Mediaeval quotation functioned as appeal to consensus, not self-expression

Evidence

The question was what should be admitted as an authority in polemic of this kind. Authority might be the citation of philosophers or other secular writers, but more often it meant Scripture, and, second to Scripture, the Fathers. … Quotations are necessarily made, in any age, less as a specially good expression of what the author wants to say, than for the validity which inheres in what has been said before and accepted by other men, and has entered into the general consensus of opinion. … A scholastic without authorities was a craftsman robbed of half his tools; and few of his authorities were acceptable to Muslims. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1407

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Standing directive on craft — the insight that quotation is consensus-invocation rather than self-expression parallels the reason/authority split in scholastic method discussed throughout this chapter.