I suggested in Chapter One that Antony’s primary purpose in composing his Opus Dominicale was to fulfil Francis’s commission to teach the friars, preparing them for the work of preaching, especially against the background of contemporary abuses and the Cathar heresy. However, if we look more closely at the work as it developed, I believe we can see it also as a sustained meditation upon the Gospel, and an attempt to answer the question, "What is it, to observe the holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ?" Antony’s other term for his work, in the Epilogue, is Opus Evangeliorum, which expresses this very well. The regular appeal to his ‘carissimi fratres’ suggests that he never lost sight of his immediate audience, the members of the fledgeling Order of Friars Minor.

Francis’s spirituality and that of his Order was (and is) strongly Christocentric, ‘following the teaching and footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ It was also profoundly Eucharistic and liturgical, so that the Gospel was situated normatively within the context of the Mass. It was from the Mass-gospel that Francis first received his vision of imitating Christ in his poverty. Antony was therefore following a thoroughly Franciscan precedent in giving his own Gospel commentary a liturgical pattern, weaving together the texts of Mass and Office. The life and teaching of Jesus provided a central axis around which the Scriptures, Creation and the Christian life revolved harmoniously.

 5.1 The method and terminology of concordance.

In this section I want mainly to examine the development and extent of Antony’s terminology, but this cannot be done (especially in the early stages of this development) without some reflection upon his methodology. Setting aside for the moment the General Prologue (which at least in its references to concordance seems to have been written after the rest of the work), I will begin with a consideration of Antony’s method and terminology in the Sermones up to and including Easter.

In the first Sermo, for Septuagesima, Antony has the opportunity to give a ‘cosmic’ dimension to his work, which we should bear in mind throughout. He develops a parallel between the Creation, in its seven days, and the life of Christ in seven stages. Then, in the second part of the Sermo, using the Gospel of the labourers in the vineyard, he draws a further analogy with the development of the Christian life, from conversion to heavenly reward. It is as he begins this parallel, the ‘moral sense’ as opposed to the ‘allegorical’ development in the first part, that Antony first uses the term ‘concordance’. He will ‘concord’ the six hours of the Gospel-day with the six days of Creation; and immediately he bids his readers, ‘Hear the concordance of the first hour...’ There is no sense that the words concordare and concordantia are here being used in any technical way. It is in the prologus of the second Sermo, for Sexagesima, that he seems to become aware in advance, as it were, of his programme: ‘Therefore we will concord each Testament, for the honour of the one God and the utility of our hearers...;’ ‘In the Lord’s name, then, we will concord all these things.’ The main ‘concordance’ is between the story of Noah and the parable of the sower. The chambers of the Ark and the kinds of soil each stand for kinds of sinner (the lustful, hypocritical religious, and the avaricious: paradigms of offenders against chastity, obedience and poverty) and for good penitents; this word could have a technical as well as a general sense, since Francis’s first companions were known as ‘penitent men of Assisi’, and the term was widely used for men and women, celibate or married, who had devoted themselves to a religious way of life. In the body of the Sermo, the term concordare occurs only twice: ‘The wild animals are concordant with these thorns,’ and ‘See how well the good earth, the tame animals, men and birds are concordant..’

In the next three Sermones, the term is rare; in one Antony says ‘We will concord all these things for God’s honour and your enlightenment;’ in the next, ‘See the concordance of each temptation in Genesis and Matthew;’ and in the third, ‘Note the individual words, and there will be a concordance with the Gospel.’ Again, there is no sense of the term being particularly technical. However, in the three Sermones that follow (Lent IIB, Lent III and Lent IV) there is a slight move towards consistency, in that the expression ‘habes concordantiam’ is introduced and used more often than not, often with the qualification ‘de hoc’, ‘de his’ or ‘de qua’. The context implies a comparison between specific texts of the Old and New Testaments. However, in the final three Sermones of this sequence, the term disappears altogether, which suggests that Antony had not as yet settled upon it as a technical term for his method. The method itself, however, is followed consistently; the stories of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses being utilised according to the pattern of the Office, followed by examples from Jeremiah in Passiontide.

