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Ivo of Chartres’s Quare Deus Natus et Passus Sit

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2025

PATRICK CHRISTOPHER COWLEY
PATRICK CHRISTOPHER COWLEY*
Affiliation:
King’s College , Cambridge
*
E-mail: pcc45@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

Around the turn of the twelfth century, Bishop Ivo of Chartres (c. 1040-1115) wrote the sermon-tract Quare deus natus et passus sit in which he outlined the process of human redemption. Although widely circulated in the twelfth century, this important text has been little studied. Here it is situated within the context of high-medieval penance. It is argued that Ivo was specifically concerned to impress the importance of contrition in Quare deus natus et passus sit by providing an outline of the redemptive process that emphasised God’s ‘medicinal mercy’ whilst delineating human knowledge of that process for priestly audiences.

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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , First View , pp. 1 - 22
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‘If Adam had humbly accused himself instead of laying the blame with his creator’, wrote Ivo of Chartres (c.1040–1115), ‘he would not have been banished from Paradise.’Footnote 1 Reflecting upon Adam’s recalcitrance in confessing his sin to God, Ivo emphasised powerfully how it was Adam’s lack of self-examination and remorse, as opposed to his act of disobedience itself, that sealed his banishment from Paradise. Ivo wrote these words about the turn of the twelfth century in his sermon-tract Quare deus natus et passus sit, in which he treated the redemptive process across some 2,500 words. The Quare deus natus et passus sit was widely read over the twelfth century and beyond, in addition to Ivo’s other sermons and sermon-tracts.Footnote 2 These texts, however, remain under-studied in comparison to Ivo’s contributions to canon law with his Decretum and influential Prologue along with his widely-copied collection of letters.Footnote 3 In this article the Quare deus natus et passus sit will be brought to the forefront of discussion and placed within its proper context: that of high-medieval penance and its practice.Footnote 4 Increased emphasis was placed upon matters of interiority in the penitential process during the twelfth century, and this emphasis will be argued to have profoundly influenced Ivo’s composition of, and intentions for, this text. Ivo, who served as bishop of Chartres from 1090 until his death, was among the most pastorally-sensitive bishops of his age, a fact emphasised by his most recent biographer Christoph Rolker, who has drawn attention to the pastoral concerns expressed in Ivo’s canon law collection and his day-to-day pastorate evidenced in his correspondence.Footnote 5 Rolker has also stressed the importance of contrition in Ivo’s thinking, and has noted some articulation of its importance by Ivo in the Quare deus natus et passus sit. Footnote 6 The following will suggest, however, that contrition was the central concern upon which the text hinged. To feel guilt and genuine remorse for sin required a comprehension of whom the sinner’s transgression harmed and how it harmed them. This was Ivo’s concern in writing the Quare deus natus et passus sit, a concern borne out of his consideration for a specific audience: confessors and those responsible for educating them. As such, in making this argument, we can better understand how confessors were educated at the turn of the twelfth century, and the concerns of those educating them, through the example of Ivo’s own episcopate and this important text.

I

It is important, before proceeding, to outline both what was being read and what was being written about the process of redemption at the turn of the twelfth century, within which Ivo’s own text can be properly situated. There were a number of works written around 1100 that specifically treated the question of why God became man, the most radical of which was Anselm of Canterbury’s (d. 1109) Cur deus homo, completed around 1098, in which he rejected the notion of the ‘devil’s rights’ and placed the rupture and reconciliation of the relationship between God and humanity at centre stage.Footnote 7 Anselm wrote in Cur deus homo that his treatment of the question ‘by logical steps’ was compelled by the critiques of ‘infideles’, and the desire on the part of his monastic brothers to answer their objections in logical terms.Footnote 8 However, as Anselm himself noted, those who sought such explanations were not always learned, and he wrote that even illiterate men were asking this question and required an answer.Footnote 9 Indeed, earlier in the eleventh century, the famous debate over the nature of the eucharist between Lanfranc of Bec (d. 1089) and Berengar of Tours (d. 1088) was reportedly discussed in the streets by the laity.Footnote 10

Others, however, were content to adhere to traditional outlines of the process of redemption with their powerful imagery of the battle between God and the devil. There was a ‘reluctance to jettison an image that had such powerful emotive appeal’ among authors who ‘were less concerned with the demands of logical consistency’ than the rhetorical power of their words.Footnote 11 Ivo of Chartres was certainly motivated by the latter set of concerns, although his own emphases were different. Whilst other authors were wary about logical treatments of the redemption because they sought to preserve the didactic qualities of the ‘devil’s rights’ imagery, Ivo’s concern, it will be argued, was that an emphasis on logical consistencies could erode the wonder, mystery and ‘medicinal mercy’ of Christ’s self-sacrifice upon the wood of the cross to turn hardened hearts to repentance.

Ivo himself had condemned the conclusions reached concerning the incarnation through the use of logic by the secular master Roscelin of Compiègne (d. c.1121).Footnote 12 Roscelin’s views on the Trinity were condemned as heretical at the Council of Soissons in 1092 where he recanted his teachings, although he afterwards returned to them and continued to espouse them. Ivo wrote to Roscelin after hearing of this and, quoting from Romans, advised him ‘not to be wiser than it behoves to be wise, but to be wise unto sobriety’ (Romans xii.3).Footnote 13 Ivo did not make it his work to treat with Roscelin on his own terms but sought to impress upon him forcefully the limit to human knowledge of the divine: ‘armed with human reasonings (rationibus humanis) you tried to rend [God’s] garment by your infertile eloquence (infecunda facundia)’.Footnote 14

Others sought to challenge Roscelin’s heretical opinions by means of his own terms of reference. Anselm, in the preface to his Epistola de incarnatione verbi, wrote that ‘[Roscelin] cannot be answered from the authority of holy scripture since he will either not believe it or will interpret it in some perverse sense … his error is to be proved by the very logic on which he relies to defend himself.’Footnote 15

Ivo’s condemnation of Roscelin’s logic was, of course, due to the heresy it led him to espouse. Thus, his own letter of reprimand sought to impress upon the errant master that he should not continue to pursue explanations through logic. Yet others, like Anselm, counter-applied logical explanations in grappling with heterodox and heretical opinions. As will be suggested below, however, Ivo’s own wariness around the use of logic was not just confined to the heretical conclusions that it might engender, but to the use of logic more broadly, even by those such as Anselm who sought to impress the fact that they were explaining through logic what they already held to in faith. The Quare deus natus et passus sit evidences this wariness on Ivo’s part.

II

Ivo’s concern was to answer why God was born and why he suffered. A scribe responsible for an early manuscript of the text, written somewhere in northern France, summarised its concerns more specifically in the title that he picked out for it in red ink: ‘Why God wanted to redeem the human race more through the lowliness of the humanity he assumed than through his divine power.’Footnote 16 In his work, then, Ivo regarded the incarnation and passion as the approach taken by God who could have acted otherwise. The piece opens with God the Father imagined as an ‘almighty potter’ mending his broken vessel:

Since the world had been corrupted by sins, both original and actual, the creator of the world, through his secret and wonderful counsel, wished to heal the breach through the mystery of the incarnate Word. He who by his word could form all things from nothing could reform that which had fallen, for ‘he spoke, and they were made, he commanded, and they were created’ [Psalm xxxii.9]. We do not believe his power to be lessened or transformed, ‘with whom there is no change nor shadow of alteration’ [James i.7], as if he would be less powerful and wise in reforming [the world] than he had been in first forming it. Indeed, the hand of the almighty potter, ‘all of whose ways are mercy and truth’ [Ps. xxiv.9], which had raised clay drawn from the ground to the dignity of rational nature, thus wanted to mend the break to his fragile vessel in such a way that he would not dismiss the sin of man unpunished, since he is just, nor leave it irremediable, for he is merciful.Footnote 17

