Before the disputeAlexander of Hales · Albert · Fishacre · Kilwardby
before · c. 1246 · Paris
Can charity be increased, or diminished?
Here there falls in a difficult question about what is here presupposed: that charity is increased. And it is said by the Master that it is not increased essentially, but to us, or in us. But almost all the moderns say the contrary.
It seems, however, that it is not increased:
1. For in things that are simple, if one is added to another nothing greater is produced. Therefore if the essence of charity is added to the essence of charity, nothing greater is produced; therefore it cannot be augmented.
2. Again: if I add a point to a point I have doubled the point, but I have not made a line by extension. Therefore, by parity, if I add the essence of charity I have made nothing greater by way of a continuous extension, but have doubled the charity. But this is nothing, because even if charity is granted to be increased, it is nevertheless not always increased twofold.
Solution. It is to be said that this question is one and of the same account in the augmentation of all the virtues. And I concede simply that charity is increased by the addition of essence to essence; and it seems to me that on this point the Master plainly said what is false.
To the first, then, it is to be said that there is a simple thing which has position in the continuous, and this, added to another, produces nothing greater; and there is a simple thing which has order in the discrete, and this, added to another, makes the discreteness of a plurality — an example of the first is a point, of the second a unit. There is also a simple thing which has no extension of bulk but of power; and this, added to another, makes something greater in essence or in power, and not in bulk.
⭐ Albert answers the increase question by ADDITION — augetur charitas per additionem essentiae ad essentiam — and says of the Master, in the first person and without softening it, bene videtur mihi in hac parte Magister falsum dixisse. That matters twice over on this page. It is the position Thomas will refuse eight years later, explaining increase as alteration in a quantity of power with no addition of parts; and it is the position the fourteenth century re-opens, since what Auriol, Wodeham and Scotus are arguing about is whether intensification requires something real to arrive. The oldest witness on the page holds what the newest ones are fighting to recover. ⭐ He also dates the consensus: Et a Magistro dicitur, quod non essentialiter augetur, sed nobis, vel in nobis. Omnes autem moderni fere dicunt contrarium. By about 1246 the Master's answer was already the minority one. ⚠ His reply to the first objection is where the argument is really made, and it is a distinction between three senses of simple: what has position in the continuous (a point), what has order in the discrete (a unit), and what has no extension of bulk but of power. Charity is the third, and only the third can be made greater by addition without being made bigger. ⚠ virtus is rendered POWER in that sentence and virtues in augmentum omnium virtutum, in the same paragraph; RENDERINGS.md requires the choice be recorded where it could be read either way.
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
ThomistThomas · Tarentaise · Capreolus · Denys
thomist · c. 1254 · Paris
To the first the procedure is as follows. It seems that charity is not increased. For nothing is increased except a quantity. But nothing simple is a quantity, since every quantity is divisible. Now charity is a simple habit, and so it is not a quantity of itself, nor likewise by accident, since its subject, namely the soul, is also indivisible. Therefore it is not increased.
If you say that it is a quantity, not by the quantity of bulk but by the quantity of power, against this: the quantity of a power is divided according to the objects the power extends to. But any charity whatever, however small, extends to all the objects of charity. Therefore it is not increased according to the quantity of power.
Likewise, since increase is a species of motion, whatever is increased is moved, and what is increased essentially is moved essentially. But what is moved is a body, as the Philosopher proves; and what is moved naturally is corrupted. Since therefore charity is not corrupted, because charity never falls away (1 Corinthians 13:8), nor is it a movable body, it seems that it is not essentially increased.
Likewise, that whose cause always stands in the same way is neither increased nor diminished, nor varied in any way. But the immediate cause of charity is God, who always stands in the same way. Therefore charity is not varied by increase.
Further, it is established that the increase of a quality cannot be reduced to any species of motion except alteration. But alteration, as the Philosopher proves, is only about the sensitive part of the soul and about its objects. Since therefore charity is a quality and is in the intellective part — otherwise it would not be in the angels, who lack the sensitive part — it seems that it is not increased.
