Gilles de Rome et les modes de parler angéliques

In the De cognitione angelorum (1287-88) and then in the Ordinatio (after 1309), Gilles of Rome dedicates long chapters to angelic language (locutio angelica). His starting point is a question from Thomas Aquinas about the “secrets of hearts” (occulta cordium): they can only be known through corporeal signs, which unwillingly manifest them. Gilles uses Thomas’s postulate that the acts of will are not visible to others, to reject his definition of speaking as a thought voluntarily conveyed to others, and generalizes from his answer: thoughts need to be made manifest through a sign. He develops a theory describing the different types of signs according to their addressees (an angel’s speech to God, to himself, to another angel, to a man), and analyses them according to several criteria. In particular, from a careful analysis of the signs used by men, Gilles wonders whether the different types of signs used both by men and angels are natural or voluntary, from the point of view of both their composition and their meaning, basing his questioning on the reflections on language and signs in his earlier philosophical commentaries. This insistence on the need for signs will lead Gilles to give different answers to the classic questions about the difference between thought and language, the possibility of addressing a particular angel, and lying.