The opening to Quare deus natus et passus sit introduces us to a number of Ivo’s favourite themes which reappear in his other works; notably the entwinement of mercy and justice which features prominently in his canon law Prologue. Footnote 18 In that text Ivo wrote that it was essentially left to the discretion of individual priests how to implement his assembled canons, whether governed by mercy or justice, although from Ivo’s own collection of correspondence he repeatedly admonished and practised a more merciful approach.Footnote 19 For instance, Ivo wrote to an abbot about a monk who had fled his monastery four times. He advised him to receive the brother again even though it was against the Rule ‘because mercy rejoices over justice’ [James ii.13].Footnote 20

Ivo thus explained the redemption as the deliberate choice by God to act mercifully:

If he only acted justly, whose wisdom ‘reaches from end to end mightily and orders all things sweetly’ [Wisdom viii.1], he could have charged against the seducer of humankind by his might and restored that ‘lost sheep’ [Luke xv], returned to the flock, to its lord. But it appears that this approach would only have shown to the redeemed the eminence of [God’s] virtue and not impressed upon them the medicinal mercy of his love. Nor would it have made clear just how much love the Creator bore for his creation, by whom he expected in turn to be loved, such that wretched man, with grace preceding, might also preserve through merit what he was not owed but received again ill-deservedly.Footnote 21

What mattered in the redemption of humanity, and why God chose to take the approach of acting ‘sweetly’, was that the love expected to be rendered by humanity to their creator, which had been wilfully spurned in the Fall, would be re-animated by his mercy. Acting through might alone would not have achieved that intention. The desire to elicit love and gratitude for God’s kindness in the hearts of individual sinners is the main thrust of Quare deus natus et passus sit.

An especially prevalent use of imagery within the text which, again, is witnessed across Ivo’s other writings, is that of medical analogy, particularly in referring to Christ as both humanity’s physician (‘medicus’) and the medicine (‘medicina/medicamentum’) for their spiritual sickness. The medical imagery Ivo used, ancient and found in many patristic writings, he likely took from Augustine (d. 430) who used such language particularly frequently.Footnote 22 Indeed, the Quare deus natus et passus sit may be regarded as an expansion of the section of Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana in which the bishop of Hippo described the process of redemption and God’s presentation of himself both as humanity’s medicament and its administrator through Christ.Footnote 23 Ivo, likely drawing from this passage, described how a physician went about their work by healing like with like on some occasions, and at other times applied remedies that were opposite to the condition. For instance, a physician sometimes applied what was moist to what was dry but also measured the size of a bandage according to the patient’s wound when working in a like-for-like manner.Footnote 24

Thus, Ivo described how Christ’s assumption of human ‘infirmity’ cured ‘sick’ humanity, an example of the like-for-like medical theory, whilst also drawing attention to Christ’s work through opposites by ‘enriching us through his poverty, raising us up through his humility, healing us with his infirmity, and vivifying us through his death’.Footnote 25 In one notable image Ivo interwove imagery concerning the dimensions of Christ’s cross with his medical analogies; an image which also encompassed a parallel between the disobedience of Adam in eating from the Tree of Knowledge and Christ’s obedience in dying upon the Tree of the Cross:

And the very form of the Tree was shaped to the length, breadth, and height of the human body, and upon it the whole body was tormented so that the hands were stretched apart to prevent them moving, and the body upon the cross distended through all its members. All which had been broken (confractum fuerat) by the transgression of the forefather [Adam] was steadied by the gentle application of this splint. But in addition to this similar treatment an opposite one was added. For here [on the cross] obedience healed what there [in Paradise] disobedience had corrupted, and what the pleasure of gluttony contaminated there, the torment of the cross reformed here.Footnote 26

With this image Ivo held that the God-man’s body, stretched out and broken through all its members, was the appropriate ‘splint’ to heal the ‘break’ caused by the Fall, whilst Christ’s torment and patience upon the cross was also an opposing remedy in that his obedience and suffering were the very opposite of the disobedience and delight that motivated Adam’s transgression.

III

Continuing from his striking image of the cross and its dimensions, Ivo then moved into an extended treatment of Ephesians iii.18 and the length, depth, breadth and height of charity referred to by St Paul.Footnote 27 Augustine had associated this verse with the dimensions of the cross; the ‘breadth’ referring to the crossbeam, the ‘length’ the section from the crossbeam to the ground, the ‘height’ the section above the crossbeam upon which Christ’s head was held, and the ‘depth’ the section fixed into the ground.Footnote 28

The readings of each part of the cross pursued by Ivo were largely Augustinian, with the breadth of the cross referring to love for one’s neighbour, the length perseverance in labour and through persecution, and the height the eminence of hope.Footnote 29 Ivo left his treatment of the depth, however, until slightly later, following an exegesis of how Christ embraced the four parts of the world from his cross, fulfilling his prophecy in John xii.32 that when he was lifted from the earth he would draw all things to him.Footnote 30

For Augustine, and other exegetes who followed his analysis of Ephesians and the cross, the depth referred to God’s hidden judgements and the mysteries of the Church, the understanding of which was hidden from human beings.Footnote 31 Ivo, however, pursued a more specific interpretation in this same exegetical vein:

Returning once more to the dimensions of the cross, its depth (profunditas) should be shrewdly attended to because it is a profound mystery in which the talents of many who were said to be knowledgeable fell short in venturing to grasp what they could not comprehend by human logic (humana ratione): namely, why the Word co-eternal to God the Father, encompassing all and covering all, confined itself entirely in assuming human nature and yet did not desist to guide, fill, and enclose the entire world; inadequately considering that he prevails to achieve in a lesser form what he could do much more efficaciously in a greater form, since his voice, one and whole, could leave his speaking mouth and reach the ears of many. Let those who anxiously debate this question, ‘and having closed the door’ [Matthew vi.6], as it were, ‘grope about for the wall’ [Isaiah lix.10] (et tanquam clauso ostio ad parietem palpant), hear the Apostle saying: ‘Oh man, who are you that replies against God?’ [Rom. ix.20]. Thereafter let them mellow ‘and knock’ [Apocalypse iii.20] with piety so they can be shown that their creator was just in condemning and merciful in redeeming, and that what the righteousness of the almighty had justly condemned could not be healed without mercy.Footnote 32

Within the exegetical ‘depth of the cross’ Ivo placed the specific mystery of why God became man, which was a more pointed interpretation than the inherited tradition of commentary. This decision perhaps betrays a contemporary concern. Ivo’s references to those ‘called wise’ who ventured to answer this question through ‘human logic’ (‘humana ratione’) may be a nod to the contemporary discussions of the incarnation and redemption through the use of logic that we noted earlier. Indeed, although these first references by Ivo were written in the past tense (‘qui sapientes dicebantur’) he later mentioned those ‘who anxiously debate concerning this question’ in the present tense.