On the contrary, Augustine says: charity, when it has been born, is nourished; when it has been strengthened, it is perfected. But everything in which progress through different degrees is observed is increased. Therefore and so on.
Further, through the act we arrive at knowledge of the habit. But it happens that the act of charity becomes more intense. Therefore charity too can be increased.
I answer that certain men held that charity is not essentially increased, and among these there was a fourfold opinion. For certain men said, as the Master does in the letter, that charity is not increased in itself, but is said to be increased in us inasmuch as we advance in charity; and this because he holds charity to be the Holy Spirit, into whom no variation falls. But this cannot stand: because it is not intelligible that we should advance in charity, which is the Holy Spirit, unless something comes about in us which was not there before; and this cannot be an act only, since every act is from some power, and a perfect act, of the kind by which we are united to the Holy Spirit, is from a power perfected by a habit. Others said that charity is not essentially increased, but is said to be increased inasmuch as it is more firmly settled in the subject, by a kind of rooting. But from this too it follows that it is essentially increased. For no form can be understood to be more firmly settled in a subject except through having a greater victory over its subject. And the increase of that victory redounds into an increase of power, and consequently into an increase of essence: because power, if it is not the essence itself, must be from the essence, and be commensurate with it as an effect with its proximate cause. Others said that charity is not essentially increased, but that when a greater charity comes, the lesser charity which was there is destroyed. This too cannot stand: because no form is destroyed except either by a contrary agent or accidentally by the corruption of the subject. Since therefore the subject of charity remains, and the charity that comes is not contrary to the charity already found there, it cannot be that it is destroyed, neither of itself nor accidentally, in the way a small fire is destroyed by a great one through the consuming of its material. Others said that charity is increased only as to fervour. But this too cannot stand: because the fervour of charity is taken in two ways, properly and metaphorically. Metaphorically, according as we say that charity is heat, and call the intensity of the act of charity fervour metaphorically, in the way Dionysius attributes the fervid to the love of the angels. But fervour so taken follows of itself upon the essence of charity; whence there cannot be an increase in such fervour unless charity itself is essentially increased, since a thing and everything that follows of itself upon it are varied together. In another way fervour is spoken of as it is in the sensitive part; for since the lower powers follow the motion of the higher, if it is more intense — as we see that at the apprehension of a beloved woman the whole body is kindled and moved — so also when the higher affection is moved towards God, a certain impression follows in the sensitive powers too, by which they are stirred to obey the divine love. But the intensity of this fervour does not suffice for an increase of charity: because the quantity of merit is not measured by the increase of this fervour, since it consists in a disposition of the body. Whence the more fervent do not always merit more. But he who is said to grow in charity grows also in merit, if he is in a state of meriting. And therefore it must be said that charity is essentially increased. Yet it is to be known that to be increased is nothing other than to take on a greater quantity; whence, as a thing stands to quantity, so it stands to increase. Now quantity is spoken of in two ways: one virtual, one dimensive. Virtual quantity is not quantity from its own genus, because it is not divided by a division of its own essence; but its magnitude is measured against something divisible outside it, or multipliable, which is the object or the act of the power. Rather, from its own genus it is either an accidental form in the genus of quality, or a substantial form, which however is not greater or lesser. And therefore increase according to quantity of power does not belong to the species of motion which is called increase, but rather to alteration; and it is in this way that charity and other qualities are increased. But dimensive quantity belongs to some things accidentally, as to whiteness, which is called a quantity according to the quantity of the surface, as is said in the Predicaments. Whence it is not increased except accidentally; but of itself it is found in bodies, which are increased of themselves. Now this happens in two ways. For sometimes that which takes on a greater quantity is moved from a lesser quantity to a greater. But sometimes it is without motion of the thing which is said to be increased; whence not every part is increased, as every part of what is moved is moved of itself. And this happens when a greater quantity is brought about by the addition of quantity, as when wood is added to wood, or a line to a line. Whence this is an increase, but not a motion of increase. But that something should be moved towards a greater quantity happens in two ways: either so that the quantity is of itself the term of the motion, or so that it follows upon the term. When quantity is of itself the term of the motion, there must be an addition to the whole, and to each part, so that the whole is increased and each of its parts; as is the case in an animal and in a plant; and then it is properly a motion of increase. Whence a motion of increase occurs only in things having a nutritive power. But it follows upon the term of the motion when the motion is towards some form upon which a certain quantity follows. For to every form a determinate quantity is owed; and because a motion is specified only by what is of itself the term of the motion, therefore such a motion is not called of itself a motion of increase, but either generation, if it is a substantial form, as when fire comes to be from air, or alteration, when it is an accidental form, as is plain in the rarefaction of air.
