"Every Valley Shall Be Exalted": The Discourse of Opposites in Twelfth-Century Thought

By Frank E. Daulton

In high medieval France, men and women saw the world around them as the product of tensions between opposites. Imbued with a Christian culture in which a penniless preacher was also the King of Kings and the last were expected to be first, twelfth-century thinkers brought order to their lives through the creation of opposing categories. In a highly original work, Constance Brittain Bouchard examines this poorly understood component of twelfth-century thought, one responsible, in her view, for the fundamental strangeness of that culture to modern thinking.

Scholars have long recognized that dialectical reasoning was the basic approach to philosophical, legal, and theological matters in the high Middle Ages. Bouchard argues that this way of thinking and categorizing—which she terms a "discourse of opposites"—permeated all aspects of medieval thought. She rejects suggestions that it was the result of imprecision, and provides evidence that people of that era sought not to reconcile opposing categories but rather to maintain them.

Bouchard scrutinizes the medieval use of opposites in five broad areas: scholasticism, romance, legal disputes, conversion, and the construction of gender. Drawing on research in a series of previously unedited charters and the earliest glossa manuscripts, she demonstrates that this method of constructing reality was a constitutive element of the thought of the period.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Release date: May 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781501716645

Frank E. Daulton

Frank E. Daulton is an Associate Professor at Ryukoku University in Kyoto. Born in the United States, he has taught EFL in Japan for nearly two decades. His academic interests include vocabulary acquisition and language transfer. He holds degrees in Journalism (University of Missouri) and Education (Temple University). And in 2004, he completed his doctorate in Applied Linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington under vocabulary expert Paul Nation. He resides on the shore of Lake Biwa with his wife and three children.

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Introduction

"Many of the statements of the saints appear not only different from each other, but opposed to each other (invicem adversa)."¹ So Peter Abelard began the prologue to his Sic et Non, a compilation of contradictory statements by ancient Christian authorities on a number of theological questions. This work, put together in the first quarter of the twelfth century and tremendously influential on the development of scholastic logic in medieval universities, forms the starting point of this study of a key aspect of twelfth-century thought. Although Abelard was not the first to try to make sense out of a millennium of pronouncements on Christian doctrine, he was the first to try to make sense of them by consistently organizing them into opposing answers, both yes and no. He not only recognized opposition, he embraced it as a way of perceiving and reasoning about fundamental questions. He was emblematic, I shall argue, of an approach that not only characterized twelfth-century scholasticism but also influenced how people of the time thought about religious conversion, literature, legal disputes, social status, and gender.

"Every Valley Shall Be Exalted explores a particular way of thinking and categorizing that I term a discourse of opposites." The title comes from the radical reversals of Isaiah, later picked up in the New Testament. The central theme is that the creation of opposing categories, long recognized in scholastic approaches to theology and canon law, was ubiquitous in this period. This theme is developed through a close analysis of several different kinds of sources not usually treated together in order to suggest how widespread the use of discursive opposites was as a way of ordering experience. The approach here is primarily historical but with multidisciplinary aspects, including the history of philosophy and theology, literature, ecclesiastical institutions, and secular society. In each case, the heart of the discussion is a rereading of several texts with an emphasis on what they reveal about the writers’ use of opposites.

The focus is France in the twelfth century. Although the discourse of opposites had long roots in classical philosophy, I argue that the use of such a discourse reached a high point in the twelfth century. In this period the discourse also spilled over into many other aspects of culture beyond philosophical reasoning. This high point was relatively short­lived, as the schools of the thirteenth century increasingly sought unitary answers to philosophical and theological dilemmas rather than embracing opposition, as they had done a hundred years earlier.² During this period, the culture of France, home of the first universities and of courtly literature, was especially influential throughout western Europe. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, French culture infused England’s intellectual and social circles. The same was true, though to a lesser degree, in the Iberian Peninsula. Although German culture had long-standing traditions of its own, both its philosophers and its literary writers were heavily influenced by French models during this period. Scholars have long characterized the culture of twelfth-century France as a renaissance in which there was a triumphant pursuit of order. In this book I argue that in this flourishing and fruitful period order was found, if at all, through a discourse of opposites.