From the Octave of Easter there is a considerable development in consistency. Not only do the terms concordare and concordantia reappear, but one or both is used in every Sermo of the sequence, and almost every clause. Antony regularly announces in the prologi his intention to concord the Office lesson with the Gospel (volumus concordare), divided into clauses, and regularly proposes specific comparisons (habes concordantiam). In the case of comparisons between the Epistle and the Gospel, in two cases he uses the form concordat, and in one habes concordantiam. There is a slight diminution in frequency in the Sermo for Pentecost, but this is anomalous in other ways, because the key-text is not the Gospel but the Epistle reading from Acts about the coming of the Spirit. There are two concordances (habes concordantiam) from Exodus and one from Lamentations. On the whole, the evidence seems to suggest a conscious decision by Antony to use his terms in a more consistent and technical way, although I would stress again that this is only a development in terminology, while the basic method it refers to was used from the beginning. Following the pattern of the Office, fewer examples are taken from the Old Testament; instead, the Apocalypse and the Epistles of James and Peter are prominent. The instances of concordare and concordantia for the Sermones from Septuagesima to Pentecost will be found in the Appendix, Table II.

5.13 From Pentecost to Epiphany.

If there appears to be some break in the development of the terminology between Lent IV and the Octave of Easter, there is a much greater one between the Sermones for Pentecost and the first Sunday after Pentecost. This is the main reason for suggesting a break in composition, possibly corresponding to Antony’s return to Italy after the death of Francis. Antony introduces a series of short prologues to groups of Sermones, but as these appear to have been composed with the General Prologue, I will leave them on one side for the moment. From the Sunday after Pentecost to the third Sunday after the Octave of the Epiphany there are thirty-three Sermones. It would be tedious to consider each and every occurrence of concordare or concordantia; it is also unnnecessary, because from this point onwards the formulae become quite stereotyped. In the prologi consonantes Antony sets out the divisions of the Gospels into clausulae; he then says something like: ‘His N. clausulis quasdam historias libri M. concordabimus’; and after mentioning the introit and the source of the epistle, he adds ‘quam in N. particulis dividere et cum N. evangelii clausulis volumus concordare’. In the body of the sermon, in reference to the clause of the Gospel being considered, he writes ‘super hoc habes concordantiam in libro M’, and quotes the relevant passage of the Old Testament; in regard to the epistle, the formula is ‘huic n^ae clausulae evangelii concordat n^a particula hodiernae epistolae’. Only very rarely does he use either ‘habes concordantiam’ or ‘concordat’ in regard to the introit; it is only mentioned briefly, and in passing. Since the formulae are so constant, in the Appendix, Table III, I shall set out schematically only the references to the passages which are concorded.

My principal reason for supposing that the General Prologue and the lesser prologues referred to above were composed after the Sermones themselves is based on grammar: while in the prologi consonantes Antony always uses the future tense or the subjunctive mood of concordare (concordabimus, concordemus) to indicate what he intends to do in the body of the Sermo, the General Prologue uses the perfect tense (concordavi, concordavimus) to indicate what he has already done. The same is true of other verbs (divisimus, etc.). The prologue for the first Sunday after Pentecost, although it uses a form of the future (volumus concordare), refers to the intention which ‘in principio operis proposuimus’ to concord the readings of Mass and Office. Antony stresses the Liturgical influence on his concordances- it is the Scriptures ‘as they are read in Church’ that are to be related to the Gospels; while the Epistles and Introits are to be considered ‘at least half-fully’. It would seem, then, that this and the other short prologues for August, September, October, November and Advent were also composed after the General Prologue. The very neat division of precisely twenty-four Sundays after Pentecost, divided into months of exactly four Sundays, strongly suggests that we have an artificial and ‘ideal’ scheme in these months, and that we should not look for clues to the year or years in which the Sermones were composed. In the prologues, Antony announces a programme which he has in fact already completed. The general scheme is to divide the Gospels and Epistles into corresponding clausulae and particulae, and this is to prevent the variety of ‘concordances’ leading to confusion or forgetfulness. In particular, in the time after Pentecost concordances will be drawn from the Old Testament book or books currently being read at Matins, and these are noted in the short prologues. Antony will be selective; only ‘aliquas historias, prout melius viderimus’ will be concorded with the Gospels.

