True, the Abelard of Sic et non invites us to beware of words used in an unusual sense, of the corrupt state of a text as a sign of a work’s inauthenticity, but the practice will remain imprecise, at least down to Petrarch and the proto-humanists.8
5.2.3. Authentication at the Level of Content
In this case we must decide whether the categories, the taxonomies, the styles of argument, the iconographic configurations, and similar phenomena can be traced back to the cultural universe to which the document is attributed. Even for the modern period such criteria are highly conjectural in nature, though they appeal to relatively accepted notions with regard to the “worldview” typical of a given historical period.
Medieval intellectuals had some idea of content screening; at least during the Scholastic period, they attempted to verify whether a text attributed to a certain author displayed modes of thought in keeping with the cultural universe to which the author belonged. Abelard advises his readers to beware of passages in which the author cites only other people’s opinions, often contradictory, in which the words have a different meaning depending on the author cited. Like Augustine in the De doctrina christiana, Abelard recommends checking the context. But this contextual principle is invalidated by his next recommendation: to give greater weight, in doubtful cases, to the most qualified authority.
Thomas Aquinas takes up the criterion of textual and historical contextuality, giving precedence to usage over the lexicographical meaning; and implicit in this criterion is that the usage be that of the period referred to (Summa Theologiae I, 29, 2 ad 1). Thomas concentrates on the modus loquendi, that is, on the philosophical style, and he is able to establish that at certain points Dionysius the Areopagite or Augustine speak in a certain way because they are following the usage of the Platonists. He goes in search of the intentio auctoris, but his examination is not historical but theoretical. He does not always ask himself whether, at the time of the supposed production of the text, people thought in that way, but rather whether that way of thinking was “correct,” and therefore to be attributed to the supposed doctrinal authority. “In quantum sacra doctrina utitur philosophicis documentis, non recipit ea propter auctoritatem dicentium sed propter rationem dictorum” (“Inasmuch as sacred doctrine makes use of the teachings of philosophy for their own sake, it does not accept them on account of the authority of those who taught them, but on account of the reasonableness of the doctrine”) (In Boet. De Trinitate 2, 3 ad 8).9
Credit is denied to the name of the presumed author (a previous false identification is called into question), but this is done by demonstrating that the alleged author could not have thought what the text says, or think it in the way the text says it.
Let us see how Thomas proceeds in reattributing the De causis, an operation that, when we take the period into account, may be defined as philological—but only in a metaphorical sense. Thomas’s argument goes as follows: until yesterday this book was thought to be by Aristotle, but now we have William of Moerbeke’s translation of the Elementatio theologica of Proclus. Given the similarity of the two texts, we believe that the second is derived from the first, of which it is an Arabic variant, since it comes to us from the Arabic, and its content is not Aristotelian but Platonic. There can be no doubt that we are dealing with an attitude that is already mature, but in this connection it must be observed that these so-called procedures of authentication are based on a concept of authenticity different from our modern criteria.
Thomas repeatedly uses the term authenticus, but for him (and for the Middle Ages in general) the term signifies, not “original,” but “true.” Authenticus expresses its value, its authority, its credibility—not the genuineness of a text’s provenance. Apropos of the De causis he says: “ideo in hac materia non est authenticus” (II Sent. 18, 2, 2, ad 2), but he means that the text is not authentic because it is not in the spirit of Aristotle. In De ver. 1, 1 ad 1, rejecting the attribution of the Liber de spiritu et anima to Augustine, he declares “non est authenticus nec creditur esse Augustini,” but the reasons he gives are purely theoretical (see Chenu 1950: 111).
As Thurot (1869: 103–104) remarks, when explaining texts, the glossators do not attempt to grasp the thought of their author, but to teach the same science that is supposed to be explained therein: “An authentic author, as he was called at the time, cannot be deceived or contradict himself, and neither can he follow a defective plan or be in disagreement with another authentic author.”
5.2.4. Authentication with Reference to Known Fact
In such cases our modern philological disciplines establish whether what the document refers to was indeed the case (or could be known) at the time it was supposedly produced. For example, analyses of the alleged correspondence between Churchill and Mussolini demonstrate the patent falsity of certain letters dated 1945—in spite of the fact that the paper (the material support) is authentic—on the basis of obvious contradictions of known fact. One letter is alleged to have been written from an address where Churchill had not been living for years, another is dated May 7, though in it Churchill refers to events that did not occur until May 10 of that year.
This criterion seems not only “scientific,” but also intuitively obvious. In reality, however, it is very modern. In fact, not only does it presume historical knowledge and the ability to establish on the basis of incontrovertible documentation whether something happened or not in that particular way; it also presupposes that we do not lend credence to the prophetic gifts of the ancient authors.
There is no need to go looking for violations of this principle in the Middle Ages—for the simple reason that we can find a mind-boggling example in the Renaissance. At the height of Humanism, the writings of the supposed Hermes Trismegistus show up at the court of Cosimo de’ Medici, and everyone from Pico della Mirandola to Ficino and beyond is inclined to consider them a product of the ancient world and divinely inspired. The reasoning of these authors, who nevertheless knew both Greek and Hebrew, is not fundamentally different from that of their medieval predecessors: the hermetic texts are divinely inspired because, although they were written before Jesus Christ, they contain the same teachings! They are considered authentically ancient only because they anticipate “prophetically” events (or ideas) that happened later. As we have seen, it will be a good century before Casaubon will turn this criterion on its head: in addition to analyzing expressive forms and forms of content, and demonstrating that the texts of the Corpus Dionysianum contain stylistic traits typical of the Hellenistic period, he will recognize that, if these texts contain echoes of Christian concepts, they must have been composed in the early centuries of the Christian era.
5.3. Three Categories of False Identification
At this point we are in a position to identify three chief forms of false identification.
5.3.1. Strong False Identification
It is asserted (in good or bad faith) that an object Ob is identical (or coincides with) an object Oa, already well-known and famous, where B is an anonymous author, whereas A is an author who is well-known and famous. Oa is instead physically different from Ob and between the two objects there exists merely a relationship of apparent formal homology.