The Didascalicon de Studio Legendi by Hugo of Saint Victor
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. On the Origin of the Arts
Chapter 2. That Philosophy Is the Art of Arts and the Discipline of Disciplines
Chapter 3. On the Threefold Power of the Soul, and That Only the Human Being Has Reason
Chapter 4. What Things Belong to Philosophy
Chapter 5. On the Rise of the Theoretical, Practical, and Mechanical Arts
Chapter 8. On the Threefold Power of the Soul
Chapter 9. On the Restoration of the Human Being
Chapter 1. On the Distinction of the Arts
Chapter 4. On the Quaternity of the Soul
Chapter 5. On the Quaternity of the Body
Chapter 15. Definition of the Quadrivium
Chapter 17. What Is Proper to Each Art
Chapter 18. Comparison of the Above
Chapter 20. The Division of Mechanics into Seven
Chapter 21. The First: Weaving
Chapter 22. The Second: Armament
Chapter 23. The Third: Navigation
Chapter 24. The Fourth: Agriculture
Chapter 25. The Fifth: Hunting
Chapter 26. The Sixth: Medicine
Chapter 27. The Seventh: Theatrics
Chapter 28. On Logic, Which Is the Fourth Part of Philosophy
Chapter 1. On the Order and Manner of Reading, and on Discipline
Chapter 2. On the Authors of the Arts
Chapter 3. Which Arts Should Especially Be Read
Chapter 4. On the Two Kinds of Writings
Chapter 5. That Each Art Must Be Given What Belongs to It
Chapter 6. What Is Necessary for Study
Chapter 7. On Natural Capacity, as It Belongs to Nature
Chapter 8. On the Order of Reading
Chapter 9. On the Manner of Reading
Chapter 14. On Zeal for Inquiry
Chapter 1. On the Study of Divine Scriptures
Chapter 2. On the Order and Number of the Books
Chapter 3. On the Authors of the Divine Books
Chapter 6. On the Authors of the New Testament
Chapter 7. That the Rest Are Apocrypha, and What Apocrypha Means
Chapter 8. The Meanings of the Names of the Divine Books
Chapter 9. On the New Testament
Chapter 10. On the Gospel Canons
Chapter 11. On the Canons of Councils
Chapter 12. The Four Principal Synods
Chapter 13. Those Who Made Libraries
Chapter 14. Which Writings Are Authentic
Chapter 1. On Certain Properties of Sacred Scripture and the Manner of Reading
Chapter 2. On the Threefold Understanding
Chapter 3. That Things Also Signify in Divine Scripture
Chapter 6. The Fruit of Divine Reading
Chapter 7. How Scripture Should Be Read for the Correction of Morals
Chapter 8. That Reading Belongs to Beginners, Work to the Perfect
Chapter 1. How Sacred Scripture Should Be Read by Those Seeking Knowledge in It
Chapter 2. On the Order Found in the Disciplines
Chapter 5. On Tropology, That Is, Morality
Chapter 6. On the Order of the Books
Chapter 7. On the Order of Narration
Chapter 8. On the Order of Exposition
Chapter 12. On the Manner of Reading
Chapter 13. That Meditation Is to Be Passed Over Here
Chapter 14. A Division Containing Philosophy
Elder’s Notes
The Didascalicon de Studio Legendi was written by Hugo of St. Victor, an influential theologian who taught at the Abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris over a thousand years ago. This book is a classical manual on studying the liberal arts. If you’ve read the Book of Memory, you’ll be familiar with Hugo’s contributions to the mnemonic arts. This book doesn’t cover those contributions, instead it’s an excellent guide to learning the liberal arts.
It’s been translated before by Jerome Taylor, but I wanted a more accessible version that people could read on the web. This book deserves a wider audience.
This translation is in a more casual register. It’s not a diplomatic transcription. I recommend the Taylor translation for those who can afford it, but this is a passable and free alternative.
Editing of this work is still in progress.
Preface
There are many people whom nature has left so lacking in natural ability that they can scarcely grasp even what is easy to understand. Among these I think there are two kinds. Some know their dullness, yet with whatever strength they have they strain toward knowledge; by persevering in study they deserve, through the effect of their will, what they cannot fully obtain through the effect of their work. Others, because they feel unable to grasp the greatest things, neglect even the least. Resting secure in their own torpor, they lose the light of truth in the greatest matters all the more because they refuse to learn the lesser things they could understand. Of such the Psalmist says, “They refused to understand, that they might do well.” It is one thing not to know and another thing not to wish to know. Not knowing belongs to weakness; hating knowledge belongs to a corrupt will.
There is another sort of person whom nature has richly endowed with intelligence and for whom she has provided an easy entrance to truth. Yet, although the strength of intelligence is unequal among people, not all have the same virtue or will to cultivate natural understanding by exercise and teaching. Many, too much entangled in worldly affairs and cares, or given over to bodily vices and pleasures, bury God’s talent in the earth and seek from it neither the fruit of wisdom nor the interest of good work. These are truly detestable. Others are hindered from learning by poverty and slender means. Yet we do not think they can be fully excused by this, since we see many who labor under hunger, thirst, and nakedness still reach the fruit of knowledge. It is one thing not to be able, or rather not easily to be able, to learn; it is another thing to be able and not to wish to know. As it is more glorious, when resources are lacking, to grasp wisdom by virtue alone, so it is more shameful to have a vigorous mind, to abound in wealth, and to grow numb in idleness.
Two things chiefly instruct a person in knowledge: reading and meditation. Reading holds the first place in instruction, and this book treats it by giving rules for reading. Three rules are especially necessary: first, that one know what ought to be read; second, in what order it ought to be read, that is, what comes first and what follows; third, how it ought to be read. This book treats each of these. It instructs both the reader of secular writings and the reader of divine writings. Therefore it is divided into two parts, each with three divisions. The first part teaches the reader of the arts; the second teaches the reader of divine Scripture. It first shows what should be read, then in what order and in what manner.
In the first part, so that it may be known what should be read, and especially what should be read, it first numbers the origin of all the arts; then their description and division, that is, how each contains another or is contained by another, dividing philosophy from its highest point down to its final members. Then it names the authors of the arts and shows which arts in particular should be read. Afterward it explains the order and manner of reading them. Finally it prescribes a discipline of life for readers, and so the first part ends.
In the second part it determines which writings should be called divine. Then it gives the number and order of the divine books, their authors, and the meanings of their names. Afterward it treats certain properties of divine Scripture that are especially necessary. Then it teaches how sacred Scripture should be read by one who seeks in it the correction of morals and a pattern of life. Finally it teaches the one who reads it from love of knowledge, and so the second part also comes to an end.