The four Marian Sermons, with their own Prologue, are included among the Sermones Dominicales in the critical edition, coming between the twelfth and the thirteenth Sundays after Pentecost. Whether or not Antony himself intended them to be incorporated here, stylistic considerations suggest that they were not composed as part of the sequence, which they interrupt. There is some use of the term ‘concordance’, mostly in the form ‘habes concordantiam’, but it is not a notable feature of these Sermones. The same is even more true of the Sermones Festivi. The term is used four times in the first Sermo, for the Nativity, and only a very few times in all the rest. The scheme of ‘concording’ Mass and Office readings in a systematic way is missing from these Sermones, and so too, therefore, is the terminology. The references are given in the Appendix, Table IV.

The extent of Antony’s use of concordare and concordantia to express a relationship of agreement or harmony between Scriptural passages is now clear. We can now enquire from what sources he derived this usage, and what he understood by it.

A computer search of the literature prior to Antony reveals more than two thousand instances of the verb concordare or the noun concordia. Most of these instances refer to agreement or harmony between individuals, or within communities; but there is a significant number of cases which refer to an agreement of the Scriptures: for instance, Cassiodorus refers in his exposition of the psalms to a concordia evangeliorum, and an anonymous author says, ‘S. Augustinus concordiam evangelistorum visus est fecisse’. In fact, the largest number of instances of concordia or concordare is to be found in Augustine, nearly eight hundred in all. There are two hundred more in Gregory, and between forty and a hundred each in Caesarius of Arles, St Ambrose, Cassiodorus, Bede and Bernard (although, as I have said, these are generally not in reference to Scriptural agreement). However, it seems safe to say that there is precedent, especially in his favourite authors, for Antony’s use of concordare and concordia to refer to Scriptural harmony.

In fact, as we have seen, although Antony regularly uses concordare in this way, he hardly ever uses the word concordia. His overwhelmingly preferred term, when he requires a noun form, is concordantia; and when we search for this word, we find that it is very rare indeed before Antony. There seem to be three instances in Augustine, one each in Cassiodorus and Isidore, and a few in Aelred (which do not refer particularly to Scripture). The three examples from Augustine are these:

Here concordantia is adjectival (‘duo testamenta concordantia’), but it clearly refers to the harmony between the two Testaments, and in particular between the passover and the giving of the Law on the one hand, and the death of Christ and the giving of the Spirit on the other. The two Testaments are concordant, like the choirs of angels: the words of Isaiah with the Gospel.

The reference here is to the agreement between the prophets (who spoke by the Spirit), and the Greek translators (who interpreted by the Spirit).

Augustine asserts that if one reads the Scriptures, one sees that all things in either Testament are concordant among themselves (‘omnia... sibi concordantia’) and properly ordered (‘in suis gradibus ordinata’). (1) and (3) certainly refer (at least in a general way) to the harmony of the Scriptures themselves. (2) refers to the prophets speaking ‘vera et concordantia’, but by implication this must include the written records of their prophecies.

It is impossible to say whether Antony knew these particular passages, or derived the word concordantia from them. All that we can say is that there is a precedent. The only other precedent I can think of is the proper title of Gratian’s ‘Decretals’: Concordantia discordantium canonum. As we have seen, Antony makes virtually no use of Gratian, but at least the title of his work must have been known to him. Unlike Gratian, however, he was not concerned with the harmonisation of apparent disharmonies. In sum, the word concordantia does not seem to have been in common use before Antony, and is fairly safe to say that he was using it in a new way, and indeed a way which he himself only developed in the course of composing his Sermones.

If the word was newly coined, what of the method? We noticed in Chapter Three how St Gregory calls the two Testaments the ‘two wheels of the chariot of the Church’, and they are also the ‘new and old apples’ of Canticles 7.13, which the Church keeps for her Beloved.

In commenting on one part of Scripture, Gregory often cites another passage to shed light on the first; for instance, he quotes Genesis in the context of Job. His followers collected such passages together, in order to make Gregory’s comments more accessible. For instance, Migne’s Patrologia Latina contains the following work: Sancti Gregorii Magni, Romani Pontificis, Concordia quorundam testimoniorum S. Scripturae. It consists of the examination of some 34 apparent disagreements between passages of Scripture (drawn mainly from the New Testament) in order to show that they can be reconciled. In each section, the two passages are set side by side. In the Interrogatio the apparent disagreement is discussed, and in the Responsio the contradiction is solved. This is an example of the use of concordia to refer to a juxtaposition of Scriptural texts. It clearly means ‘agreement’, and the purpose of the work is to solve difficulties arising from apparent inconsistencies in Scripture.

