william of conches - a dialogue on natural philosophy
TRANSCRIPT
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A Dialogue o Natural Philosophy
Dragmaticon Philosophiae)
Translation of the ew Latin ritical Text
with
a Short Introduction and Explanatory Notes
O" '
g c ; . ~ ' J C Y '
~ 1 \ t $ ' 1 ' 0 ' 1 ' 1 ' .
':11'1' a' '
; ; ; ; . ; , 1 ~ ' ' '
y Italo Ronca and Matthew Curr
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame Indiana
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NOTRE D NlE TEXTS
IN
MEDIEV L CULTURE
Vol 2
The Medieval Institute
University
of
Notre ame
John Van Bngen and Bdward D Bnglish Bditors
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© 1997
y
The University of Notre Dame Press
Notre
Dame, Indiana 46556
All Rights Reserved
Designed by Wendy McMillen
Set in ro.5/13 Trump Mediaeval by The Book Page, Inc.
Printed in
the
United States of America
Library of
Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
William, of Conches, 1080-ca. 1150.
[Dragmaticon philosoplriae. English]
A dialogue on natural philosophy Dragmaticon philosophiae /
William
of
Conches; translation
of
the new Latin critical text with
a short introduction and explanatory notes, ltalo Ronca and Matthew
Curr.
p.
cm - Notre Dame texts in medieval culture; v. 2
Includes llibliographical
e f ~ n ~ n e s
and indexes.
ISBN
o-26H-00881-7 (alk. pape[i ")
I. S c i e n e t : ~ Medieval. 2. Philosophy, Medieval. I. Ronca, Italo.
II. Curr, Matthew.
l l
Title.
IV.
Series.
QI24.97
.w5513
1997
113-dc20
° The paper
l Sed
in this publication meets the
minimum
requirements
of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of
Pap :Jr for Printed Library Materials
ANSI
239.48 1984
i\'lanufactured in the United States
of
America
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Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
CONTENTS
WILLIAM OF
CONCHES:
DIALOGUE
ON NATURAL
PHILOSOPHY
DRAGMATICON
PHILOSOPHIAE
BOOK I
ix
xi
xiii
xv
I Prologue 3
2
Definition
of Substance 6
3
The Creating Substance: The Author s Confession of Faith 7
4. The Created Substance: The Five Classes
of Rational Beings 8
s Demons
or Angels 10
6.
The
Elements
13
7 Chaos and the Work of the Creator and Nature I7
BOOK II
I Prologue
2 The Creation
of
the
Four Elements from Chaos
3. What Caused the Creation of Such Elements
4 Why God Created Two Middle Elements
5 The Syzygy, or the Interconnection of the Elements
6
The Movement of the Elements
v
2
22
25
27
29
32
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CONTENTS
BOOK III
r Prologue
2 There Are
No
Waters above
the
Heavens
3
The
Creation
of
the
Stars
4.
The
Creation of Animals and Man
5
The
Quintessence
6
The Movement
of
the
Stars and
the Firmament
7.
The
Heavenly Circles
BOOK VI
r
Prologue
2 he Planets: Saturn
3. Jupiter and Mars
4.
The
Retrograde
Motion
and Standsti ll of the Planets
5 Venus and Mercury
6. The Movement of
Venus and Mercury
7. The Natural
lVlovement of
the Sun
8
The
Four Seasons: Winter
9.
Spring
ro Summer
rr Autumn
12
The
Acciden1:al Motion of
the
Sun
13.
The
Eclipse of
the
Sun
14.
he
Moon
15.
The
Eclipse of
the Moon
BOOKV
r Prologue
2
Winds
3. Rain
4.
The
Rainbo v
5.
Hail
and Snow
6. Thunder, Coruscation, and Lightning
7.
Shooting Stars
8.
Comets
9.
Water
and the
Tides of
the
Ocean
ro
Why the
Sea
Is
Salt
rr The
Origin
of
the Water in
Wells
12
Flood
and
Conflagration
37
38
42
43
46
47
51
57
58
59
60
63
66
67
70
71
72
73
76
79
83
88
91
92
97
98
O
102
105
107
109
II3
II4
IIS
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BOOK VI
I .
Prologue
Part
One:
The
Earth
2. The Form
of
the Earth
3 The
Qualities of the Earth
4 The Four Areas of Habitation of the Earth
5 Our Habitable Area
6 Things Supported
by the
Earth
Part Two: Man
7
Sperm
8 Intercourse
9 Conception and
the Formation
of
the
Fetus
ro Birth
and
Infancy
r r. Sensation
12. The Working of
the
Natural Virtues in Humans
r3 Growth
14 Sleep
5 The Virtue of Breath
16 The Virtue of the Soul
17 The Head and the Hair
18 The Meninges and the
Brain
19
The
Eyes
and the
Sight
20. Mirror
Images
and
Other
Amazing Phenomena
COncerning Sight
21.
Ears
and
Hearing
22. The Other Senses
23
Voluntary Motion
24
Imagination
and the Other Functions of the Soul
25 The
Human Soul
26 The Faculties of the Soul
27 Teaching and Learning
Notes
Select ibliography
CONTENTS Vii
2 0
24
26
27
r30
r6o
62
r65
r66
r67
r68
70
73
77
207
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PREF CE
\Jf' Ii':
•
j
( L ~ < h . i s is
the
first English translation of the Dragmaticon as a
G w iif @ It developed together with my critical edition of
the
Latin
text, published
in
the
Corpus christianorum
series (
Continuatio
mediaevalis .
The translation is not meant to be definitive,
nor
is it
intended to
be
an
elegant·
work
of
ar t an
aim
alien
to
the
form
mentis of William of Conches.
Rather,
in this
translation Matthew Curr and I have tried,
after
several
attempts
in various directions, to achieve the
modest
goal of
a faithful rendering of William's own style. Even so, William's some
times obscure brevity and variable technical terminology proved a
constant
challenge to
our
ideal of fidelity to
his
Latin. Technical
terms
in
the
language of twelfth-century natural philosophy have been ren
dered literally whenever
it
was possible
to
do so
without
danger of
serious misunderstanding. Thus, in speaking of the elements, we pre
ferred
the
literal
1
acute/obtuse
to sharp/blunt,
1
but
we
clearly
had
to
abandon literalness
in the
case of
animales
actiones: the faculties
of
the
soul
1
and
not
11
animal actions
1
A real
dilemma
was posed by
the
remarkable (and certainly in
tentional) difference in style between the prologues and the dialogue
proper:
any
serious attempt at rendering
the
original difference would
have
resulted
in
pomposity.
So
we did
not
resort
to any
rhetorical
device, leaving
the
difference
to shine through the
vocabulary or
the
syntax.
Another
difficulty was
the
rendering of
the
more
subtle dif-
ferences in style between the first books
and
the anthropological
0
section of Book VI, or between this and the u meteorological parts of
ix
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X PREF CE
Book
V.
Such differences derive from William s massive, sometimes
verbatim,
utilization
of different source materials (Constantine
the
African for Book n, Seneca s.Naturales
quaestiones
for Book
V .
These alterations
in
style cannot always be reflected
in the
transla
tion. We have also been concerned
to
provide an English version
that
is fluent and readable.
As coauthors of this book,
Matthew
urr and I have shared
the
task in the following way: urr did the first draft, which we discussed
together section
by
section; I
then
rewrote the translation, paying par
ticular attention to the factual correctness; urr finally revised it,
focusing his
attention
on idiom and style.
After a three-year
maturation
(during which I prepared the Latin
edition for the Corpus
christianorum i
I undertook a
new and
thor
ough revision of the whole
text
while
writing the
explanatory notes.
For these and
the introduction
(which was
written
last), I am solely
responsible.
The
introduction was partly adapted from the
more
de
tailed and technical introduction to the critical edition,
but it
was
conceived anew for less specialized readers who are
not
necessarily
fluent in Latin.