Categories of Opposition

Historians have always recognized that scholastic arguments—organizing material into opposing categories as a first step to answering legal, philosophical, or theological questions—were fundamental in twelfth-century schools and early universities.³ Abelard’s response to the adversa that he found in a thousand years of Christian commentary was to make opposition the centerpiece of his own theology. Rather than an approach unique to scholasticism, seeing the world in terms of opposition permeated high medieval thought in every sphere of life. Historians of scholasticism and mentalités during the twelfth century have commonly described the period as one in search of resolution. In contrast, this book shall portray twelfth-century thinkers as deliberately creating unresolved sets of opposites.

Studies in several different areas have hinted at this dimension. Karl Morrison’s work on the concept of mimesis, on reflection and imitation as fundamental in medieval thinking, was a seminal influence on my own thinking. He has suggested that one should look at twelfth-century historians through their silences as well as their words, and that the gap or the reflection that surrounded what they said was also intended to be significant.⁴ Catherine Brown, whose work on contraries appeared as I was finishing the first draft of this book, has suggested that medieval authors may have employed contradictions in their works specifically for teaching purposes. Sarah Kay, whose work on contradictions appeared as the present book was going to press, suggests that such contradictions were at least partially responsible for the continued success of medieval courtly literature.⁵ Studies of medieval monasticism, especially those by Barbara Rosenwein and Stephen White, have concluded that creating categories of monastic friend versus monastic enemy, or of property ownership versus property alienation, is an attempt to separate opposing ideas from each other, whereas medieval thinkers did not make so unequivocal a distinction.⁶ Joan Ferrante has argued that the women in twelfth-century lyrics and romances can best be interpreted as mirrored reflections of their male lovers.⁷ And historians of women’s roles in the High Middle Ages have for some time been debating whether the Eve-Mary dichotomy, present in everything from art and literature to the liturgy, suggests that women’s roles were improving or worsening in this period.

I have taken this analysis one step further, arguing that while medieval thinkers did create sharp distinctions and dichotomies, they were perfectly willing to have two opposing things be true at the same time.⁸ Rather than stopping at saying that there could be opposites at work in medieval society and thought (for example, that two different people or institutions could at the same time be in some sense the owners of the same piece of property), I shall argue that medieval thinkers intended opposites.

Although this tension between opposites in twelfth-century thought has often been noted, the most common explanations have been that medieval thinkers were only partially successful in integrating the diverse elements that influenced their culture, or that contradiction was only a temporary phenomenon and one side or the other of the contradiction would prevail.⁹ My own reading of the sources suggests that twelfth-century thinkers were not nearly as eager as modern scholars to find resolution. Instead, they routinely constructed a reality balanced between deliberately unreconciled poles. Indeed, they might explain or express even a fairly unitary and un-complicated phenomenon by invoking its opposite.

Anselm of Canterbury provides an example of this tendency when he characterized his own sins in a prayer to Saint Paul not simply by saying they were numerous but by describing them in terms of what they were not: There are not one or a few transgressions, but many. They are not small but enormous. There is no doubt about them, but instead certainty.¹⁰ Similarly, Alan of Lille described how God intended that transitory things should be given stability by instability, endlessness by endings.¹¹ Guibert of Nogent began his description of the famous riot that took place at Laon in the 1120s by saying, As I already mentioned, I shall now treat the people of Laon, or rather I shall enact their tragedy. The opposition between to treat and to enact, of minor significance in English, draws a distinction here between something one discusses from the outside and something in which one is involved, highlighted by the Latin play on tracturi versus acturi.¹² Such a deliberate creation of opposites certainly had rhetorical force, but it would be a mistake to treat it simply as a rhetorical device. The frequency of the use of such a device is instead indicative of a mode of thinking in which perception was aided by the creation of opposing categories.

A few preliminary words are necessary on what this particular form of categorization was not. It was not Manichaean dualism, either the form that Augustine railed against in the fifth century or the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Albigensian version. Manichaean dualism postulated an absolute division between body and soul, between God and the devil, whereas orthodox twelfth-century thought discussed physical and spiritual aspects of humanity that required and reflected each other even while they denied each other.¹³ Indeed, an effort by twelfth-century thinkers to distance themselves from the Albigensians may have strengthened their insistence that their opposites not be simplified into what was to be accepted versus what was to be rejected.