Two works follow the Concordia in Migne: Sancti Paterii: De expositione Veteris ac Novi Testamenti, de diversis libris S. Gregorii Magni concinnatus, and Alulfi: De expositione Novi Testamenti. Both these works collate passages in the works of Gregory referring to passages in Scripture which have a bearing on the one he is discussing. Thus in Gregory’s commentary on Job, he discusses texts from Genesis, and other books. Paterius and Alulfus arrange these according to the order of the Biblical books (e.g. in Paterius: the passage in Acts 8.20, ‘Pecunia tecum sit in perditionem’, is expounded by reference to 4 Kings 1.10, fire descending on behalf of Elisha). Alulfus deals only with the New Testament books, where his choice of passages does not coincide with that of Paterius: his work would therefore seem to be independent of the former’s, not simply an expansion of it. Beryl Smalley sees no evidence that Antony knew Paterius. Nevertheless, both Paterius and Alulfus are examples of a technique of ‘concordance’, even though the term is not used, in that they systematically juxtapose texts so that one illustrates another.

I would like at this point to digress slightly, in order to examine an author only just prior to Antony, and whose terminology has some resemblance to his. I said at the beginning of Chapter Three that emphasis on types and fulfilment

1) gives an eternal meaning to the particularities of history;

2) implies a divinely ordained progress through history.

The question arises, to what end are the events of the ‘contemporary’ period (from Christ onwards) leading? Late Jewish apocalyptic writings regarding the ‘Messianic Age’ were influential in forming Christian theories; and in particular Apoc 20.1-3 (the ‘thousand years’ or millennium). Was such an age the End of History, or just its final stage? Montanus linked the concept with the idea of a ‘Third Dispensation’, an Age of the Spirit, which would succeed the Ages of the Father and the Son.

In the fifth century Augustine opposed such views. The People of God are alien pilgrims in this world, journeying through time to a destination beyond time. The millennium has already begun at the Incarnation, and the saeculum is dying. Augustine took Paul’s division of time (ante legem, sub lege and sub gratia), and sub-divided these periods into six aetates symbolised by the six days of Creation, with Christ inaugurating the sixth. The ‘sabbath age’ to come is not a further stage in history, but a rest from time, although it is not yet the ‘eighth day’ of Eternity. The period between Christ’s two comings is a time of waiting, not progress.

Howevever, Augustine’s influence did not totally stem millenarian speculation; and a very small crack in the Augustinian view derived from the curious discrepancy (noticed by Jerome) in Daniel 12.11-12 between the 1335 days till the End, and the 1290 days of the ‘abomination’. The Glossa Ordinaria on this text would later comment:

In the early twelfth century, Honorius of Autun in his Gemma Animae took over the sixfold division of time, the time ante legem being divided into the periods from Adam to Noah, Noah to Abraham and Abraham to Moses; the time sub lege into the periods from Moses to David and David to Christ; the time sub gratia being that from the Incarnation to the second Coming. The Victorine Anselm of Havelburg in his ‘Dialogues’ divided the period of the Incarnation into seven status, symbolised by the seven seals of the Apocalypse; another Victorine, Rupert of Deutz, gave a Trinitarian division to the whole of history: the Age of the Father was from the Creation to the Fall; that of the Son from the Fall to the Passion; and that of the Holy Spirit would run from the Resurrection until the general resurrection at the end of time. The idea of a period of conversion and peace before the last day is found in Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), but she does not seem to have worked out a full philosophy of history.

Joachim of Fiore was a Cistercian Abbot in Calabria. He was born between 1135 and 1145, and died in 1202. Of the works regarded as certainly by him, the principal are: Concordia novi et veteris testamenti; Expositio in Apocalypsim; and Psalterium decem chordarum. Practically all his writings are in the form of commentaries on Scripture, and he seems to have regarded himself as primarily an exegete. He claimed his Concordia to be a new kind of exegesis, and that is why I think it is worth looking at Joachim’s method, and comparing it with Antony’s.