Book I
Chapter 1. On the Origin of the Arts
Of everything worth seeking, wisdom comes first. Perfect goodness takes shape in wisdom. Wisdom enlightens a person so that he can know himself. Without self-knowledge, a human being is no better than the other creatures, even though he was made to stand above them.
The soul is immortal. Wisdom enlightens it and lets it see where it comes from. Then it understands how unworthy it is to look outside itself for what could satisfy it from within. The inscription on Apollo’s tripod read: “Know yourself.” If people did not forget their own origin, they would understand that everything subject to change is nothing.
A saying accepted among philosophers holds that the soul is composed from all the parts of nature. In Plato’s Timaeus, entelechy is formed from divided and undivided substance and joined with sameness and difference. What is divided among external things is gathered within the soul by one inward nature. In this way the soul can receive visible forms and also rise, through reason, to invisible causes.
Because the soul resembles every nature, it draws all things into itself by a power native to it. Varro, in the Periphysion, calls this “the wise mobility of the soul.” He says that the soul moves itself, and that this movement does not run through stretches of place but through moments of time. When the soul moves through the senses toward sensible things, it draws images from them; when it rises toward intelligible things, it shapes itself in their likeness.
It is not true, as some have claimed, that the soul is spread through bodies in bodily quantity and so divided into parts. Rather, because it has the power of reason, it receives the likenesses of all things into itself. This power is where the search for wisdom begins. The soul does not remember having existed before the body, as Plato thought. Instead, once joined to the body, it begins to know both itself and the things outside itself through the senses.
When sensible forms strike the senses, the soul wakes to them. It then distinguishes likeness from unlikeness and considers the natures of things. Since the soul cannot grasp the truth of things unless it first knows itself, philosophy begins with this task: each person must know what he is.
Chapter 2. That Philosophy Is the Art of Arts and the Discipline of Disciplines
Philosophy is the love, pursuit, and friendship of wisdom. Not just any wisdom is meant here, but the wisdom that needs nothing, the living mind and single first reason of all things. The love of wisdom is the enlightening of an intelligent mind by that pure wisdom; it is also, in a sense, the mind being called back and summoned to itself. To pursue wisdom, then, is to enter friendship with divinity and with that pure mind.
This wisdom shares the benefit of its divinity with every kind of soul and restores each soul to the strength and purity that belong to its nature. From it come true contemplation and true thought, and also the holy and pure chastity of deeds. Philosophy is the art of arts and the discipline of disciplines. Every art and every discipline looks toward it.
An art is anything that works on matter as its subject and reaches completion through action. Architecture is an example, since it works in wood. A discipline, by contrast, works through contemplation and unfolds through reasoning alone. Logic is an example. Philosophy is the art of arts and the discipline of disciplines because all other arts and disciplines fall under it.
Philosophy is also the discipline that investigates fully the reasons of all things, human and divine. In another sense, too, philosophy is the art of arts and the discipline of disciplines: it alone knows how to give the reason for all things, while the other arts and disciplines do not. Every art has its own principles, but philosophy examines the principles of them all.
Chapter 3. On the Threefold Power of the Soul, and That Only the Human Being Has Reason
In living bodies, the soul has a threefold power. One power gives life to the body, so that once born it grows and is nourished. Trees, grasses, and all roots fixed in the earth have this power. Another power gives the body sense-perception and judgment; all animals have it. A third power has its strength in mind and reason, and only human beings have this.
The first power is called vegetative, because it gives growth and nourishment. The second is called sensitive, because through it the body receives present things by the five senses. The third is called rational, because through it the soul understands absent things, judges present things, and searches out hidden things.
In plants, the soul’s power is so bound to the body that it cannot move outward into sensation. In animals, it goes beyond nourishment and growth into sensation and movement. In human beings, it not only gives life to the body and stirs the senses, but also rises into intelligence. It examines causes, compares present things with absent things, and recognizes the invisible through the visible.
Among mortal creatures, reason belongs to human beings alone. The human soul is not content with what the senses report. It asks why something is, what it is, where it comes from, what end it tends toward, and how it should be judged. This rational power is the source of the arts, because the arts take shape when reason considers the order of things and discovers how nature works.
Chapter 4. What Things Belong to Philosophy
Philosophy contains every human action and every human study. Nothing lies outside philosophy if it belongs either to knowledge or to the ordering of life. Within philosophy, some things concern contemplation, some action, some making, and some speech. From these come the four principal parts: theoretical, practical, mechanical, and logical.
Theoretical philosophy seeks truth. Practical philosophy considers moral discipline. Mechanical philosophy governs the works of human labor. Logical philosophy supplies the rules for speech and disputation. These four parts include every art by which human life is taught, corrected, protected, or adorned.
Some have divided philosophy into three parts and left out the mechanical arts, because they regarded those arts as low and servile. But that division is incomplete. Human life is restored not only by knowledge and moral discipline, but also by the arts that relieve bodily weakness. For that reason, the mechanical arts must be counted among the parts of philosophy.
Chapter 5. On the Rise of the Theoretical, Practical, and Mechanical Arts
Before sin, human beings knew truth without error, did good without difficulty, and had what they needed without lack. After sin, ignorance darkened knowledge, disordered desire weakened action, and bodily need imposed labor. Human effort therefore had to be trained by disciplines, so that the damage caused by ignorance, vice, and weakness could be repaired.
Theoretical philosophy arose as a remedy for ignorance. Practical philosophy arose as a remedy for vice. Mechanical philosophy arose as a remedy for bodily weakness. In theoretical philosophy, the mind is enlightened so that it can know the truth. In practical philosophy, life is instructed so that it can love the good. In mechanical philosophy, human need is helped so that bodily frailty can be sustained.
For the restoration of human nature, then, three remedies were found: wisdom against ignorance, virtue against vice, and relief for necessity against weakness. Because human beings fell inwardly through ignorance and disordered love, and outwardly through bodily need, philosophy provides restoration both within and without.
Chapter 6. On the Three Works
There are three works: God’s work, nature’s work, and the artisan’s work. God’s work is to create what did not exist. Thus it is said: “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” Nature’s work is to bring into act what lay hidden in seed. Thus trees are born from the earth, animals from their seed, and all bodies from their own causes.
The artisan’s work is to join together things already created and shaped by nature. A house is made from wood and stone; a garment from wool; a ship from timbers. The artisan does not create substance, but changes the form of things already made. The divine work creates nature; the natural work unfolds what has been created; the artisan’s work imitates nature by using what nature supplies.
These three works should be kept distinct. Creation belongs to God alone. Generation belongs to nature. Composition belongs to the artisan. The artisan follows nature, nature follows God, and God, who needs no one, is the cause of all.