The
notes are usually \though
not
always) expansions
on
selected
items taken
from
the
source register of
the
Latin
text
(the
apparatus fontium . Finally, the diagrams I xcept for the English cap
tions) are adapted from my edition of the Latin text. They are based
on the
medieval n1anuscripts
particularly on
MS
Montpellier, Fae. de
Medecine, H 145.
Italo Ronca
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~
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
. e wish to thank
all
our
friends and colleagues impossible
to nanfe
individually) for
their continuous support
and encourage-
ment,
in particular
those
who
were involved
in one way
or another,
whether
reading
through the
early drafts, typing, editing, or
making
numerous valuable suggestions. We are especially grateful
to
Charles
Burnett
of
the
Warburg
Institute,
University of London, who me-
ticulously read
the
final version, improving
it in
many details, and to
Mark D. Jordan of
the
University of Notre Dame,
who
showed in-
terest
in this translation
and recommended
it
for publication
in the
United States.
Italo Ronca and atthew urr
xi
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ABBREVIATIONS
CC Corpus christianorum. Series latina
Du
Cange
Du
Cange, Sieur Ch.
Du
FresneJ,
Glossarium ad scriptores mediae t
infimae latinitatis
Gl. Boet. William of Conches, Glosae super Iioethium
Gl. Macrob. William of Couches,
Glosae super Macrobium
Gl. Plat.
Gl. Prise.
LS)
MGH
Philos.
PL
William of Couches, Glosae super Platonem
William of Couches, Glosae super Priscianum
H. Liddell, R Scott, and H. Jones,
A Greek English Lexicon
Monumenta Germaniae historica
William of Conches,
Philosophia
Patrologia latina cursus completus .
,
ed.
J
P
Migne
xiii
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INTRODUCTION
William of
Conches's
Life and Career
~ ; ; :
?'·'
( >
_ f]:,n
hardly add anything new to Tullio Gregory's
circumstantial
~
of William of Conches's life and works,
1
and
this
brief intro-
duction is
not the
right forum for
yet
another discussion of
the
scanty
jand largely inferential) evidence at
our
disposal. Instead, I will sum-
marize William's life
and
career so as
to
enable readers
to put the
ragmaticon into some kind of historical frame.
William was born
at
Couches, a
small
town near Evreux, in Nor-
mandy, in a country of mutton-heads under the dense sky of Nor-
mandy,112 probably
around 1090.
We know
from
his
famous
disciple
John of Salisbury c.
III5-80)
that, before
forming
his
own
disciples
in grammar,
1
William had himself been formed at
the
solid school of
Bernard of Chartres,
3
becoming after him
11
the most
splendid teacher
of grammar.
114
John
further informs
us
that
he himself
went
of his
own free
will to the grammarian from
Conches and heard him for a
period of
three
years.
5
There
is
still
no agreement on where John of
Salisbury heard William. It seems reasonable to think of Chartres, as
was first argued in
detail in
1862 by C. Schaarschmidt,
whom
nearly
all
modem
authorities (Klibansky
Garin, Gregory, Jeauneau, Dronke,
Haring) follow. R.
W.
Southern, however, questioned both
the
s i g n i i ~
cance of the School of
Chartres
and John's staying there, adducing
inferential proofs in favor of Paris.
6
This opened a long controversy
with P. Dronke and
N.
M. Haring.
7
With Dorothy J. Elford I am in
clined to believe that William both studied and taught
at
Chartres.
8
xv
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{Vi
lNTRODUCTlON
t
is possible
that
he began his teaching career at the cathedral
school of Chartre:s where Bernard himself,
who
had been a teacher
there since
1114
and chancellor since r
124, might
have appointed his
former disciple. .
A
clue in the prologue to Book
VI
also points to the
early
1120S
as a probable beginning of his scholastic career. There
William admits to
still
experiencing some difficulty
in
"retaining and
understanding completely and perfectly" all the complex philosophi
cal doctrines he professes, although he has
11
taught them to
others for
twenty years and longer.
119
Since those words, and the composition of
the
Dragmaticon
as a whole, m_ay be approximately dated to the years
1144-49
(and more precisely to
I 147-49\i
his career may have begun
around
1125, not
long before he
set
out to
write
the
youthful i-
losophia
usually dated between
n25
and u30).
John of Salisbury informs us of the circumstances of William's
possible early retirement
after
he
lost his popular
stand in
the
bitter
controversy wit"h the
11
Cornificians," facile educational reformists
who propounded. a drastic shortening of the basic school training.
10
He
does
not
say,
ho1Never
whether
William was
reinstated in
his former
post
when the Cornificians themselves were eventually defeated.
11
It
is possible,
though not
certain,
that
1
embittered by the decadence of
the schools
and
the attack of William of St.
Thierry
who denounced
him
as heretic, he left Chartres to return to his native Normandy,
under the protection of Geoffrey Plantagenet.
1112
Here he was probably
appointed a private tutor to Geoffrey's two young sons, one
of
whom,
Henry {born at Le Mans
in 1133)
was
to
become.Henry
II
king of
England.
13
And here/ supported by his
mighty
protector
the
Duke
of
Normandy
and
Count
of Anjou,
1114
he was able to rewrite at his
leisure
the
imperfect
Philosophia
as a largely
new work
(in fact, his
major
systematic
treatise),
the Dragmaticon.
In this
work
William
constructed a dialogue resembling those of Plato and Cicero
in
every
thing
except the fixed roles assigned by the
1
dramatic genre" to the
two partners:
the
11
Duke of Normandy" asks questions, and· a
11
name
less philosopher" (that is, William of Couches) answers them.
That
the
l ragmaticon
is, and was
intended
to be, more
than
a
mere''
second edition" of the
Philosophia
15
has been forcefully proven
by Gregory and confirmed
by
Elford
in
a systematic comparison of
the
philosophical contents
of both
works.
16
Elsewhere, I have also dealt
with
this question in detail.
17
Of Williain's
last
years we
know nothing
except
that
he
must
have survived his noble patron (who died
in 1151)
by a few years, since
he was still alive in n54: Alberic of Trois-Fontaines Idied after
1252),
the
compiler of
an important
chronicle,
mentions our
philosopher
in
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INTRODUCTION xvii
his
entry for
I
r54
the year Henry
II
became
king:
in his
[Henry s]
time Master
William
of
Conches
was regarded as a philosopher of
great
fame.
1118
The
Relative Chronology of
William
of Conches's
Works
By
addressing
his
patron as
11
Duke of Normandy
and
Count of
Anjou
1
11
William
provides one of very few clues to
an approximate
dating
of
the
general prologue of
the Dragmaticon
(and,
by
i1nplica-
tion, of the entire dialogue):
since
Geoffrey Plantagenet assumed the
title of
11
duke of
Normandy
11
in r 144
and
passed it on to his son
Henry
at
the
end
of
1149
1
we have
the
two
terms within
which
to locate
William s work.
1119
Assuming that William worked on the Dragmati-
con while he
was
a tutor to Geoffrey
s sons, we may narrow down
the approximate date of composition
to the years r
147-49,
a
time
when
Henry was
in
Normandy and mature
enough
to
e instructed
in
natural philosophy (he had been
in
Bristol
in
rr42/43, 1146/47,
and
again
in 1149/50
when
Geoffrey
transferred
to
him the
duchy of
Normandy).
20
An
additional imore
speculative)
clue to
narrowing
down
the
time frame to the years
around
1148 might
be
the
outcome
of Gilbert
de
la
Porrf.e
1
s appearance
at the council
of
Reims
(1r48).
Contrary
to
what had happened to Abelard
at
Sens
in
r
140,
Gilbert's
subtlety
and
learning
impressed the assembly;
and
conceding perhaps more to his
opponents than he really bel\eved
Gilbert managed to substitute, for
the
condemnation they
demanded, an
undertaking
that
he
would cor-
rect
his
book
in
accordance with an agreed profession of faith, if it
.. .
needed
correction.