Joachim began his writings on the ‘concord’ between the Old and New Testaments in the early 1180s, and in 1190 he separated from the Cistercians to found his own Order at S. Giovanni da Fiore in Calabria. He had already acquired a reputation as a prophet, and was favoured by several Popes, actually presenting his Concordiae to the Pope in person (maybe to Pope Celestine III in 1196). His dominant theological interests were in the theory of the senses of Scripture, in the nature of the Trinity, and in the meaning of history. He broke with the traditional four-fold division of the senses of Scripture (literal, allegorical, tropological and anagogic), expanding them to twelve, and particularly emphasising the seven ‘typical’ senses, by which events in each of the seven ages of history had literal ‘concordances’ in the other six. To Joachim, the ability to work out such types or concords between the ages was not so much prophecy as the Gift of Understanding. Everything was there in Scripture for the God-enlightened exegete to discover. He looked for patterns, particularly numerical patterns of twos, threes, sevens and twelves; of which the patterns of threes came to predominate in his system. He opposed the Scholastic approach of Peter Lombard especially, accusing him of Sabellianism and Arianism, in that he overemphasised the unity of God and, by implication, underemphasised the Trinitarian nature of the Divinity. Joachim wanted to regard the Divine Persons as somehow ‘substances’, not merely ‘relations’ . His Trinitarian views were later censured. However, his application of Biblical exegesis to history became extremely influential. Broadly speaking, basing himself on analogies between the Old Testament and the New, and on various New Testament texts, he held that Scripture prophesied a ‘Third Age’ to succeed the Ages of the Father (the Old Testament) and of the Son (from Christ to an unspecified future time, probably not far ahead). The first two Ages had been those of Law and of Grace; the third, that of the Holy Spirit, would be characterised by Love. Each Age had its precursor: Adam was by his sin the precursor of the Law initiated by Moses; King Uzziah was the precursor of the Age of Grace that began with Zechariah and the birth of the Baptist; the precursor of the third Age was St Benedict. The ages were also characterised as those of marrage; of clericalism; and of monasticism .

Joachim seems to have regarded the second age, in which he lived, as characterised by secular interference with the spiritual, just as Uzziah King of Judah was punished for laying sacrilegious hands on priest and altar. In the age to come, the spiritual would rule. His calculations of the time were based on the idea that there were forty generations from Adam to Christ; hence there would be the same number in the second age (bringing it up to about 1260 A.D.), and presumably another forty to the final Judgement. As the Gospel had superseded the Law, so the Spirit would in some sense supersede the Gospel. The great imaginative step he took was to put the full manifestation of the Third Person of the Trinity into the future, a decisive break with Augustine; but he was concerned to interpret the whole of history, not just the period at the end. He agreed that all three Persons were operative at all times, the Persons being co-eternal, interpenetrating one another with no ‘before’ or ‘after’, but the core of ‘Joachimism’ was the belief that the inner mystery of the Trinitarian relations was reflected in the working out of history. The double procession of the Spirit from Father AND Son created two parallel histories of the Spirit, one beginning with Elijah and Elisha in the first status, the other with St Benedict in the second. This was not to diminish the importance of Christ, who has a central position dominating both the second and the third status (symbolised by Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration). The inner relationship of Son and Spirit in history was expressed by the diamond-shaped pavimentum expounded in the Liber Concordiae. Horizontal progress through history was plotted by the seven seals, each marked by a pair of persons typifying Son and Spirit as sent by the Father. The final age would still be an age in history, the logical climax to the historical process and not just a divine intervention or ‘pause’ from history. It comes before Eternity in God’s Presence, and it will end with Antichrist and the Last Judgement. The ‘Third Age’ was to be seen as a time of Renewal of the Church, not a superseding of it as the Church had superseded the Synagogue. Melchisedech, the priest-king, was a prefiguration of the papacy, with its spiritual and temporal jurisdiction. There would be a transformation of people and institutions, not a substitution.

Joachim, in his theology of history, managed to combine cyclical and repeated patterns with the unique, linear view of history at the heart of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Joachim illustrated the mystery of the Church with a spiral figure. The Old Testament provided a key to the whole of history. Joachim was not original in finding types in Scripture, but he employed the traditional typology (stemming from Origen) in a new way. Particularly in his interpretation of the Apocalypse, he shifted the emphasis from the moral interpretations favoured by St Augustine (though he quotes Augustine extensively), to an historical and prophetic application. The allegorical meaning of the text was not simply within the realm of personal moral and spiritual life, but in history itself. Also, by concretizing the allegory in this way, he made the literal meaning of the text more, not less, important. St Paul had spoken of three ages (ante legem, sub lege, sub gratia), but these do not correspond to the three ages of Joachim, though they provide a model for his tri-partite division. For St Paul, the Gospel was God’s final word; for Joachim it was not final, but could be superseded (in some sense).

