Evidence of Augustinian 'Ressourcement' in the Franciscan Summa Halensis: The Cases of Contra Faustum and De spiritu et littera

Abstract

Among the thornier issues surrounding the Parisian Franciscan collaborative compilation Summa Halensis1 is the matter of its sources, consideration of which most often involves discernment of its contributing authors and their engagement with near-contemporary texts and trends in twelfthand thirteenth-century scholastic theology.2 Hiding in plain sight, and thus easily overlooked in this array of detailed concerns, is the privileged place afforded to Augustine of Hippo—and more precisely, to historically underexamined and underutilized of his works—within certain sections of the Franciscan Summa, a dynamic that seems to indicate a deliberate Augustinian ressourcement alongside more standard scholastic uses of stock textual auctoritates.3