that they are too much for such a saint as Thomas of Aquin. Considering that his own works, as printed in the splendid Parma edition lately completed, would make up some forty volumes of the size of these two goodly ones, it is not much. Considering that Thomas of Aquin has been more written about by commentators for four or five centuries than any other [pg 032] man, except perhaps Aristotle, who ever lived—considering that every student of theology is always coming across his authority, and that he has been the great builder-up of the vast building of Catholic philosophical and theological terminology, it is not much that he should have two volumes. Indeed, when we look into the book, we expect to find Prior Vaughan not seldom complaining of being obliged, through want of space, to leave out a great deal that he would have wished to say. And this leads us to notice the author's name. Father Bede Vaughan, though fairly known by reputation in England, is perhaps a stranger to the greater number of American Catholics. It is sufficient to say at present that he is a brother of the Very Rev. Dr. Herbert Vaughan, whose presence in this country lately, in connection with the mission to the negroes, will have made his name familiar to many even of those who had not the pleasure of personally meeting him. Father Bede Vaughan is Prior of the Benedictine Cathedral Chapter of Newport and Menevia. A cathedral-prior is a novelty, not only in literature, but absolutely. There were a great many cathedral-priors in England once upon a time—men of power and substance—wearing their mitres (some of them) and sitting in the House of Lords. Whatever be the lands and the revenues of the only cathedral-priory in English-speaking hierarchies of the present day, it is pleasant to meet with the old name, and to meet it on the cover of a book. That a Benedictine should have written a sterling book will not surprise the world of letters. It is perhaps a little new to find the great Dominican, the Angel of the Schools, taken up by a member of an order which S. Thomas is popularly supposed to have in set purpose turned his back upon. But this is a point on which the work itself will enlighten us. Meanwhile, on opening the first volume we catch sight of a portrait of the Saint. It is a reproduction, by photography, of a painting by the Roman artist Szoldatics, which was painted expressly for the present work. It represents the well-known scene in which the crucified Master, for whom the great doctor has written and taught his life long, asks him what reward he would desire. Portraits of S. Thomas of Aquin are not uncommon. We are all familiar with the large and portly figure and the full and mild countenance, the sun upon his breast, the black and the white, and the shaven crown of the Order of St. Dominic, the open book and the immortal pen. Some of the representations of the saint exaggerate his traditional portliness into a corpulence that almost obliterates the light of genius in his face. On the other hand, there exist many which give at once the large open features and the look of inspiration and of refinement. Those who have turned to the title-pages of the best Roman or Flemish editions of his life or works will remember these. The new portrait, photographed in the first volume, is very successful. Thomas of Aquin had Norman blood in his veins, and the fairness of his skin and the contour of his head are not those of the typical Italian. The artist has managed to convey very well that massive head, in which every lobe of the brain seems to have been perfectly developed and roomily lodged, thus furnishing the intelligence with an imaginative instrument whose power was only equalled by its delicacy. In the corresponding place in the second volume there is a photograph of a meritorious engraving, from a picture or engraving unknown to us, [pg 033] in which, however, the head of the Saint is not so noble or refined.

Passing, however, to consider the substance of the work itself, it is not too much to say that, as a life of S. Thomas of Aquin, it is perfectly original. We do not mean, of course, that the writer has found out new facts, or made any considerable alteration in the aspect of old ones. But his plan of working is new. He has had the idea of giving, not merely S. Thomas, but his surroundings. Some saints, even of those who have spent themselves in external labors for their fellow-men, require but little in the way of background to make their portraits significant. Ven. Bede's biography would not gain much light from discussions upon Mohammedanism, or upon the state of England or of Europe during his life. To understand and love S. Francis of Sales, it is not necessary to study the growth of Calvinism, to follow the steps of the De Auxiliis controversy, or to become minutely acquainted with the character of Henri IV. But it is very different with S. Thomas of Aquin. Opening his mouth, like a true doctor of the church, “in medio ecclesiæ,” he had words to speak which all Christendom listened to, and acted upon, too, in one way or another. He was a power at Paris, at Cologne, at Naples. Every great influence of the thirteenth century felt the impulse of his thought: S. Louis the Crusader, Urban IV., Gregory X., the Greek schismatics, the Arabian philosophers, the opponents of monasticism, the mighty power of the universities. Prior Vaughan thus speaks in the preface to the first volume:

“The author has found it difficult to comprehend how the life of S. Thomas of Aquin could be written so as to content the mind of an educated man—of one who seeks to measure the reach of principle and the influence of saintly genius—without embracing a considerably wider field of thought than has been deemed necessary by those who have aimed more at composing a book of edifying reading, than at displaying the genesis and development of truth and the impress of a master-mind upon the age in which he lived. It has always appeared to him that one of the most telling influences exerted by the doctor-saints of God, has been that of rare intellectual power in confronting and controlling the passions and mental aberrations of epochs, as well as of blinded and swerving men....

“The object which the author of these pages has proposed to himself is this: to unfold before the reader's mind the far-reaching and many-sided influence of heroic sanctity, when manifested by a man of massive mind, of sovereign genius, and of sagacious judgment, and then to remind him that, as the fruit hangs from the branches, so genius of command and steadiness of view and unswervingness of purpose, are naturally conditioned by a certain moral habit of heart and head; that purity, reverence, adoration, love, are the four solid corner-stones on which that Pharos reposes which, when all about it, and far beyond it, is darkness and confusion, stands up in the midst as the representative of order, and as the minister of light, and as the token of salvation.

“Now, the Angel of the Schools was emphatically a great and shining light. To write his life is not so much to deal with the subject of his personal history, as to display the stretch of his power and the character of his influence. Indeed, few of the great cardinal thinkers of the world have left much private history to record. Self was hidden in the splendor of the light which bursts out from it—just as the more brilliant the flame, so much the more unseen is the lamp in which it burns. It stands to reason that the more widespread the influence which such men as these exert, so much the wider must be the range taken by the writer over the field of history and theology and philosophy if he wishes adequately to delineate the action of their lives. The private history of S. Thomas of Aquin could be conveniently written in fifty pages, whilst his full biography would certainly occupy many thousand pages.”(Pp. iii., iv.)

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The view which is thus sketched out is a large one. We have said that the author presents not merely his hero, but his hero's surroundings. But, in studying his mind and his work, he does not content himself with making a vivid background of the thirteenth century. One century is the child of another, and mind is educated by mind. The past is the seed of the future, and no time can be understood without understanding the times that gave it birth. This is especially true of the times when history accumulates most rapidly, and of minds to whom it is given to fashion history as it is made. Prior Vaughan finds the story of S. Thomas' intellectual work commencing far back in the work of those men whom he calls the “columnal fathers” of the church. He therefore takes his reader back to primitive ages—to the desert, the laura, the early conflicts of God's servants with paganism, with heresy, and with worldliness. He sets before him S. Anthony, in the majesty of his single-hearted union with Christ; S. Athanasius, worthy disciple of such a master, unsurpassed in the great opportunities of his life and the strength with which he rose to meet them; S. Basil, the monk that fought the world, and overcame it; S. Gregory Theologus, the vates sacer of the fourth century, who sang in verse and in rhythmical prose the song of the consubstantial Son of God. He introduces us to S. Augustine, to S. Ambrose, to S. Gregory the Great, and points out how essential a feature, in the greatness of S. Thomas, is the way in which he has reproduced all that was eternal and “catholic” in the thoughts of the men whom God has set up to be the pillars of the doctrine of his church. With other saints, it would, perhaps, be superfluous to trace their connection with the fathers; with the author of the Summa, it is indispensable.