1121
f
this is true,
it
is a
remarkable
parallel to
what
happened to
William,
who
included
at the beginning
of
his
new
work
both a
retractatio errorum
and a carefully worded
confessio fi_dei
The
striking
similarity in the reaction
of
the
two
11
Chartrians
11
to
similar
ecclesiastical accusations would
at
least
point
to a similar intellec-
tual
climate
surrounding both events-an indication that the council
of
Reims and
the
composition
of the general prologue may not
have
been far
apart
from each other
in
time as well as
in
place. But
this
re-
mains
speculation. For
want
of
hard
historical evidence,
the
six years
1144-49
(and especially
rr47-49)
are
the most
likely period for
the
composition of the
Dragmaticon
As for William
s other works, the list of those certainly authentic
is not
yet
complete
or
definitive.
Apart
from
the systematic
treatises,
which can
be
attributed
to
his
11
youth
11
and
0
maturity
11
respectively,
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iii INTRODUCTION
William of Conches
wrote
several comments on authors
glosae
super auctores),
mLostly-but not exclusively-philosophers. As it is,
not
all comments that he planned to write, and may have written,
have been recovered: this is
the
case of
the comment on
Martianus
Capella, which the
Glosae
super
Boethium
(William's earliest
known
work) announces as being planned for the immediate future.
22
On the other hand, some of the extant
Glosae,
transmitted i :
double (and even triple) versions believed to have been composed by
William himself at different stages
in
his scholastic career, might still
prove, on a close scrutiny, to be
nothing
more than different textual
traditions of one and the same original, with corrections, expan
sions, or omissions
by
intelligent readers or innovative scribes. To
some extent, this seems to be the case of the Glosae super Platonem,
for which Gregory
23
implied two different versions, one preceding
and the
other
following
the Philosophia.
However,
the
editor of the
later//
Timaeus
glosses rightly suspected that the so-called ear
lier redaction, known from MS C.620 of the University Library,
Uppsala, and edited by Toni Schmid, could just as well be
the
work
of a compiler sun1marizing William of Couches or making lavish
Use
of his
works/'
24
\Ve
now know
that
the supposed earlier redaction
in
fact contains a 1nixture of passages extracted from the independent
glosses of Bernard
[of
Chartres], William, and others by a late twelfth
or thirteenth-century scribe.
25
On the strength of these considerations, I take the liberty further
to
update
and slightly modify the provisional list
and
relative chro
nology of William of Conches's authentic works compiled by Edouard
Jeauneau. My ve:rsion is as follows:
Youthful Works
r Glosae super Boethium De cons. phil.)
2 . Glosae super Macrobium Comm.
n
Cic. Somn.)
3. Philosophia
4 Glosae super Priscianum
jfirst version)
Mature Works
s.
Glosae
super
Platonem {in Tlmaeum)
6.
Dragmaticon
7 Glosae super Priscianum (second version)
With
regard to some still controversial questions about the rela
tive chronology of those certainly authentic works and the dubious
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INTRODUCTION
x iX
authorship of others that have been attributed to William of Conches,
the
following
points
should be noted:
1. The Glosae in Iuuenalem, of
which
an inadequate modern
edition exists (ed.
B.
Wilson [Paris, r980])
is no longer attrib
uted to William.
2 .
The Glosae super Martianum, if it
was ever written, could
be placed second
or third
(before or after
the
Glosae super
Macrobium .
3. I cannot follow Jeauneau in assigning
the
Glosae super
Priscianum to William's
1
old age. William can hardly have
died long after r r
54
(the year of his death is usually given as
I
155
)
that
is,
only
a few years after
the
Dragmaticon
was
completed.
How
could he become old so suddenly and
still
have
the
stamina to write such a long and demanding work?
4. The attribution
of a very popular florilegium of moral max
ims drawn from pagan authors, the Moralium dogma phi-
losophorum, earlier attributed to various authors and then to
William,
remains
uncertain.
26
5.
The Compendium philosophiae, sometimes called the Tertia
philosophia,
in
six
books recalling
the
Dragmaticon,
known
from
three
MSS and partly published by C. Ottaviano,
27
is not
William's work, but a manipulation of William's Philosophia
by
some
theologian near
to
Hugh of St. Victor:
the
compiler
rewrote
the entire
first book of
the
Philosophia,
expanding
it
into
Books
I-III
and reproduced
the
rest as Books
IV-VI.
28
6. The Magna de naturis philosophia,
mentioned in earlier lit
erature
as William's
main
work, of which his Philosophia
was assumed
to
be
an
excerpt,
29
has never existed.
The
tradi
tion
goes back to an article in the Histoire littiraire de la
France
(Paris, r763), pp. 455-66,
1130
whose author was perhaps
thinking of Vincent of Beauvais's Speculum natmale.
7. Similarly,
B.
Lawn's assumption of a much fuller version of ,
the
Dragmaticon,
antedating
the
Philosophia
and used by
the
compiler of the gynecological section of
the
Oxford MS Bodi.
Auct. F.3.10 (in
his
Prose Salernitan Questions= MS
B
writ
ten
c.
1200
cannot
be validated and should be dismissed.
A sensible
refutation
of Lawn's proto-Dragmaticon
theory
is given by Elford. She in turn suggests as one of
many
pos
sible
alternatives
to that theory
the
existence of a fuller ver
sion of
the Dragmaticon
compiled later.
31
But a deutero-
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:X
INTRODUCTION
Dragmaticon is as hnprobable as a
11
proto-Dragmaticon
11
: a
close comparison of
all
11
gynecological
11
texts
that
B shares
with the
Dragmaticon proves beyond
doubt that the
anony
mous
compiler of B borrowed (and variously adapted)
them
from
an
M.S
of
the
lesser class of our
extant
Dragmaticon.
32
The Dragmaticon
Authorship
and
Title
Th
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INTRODUCTJON XXi
that
treatise at I.r.8 make
Philosophia
a confusing and inappropriate
title for the dialogue. Secunda philosophia would be appropriate but
can hardly be authentic: William reedited and made second edi
tions of
most
of his comments on the auctores, but not one is
known
to have been titled
Secundae glossae
or the like.
What is, then, the
merit
of
Dragmaticon philosophi{
a e, apart
from the scanty manuscript evidence?
The
word dragmaticon (used
as a neuter
noun
and spelled with -gm- or -mm- is a late medieval
transliteration of the Greek adjective 5paµaTlK6v. The -gm- cluster
and the substantivization is due to the analogy
with pragmaticon
35
and
didascalicon,
respectively.
The
Greek adjective is attested
in
Latin as early as Diomedes
1
Ars grammatica,
Book
1
where it quali
fies one of
the three
kinds of poems,
the
poema dramaticon,
or
the active one
1
in which characters act alone
without
the poefs in
teracting.11 Diomedes distinguishes the dramatic or active poem
(exemplified by classical drama and Virgil's first Eclogue from the
exegetic or narrative
(exemplified by
the
first three Georgics and
Lucretius
poem
1
where the poet himself speaks without the in
terference of any character
1
)
and
the common
or mixed
(the case of
the Homeric poems and Virgil's
Aeneid,
where both the poet himself
and
the
characters speak:
.
36
This
passage
may
have been influenced
by Suetonius'
De poematis
and appears to be
an
expansion on Aris
totle's Poetics 3
1
dealing with the three manners of poetic imitation
µLµT}aL
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di
INTRODUCTION
question
{interrogatio) and its derivative adjective dragmaticum
as a quasi-synonyrri of questioning
interrogativum), since this
kind of dialogue
11
takes place
through
question
and
answer.