One particular section from the extract is particularly suggestive in this regard, which is Ivo’s use of Matt. vi.6 and Isa. lix.10: ‘and having closed the door [they] grope about for the wall’. The ‘closed door’ refers to the inner chamber of the mind, entered into to seek God. It may be significant that the prologue to Anselm of Canterbury’s Proslogion – his extended philosophical meditation presenting his ‘ontological argument’ for the existence of God – included the same Matthean reference. Anselm wrote: ‘Empty a little while for God and rest in him. Enter into the chamber [Matt. vi.6] of your mind and exclude everything except God and the things which help you to look for him, and having closed the door [Matt. vi.6 – my emphasis] seek him.’Footnote 33

Read against Ivo’s use of the Matthean verse, the contrast between the two is striking. In Anselm’s Proslogion he exhorted the reader to withdraw into their mind to prepare themselves to seek out God and attain knowledge of him, the ‘unobtainable light’ of 1 Timothy vi.16 which he discussed in the prologue.Footnote 34 In the rest of the text Anselm then laid out his argument concerning God’s being, an argument which was a product of ‘the grammar and logic of [Anselm’s] day applied with an otherwise unknown subtlety’.Footnote 35

Ivo’s use of the same verse, however, can be read as a comment with the opposite effect intended concerning the use of logic. Withdrawal into the ‘inner chamber’ by those ‘who anxiously debate concerning this question’ did not lead to illumination of God’s workings, but a fumbling about in the dark like the blind men from Isa. lix.10. There is also a very subtle reference to a particular verse from Apocalypse in the quoted extract here that further supports this interpretation, which is Ivo’s advice that the logical questioners ‘knock with piety’; a reference to Apoc. iii.20: ‘I stand at the gate and knock.’ Amongst the set of glosses to Matt. vi.6 in what would become the Glossa ordinaria is the following exegesis drawing on the quotation from Apocalypse: ‘I stand at the door and knock (Sto ad hostium et pulso): faith opens [the door], and the spirit enters and understands.’Footnote 36

Ivo’s own admonition to those who ‘scrupulously dispute’ concerning why God became man was for them to ‘knock with piety’. The admonishment is similar to the Apocalypse gloss: the door should be knocked upon but then opened by faith, suggesting that Ivo was aware of this particular strand of exegesis. Ivo’s point, then, was that those who knocked on the door with ‘humana ratio’ would open it, enter, close the door, but then stumble about like blind men reaching out at the walls. Those who knocked with piety, on the contrary, and entered the chamber with faith ‘could be shown’ the justice and mercy of the redemption in the manner Ivo had outlined up until this point in the text through his metaphors and analogies.

The point Ivo sought to impress upon his readers, therefore, was that withdrawal into the mind’s inner chamber and the application of humana ratio to questions of faith did not necessarily provide insight into God’s workings. The comment is intriguing and could perhaps be a subtle nod to the prologue to Anselm’s Proslogion and his broader application of logic to doctrine noted in reference to the Cur deus homo earlier. The fact that both Anselm and Ivo wrote contemporaneously on the same topic (Quare deus natus et passus sit and Cur deus homo) has been noted before, but little commented upon, with the consensus holding that there is no obvious sign of contact between them in this regard.Footnote 37 There was, however, contact between the two men during their lives, and points at which such ideas could have been shared or discussed. At Pentecost 1103, in exile, Anselm was received at Chartres by Ivo who advised him not to proceed to Rome on account of the Italian summer heat. After returning to Le Bec-Hellouin, his former monastic community, Anselm spent time at Chartres again on his second journey towards Rome.Footnote 38 There is also the debate as to whether Ivo spent time at Bec during his earlier life, learning from Lanfranc, and thus would have known Anselm and had strong connections with the community.Footnote 39 If Ivo’s comments were a subtle critique of Anselm’s logical arguments, the latter would of course have protested that he entered the ‘chamber’ with faith himself, in that his own use of humana ratio was to logically explain what he already believed.Footnote 40 Anselm had, however, been criticised before for his rational methods, notably by his friend Lanfranc, then archbishop of Canterbury, to whom he sent his earlier Monologion for comment.Footnote 41 Indeed, it has been recently argued that Anselm published the Proslogion as a pious and more devotional application of rational argument for conservative and wary readers, thereby providing ‘cover’ for his more general and delayed release of the Monologion. Footnote 42 A wariness by Ivo around rational argument used by Anselm, subtly expressed, might therefore be plausible given these considerations and the contemporary wariness around the relationship between reason and faith. On the other hand, Ivo’s comment may have been directed at bad logicians, those who entered the chamber only with reason and were not sufficiently prepared in the way Anselm admonished.

In any case it is possible to read Ivo’s exegesis on the depth of the cross as a glance at these contemporary debates, and especially the question of why God became man. Whether his exegesis on the depth of the cross was directed at bad logicians or the use of logic as a whole is debatable, although the general thrust of Ivo’s sermon-tract suggests the latter: that what was buried beneath the exegetical ground could not be understood by humans, and that mercy – by definition – was something incomprehensible which thus animated love. That Ivo was wary not just of bad logic, but its application in general, will be argued as stemming from concern for a particular audience of the Quare deus natus et passus sit.

IV

Immediately following Ivo’s exegesis on the depth of the cross, he turned his attention to the Fall. Ivo focused on Genesis iii.12, Adam’s reply to God that it was Eve who told him to eat the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.Footnote 43 ‘By saying this’, Ivo wrote, ‘[Adam] thought he excused himself and that his creator, who had made the woman who compelled him to sin, was to blame.’Footnote 44 This was the reason for the sentence levelled upon humanity: ‘If [Adam] had humbly accused himself instead of laying the blame with his creator, he would not have been banished from Paradise.’Footnote 45 Herein lay the key issue as Ivo saw it. Adam was unrepentant, and somebody who was unrepentant and sinned of their own volition could not be restored to their former state without expressing genuine remorse and accountability.Footnote 46 The gravity of the crime had to be acknowledged, and an interior change affected. Here the medical imagery returns to the text, with Ivo describing how Christ the divine physician sent preachers, witnesses, legislators and prophets before his coming to ‘prepare the hearts of their listeners for penance’.Footnote 47

The emphasis that contemporaries placed on Adam’s contrition, or lack thereof, depended on the particular context in which Gen. iii.12 was referenced and the motivations of a particular author or thinker. In contemporary Laon, for instance, one collection of sentences from Master Anselm’s (d. 1117) school, in seeking to ascertain whether it was Adam or Eve who committed the greater sin, suggested that Adam’s sin was the lesser because he had in fact considered that he could return to God’s mercy through repentance.Footnote 48 For Ivo, as we have seen, his emphasis was placed squarely on the opposite: Adam’s lack of contrition and desire to defer blame onto God.

Language concerning softening is a notable feature of the text following Ivo’s treatment of Adam’s lack of contrition, and this is significant. Ivo’s admonition to those who anxiously debated the question of why God became man was for them to ‘mellow and knock with piety’ (‘mitescant, et cum pietate pulsent’). The remedy for the recalcitrance of Adam and his inability to recognise his own sin was a medicine suited to the condition ‘which would soften the tumour’s hardness (quo duritiam tumoris sic emolliret), so that having been made soft (mollefactus) one could freely release the deadly poison, as the Psalmist says: “Pour out your hearts before him” [Ps. lxi.9], that is, remove every foul thing from your conscience through confession’.Footnote 49 Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, his laying down his life for his friends as per John xv.13, produced a natural reaction amongst men: ‘because it is natural that men love those who love them’, Ivo explained, ‘the world’s hardness (duritia mundi) was humbled and melted away (liquefacta) by this display of humility and love such that man could recognise the benefit of his restoration since he was not cognizant of the excellence of his [former] condition’.Footnote 50 Finally, Ivo spoke of the virtue of the cross being preached throughout the world and how it ‘filled the entire world in its softening embrace (malaxatione complexata)’.Footnote 51

Such language fits with Ivo’s overarching treatment of the redemption as a merciful approach by God, and earlier references to language of softening and mellowing in the text, like the ‘gentle application’ (‘malaxatione’) of the ‘splint’ of Christ’s cross, lend further support to this view. For Ivo it was hardness of heart, and the concomitant inability to recognise sin, that had to be eroded through Christ’s ministry on earth and his self-sacrifice for his friends upon the cross which ‘melted’, ‘softened’ and ‘mellowed’ this hardness. The emphasis in his writing here lies with interior change, on Christ’s actions turning the hearts of those on earth to repentance and love for God ‘freely’. Indeed, as Ivo wrote at the beginning of the text, the fact that God became incarnate and suffered a human life and death was so that he could impress upon humanity the ‘medicinal mercy’ of his love that was intended to inflame their hearts with love for him; a love which had been unrequited since the Fall and Adam’s blaming of God for his own sin.