To the first, therefore, it must be said that charity, although it has no dimensive quantity either of itself or by accident, because its subject too is not a quantity, nevertheless has in it a quantity of power, by reason of which it is said to be increased, as whiteness and heat are.
To the second it must be said that quantity of power is measured in two ways: either as to the number of objects, and this is after the manner of discrete quantity; or as to the intensity of the act upon the same object, and this is like continuous quantity; and it is in this way that the power of charity grows.
To the third it must be said that charity is not said to be increased as though it were the subject of the increase, since it is an accident, but because the increase is measured according to it; just as quantity too is said to be increased, and whiteness to be varied, when something is varied through whiteness. Nor does it follow that if it is essentially increased it is destroyed. For a thing is said to be moved according to its essence in two ways: either because the essence is of itself the term of the motion, and so to be moved through the essence is to lose the essence and be corrupted; or because it is according to something joined to the essence which is of itself the term of the motion, as a thing is said to be moved essentially while it is moved according to place, because according to its essence it is in a place. And so essential increase is called that which is according to a quantity following upon the essence, one and the same essence remaining under a different quantity — whether the quantity be the essence of the thing itself, as the quantity of a power is the same as the power itself, and yet it is moved, properly speaking, according to quantity, according to greater and lesser perfection.
To the fourth it must be said that although the efficient cause of charity is in itself immovable, nevertheless according to the order of his wisdom he can grant a greater charity to someone at the good pleasure of his will, and according as a man prepares himself differently for charity — who also stands in a certain way to charity as a receiving material cause, upon whose difference a variation in the effect also follows.
To the fifth it must be said that, since passive alteration includes passion in its very notion, then just as passion is twofold, so also is alteration. For passion is spoken of commonly in one way as every reception, according as even to understand is said to be to undergo, and so alteration according to this passion consists in any variation about the reception of some quality; and in this way there can be alteration even in purely intellectual substances, and so there can be alteration in charity. In another way passion is spoken of properly, when something is cast off from a substance, and this is from the action of a transforming contrary; and according to this passion the alteration spoken of is only about sensible things and about the sensible part of the soul of itself, and about the intellect accidentally, as regards those qualities which arise in the intellective part from the senses, such as all acquired habits are — among which charity is not.
The corpus surveys four opinions that deny charity is essentially increased and refutes each. The Master's is the first, and Thomas states its ground rather than merely its content: caritas secundum se non augetur, sed dicitur augeri in nobis, inquantum nos in caritate proficimus; et hoc quia ponit caritatem esse spiritum sanctum, in quem variatio non cadit. The fourth opinion, that charity increases only in fervour, draws from Thomas the one image on this page taken from outside the schools: ad apprehensionem mulieris dilectae totum corpus exardescit et movetur.
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
thomist · c. 1426 · Toulouse
Again, concerning the seventeenth distinction it is asked: whether charity can be increased.
And it is argued that it cannot: because nothing simple and invariable can be increased; but charity is of this kind; therefore, and so on. The major is plain: because to be increased is to be varied, and moved, and made greater, which is repugnant to what is simple. The minor is plain: because charity is a certain accidental form; and an accidental form is simple and invariable, according to the Author of the Six Principles. On the opposite side it is argued from the Master and from the saints.
In this question there will be two articles. In the first it will be considered whether and how charity is increased. In the second, whether it can be increased to infinity.