4
Fur
thermore, the word
dragmaticon
appears
in an
amplified redaction
of doubtful authenticity in a fifteenth-century MS of the Biblioteca
Nazionale Marcial1a
in
Venice containing the
Glosae super Platonem
(that is, William's comment on the Latin Timaeus translated by Cal
cidius).42
Although
dragmaticon
looks very
much
like William's own
coinage
1
the
question still remains
to
be asked
whether
or not
he
in
tended to give his dialogue the title of Dragmaticon philosophiae.
The
phrase would make sense
to
readers who knew
that
dragmaticon
was one of
three
possible kinds of twelfth-century dialogue. Still, the
descriptive genitive philosophiae sounds awkward; one would expect
de philosophia or de substantiis from Dragmaticon l.r.7 and I I .
The
genitive can only be
1
descriptive" or
epexegeticus as in
1
arbor fici
.
The
phrase sounds awkward
to
us because the
noun in
the genitive
case, the nomen specifi_cum, is well known, while the nomen generi-
cum
presupposes a currency as a technical term of twelfth-century
literary rhetoric for which only poor evidence can be adduced. Never
theless, the phrase is idiomatically correct and seems likely
to
cor
respond to William
1
s own intention ia generic title of Dragmaticon
alone
would
perhaps have sounded vague
to
him,
much
as
Dialogue
would to us).
On the other hand, no mention is
made
of a dragmaticon
as
a treatise in dialogue form) or of a dragmaticon philosophiae) in the
known
indirect tradition.
The
crown witness for the indirect tradi
tion, the
Speculum naturale
of Vincent of Beauvais, refers only
to
11
Guilli)elmus de Conchisn; and
the title Dialogus de substantiis
physicis, given
to the
first
printed
edition of
the
Dragmaticon by
Guglielmo Gratarolo Strasburg, 1567), is not found
in
the MSS.
For all these reasons, I am no longer inclined to regard the con
ventional
title
Dragmaticon as an early redactor's extrapolation from
I 1. r r (
1
dragmatice distinguemus
1
.
The grammarian William knew
the word as a technical term at least from Calcidius and from the
ancient
grammarians
1
tradition.
He
needed
an
appropriate
title to
distinguish the dialogue from its "first redaction/' the Philosophia.
Moreover, in choosing the dialogue form and widening the scope of
his subject matter to a near-encyclopedia, he had probably cherished
the thought of emulating Hugh of St. Victor's Didascalicon com
pleted before n37). The popularity of
this
title, a bold innovat,ion of
the r 13os
1
and the consideration of the Diomedes/Bede passage, are
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INTRODUCTION XXiii
likely to have suggested the analogic choice of Dragmaticon. Thus,
the dialogue may have
been
called Dragmaticon by William himself,
a tit le soon expanded to Dragmaticon philosophiae by the redactor re
sponsible for several additions
to the text
of the twin MSS (perhaps by
analogy
with
Philosophia mundi .
The Purpose of the Dragmaticon
A close comparison with the Philosophia reveals a multiplicity of
purposes of the Dragmaticon, most of them explicitly stated by the
author himself in the general prologue. William wants:
• To rewrite and
update
the
Philosophia
by retaining
what
is
still true or applicable, by
omitting
certain sections now out
dated or wrong,
and
by adding some new material, unknown
or
not
considered n his youth
Vl.1.r),
in fact, more than the
reader of the prologue is made to assume
(I.r.8).
• To retract his youthful errors I.r.8-11) and,
by
implication, to
satisfy the suspicious hierarchy of his Catholic orthodoxy by a
circumstantial (sometimes ironically ambiguous and tongue
in-cheek) profession of faith
(I.3.r-5).
• To provide his powerful protector, purported to be keenly in
terested in philosophical questions,
43
and his noble pupils
with
something
that
pertains to science (that is, suitable
to
scientific studies, I. r.5 ) -an understatement, typical of the
general prologue,
that
is intended
to mean
a relevant contri
bution to modern science.
This overall intent is further
narrowed down a few lines later, when the Dragmaticon is de
scribed as a
work
dealing
with
substances philosophically
and relevant to
the
reading of the philosophers who are stud
ied in today's schools (I.r.6-7)
According to William's unassuming modesty
1
the Dragmaticon is a
work of his maturity, intended to replace the imperfect and outdated
youthful
Philosophia
with
a corrected, updated, and
somewhat
en
larged
version-as it were
a second edition of essentially
the
same
work. At-close scrutiny,
this
second edition
reveals itself as a sub
stantially new work,
both in
form and in content.
The
classical dia
logue form, involving the mighty duke as co-protagonist lat times as
an orthodox inquisitor), is after all a clever device, aiming at removing
in the reader any residual
or
possible suspicion about the author's
Abelardian
(and heretical) views.
At
the same time the philosophus
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dV
INTRODUCTJON
sine nomine,
1
' overtly supported by such
an
authority, may still
vent
his strong feelings
at
his archenemies of old, the prelates,
and
do
so
with
impunity, therefore more boldly
than
ever before (despite
re-
tractatio
and
confessio fidei .
As for the contents, the
Dragmaticon
is
a considerably
e11larged
and
much
more balanced
new
11
reference
work.
1144
It is written
not
only for the private
use
of the duke and his
sons, but also for the better understanding of the school
authors-that
is, for the benefit of all serious students of natural philosophy.
NOTES
r
T. Gregory,
Anima mundi
La filosofia di Guglielmo di Conches e
la Scuola di Chartres Florence, 1955 .
2. Dragmaticon V1.r.1,
11
in patria ueruecum crassoque sub aere Nor
manniae sum natus": an adaptation of Juvenal's Satire
X.50
in typical self
irony.
3.
See John of Salisbury, Metalogicon l.24 PL 199:856).
4. John of Salisbury, Metalogicon Ls PL 199:832).
5. John of Salisbury, Metalogicon Il.10 PL 199:868). The triennium
has been narrowed. down to the years 1137/38-1140/41: see Gregory,
Anima
mundi,
p.
2
n.5.
6.
R.
W. Southern,
11
Humanism and the School of Chartres," in Me-
dieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970)
1
pp. 61-85.
7. Dronke replied to Southern in "New Approaches to the School of
Chartres,
11
Anuario de estudios medievales 6 1971): 117-40; and Haring in
11
Chartres and Paris Revisited," in Essays in Honor
of
Anton Charles Pegis,
ed. J.
R.
0
1
Donnell {Toronto,
1974),
pp. 268-329. Southern countered in his
1978
Stenton Lecture, Platonism, Scholastic Method, and the School of
Chartres (Reading, 1979) and
"The
Schools of Paris and the School of Char
tres,"
in
Renaiss.ance and Renewal
in
the Twelfth Century,
ed.
R.
L.
Benson
and G. Constable
with
Darol D. Lanham (Oxford, 1982), pp. 113-37.
He
was
supported by K.
S. B.
Keats-Rohan
in
"The Chronology of John of Salisbury's
Studies in France: A Reading of
Metalogicon
II.re," Studi medievali
28
(1987): 193-203.
8. D.
J.
Elford,
11
William of Couches,"
n
A History
of
Twelfth-CentUiy
Western Philosophy, ed. P. Dronke {Cambridge, 1988), p. 309 n.7.
9. Dragmaticon V1.r.1.
10.
John
of
Salisbury,
Metalogicon
l.24
PL 199:856).
rr.
John of Salisbury,
Metalogicon
I.5 PL 199:832).
12. Gregory, Anima mundi, p. 3.
r3. Dragmaticon l.r.5. M. D. Knowles, "Henry
II
of England,
11
in
Ency
clopaedia Britannica, 1977 edition, Macropaedia, 8:764. Gregory, Anima
mundi p. 8 n.4) gives the improbable year l
139
{a printing error?) as Henry's
date of
birth.
14.-Dragmaticon I.r. I The phrase
11
Dux Normannorum et Comes An
degauensium" is therefore the most important clue to the dating of the gen
eral prologue and, by implication, of the dialogue as a whole.