The novelty of Joachim’s position lay in postulating a coming ‘Third Age’ as an historical period, rather than in Paradise. He shared with other twelfth century writers a system of symbols and types. He employed Augustine’s sevenfold division, but placed the seventh within time. In the mid thirteenth century he would be particularly opposed by St Thomas Aquinas, who argued that the comparison between Old and New Testaments can only be general, in that all figures in the Old Testament find their fulfilment in Christ, noting that St Augustine had already refuted those who, for example, regarded the ten plagues of Exodus as types of the ten persecutions of the early Church.. ‘And the same seems true about the sayings of the Abbot Joachim..’ The present dispensation is to last to the end of the world . In this view, St Bonaventure concurred.

The main legacy of Joachim’s ideas was the expectation of a future Age, rather than his Trinitarian philosophy of history as a whole. Around the middle of the thirteenth century, Joachim’s views came to have an enormous influence in the Franciscan Order, particularly in what came to be called the ‘Spiritual’ movement. Beginning as a dispute over the observance of poverty, the movement developed into a radical protest against every sort of worldliness in the Church, and the apocalyptic theories of Joachim provided a theoretical basis for criticism of the Papacy and for hope that a new age would soon dawn for the Church. Even Bonaventure saw Francis as ‘the Angel of the Sixth Seal’, herald of a new era for the Church. However, it is important to stress that ‘Joachimism’ was a phenomenon of the mid and late thirteenth century. It must be obvious that this ‘idealisation’ of Francis could only develop after his death, and a period of reflection on the meaning of his life; as well as an elaboration of a vision of the Order’s future. It would be an anachronism to read it back into writers even a little earlier, such as Antony. Antony, who died only six years after Francis, most of which he spent in preaching and in the editing of his homiletic material, does not seem to have contributed to this development in any way. His technique of ‘concordance’ bears little resemblance to Joachim’s concordiae, the latter being concerned with broad resemblances of historical types, rather than the interpretation and application of texts for individual life. It has been suggested that Joachim influenced Pope Innocent III , who first authorised St Francis and his companions to preach, but though Antony does on occasion quote Innocent, it is unlikely that the Calabrian, who died in 1202, was well-known to him as he did his studies in Lisbon and Coimbra between 1210 and 1220. The terminology of ‘concordance’ is also similar, but not identical. Joachim uses the term concordia, while Antony speaks of concordantia; and Antony’s interests are far more the moral applications common to the tradition, than the new historical applications of Joachim. It is safer to say that in Scriptural interpretation they both stood in a well-established tradition, which Antony developed in a less radical way than Joachim.

The fact and the extent of Antony’s use of the terms concordare and concordantia has now been adequately demonstrated. Before going on to a fuller analysis of their meaning and justification, however, it will be helpful to survey the work that has already been done on this topic. We do not yet have a major study of Antony’s work; nothing, for instance, to compare with Gilson’s volumes on Bonaventure and on Duns Scotus. There have nevertheless been number of shorter studies of various aspects of Antony’s theology, occasioned principally by his naming as a Doctor of the Church in 1946, and again following the publication of the critical edition of his writings in 1979. Several of these studies have already been mentioned in the course of this present work. More recently, an English translation of the Sermones for the Easter period has been accompanied by a useful introduction by Charles McCarron. A number of these studies touch upon Antony’s ‘concordances’, and it is this material that I want to review briefly at this point.