First conclusion: that created charity can be increased. It is proved from Augustine, on John […], who says that charity merits to be increased so that, having been increased, it may merit to be perfected. Again, everything in which progress is observed according to different degrees is increased. But charity is of this kind. For Augustine says (on 1 John, tract. 5): Charity, when it has been born, is nourished; when it has been nourished, it is strengthened; when it has been strengthened, it is perfected. Again, charity is divided into charity beginning, charity advancing, and charity perfected, as is recited at Sentences III, distinction 29, last chapter.
The second conclusion is that although the intensification of some qualities comes about through the removal of a contrary, the intensification of charity does not come about in that way. St Thomas lays this down, Sentences I, distinction 17, question 2, article 2, in reply to […] From which it is plain that the intensification of charity does not arise from the removal of a contrary, as happens in some qualities, as he shows in De veritate, question X […] From which it is plain that contrary forms can exist together in the second way and in the first way; and how, in such cases, as one of them is successively diminished or corrupted, the other is increased — which is what was intended.
Capreolus asks the increase question in the Master's own words and answers it in two steps that are easy to miss as one. First, that created charity can be increased — proved from Augustine, not from Aristotle, and not from Thomas. Second, and this is the step the whole fourteenth-century argument turns on, that charity is not intensified in the way some qualities are, by the removal of a contrary. Everything staged against him in this question, by Gregory, by Wodeham, by Scotus, attacks that second conclusion, and attacks it in the physics rather than in the theology: the disputed claim is whether whiteness and blackness can be in one subject at once in remitted degrees. Charity is the case; contrariety is the argument. ⛔ His proofs of the second conclusion are two long quotations of Thomas, elided here at […] under the via rule. The article numerals are elided too: the 1900 OCR gives them as ad :5'" and art. li, and a guessed citation number is worse than an admitted gap.
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
thomist · c. 1460 · Roermond
One charity is called greater than another in five ways. First, by the greatness of its subject, as the whiteness of a horse is greater than the whiteness of a pearl. Second, by greatness of duration, as the colour of the phoenix is greater than that of the swan. Third, intensively, as the whiteness of snow is greater than that of stone. Fourth, according to efficacy in meriting: so the charity of a heroic man is greater than that of a small one. Fifth, in dignity, as a theological virtue is greater than a moral one.
In the first way one charity is not greater than another, because every charity is in an indivisible subject. Whether in the second way is doubtful, since it seems that it is, given that one act of love lasts longer than another. But it is objected that the act and motion of charity seems to be instantaneous. And it must be answered that it does last longer, because it at least coexists with time. It is agreed too that in the third, fourth and fifth ways one charity is greater than another, since one is more intense, more efficacious and more perfect than another.
On the intensification of charity there are two opinions. One, that it does not remain the same in number when it is increased — which is false, and against the Apostle's word: charity never falls away. It is asked, then, according to what the augmentation or intensification of charity is measured. To which it is commonly said: according to the greatest motion of charity, that is, according as it approaches its greatest act, or according as it can proceed to a greater motion. Which is to be understood of measuring by effect and sign, not of measuring by cause, since charity is the cause of the acts and motions […]
At length, in this matter, the position of Thomas seems to be the more reasonable, because of the considerations advanced on both sides. Yet in this matter Richard followed Bonaventure's opinion, holding that charity is increased by the addition of charity, and that from those various degrees or charities one more perfect charity comes to be. […] Nevertheless Bonaventure, Peter and Richard speak here soberly, and by way of opinion rather than assertion.