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INTRODUCTION
X:XV
15·
Against
the
opinion of early scholars, subsumed in G. Manitius's
notorious statement, Dies ist . kein neues Werk, sondern
nur
die in
Dialogform-zwischen Philosophus
und
Discipulus
[sic]-gebrachte
Philoso
phia mundi
{Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters,
vol. 3
[Munich,
1931],
p. 217).
16. Gregory,
Anima
mundi;
D.
J
Elford, Developments
in
the
Natural
Philosophy of William of Couches (diss., Cambridge,
1983).
17. See I Ronca, Ragione e Fede in Guglielmo di Conches: per una edi
zione critica del
1
Dragmaticon
1
1
11
in Studi di filologia classica in onore di
Giusto Monaco (Palermo, 1991) 4:1535-59
1
especially pp. 1538 and following.
18. Monumenta Germaniae historica,
Scriptores, vol. 23, ed. Scheffer
Boichorst (Berlin, 1874)
1
p. 842.
19. Gregory, Anima mundi, p. 7 n.5.
20.
J.
D. North, Some Norman Horoscopes, in Adelard
of Bath,
ed. Ch. Burnett (London,
1987}
1
p.
158.
2r.
J
Marenbon
1
Early Medieval Philosophy 480-I I 50): An Introduc
tion {London,
1983)
1
p. 118.
22. See E. Jeauneau, Glosae super Platonem (Paris,
1965)
1
p. r2 n.5
1
quoting from Cl. Boet. MS Troyes, Bihl. mun. lI01, fol. 17vb}.
23. Gregory,
Anima
mundi, pp. 14-17; E. Garin,
Studi sul Platonismo
medievale (Florence, 1958)
1
pp. 56-62.
24.
11
L'oeuvre d'un compilateur
resumant
Guillaume de Conches ou
puisant abondamment dans ses oeuvres (Jeauneau, Glosae super Platonem,
p. 14). Jeauneau's hypothesis is confirmed by similar cases of later compilers
or
deliberate innovators
within the textual
transmission of
the
Dragmati
con, as I have shown in
the
introduction to my critical edition.
25.
P.
E.
Dutton, The Glosae super Platonem
of
Bernard of Chartres
(Toronto, 1991), pp.
19
1
20-21, 259-60.
26. See Gregory,
Anima
mundi, pp. 19-26.
27. C. Ottaviano
1
Un brano inedito della Philosophia di Guglielmo
di Conches
(Naples, 1935
).
28. See Gregory, Anima
mundi,
pp. 28-40.
29. So, for instance, K. Werner, Die Kosmologie und
Naturlehre
des
scholastischen Mittelalters
mit
spezieller Beziehung auf Wilhelm
van
Conches,
11
Sitzungsberichte der Wiener
Akademie
der Wissenschaften,
philos.-hist. Klasse 7 1873): 309.
30. Elford, Developments, p. 207.
3r. B. Lawn, I quesiti salernitani {Cava dei Tirreni, r969)
1
Nota
ag
giuntil G (pp. 236-38}; Lawn, he Prose Salernitan Questions (London, r979),
pp. x:v-x:vii; Elford, Developments,
11
pp. 204-14.
32. Lawn has replied to
Elford's criticism n
An
Answer to Mrs. El
ford's Criticism/' typescript dated 25 May 1985. I thank Charles Burnett for
sending me,
at
the
suggestion of
the
author, a copy of
this
unpublished text,
which I was not able to consider before. Lawn's answer, however
1
has not
convinced me of his basic assumption of the existence of a fuller text of that
section, antedating
the
vulgate Dragmaticon
and
compiled by William of
Conches himself.
33. I Ronca, Reason and Faith in the Dragmaticon:
The
Problematic
Relation between Philosophica Ratio and Diuina Pagina, in Knowledge
and
the Sciences in Medieval Philosophy: Proceedings of the Eighth Interna-
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cvi INTROOUCT10N
tional Congress of Medieval Philosophy, Helsinki 24-29 August 1987
1
vol. 2,
ed.
S.
Knuuttila,
R.
T'y6rinoja, and
S.
Ebbesen (Helsinki, 1990)
pp. 331-41.
34. Obscuri quidem nominis et nullius auctoritatis.
11
So William of
St. Thierry in his letter of 1141 to Bernard of Clairvaux, Concerning the
Errors of William
o.f
Conches
De
erroribus Guilelmi de Conchis,
PL I8o:
333-40).
See
the
modern critical
edition
by
J
Leclercq
in
Revue
binidictine
79 (1969): 375-91,
especially
382-9r.
35.
See H. Flatten, Die Philosophie des Wilhelm von Conches (Koblenz,
1929), p. II n.I3.
36.
Diomedes
edited
by
H.
Keil in Grammatici latini (Lipsiae
1855;
reprint, Hildesheim, I961)
1:482.I4-25.
37. See Grammatici latini, 7:428.7-I4 (Dositheus) and 4: 487.I7-23
(Anon., In artem l)onati)i Servius, In Vergilii carmina comm. (ed. Hagen
[Lipsiae 1902; reprint, Hildesheim, I96IJj,
3:
fasc. 2 (Philargyrius).
38.
See Gram.matici latini, 7:259.14-260.2.
39.
See Th V.2067 .14-28.
40. MS Paris, BibL Nat., Lat. 15130
fol. 5b: S[unt] igitur teste Bo[ecio]
tria genera coll[ocu]tionis: didascalic[umJ quad fit inter magistrum et dis
cipulum,
didascalos enim est magisterLJ] dra{g]mati[c)o[n] id est interro
gationum, dragma enim est interrogatioi enar[ratiuu]m [,]quad fit
inter
lo
quentem er audientem, continua [enim] or[aci]o est.
4I. Petrus Helias,
umma
super Priscianum, ed.
L.
Reilly {Toronto,
1993 , I:158.59-61:
Invenitur
etiarn
dragma matis
tercie declinationis
et
est
'interrogatio', unde dragmaticus [read rather dragmaticum,
with W]
genus
loquendi dicitur quasi 'interrogativum' quad fit per interrogationem et re
sponsionem. '
42. MS Marcianus Lat. Z
225
(=I870). Contrary to Garin Studi sul
Pla-
tonismo medieva.le, p. 71 and Gregory Anima mundi, p. IS), who have
considered the amplified redaction as authentic, I am convinced
that
the first
chapters of the Glosae in the MS Marcianus are the result of a deliberate am
plification by a late redactor.
43.
This is
the
apparent reason
why the
duke of Normandy is assigned
the
role of questioner
in
the
dialogue. There are other reasons, less transpar
ent and more subtle; see Ronca, Reason and Faith.
11
44. Despite :its enlarged contents, the Dragmaticon is still far from
being,
and
was never meant to be, a comprehensive scientific
summa
or en
cyclopedia: see, e.g., 111.6. I, VI.4.8,
6. 1,
6.I2.
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HERE BEGINS THE DI LOGUE ON
N TUR L PHILOSOPHY Y THE
M STER
WILLI M O CoNCHEs
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BOOK
ON
1
Prologue
[r] You ask, venerable Duke of Normandy and ount of Anjou, why
teachers
in
our time are less trusted than
in
the past. The reason for
this, you should understand, lies
not
only
with the
teachers
them-
selves
but
also
with the
pupils and
the
prelates. For
two
things
make
a person s teaching reliable: namely,
when it
is known
that he
pos
sesses
the
particular quality that, first, would not allow him
to
be
deceived
by another
and, second,
would
not
make him
wish to de
ceive another. The first of
these
is acquired by science,
the
second by
justice.