“The Columnal Fathers and the Angelical were in completest harmony; they were knit together by the monastic principle. The intellectual hinges of the Universal Church (speaking humanly) have been monastic-men—that is to say, men who, through an intense cross-worship and a keen perception of the beautiful, threw up all for Christ; and through

‘The ingrained instinct of old reverence,

The holy habit of obedience,’

loved, labored, suffered for him, and died into his arms.

“For the one thread which pierces through all, and maintains a real communication between the Angelical and the heroes of the classic age—which creates a brotherhood between S. Thomas of the thirteenth century and the great athletes in the second and the third—which makes the ‘Sun of the Church’ illuminate the ‘Pillar of the World,’ and so reciprocally—that is to say, which renders S. Thomas and S. Anthony one in spirit and in principle—was this, that their beings were transformed into a supernatural activity, through an intense and personal love of their Redeemer.

“This was the one special lesson which the Angelical drew from the wilderness and the fathers, which came to him through S. Benedict, indeed, but rather as a principle of quies than of exertion. In the desert athletes, and those who followed them, he found that principle operative, and almost military in its chivalrous readiness to combat and spill blood in defence of truth. It lent to him what it exhibits in them also—breadth of view, largeness, moral freedom, stubborn courage, generosity of heart, expansion of mind, and an electric light of intellect, which bear about them a touch of the Eastern world. How could the Angelical read Anthony's life, or follow Athanasius in his exiles, or see Basil so heroically rigid in his defence of right, or hear, in imagination, Gregory Theologus pouring out a stream of polished eloquence, without being impressed by truth's grace and music; how could he watch S. Chrysostom, all on fire with his love of God and with his discriminating sympathy for men, or [pg 035]think of the ascetic Jerome, battling single-handed in the wilderness, or perusing his Scripture in the cave; how could he dwell in spirit with S. Ambrose or S. Gregory the Great, or follow the career of the passionate, emotional, splendid S. Augustine, without expanding in heart and mind towards all that is best and greatest—all that is most noble and most fair in the majestic character of God's tenderly-cherished saints?

“Had he not known them so intimately, great as he was, his mind would have been comparatively cramped, his character most probably would have been less imperial in its mould, and there would have been less of that oriental mightiness about his intellectual creations, which now reminds one of those vast monuments of other days, which still are the marvel of travellers in the East, and the despair of modern engineers.”(II., pp. 523-5.)

A great portion of the second volume is taken up with the exposition in detail of these thoughts and ideas. We do not think that any one who has thoroughly seized the author's point of view will be sorry that so much space is given to the lives and characters of men who are not the immediate subject of the book. The truth is, that the full significance of S. Thomas of Aquin has been very much overlooked in modern times. The non-Catholic theory has always been that he was a voluminous “scholastic,” more acute than most of his sort, perhaps, but mediæval, hair-splitting, and unprofitable. The Catholic theory has done him greater justice; but even the Catholic schools have too much forgotten S. Thomas. There is an interesting passage in one of Lacordaire's letters, in which he tells the Abbé Drioux, who has done so much for S. Thomas in France, how he read the Angelical every day, and yet how long it had been before he had come to know him! And then he speaks with some depreciation of that “Positive” theology which has pretended to take the place of the scholastic form and discipline. The great preacher was familiar with the spiritual wants of the world in their widest aspect, and he no sooner came to know S. Thomas of Aquin than he saw that he was face to face with the mind that has said more truth about God and man, and said it better, than any one man who has ever lived; and he has said it so well, because he has not said it out of his own consciousness, but first saturated himself with the living truth of the immortal fathers, and then reproduced in his own way what God had thus himself imparted to the world.

