¹ The most prolonged and detailed description of the history of 19^th and 20^th century Neo-Thomism is Riet, Georges Van, Thomistic Epistemology: Studies Concerning the Problem of Cognition in the Contemporary Thomistic School, 2 vols. translated by Franks, Gabriel, McCarthy, Donald G. and Hertrich, George E (French 1946; English, St. Louis: B. Herder Books, 1963–1964)Google Scholar.

² Chenu, Marie-Dominique, ‘L’interprète de Saint Thomas d’Aquin,’ in Étienne Gilson et nous: la philosophie et son histoire ed., Couratier, Monique (Paris: J. Vrin, 1980), p. 44Google Scholar.

³ Gilson, Étienne, Introduction au système de S. Thomas D’Aquin(Strasbourg: A Vix, 1919), p. 24Google Scholar. Gilson's first book on Aquinas was delivered as lectures in the University of Lille, in 1913; half of them had been published in the Revue des cours et conférences, in 1914, before the Great War put an end to such academic ventures. After the war, the whole text was published at Strasbourg, where Gilson was then teaching.

⁴ Chenu, Marie-Dominique OP, Aquinas and his Role in Theology, trans. Philibert, Paul OP (French 1959Google Scholar, Thomas d’Aquin et la théologie, Paris: Seuil, Maîtres Spirituels, English, Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2002), p. 45Google Scholar.

⁵ Gilson to Marie-Dominique Chenu, 28 February 1942, in the Saulchoir archives, Saint-Jacques, Paris. I have just completed editing a selection of the Gilson/Chenu letters, and hope to see them published in the Revue Thomiste in the next year.

⁶ Gilson, Étienne, ‘Note sur un texte de S. Thomas,’Revue Thomiste vol. 54 (1954): 148–152Google Scholar; reprint Autour de saint Thomas, ed. Courtine, Jean-Francois (Paris: J. Vrin, 1983), 35–40, p. 39Google Scholar.

⁷ Gilson, Étienne, Le thomisme: introduction au système de saint Thomas d’Aquin(Third edition, revised and augmented. Paris: J. Vrin, 1927), p. 39Google Scholar.

⁸ Gilson, Étienne, Le philosophe et la théologie(Paris: Librarie Arthème Fayard, 1960), p. 23Google Scholar.

⁹ Chenu, Marie-Dominique, Jacques Duquesne interroge le père Chenu: Un théologien en liberté(Paris: Le Centurion, 1975), p. 27Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 44.

¹¹ Chenu, Marie-Dominique, Une école de théologie: le Saulchoir(1937; reprint, edited by Giuseppe Alberigo. Paris: éditions du Cerf, 1985), p. 119Google Scholar.

¹² Gilson, Le philosophe et la théologie, pp. 54.

¹³ Prouvost, Géry, ‘Les relations entre philosophie et théologie chez E. Gilson et les thomistes contemporains.’Revue Thomiste vol. 94. No. 3 (July-September 1994): 413–430 (418)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Étienne Gilson quotes Sanseverino saying this in ‘Les principes et les causes,’Revue Thomiste vol. 52 (1952): 39–63Google Scholar; revised version published as Chapter II of the posthumous Constantes philosophiques de l’être, 53–84, p. 59.

¹⁵ For a general statement, see Garrigou-Lagrange, Réginald, God: His Existence and His Nature. A Thomistic Solution of Certain Agnostic Antinomies, translated from the fifth French edition by Rose, Dom Bede O.S.B., (French, 1914; English, St. Louis, Mo.: B. Herder, 1939), 117–118Google Scholar and ff. Much of God: His Nature and Existence is reproduced verbatim from Garrigou's Le sens commun: le philosophe de l’être et les formules dogmatiques(Paris: Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, 1909, 1922)Google Scholar. For the specific critique of Bergson, see Le sens commun, Chapter one, section three: ‘Consèquences du nominalisme bergsonien: Négation de la raison et de la valeur objective du principle de non-contradiction’. The tone of Garrigou's Thomism is of course unique to his era; one may wonder, however, whether the persistent interest of analytic philosophy of religion, including analytic Thomism, in logic and ‘possible worlds theory’. constitutes any advance or change on Baroque scholasticism.

