Philip of Harveng on Silence
Paul F. Gehl
I want to open, or reopen, the book today on an important but little-read figure in the history of twelfth-century spirituality, Philip of Harveng. Philip has been recognized as an important figure in the flowering of spiritualist writing among lay canons and as one of the saner and calmer participants in the mid-century controversy over the relative status of monastic and clerical vocations. Still, by 1146 even the mild-mannered Philip had so provoked the ire of St. Bernard of Clairvaux over a dispute concerning a fugitive monk that he was censured and exiled by the synod of Tournai.
Unfortunately for our modern understanding of Philip, and clerical spirituality more generally, his works have almost always been read as if they were only a part of the controversy with Bernard or of the larger but still narrow question of monastic-clerical tensions. In fact, Philip was the one party to these disputes who repeatedly proved able to rise above them. He wrote calmly, copiously, and vigorously for over thirty years about spiritual themes of concern to his own order of Premonstratensian canons.
The most recent and extensive treatment of his work is that of Caroline Walker Bynum, who discusses Philip's massive collection of essays on clerical life (De institutione clericorum) both in her disseration book, Docere verbo et exemplo, and in her more recent Jesus as Mother. Bynum is less
On clerical silence is one of the essays usually considered part of Philip's longer work De institutione clericorum. In fact the De Silentio is a free-standing treatise, only loosely linked to the earlier essays, like the De clericorum which precedes it in the standard edition. By contrast, the first three essays are a single unit, On the dignity of clerics (knowledge, justice and chastity are included). The treatise On silence is also unique among Philip's works for its extreme length, 261 columns in the PL, more than twice the length of any other of Philip's rather verbose writings. It is also the longest work by any author on the popular monastic subject of silence. I am providing an outline of the work to make it clearer what Philip is up to.
Several major themes are sounded in the prefaces to De institutione clericorum that are pertinent. First, Philip's critical stance is expressly non-controversial; he says there is a long-standing argument between monks and clerks and says he is not addressing it, that he intends his remarks to be taken only of clerics. This is important in reading On silence because it opens with a brief address on the joys of the cloistered life of silence.
A second important theme sounded in all of Philip's works also bears upon the De silentio, and that is his insistence that scriptural learning alone is of use to the Christian. All wisdom is contained in scripture; its understanding is the task of a lifetime; and therefore no other form of study is worth the effort. This goes far to explain the form On silence takes. For, although the ostensible subject, silence, is elaborately subdivided in what seems scholastic fashion (see outline), not one of the numerous categories receives a full and proper definition. Instead a one-line explanation is offered for each and then a series of biblical examples are given. The reader must work very hard to derive the real meaning of the category from these diffusely described and loosely linked examples. Ultimately, the categories serve primarily to group the related biblical texts and provide a sequence to the meditations on each. Silence becomes a term for whatever it is in scripture meditation which provides cloistered peace and contemplative grace to the clerk.
This brings us very close to the internal logic of the treatise on silence and of much of the rest of Philip' s writing. For the non-monk, reading and study the classic monastic labors of silence are the source of an interior life which ultimately serves the pastoral vocation of the cleric. To some degree non-monastic study is limited and restricted, at least by the standards of traditional monastic usage, because the cleric
Philip's approach will perhaps be clearer if we examine in some detail one of the biblical stories he reads in terms of his theology of silence. Under the rubric silentium a bonis Philip discusses a number of ways in which people refrain from doing good deeds (see outline, section D). He distinguishes those who do so with good reason, as for example when Paul left Asia behind without trying to preach there (Acts 16:6-11); those who do so sinfully and deliberately (culpabiliter); and those who do so rashly or thoughtlessly (poenaliter). The emphasis here is on the tacit intention of the actor; it is this intention which defines the kind of "silence" in question.