Alternately, this form of categorization was far more than some sort of Averraist double truth, especially since Averroes was not yet known in the twelfth century. Even for the thirteenth century, scholars have argued that no one would have made such a simplistic duality as true faith against true philosophy.¹⁴ Some positions were clearly false and to be rejected, even while the true ones were often described—and indeed reached—through a discourse of opposites. Here it is also worth stressing that I am not discussing the categories of good versus evil, categories that were rarely drawn this crudely in the twelfth century. Rather, the categories under discussion here were ones in which both halves of the tension structure, whether body and soul, chivalrous warrior and humble convert, or man and woman, were both to be valued.

Perhaps one of the clearest statements of the necessity of such opposites for medieval thinkers comes not in a scholastic work but in literature, in the Roman de la rose compiled in the thirteenth century. The narrator comments,

And so it goes with contrary things, some are glosses on the others. Therefore someone who wishes to define one of them must always remember the other, or, no matter how hard he tries, he will not be able to give a definition.¹⁵

The author makes explicit something inherent in virtually all definitions created at the time: one cannot understand something without understanding what it is not, but this establishment of paired opposites does not mean a rejection of the other, for it too must always be remembered.

The twelfth century, with its rapid development of universities, urban culture, the legal profession, banking, government bureaucracies, and vernacular literature, can too easily be seen as modern, analogous to Western society at the beginning of the twenty-first century. On the contrary, those who founded many of the institutions we now take for granted need not on that account have perceived the world around them in the same way as do their descendants eight or nine centuries later. Part of my purpose, then, is to restore the fundamental strangeness of the twelfth century.¹⁶

Much of the strangeness (to us) of this period lies in its willingness, indeed eagerness, to accept two opposite answers at the same time. Social and legal distinctions during the High Middle Ages, and the literature that society created both to reflect and to meditate on those distinctions, can be better understood if modern views of a single correct answer are not imposed on an inherently polysemous vision. If scholastic logic and theology embraced opposition, it should not be surprising that a discourse between opposites is also found in other spheres of thought. One of the most fundamental concepts in medieval theology was the relationship between soul and body, aspects of the human that were opposed to each other, and yet required each other, for identity was assumed to lie in the body as much as in the soul.¹⁷ There was a very strong assumption in the twelfth century that sensory experience at some level indicated or reflected a coherent cosmology,¹⁸ and hence an ordering device that made theological sense could also provide the best way to approach other experiences and perceptions.

That particular device or vision is what I term a construction of reality. While I have no intention of being drawn into theoretical debates on the existence of objective reality—and here assume its existence without further discussion—members of different societies do make different assumptions about the organizing principles that shape this reality. Given that no one is ready to accept the exterior world as a series of unrelated, random events—from a practical standpoint it would be impossible to do so—it is always necessary to create categories to order and understand experience. Each society’s version of the organizing principles that make sense of reality is somewhat different. Indeed, so is every individual’s, but as most people adopt a major proportion of the expectations and presuppositions of the society around them, it is possible to speak in at least broad terms about how a society organizes and structures experience and hence perceives reality. This categorization I term a construction of reality, and I shall discuss both the particular form it took in the twelfth century and the impact this had on approaches to legal, social, religious, and philosophical questions.

A few simple examples will demonstrate the very significant impact that perceptions about categories can have. In the modern United States, one’s accent tells the listener one’s regional origins but very little about one’s social or economic status; in modern Britain, in contrast, one’s accent tells both and thus can influence how one will be treated. More fundamentally, every society makes assumptions about gender that go far beyond the basic biological givens that women but not men can bear and nurse children, and that men on the average are larger and have more upper-body strength. Distinctions such as who wears skirts or trousers, who wears more jewelry, and who wears their hair longer are often assumed to be as natural as the differences in genitals, even though there is no particular connection, and even though every society draws the lines somewhat differently.

This book discusses gender in the context of a broader way of looking at opposites, where a concept or object is defined at least in part as a negation of its obverse. Thus, something may reflect—in reverse—its opposite, denying it, and yet at the same time requiring it for its own definition. If an emphasis on a discourse between opposites suggests that the hidden cosmology with which thinkers were trying to come to terms was also one of discursive opposition, then the relationship between the seen and the unseen was itself a product of two opposing categories that reflected, even as they denied, the other.

Although the creation of opposites was certainly not the only categorization that took place in the twelfth century, it was a crucial, if hitherto unappreciated, method of making sense both of abstract ideas and of the exterior world. The discourse of opposites will be presented as a theory in the scientific sense of the term: that is, as an explanatory device that makes sense of the existing evidence and which is to be tested by seeing whether it continues to be useful when presented with new evidence.