Chapter 7. What Nature Is
Nature is not a simple word. Sometimes it means the essence of a thing, as when we say that human nature is rational mortality. Sometimes it means the force implanted in things, by which each thing is brought to its own activity. Sometimes it means the order of the whole world, by which all things arise, are nourished, and pass away according to their own causes.
Whatever exists from itself, without beginning and without change, is not nature but the author of nature. By contrast, whatever does not exist from itself, but receives being from another cause and so begins to exist, belongs to nature. Nature therefore includes the whole created world, visible and invisible, insofar as it has been brought into being.
Nature is divided into two parts. One part makes; the other is made. The nature that makes is the invisible order and power placed in things by God, through which each thing produces its own effects. The nature that is made is the visible form of things as they emerge into act. The first works inwardly; the second appears outwardly.
Chapter 8. On the Threefold Power of the Soul
The soul has three powers: one by which it gives life to the body, one by which it senses through the body, and one by which it understands beyond the body. By the first, it nourishes, grows, and preserves bodily life. By the second, it receives sensible forms through sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. By the third, it grasps what is incorporeal and judges what the senses bring in.
The first power is shared by plants, animals, and human beings. The second is shared by animals and human beings. The third belongs to human beings alone among mortal creatures. In this third power the image of God shines out most clearly, because through it the soul is capable of wisdom and can return to its creator by knowledge and love.
The rational soul, then, reaches the lowest things through the body, the middle things through sense, and the highest things through intelligence. It touches the earth through bodily life; it moves among sensible things through sensation; it rises above bodily things through reason. For this reason, the human being stands, in a sense, as a middle creature: joined to what is below by the body, and open to what is above by the mind.
Chapter 9. On the Restoration of the Human Being
Human beings are restored through knowledge and virtue. Knowledge repairs ignorance; virtue repairs vice. Since human beings lost both light and uprightness through sin, they must be restored by learning truth and loving the good. The arts were discovered for this restoration.
Some arts restore the likeness of divine wisdom in us by teaching truth. Some restore moral order by training conduct. Some restore bodily weakness by providing food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and the other supports required by this mortal life. Human life, after falling into confusion, is gathered back toward order by these arts.
The purpose of learning is not mere curiosity, but restoration. We learn so that we may know ourselves, know the world, and know God. We act so that the will may be corrected. We make and labor so that bodily need may be relieved. All of philosophy, rightly understood, serves this human healing.
Chapter 10. On the Three Kinds of Things
There are three kinds of things: divine, natural, and artificial. Divine things neither begin nor pass away, but always remain the same. Natural things arise by nature and pass away by nature. Artificial things are made by human work from the materials of nature.
Divine things are studied by theology. Natural things are studied by physics and the other speculative disciplines. Artificial things are studied by the mechanical arts. Yet all of them fall under philosophy, because philosophy searches out the reason of every thing according to its kind.
Artisan fire differs from natural fire not in substance, but in use. Natural fire burns by its own force. Artisan fire is applied by human skill to some work, as when metal is softened, clay is baked, or food is prepared. In the same way, the mechanical arts do not make new natures, but apply natural things to human use.
Chapter 11. On the Rise of Logic
Logic arose because human beings needed rules for speaking truly and arguing correctly. Since truth is sought through reasoning, and reasoning is expressed through speech, speech itself had to be disciplined. Otherwise the mind would be led into error by confused words, false arguments, and deceitful conclusions.
Logic therefore teaches the forms of words, propositions, arguments, and syllogisms. It shows what follows from what, what contradicts what, and how truth can be defended against falsehood. It is not mainly concerned with things as they are in themselves, but with the ways the mind speaks about things and reasons from one thing to another.
Some have called logic a part of philosophy; others have called it an instrument of philosophy. It can rightly be called both. It is a part because it has its own subject and method. It is an instrument because every part of philosophy uses reasoning and speech. Without logic, the other disciplines cannot proceed safely, since they must explain what they discover and defend what they teach.
There are two parts of logic: grammar and the science of disputation. Grammar teaches correct speech. Disputation teaches truthful argument. Grammar considers words as they are properly put together in speech. Disputation considers arguments as they are ordered toward proof. Both are necessary, because speech must first be correct, and then reasoning must be true.
The science of disputation is divided into probable, sophistical, and demonstrative reasoning. Probable reasoning seeks what is persuasive and credible. Sophistical reasoning imitates truth with false appearances. Demonstrative reasoning proves what is necessary. Logic distinguishes among them so that the mind will not be deceived by what only looks true, but will learn to recognize truth itself.
Book II
Chapter 1. On the Distinction of the Arts
Philosophy is the love of wisdom: the wisdom that needs nothing, the living mind and one first reason of all things. This definition mainly explains the word itself. In Greek, philos means love, and sophia means wisdom; from these comes philosophy, the love of wisdom. The added phrase, “the wisdom that needs nothing, the living mind and one first reason of all things,” points to divine wisdom. This wisdom is said to need nothing because it contains all things without lacking anything, and because it sees all things at once: past, present, and future. It is called the living mind because whatever has once existed in divine reason is never erased by forgetfulness. It is the first reason of things because all things have been formed according to its likeness.
Some say that the subject matter of the arts always remains. All the arts do this and aim at this: that the divine likeness in us may be restored. That likeness is form in us and nature in God. The more we are conformed to it, the wiser we are. Then what has always existed in his reason begins to shine again in us; what passes away in us remains unchangeable with him.
Philosophy may also be called the art of arts and the discipline of disciplines, that is, the goal toward which all arts and disciplines look. An art may mean knowledge made up of artistic precepts and rules, as in writing; a discipline may mean complete knowledge, as in teaching. Or art may be the name for treating something probable and open to opinion, while discipline is the name for discussing, by true arguments, things that cannot be otherwise. Plato and Aristotle wanted this difference to stand between art and discipline. Or again, art may be the name for something made in underlying matter and worked out through practice, as in architecture; discipline may be the name for something that consists in contemplation and is worked out by reasoning alone, as in logic.
Again, philosophy is meditation on death. This especially suits Christians, who trample down worldly ambition and live by disciplined conduct in the likeness of the homeland to come. Again, philosophy is the discipline that investigates, by reasonable argument, the causes of all divine and human things. In this sense, the reason of every field of study belongs to philosophy. Not every administration is philosophical; still, in one sense, philosophy may be said to reach all things.
Philosophy is divided into theoretical, practical, mechanical, and logical. These four contain all knowledge. Theoretical means speculative. Practical means active; it is also called ethical, or moral, because morals consist in good action. Mechanical means adulterine or artificial, because it is occupied with human works. Logical means concerned with speech, because it treats words.
