A Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

128 justin a. stover
with the role of reason with respect to faith in theological inquiry, devoting
two treatises and two polemical letters to the topic.85 For Bernard and
William, the notion of the ratio fijidei was crucial to safeguard Christian
doctrine against the theological novelties of the schools.86 Examining William’s
concept of ratio with Hildegard’s racionalitas will cast her attitude
towards contemporary theology in sharper relief.
In his De erroribus, William lays out a deep connection between reason,
love, and faith. Mere human reason by itself is insufffijicient and potentially
dangerous, and therefore must be conformed to divine love and truth
“through illuminating grace.” Without these, reason conforms God to
itself.87 In contrast to ratio humana, William juxtaposes ratio fijidei, which
has its origin in faith and is bound to the service of faith:
Ratio fijidei places all human reason after faith; it takes it captive and brings
it into service of faith; it does not disregard the boundaries of the faith itself,
which our fathers have established; and it does not pass beyond them into
something else.88
Reason must respect the boundaries traditionally established for it and
not go beyond them. Faith itself does not establish the boundaries of reason;
they are rather set by auctoritas of the Fathers. This part of the defijinition
places reason fijirmly within the context of monastic learning, where
education consisted in the patient working out of auctores, interpreting
them according to the regula fijidei and the regula caritatis but remaining
in a reverential submission to the text:89
Guillaume de Saint-Thierry (†1148),” Rives méditerranéennes [Online] 31 (2008). http://
rives.revues.org/3943 (accessed 25 August 2013).
85 These are published in Guillelmi a Sancto Theodorico Opera Omnia, ed. Paul Verdeyen,
CCCM 89A (Turnhout, 2007). On William’s critique of the schools in general, see
the discussion by Stephen C. Ferruolo, The Origins, pp. 71–77. Also of interest regarding
William’s views on faith and reason is the recent monograph by Mariano Ruiz Campos,
‘Ego et Pater unum sumus’: el misterio de la Trinidad en Guillermo de Saint-Thierry (Rome,
2007), especially pp. 333–35.
86 See Klaus Riesenhuber, “Der Streit um die ratio in der Frühscholastik,” in Was ist
Philosophie im Mittelalter?, eds. Jan Aertsen and Andreas Speer, Miscellanea Mediaevalia
26 (Berlin, 1998), pp. 460–67.
87 William of St Thierry, De erroribus, pp. 57–60: “per illuminantem gratiam format veritas
tua, et amor tuus in ratione hominis, quam conformat sibi, ut in ipso intelligam, quam
nullus sit intellectus omnis humanus, quem de te per se humana ratio format sibi.”
88 Ibid., pp. 68–72: “Ratio autem fijidei est omnem rationem humanam fijidei postponere,
vel in obsequium fijidei captivatam redigere; terminos fijidei ipsius, quos posuerunt patres
nostri, non ignorare, nec in aliquo eos praeterire.”
89 See Leclercq, Love of Learning, chapters 5 and 7.