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Book Review: The Cardinal Virtues: A Study in Moral Thought from the
Fourth to the Fourteenth Century
Atif Khalil
Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 2014 43: 183
DOI: 10.1177/0008429813517459a
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Book Reviews / Comptes rendus

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The Cardinal Virtues: A Study in Moral Thought from the Fourth to the
Fourteenth Century
Istvan P. Bejczy
Leiden: Brill, 2011. 361 vii pp.

The moral consciousness of the Western intellectual tradition has for much of its history been defined by the cardinal virtues of fortitude, prudence, temperance, and justice.
The scheme, which made its first appearance in Platos Republic, was later diffused
into the ethical philosophies of late antiquity, notably Neoplatonism and Stoicism.
With the emergence of Christianity, it was soon assimilated into Eastern Greek
thought, but it took almost four centuries before the Latin authors began to integrate
it into their own ethical and theological discourses. It is to this integration and the theoretical development of the scheme among Latin writers over the course of ten centuries from the patristic period to the end of the 14th century that the present work is
devoted. In this respect, Bejczys study stands as the first major analysis of the history
of the cardinal virtues in the medieval West.
The monograph is divided into four main chapters, the first three of which examine
the intellectual history of the cardinal virtues in different periods of the millennium to
which Bejczy devotes his broader analysis. The first chapter, which examines the assimilation of the scheme, demonstrates the process by which the virtues were not only
Christianized but stripped of their classical origins. Ambrose in particular to whom
we owe the term virtutes cardinales is shown to have played a leading role in this process. It was he who, among Latin writers, first identified the scheme with the four biblical rivers of Paradise which spring from wisdom and take one to eternal life, as well as
with the four periods of human history (prudence from creation to flood; temperance
era of the Patriarchs; fortitude era of Law; justice era of Christ). The tendency to
exegetically tie the virtues to a variety of Scriptural quartets would be faithfully followed
by many later writers. The early patristic authors, as Bejczy demonstrates, also took great
pains to emphasize the biblical, as opposed to classical, origins of the cardinal virtues, a
task at which they were so successful that after some time, few among the early medieval
writers seem to have remembered the pre-Christian, non-biblical origins of the scheme.
The argument, based on a kind of medieval historical revisionism, was complemented
by the theological claim that the unbelieving pagans, despite their knowledge of the
scheme, could not have been truly virtuous, since genuine virtue, as Augustine stressed,
remained impossible outside of grace. It was only through a life in Christ, or so the argument went, that one could truly participate in a life of goodness. The argument served to
reinforce the claim that the cardinal virtues had their real origin in revelation.
By the 12th century, the subject of chapter two, it was no longer possible, for a variety
of reasons, to feign ignorance of the classical origins of the scheme. There were, as
Bejczy demonstrates, three general responses to the dilemma of having to reconcile its
pagan origins with its widespread assimilation into medieval Christian thought. The
first of these responses, championed by the likes of Peter Abelard, stressed the common
ground which united Christian and classical ethics. At its heart lay what appeared to be a
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Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses 43(1)