Theoretical philosophy is divided into theology, mathematics, and physics. Boethius gives the same division in different terms, dividing theoretical philosophy into the intellectible, the intelligible, and the natural. By intellectible he means theology; by intelligible, mathematics; by natural, physics. He defines the intellectible in this way.
Chapter 2. On Theology
The intellectible is what always remains one and the same in itself, in its own divinity, and is grasped not by any sense but only by mind and understanding. In the investigation of true philosophy, this subject is joined to speculation on God, to the incorporeality of the soul, and to contemplation. The Greeks call it theology. The name theology means speech about divine things: theos means God, and logos means speech or reason. Theology, then, is what we do when we discuss, in some measure and with the deepest care, either the ineffable nature of God or spiritual creatures.
Chapter 3. On Mathematics
Mathematics is called doctrinal knowledge. When matesis is written with an unaspirated t, it means vanity and refers to the superstition of those who place human fates in the constellations; people of that sort are called mathematici in the bad sense. But when mathesis is written with aspirated th, it means teaching. This mathematical discipline considers abstract quantity: quantity that we separate in the intellect from matter and from other accidents, such as even, odd, and the like, and treat in reasoning alone. Teaching does this; nature does not.
Boethius calls this the intelligible. Through thought and understanding it comprehends the first part, the intellectible: all the heavenly works of the higher divinity, whatever beneath the lunar globe has a more blessed soul and a purer substance, and finally human souls. Since all these belonged to that earlier intellectible substance, they degenerated, through contact with bodies, from intellectible things into intelligible things. As a result, they are not so much objects understood as beings that understand, and they are more blessed in the purity of intelligence whenever they turn themselves toward intellectible things.
The nature of spirits and souls shares in intellectible substance because it is incorporeal and simple. But because it descends through the instruments of the senses to grasp sensible things in a non-uniform way, and because it draws their likeness to itself through imagination, it partly leaves behind its simplicity by losing the principle of composition. For what resembles a composite thing cannot be called altogether simple.
The same thing, then, is intellectible and intelligible in different respects: intellectible because it is incorporeal by nature and cannot be grasped by any sense; intelligible because it is a likeness of sensible things, though it is not itself sensible. The intellectible is what is neither sensible nor a likeness of the sensible. The intelligible is what intellect alone perceives, but it does not perceive by intellect alone, because it has imagination or sense by which it grasps things available to the senses.
It declines through contact with bodies, because, while it passes through the invisible forms of bodies by the passions of the senses and draws them into itself through imagination once they have been touched, it is divided from its own simplicity whenever it is informed by the qualities of a contrary passion. But when it climbs up from this distraction to pure intelligence and gathers itself into one, it becomes more blessed by sharing in intellectible substance.
Chapter 4. On the Quaternity of the Soul
Number itself teaches the pattern of this going out and returning. Say: three times one makes three. Say: three times three makes nine. Say: three times nine makes twenty-seven. Say: three times twenty-seven makes eighty-one. Here, at the fourth step, the first unity meets you again. You will see the same thing happen if you carry the multiplication to infinity: unity always reappears in the fourth degree.
The soul’s simple essence is most rightly expressed by unity, which is itself incorporeal. The number three, because of the unbreakable bond of the middle unity, is fittingly referred to the soul; the number four, because it has two middle terms and is therefore dissoluble, properly belongs to the body.
The soul’s first progression is this: from its simple essence, figured by the monad, it extends itself into a threefoldness of powers. By desire it seeks one thing, by anger it rejects another, and by reason it discerns between the two. It is rightly said to flow from monad into triad, because every essence is naturally prior to its power.
Again, the fact that the same unity is found three times when multiplied by three signifies that the soul exists not part by part but wholly in each of its powers. We cannot call reason alone, or anger alone, or desire alone a third part of the soul, since reason is not other than the soul or less than the soul in substance, nor is anger other or less than the soul, nor desire other or less than the soul. One and the same substance receives different names according to its different powers.
Then, in a second progression, the soul descends from the triad of powers to govern the music of the human body, which is composed in the number nine. There are nine openings in the human body, and through them, according to natural tempering, everything that enlivens and governs the body flows in and out. This too is orderly, because the soul naturally has its powers before it is joined to the body.
Afterward, in a third progression, the soul is poured outside itself through the senses and scattered among infinite actions in managing visible things. These are figured by twenty-seven, a solid number extended by three dimensions in the likeness of a body. In the fourth progression, released from the body, the soul returns to the purity of its simplicity. Therefore in the fourth multiplication, where three times twenty-seven has grown to eighty-one, the monad appears at the summit. This makes clear that the soul, after the end of this life, which is designated by eighty, returns to the unity of its simplicity, from which it first departed when it descended to govern the human body.
The prophet declares that the boundary of human life naturally lies at eighty: “If in strength, eighty years; and what is beyond them is labor and sorrow.” Some think this fourfold progression should be understood as the quaternity of the soul mentioned above, and that it is called the quaternity of the soul to distinguish it from the quaternity of the body.
Chapter 5. On the Quaternity of the Body
They also assign a quaternity to the body. As the monad corresponds to the soul, so the dyad corresponds to the body. Say: twice two makes four. Say: twice four makes eight. Say: twice eight makes sixteen. Say: twice sixteen makes thirty-two. Here, in the fourth place, the same number meets you again: the two from which the multiplication began. If you proceed to infinity, the same thing will certainly happen, so that the number two always reappears in the fourth degree.
This is the body’s quaternity. It lets us understand that everything that receives its composition from dissoluble things is itself dissoluble. I think you now see clearly enough how souls degenerate from intellectible things into intelligible things when they descend from the purity of simple intelligence, darkened by no image of bodies, to the imagination of visible things; and how they become more blessed when they gather themselves back from this distraction to the simple fountain of their nature and are formed, as if stamped with the sign of the best figure.
To speak more plainly, the intellectible in us is intelligence, and the intelligible is imagination. Intelligence is pure and certain knowledge of the principles of things alone, that is, of God, the ideas, hyle, and incorporeal substances. Imagination is the memory of the senses, formed from the traces of bodies that cling to the mind; it is the beginning of knowledge, but by itself it has nothing certain. Sense is a passion of the soul in the body, caused by qualities coming upon it from outside.
Chapter 6. On the Quadrivium
Since, as was said above, mathematics properly attends to abstract quantity, its species must be sought in the parts of quantity. Abstract quantity is nothing other than visible form according to linear dimension, impressed on the mind and existing in imagination. Its parts are twofold. One is continuous, as a tree or a stone is, and is called magnitude. The other is discrete, as a flock or a people is, and is called multitude.
