Alcher of Clairvaux explained

Alcher of Clairvaux was a twelfth-century Cistercian monk of Clairvaux Abbey. He was once thought to be the author of two works, now attributed by many scholars to an anonymous pseudo-Augustine of the same period.[1] [2] [3]

Thomas Aquinas made the traditional attribution of the De spiritu et anima[4] to Alcher.[5] [6] It is now reckoned to be a compilation of c. 1170, taken from Alcuin, Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, Augustine of Hippo, Cassiodorus, Hugh of St Victor, Isaac of Stella, and Isidore of Seville;[7] also Boethius.[8] It is a source for medieval views on self-control,[9] and the doctrine that the soul rules the body.[10]

De diligendo Deo is a devotional work, also traditionally attributed to Alcher.

At one point in the Summa Theologica, Aquinas writes about De Spiritu et Anima, "that book is not of great authority."[11]

References

Notes

  1. http://users.skynet.be/am012324/studium/oneil/bibper15.htm states that Alcher was at Clairvaux c.1150-1175, but the authorship as increasingly doubtful.
  2. Ioan P. Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (1987) regards Alcher as more likely than Hugh of St Victor.
  3. [Beryl Smalley]
  4. Also Liber de anima et spiritu.
  5. http://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/XP/XP090.html Summa Theologica
  6. http://www.newadvent.org/summa/5090.htm SUMMA THEOLOGICA: The form of the judge in coming to the judgment (Supplementum, Q. 90)
  7. Janet Coleman, Ancient and Medieval Memories: Studies in the Reconstruction of the Past (1992), p. 220.
  8. http://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/etext/hwp213.htm, giving Alcher as author.
  9. Louis G. Kelly, The Mirror of Grammar: Theology, Philosophy, and the Modistae (2002), p. 136.
  10. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09580c.htm Catholic Encyclopedia, article Man
  11. Web site: SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The intellectual powers (Prima Pars, Q. 79).

External links