Christian Philosophy

Separating himself from the Neo-Thomistic framework, Étienne Gilson, the most important scholar of medieval philosophy of the 20th c., articulated an interpretation of medieval philosophy understood as ‘Christian philosophy,’ meaning rational activity insofar as it is practiced by Christian thinkers. This idea of Christian philosophy stressed the novelty of the themes that the philosophers had to confront vis-à-vis the classical tradition (and no longer only Aristotle) as well as its various historic phases and ways of confrontation. Finally, Gilson also broadened the chronological period of medieval philosophy. All of these characteristics can be found in the structure of his handbook, which became after the Second World War the historiographic model until the 1990’s. The idea of Christian philosophy became the fulcrum of an important debate between the two wars, whose result was the deepening and broadening of research done on the entire time period and on all authors, a trend exemplified by the journal founded by Gilson himself, the Archives d’Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Âge. Among the most important scholars of this school, it is necessary to list at least Paul Vignaux and, in Italy, Sofia Vanni Rovighi.