[ ]
Science,
in
fact, not only teaches the
nature
of things,
but
also presses
home
the
proper meanings of
words
and
uncovers
the
tricks of sophistry. Therefore, once
he has
acquired such abilities
through eager
learning
and
strengthened them
through
habit
and
practice, a
teacher cannot
easily
be
deceived regarding
either the
nature
of things or
the
use of words. Justice,
on the other
hand,
which
is the h bit
of
the
mind of
bestowing wh t
is
right upon e ch per-
son 2
expels from
the mind any
desire
to
deceive and, as
it
were, corn- -
pels everyone to teach. Therefore, because virtually everyone of our
time
approaches
the
office of teaching
without
these two
requisites,
they are
themselves
the reason why they are less trusted.
[3]
The pupils are also not without blame: they have aban
doned
the
Pythagorean model of teaching, according
to which
a pupil
should
listen and believe for
seven
years, and ask
questions only in
the
eighth.
3
Instead, from
the
first day of school,
even
before
sitting
3
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4 OOK ONE
down,
they
question and, in fact,
what
is worse,
they
pass judgment.
They
study
carelessly for the space of a single year and
think th t
the whole of wisdom has accrued to them, whereas they have merely
snatched
r gs
from it;
they leave school full of
the wind
of
loquacity
and pride, empty of a solid knowledge of things. And when their par-
ents or others listen to them and discover that
there
is little or noth-
ing of any use in
what
they say, they are
at
once led to believe that
this is all the pupils received from their teachers:
so
the
authority
of
the teacher is impaired.
[4] The prelates, too, but especially the bishops, are
not
with-
out blame either, since
they
see
to their own interests and
not
fesus
Christ s;
5
in
fact,
to
be able to squander
the
goods of
their
churches
without
any apposition, they exclude wise
and
noble men from
the
clergy and, just to keep positions filled, include foolish
and
ignoble
people, shadows of clerics,
not
clerics at all. As a result, those who
could advance
in
science if they devoted themselves to studying,
realizing
that they
would gain
nothing but
hatred
and
envy from
such studies, and
that
the bishops are seeking a rich coffer rather
than
a rich mind, follow a different path
n
life: they crave wealth
and profit and, while impoverishing their minds, only labor
to
enrich
their coffers.
s] These are therefore the reasons, most illustrious Duke, why
all the dignity and prestige of teachers has faded away, and all sci-
entific endeavor has virtually disappeared,
without
hope. In you,
however, and in your sons there rests some hope: you have imbued
them
from a tender age not, as others do,
with
a taste for playing dice,
but
with
love for the liberal arts, the fragrance of which they will
long preserve, as
in
that
saying of Horace:
The
jar will long keep
the
fragrance of what
it
was once steeped
in
when new.
116
Therefore, ex-
cited and encouraged by that hope, we have set out to write for
you
and your sons something suitable to scientific stlidies.
If this
work
will find favor with you,
we
shall under your gracious auspices also
obtain
the approbation of others. For
who
will dare to disapprove of
something
that
one
hears is approved of
by
people of such standing
and character?
[6]
But since science
in
all
its
branches is concerned
with
either
things or words, and since a thing can be either a substance or an
accident, we are now going to deal
with
substances, and we shall
do so in terms of philosophy. For the same matter can be dealt with
in terms
of dialectic, sophistry, rhetoric, or philosophy. To ·consider
whether something is individual or universal is the concern of dia-
lectic;
to
prove that that same thing exists, when it does not, or
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PROLOGUE
that
it
does not exist, when in fact
it
does, is
the aim
of sophistry;
to
prove
whether
that
same thing
is
worthy
of praise
or blame
is
the task
of rhetoric;
but to examine
the
nature
of that
same
thing,
its
behavior and functions, is
the task
of philosophy. Therefore,
the
dialectician
sophist, orator,
and
philosopher can debate
about
one
and
the
same thing from
different points of view
and
with differ-
ent aims.
[7J Now some people, failing
to understand
this, have rooted
out
all real things from dialectic and sophistic disputes, but they have re-
tained
the
names
of things,
which
alone
they
proclaimed
to be
uni-
versal or individual.
Then
an even more foolish age succeeded, one
that excluded
both
the things and
their names and
reduced all dis-
putation
to
four
or
five
mere
nouns.
8
However, because
they
were
not of God,
both
sects failed of their
own
accord. Therefore,
we
have
decided
to
deal philosophically with substances. Anyone who con-
siders the matter thoroughly will find this approach useful for the
pursuit of
science and necessary for reading
the
philosophers.
[8}
There
is, however, a little
book
of
ours on the same
subject,
entitled Philosophia it
is
quite
imperfect, as
it
was composed
in
our
imperfect youth.
In
that
booklet truths
are interspersed with false-
hoods and
many
points
that
ought to
have been
made
were omitted.
It is our plan, therefore,
to retain
whatever is true in that booklet, to
condemn its
falsehoods,
and to
supply its omissions. But before
the
proper dialogue begins, we have determined
to condemn
indi-
vidually all those wrong statements
that
seem to us to be contrary to
the Catholic faith. Consequently, we call on those who possess that
little
book to condemn and remove
these same statements
as we do.
For
it
is not words that make a heretic, but stubborn defense.
[9]
In
that
booklet
we
said
that
there
were
three constituents in
the
Godhead: power, wisdom,
and
will;
and
that power was
the
Father, wisdom
tl e
Son,
and
will
the Holy
Spirit. What
we
have said
about
power, that
it
is the Father,
or about
will, that
it
is
the
Holy
Spirit,
may
be defended in
one way or
another. However, since
this
idea is found
neither
in
the
Gospel nor in the writings of the
Church
fathers,
we condemn it
in
the
words of
the
apostle:
1
Avoid profane
novelty in words.
119
Concerning
wisdom, that is
the
Son,
we
do not
condemn
our
statement, since
the
apostle says:
Christ
the
power
of
God and the wisdom of
God.
111
n
that
same little
book
we
at-
tempted
to
show in what way the
Father begot
the
Son, and that
the
question
Who shall declare his generation?
implied
difficulty,
not
impossibility.
This
again
we condemn
and declare
that it
should
be condemned by others.
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6
BOOK ONE
[ro]
When we
spoke
in that
little book about
the
creation of
the
first man
we said that God neither took a rib from Adam nor created
the woman
from a rib,
but
from a part of
that
same mass of clay
out
of
which he had
molded
the
body of
the man.
We
then
concluded
that
the
state1nent
the
woman
was created from a rib of Adam was
meant
metaphorically. This, too, we con_demn
and
advise others
to do likewise, according to holy
and
divine Scripture,
which
says:
And
the
Lord God caused a deep sleep
to
fall upon Adam and He
took one of his ribs/}
12
and used it as material to form
the
woman.
[rr]
These, then, are
the
points
that we
condemn in
that
book;
we
do
not
list
all
the
other points individually as false or futile but
simply
do
not
cite them
in this work. But so
much
for these things.
Now
let
us deal
with
the
substances, as
we
proposed. But because
an
uninterrupted exposition produces boredom
13
and
boredom annoy-
ance, we shall divide up our discourse in
the
form of a dialogue. You,
therefore,
most
serene Duke, should ask
the
questions;
let
a philoso-
pher who shall remain unnamed reply to them.
2.
Definition ol Substance
[r] DUKE Seeing
that
I
have been
given
the
task of questioning
and
since you propose
to
deal with substance, I ask whether you under-
stand
the term
substance to have only one or several meanings.
PHILOSOPHER.
Nobody
who
understands
the
writings of
the
authors
correctly
would
doubt that this
term
has
many
meanings. For some-
times
the
body,
sometimes the
spirit and
sometimes the
compound
of both is called substance;
whence
some writers give
the
following
definition
o
substance: Substance is a thing existing in itsel£.n
14
Sometimes those
things themselves as
well
as
their
genera
and
spe-
cies are terrrled substance, so that Aristotle divides it into a first and
a second subst:ince.
15
Sometimes,
n the
same way
that
the act of living is called life, so
the
act of subsist ing is called substance,
as
in
Generation
is
an
en-
trance
to
substance; corruption is a departure from substance.