The influence which S. Thomas owed to the study and meditation of the great fathers was surpassed—or rather, we ought to say, most powerfully shown—by the impressions made upon his heart, even more than his mind, by his early bringing up. Every one knows that the Angel of the Schools, who was of the noblest blood of Italy, spent his early years in the great arch-monastery of Monte Casino. Prior Vaughan has no hesitation in making the assertion that Thomas of Aquin never lost what he acquired from the monks of S. Benedict during those seven childish years that he spent with them in the cloisters of the great abbey. He was never a professed Benedictine, although he would, in the natural course, have become one without making any explicit profession, had not the troubles of the times forced the monks to flee from the abbey. But the Benedictine or monastic spirit, the principle of quies, as our author calls it, with the vivid appreciation of the kingship of Christ, Thomas took away with him when he went forth and carried with him to the work he had to do. The new mendicant orders that had recently been founded were schools of activity, [pg 036] aggressive, moving hither and thither, pitching their tents in great towns, and lifting their voices in universities. Their saints were to be fitted for the regeneration of a new phase of the world. But in the saints themselves it was only an outward change. The essential spirit remained the same. That spirit had been the heirloom of the old monastic orders, and it could never be out of date. In the men who were to do the greatest things in the new life of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the old spirit of the cloister must be found strong and deep. In the man who above all was to stand forth as the sum and crown of the middle age, that contemplative, immovable, far-seeing realization of “the person of Christ” must exist as heroically as in Anthony of the Desert or Benedict of the Mountain. And it was S. Thomas' Benedictine training that contributed much to make him such a man.

“The monks thought much, but talked little; thus the monastic system encouraged meditation, rather than intellectual tournaments; reserve rather than display, deep humility rather than dialectical skill. The Benedictines did not aim so much at unrestrained companionship of free discussion as at self control; not so much at secular-minded fantasy as at much prayer and sharp penance, till self was conquered, and the grace of God reigned, and giants walked the earth. Self-mastery, springing from the basis of a supernatural life, moulded the heart to sanctity, and imparted to the intellect an accuracy of vision which is an act of nature directed and purified by grace. Theodore, Aldhelm, Bede, Boniface, Alcuin, Dunstan, Wilfrid, Stephen, Bernard, Anselm, these names are suggestive of this influence of the monastic system.”(I., p. 26.)

It is one of the aims of the book to bring out the view that the prince of scholastics and the king of dialecticians was a man of the purest and deepest “monasticism.” But he was not destined to be as an Anselm, a Bernard, or a Hugh of S. Victor.

The Saint was sent to Naples for the prosecution of his studies, and whilst there he asked for and received the habit of S. Dominic. The author gives a brilliant sketch of Naples as it was under the sway of Frederick II. He then devotes a whole chapter to a “study” of the new orders of S. Francis and S. Dominic, for the purpose of bringing out vividly before the reader the new world that was springing up and the new race of men that the church was calling forth to deal with it. We have no space to quote from this chapter, but, even taken apart from its connection with S. Thomas, it is full of interest and life.

Thus was Thomas of Aquin prepared and equipped; prepared by the great fathers and by S. Benedict, equipped in the armor of the Order of intellectual chivalry. And what was the work before him? Who were his enemies, his friends, his neighbors, his assistants? In answer to these questions we have the chapters on “Abelard, or Rationalism and Irreverence”; on “S. Bernard, or Authority and Reverence”; on the “Schools of S. Victor”; on the “Arabian and the Jewish Influence in Europe”; on “William of S. Amour”; on “Paris and its University”; and on “Albert the Great.” Some of these chapters relate, as will be seen, to men who were not contemporaries of S. Thomas. But if Abelard, and S. Bernard, and William of Champeaux had passed away in the flesh, their influence or their views still lived on when Thomas wrote. And we see the full significance of these chapters on the great schools of thought, orthodox and heterodox, when we arrive at the second [pg 037] volume, and find the author showing in detail how the Angel of the Schools, in some part or other of his voluminous writings, met and refuted every form of prevalent error, and, whilst majestically laying down principles for all ages, never forgot to clear up the difficulties of his own time. The rationalism of Abelard, the emanation doctrines that Arabian subtlety had elaborated out of the reminiscences of the old Gnosticism, the errors of the Greek schismatics, the perversity of the Jews, are all encountered by his never-resting pen, either in some one of his numerous Opuscula, varying in length from an essay to an octavo volume, or else in one or other of his two great Sums, or perhaps in more places than one, the refutation being the more complete as the writing becomes more mature. As for the two greatest and most prominent of his enterprises—the Christianizing of Aristotle and the formation of a complete Sum of theology—it was to be expected that Prior Vaughan should fully enlarge upon them. The chapters on “S. Thomas and Aristotle,” and “S. Thomas and Reason,” in the second volume, form a good introduction to the study of the Angelic Doctor, and at the same time give the enquiring mind some notion of how S. Thomas has performed one of the greatest feats that genius ever accomplished—the successful and consistent “conversion” of the greatest, the most original, and the most precise of heathen philosophers into a hewer of wood and carrier of water for the faith.