⭐ The last full commentary on the Sentences reaches this question and finds nine men already on it — Peter of Tarentaise, Albert, Giles of Rome, Durandus, Henry of Ghent, Scotus, Bonaventure, Richard of Middleton, Thomas — quotes each, and then chooses: videtur demum in hac materia positio Thomae rationabilior esse. Two centuries of argument, and the verdict is given in a comparative, propter motiva hinc inde praehabita. ⭐ What he adds himself is the most useful thing on the page for a reader who has lost the thread: five distinct senses in which one charity is greater than another — by its subject, by duration, intensively, by efficacy in meriting, and in dignity — with the observation that the dispute concerns only the third. Much of the fourteenth-century argument on this crux is two men using the word in two of these senses. ⭐ And he is careful where the others are not: the measure of increase is taken by effect and sign, not by cause, since charity is the cause of the acts by which we would measure it. ⚠ He also notes that Bonaventure, Peter and Richard speak here sobrie et opinative magis quam assertive — soberly and as opinion rather than assertion — which is a judgment about the temperature of the dispute that no other witness on this page makes.
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
I d.17
Utrum caritas augeri possit, et quomodoCan charity increase, and how?
Cap. 5 · Whether the Holy Spirit is increased in a person, or is more or less had or given, and whether he is given to one who has and to one who does not have.
PL 192, col. 566
FranciscanBonaventure · R. Middleton · Scotus
franciscan · c. 1302
These are not John Duns Scotus's own words. They are John Capreolus's report of him — staged as the first of the Argumenta Scoti against the second conclusion, before Capreolus answers it; Capreolus cites only in secundo and names no redaction, so which redaction of Scotus this is cannot be recovered.
In the second place it is argued against the same conclusion, by proving that contraries can be together in complete and settled act, and not only in becoming.
Scotus argues first in this way, in his second book. If contraries could not naturally be in the same subject at once, it follows that when some subject is continuously changed from one contrary form into another, either the form being destroyed would have a last instant of its being, or the form being generated would have a first instant of its being. The consequence is plain enough. For the instant joining the whole time in which the subject is under the form being expelled to the whole time in which it is under the form being generated will be either the last instant of the preceding time or the first of the following one; for this time and that time exclude one another entirely, if contraries are not granted to be together; and again, there is no middle time between them, otherwise for some time the subject would lack both forms; and consequently the same instant joins them both. But the consequent is false as to its first part, as is plain from Physics VI (text 31); and likewise as to the second, for otherwise there would be a first change, and a first having-changed, or a first part of the motion that follows the later form — of cooling, for instance, if the subject is moved from hot to cold; which is unacceptable. — It is confirmed. Because, just as in such a motion there is no first remission of the form being cast off, so there is no first generation of the form being brought in.
⛔ Three things are declared on this note and none of them is a detail. The words are Capreolus's report of Scotus, not Scotus's own. The redaction is unknown — Capreolus cites him only as in secundo, and the Lectura, the Ordinatio and the Reportatio do not always agree — so this edition says so rather than choosing one (RULINGS.md ruling 9A), and with the redaction unknown the place is unknown too. And the text being reported is not on this distinction: it is from Scotus's second book, on the physics of contraries. ⭐ What he argues is the exact opposite of Wodeham's argument two notes away, and both are staged against the same conclusion. Scotus says contraries must be able to coexist in complete and settled act, because otherwise a continuous change would have either a last instant of the old form or a first instant of the new one, and neither can be granted. Wodeham says they cannot coexist in any degree at all. Capreolus's position — that they coexist in potency and in becoming but not in complete and settled act — is the middle both of them are squeezing. ⚠ The section heading Capreolus gives is Argumenta Scoti, Cattonis, et aliorum, but only this first argument is attributed to a man by name. Walter Chatton is named in the heading and nowhere else, so he is not a witness on this page; the edition will not supply an attribution its source declines to make.
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
Dissenting · nominalist · AugustinianDurandus · Auriol · Ockham · Gregory · Biel
dissenting · 1316–1318 · Paris
The first [proposition] indeed is that every form must be intensified through the acquisition of something real which shares the specific character of that form. That something real must come to it was made plain above, in the first place, by arguing to the opposite. And it can be demonstrated more evidently, since it is impossible that contradictories about a real predicate should be verified of a subject at different times without a change having been made in something real in the subject at those times.
