AN INVECTIVE AGAINST THE NEW LEARNING
STEPHEN OF TOURNAI TO THE POPE,
1192-1203

Stephen, who had previously been abbot of Sainte Genevieve, became bishop of Tournai in 1192 and died in 1203, but it is not known if this letter is addressed to Celestine III or Innocent III.

Having obtained indulgence, let us speak to our lord, whose gentleness emboldens us, whose prudence sustains our inexperience, whose patience promises impunity. To this the authority of our ancestors compels us and a disease gradually insinuating whose ills, if not met at the start, will be incurable in the end. Nor do we say this, father, as if we wished to be censors of morals, or judges of doctors, or debaters of doctrines. This load requires stouter shoulders, and this battle awaits the robust frames of spiritual athletes. We merely wish to indicate the sore spot to your holy paternity, to whom God has given both the power to uproot errors and the knowledge to correct them.

The studies of sacred letters among us are fallen into the workshop of confusion, while both disciples applaud novelties alone and masters watch out for glory rather than learning. They everywhere compose new and recent summulae and commentaries, by which they attract, detain, and deceive their hearers, as if the works of the holy fathers were not still sufficient, who, we read, expounded holy scripture in the same spirit in which we believe the apostles and prophets composed it. They prepare strange and exotic courses for their banquet, when at the nuptials of the son of the king of Taurus his own flesh and blood are killed and all prepared, and the wedding guests have only to take and eat what is set before them. Contrary to the sacred canons there is public disputation as to the incomprehensible deity; concerning the incarnation of the Word, verbose flesh and blood irreverently litigates. The indivisible Trinity is cut up and wrangled over in the trivia, so that now there are as many errors as doctors, as many scandals as classrooms, as many blasphemies as squares. Again, if a case comes up which should be settled by canon law either under your jurisdiction or within that of the ordinary judges, there is produced from the vendors an inextricable forest of decretals presumably under the name of pope Alexander of sacred memory, and older canons are cast aside, rejected, expunged. When this plunder has been unrolled before us, those things which were wholesomely instituted in councils of holy fathers neither impose form on councils nor an end to cases, since letters prevail which perchance advocates for hire invented and forged in their shops or cubicles under the name of Roman pontiffs. A new volume composed of these is solemnly read in the schools and offered for sale in the forum to the applause of a horde of notaries, who rejoice that in copying suspect opuscula both their labor is lessened and their pay increased. Two woes are the aforesaid, and lo, a third remains: faculties called liberal having lost their pristine liberty are sunk in such servitude that adolescents with long hair impudently usurp their professorships, and beardless youths sit in the seat of their seniors, and those who don't yet know how to be disciples strive to be named masters. And they write their summulae moistened with drool and dribble but unseasoned with the salt of philosophers. Omitting the rules of the arts and discarding the authentic books of the artificers, they seize the flies of empty words in their sophisms like the claws of spiders. Philosophy cries that her garments are torn and disordered and, modestly concealing her nudity by a few specific tatters, neither is consulted nor consoles as of old. All these things, father, call for the hand of apostolic correction, that the disorder in teaching, learning and disputing may be reduced to due form by your authority, that the divine word be not cheapened by vulgar handling, that it be not said on the street corners, "Lo Christ is here or lo He is there," lest what is holy be given to dogs and pearls be trodden under foot by swine.

To all masters and scholars of Paris. Divine clemency excites us multifariously and in many ways to awake from the sleep of death to life and from the slough of despond to breathe the hope of eternal glory. We indeed exult, and the entire church of the saints may justly exult, that there has visited us a visitor arising from on high, so that a great part of the eastern church, almost all Greece forsooth, which for a long time past has scorned to follow the footsteps of its mother the holy Roman church, in our time has changed from disobedience to obedience and from contempt to devotion. To greater affluence of joys contributes the fact that the most Christian man, our dearest son in Christ, Baldwin, illustrious emperor of Constantinople, is working with all his powers at means by which the Christian religion can and should be propagated, and is laboring zealously and diligently that the edifice already in large part constructed may not sink in ruin. Recently in fact, diffusing the devotion planted in his breast to the branches of good works, he humbly begged us to see fit to induce and warn you by apostolic letters to come to Greece and work for the reform of the study of letters there, where it is known to have had its first beginning. Wishing therefore to give ear benignly to the same emperor in his petitions, the more that we have frequently tested his sincerity in major matters of faith, we pointedly ask and urge your university, ordering by apostolic writings to you that, carefully recalling how great difficulties and discomforts your ancestors underwent in order to imbue their early years with literary disciplines, many of you shall not hesitate to go out to a land filled with silver and gold and gems, furnished with corn, wine and oil, and abounding in all good things, in order that to the honor and glory of Him, from whom is the gift of all science, you may be of profit there to Him and others, receiving, besides temporal riches and honors, the rewards of eternal glory.

Let the body of master Amaury be removed from the cemetery and cast into unconsecrated ground, and the same be excommunicated by all the churches of the entire province. Bernard, William of Arria the goldsmith, Stephen priest of Old Corbeil, Stephen priest of Cella, John priest of Occines, master William of Poitiers, Dudo the priest Dominicus de Triangulo, Odo and Elinans clerks of St. Cloud--these are to be degraded and left to the secular arm. Urricus priest of Lauriac and Peter of St. Cloud, now a monk of St. Denis, Guarinus priest of Corbeil, and Stephen the clerk are to be degraded and imprisoned for life. The writings of David of Dinant are to be brought to the bishop of Paris before the Nativity and burned.

Neither the books of Aristotle on natural philosophy nor their commentaries are to be read at Paris in public or secret, and this we forbid under penalty of excommunication. He in whose possession the writings of David of Dinant are found after the Nativity shall be considered a heretic.

As for the theological books written in French we order that they be handed over to the diocesan bishops, both Credo in deum and Pater noster in French except the lives of the saints, and this before the Purification, because [then] he who shall be found with them shall be held a heretic.

Among the heresies of the aforesaid persons--we are told--were that the Father had worked without the Son and Holy Spirit before the incarnation of the Son; that the Father was incarnated in Abraham, the Son in Mary, and the Holy Spirit in us today; that whatever is, is God; that the Son had ruled until now, but that henceforth the Holy Spirit would begin to rule until the end of the world. However, it is well to repeat the caution of the recent editors of Rashdall, I (1936), 355, note 2: "Many attempts have been made to discover the exact nature and the sources of the views ascribed to Amauri and to David of Dinant, but it is still uncertain whence they derived them and how they were related to each other." Consult further G. Thery, Autour du decret de 1210: David de Dinant, 1925; G. C. C. Capelle, Almaury de Bene: etude sur son pantheisme formel, 1932.