Alcher of Clairvaux

Alcher of Clairvaux was a twelfth-century Cistercian monk of Clairvaux Abbey. He was once thought to be the author of two works, now attributed by many scholars to an anonymous pseudo-Augustine of the same period.[1][2][3]

Thomas Aquinas made the traditional attribution of the De spiritu et anima[4] to Alcher.[5][6] It is now reckoned to be a compilation of c.1170, taken from Alcuin, Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, Augustine of Hippo, Cassiodorus, Hugh of St Victor, Isaac of Stella, and Isidore of Seville;[7] also Boethius.[8] It is a source for medieval views on self-control,[9] and the doctrine that the soul rules the body.[10]

De diligendo Deo is a devotional work, also traditionally attributed to Alcher.

At one point in the Summa Theologica, Aquinas writes about De Spiritu et Anima, "that book is not of great authority."[11]

References
  • J. M. Canivez: Alcher, in: Dictionnaire de Spiritualité v. 1 (1937), 294f
  • Leo Norpoth, Der Pseudo-Augustinische Traktat: De spiritu et anima (Dissertation, Munich, 1924; Cologne, 1971)
  • G. Raciti, L'autore del De spiritu et anima, Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica 53 (1961) 385-401

Notes
  1. http://users.skynet.be/am012324/studium/oneil/bibper15.htm states that Alcher was at Clairvaux c.1150-1175, but the authorship as increasingly doubtful.
  2. Ioan P. Couliano, Eros and Magic in the Renaissance (1987) regards Alcher as more likely than Hugh of St Victor.
  3. Beryl Smalley, Studies in Medieval Thought and Learning from Abelard to Wyclif (1981), p. 91, agrees with Raciti that the De spiritu et anima is not by Alcher, but disagrees with his suggestion of Peter Comestor as author.
  4. Also Liber de anima et spiritu.
  5. Summa Theologica
  6. SUMMA THEOLOGICA: The form of the judge in coming to the judgment (Supplementum, Q. 90)
  7. Janet Coleman, Ancient and Medieval Memories: Studies in the Reconstruction of the Past (1992), p. 220.
  8. http://maritain.nd.edu/jmc/etext/hwp213.htm, giving Alcher as author.
  9. Louis G. Kelly, The Mirror of Grammar: Theology, Philosophy, and the Modistae (2002), p. 136.
  10. Catholic Encyclopedia, article Man
  11. "SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The intellectual powers (Prima Pars, Q. 79)".
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