Here, perhaps, we have the answer to Ivo’s reticence concerning those clamouring to answer the question of why God became man in all its logical intricacies suggested in his exegesis on Eph. iii.18 and the depth of the cross. Those who ‘disputed anxiously’ concerning this question were to recognise God’s justice in condemning humanity and his mercy in redeeming them but not venture further than this. Ivo’s hortatory ‘let them mellow and knock with piety so they can be shown’ suggests that he held that a logic-based search for answers ran counter to this admonition. Such mercy and love by God were incomprehensible, and to delve too deeply into the ‘depth of the cross’ in attempting to comprehend them eroded the efficacy of their wonder to turn human hearts to love for their creator, and thence to contrition and penance. This need to turn hearts to penance was the problem the latter half of the Quare deus natus et passus sit stressed most fully, with Christ’s ministry and manner of death portrayed as having a softening effect on those who were hard of heart.

V

The problem of softening hardened hearts, of inspiring contrition amongst sinners, was an issue to be contended with by priests in Ivo’s own day: a period during which, as noted earlier, contrition was increasingly foregrounded in contemporary discussions of the sacrament of penance. Ivo’s collection of letters shows his own wranglings over the contrition of sinners in a number of instances during his episcopate. Particularly famously, Ivo questioned the sincerity of Philip i of France (d. 1108) concerning his illicit union with Bertrada (d. 1117) and the king’s expressed desire to make amends for his sin.Footnote 52 Philip sought remission for his sin through gifts of alms whilst at the same time seeking to remain in his relationship with Bertrada. Ivo, in a letter to the king’s seneschal, objected to this and regarded the monarch’s sins as unforgiven because he was not contrite, arguing that ‘somebody who wishes to remain in their sin can by no means buy their way out of it’.Footnote 53

In another letter Ivo reinstated a sentence of anathema which had been lifted from an adulterous lord, due to his lack of contrition. ‘If someone is restrained by the just bonds of anathema’, he wrote, ‘bonds which cannot be released except with a true change of heart [my emphasis], but persists in his crime, what is it to remove that sentence of anathema, even if at the persuasion of some renowned person, but to render oneself a praevaricator?’Footnote 54

Looking to Ivo’s broader literary corpus, his sermon for Lent is particularly illustrative of his desire to stress the importance of contrition.Footnote 55 ‘The Prophet admonishes you’, Ivo wrote, ‘how to do penance, saying: “Be converted to me with all your heart, in fasting, and in weeping, and in mourning, and rend your hearts, and not your garments” [Joel ii.12,13].’Footnote 56 Ivo explained how the heart was to be ‘rent’ such that ‘nothing remains closed up within it which compunction of the heart does not expel and oral confession does not reveal’.Footnote 57 In similar terms to the condemnation of Adam defending and excusing his sin in Quare deus natus et passus sit, Ivo preached that penitents were to humble themselves, confess their wickedness and not defer the blame for their transgressions on the time of year, fate, the movements of the stars or some other excuse.Footnote 58

Eliciting this ‘true change of heart’, then, mattered a great deal to Ivo. Eroding hardness of heart is the primary theme of the Quare deus natus et passus sit, lying behind Ivo’s characterisation of the softening effects of Christ’s ministry and death and his note that attempts to explore the logic of God’s redemptive work ran contrary to the effects of his incomprehensible and medicinal love to erode the duritia mundi.

With such pastoral emphases behind Ivo’s words, it should be considered whether the sermon-tract was written with those charged with the ‘care of souls’ in mind. The frequent use of medical imagery in the text might suggest such a priestly audience, for the association between bodily and spiritual sickness was a well-established trope of penitential literature, in which penitents showed the ‘wounds’ of their burdened consciences to priestly ‘physicians’ who sought to cure them with appropriate remedies. The eleventh-century bishop and canonist Burchard of Worms (d. 1025) titled his penitential handbook (a text used by Ivo in his own canon law collection) the Corrector sive medicus, explaining that he chose the title ‘because it contains many corrections for the body and medicines for the soul’.Footnote 59

Additionally, Ivo’s concerns about the limits to knowledge of the incarnation and passion might be seen as especially relevant to a priestly audience who may have been cognisant of contemporary debates concerning the logic of cur deus homo but were, in his opinion, to concern themselves more with knowledge befitting their pastorate. The Quare deus natus et passus sit supplied such audiences with an answer to why God was born and why he suffered whilst delineating, via exegesis on the ‘depth of the cross’, between knowledge that was and was not beneficial in achieving the pastoral aim of wearing away the hardness of heart within penitents. In a widely-copied treatise on penance from this same period, the De vera et falsa poenitentia, its anonymous author impressed upon his readers the responsibility that ‘intercessors and preachers’ bore in eroding hardness of heart amongst penitents.Footnote 60 Confessors, then, had to be suitably equipped with imagery and explanations to erode the hardness of heart within penitents, and thence have them lament their sins in confession. We might here remember Ivo’s words in his letter to Roscelin of Compiègne ‘not to be wiser than it behoves to be wise’. What it behoved a confessor to know was what benefitted him in his pastoral charge: in this case the softening and incomprehensible mercy of the redemption.

We might here also posit a tiered filtration of knowledge from the Quare deus natus et passus sit to priestly audiences. If humbler clerics were unaware of contemporary debates concerning logic and the redemption, their bishops certainly would have been, and perhaps Ivo sought to appeal to these men with his text. Indeed, in Ivo’s Decretum he wrote of the bishop’s responsibility to educate his subordinate clergymen. ‘Ignorance is the mother of all errors’, Ivo quoted from the canons of the Fifth Council of Toledo, ‘and should be avoided as much as possible amongst God’s priests who receive the office of teaching the people.’Footnote 61 A part of this education, and extirpation of ignorance, could be regarded as what it behoved them to know, and a delineation of what it did not, and at least some of the manuscript contexts in which Quare deus natus et passus sit is found could suggest this use.Footnote 62

Support for this interpretation is lent further credence by the marked difference in character between the first seven of Ivo’s ‘sermons’ and the latter eighteen. The first group, into which Quare deus natus et passus sit can be placed, are concerned with the signification of the sacraments, sacramentals, church hierarchy, priestly vestments, rituals and biblical concordances. These texts read more like sermon-tracts whilst the latter eighteen, however, display a markedly contrasting character: the majority were quite clearly intended as liturgical sermons.Footnote 63

A number of the texts in the first group – the first three specifically – were also consistently marked with the rubric ‘in synodo habitus’ in the manuscripts, suggesting that at least some of them were written by Ivo for assembled clergymen gathered together at synodal meetings, although Quare deus natus et passus sit was not one of the texts marked in this way.Footnote 64 The subject matter of the first group of sermons themselves suggest such an audience, like Sermo I in which Ivo expounded the mysteries of the sacraments and sacramentals, arguing that priests ought to learn them lest they be as blind men leading the blind, or Sermo II where he stressed how priests should live a life of good repute so that the laity committed to their charge had virtuous models to imitate.Footnote 65 Such admonitions would have resonated both with humbler priests themselves, and their superiors charged with educating them. This suggestion speaks to broader arguments that have been made regarding canonical jurisprudence and education in this period; that the availability of canons and penitentials was not enough, and that priests required a greater level of instruction to perform their pastoral duties.Footnote 66 These arguments have been concerned primarily with the priest’s canonical jurisprudence, however, whereas with Quare deus natus et passus sit Ivo’s intention was more specifically directed towards impressing upon them the importance of contrition by providing an authoritative outline of the redemptive process. With this outline and its stock of imagery in mind, it could be hoped that their understanding of contrition and its importance would be realised in their interactions with penitents.

