Abstract

Alan of Lille is a philosopher, theologian and poet of the twelfth century. He is the author of a twofold work: the transposition in poetical form of the major themes of Platonism on the one hand and treatises of theology that include many aspects of the logic and ontology of Gilbert of Poitiers on the other. He was the last representative of the first age of medieval speculation based on Boethius and on the logica vetus, which preceded the rediscovery of Aristotle’s physics, metaphysics, and psychology, and the discovery of Arabic philosophy.

As a scholar, Alan of Lille (Alanus ab Insulis, c. 1120/1128-1203, sometimes called the Doctor universalis) was influenced by two major currents of twelfth-century thought: the so-called School of Chartres, which inspired several of his research themes and the philosophical movement initiated by Gilbert Porreta (or of Poitiers). He was interested both in the philosophy of nature in a Platonic perspective grounded in the Timaeus, as was traditional among the scholars associated with Chartres, and in the philosophy of language, logic, and ontology in a Porretan perspective. In this, he synthesized the two major centers of interest of the twelfth century. He is said to have taught in Paris between the years 1170-1180, probably at Mont Sainte-Genevieve, at the same time as Simon of Tournai, before leaving for Montpellier; like Thierry of Chartres, he became a convert in Citeaux. Alan had great familiarity with the liberal arts, in particular the trivium - grammar, logic, rhetoric - and excellent knowledge of some Platonic authors of Late Antiquity (Chalcidius, Martianus Capella, Macrobius, and Boethius in the Consolatio). Despite living at the time of the beginning of the western reception of Arabic and Muslim texts (Avicenna), his thought remained within the framework of twelfth-century Latin culture (with the noticeable exception of his knowledge of the Liber de causis). In contrast with his contemporary Adelard of Bath, he demonstrated little interest in the ‘‘Arabic innovation”; his intellectual world was that of the Aetas Boethiana, the first age of medieval metaphysics dominated by Boethius and the logica vetus, of which he was the last representative.

His works belong to various literary genres and to different fields of knowledge. He wrote allegorical poems, in which he considered issues of natural philosophy: the De planctu naturae, the Anticlaudianus, and the Rythmus de incarnatione et de septem artibus (a text in which the Liberal Arts admit their incapacity to understand the Incarnation). His other works pertained to theology (Summa Quoniam homines and Regulae caelestis iuris) and to preaching (Ars predicandi and Sermones); they also included an apologetic treatise, the De fide catholica, which was aimed against Cathars and Walden-sians as much as against Pagans or Jews, and one more philosophical text, the Sermo de sphera intelligibili.

Through his poetical and allegorical writings, he contributed to the development, peculiar to the twelfth century, of a new philosophical conception of nature, thus testifying to the tradition of reading and glossing of the Timaeus, characteristic of the School of Chartres. Alan’s work is in great part the poetical transposition of the major themes of Platonism.

The Lament of Nature (De planctu naturae) - a prosimetrum (a work comprising alternating verse and prose sections) written between 1160 and 1170 - is a poetical allegory intended for philosophical and moral meditation. Nature, the vicaria Dei, whose task is to make harmony reign on Earth, descends to the poet in order to condemn the vices of humanity, first and foremost homosexuality.

The Anticlaudianus, a long epic of 6,000 verses composed in 1182-1183, describes an allegorical voyage of Prudentia to visit God so as to receive the soul of a perfect man. In this work, Alan gives an encyclopedic overview of human knowledge (grammar, dialectic, oratory art, mathematics, geometry, and astronomy) and a descriptive praise of moral and intellectual virtues. He meditates on the perfect man, whom nature alone cannot produce.

The summa Quoniam homines, like the Rules of Theology, is a text that shows Alain of Lille concluding century-long thought and opening new perspectives, among other things, on terminism. The Summa belongs to the Porretan-Boethian theological tradition. It deals with the Boethian issue of the transfer of categorical language to predication in divinis and the possibility of using categorical discourse in order to speak about God. In a reasoning inspired by the Pseudo-Dionysius on the ineffable aspect of celestial science, Alan speaks of the translation of the categories when they are predicated of God. In contrast with Boethius who used the term mutatio, Alan’s source here is Eriugena, whose arguments he uses. According to Eriugena, none of the ten categories, not even substance, is predicable of God in the proper sense (nulla categoria proprie Deum significare potest). A category can only be predicated of him in a figurative (translative) or metaphorical sense (per metaphoram), by transfer from the creature to the Creator (per translationem a creatura ad creatorem). Alan’s debt to Gilbert appears in these texts mainly in the field of the semantics of terms and of ontology (see last section). Alan grounds his theory of signification on the distinction between suppositio and significatio, which occurs in the wider framework of the opposition between the ‘‘proper use’’ and the ‘‘improper use’’ of a term.