Again, one kind of multitude exists by itself, as three, four, or any other number; another exists in relation to something else, as double, half, one-and-a-half, one-and-a-third, or anything of that sort. Of magnitude, one kind is movable, as the sphere of the world is; another is immovable, as the earth is. Arithmetic studies multitude in itself. Music studies multitude in relation to something else. Geometry promises knowledge of immovable magnitude. The skill of astronomical discipline claims knowledge of movable magnitude. Mathematics, therefore, is divided into arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy.
Chapter 7. On Arithmetic
In Greek, ares means virtue, and rithmus means number; from these arithmetic is called the virtue of number. The virtue of number is this: all things have been formed according to its likeness.
Chapter 8. On Music
Music took its name from water, because no euphony, that is, no pleasing sound, can occur without moisture.
Chapter 9. On Geometry
Geometry means measurement of the earth, because this discipline was first discovered by the Egyptians. When the Nile flooded and covered their boundaries with silt, confusing the borders, they began to measure the earth with rods and ropes. Later, wise people drew these methods out and extended them to measuring the spaces of sea, heaven, air, and all sorts of bodies.
Chapter 10. On Astronomy
Astronomy and astrology seem to differ in this: astronomy takes its name from the law of the stars, while astrology is named as speech about the stars. Nomia means law, and logos means speech. Astronomy, then, appears to be the discipline that treats the law of the stars and the turning of the heavens, investigating the regions, circles, courses, risings, and settings of the stars, and why each has its name.
Astrology, however, considers the stars by observing birth, death, and other events. Part of it is natural and part superstitious. It is natural when it concerns the constitutions of bodies, which vary according to the tempering of higher things, as in health, sickness, storm, fair weather, fertility, and barrenness. It is superstitious when it concerns contingent events and things subject to free will; this is the part treated by astrologers.
Chapter 11. On Arithmetic
Arithmetic takes even and odd number as its matter. Even number has three kinds: evenly even, evenly odd, and oddly even. Odd number likewise has three species. The first is prime and uncompounded; the second is secondary and compounded; the third is secondary and compounded in itself, but prime and uncompounded when compared with others.
Chapter 12. On Music
There are three kinds of music: cosmic, human, and instrumental. Cosmic music is found in the elements, in the planets, and in times. In the elements, it is found in weight, number, and measure; in the planets, in position, motion, and nature; in times, in days through the alternation of light and night, in months through the waxing and waning of the moon, and in years through the change of spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
Human music is found in the body, in the soul, and in the joining of the two. In the body, one kind is in growth, by which what is born increases; this belongs to all living things. Another is in the humors, from whose mixture the human body subsists; this is common to sentient beings. Another is in operations, which especially belongs to rational beings and is governed by the mechanical art. These operations are good if they do not exceed measure, so that desire is not fed from the same source that ought to support weakness. Thus Lucan says in praise of Cato:
For him, feasting was to have conquered hunger;
a great household was to have kept winter away with a roof;
costly clothing was to have drawn a toga,
in the Roman manner, over rough limbs.
Music in the soul is found partly in virtues, such as justice, piety, and temperance, and partly in powers, such as reason, anger, and desire. Music between body and soul is the natural friendship by which the soul is joined to the body, not by bodily bonds, but by certain affections, so that it may move the body and give it sensation. According to this friendship, no one ever hated his own flesh. This music means that the flesh should be loved, but the spirit more; that the body should be cared for, but virtue not destroyed.
Instrumental music is found in striking, as with drums and strings; in breath, as with pipes and organs; and in voice, as with poems and songs. There are also three kinds of musicians: one composes songs, another performs with instruments, and a third judges the work of instruments and song.
Chapter 13. On Geometry
Geometry has three parts: planimetry, altimetry, and cosmimetry. Planimetry measures the plane, that is, length and breadth, and extends forward and backward, rightward and leftward. Altimetry measures height and extends upward and downward; for the sea is called high, meaning deep, and a tree is called high, meaning lofty.
Cosmos means world, and from it comes cosmimetry, the measurement of the world. This measures spherical things, that is, things that are globular and round, such as a ball and an egg. It is named especially from the sphere of the world, not because it treats only the measure of the world, but because the sphere of the world is worthier than all other spherical things.
Chapter 14. On Astronomy
Nor is it contradictory that above we assigned immovable magnitude to geometry and movable magnitude to astronomy. That was said according to the first discovery, by which geometry is also called measurement of the earth. Or we can say that what geometry considers in the sphere of the world, that is, the dimension of the heavenly regions and circles, is immovable insofar as it falls under geometry’s way of considering it. Geometry does not consider motion, but space.
What astronomy contemplates, however, is movable: the courses of the stars and the intervals of times. Thus we may say generally that immovable magnitude belongs to geometry and movable magnitude to astronomy, because, although both treat the same thing, one contemplates what remains while the other considers what passes.
Chapter 15. Definition of the Quadrivium
Arithmetic, then, is the science of numbers. Music is the division of sounds and the variety of voices. Or, music or harmony is the concord of several dissimilar things brought into one. Geometry is the contemplative discipline of immovable magnitude and the description of forms, by which the boundaries of each thing are usually declared. Or, geometry is the source of senses and the origin of utterances. Astronomy is the discipline that investigates the spaces, motions, and returns of heavenly bodies at fixed times.
Chapter 16. On Physics
Physics considers the causes of things by investigating them in their effects, and effects by investigating them from their causes:
Whence trembling comes to earth, by what force the deep seas swell;
the powers of herbs, the spirits and angers of beasts,
every kind of shrub, and of stones and creeping things.
Physis means nature; for that reason, in the earlier division of theoretical philosophy, Boethius called physics natural. It is also called physiology, that is, speech about natures, which looks to the same cause. Physics is sometimes taken broadly as equivalent to theoretical philosophy. In this meaning, some divide philosophy into three parts: physics, ethics, and logic. In that division, mechanics is not included, but philosophy is limited to physics, ethics, and logic.
Chapter 17. What Is Proper to Each Art
Although all the arts tend toward the one end of philosophy, they do not all run by the same road. Each has its own proper considerations, and by these it differs from the others. Logic considers things by attending to their understandings: either by intelligence, so that they are neither the things themselves nor likenesses of them, or by reason, so that they are not the things themselves but are nevertheless likenesses of them. Logic therefore considers the species and genera of things.
Mathematics properly attends, by reason, to confused acts without confusion. For example, in actual things no line is found without surface and solidity. No body is only long in such a way that it lacks breadth or height; in every body, these three are together. Yet reason attends to a line purely in itself, without surface and thickness. This is mathematical, not because it exists that way in reality or could exist that way, but because reason often considers the acts of things not as they are, but as they can be; not in themselves, but in relation to reason itself, that is, as reason would allow them to be.