These suggestions can only be considered as possible audiences that Ivo had in mind in penning his sermon-tract, and indeed the manuscript contexts – which require more careful analysis than can be attempted here – testify to the ‘multifunctionality’ of the text. Yet the reading pursued here does indicate a strong pastoral and penitential emphasis by Ivo. It might be possible to regard the Quare deus natus et passus sit as a text intended for an audience at two or three tiers. The first was an audience of religious, perhaps humbler clerics, or those who educated them, for whom Ivo sought to outline the process of redemption in terms that benefitted the administration of penance. Questions of logic and necessity, which eroded the mystery of the process, were pushed to the background and, indeed, discouraged by Ivo in his exegesis on the depth of the cross.Footnote 67 For priests, what mattered in the redemptive process was the love and mercy shown by God, how ‘softening’ it was, its incomprehensibility and how hardness of heart was worn away by it. Humanity was restored from death through re-animation of their love for God. Confessors dealing with recalcitrant penitents, too ashamed or proud to confess their transgressions, or desiring to lay blame elsewhere, had an outline of God’s loving redemption to be borne in mind when treating with them and eliciting contrition and confession.

For Ivo, the power of contrition was of paramount importance, and we might here return to the words with which this article began: Ivo’s statement, in his exegesis on Genesis, that Adam could have remained in Paradise had he owned up to his sin. The statement is an extraordinary one. In the outline of the Fall in Quare deus natus et passus sit, it was Adam’s lack of contrition, and not his disobedience, which Ivo identified as the real location of sin and its consequences for humanity. The contrast with Anselm’s thought in this respect is marked: for the latter, Adam’s disobedience stole God’s ‘honour’ which absolutely nothing could return apart from the logical necessity of the God-man Christ and his passion. Ivo’s statement, by contrast, held that there was a point after Adam’s disobedience where all could have been averted: it was his lack of contrition that brought upon him and his progeny the death of sin.

Whether Ivo held this opinion outside the leaves of his Quare deus natus et passus sit is debatable. It certainly would have found no favour with a logician. But its deployment in his text impressed in extraordinary terms both the power and importance of contrition and confession, holding that the entire history of salvation stemmed from Adam’s hardness of heart and his blaming of God. The outline of the redemptive process in Ivo’s text was not governed by logic; indeed, he positively discouraged the pursuit of this question by means of it. Questions of choice, not logical necessity, were the governing themes of his work: a choice by God to act ‘sweetly’ to re-animate love, his choice to go about the redemption in a ‘softening’ manner and the condemnation of Adam’s choice in blaming God instead of contritely examining his own disobedience. Such love by God, who could have acted otherwise, was both wonderful and ineffable: and it was this love, in all its sweet and softening detail from incarnation to tortuous passion, that Ivo impressed on his readers. With such an outline of the redemptive process, the bishop of Chartres could hope that those thus instructed by it could animate penitents with love and remorse, eroding the shame, pride and fear that encased their hearts and frustrated their hopes of redemption.

Footnotes

CCSL = Corpus Christianorum Series Latina; QDN = Ivo of Chartres, Quare deus natus et passus sit; SAO = Sancti Anselmi Cantuariensis opera omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt, Edinburgh 1946–61; GO = Biblia Latina cum Glossa ordinaria: facsimile reprint of the editio princeps of Adolf Rusch of Strasbourg, 1480–81, ed. K. Froelich and M. T. Gibson, Turnhout 1992; PL = Patrologia Latina

I would like to express my sincere thanks to Martin Brett, who has been most generous with his time in discussing the ideas presented in this article, as shown in the succeeding footnotes, in addition to Carl Watkins and John Munns who have read drafts of this piece. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments, and the editorial team at this Journal.

All translations are my own unless stated otherwise.

References

1 ‘Qui si humiliter se accussaset, et in auctorem suum culpam non retorsisset, a paradiso non exsulasset’: QDN [PL clxii.565C]. This article uses a version of Quare deus natus et passus sit kindly shared by Martin Brett. There are as yet no available critical editions of Ivo’s sermons and sermon-tracts, with the most accessible printed versions being those contained in PL clxii.505–610C. Reference will be made in square brackets to where the text will be found in the PL for ease of reference, though the text will differ in some regards. In the PL the text of Quare deus natus et passus sit is printed at 562–566C.

2 There are some thirty-three twelfth- or early thirteenth-century copies of the Quare deus natus et passus sit, derived largely from catalogue references from English, French and German institutions. Knowledge of the manuscripts has been greatly supplemented here by the generosity of Martin Brett. There are doubtless many more manuscripts still to be noted, as Ivo’s sermons were frequently copied without attribution to their author which makes them difficult to identify from catalogue descriptions and incipits alone. The true number is likely to be considerably higher. Indeed, this list does not consider the evidence from library lists of manuscripts that may no longer exist.

3 ‘little systematic search seems to have been undertaken for manuscripts containing Ivo’s sermons … a new critical edition and study of these texts would prove invaluable not only to the historian of the liturgy but also to the historian of dogma’: Reynolds, R. E., ‘Liturgical scholarship at the time of the Investiture Controversy: past research and future opportunities’, Harvard Theological Review lxxi/1–2 (1978), 109–2410.1017/S0017816000025608CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 115–16. Reynolds’s call, however, has remained little heeded. For a critical edition of the Prologue see Ways of mercy: the prologue of Ivo of Chartres, ed. B. C. Brassington, Münster 2004. References to Ivo’s canonical collections will be drawn from the annotated edition by Martin Brett at <https://ivo-of-chartres.github.io/decretum.html>, accessed 22 February 2024. For citations from Ivo’s letters, references are drawn from Lettres d’Yves de Chartres, ed. G. Giordanengo, Orléans 2017, at <http://telma-chartes.irht.cnrs.fr/yves-de-chartres/page/introduction>, accessed 22 February 2024.

4 In general see P. Anciaux, La Théologie du sacrement de pénitence au XIIe siècle, Louvain 1949; Poschmann, B., Penance and the anointing of the sick, trans. F. Courtner, New York 1964, esp. pp. 155–65Google Scholar; Murray, A., ‘Confession before 1215’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society iii (1993), 51–81 10.2307/3679136CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mansfield, M. C., The humiliation of sinners: public penance in thirteenth-century France, Ithaca, NY 1995, 52 Google Scholar; Hamilton, S., The practice of penance, 900–1050, Woodbridge 2001 Google Scholar; Meens, R., Penance in medieval Europe, 600–1200, Cambridge 2014, 190–212 10.1017/CBO9781139029667.007CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Arnold, J. H., ‘Continuity and change in the experience of confession across the Central Middle Ages’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, lv/1 (2025), 11–30 10.1215/10829636-11568620CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Especially important on contrition and the experience of penance is R. Golder, ‘The changing uses and developments of affectivity in the practice of confession’, unpubl. PhD diss. Cambridge 2022.

5 Rolker, C., ‘Ivo of Chartres’ pastoral canon law’, Bulletin of Medieval Canon Law xxv (2002/03), 114–45Google Scholar, and Canon law and the letters of Ivo of Chartres, Cambridge 2010.

6 Idem, Canon law, 191.

7 SAO ii. 39–133. The literature on Anselm and Cur deus homo is voluminous and cannot be adequately represented here. See, however, Southern, R. W., Saint Anselm: a portrait in a landscape, Cambridge 1990 Google Scholar, and Gasper, G. E. M., Anselm of Canterbury and his theological inheritance, Farnham 2004 Google Scholar.

8 SAO ii. 47–8. On the identity of the infideles see Abulafia, A. S., ‘St Anselm and those outside the Church’, in Loades, D. M. and Walsh, K. J. (eds), Faith and identity: Christian political experience: papers read at the Anglo-Polish colloquium of the British subcommission of the Commission internationale d’histoire ecclésiastique comparée 9–13 September 1986, Oxford 1990, 11–37 Google Scholar.

