The Authority of the Fathers: Patristic Texts in Early Medieval Libraries and Scriptoria

Abstract

In the 1100s Bernard of Chartres described himself and his contemporaries in words that have since become familiar. He said they enjoyed a legacy bequeathed to them by earlier generations: “We are like dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. We can see more and farther than our predecessors, not indeed because of the acuteness of our own vision or bodily size, but because we are lifted up and raised on high by their gigantic stature.” Over time this vivid image came to describe what many have viewed as a characteristically “medieval” attitude towards authority, particularly towards the authority of the Fathers of the Church. Medieval scholars have often been seen as no more than guardians of an inherited tradition, content to perch comfortably on the shoulders of greater men – on the shoulders of Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Gregory the Great, and other writers of Christian Antiquity.