The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [19]
In an influential and controversial work called Sic et Non (Yes and No), Abelard analysed 168 statements from the Bible and showed that there were inconsistencies in the accepted interpretation of each of them. He compiled all comments made on them, putting arguments for and against each opinion. This technique had been in general use since the time of the early fifth-century Church fathers and was known as the quaestio (the question), in which the pro and contra were compared in order to make judgement. Until the time of Abelard a statement by an accepted authority had sufficed for proof. Abelard showed that these authorities were contradictory.
Though he claimed that his attack on authority aimed only at finding the truth, the Church did not approve. When he said, ‘By doubting we come to enquiry; by enquiring we perceive the truth,’ Rome heard the voice of a revolutionary. Abelard laid down four basic rules for argument and investigation:
A medieval miniature from the twelfth century shows Boethius, the father of logic in northern Europe until Aristotle’s works arrived from Spain.
Use systematic doubt and question everything.
Learn the difference between statements of rational proof and those merely of persuasion.
Be precise in use of words, and expect precision from others.
Watch for error, even in Holy Scripture.
Statements like these were quite extraordinary in the twelfth century. Objectivity, detachment and unprejudiced, unemotional ratiocination were rare to the medieval mind, steeped as it was in mystery and dogma.
Pierre Abelard had used the new logic to strengthen theology and turn Paris into the centre for dialectic. In Bologna the demands of the everyday world were taking things in a different direction. A generation after Irnerius had added his glosses to the recovered corpus of Roman law, Bulgarus, another Bolognese, was going one step further. He too was applying the quaestio, but he was teaching his law students to use it in court. In the 1130s his students were being trained to take pro and contra sides in legal argument and in judging the cases they presented to the class.
Without formal marriage, the passage of landed property was insecure. Here a father transmits his feudal rights through his daughter to her new husband, with his wife's approval. From a manuscript written at the order of Alfonso II of Aragon (1162-96).
Then, in 1140, the great Bolognese jurist Gratian produced his Decretum, a lawyer’s textbook embodying all the new techniques. The Decretum was heavily influenced by Abelard’s Sic et Non. It came in two parts. The first gave the main outlines of all law. The second took hypothetical cases and reconciled the pros and cons using what is essentially the modern technique of cross-examination, incorporating Aristotle’s rules of argument and deduction. This technique was particularly valuable in dealing with conflicting arguments about the law itself. In such cases Gratian would also apply the rules of grammar to find the true meaning of the terminology being used.
By this time law had become so important and so attractive as a career that it had been split into two types, civil and canon law. John of Salisbury noted the increasingly common problems with which the new, codified law dealt. In the late 1150s a major area of difficulty in canon law was that of marriage, the key to inheritance and a hazardous venture, as death by one or other party was common. A woman might marry several times, each time taking with her a complicated dowry of property that had originally belonged to one of her husbands’ families. The act of marriage itself was extremely informal. More often than not it was not even conducted in church. What then of the legitimacy of any heirs born to the union? There is a record of the case of Richard of Anstey, who went to his Archbishop’s court eighteen times and twice more to the court of the Pope before his affairs were settled.
A law class at the