One of the fullest treatments is also among the earliest, that by Fr L. Gonzaga da Fonseca: ‘La sacra Scrittura negli scritti di S. Antonio’. I will outline his position as a base-line from which to measure what has been said since. He includes a section (about nine pages) on Antony’s method of concordance, noting that the first thing that strikes the reader is the huge number of Scriptural passages adduced: ‘His preaching appears to be a veritable mosaic of biblical texts, juxtaposed, combined, concorded, interlinked and intertwined,’ while his whole style is pervaded with a biblical flavour by the continuous scriptural allusions. He calls concordance (the harmonization of the liturgical readings) Antony’s ‘idea geniale’. Whether the idea was entirely original, or derived from some previous example, he is not prepared to say. Augustine occasionally quotes the epistle or psalm when commenting on the Sunday gospel, but not in any systematic way. Antony’s ‘magnificent idea (founded upon the sound assumption that the Church’s wisdom in ordering the liturgy was guided by a principle of harmony, whereby the combination of various parts gives the total expression) was an unfailing well-spring of resources, newness and efficacy for the preacher; and for the faithful, whether educated or not, a means of gaining familiarity with the word of God.’ Fonseca notes that some concordances are suggested by the primary text itself, while others are introduced to supply what is not to be found there. Sometimes they are a means to explain and expand the text, sometimes they serve to introduce a new idea. In principle, the method is no different from that of other preachers: but few others achieved the same effect, since they lacked Antony’s phenomenal Biblical memory. Antony was helped by an accepted methodology that allowed him to see parallels and harmonies where we, perhaps, would see none. Fonseca calls him ‘a living Concordance, even before the first recorded Concordance was published.’ This is true, but in a sense underestimates Antony’s achievement. Concordances, as they came to be developed from the mid-thirteenth century, are based on words; Antony’s ‘concordances’, as we shall see, are founded on a harmony of meanings.

Shortly after Fonseca’s study, R. Huber included an interesting chapter on ‘The Sermons of St Anthony’ in his ‘St Anthony of Padua.. A critical study’, the nearest there has been to a general critique of St Antony, but unfortunately now rather out of date. He notes that Antony strove to make a concordance of the Gospel with the Epistle and Introit of the Mass, together with the Lessons of the Divine Office. He adds:

This seems to betray some misunderstanding of Antony’s method. The homiletic explanation of the Gospels is the overarching framework of the whole work, not a category within it; and while it is true that usually the Introits and Epistles are treated only briefly, the amount of Old Testament reference is immense, although it is not (and is not intended to be) a commentary on the entire Old Testament book being read concurrently with the Mass readings. Huber goes on to say that Antony delights in particular in making ‘concordances’ or comparisons with other Scriptural texts, especially the Canticle of Canticles, and,

This is quite misleading, as in fact Antony has no particular predilection for the Canticles, even in the rather few sermons particularly devoted to Mary. While Huber is quite right in saying that the Sermones ‘may not be looked upon as his Summa Theologica’, I think he goes too far in adding ‘nor as a... collection of commentaries on the Sacred Scriptures compared and placed in juxtaposition (concordance);’. They do not pretend to be commentaries on the whole of Scripture, but they are most certainly a collection of commentaries on the Sunday Gospels. Although they are intended for use by preachers, the term ‘commentary’ seems to me to describe them better than Huber’s preferred category, ‘a manual or a model for preachers.’

At about the same time, in his doctoral thesis, L.F. Rohr calls the Sermones

This is well said, and Rohr has also noted Antony’s motivation in employing this method, as a counter to the Cathar rejection of the Old Testament. It is therefore disappointing to find that in this final summary he merely says,

It is indeed of interest, and it deserves much closer consideration if some of the ‘mystifying’ aspects of Antony’s approach are to be made clear.

Again, S. Doimi has made similar points about Antony’s method in general, and its particular relevance to the teachings of the Cathars. He says that the saint certainly intended, with his system of concordance, to oppose the theory of contemporary heretics who thought that the author of the Old Testament was the evil principle.

He adds that in order to oppose the heretics,

Referring to the hermeneutical method which Antony follows, he says that Antonian sermons appear to be an endless sequence of themes and arguments which change, succeed one another, interlink and repeat in a variety that disconcerts and disorientates the most patient reader. ‘We are evidently dealing’ , he says, ‘with a mentality and method very different from ours, and we must go back to the mentality, methods and tastes of that time.’ Undoubtedly, patience is necessary in disentangling the logic of Antony’s method, but we have already seen a good deal of pattern in it, and we must hope to elucidate it still further.