According to this consideration, continuous quantity is said to decrease into infinity, and discrete quantity to increase into infinity. Reason is so lively that it divides every long thing into long things, every broad thing into broad things, and so on, and, for reason itself, what has no interval generates interval.
Physics properly attends to the mixed acts of things without mixing them. The acts of the bodies of the world are not pure, but are composed from the acts of pure things. Although these are not found by themselves, physics nevertheless considers them purely and by themselves: the pure act of fire, or of earth, or of air, or of water; and from the nature of each considered in itself it judges the concretion and efficiency of the whole.
This also must not be passed over: physics alone properly treats things themselves; all the other arts treat the understandings of things. Logic treats those understandings according to predicamental constitution; mathematics treats them according to integral composition. Therefore logic sometimes uses pure intelligence, but mathematics is never without imagination, and for that reason has nothing truly simple.
Because logic and mathematics come before physics in the order of learning, and because they serve it in some way as instruments through which each person must first be formed before giving his labor to physical speculation, they had to place their consideration not in the acts of things, where experience is deceptive, but in reason alone, where unshaken truth remains. Then, with reason leading the way, they descend to the experience of things. Now that we have shown how Boethius’s division of theoretical philosophy agrees with the earlier one, let us briefly repeat both, so that we may compare the individual terms of each division with one another.
Chapter 18. Comparison of the Above
Theoretical philosophy is divided into theology, mathematics, and physics. Or differently, theoretical philosophy is divided into intellectible, intelligible, and natural. Or differently, theoretical philosophy is divided into divine, doctrinal, and philology. Theology, intellectible, and divine are therefore the same; mathematics, intelligible, and doctrinal are the same; and physics, philology, and natural are the same.
Some think that these three parts of theoretical philosophy are mystically signified by a certain name of Pallas, who is imagined to be the goddess of wisdom. She is called Tritona, as though tritoona, that is, third knowledge: the knowledge of God, which we called intellectible; the knowledge of souls, which we called intelligible; and the knowledge of bodies, which we called natural. It is deservedly from these three alone that the word wisdom takes its name. Although we can fittingly refer the other three, that is, ethics, mechanics, and logic, to wisdom, nevertheless we more expressly call logic eloquence, because of the eloquence of speech, and mechanics and ethics prudence or knowledge, because of their careful attention to morals and works. Theoretical philosophy alone, because it contemplates the truth of things, we call wisdom.
Chapter 19. Again
Practical philosophy is divided into solitary, private, and public; or differently, into ethical, economic, and political; or differently, into moral, dispensative, and civil. Solitary, ethical, and moral are one. Private, economic, and dispensative are also one. Public, political, and civil are likewise the same. Oeconomus means steward; from this oeconomica is called dispensative. Polis in Greek means city in Latin; from this politica is named, that is, civil. When we place the ethical part within practical philosophy, ethics must be taken strictly for the morals of one person, and it is the same as the solitary part.
The solitary part, caring for itself, raises, adorns, and increases itself with all virtues, admitting nothing in life over which it should not rejoice and doing nothing that must be repented. The private part arranges the duties of the household with moderate order. The public part, taking up care of the commonwealth, tends to the welfare of all by the skill of its providence, the balance of justice, the stability of fortitude, and the patience of temperance. The solitary part belongs to individuals, the private to heads of households, and the political to rulers of cities. Practical philosophy is called actual because it unfolds the things proposed by its operations. It is called moral because through it an honorable way of living is sought and institutions tending toward virtue are prepared. It is called dispensative when the order of household matters is wisely arranged. It is called civil when the usefulness of the whole city is administered.
Chapter 20. The Division of Mechanics into Seven
Mechanics contains seven sciences: weaving, armament, navigation, agriculture, hunting, medicine, and theatrics. Of these, three belong to nature’s outward clothing, by which nature protects itself from injuries; four belong to the inward, by which nature nourishes and fosters itself through feeding. This resembles the trivium and quadrivium, because the trivium treats voices, which are external, and the quadrivium treats understandings, which are conceived inwardly.
These are the seven handmaids that Mercury received from Philology as dowry, because every human action serves eloquence when wisdom is joined to it. As Cicero says in his book of rhetoric concerning the study of eloquence: through it life is made safe, honorable, illustrious, and pleasant. From it many advantages come to the commonwealth, if wisdom, the ruler of all things, is present. From it praise, honor, and dignity flow to those who have obtained it. From it also comes the surest and safest protection for their friends.
These arts are called mechanical, that is, adulterine or artificial, because they treat the artisan’s work, which borrows its form from nature. The other seven are called liberal either because they require free, that is, unencumbered and exercised minds, since they discuss the causes of things with subtlety, or because in antiquity only the free, that is, the noble, were accustomed to study them, while commoners and the children of the ignoble studied the mechanical arts for skill in working. In this the great diligence of the ancients appears: they wished to leave nothing untried, but to bind all things under fixed rules and precepts. Mechanics is the science to which, they say, the making of all things belongs.
Chapter 21. The First: Weaving
Weaving contains every kind of weaving, sewing, and twisting done by hand, needle, spindle, awl, reel, comb, warping-board, curling-iron, roller, or any other instruments; from any material of linen or wool, from every kind of skin, scraped or hairy, and also from hemp, cork, rushes, hairs, locks of wool, or anything else of this kind that can be turned to the use of garments, coverings, linens, cloaks, saddlecloths, bed-coverings, curtains, mats, felts, cords, nets, or ropes. Straw too, from which people customarily weave hats and baskets, belongs here. All these studies belong to weaving.
Chapter 22. The Second: Armament
The second is armament. Arms sometimes means any instruments whatever, as when we speak of the arms of war or the arms of a ship, that is, the instruments of war or of a ship. Properly, however, arms are the things by which we are covered, such as shield, breastplate, and helmet, or the things with which we strike, such as sword, double-axe, and long spear. Missiles are things we can throw, such as lance and arrow. Arms are named from armus, the arm, because they protect the arm, which we usually set against blows. Missiles are named from the Greek telon, long, because such things are long; from this also comes protelare, to prolong.
Armament, then, is called a kind of instrumental science, not so much because it uses instruments in working, as because from some mass of material lying before it, it makes what might be called an instrument. Every material of stones, woods, metals, sands, and clays belongs to it. It has two species: architecture and fabrication.
Architecture is divided into masonry, which belongs to stonecutters and masons, and carpentry, which belongs to carpenters, builders, and similar workers. Artisans in either branch polish, hew, carve, file, chisel, join, and plaster with adzes and axes, files and planes, saws and drills, scrapers, knives, trowels, and levels, working in every material: mud, brick, stone, wood, bone, sand, lime, gypsum, and the like. Fabrication is divided into hammer-work, which stretches a mass into form by striking, and casting, which brings a mass into form by pouring. Those who know how to draw the shape of a vessel out of the confusion of a mass are therefore called casters.