The Regulae caelestis iuris circulated under several different titles: Theologicae regulae, Regulae Alani de sacra theologia, Maximae theologiae, Liber de maximis theologiae, De maximis theologicis, Axiomata theologica. Beginning with the postulate that ‘‘each science is grounded in foundations which are proper to it,’’ this writing is an attempt at stating systematically the rules of theology. This organized set of 134 propositions, which are analyzed, commented upon or demonstrated, offers an axiomatization of theology, that is, the definition of the set of principles that theology needs in order to be constituted as a rigorous science, reminiscent of Boethius’ treatise De hebdomadibus. This is the first attempt to provide theology with a scientific character, by presenting it according to a geometrical organization, and by applying logic and grammar to it. This work is inspired by Boethius, the Chartrians, and the Liber XXIV philosophorum - an anonymous text of supposed ‘‘hermetical’’ origin - and is pervaded by Neoplatonic henology. The starting point is not, as it was for Boethius, esse, being, but the One in the form of the monad. The first rule is ‘‘the monad is that which makes any reality one.’’ God is first considered as One or unity (monas) before being considered according to the metaphysical categories of esse, simplicity, and form. This monad is God-One, through which all unities and pluralities and, therefore, beings come into existence. Henology reacquires a form of primacy, but is now represented as acting on the order of nature, and not any more as the presence in all things of the transcendental One. According to Alan, God is really One, but does not have being: ‘‘of that which is being (esse), there is no being. Of God, who is the being of all things, there is no being, because in order to be he does not participate in anything.’’ A ‘‘form without a form’’ or ‘‘form of forms,’’ God is ‘‘the first substance [...] called ousid’ - in the words of the Liber XXIV philosophorum, ‘‘an intelligible sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere.’’ Alan’s axiomatization of theology contributed, more than any other work, to the evolution of the old sacra pagina into a proper ‘‘theological science,’’ which took place at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Alan’s text inspired Meister Eckhart’s idea of an Opus propositionum, the set of the 1,000 theses necessary to an axiomatization of theological knowledge.

The Sermon on the Intelligible Sphere is a treatise of Neoplatonic metaphysics, inspired among others by Boethius, and also by Bernard of Chartres and Gilbert Porreta for the theory of ‘‘native forms.’’ The universe consists in four spheres with four modes of being and four modes of knowledge. The first sphere is that of reality, dominated by nature, in which ‘‘the marriage of forms and their subjects is celebrated.’’ The second is that of primordial matter around which the forms revolve in a continuous movement. The palace of the World-Soul that illuminates the universe is the third sphere, in which the pure form returns to its origin. The fourth is the perfect sphere of intelligibles, of eternal ideas.

One of the salient traits of the philosophy of Alan of Lille is its Porretan character. Alan is one of the thinkers who echoes most strongly the thought of Gilbert. A large part of Alan’s philosophy of language, his theory of reference (in particular, the theory of the nomen appellativum), and, most of all, his ontology consist in the intelligent use, systematization, and rethinking of Gilbert’s doctrines. Here Alan does not use allegory or poetry, but dry and technical reasoning. Although Platonism pervades part of his thought, one must not expect to find him defending a realist ontology. On the contrary, his ontology is grounded in strict particularism (and in this, Alan’s thought constitutes yet another example that realism and Platonism must not be considered as necessarily related). Alan’s position is nominalistic, and can be described more precisely as a trope theory. He does not accept universal entities, in the sense of entities that are common to several spatiotemporally distinct individuals. All properties, both essential and accidental, are particular. A man is man through his own humanity, this apple is red through its own redness, and Socrates is wise through his own wisdom. Complementary to this particularism, Alan also borrows from Gilbert his theory of exact resemblance or conformitas. Two individuals that belong to the same species or exemplify the same property are considered to be conform in this respect. Although they are both particular, the humanity of Socrates and that of Plato are exactly resemblant and therefore conform (Regulae, CXXX: ‘‘conformitas est singularium naturarum plena similitudo. Vt Socrates et Plato dicuntur naturaliter conformes suis singularibus humanitatibus eos similiter conformantibus’’). This form that makes Socrates a man causes him to belong to a group of individuals which have the same specific characteristic; it makes him resemble other men. Men do not resemble each other through a common form, but through the conformity of their own form.

On the basis of this exact resemblance, one can, through abstraction, obtain universal concepts that are ontologically grounded. The specific or generic universal is the reunion or collection of all the individuals which present the same specific or generic character; however, this universal is not a res.

See also: > Gilbert of Poitiers > Schools in the Twelfth Century