Pierre Rousselot, The Problem of Love in the Middle Ages: A Historical Contribution

Marquette University Press, 2002.

Summary: Rousselot argues from the primary sources that in the Middle Ages there were three basic positions on love: Augustine, Thomas, and Abelard or eudemonistic, natural, and ecstatic. Thomas view is natural because love seeks the “natural unity” provided by the source of being. The ecstatic view is found in the medieval mystics and Abelard and Duns Scotus. This view is irrational, violent, and egalitarian. Oliver O’Donovan teaches that “ecstatic” and “natural” love both require a corrosion of self and lead to pietism and mysticism, but Rousselot believes that the self can be maintained in natural love if a neo-Thomist understanding of the part’s participation in the whole is maintained. Because a Christian’s view of love helps define both his theology proper and anthropology, this is an incredible important discussion.

The book appears to be competently translated, but the reviewer lacks the language skills to make a judgment—readable and scholarly.  Latin quotes are kept in text and footnotes, but translated.