Chapter 23. The Third: Navigation
Navigation contains every kind of commerce in buying, selling, and exchanging domestic or foreign merchandise. It is very properly a kind of rhetoric belonging to its own genus, because eloquence is especially necessary to this profession. Hence Mercury, who is said to preside over eloquence, is called, as it were, mercatorum kyrios, the lord of merchants.
This art penetrates the secrets of the world, reaches unseen shores, crosses dreadful deserts, and carries on human commerce with barbarous nations and unknown tongues. Its practice reconciles peoples, calms wars, strengthens peace, and changes private goods into the common use of all.
Chapter 24. The Fourth: Agriculture
Agriculture has four species: arable land, which is assigned to sowing; planted land, which is devoted to trees, such as vineyards, orchards, and groves; pasture, such as meadows, valleys, and rough grazing-land; and flowering land, such as gardens and rose-beds.
Chapter 25. The Fifth: Hunting
Hunting is divided into beast-hunting, bird-catching, and fishing. Beast-hunting is practiced in many ways: with nets, traps, snares, pits, bow, darts, spear-point, driving, the scent of feathers, dogs, and hawks. Bird-catching is done with snares, traps, nets, bow, birdlime, and hook. Fishing is done with seines, nets, weirs, hooks, and spears.
The preparation of all foods, flavors, and drinks also belongs to this discipline. It takes its name, however, from one part of itself, because in antiquity people used to live more by hunting, as they still do in some regions where bread is very rare and people have meat for food and mead or water for drink.
Food is divided into bread and relish. Bread is so called either as if from ponis, because it is placed on every table, or from the Greek pan, meaning all, because no good banquet is held without bread. There are many kinds of bread: unleavened, leavened, baked under ashes, coarse bread, sponge bread, cakes, oven bread, sweet breads, fine wheat bread, starch bread, sifted flour bread, and many others. Relish is so called as something added to bread; we may call it food-stuff. It has many kinds: meats, stews, milk foods, vegetables, and fruits.
Some meats are roasted, some fried, some boiled, some raw, some salted. Others are called cured meats: bacon or taxea, ham or small ham, grease, fat, and lard. There are also many kinds of stews: Lucanian sausage, minced dishes, afrotum, Galatian mortisia, and whatever else the chief of cooks has been able to devise. Milk foods include milk, colostrum, curds, butter, cheese, and whey. Who can list all the names of vegetables and fruits? Flavors are hot or cold, bitter or sweet, dry or moist. Some drinks are only drinks, that is, they moisten but do not nourish, such as water; others are both drink and food, that is, they moisten and nourish, such as wine. Again, of the things that are food, some are food by nature, such as wine and any strong drink; others are food accidentally, such as beer and mead. Hunting therefore contains all the duties of bakers, butchers, cooks, and innkeepers.
Chapter 26. The Sixth: Medicine
Medicine is divided into two parts: occasions and operations. There are six occasions: air, motion and rest, emptying and filling, food and drink, sleep and waking, and the accidents of the soul. These are called occasions because, if they are temperate, they make and preserve health; if intemperate, they produce sickness.
The accidents of the soul are called an occasion of health or sickness because sometimes they move heat violently, as anger does, or gently, as pleasures do; sometimes they draw it inward and hide it, either violently, as terror and fear do, or gently, as anxiety does. There are also those that move the natural power inwardly and outwardly, such as sadness.
Every operation of medicine is done either inwardly or outwardly. Inwardly, as with things introduced by mouth, nostrils, ears, or anus, such as potions, vomits, powders, and the like, which are taken by drinking, chewing, or inhaling. Outwardly, as with fomentations, poultices, plasters, and surgery. Surgery is twofold: in flesh, as cutting, sewing, and burning; in bone, as setting and restoring joints.
No one should be troubled that I count food and drink among the attributes of medicine, though above I assigned them to hunting, because the same things are being considered under different aspects. Wine in the cluster belongs to agriculture, in the store-room to the cellarer, and in taste to the physician. Likewise, the preparation of foods belongs to the bakery, butcher-shop, and kitchen; the power of flavor belongs to medicine.
Chapter 27. The Seventh: Theatrics
Theatrics is called the science of games from the theater, where the people used to gather for play. It is not that play occurred only in the theater, but that the theater was a more celebrated place than the others. Some games took place in theaters, some on scaffolds, some in gymnasia, some in circuses, some in arenas, some at banquets, and some in temples.
In the theater, deeds were recited by songs, by dramatic persons, by masks, or by little hanging images. On scaffolds they led dances and danced. In gymnasia they wrestled. In circuses they competed in running, whether on foot, on horses, or in chariots. In arenas boxers exercised. At banquets they sang psalms with rhythms, musical instruments, and odes, and played dice. In temples, at solemn times, they sang the praises of the gods.
Games were counted among lawful actions because moderate movement nourishes natural heat in the body and joy restores the mind; or, what seems more likely, because the people sometimes had to gather for play, they wanted fixed places for playing, so that people would not form little assemblies in inns and commit shameful or criminal acts.
Chapter 28. On Logic, Which Is the Fourth Part of Philosophy
Logic is divided into grammar and the art of reasoning in discourse. Gramma in Greek means letter in Latin; from this grammar is named, that is, the science of letters. Strictly speaking, a letter is the figure that is written; an element is the sound that is pronounced. Here, however, letter must be taken broadly, so that we understand both voice and writing, for both belong to grammar.
Some say that grammar is not a part of philosophy but rather a kind of appendage and instrument for philosophy. Concerning the art of discourse, Boethius says that it can be both a part and an instrument of philosophy, just as foot, hand, tongue, eyes, and the like are both parts and instruments of the body. Grammar treats words simply, that is, in themselves, discussing their invention, formation, composition, inflection, utterance, and the other things that belong only to pronunciation. The art of discourse treats words according to understandings.
Chapter 29. On Grammar
Grammar is divided into letter, syllable, word, and sentence. Or, differently, grammar is divided into letters, that is, what is written, and voices, that is, what is pronounced. Or, differently again, grammar is divided into noun, verb, participle, pronoun, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection, articulated voice, letter, syllable, feet, accents, punctuation, signs, orthography, analogy, etymology, glosses, distinctions, barbarism, solecism, faults, metaplasm, figures, tropes, prose, meters, fables, and histories.
I pass over the exposition of these because it would be longer than the brevity of this little work permits, and because even in this small book I have set out only to investigate the divisions and names of things, so that a beginning of instruction may be laid down for the reader. Whoever wants to know these matters should read Donatus, Servius, Priscian On Accents, Priscian On the Twelve Verses of Vergil, Barbarismus, and Isidore’s Etymologies.
