«Quid verisimile sit dicturum me arbitror» Il laboratorio delle Theologiae di Pietro Abelardo

Abstract

My dissertation is concerned with the three clearly ordered versions («Summi boni», Christiana and «Scholarium») of the same theological work, that is the Theologia of Peter Abelard. If, on the one hand, the entire work proves to be ultimately in fieri, on the other a clearly defined modus operandi underlies its different versions. The first of them was convicted during Soisson’s council in 1121 and the same fate affected, but this time more emphatically, the third one during Sens’s council in 1140. The purpose of my dissertation is to specify the relationship between the Theologia’s versions, whose title suggested a ‘new’ disciplinary domain. In the first part of the work I analyse the theoretical foundations of God’s knowledge, while, in the second, I assume their effects as related to the evolution of the Theologia. Abelard’s theological masterpiece is scarred by an awareness of an unbridgeable gap between the unfathomable misteries of God and the hystorical and linguistical Revelation. From this viewpoint, both the revisions of the Theologia and its incompleteness turn out to be essential conditions of the work itself. Accordingly, it proves to be the same work as regards the firm belief that man cannot have but a limited knowledge of God, but a different one as regards the use of the logical, grammatical, and rhetorical instruments serving a scientific understanding of the world, it being understood that this kind of knowledge always occurs in conformity with the Revelation. [edited by Author]