TRS 820 Augustine in the Middle Ages: Augustine and 12th Cent. Spirituality
If it is a truism that twelfth-century theology was Augustinian, nevertheless we still have insufficiently precise knowledge of how individual theologians made use of Augustine. This is especially true of twelfth-century mystical writers, whose reliance on Augustinian epistemology has gone largely unnoticed. In this class, after first reading key Augustinian epistemological texts - we shall read these in Latin, so that we will recognize at once the use of Augustinian language by twelfth-century writers - we shall focus on works of two justly-famous twelfth-century mystical theologians, William of St. Thierry and Richard of St. Victor, to examine their incorporation of Augustinian epistemology. A principal goal of the course is to see how mystical theology in the twelfth century was not a separate enterprise but was rather the culmination of an integrated theology, built on the Bible, founded on reason, and aimed at union with God.