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This chapter explores the different trajectories taken by discussions among (mainly) university theologians of pagan virtue, before turning to the topic of salvation in the rest of the chapter. After the discussions on pagan virtue, the chapter turns to the theories devised in the period up to William of Ockham in the early fourteenth century. It then focuses on discussions about the salvation of particular pagans (such as Aristotle himself), before finally moving on to the theoretical developments which took place in the mid- and later fourteenth century and set the stage for the debates which would go on to 1700 and even later.

This chapter turns to the second aspect of the Problem of Paganism: virtue. The dominant view among scholastic theologians in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was that pagans could be genuinely virtuous, although their virtues were not of the sort which could merit salvation. In the period after 1400, mainstream Catholic theologians in the scholastic tradition tended to take the same broad view as their predecessors, but reformulating it to take account of new opponents. By contrast, and surprisingly, writers more influenced by humanism were often more sceptical about pagan virtue, although they presented their doubts in sophisticated literary forms. From 1500, the newly discovered pagans of America presented another side to the problem of pagan virtue, overlooked by most mainstream writers on them, but noticed by Jean de Léry and probed by Montaigne. This chapter looks at each of these approaches in turn.

This introductory chapter discusses the ‘Problem of Paganism’ and premise of this issue, as well as the scope and methods this volume will undertake in unraveling the subject. The Problem posited here is a newly invented label which picks out a set of closely connected issues about pagan virtue and the knowledge of God and salvation — issues which reveal a central tension within the culture of Western Europe in the period from c. 200 to c. 1700, the ‘Long Middle Ages’. More often than not they are sidelined or hidden, but they are given sustained attention by a number of the most remarkable thinkers and writers of the period.

The introduction identifies the book’s topic and elucidates its theological, philosophical, and political significance. The chapter explains that, for Thomas, the question of “pagan virtue” concerns what sort of virtue, if any, is attainable by fallen humans without charity and connects Thomas’s pagans and this question to our own outsiders and struggles with difference. Interpreters dispute whether Thomas follows Augustine in rejecting pagan virtue or goes with Aristotle in welcoming it. Such interpretations fund competing proposals for Thomas’s ongoing significance: “hyper-Augustinian” Thomists preserve Christian particularity but ask Christians to reject pagan virtue; “public reason” Thomists commend a welcome of pagan virtue but seem to abandon Christian commitment in the process. The chapter suggests “prophetic Thomism” as an alternative, arguing that in both form and substance, Thomas serves as a model for all who want to welcome outsiders without compromising their convictions.

Chapter 7 establishes a contrast between two Roman traditions—the constitutionalist one that is the subject of this book, and the Machiavellian, neo-Roman one that was in many ways opposed to constitutionalism. This Machiavellian tradition is interpreted as a relict of an Augustinian tradition, based on the way Augustine in the City of God had portrayed so-called “pagan virtue.” Machiavelli, applying Roman republicanism to contemporary issues in his Discorsi, can be shown to have built on Augustine’s distinction between pagan Roman virtue and Christian virtue. By assigning absolute value to the preservation of the state and its aggrandizement, Machiavelli aimed at a restoration of what Augustine had termed “pagan” virtue and developed out of it a concept of unconstrained reason of state. The tradition discussed in this chapter is thus informed by an anti-constitutional view that is ultimately Greek in origin and had already been opposed by Cicero.

Chaucer’s classicism is as much about the present as it is about the past. It accommodates, indeed enables, a remarkable degree of cultural relativism, which is reluctant to resort to simplistic forms of Christian triumphalism. The question of the salvation of the heathen is left to the professional theologians, as Chaucer celebrates the chivalric achievements and the occasional monotheistic discourse of characters like Theseus, Troilus, and Cambyuskan. The pagan gods are berated for their cruelty, and certain extreme feats of heathen virtue are clearly to be admired rather than emulated. Yet much pagan learning is deemed at least partly trustworthy (whether it relates to metaphysics, ethics, natural science, and possibly alchemy), and naturalistic explanations rather than miracles are sought for many phenomena. Such attitudes permeate Chaucer’s writing, contributing to a forward-looking classicism that has much yet to disclose.

Cicero’s Republic contains a debate about the justice of Roman rule and Roman Empire. The so-called Carneadean debate, known to early modern natural lawyers through its echoes in Virgil, Lactantius, and Augustine, was a powerful undercurrent of the early articulations of a juridical normative order applied to empires and states. It has resurfaced in numerous works on international political thought, most famously in Hugo Grotius’ De iure belli ac pacis (1625). It also provided a model for Machiavelli in the Discourses and for Alberico Gentili’s work on the justice of the Roman Empire, The Wars of the Romans (De armis Romanis, 1599). Repercussions of its effects can also be felt in the work of Thomas Hobbes. This chapter seeks to give an interpretation of the original Carneadean debate in Cicero and show its importance and continuing relevance for early modern approaches to natural law and the law of nations.

Augustine’s Confessions is a locus classicus for early Christian privileging of the virtue of humility. This chapter shows that the contemporary “memory” of Christian humility fails to capture what Augustine took humility to be in the Confessions. Augustine had all the marks of the contemporary memory of “Christian humility,” yet still took himself to lack the humility of Jesus. The chapter then tries to supply an account of Augustinian humility. Augustinian humility is best understood as the virtue opposed to the Roman valorization of self-sufficiency and immortality. The chapter concludes by trying to relate Augustinian humility to the most prevalent contemporary accounts of humility, low concern and limitations-owning. Neither of those accounts can be assimilated to an Augustinian account of humility.