We would gladly dwell on the three chapters at the end of Vol. I., in which the writer, in reviewing the writings of the Saint in defence and exaltation of monasticism, gives a useful and spirited history of the whole of that exciting contest which took its beginning in William of S. Amour's book called Perils of the Last Times. It seems really impossible to say how much the religious state, humanly speaking, owes to the man who wrote the book Against Those who attack the Service of God and Religion, and that On the Perfection of the Spiritual Life.

Passing now from the more remote surroundings of the hero of the story to the immediate scene of the greatest portion of his labors, we venture to believe that one of the most popular parts of this work of Prior Vaughan's will be his animated description of the university system of the thirteenth century, and of the University of Paris in particular. He has spared no pains in getting at correct details and putting them artistically together. M. Franklin's splendid and comparatively unknown labors on mediæval Paris have supplied him with matter that will be found nowhere else. Paris is the natural type of the great mediæval university. More central and accessible than Oxford, safer than Bologna, freer than Naples, and founded on a wide and grand basis, the University of Paris soon grew into a formidable assemblage of men who, whilst ostensibly votaries of science, were not unprovided with excitable spirits and rough hands. Students gathered, rich and poor, great doctors taught, munificent founders, like Robert of Sorbon, bestowed their money or their influence, the monks of all orders gathered round silently, and to some extent distrustfully, from Citeaux, from Cluny, even from the Grande Chartreuse, with the Benedictines of S. Germain, the Premonstratensians—their church was where now stands the Café de la Rotonde—and the Augustinians. As for the Dominicans and Franciscans, they, as may be supposed, were [pg 038] early on the spot, to teach quite as much as to learn. The following is a sketch of the men who flocked to the great university—at least of one considerable class:

“There were starving, friendless lads, with their unkempt heads and their tattered suits, who walked the streets, hungering for bread, and famishing for knowledge, and hankering after a sight of some of those great doctors, of whom they had heard so much when far away in the woods of Germany or the fields of France. Some were so poor that they could not afford to follow a course of theology. We read of one poor fellow on his death-bed, having nothing else, giving his shoes and stockings to a companion to procure a Mass for his soul. Some were only too glad to carry holy water to private houses, selon la coutume Gallicane, with the hope of receiving some small remuneration. Some were destitute of necessary clothing. One tunic sometimes served for three, who took it in turns—two went to bed, whilst the third dressed himself and hurried off to school. Some spent all their scanty means in buying parchments, and wasted their strength, through half the night, poring over crabbed manuscript, or in puzzling out that jargon which contained the wisdom of the wisest of the Greeks. Whole nights some would remain awake on their hard pallets, in those unhealthy cells, trying to work out some problem proposed by the professor in the schools. But there were rich as well as poor at Paris. There was Langton, like others, famous for his opulence, who taught, and then became Canon of Notre Dame; and Thomas à Becket, who, as a youth, came here to seek the charm of gay society.” (I., p. 354.)