9 SAO ii. 48.

10 ‘The report recently brought to us, O most blessed Father, of the questioning that has arisen in regard to the body and blood of the Lord, has suddenly filled all this land to such an extent that not only clerics and monks, whose watchful attention should be devoted to such matters, but even the very laymen are chattering about it among themselves in the town squares. What they say is that a certain Berengar of Tours, a man of great talent and profound knowledge, has come to Rome and wishes to revive anew the interpretation which he had once renounced.’ Albeit this reference is from southern Italy, in Alberic of Monte Cassino’s (d. 1088) libellus against Berengar: text and translation printed in Radding, C. M. and Newton, F., Theology, rhetoric, and politics in the eucharistic controversy, 1078–1079, Columbia, NY 2003, 129 10.7312/radd12684CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 On this see J. R. Dunthorne, ‘Anselm of Canterbury and the development of theological thought, c.1070–1141’, unpubl. PhD diss. Durham 2012, 14, 81.

12 On this see Southern, Saint Anselm, 174–81. See also Mews, C. J., ‘Nominalism and theology before Abaelard: new light on Roscelin of Compiègne’, Vivarium xxx/1 (1992), 4–33 10.1163/156853492X00025CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 ‘non plus sapere quam oportet sapere, sed sapere ad sobrietatem’: Ivo, ep. vii.

14 ‘cujus vestem scindere conabaris rationibus humanis armata, sed tamen infecunda facundia’: ibid.

15 ‘Huic homini non est respondendum auctoritate sacrae scripturae, quia aut ei non credit aut eam perverso senso interpretatur … Ratione igitur qua se defendere nititur, eius error demonstrandus est’: SAO ii. 11.

16 ‘cur deus magis per humilitatem humanitatis quam per potentiam diuinitatis humanus genus redimere uoluerit’: Lincoln Cathedral Library, ms 233, fo. 38r.

17 ‘Corruptum peccatis originalibus et actualibus mundum mundi Conditor secreto et mirabili consilio per misterium Verbi incarnati eiusdem mundi lapsum voluit reparare. Qui eo verbo quo potuit de nihilo cuncta creare, potuit que perdita fuerant reformare, “Ipse namque dixit et facta sunt. Ipse mandavit et creata sunt.” Hanc eius potentiam non credimus minoratam, non credimus immutatam, “apud quem non est transmutatio nec vicissitudinis obumbratio” quo minus esset potens et sapiens in reformando quam fuerat in plasmando. Omnipotentis quippe figuli manus, cuius “universe vie misericordia et veritas”, que lutum de terra levatum rationalis nature dignitate sullimaverat, sic voluit ruinam vasis fragilis reformare ut nec peccatum hominis dimitteret impunitum, quia iustus est, nec insanabile, quia misericors es’: QDN [PL clxii.562C].

18 Rolker, Canon law, 165–71.

19 Ibid. 169–70.

20 Ibid.

21 ‘Si tantum iustus esset, cuius sapientia “attingit a fine usque ad finem fortiter, et disponit omnia suaviter”, potuit sua fortitudine adversus seductorem generis humani contendere, et ovem perditam ad gregem reductam suo Domino restituere. Sed hoc modo videretur eminentiam tantum sue ostendisse virtutis, non medicinalem misericordiam impendisse redemptis, nec appareret quanta caritate creator creaturam diligebat, a qua se diligendum esse multiplici beneficio expetebat, quatinus miser homo precedente gratia optineret etiam per meritum quod ei male merito rependebatur indebitum’: QDN [PL clxii.562C].

22 See Arbesmann, R., ‘The concept of “Christus medicus” in St Augustine’, Traditio x (1954), 1–28 10.1017/S0362152900005845CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 ‘sic medicina sapientiae per hominis susceptionem nostris est accommodata uulneribus de quibusdam contrariis curans et de quibusdam similibus. Sicut etiam ille, qui medetur uulneri corporis, adhibet quaedam contraria sicut frigidum calido, uel humido siccum uel si quid aliud hujusmodi, adhibet etiam quaedam similia sicut linteolum uel rotundo uulneri rotundum, uel oblongrum oblongo ligaturamque ipsam non eandem membris omnibus, sed similem similibus coaptat, sic sapientia dei hominem curans, se ipsam exhibuit ad sanandum, ipsa medicus, ipsa medicina’: Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, CCSL xxxii, ed. J. Martin, Turnhout 1962, bk 1, ch. 14, 13–14.

24 Ibid; QDN [PL clxii.563C]; cf ‘Sicut enim racio corporalis medicine uel depellere morbos uel curare uulnera salutem seruare uel augere intendit nec medicus contrarius sibi esse uidetur cum pro qualitate uel quantitate egritudinis uel egrotantis nunc mordecina nunc molliencia egrotanti medicamina apponit et nunc ferro secat cui fomento subuenire non poterat et e conuerso ei nunc subuenit fomento quem ferro secare non audebat ita spirituales medici doctores uidelicet sancte ecclesie’: Ivo, Prologue, 117.

25 ‘sua paupertate nos ditans, sua humilitate nos sullevans, sua infirmitate nos sanans, sua morte nos vivificans’: QDN [PL clxii.563C].

26 ‘Et ipsa ligni forma longitudini et latitudini, et altitudini humani corporis configurata est quo, sicut totum corpus motum est ut manus ad vetitum extenderentur, ita corpus per omnia membra sua in cruce distenderetur, et totum quod reatu paterni delicti confractum fuerat, hujus emplastri malaxatione consolidaretur. Sed huic medicamento per similia composito admixtum est etiam medicamentum factum per oppositum. Nam hic sanavit obedientia quod ibi corruperat inobedientia. Et quod ibi contaminavit gule obiectamentum, hic reformat crucis tormentum’: ibid. [PL clxii.563–564C]. The word emplastrum has been translated here as ‘splint’, as this is closer to the image Ivo wanted to convey concerning a ‘break’ (confractum). The word, however, can be taken to mean a type of bandage.

27 ‘You may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth, and length, and height, and depth’: Ephesians iii.18.

28 ‘latitudo in cruce est transuersum lignum ubi figuntur manus quod ad bona opera pertinet quia ibi manus extenduntur. Longitudo est ab ea parte ligni que ab ipso transuerso ad terram tendit est ab ipso usque ad terram conspicua est ibi corpus crucifigitur est quodammodo stat que statio perseuerantiam significat. Altitudo autem in illo ligno est quod ab eodem transuerso sursum caput usus eminet per quod signatur supernorum expectatio. Profundum uero est in ea parte ligni que non apparet que fixe terre occultatur’: GO iv. 374.

29 The reference to the ‘eminence of hope’ draws on the language of Hebrews vi.19, which does not feature in the set of Augustinian extracts in the GO: ‘eminentia spei penetrans usque ad interiora velaminis, ubi visione pacis perfruentur, qui hic a civibus Babyloniae multipliciter exercentur: donec in libertatem gloriae filiorum Dei, a servitude corruptionis hujus liberentur’: QDN [PL clxii.564C]. For the Augustinian glosses see GO iv. 374.

30 QDN [PL clxii.564C]; ‘And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself’: John xii.32.

31 See GO iv. 374. For other interpretations in this vein see, amongst others: ‘Per profundum autem, hoc est partem illam ligni quae in terrae abdito defixa latet sed inde consurgit omne quod eminet, inscrutabilia indicantur iudicia dei de quibus occulta eius uoluntate uocatur homo ad participationem tantae gratiae, alius sic, alius autem sic’: Isidore of Seville (d. 636), De ecclesiasticis officiis, CCSL cxiii, ed. C. M. Lawson, Turnhout 1989, bk1, ch. 30, 34; ‘Profundum autem quod terrae infixum est, secretum sacramenti praefigurat’: Bede (d. 735), Homilia LIII, PL xciv.406C; ‘profunda est etiam in ea parte quae in terra figitur: ibi quippe occulta est, nec videri potest: sed cuncta ejus apparentia et eminentia inde consurgunt, sicut bona nostra de profunditate gratiae Dei, quae comprehendi ac dijudicari non potest, universa procedunt’: Haimo of Auxerre (d. 855), Homilia LXVIII feria sexta parasceves, PL cxviii.440C; ‘Per profundum autem, hoc est partem illam ligni, quae in terrae abdito defixa latet, sed inde consurgit omne quod eminet, inscrutabilia indicantur iudicia dei, de quibus occulta eius voluntate vocatur homo ad participationem tantae gratiae dei’: Hrabanus Maurus (d. 856), De clericorum institutione, ed. D. Zimpel, Frankfurt 1996, bk ii, ch.37, 386; ‘Profunditas vero est ultima pars crucis, quae in terris defixa non potest videri luce corporea. Sublimitatem credimus esse excellentiam summae et principalis virtutis, quae est fides in Deo et de Deo, sine cujus sinceritate et integritate impossibile est ei placere. Aliter in latitudine bona opera charitatis, in longitudine perseverantiam usque in finem, in altitudine spem coelestium praemiorum, in profundo inscrutabilia judicia Dei possumus intelligere, ut Patrum refert fidelis et amplissime opinata relatio’: Odilo of Cluny (d. 1049), Sermo xv de sancta cruce, PL cxlii.1033C.

