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S i d e b a r
Saintly Rhetoric?
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This Rock
Volume 18, Number 8
 October 2007 
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In the contemporary world, we tend to associate "rhetoric" with slick-sounding words that cover up meaningless promises. Politicians, we are sometimes told, talk about solutions, but they seduce us with hollow words.
Rhetoric has not always been viewed with such distrust. During ancient and medieval times, rhetoric was an esteemed branch of study. Until the eighteenth century, rhetoric was one of the central academic disciplines, respected as a centerpiece in a liberal arts education.
After the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on objectivity and equality, rhetoric was increasingly viewed with suspicion because of the belief that legitimate persuasion should be rational, understandable to everyone, and free of elevated language. Hence, we hear warnings against those who use "empty" rhetoric. But even this word of caution reveals that there is a kind of rhetoric that is not empty or deceitful.
Many great saints have been students of classical rhetoric, including especially St. Augustine and St. John Chrysostom. Classical rhetoric was a staple of medieval universities. The art of persuasion was studied, along with grammar and logic, as a preparation for theology, the natural sciences, and the law. During the high middle ages, when St. Francis of Assisi formed his community of friars and St. Dominic formed the order of preachers, the study of rhetoric was at its peak. Students of rhetoric studied four distinct sub-disciplines: the art of letter writing, the art of poetic eloquence, the art of persuasive speaking, and the art of preaching. Training in classical rhetoric was part of the education of St. Thomas Aquinas, who, with regard to understanding and explaining the teachings of the Church, had perhaps the greatest mind in that or any period.
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