Premium
LITURGICALLY TRAINED MEMORY: A READING OF SUMMA THEOLOGIAE III.83
Author(s) -
CANDLER PETER M.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
modern theology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.144
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1468-0025
pISSN - 0266-7177
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0025.2004.00260.x
Subject(s) - eucharist , liturgy , philosophy , rite , rhetoric , rhetorical question , reading (process) , theology , literature , order (exchange) , epistemology , art , linguistics , finance , economics
Drawing on Ciceronian rhetorical tropes, Thomas Aquinas treats the rite of the Eucharist in terms of the classical ars memoriae . The Eucharist, for Aquinas, is the schooling in desire whereby we are trained to order the associations of our memory to their proper objects in terms of their relations to God. He thus conceives of the liturgy of the Mass as rhetoric proper, which truly teaches, moves and delights. Since memory is the condition of all thought, as both Thomas and Augustine claim, the Eucharist is the “site” of all theological production, and therefore the liturgy is the art of memory of which all other similar arts are derivative.