32 ‘Preterea inter has crucis dimensiones solerter attendenda est crucis profunditas, quia profundum est misterium crucis, in quo multorum qui sapientes videbantur esse ingenia defecerunt, qui hoc ausi sunt reprehendere quod non potuerunt humana ratione comprehendere. Videlicet, cur verbum Deo Patri coeternum, omnia continens, omnia implens, in assumpto homine totum se incluserit, et tamen totum mundum regere, complere et continere non desierit, non satis considerantes quod valet in minori multo magis posse valere in maiori, cum vox una et tota de ore loquentis prodeat, et tota ad multorum hominum aures perveniat. Qui de hac questione scrupulosius disputant, et tanquam “clauso ostio” ad parietem palpant, audiant primum dicentem Apostolum: ‘O homo, tu quis es qui respondeas Deo?’ Deinde mitescant, et cum pietate pulsent, ut aperiatur eis, et intelligent justum fuisse conditorem in condemnando et misericordem in redimendo, nec potuisse sanari sine miserocirdia, quod juste condemnaverat Omnipotentis justitia’: QDN [PL clxii.564–65C].

33 ‘Vaca aliquantulum Deo, et requiesce aliquantulum in eo. ‘Intra in cubiculum’ mentis tuae, exclude omnia praeter Deum et quae te iuvent ad quaerendum eum, et “clauso ostio” quaere eum’: SAO i. 97. The Matthean reference also appears in Anselm’s later Meditatio redemptionis humanae, composed around 1099: ‘Ecce, domine, coram te est cor meum. Conatur, sed per se non potest; fac tu quod ipsum non potest. Admitte me intra cubiculum amoris tui. Peto, quaero, pulso’: SAO iii. 91.

34 ‘Who only hath immortality, and inhabiteth light inaccessible, whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and empire everlasting. Amen’: 1 Timothy vi.16.

35 Southern, Saint Anselm, 128. It should be noted, however, that the prologue to the Proslogion is a rather different work of literature than the rest of Anselm’s text and can be (and indeed was) regarded as a devotional piece in its own right. On this see Evans, G. R., ‘Mens devota: the literary community of the devotional works of John of Fécamp and St. Anselm’, Medium Aevum xliii/2 (1974), 105–15Google Scholar, esp. Evans’s note at p. 111: ‘[The prologue] may have had a purpose quite separate from its function in relation to the rest of the Proslogion which it introduces.’ See also n. 42 below.

36 ‘Sto ad hostium et pulso. fides aperit. spiritus intrat et exaudit’: GO iv. 24. With this said, the gloss on Apocalypse presents some difficulties in the already complicated history of the Glossa ordinaria and its history. See Smith, L.: ‘the rest of the Bible had been glossed by about 1175; although the book of Revelation was one of the earliest to appear, its textual history has been shown … to be particularly convoluted, and it may be that there was never a single agreed Revelation Gloss’: The Glossa ordinaria: the making of a medieval Bible commentary, Leiden 2009, 26 10.1163/ej.9789004177857.i-270CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 See Barker, L. K., ‘Ivo of Chartres and the Anglo-Norman cultural tradition’, in Anglo-Norman studies XIII: Proceedings of the Battle conference 1990, ed. Chibnall, M., Woodbridge, 1991, 22–3Google Scholar.

38 Eadmer, History of recent events in England, ed. and trans. G. Bosanquet, London 1964, 160.

39 The debate is based on the word of Robert of Torigni (d. 1186), a former monk and prior of Bec who later became abbot of Mont-St-Michel and reported this information in the 1150s in his Chronicle: ‘[Ivo] dum esset juvenis audivit magistrum Lanfrancum, priorem Becci, de secularibus et divinis litteris tractantem in illa famosa schola, quam Becci tenuit … Reliquit autem multa monumenta industriae suae, religionis, et sapientiae, aedificando scilicet monasterium canonicorum Sancti Johannis de Valle … et multa utilia scribendo’: Chronicle, ed. R. Howlett, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I (Rolls Series, 1884–9), iv. 100–1. Robert would have known some of these ‘most useful’ writings, since the community of Mont-St-Michel possessed a copy of Ivo’s Sermones (including Quare deus natus et passus sit). The manuscript is Bibliothèque municipale, Avranches, ms.243, with Quare deus natus et passus sit under the title Sermo cur filius dei factus sit homo at fo. 166r. For a summary of the debate on Ivo and Bec see Rolker, Canon law, 90.

40 In the Proslogion itself Anselm of course famously described the intellectual activity pursued there as ‘faith seeking understanding’ (‘fides quaerens intellectum’): SAO ii. 94.

41 ‘As regards the things that this little work makes mention of and which your wholesome and wise counsel advises me to weigh more meticulously in the balance of mind and to discuss with men who are learned in holy writ and, where reason fails, to furnish with divine proofs, this I have done to the best of my ability after and before your fatherly and lovable advice’: Anselm, ep. lxviii in Letters of Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury, ed. and trans. S. Niskanen, Oxford 2019, 199.

42 Holopainen, T. J., A historical study of Anselm’s Proslogion: argument, devotion, and rhetoric, Leiden 2020, esp. pp. 140–6310.1163/9789004426665_008CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 QDN [PL clxii.565C]; ‘And Adam said: The woman, whom thou gavest me to be my companion, gave me of the tree, and I did eat’: Genesis iii.12.

44 ‘Hec dicendo se putavit excusatum et creatorem conditorem mulieris, que ad peccandum virum traxerat, inculpatum’: QDN [PL clxii.565C]. Indeed, the interlinear gloss to the GO treatment of this verse holds to this interpretation: ‘Not humbly confessing but proudly excusing himself and placing the blame on the creator of the woman’ (‘non humiliter confitens sed superbe se excucusans et in auctorem mulieris culpam retorquens’): GO i. 28.

45 ‘Qui si humiliter se accussaset, et in auctorem suum culpam non retorsisset, a paradiso non exsulasset’: QDN [PL clxii.565C].

46 ‘Non enim conveniens erat ut invitus traheretur ad penitentiam qui spontaneus corruerat in penam, ne itidem ingratus existeret sue reformationi, sicut ingratus exstitererat prime conditioni’: ibid [PL clxii.565C]; cf. ‘Duo sunt, charissimi, que principaliter attendere debet humana circumspectio: dignitatem sue conditionis, et excellentiam sue reformationis. Dignitatem sue conditionis, ut peccare timeat; excellentiam redemptionis, ut gratie redimentis ingratus non existat’: Ivo, Sermo XXI [PL clxii.599C].

47 ‘misit medicus noster precones et testes suos ante se legislatores et prophetas, qui corda auditorum ad penitentiam prepararent’: QDN [PL clxii.565C].

