Alcher of Clairvaux
Twelfth-century French monk
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Alcher of Clairvaux was a twelfth-century Cistercian monk of Clairvaux Abbey. He was once thought to be the author of two works, now attributed by many scholars to an anonymous pseudo-Augustine of the same period.[1][2][3]
Thomas Aquinas made the traditional attribution of the De spiritu et anima[4] to Alcher.[5][6] It is now reckoned to be a compilation of c. 1170, taken from Alcuin, Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, Augustine of Hippo, Cassiodorus, Hugh of St Victor, Isaac of Stella, and Isidore of Seville;[7] also Boethius.[8] It is a source for medieval views on self-control,[9] and the doctrine that the soul rules the body.[10]
De diligendo Deo is a devotional work, also traditionally attributed to Alcher.
At one point in the Summa Theologica, Aquinas writes about De Spiritu et Anima, "that book is not of great authority."[11]
References
- J. M. Canivez: Alcher, in: Dictionnaire de Spiritualité v. 1 (1937), 294f
- Leo Norpoth, Der Pseudo-Augustinische Traktat: De spiritu et anima (Dissertation, Munich, 1924; Cologne, 1971)
- G. Raciti, L'autore del De spiritu et anima, Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica 53 (1961) 385–401