An Alternative History of Medieval Empathy: The Scholastics and compassio

This essay contributes to the alternative history of empathy by complicating the current state of scholarship placing the birthplace of modern Western empathy in the European Middle Ages. In counterpoint, the essay argues that there endured throughout the Middle Ages a suspicion of empathy as a feeling state and a prompt to right action. This position was inherited from the ancient Stoics and was particularly expressed by the medieval philosopher-theologians known as the Scholastics. In making this case, the essay focuses on the Medieval Latin term compassio and takes as its material the writings of Bonaventure, scholastic exegesis of the Christian foundation myths of the fall of humans and the evil angels, and scholastic analyses of almsgiving.