48 ‘Ne tamen mulierem, quam in solatium acceperat, contristraret, in malo ei consensit, quia putabat et mulieri se posse obtemperare et iterum per penitentiam et misericordiam dei ad ueniam posse resurgere’: Sententiae Anselmi, ed. F. Bliemetzrieder, Münster 1919, 62. For more on original sin and its treatment in Anselm’s Laon see Lottin, D. O., ‘Les Théories du péché originel au xiie siècle: l’école d’Anselme de Laon et de Guillaume de Champeaux’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale xi (1939), 17–32 Google Scholar. With this said, in the same collection of Laonais sentences the author later referred to Adam’s pride in his statement that Eve compelled him to eat the fruit, but the verse received less treatment than in Ivo’s work and the author did not suggest that Adam lay blame with God: ‘inuentus culpam in ipsum refudit superbe se excusans: mulier quam dedisti mihi, et cetera’: Sententiae Anselmi, 66.

49 ‘quod duritiam tumoris sic emolliret ut mollefactus sponte mortiferum virus effunderet, dicente psalmista: “Effundite coram illo corda vestra”, id est, per confessionem eicite de conscientiis vestris omnia immunda’: QDN [PL clxii.565C].

50 ‘quia naturale est ut homines diligentes se diligant, hac humilitate et caritate humiliata est et liquefacta duritia mundi, ut agnosceret beneficium sue reparationis que non agnoverat excellentiam sue conditionis’: ibid. [PL clxii.566C]; ‘Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends’: John xv.13.

51 ‘et totum mundum sua malaxatione complexata’: QDN [PL clxii.566C].

52 On this see Rolker, Canon law, 236.

53 ‘nulla redemptione vel commutatione quis peccatum suum poterit abolere, quamdiu vult in eo permanere’: Ivo, ep. xlvii; cf. ‘De illis qui ex industria peccant, et promittunt sibi quamdam impunitatem peccandi, propter largitionem elemosinarum. Ex concilio Cabillonensi, cap. 36’ Sed nec hoc pretereundum putavimus quod quidam ex industria peccantes, propter elemosinarum largitionem quamdam sibi promittunt impunitatem. Elemosina enim exstinguit peccata, iuxta illud, Ignem ardentem exstinguit aqua, et elemosina exstinguit peccata, sed ea que aut necessitate, aut casu, aut qualibet fiunt fragilitate. Ea vero que ex industria ad cuiuslibet libidinem explendam idcirco fiunt, ut elemosinis redimantur, nequaquam eis redimi possunt, quia qui hoc perpetrant, videntur Deum mercede conducere, ut eis impune peccare liceat. Non ergo quis idcirco peccare debet, ut elemosinam faciat, sed ideo elemosinam facere debet, quia peccavit. Mentem enim et corpus que libido traxit ad culpam, afflictio et contritio debet reducere ad veniam’: Ivo, Decretum, bk 15, ch. 70.

54 ‘si enim justo anathematis vinculo est ligatus, cum justa vincula non dissolvat nisi vera cordis conversio eo adhuc permanente in crimine, ad persuasionem quamlibet splendidae personae quid est hoc anathema destruere nisi seipsum praevaricatorem constituere?’: Ivo, ep. xviii.

55 Ivo, Sermo XIII [PL clxii.579–81C].

56 ‘Quomodo autem penitentiam agere debeatis, Dominus prophetica voce vos admonet, dicens: “Convertimini ad me in toto corde vestro, in jeiunio et fletu et planctu, et scindite corda vestra, et non vestimenta vestra”’: ibid [PL clxii.579C].

57 ‘ut intus nihil clausum remaneat quod compunctio cordis non expellat, et oris confessio non aperiat’: ibid [PL clxii.579C].

58 ‘Adversum se quippe confitetur, qui seipsum accusat, et horis vel fato, vel stellis peccatum suum non imputat’: ibid [PL clxii.580C].

59 ‘Liber hic Corrector vocatur et Medicus, quia correctiones corporum et animarum medicinas plene continet’: PL cxl.949C.

60 Printed in PL xl.1113–30C. For parallels between Ivo’s works and the De vera et falsa poenitentia see Rolker, ‘Pastoral canon law’.

61 ‘Ignorantia mater cunctorum errorum, maxime in sacerdotibus Dei vitanda est, qui docendi officium in populis susceperunt’: Ivo, Decretum bk 5, ch. 202. In quoting about the bishop’s circuitione and synodum in his Decretum, Ivo was drawing from their inclusion in Burchard’s own Decretum a century earlier (bk 1, ch. 90) and, before him, their incorporation in Regino of Prum’s (d. 915) De ecclesiasticis disciplinis (bk 2, ch.1), the latter of which is printed in PL cxxxii. 281C.

62 It is interesting, in this regard, that two manuscripts containing the Quare deus natus et passus sit appear quite plausibly to have been used in the education of subordinates. Vatican Library, ms Reg.lat.223 contains (at fos 29r–30r) a stock set of questions and answers on doctrinal matters immediately after the text of Ivo’s Quare deus natus et passus sit. The questions and answers appear to be a Carolingian text intended for use by a priest examining the knowledge of godparents, given that another instance in which the text appears is a tenth-century manuscript associated with the monasteries of Corbie and St-Germain-des-Pres alongside baptismal ordines. See Staerk, A., Les Manuscrits latins du Ve au XIIIe siècle conservés à la bibliothèque impériale de Saint-Pétersbourg: description, textes inédits, reproductions autotypiques, St Petersburg 1910, i. 173–92Google Scholar. The questions and answers were printed by Staerk at pp. 180–1. It has been suggested that ms Reg.lat.223 originates from France and the second half of the twelfth century; it also contains a wealth of theological sentences from the school of Laon, organised somewhat haphazardly, but perhaps in order to aid some clerical user or an itinerant bishop or archdeacon performing visitations. Lincoln Cathedral Library, ms 233, a small and scruffy volume measuring 17x11cm, contains the Quare deus natus et passus sit along with other sermons by Ivo, his letters, his canon law Prologue, a consecration order for a church, another large collection of Laonais sentences and some added notes on penance at the very end of the book. The volume very much has the appearance of a ‘working book’, unembellished and practical, for an itinerant user. It could be that Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms Lat.3004 may also be regarded similarly; it opens with the Quare deus natus et passus sit followed by sentences on penance and other matters.

63 One should note that sermons 22–4 treat the Paternoster (Sermo XXII), the Creed (Sermo XXIII), marriage and adultery (Sermo XXIV). Such could also have been particularly suited for educative purposes given their subject matter.

64 For instance, British Library, London, ms Royal B VI (Rochester Cathedral, c.1124); St John’s College Cambridge, ms D.19 (Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, c.1112–25); Bodleian Library, Oxford, ms Laud Misc.52 (Durham Cathedral, 1125–50); and Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms Lat.18585 (north-west France, 1125–50).

65 Ivo, Sermo I [PL clxii.505C]; Sermo II [PL clxii.519C]. Ivo did, however, point out that the priest’s level of education had no bearing on the efficacy of the sacraments he administered, although Quare deus natus et passus sit evidences his own attempts to increase the level of cognisance.

66 W. L. North, ‘Bonizo of Sutri, the dicta Bonizonis and the development of the jurisprudence of canon law before Gratian’, in Eichbauer, M. H. and Summerlin, D. (eds), The use of canon law in ecclesiastical administration, 1000–1234, Leiden 2019, 159–8410.1163/9789004387249CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Larson, A. A., Master of penance: Gratian and the development of penitential thought and law in the twelfth century, Washington, DC 2014, 311 10.2307/j.ctt5vj8g3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 A desire to address the needs of ‘simpler’ audiences around the question of cur deus homo can also be said to have later motivated Bernard of Clairvaux (d.1153), for whom the Anselmian outline of the redemption was too narrowly focused on Christ’s redemptive death and did not focus enough on his perfect life: Evans, G. R., ‘ Cur deus homo: St Bernard’s theology of the redemption: a contribution to the contemporary debate’, Studia Theologica xxxvi/1 (1982), 27–36 10.1080/00393388208600006CrossRefGoogle Scholar.