genuine appreciation of the knowledge which the pagan philosophers had to offer. This
conciliatory approach, however, was far from secular, since its proponents did not contest the superiority of virtue infused by faith. There was also a more closed, fideistic
approach, which stressed the exclusively Christian character of virtue, and which
retraced much of its approach to certain aspects of earlier patristic thinking, indebted
to the likes of Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine. This tendency, exemplified by such thinkers as Bernard of Clairvaux, downplayed or minimized the schemes classical origins as
well as refusing to admit the virtuous dispositions of non-Christians. Finally, there was
a middle-ground forged by the Parisian masters, who argued that there were in fact two
kinds of virtues, those which were gratuitous, that is to say, the consequence of grace, and
therefore conducive to salvation, and non-gratuitous ones, which any morally upright
human being could develop through study and effort. This latter category had, however,
no real bearing on ones fate in the afterlife, since only a life in Christ was conducive
to salvation. The gratuitous virtues were therefore heavenly as opposed to earthly. Along
similar lines, the Parisian authors also distinguished between Catholic and political virtues
with the demarcation resting on whether or not the virtue had God as its final end.
The debates which marked the 12th century continued into the 13th and 14th centuries, but took a new turn as a consequence of the recovery of Aristotles Ethics, translated
into Latin in 1250, as well as the overall growing influence of the Stagirite philosopher,
at least in the domain of moral theology and ethical philosophy. It is to these issues that
Bejczy devotes the third chapter. While the question of the relation between virtues
acquired in and outside faith continued to remain central, many writers felt compelled
to explain the pivotal place of the cardinal virtues within Christian thought in view of
the absence of such a place in Aristotles ethical system. The 13th and 14th century
authors responded to this challenge, according to Bejczy, by giving the four-fold scheme
even greater importance than was accorded it by tradition. Aquinas, for example,
explained the significance of the scheme by arguing, among other things, that the cardinal virtues are central to moral activity since prudence perfects reason, and therefore
ones knowledge of virtue; justice takes one in the direction of doing that which is good;
while fortitude and temperance restrain the passions. In other words, moral activity is not
possible without the cardinal virtues. In a similar vein, Philip the Chancellor argued that
the cardinal virtues involve mental dispositions which, taken together, are present in
every act of virtue. Along similar lines, the medieval authors also related the cardinal
virtues to the various faculties of the soul. Building on the ideas of his predecessors,
Aquinas interlinked prudence to reason, fortitude and temperance to the irascible and
concupiscent appetites, and justice to the will. Through these and other such measures,
13th and 14th century thinkers sought to more concretely secure a place for the cardinal
virtues within medieval thought.
The final chapter is more thematically centered, and explores the role of virtue within
a religious anthropology sensitive to the human beings fallen nature. More specifically,
it examines the role of virtue in combating vice and sin. One of the most interesting features of this chapter, particularly for the present reviewer, revolves around the question
of the extent to which women could be characterized as virtuous in medieval thought.
Bejczy argues that those who were more heavily influenced by Aristotle on this issue
tended to relegate women to an inferior moral status. Those less bound to Aristotelianism
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felt that since grace encompassed all believers, both genders were equally capable of
exercising virtue. In Bejczys own words, [a]lthough it is sometimes believed that
medieval Christendom and Aristotelianism reinforced each other in portraying women
as morally inferior, Christendom actually introduced the idea of the moral equality of the
sexes in the West, as a result of its understanding of virtue as a gift extending to male as
well as female believers (p. 270).
While Bejczys overall analysis rests on a close survey of a broad range of sources,
the very strength of this approach also turns out to be its weakness. Due to the sheer
amount of material the author sets out to cover in one succinct volume, he was forced
by the very nature of his project to often simply catalogue a variety of conflicting views
without extensive analyses. One often wishes that he would explain a particular point of
contention in greater depth. For example, he states in more than one instance that suchand-such a thinker believed that the cardinal virtues exist in God. How exactly they
exist in divinis, however, is never adequately explained. Or to give another example,
in the opening chapter Bejczy demonstrates with great erudition the exegetical strategies
that the early patristic authors employed to integrate the cardinal virtues into Christian
moral theology. As to why they felt compelled to do this, however, the reader is left
more or less in the dark the inevitable consequence, as already noted, of an attempt
to channel ten centuries of intellectual history into one volume. These shortcomings
aside, the present work stands as an impressive contribution to our knowledge of medieval Western thought and the broader history of ideas, and will prove useful to medievalists, intellectual historians, philosophers, scholars of religion, and theologians alike.
Atif Khalil
Dept. of Religious Studies, University of Lethbridge

Understanding Religion and Science: Introducing the Debate

Michael Horace Barnes
New York: Continuum Books, 2010. 308 pp.

While there is no shortage of introductory books on the topic of religion and science,
Michael Horace Barnes does attempt to distinguish his contribution from the others. His
book has a generally slick presentation that makes it easy to use in the context of an introductory undergraduate classroom. Barnes approaches religion and science from a theologicalphilosophical perspective that sets his introduction apart from many of the more
historically based books already on the market. Addressing topics such as the problem of
evil, the possibility of miracles, the nature of the human soul, the existence and nature
of God, the relationship between faith and reason, the cosmic and biological origins
of human beings, the nature of the human mind/brain and the methods of both religion
and science, his book might have been more appropriately sold as an introduction to the
philosophy of religion with a strong emphasis on Christianity.
Barnes embraces a prescriptive mandate that he interweaves throughout his entire
narrative. While seeking to sit in the stands (5) and offer a descriptive account of the
conflict, he refuses to maintain any pretense to neutrality. Barnes styles himself as a
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