Thomists at War: Pierre Mandonnet, Étienne Gilson, and the Contested Relationship between Aquinas's and Dante's Thought (1879-2021)

Abstract

Thomists at War:Pierre Mandonnet, Étienne Gilson, and the Contested Relationship between Aquinas's and Dante's Thought (1879-2021)* George Corbett At the turn of 1921, the French Dominican Pierre Mandonnet (1858–1936) helped to launch a new historical institute for Thomistic Studies at the Dominican study house of Le Saulchoir in Belgium. One of the pressing purposes of the foundation of the Institut historique d'études thomistes was to provide a properly historical approach to Aquinas's doctrine which would defend its integrity and authority, and refute the alarming assertations of those outside the Dominican order who were, on the view of its founders, abusing the historical method to undermine the true sense of Aquinas's thought.1 The founders singled out Étienne Gilson (1884–1978), whose Le Thomisme, introduction au système de saint Thomas [End Page 1053] was published a couple of years earlier (in 1919); according to Mandonnet, Gilson's volume distorted the very nature and pedagogy of Thomist philosophy.2 Mandonnet and Gilson would become principal antagonists in the famous debates about Aquinas's thought in the 1920s and 1930s. Less known, however, are their parallel skirmishes in the field of Dante studies. In this article, I suggest that we need to consider the battles in Thomism and Dante studies together, as part of a wider intellectual war that would question the very nature of Catholic theology and philosophy. I first survey the main battlefield—the debates about Aquinas's thought—with specific reference to the controversies in the 1920s and 1930s about Gilson's "Christian philosophy" and about Marie-Dominique Chenu (1895—1990)'s Une école de théologie. In the second part, I turn to the skirmishes in the field of Dante studies between scholars such as, on the one hand, the French Dominicans Mandonnet and Joachim Berthier (1848—1924), who presented Dante as an essentially Thomist and Catholic poet, and, on the other hand, the lay historians Gilson and Bruno Nardi (1884—1968), who deconstructed the "myth of the Thomist Dante" and saw a fundamental disharmony between Aquinas's and Dante's thought, a view which profoundly influenced post-war Dante scholarship to the present day. In light of this intellectual history, in the third part, I reappraise constructively eight alleged points of divergence between Aquinas's and Dante's thought. I demonstrate that these key points of apparent divergence—as on the natural desire for the beatific vision, on the doctrine of two final ends for man, or on the relationships between philosophy and theology and between nature and grace—have as much to do with these scholars' interpretations of Aquinas's works as with their interpretations of Dante. Mandonnet, Gilson, and a Civil War in Thomism The Institut historique d'études thomistes: Maintaining the "Authority" and "Integrity" of Aquinas's Doctrine Having entered the Dominican order in 1882, Mandonnet was professor of history at the University of Fribourg from 1891 to 1918; on retirement, he continued to research and teach at Le Saulchoir.3 Author of significant research on Siger of Brabant and St. Dominic, he collaborated on the critical edition of Aquinas's works commissioned by Pope Leo XIII as [End Page 1054] editor, for example, of Aquinas's commentary on the Sentences and was one of three founders of the Revue thomiste in 1893.4 At Le Saulchoir, Mandonnet was also instrumental in the founding and mission of the Institut historique d'études thomistes from its inception in 1921 to his death in early 1936.5 One of "the giants of medieval studies," and founder (also in 1921) and honorary president of the Société Thomiste (which published the Bulletin Thomiste beginning in 1924), Mandonnet's name became "synonymous with fundamental research into the thought and writings of Thomas Aquinas."6 For Mandonnet, the historical method facilitated a greater penetration into the thought of Aquinas and his contemporaries, and historical research, in this way, enriched and complemented the institutional teaching of Thomism as Scholastic theology and a perennial philosophy.7 But, like other founders of the institute, Mandonnet believed [End Page 1055] that some recent scholars were using the historical method to undermine Aquinas's doctrine, and...