16
Sometimes possession, because
it
makes man's existence possible
is
called substance
1
as
in
11
Give
me the portion
of
the
substance
that
is
my due,
1117
and
again,
11
He
wasted
his
whole
substance on whores and
riotous living.
1118
[2] DuKE Since this
term
is used
to
mean so many things, say which
meaning you accord
it
in this work.
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THE CREATING SUBSTANCE 7
PHILOSOPHER.
Virtually everywhere in this
work
the term
1
sub-
stance
is understood
to be
a thing existing
in
itself.
DUKE Now
that
we
agree
about the meaning
of
the
term, go on
with
the
subject matter.
PHILOSOPHER.
Substance is a
thing
existing
in
itself,
but there
is one
substance
that creates
and another
that is created. Concerning
the
creating substance, which precedes
the other in
time and dignity,
we shall briefly state our faith, lest
it
be thought to differ from the
Catholic
faith. But
you should
defer your
questioning
for
the time
being
and
not
ask
for explanations, since
it
is written, There is
no
merit in
a faith for
which
human
reason provides experiential
evidence.
19
DUKE
So be it.
3. The
Creating Substance:
(The
Author's
Confession
of Faith]
[r]
PHILOSOPHER.
We believe that there is one creating substance,
immense beyond length
or width
or thickness, wise and just without
application
or
disposition, compassionate
and
pious without suffer-
ing, moving everything without being moved, existing in every place
essentially,
neither
expanded
nor
contracted, always
present without
past
and
future, omnipotent, omniscient.
[ ] We believe that
there
are
three
persons in
the
Godhead:
the
Father unbegotten;
the
Son
only begotten
by
the
Father, never parted
from
him, neither
succeeding
nor
preceding;
the
Holy Spirit proceed-
ing from both.
That
no
one of these persons is the same as the other;
however, that all
three
are
the
same, all are
equal in
power, wisdom,
will, and action; that many things
they
can do
they
choose not to do,
but nothing
they
choose
to
do
they
cannot do. That each one of them
is a person-namely, an individual essence endowed with rational
nature-that all of them are one existing reality and one God.
[3]
We believe
that
one of these persons,
that
is
the
Son, was
incarnate
from a virgin, so that He,
who
was a
son in
divinity, would
be
· son in humanity;
that
He is true
God and
true man, in two
na-
tures,
neither nature
mingling with
or
changing
the
other; brought
into being from true flesh
and
rational soul,
though
without a father
according
to the
flesh; and that
the
same person as before is
both
cre-
ator and
created, maker
and
made. And so what was earlier
unheard
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OOK ONE
of is now true:
the Creator
is a creature, because
God
is a
man.
For
with
what
effrontery would anyone who accepts God
to
be a man
deny the Creator
to
be a creature? But
who
does
not
accept
this
is
not
a Catholic.
[4] It is also true that this man created heaven and earth, that
this God
has been
dead;
He
was not, however, a man when
He
ere·
ated these
things,
but
was God when dead. We believe that
this true
God and inan suffered
under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, and died.
That
his
body,
with
its divinity
but without
its divine soul, lay
in
the
sepulcher; his soul and his same divinity
without
body descended
to
hell. On the third day
He
arose with soul and body united;
He
often appeared
to
the
apostles
in
many
manifestations.
On
the
forti·
eth
day
He
ascended
to
heaven, while they watched. On the fiftieth
day
He
sent the
Holy
Spirit in tongues of fire; and
He will come
to
judge the living and the dead.
5] Thus
we believe, approving
some
propositions with
human
reason; others,
although
possibly
contrary to
human reason, we
yet believe and profess
with
absolute
certainty
because they were
written by men
to
whom the Spirit
had
revealed them: men who
professed
neither
to
lie
nor
to
affirm anything
but
certainty. But if
any religious person should read this small work of ours, and some·
thing
in
it should appear to deviate from the faith, he
should
cor-
rect it either by spoken or by written word, and we will not object
to
altering it.
DuKE. It seems
to
me you have ended the confession of your faith.
It
remains, therefore, that you next speak
about
created substance.
4.
The Created Substance:
[The Five
Classes
of Rational Beings]
[r] PHILOSOPHER. Created substance is divided in two, for it is either
invisible or visible. But in order
to
dwell a little longer on the subject
of visible substance, which needs much more discussion, concerning
the invisible
\Ve
will not adduce our
own
opinion, but Plato s.
DUKE. If the opinion of a pagan is
to be
cited, I prefer
you to quote
Plato
than
any other, for
he
accords better with our faith.
[2] PHILOSOPl:J:ER. Plato, the most learned of philosophers, divided the
world
into
five regions: heaven, ether, air, the moist region, and earth.
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THE CREATED
SUBSTANCE
r The five regions
of
the world and their creatures.
He
calls
heaven
the
region
in
which
the
fixed stars are found; ether
the
region
stretching from
there as far as
the lunar
circle; air
the
upper
half
of the atmosphere;
the
moist region
the lower part
of
the
atmosphere.
He wanted none
of
these
regions
to be without rational
living beings. Therefore he said
that
there existed in heaven a visible
rational
immortal and
impassible living being namely
the
stars;
that on earth there was a visible rational passible and mortal being
namely man;
in the three middle regions he said there
were
crea-
tures
that
shared
some of
the
qualities of
the two
outermost
regions
but
differed
in
others
[fig
r
]
2
0
[3] We shall give a definition common to these three groups of
intermediate creatures;
the
intelligent reader may
work
out from
the
definition
which
characteristics
they
share with
the
outermost
ones
and
which
they
lac.k. So
the
middle creature which is located
in the
three regions is defined by Plato as rational
immortal
invis·
ible passible. The three groups differ however with regard
to their
passions. For owing
to
their
natural
goodness
the two
higher ones
love human beings rejoice with them in
their
prosperity and mourn
at
their
adversity. In this
way they
are passible for joy
and
sorrow are
counted among the
passions.
[4]
The
creature
of the ether however has greater knowledge
and
dignity so that
it sometimes
rules over
the creature
of
the
air.
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IO BOOK ONE
But the
creature
of the air runs
to
and fro between God and man
almost as a mediator and reveals the will of God
to
men through a
voice
a
dream
imagination
or
visible signs.
He
reports the prayers
of man to God
who is not ignorant of his needs
yet
wishes
to be
asked. For this reason
he
is called an angel, that is, a messenger.
5] The c:reature of the
moist
region is passible in a different
way: he is full of wickedness, hatred, and envyi it
tortures
him to see
men do well
but it delights him
to
see
them in
distress, because he
fell through his pride from the very place
to
which man ascends
through humility This Creature suggests base thoughts
makes man
sharp-tongued and quarrelsome
causes
backbiting
and false testi
mony,
incites
men
to dishonest
actions:
in
short, he
rushes
about
to
prevent all good.
Sometimes
he takes on some bodily for1n and
has
intercourse
with a woman; from that union a
human
being is often
produced.
[6] DUKE This
seems
to
be
abhorrent
to our faith.
PHILOSOPHER If you do not believe me
believe Augustine, who
affirms
that the
Huns were
born
like
this
in
the
marshes
of
the
Maeotis.
21
DUKE
Let
it
be, then
as
we
are
not
allowed to contradict
such
an au
thority. But
go on
to the next point.
s.
[Demons or
Angels]
[
r] PHILOSOPHER
These three classes
of
living beings are called
demons by the Greeks.
DUKE
You appear
to contradict
yourself. For at first you laid down
that two classes Were good and the third
was
wicked; now you call
all of them demons.
How
then is it possible
that one
and the
same
class
should be
good as well as demonic?
PHILOSOPHER
Now
you
are speaking
like
one of the commoners.