The first witness on the dissenting bench in this edition, and a Franciscan — which is the reason the benches are schools and not orders. Auriol answers the increase question by a general thesis about forms as such: intensification is always the arrival of something real sharing the form's own specific character. Where Thomas asks what kind of quantity charity has, Auriol asks what happens to any form whatever when it becomes more intense, and lets charity follow. ⛔ Licence: the Electronic Scriptum is copyright, not public domain, so this excerpt is quoted at apparatus length under licence key auriol-electronic-scriptum. RULED 2026-09-06 (Wilson): approved as fair use; do not extend beyond apparatus length. His first question on this distinction, which is crux 1's question, is edited but unpublished on the Electronic Scriptum.
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
dissenting · c. 1317 · Paris
These are not Durandus of Saint-Pourçain's own words. They are Denys the Carthusian's report of him — quoted at length in Denys's survey, rejecting Giles of Rome's account before giving his own.
Finally Durandus writes on these matters, and rejecting the opinion of Giles brought forward above, he says: wherever there is an augmentation according to more and less — which augmentation is, however, more an alteration than an augmentation — there degrees of greater and lesser perfection are to be found. For that whose nature consists in what is simply indivisible is not spoken of according to more and less, since more and less, properly taken, is according to the same specific nature, as is said in Physics VII: that things comparable according to more and less are of the same account.
Now there are two opinions as to what the degrees of a form are measured by, according to which the form receives more and less. For some say that they are not measured according to essence, but according to being. But this opinion fails in many ways. First, in this, that it supposes being itself to be really distinguished from essence — the opposite of which many hold as entirely true.
Finally, when they say that the degrees are measured according to being and not according to essence, either it is understood that in the act of being itself, as it is a certain thing, there are diverse degrees, just as others posit diverse degrees in the essence of a form; or it is understood that being is a thing in itself wholly indivisible, but that its participation in the subject has a certain latitude of degrees. The first cannot be said, for many reasons. First, because being at least follows upon the form, or upon the whole composite by reason of the form, just as any proper attribute or property follows upon the species — as risibility follows upon man. But in a species and its proper attribute there cannot be degrees in the one without there being degrees in the other; therefore neither in the form and in its being.
⭐ Durandus was on this project's second-pass list and both routes to him had failed: Capreolus never names him in this distinction, and no scan of the Venice 1571 print exists on archive.org under any spelling tried. Denys is the only road to him this edition has found, and the words below are Denys's report, not his own (RULINGS.md ruling 8). ⭐ What he contributes is the sharpest formulation on the page of what the argument is actually about: the growth of charity is more an alteration than an augmentation, and the real question is whether the degrees of a form are measured by its essence or by its being. He refuses the second because it presupposes that being is really distinct from essence, which he will not grant. ⭐ A Dominican on the dissenting bench, as Auriol is a Franciscan there — between them they are the argument for arranging these benches by school and not by order.
Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson
dissenting · c. 1332 · Oxford
These are not Adam Wodeham's own words. They are John Capreolus's report of him — staged as Argumentum Adae against the second conclusion, before Capreolus answers it.
Adam too (Sentences I, distinction 6, question 4) argues to the same purpose, proving that it is naturally impossible for contraries to be in the same subject in any degree whatever, thus: because contrary qualities are not compatible with one another in intense degrees; therefore neither in remitted ones. The antecedent is granted by everyone. But the consequence is proved.
