Holy Church or Holy Writ: A Dilemma of the Fourteenth Century

Abstract

Students of medieval theology are acquainted with the fact that neither the formative years of the medieval synthesis—say, from the 8th through the 12th century—nor the climax of the Middle Ages— 13th century—conceived of Holy Scripture as being only a set of inspired books, the ‘Canon,’ containing the Revelation committed by Christ to His Church. Rather, the Sacred Scripture—or, as it was also called, the Sacred Page or the Sacred Doctrine—was to the medieval mind wide enough to encompass somehow the works of the Fathers and those of subsequent Doctors. Distinct though these were from the canonical scriptures, they nonetheless were viewed in the same perspective: Holy Writ and the commentaries thereupon formed one uncleft whole which was kept together by the continuity of the Church's life. The apostolic writings were in a way continued by the Fathers' homilies and treatises, and these in turn were prolonged in the early medieval tractates.