Amid all the noise, turmoil, and disputes of the huge colony of students, numbering more thousands than Oxford or Cambridge at this day can show hundreds, the great Dominican convent of S. James was a grand and famous centre of light and work. S. Dominic was not long before he settled in Paris. At first the friars lived in a mean hired lodging, apparently on the Island of Notre Dame. But soon their reputation for poverty and learning attracted the notice of influential benefactors, and they had a house of their own. It was dedicated to S. James the Apostle, and quickly became not only a great monastery but a famous school. The Dominican Order, divinely founded for a want of the time, soon began to show in front of the progress of the age, and to lead instead of following. It was here, in S. James, that Alanus de Insulis and Vincent of Beauvois wrote histories and commentaries; it was here that Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas lectured and wrote; and the crowd of lesser names that are mentioned on its rolls about this time, less distinguished but still distinguished, would take long to enumerate. It was for S. James that S. Dominic himself had framed a body of rules. These rules are most striking, as given in the pages of Prior Vaughan. They show how a saint and monastic legislator feels the “form and pressure” of the times, and how he provides for a new feature in monasticism. To read these rules, one feels tempted to say that the Dominicans sacrificed everything to give their men a first-rate course of studies. But we must remember the midnight vigil and the perpetual absence and the long silence. Still, the cloisters of S. James were different enough from those of Monte Casino. There was a great hall at S. James', where professors taught and whither students thronged to hear—how different from the remote cloister of Jarrow, where Venerable Bede taught his younger brethren for so many years on the quiet flats between the Wear and the Tyne! The cells knew the light of the midnight lamp, the cloisters resounded with disputation, the young students of the Order [pg 039] were men of few books—a Bible, a copy of the Historia of Petrus Comestor and of the Sentences of Peter Lombard, was all their private library. But half the day was spent face to face with a professor and with each other, and the want of books was not much felt. And what an education it must have been to listen to and take down the Summa contra Gentiles of the Angel of the Schools! As we have said, the whole of these two chapters is instinct with the liveliest description, and we cannot do better than recommend readers to go to it and judge for themselves.

We must reserve what we have not yet touched upon, viz., the personal life of the Saint himself, for another notice. It must not be supposed that Prior Vaughan passes over the person of S. Thomas in his anxiety to show us what sort of a world he lived in. It will soon be seen, on making some slight acquaintance with the book, that the strictly biographical portion is in reality most successful; the story is well told, and, like all stories of sanctity and supernatural heroism, goes straight to the heart.

Without saying that Prior Vaughan's two volumes partake of the nature of the perfect, we frankly say we do not intend to find faults in it. We welcome it, and it deserves to be welcomed by every Catholic that can read it. There are, of course, defects and a few errors here and there; but the book lays down no false principles, takes no dangerous views, and patronizes no pernicious mistakes. On the other hand, it deals with a wide theme in a large way. In language which, if at times too copious, is nevertheless frequently eloquent and always easy and fluent, the writer raises the life of a saint into a picture of a world-epoch. He has labored very hard at his authorities and sources, and when the book gets into use many students, we are sure, will thank him for his copious references and notes. His imagination is of a high order, and his picture-loving power is seen in the way in which he sketches with an epithet, puts together the elements that he finds up and down the old authors, and shakes the dust and the mildew from valuable bits of ancient chronicle, so that they look bright again. The Hon. John L. Motley is in the front rank of modern historians, and to compare any writer with him is to give praise that one must think much before giving; but if we wished to indicate the genre of Prior Vaughan's style—its pictorial power, its realism, and its tone of earnest conviction—we should mention the name of the historian of the Netherlands. The two writers are very unlike in their convictions; and Mr. Motley has, no doubt, a perfection and finish of art which few writers can approach. But still Prior Vaughan is quite fit to be named in the same sentence. And a book which has cost so many hours of thought and labor, which aims so high, which is so really the work of a man with views and with a power to express himself, and which deals with a subject that can never lose its interest, but one which, if we do not mistake, is as yet only at the beginning of a grand revival, is a book to be welcomed, to be read, and to be thankful for.

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