The most extended example offered in this section is that of the prophet Jonah, who is described in six chapters (roughly ten times the length of the corresponding biblical narrative) as guilty of silentium a bonis culpabiliter (see outline, item D. 2). Jonah, you may remember, was commissioned by Yahweh to preach to the Ninehvites, but fled in the opposite direction by sea. The ship was overcome by a tempest; Jonah was discovered by the ship's master to be the only passenger not praying to his god for safety; and eventually he was found out as a sinner,
Philip rightly sees this story's potential for moralization. But interestingly enough, although he says Jonah's sin is one of silence, Philip ignores most of the language acts in the story. Thus, Philip does not comment on the action which occupies most of Jonah chapter one, namely the discovery by the sailors of the silent Jonah; Jonah's refusal to pray, and his refusal at first to tell the sailors the reason for the tempest. In the biblical story, this is one of the great anomalies of Jonah's behavior his lack of prayer implies despair or apathy but Philip doesn't mention it at all. Philip also passes completely over the psalm of repentance and thanksgiving in chapter two, and the conversation between God and Jonah in chapter four which contains the real moral of the biblical tale.
Instead, Philip focuses on four events: the first commission to preach, which Jonah flees from; the way in which the great fish compels Jonah to return to land; the second commission which Jonah accepts; and the prompt response of the Ninehvites to Jonah's preaching. On the surface, this seems to abstract the tale into a moral example for preachers. But on closer examination it
By contrast, Jonah's first response, to flee from the commission, is a culpabiliter silentium, a silent refusal to obey. The great fish, by contrast again, obeys the original divine command and delivers Jonah back to land where he can undertake the mission. This is a silence of punishment for Jonah, and carries the clear lesson that the animal is obedient as Jonah was not. Still as punishment, Jonah is forced to obey God's second commission. This is acquiescence, another silent act. Finally, the Ninehvites also obey not through their own volition but at the silent prompting of providence. What they actually do is also a silence of abstinence; they renounce goods and pleasures to do the penance Yahweh has demanded through his prophet. The longest single part of Philip's exposition concerns this doing of penance, which is portrayed as a renunciation of private goods (selentium a bonis) for a common good, the safety of the city. The fact that the king of the Ninehvites decrees a fast day for
It is interesting that Philip stresses the obedience of animals, one of the prominent themes of the biblical story, but does not pick up the equally prominent biblical emphasis on other non-human tools of providence the tempest in chapter one or the gourd tree in chapter four. If pressed, Philip would surely have admitted that these were tools of God directly used for teaching Jonah and us. But this aspect of the providential plan is not pertinent to the question of silence which has to do with interior assent or disposition of the will. The animal agents of providence, though not rational, make better images for human intentionality. Their blind obedience is offered as an example to men. Of the domestic animals who do penance at Nineveh, Philip further singles out the yoked animals, again no accident, for these most clearly correspond to the properly harnessed human will.
It will be clear from this single image (it occupies twelve columns of the 261 in the printed edition) that Philip is not talking about silence as a daily, ascetic practice or as a virtue with some single dimension of theological meaning. Instead silence is Philip's central metaphor for the orientation of the interior will, even for the entire interior dimension of Christian life. As such, it needs to be a flexible concept, and will necessarily keep
I know of no earlier uses of the term which would diminish the originality, even idiosyncrasy, of Philip's construction here, but I would like to argue briefly, before I close, that the underlying spirituality of Philip is a traditional monastic one. Like many twelfth century monastic formulations, Philip's strains hard to be striking and original in expression, but differs very little tries to differ very little from traditional monastic psychology.
Most fundamentally, Philip's reliance on silence as a metaphor for interior life is put firmly in the monastic context of common religious life aimed at personal salvation. This book on silence, he tells us, concerns that dimension of religion cultivated by the individual soul, most successfully in the relative retreat of the cloister. Echoing Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, he says the preacher or secular priest must first attain an interior disposition towards salvation before he attempts to instruct others. In effect, the Christian must find or create a cloister. Having made this segregation of interior from exterior, Philip leaves behind all the extroverted functions and needs of the cleric and concentrates on developing notions of obedience, humility, and conformity of the individual will to God's. This is perfect silence. It animates clerical life but is not significantly different from the same complex of virtues which animates the quest of the monk.