First. Because a remitted degree is of just such a nature as an intense degree is; and consequently, if it belongs to the nature of whiteness that whiteness is incompatible with the coexistence of blackness, then there will be the same incompatibility in a remitted whiteness with respect to blackness as in an intense one. But if it is not incompatible because it is whiteness, but because it is so much whiteness, this will be said arbitrarily and without reason […]
Second. Because the incompatibility that holds between degrees of intensity is either formal or virtual: formal, he says, as being white and not being white are formally incompatible in respect of whiteness; and being blind and being sighted are virtually incompatible, because the one form is destructive of the other. If in the first way, then, as before, since whiteness in a lesser degree is just as much whiteness as in a greater degree, a small degree of whiteness will be as incompatible with a degree of the other as a great one is. […]
⛔ Two things about this note are not what they look like. The words are Capreolus's report of Wodeham, not Wodeham's own (RULINGS.md ruling 8); and the text being reported is not on this distinction at all — Capreolus gives the reference himself, Lectura I d.6 q.4, a question about contraries, which he brings here because the increase question had become a question in the physics of intensification. ⭐ That is what this note is for. A reader who wonders why an argument about whiteness and blackness is standing on a page about the love of God is seeing the fourteenth century accurately: by 1330 the dispute over whether charity increases had been absorbed into a general one about whether any form can be more or less intense without something being added or destroyed, and the theology follows the physics. ⚠ Wodeham's Lectura secunda was first printed in 1990 and has no early edition, so report is not a shortcut past the plates here; it is the only public-domain access to him that exists. ⚠ The 1900 print of pp. 102–103 carries a systematic OCR substitution of ro for m and several words no reading recovers; his argument is quoted as far as it is legible and elided at […] thereafter.
English: fresh draft (Claude), approved by Wilson Pruitt
This is the crux where the thesis of crux 1 shows what it costs elsewhere.
Lombard's answer here is not an independent position. He says charity is not increased in itself but in us, and he says it because charity is the Holy Spirit, into whom no variation falls. Thomas reports it in exactly that order — the answer, then its ground — and the ground is the thesis of the first crux. A reader who arrived at this page by way of that one can watch a metaphysical commitment pay out three questions later.
What follows is a disagreement of a different temperature from crux 1. There, one position was being rejected by everyone. Here everyone rejects the Master's answer and then divides among themselves, and the division is not between schools but about what increase is at all. Thomas denies that a greater charity destroys the lesser, and locates the increase in a quantity of power measured by intensity rather than by parts. Auriol answers a wider question than he was asked: not what kind of quantity charity has, but what must be true of any form whatever that becomes more intense, and he makes it the arrival of something real sharing the form's own character. Charity is then a case.
Auriol is the first witness this edition prints on the dissenting bench, and he is a Franciscan. That is the argument for arranging the benches by school rather than by order, made by a single entry: he shares a habit with Bonaventure and almost nothing else.
⭐ With Capreolus and Wodeham on the page the division becomes visible as something other than a disagreement about charity. Capreolus answers the question in two steps, and the second is the one that is fought over: that although some qualities are intensified by the removal of a contrary, charity is not intensified in that way. Everything staged against him in this question attacks that step, and attacks it in the physics — the disputed claim is whether whiteness and blackness can be in one subject at once in remitted degrees. Wodeham's argument, which Capreolus fetches from a question about contraries eleven distinctions away in Wodeham's own commentary, never mentions charity at all: a remitted degree is of just the same nature as an intense one, so if whiteness excludes blackness it excludes it at every degree. He and Auriol have no citation between them and arrive at the same refusal from opposite ends — Auriol positively, that intensification is always the acquisition of something real; Wodeham negatively, that no degree of a form tolerates its contrary. Neither will let increase be a matter of degree alone.
⭐ And Scotus, staged four pages further on, comes at the same conclusion from the far side. Wodeham says contraries coexist in no degree whatever; Scotus says they must coexist even in complete and settled act, because a continuous change from one contrary to the other can have neither a last instant of the old form nor a first instant of the new. Capreolus's position is the middle they are squeezing from both ends: contraries coexist in potency and in becoming, but not in complete and settled act. Two of the three men objecting on this page are arguing about whiteness and blackness, and the man they are arguing against is defending an account of how charity grows.
⭐ Albert, seventy years before any of them, has already conceded what they are fighting to recover. He answers the increase question by addition — augetur charitas per additionem essentiae ad essentiam — and says of the Master, in the first person, bene videtur mihi in hac parte Magister falsum dixisse. Thomas will refuse that answer eight years later and put increase in a quantity of power with no addition of parts; and the fourteenth century will spend itself reopening the question Albert closed in a sentence. The oldest witness on this page holds a position closer to the newest ones than to the man who taught alongside him. ⚠ It is worth being exact about what that shows. It is not that Auriol or Wodeham read Albert — nothing on this page suggests they did. It is that the addition answer was available from the beginning, was rejected by the Thomist line, and came back.
