Angels and Prophets in Thirteenth Century Latin Prophetology

Latin prophetology in thirteenth century constitutes a compact and coherent set of issues, which ideally extends from the 1220s to the end of the century and the first decades of the following century. Prophecy becomes the subject of investigations contained in treatises in the typical form of the quaestio, independent of the commentaries on the prophetic books of the Bible typical of the early medieval period. These treatises are consistently affected by a new way of doing and thinking about theology as a science and by the influence of Aristotelian psychology, which explains the centrality assumed in them by the analysis of the process of prophetic knowledge. It appears as a complex process as it is out of the ordinary since man cannot by nature know the future. Some central aspects of this process are brought into focus: a) the division into stages (reception, interpretation and announcement); b) the nature of the prophecy as an act of knowledge (actus or habitus?); c) the means by which the prophecy is fulfilled (the speculum aeternitatis, or the images in the mind of the profet); d) the proper objects of prophecy (i.e. the future contingents, depending on human free will). It is within this theoretical framework that Latin authors of the thirteenth century also discuss the specific question of the relationship between the prophet and the angel. The topic was central in Arabian medieval prophetology: an author like Avicenna, for example, establishes a strong ontological and noetic continuity between the prophet and the angelic intelligences, up to the first cause. Also for the Latins the first link between angels and prophets arises on the common ground of the mediating function that both perform – «Propheta est medium inter angelos et populum», says Thomas Aquinas. Starting from here, the main questions discussed in the quaestiones de prophetia of the thirteenth century are two: a) whether the angel can be a prophet and, if not, b) whether he plays a role in prophecy and of what type.