¹⁶ Fouilloux, Étienne, Une Église en quête de liberté: La pensée catholique française entre modernisme et Vatican II: 1914–1926(Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1988), p. 51Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Chenu, in Jacques Duquesne interroge le père Chenu, p. 38.

¹⁸ Gilson, Le philosophe et la théologie, pp. 102–103.

¹⁹ Gilson, Le philosophe et la théologie, pp. 102–103.

²⁰ Lévy-Bruhl, L. Ethics and Moral Science, translated by Elizabeth Lee (French: 1903, English, London: Archibald Constable & Co Ltd, 1905), p. 80Google Scholar.

²¹ According to Lawrence Shook, Gilson called La morale et la science des moeurs an ‘almost incredible book’: Shook, Laurence K. C.S.B., Étienne Gilson(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, 1984), p. 11Google Scholar. At its publication, in 1903, the Louvain Thomist, Simon Deploige began a campaign against the book which Maritain was still pushing on with in 1923.

²² Gilson, Le philosophe et la théologie, 31–33.

²³ Gilson, Étienne, God and Philosophy(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941, 1955), xiiiGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Lévy-Bruhl, Ethics and Moral Science, p. 21.

²⁵ Pierre Mandonnet, O.P. Review of Le Thomisme: Introduction au système de S. Thomas d’Aquin, 1923; The Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas, translated by E. Bullough, 1924, by É. Gilson. Le Saulchoir, Bulletin Thomiste, vol. I (1924–6): 132–136 (136).

²⁶ Fouilloux, Une Église en quête de liberté, pp. 127–128.

²⁷ Mandonnet, Review of Le Thomisme, (135).

²⁸ Chenu to Étienne Gilson, 5 November, 1923, in the Saulchoir Archives, Saint Jacques, Paris, filed under Correspondence: Étienne Gilson à M.-D. Chenu/Chenu à Gilson.

²⁹ Marie-Dominique Chenu, Review, ‘E. Gilson, Le Thomisme. Introduction au système de S. Thomas d’Aquin’, Bulletin Thomiste vol I (January 1928), 242–245 (244).

³⁰ So, for instance, in reference to the defence of ‘Christian philosophy,’ in Gilson's The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy(1932), Chenu pointed out that this phrase only came into existence in 1535–8, when it was first used by Javelli. See Marie-Dominique Chenu, ‘Note pour l’histoire de la notion de philosophie chrétienne,’Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, (1932, vol 21) 231–5. Chenu would later call The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, ‘Gilson's most beautiful book’: See Chenu's ‘L’interprète de Saint Thomas d’Aquin,’ p. 45. The Spirit is, I think, the work of Gilson's to which Chenu refers the most often, and the most affectionately.

³¹ Fouilloux, Une Église en quête de liberté, p. 153.

³² Marie Dominique Chenu, Towards Understanding Saint Thomas, translated by A.-M. Landry OP and D. Hughes OP (French: Introduction à l’étude de Saint Thomas d’Aquin, 1950, English: Chicago: Henry Regnery Co, 1963), p. xx, citing É. Gilson, ‘Le Moyen Age et le naturalisme antique,’leçon d’ouverture du cours d’histoire de la philosophie au Moyen Age, au Collège de France, in Arch. hist. doctr. litt. du. M.A., pp. 5–37 (35). The whole lecture is accessible as an appendix to Gilson's Héloise et Abélard(Paris: J. Vrin, 1938)Google Scholar.

³³ Marie-Dominique Chenu, ‘Position de la théologie,’Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques(1935), reprinted in Chenu, La parole de Dieu: La foi dans l’intelligence(Paris: Cerf, 1964), 115–137 (134–135) citing Gilson, ‘Le Moyen Age et le naturalisme antique.’

³⁴ Ibid., p. 128.

³⁵ Gilson to Marie-Dominique Chenu, 29 April 1936, in the Saulchoir archives, Saint Jacques, Paris. This is the same letter in which he asks for an ‘imprimatur.’