In the following chapters the English word opposites will be used as I have been using it so far, in a perhaps rather imprecise way. The reason for this imprecision is that the medieval thinkers discussed here might use a fluid vocabulary even when they were quite clear that they were discussing a single concept. Both to these thinkers and in my own analysis, opposites include some things that were completely different, what one might term binary opposites, and also polar opposites, the two ends of a continuum. The English opposites may translate the Latin terms opposita, contraria, or adversa, all of which carry the meaning of something put up against or turned against something else. The Old French contreres (contraries), used in the Roman de la rose passage cited above, conveys a similar meaning. According to Martianus Capella, contraries (contraria) were a subset of opposites, so it seems preferable to use the broader term.¹⁹

In addition, when one thing is defined explicitly as not something else, non ... sed, this too is treated as an example of opposition.²⁰ Such contradictions could be established between binary pairs or between polarities. Deconstructionist theory argues that in fixed oppositions even the rejected term remains central because it is required for the definition of the other term. Medieval thinkers would not have had much use for poststructuralist theory in general, but here they would have had little difficulty—indeed, probably less than many modern readers.²¹ Examples of categories that were defined by what they denied will be seen most clearly when discussing conversion, where the new convert’s status and position were normally phrased in terms of what he or she had rejected. Other examples may be found, more simply, in the use of language that invoked opposition, as in Anselm’s prayer mentioned above. Finally, even when opposita or a similar word is not used, I shall speak of opposites where, especially in vernacular literature, the author makes it clear that a choice must be made, say between love and honor, and that one cannot try to hold onto one while seeking the other.

Exploring twelfth-century thought through the discourse of opposites is particularly fruitful because it may open up an understanding of aspects of that thought that have previously been troublesome or obscure. Throughout, my argument shall be that to understand the medieval use of opposites one must realize that they were always meant to remain separate, even if reflecting each other in inverse, rather than to have either one ultimately dominate or to have the two meet somewhere in the middle.

Philosophical and Theological Origins

The construction of reality through the discourse of opposites was not unique to the twelfth century, for it had very long roots and continued to be influential in subsequent centuries, even if its fullest flourishing was in the High Middle Ages. The two major sources of the twelfth-century discourse of opposites were the Neoplatonism that became thoroughly integrated into early medieval theology, in which creation grew out of a union of opposites, and the radical reversals found in the New Testament.

The concept had first been set forth explicitly in several of Plato’s dialogues. Although the scholars of the twelfth century had not read these dialogues—only the Timaeus was available before the thirteenth century, and that in somewhat fragmentary form (the available Latin translation included only sections 17–53)—their content had permeated the writings of the Neoplatonic thinkers of early Christianity, who in tum influenced twelfth-century theologians and philosophers.²² In the twelfth century, the appellation The Philosopher was still given to Plato, not to Aristotle, as it would be in the thirteenth century.

Modern historians of philosophy usually stress Plato’s distinction between the Ideal and its reflection, between being and becoming—adistinction crucial to the Timaeus.²³ His political philosophy, as set out in The Republic, also receives its share of modern attention—though this was unknown in the twelfth century. But another theme in his works, and one with great impact on twelfth-century thought, was that of finding harrnony in dissonance. As the following examples illustrate, he did not argue that opposites had to lose their contradictions in order to meet in concordance (concordia in Latin). Rather, for Plato and those who followed him, opposition reached concordance through the mediation of love.

In the Timaeus, the sharpest duality was found in humans’ very nature, the distinction between body and soul. This distinction, an entirely comfortable concept to the Christian West, was for Plato a bringing together of opposites, weaving together mortal and immortal.²⁴ Twelfth-century thinkers, however, rejected Plato’s discussion of how this happened. Plato had had multiple gods create humans’ double nature at the orders of the Demiurge, rather than have a single supreme God create humanity, and had the material part of human nature derived from preexisting and eternal matter.²⁵ But while they disagreed with Plato on the details, Christian thinkers found it easy to reconcile his view of human nature as compounded of opposites with the Genesis account of humans as made of both dust and spirit.

While a basic duality was one of the key aspects of the Timaeus, the theme of harmony from dissonance was developed in other Platonic dialogues that were not directly known in the twelfth century. In the Symposium, Plato placed the discourse of opposites in the context of music. He