⭐ Albert also dates the consensus here as he does on crux 1: omnes autem moderni fere dicunt contrarium. The Master's answer to the increase question was already the minority one among the moderns by about 1246, before the men who argue it on this page were born.
⭐ So a reader who wonders why an argument about whiteness is standing on a page about the love of God is seeing the century accurately. Lombard asked whether charity grows in itself or only in us. By 1330 the question has been absorbed into a general one about whether any form whatever can be more or less intense without something being added or destroyed, and the theology follows the physics wherever the physics goes. That absorption, not any answer, is what this page shows.
⛔ Wodeham is here at second hand and says so on his note. His Lectura secunda was first printed in 1990 and has no early edition, so report is not a shortcut past the plates in his case; it is the only public-domain access to him that exists. The Latin under his name is Capreolus's.
⭐ And then, at the end of the tradition, someone arrives who has read all of them. Denys the Carthusian finds nine men already on this question — Peter of Tarentaise, Albert, Giles of Rome, Durandus, Henry of Ghent, Scotus, Bonaventure, Richard of Middleton, Thomas — quotes each, and decides: videtur demum in hac materia positio Thomae rationabilior esse. Two centuries of argument settled in a comparative.
⭐⭐ But the useful thing he does is earlier, and it is the closest this page comes to explaining itself. He distinguishes five senses in which one charity is called greater than another: by the greatness of its subject, by duration, intensively, by efficacy in meriting, and in dignity. Only the third is in dispute. Read the rest of the page with that in hand and a good deal of the disagreement turns out to be men answering in different senses of the word — Albert conceding addition of essence, Thomas measuring a quantity of power, Auriol requiring something real to arrive, Wodeham and Scotus arguing about whether contraries coexist. Denys is also the only witness here who says how the measuring is to be done and warns which way it cannot go: by effect and sign, not by cause, since charity is the cause of the very acts one would measure it by.
⭐ Durandus, whom this edition reaches only through Denys, puts the disagreement most sharply of anyone: what is called augmentation here is more an alteration than an augmentation, and the real question is whether a form's degrees are measured by its essence or by its being. He refuses the second because it presupposes that being is really distinct from essence. A Dominican on the dissenting bench, arguing against a Thomist reading, while Auriol the Franciscan sits beside him — the two of them together are this edition's argument for benches by school and not by order.
⛔ Three of this page's ten notes are reported, and each says so on its face. Wodeham's and Scotus's arguments are here in Capreolus's words, printed by the man who wanted to refute them; Durandus's are in Denys's, printed by a man who weighed him and chose against him. Scotus's note declares one thing more — that which redaction of him this is cannot be recovered, because Capreolus cites only in secundo. Auriol, by contrast, stands here in his own words, from his own Scriptum. None of the three reported notes is evidence for what its subject actually wrote, and a reader should weigh them knowing who was holding the pen and why.
⭐ One more thing this page can now show, and it is a textual fact rather than a doctrinal one. Denys quotes Albert's answer almost word for word — two prints, 1893 and 1902, of a thirteenth-century text and a fifteenth-century quotation of it, agreeing down to the order of the clauses. This edition has very few independent checks on any of its texts, and that is one.
⚠ All five regions are occupied, and this is the densest page in the edition. Gregory of Rimini and Biel, who belong beside Auriol and Wodeham and who are the other half of the addition debate, are unread, and Gregory is staged at length in Capreolus's same question — which means the shape of this page still owes more to what two prints scanned legibly than to who argued. Walter Chatton is named in Capreolus's own section heading and nowhere else in it, so he is absent by a decision rather than an accident: the edition will not supply an attribution its source declines to make. The reading most exposed is the one about absorption into the physics. It is drawn from a single reporter's selection of opponents, and a man assembling objections to his own conclusion is not a neutral sample of what the century argued.