³⁶ Chenu, ‘Position de la théologie,’ p. 129.

³⁷ Chenu, Une école de théologie: le Saulchoir, p. 124.

³⁸ Ibid., p. 136.

³⁹ This theme in Chenu's theology is brought to the fore by Christophe Potworowski, in Contemplation and Incarnation: The Theology of Marie-Dominique Chenu(Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Chenu, Une école de théologie: le Saulchoir, p. 144.

⁴¹ Ibid. pp. 148–9.

⁴² Ibid., p. 148.

⁴³ Ibid., pp. 153 and 157.

⁴⁴ The ten propositions which Chenu was required to sign in 1938 are set out in R. Guelluy, ‘Les Antécédents de l’Encyclique Humani Generis dans les sanctions romaines de 1942: Chenu, Charlier, Draguet,’Revue D’histoire Ecclesiastique(1986 Vol 81) 421–497 (461–462). There is also a facsimile in Chenu's Une école de théologie: Le Saulchoir, p. 35. This 1985 reprint of Une école contains a number of helpful historical essays about the pamphlet, by Giuseppe Alberigo, Étienne Gouilloux, Jean Ladrière and Jean-Pierre Jossua.

⁴⁵ Gilson to Marie-Dominique Chenu, 28 February 1942, in the Saulchoir archives. On receiving the news from Chenu, Gilson wrote to him twice in two days; this is the second one, written after he had re-read Une école. Both Gilson and Maritain made sustained efforts to get the ban on Chenu's teaching lifted; these were unsuccessful.

⁴⁶ Yves Congar records his 1954 discussion of the passage with Browne in Journal d’un théologien: 1946–1956(Paris: Cerf, 2000), pp. 330–331.

⁴⁷ L. Lévy-Bruhl Ethics and Moral Science, p. 161.

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 162.

⁴⁹ Gilson, God and Philosophy, p. 107. I owe my noticing this quotation to Paul Molnar's reference to it, in Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity: In Dialogue with Karl Barth and Contemporary Theology(London/New York: T&T Clark/Continuum, 2002)Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Gilson's spelling of the Danish philosopher's name. Gilson to Marie-Dominique Chenu, 5 February 1942, in the Saulchoir archives, Saint Jacques, Paris.

⁵¹ Ibid.

⁵² Chenu to Étienne Gilson, 4 February, 1942, in the Saulchoir archives, Saint Jacques, Paris.

⁵³ Gilson is remarking adversely on Cajetan's adage, semper formalissime loquitur Divus Thomas: Le Thomisme: Introduction à la philosophie de saint Thomas d’Aquin(Paris: Vrin, 1942, 1944, fifth edition)Google Scholar; English, The Christian Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, translated by Shook, Lawrence K (London, Victor Gollancz, 1961), p. 11Google Scholar. Chenu comments in the same vein on Cajetan's formula, in Towards Understanding Saint Thomas, pp. 117–121: ‘With his formaliter, Cajetan gave us only one side of Saint Thomas’(p. 121).

⁵⁴ Gilson's 1931–1932 Gifford lectures, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, which is not a history book but an historical defence of the principle that Christian philosophy can and does exist, begin to articulate this theme. But I think the first use of the phrase ‘metaphysics of the Exodus’ is in Gilson's L’être et l’essence(Paris: J. Vrin, 1948), p. 291Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas, p. 60.

⁵⁶ Ibid., p. 99.

⁵⁷ Ibid., p. 309.

⁵⁸ Potworowski, Contemplation and Incarnation, pp. 207–213 and 229, citing numerous critiques of Chenu on this point. In my recollection, Hans Urs von Balthasar also levels the same accusation.

⁵⁹ Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas, p. 307.

⁶⁰ Ibid., pp. 188–191; Chenu, Aquinas’ Role in Theology, pp. 85–89.

⁶¹ Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas, p. 165.

⁶² Ibid., p. 178.

⁶³ Ibid., p. 179.

⁶⁴ Ibid, p. 165.