In the Jonah example, remember, he leaves behind every practical detail of preaching to concentrate on the story as a narrative of Jonah's interior journey. All the accessory characters are models or rebukes to Jonah on the matter of obedience. Jonah's actual preaching, as in the biblical story, gets hardly a mention exactly one sentence (the same sentence) in Philip as in Jonah 3:4. Jonah's final emotion is the desire for death, an absolute annihilation of the will, which becomes the excuse, by the way, for a long digression on the holy desire for death in Philip's chapters 98 and 99.
Philip is also highly traditional in the way he constructs his work. None of the De institutione clericorum treatises, and least of all that on silence, is a systematic treatment of a theological notion. None offers any very practical advice on clerical life or manners. Instead each treatise proceeds, by division of the central metaphor, to classify a series of biblical examples and texts.
One would be tempted to think that this was done by way of making the biblical texts more useful for preaching; that is, in order to create a reference book of useful anecdotes, thematically arranged, for preachers to consult in preparing sermons. In fact, however, there is no evidence that this was the case with Philip's work. The virtues stressed as morals of the tales are virtues of clerics, not of lay people. Moreover, each text is cited singly and there is no attempt, as in preaching manuals, to give more than one reading at a time for a text. Again, the organizing metaphors are far removed from the
Moreover, the cloister seems the most appropriate setting in which to read and digest the elaborate and conVolutedly introspective treatise Philip has composed. The unusual metaphorical schema of the work, and its grouping of texts not usually treated together, seem to be intended for thoughtful private reading and meditation. Far from providing a preaching manual, Philip has devised a manual for meditation, the central metaphor of which is meditative silence itself. Philip advises his secular clerical audience that they must make room in their busy schedules for meditative moments which imitate, however briefly, the grand contemplative silence of the cloister. He further invites them to explore how every moral choice, if made with a proper examination of conscience, can imitate the more extended silences of cloistered life and mirror the monastic vow of obedience with a smaller-scale conforming of the will to divine providence.
My view of the work thus contrasts sharply with that of Bynum who presents the De silentio largely as a manual for preaching. It is true that the first part of the treatise,
Like so many twelfth to fourteenth century writers on secular clerical and lay spirituality, Philip takes his inspiration from monastic ideals, especially those of humility and obedience. These must be adapted to the situation of life outside the cloister, but rarely is the secular life allowed to suggest its own, independently arrived at, models of moral behavior.
The Newberry Library
U. Berlier, "Philippe de Harvengt, Abbe de Bonne-Esperance," Revue benedictine 9(1892): 24-31; 69-77; 130-36; 193-206; and 244-53.
Caroline Walker Bynum, "The Spirituality of Regular Canons," in Jesus as Mother, Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982), pp. 22-58.
---, Docere verbo et exemplo: An Aspect of Twelfth-Century Spirituality, Harvard Theological Studies 31 (Missoula, Mont., 1979), pp. 48-55, 70-98.
Ph. Delahaye, "St. Bernard de Clairvaux et Philippe de Harvengt," Bulletin de la Societe historique et archeologique de Langres 12 (1953): 129-38.
M. Fitzhume, Die Christologie der Premonstratenser im 12. Jahrhundert (Marienbad, 1939), pp. 62-129.
F. Negri, "I1 celibato sacerdotale per Filippo de Harveng," Analecta Praemonstratensia 52 (1976): 185-211.
F. Petit, La Spiritualite des Premontres aux xiie siecle (Paris, 1947), pp. 129-166.
M. Vetri, "L'Ideale di vita sacerdotale presso Filippo de Harveng," Analecta Praemonstratensia 37 (1961): 5-30; 177-231.