A. Pompei makes the interesting point that the ethos of monastic biblical study, the tradition in which Antony was trained, was far less preoccupied with disputatio than the non-monastic schools were. Rooted in the rhythm of the religious observance of the Divine Office, it was marked by a desire for harmony rather than for opposition. Francis’s commission to Antony was to teach theology in such a way as not to extinguish the spirit of prayer and devotion. Although Franciscan preaching was much concerned with conversion and repentance, the friars were not to be condemnatory or disputacious, but (as the Rule commanded) ‘gentle, peaceful, and unassuming, courteous and humble, speaking respectfully to everyone.’ Although Antony was familiar with the free way of expounding Scripture used by Bernard, he

I would qualify the final point: I do not believe that the Sermones were intended for the ‘public’, sophisticated or not, in the first instance. They were directed towards friars who were for the most part untrained and unsophisticated, to help them deliver a sound biblical message to audiences who might be either more or less sophisticated than themselves. Pompei says that Antony was proposing a new method to his students: I agree, but again this needs qualification. The friars were always supposed to preach more by the example of their lives than by their words; their words were always supposed to be aimed at evoking sorrow for sin and amendment of life, motivated above all by the example of Christ’s poverty and Passion. What Antony clearly wanted was for the friars to be well-grounded in Scripture, so as to preach the true Gospel and not their private enthusiasms. Francis’s own preaching was entirely based on the Gospel; the Opus Evangeliorum was meant to ensure that this was so for the friars who followed Francis. Pompei also rightly notes the context of heretical teaching, particularly Cathar, found in many areas. As we have seen, the Cathars were noted for their simple and austere life-style; the friars had to match this, as a minimum requirement for being heard; but they also had to match the Cathars in the intellectual debate, above all in commending the whole of Scripture as God’s word, and commending the material creation as his work.

The pervasiveness of Antony’s use of concordance has been emphasised by several writers. For instance, P. Pedone notes that ‘la concordanza è elemento costante dei sermoni antoniani’, and Claudio Leonardi writes, ‘In this sense concordare is the term- continually reprised and repeated to express a cultural awareness- which reveals a situation and explicitly defines it: because the Bible is read through this filter, and the mediation of this tool. Antony’s Bible is one expressed by concordance.’ It is ‘a literary and intellectual technique which is used constantly.’

Mainly, writers seem to have been content to note only the broad outline of the method of concordance, viewed as a treatment of the liturgical texts. Leonardi, for instance, says, ‘In the logic of the Quadrigal concordance, the theme set out from the liturgy comes to be illustrated almost exclusively by the Bible, but it is also held by a thread which may be solely biblical, but which often is not.’ ‘The Old Testament is the key which opens the spiritual sense contained in the New.’ Antony uses the analogy of a bow: if the Old Testament is the wood, and the New Testament is the string, it is the tension in the wood that enables the string to drive the arrow (of preaching) to its mark. Pedone has gone a little further in classifying concordances, dividing them into numerical, verbal, etymological and objective. That is, sometimes the basis for choosing a concordant passage is a numerical correspondence (seven virtues, ten commandments, etc); sometimes it is based on a coincidence of words themselves; sometimes on the meanings of words (especially proper names); and sometimes there is an analogy in the events or matters described. On the whole, modern writers have tended, like Fonseca, to regard Antony’s method as over-elaborate and of little intrinsic interest. Giovanni Leonardi accepts that the general principle of concordance is ‘Scripture interpreting Scripture’, and that historically it is related to anti-Cathar polemic, but he regards Antony’s method as ‘perplexing’, calling it a specific taste of Antony’s that is unprecedented. He cites Nicholas of Lyra in the late13th/ early 14th cent., that Antony’s sermons are ‘unusable as they stand’- which suggests to me that they were misunderstood from an early period, since I feel sure that they were not meant to be used (i.e. preached) ‘as they stand’.

Noting that verbal Concordances to the whole Bible were produced ‘after a long process of trial and error’ by the Paris Dominicans, Beryl Smalley points out that these were preceded by ‘distinctiones’, lists of Biblical words, which Antony may have used. We have already noticed this possibility at the end of Chapter Three. She speculates that Antony may have devised such a list for his own use, but admits that probably his prodigious memory made this unnecessary. Whatever the case may be, it seems clear that ‘concordance’ as Antony conceives it means far more than verbal agreement; and the coincidence of terminology may be no more than that- coincidence. On the other hand, it may even be that the later use of the word ‘concordance’, in the sense of a Biblical index, came indirectly from Antony’s own use of the term.

While there has been increasing interest in Antony in recent years, scholarship has tended to concern itself with the content of Antony’s teaching (his treatment of penitence, for example, or of the blessed Virgin) rather than on his method. This is a pity in one way, since it is in his methodology that he shows originality, whereas in content he tends mainly to re-state established positions.

The copyright in this Dissertation belongs to the author, S.R.P.Spilsbury