For
you
think
as I infer from your words
that a
demon
is the
same
as a devil, Vlrhich is not the case. For a demon is said
to
be any in
visible being
which
uses reason
as
if
knowing. Of
these
the two
higher orders are called calodemons that is
good knowing ones ;
the lower order is called cacodemon that is
1
11
evil
knowing
one
1
for
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DEMONS OR ANGELS
calos means ngood, cacos bad.
1122
So
what do
you find confusing in
this? After all, both types of demons are called angels.
[ ]
DUKE
When
Plato divides the good angels into two categories,
and Scripture divides
them
into
nine,
it
seems
that
there
are too few
categories
in
the former and too many in the latter.
PHILOSOPHER
Although
it may seem
like
that
to some,
it
is in fact
not true. For
it
so happens
that
one and
the same thing may
be di-
vided, according to different
points
of view, sometimes into inore
and sometimes into
fewer parts,
without there
ever being too
many
or too few. Therefore, Plato divided the calodemons or good angels,
into
two according
to
place; Scripture,
on the
other
hand, divided
them
into nine according to rank.
[3] DUKE
Since Plato calls them living beings
and
since every living
being is a
body, or
at
least has a body, he differs greatly from Scrip-
ture,
which
says
about the
good angels,
Who makes the
spirits his
own
angels,
n
23
and about the
bad angels, uwhen
an unclean
spirit
has
come out of a
man,
etc.
1124
PHILOSOPHER If Plato had been
in
agreement with Scripture
in
every
instance, he would not have been an Academic. But
why
do you con-
sider him to
be
contrary to Scripture in
view
of the above,
when
the
same
Scripture accords
with
him in
this very
issue? For Gregory
says in his
Moralia [Commentary
on
JobL
By
comparison with our
bodies they are spirits,
but
by comparison
with
the
highest and
infinite
Spirit
they ought to be
called bodies.
25
And
Augustine, in
a
chapter
of his
Enchiridion
asks,
What
sort
of bodies
do
angels
have?f/
26
[4] DUKE An example which tries to resolve one dispute
by
means
of
another achieves nothing.
7
But tell
me
whose
opinion
you support
and how you explain these authors.
PHILOSOPHER Since
each opinion
is defended by a great judge, and
on
this point neither
danger
nor
salvation of
the
soul is
at
stake,
we
confirm
or condemn neither. But those who
hold
that angels are
corporeal explain the authorities that seem to contradict them as fol-
lows: air is
sometimes
called a spirit, as
in The
spirit of God moved
upon
the
face of
the
water ;
28
whence the inhalation and
exhalation
of air is called
breathing
[spirare}
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I
BOOK
ONE
s1Therefore, angels are spirits-that is, thin aerial or
ethereal
bodies-so
that
by their natural agility they are able at once to be
here and
somewhere
else. As is the case of the visual beam,
which
nobody
doubts
is material,
it
is
at
one
moment
in
the
east and
then
suddenly in the west, and touches sun and
earth
almost
in
the
same
instant. As a result of this, some believe that demons
have
a knowl-
edge of the future. For when
someone
consults them
about
some-
thing
they
do
not know, for example, whether a friend tarrying abroad
will
soon
return,
immediately,
in
the wink of an eye, they arrive at
that
place where
he
is; seeing
that
he has already begun
the
journey
back, they count how many days
he
will take to return, and say, He
will
arrive
at
such
and
such
a
time.
11
Similarly, a
human
being could
look
into the future if his
sight
were not deficient or the swelling of
the
earth
did
not prevent him
seeing further, when he turns his eyes
in
the direction of that person.
[6]
Others
believe
that
demons read
men's
minds because, before
anyone
can
tell that I want something, they
often
predict what it is;
however, they do this not from knowledge, but from conjecture.
29
For
fi: om
time immemorial, by long practice and experience, they
are used.to recognizing
the
signs
that
precede, accompany,
or
follow
an
event.
Thus when
they see signs preceding an event, they care-
fully turn over
in their minds
what
it may be. As when, for example,
they see someone often directing his gaze to a woman: because they
know
that
where there is pain there is a hand and where there is
love there is an
eye,
30
seeing that he turns pale at one moment and
blushes at the next, that he stammers or
talks
brokenly, they conjec-
ture he is in love,
but
do not really know.
[7]
So
it is that
demons
were
never
certain
about
Christ
while
He was
on earth. For they saw in
Him
some signs typical of man,
such as hunger, thirst, and such like; others typical of God, such as
bringing the dead
back to
life and healing
the
blind. But thinking
in
their own pride
that
it
would
not be fitting for God to become man,
they Were
unaware
of what Christ was. For if they
had known
this,
they would never have urged men
to
crucify Him.
[8]
DUKE
I see the point of those
who
hold that angels are bodies; but
as
to those
who say
those same
angels are spirits, I do not know how
they interpret
the
authorities cited above.
PHILOSOPHER. Those who hold this
opinion explain Gregory s au-
thority as follows: the angels share this with the Creator, that they
are
not
bodies; they
have this in common with our
bodies, that they
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THE ELEMENTS
13
are confined within one place, so that nothing of them exists outside
it, whereas the Creator is everywhere in his totality.
[9] Therefore, by comparison
with
our bodies they are spirits,
but
compared with the
Creator
who
is spirit
uncircumscribed
by
place, they should be called bodies. For they are like bodies in
that
they
are confined within one place. It does not follow, however, that
if they
are bodies by comparison
with the
Creator,
they
1
are, there-
fore,
bodies : in the same way
human
wisdom, compared to divine
knowledge, is nothing,
although it
is
not true
that human wisdom
is nothing.
Again, one might say that the earth, by comparison with
the heavens, has no dimension; this, however, does not
mean
that
the
earth
has no dimension.
[ro]
DUKE
It is
certain
that
such deductions can be disproved by
many similar examples, but
it
is not clear to me how
they
explain
Augustine's authority.
PHILOSOPHER. They
maintain that Augustine,
when he
asks
what
types of bodies angels have
is actually asking what bodies
they
assume when
they
appear
to
men in human form: as in
the
case of
the
three angels who appeared to Abraham
at
the
foothill of Mamre,
when he saw
three but adored one;
3
or in
the
case of those who
were received as guests
by
Lot;
32
or with
that
angel
who
led Tobias
the younger
to
Raguel.
33
Augustine asks
in
these cases
whether they
are really human bodies
or
other kinds of bodies having the appear-
ance of men.
[rr] DUKE
It is
not
safe
to
go
on
disputing such issues. Let us, there-
fore, dismiss them
and deal with the other invisible things.
PHILOSOPHER.
Apart
from the
angels
the
souls of men are invisible.
But because
we
are
to speak about
man
later
let us
defer talking
about them until then, so that the discussion of man may be a single
continuous piece.
34
Further the two upper elements are invisible, so
we will discuss them
next
together with the other two.
6. The
Elements
[r] DUKE Since you intend dealing with
the
elements, would you
please take
your
time over it. For
it
is impossible for
something
to
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4 BOOK ONE
gain praise for both haste and perfection; moreover, no author has
given an accurate account of
the
elements.
35
PHILOSOPHER. I
shall
do as you wish, but before I deal with the ele-
ments,
I
ask
you not to require necessary reasons in every case: it is
quite sufficient for us to provide probable reasons.
36
But compare
our
account
with the
accounts of
other
writers
and
give your approval to
those who in your opinion have written best on this subject. For it
should not be asked who said something, but
what they
said. How-
ever1 I do not deny
that
personal excellence should give greater
distinction to a
g ~ o
work.
[2J
DUKE I shall be satisfied
with
mere probability,
when
necessity
cannot be found.
PHILOSOPHER
n element
is
what
is found
to
be the first thing in the
constitution of a body and
the
last in its resolution.
37
First
in
the con-
stitution
is
that
which constitutes
but
is not constituted; last in
the
resolution is
that which
divides
but
is not divided.
Now
reason de-
mands
that
just
as each body
can be
divi