Chapter 30. On the Art of Reasoning in Discourse
The art of reasoning in discourse has invention and judgment as integral parts, but demonstration, probable argument, and sophistic as divisive parts. Demonstration deals with necessary arguments and belongs to philosophers. Probable argument belongs to dialecticians and rhetoricians. Sophistic belongs to sophists and quibblers.
Probable argument is divided into dialectic and rhetoric, and each of these has invention and judgment as integral parts. Since the genus itself, that is, the dissertive art, is constituted integrally by invention and judgment, they must be found together in the composition of all its species. Invention teaches how to find arguments and construct argumentations. The science of judging teaches how to judge both.
One may ask whether invention and judgment are contained under philosophy. They seem to fall under neither theoretical, nor practical, nor mechanical philosophy, nor even under logic, where they would seem most to belong. They are not contained under logic, because they are contained neither under grammar nor under the dissertive art. They are not contained under the dissertive art, since they constitute it integrally, and no thing can be both an integral and a divisive part of the same genus at the same time. Thus philosophy would seem not to contain every science.
But science is usually understood in two ways: as one of the disciplines, as when I say that dialectic is a science, that is, an art or discipline; and as any knowledge whatever, as when I say that someone who knows something has science. For example, if I know dialectic, I have science; if I know how to swim, I have science; if I know that Socrates is the son of Sophroniscus, I have science. In general, everyone who knows something may be said to have science.
Yet it is one thing to say, “Dialectic is a science,” meaning an art or discipline, and another to say, “Knowing that Socrates is the son of Sophroniscus is science,” meaning knowledge. For every science that is an art or discipline, it is true to say that it is a divisive part of philosophy. But we cannot say universally that every science that is knowledge is a divisive part of philosophy. Still, absolutely every science, whether a discipline or any knowledge whatever, is a part of philosophy, either divisive or integral.
A discipline is a science that has an absolute end, in which the purpose of the art is perfectly unfolded. This does not apply to the sciences of finding and judging, because neither is complete by itself. Therefore they cannot be called disciplines, but parts of a discipline, namely of the dissertive art.
Again, one may ask whether invention and judgment are the same parts of dialectic and rhetoric. It seems unfitting that two opposed genera should be constituted by exactly the same parts. Therefore one may say that these two words are equivocal when applied to the parts of dialectic and rhetoric. Or, what is perhaps better, we may say that invention and judgment are properly parts of the dissertive art and are named univocally by these words, though in the lower species of this genus they differ from one another by certain properties. These differences are not distinguished by the words invention and judgment, because through these words they are signified not according to the way they compose the species, but according to the way they are parts of the genus.
Grammar is the science of speaking without fault. Dialectic is acute disputation distinguishing true from false. Rhetoric is the discipline suited to persuading whatever needs to be persuaded.
Book III
Chapter 1. On the Order and Manner of Reading, and on Discipline
Philosophy is divided into theoretical, practical, mechanical, and logical. Theoretical philosophy is divided into theology, physics, and mathematics. Mathematics is divided into arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. Practical philosophy is divided into solitary, private, and public. Mechanical philosophy is divided into weaving, armament, navigation, agriculture, hunting, medicine, and theatrics. Logic is divided into grammar and the art of reasoning in discourse. The art of reasoning in discourse is divided into demonstration, probable argument, and sophistic. Probable argument is divided into dialectic and rhetoric.
This division includes only the divisive parts of philosophy. There are still other subdivisions of these parts, but these are enough for now. If, then, you look only at their number, you will find twenty-one; if you want to count their degrees, you will find twenty-eight. Different authors are read for these sciences. Some discovered the arts by beginning them, others by expanding them, others by perfecting them, and so several authors are often reported for the same art. From these I will list below the names of a few.
Chapter 2. On the Authors of the Arts
Among the Greeks, Linus was a theologian; among the Latins, Varro; and in our own time John Scotus wrote on the ten categories in relation to God. Among the Greeks, Thales of Miletus, one of the seven sages, discovered natural physics; among the Latins, Pliny described it. Pythagoras of Samos discovered arithmetic; Nicomachus wrote on it. Among the Latins, Apuleius first translated it, and then Boethius. This same Pythagoras also made the Mathen tetrados, that is, the book on the doctrine of the quadrivium, and invented the Y as a likeness of human life.
Moses says that the discoverer of music was Tubal, from the stock of Cain. The Greeks say it was Pythagoras; others say Mercury, who first established the tetrachord; others say Linus, or Zethus, or Amphion. They say geometry was first discovered in Egypt, and that its best author among the Greeks was Euclid. Boethius translated his art. Eratosthenes too was very acute in geometry and discovered the circumference of the world.
Some say that Ham, the son of Noah, first discovered astronomy. The Chaldeans first taught astrology through the observation of birth. Josephus, however, asserts that Abraham first taught astrology to the Egyptians. Ptolemy, king of Egypt, restored astronomy. He also established canons by which the courses of the stars are found. Some say that the giant Nimrod was a very great astrologer, and astronomy is also found under his name. The Greeks say that this art was first devised by Atlas; for this reason he too is said to have held up the heavens.
Socrates discovered ethics, on which he wrote twenty-four books according to positive justice. After him Plato, his disciple, wrote many books On the Republic according to both kinds of justice, namely natural and positive. Then Tullius arranged books On the Republic in Latin. Fronto the philosopher also wrote a book of Strategemata, that is, military stratagems.
Mechanics had many authors. Hesiod of Ascra was the first among the Greeks to devote himself to describing rural matters, and Democritus came after him. Mago the Carthaginian also wrote the study of agriculture in twenty-eight volumes. Among the Romans, Cato first established a work On Agriculture, which Marcus Terentius later polished. Vergil too made the Georgics; after him came Cornelius and Julius Atticus, and Aemilianus, or Columella, the distinguished orator, who embraced the whole body of this discipline. Vitruvius also wrote On Architecture, and Palladius On Agriculture.
They report that Minerva first showed the use of weaving among the Greeks. They also believe that she first set the loom in order, colored wools, and invented the olive and craft. Daedalus learned from her, and after her he too is believed to have made craft. In Egypt, Isis, daughter of Inachus, discovered the use of sowing flax and showed how garments could be made from it. In the same place she likewise discovered the use of wool. In Libya, the use of wool first arose from the temple of Ammon.
Ninus, king of the Assyrians, first stirred up wars. They believe Vulcan was the first smith, but sacred history names Tubal. Prometheus first discovered the use of the ring by impressing a stone in a circle of iron. The Pelasgians first discovered the use of ships. Ceres first discovered the use of grain in Greece at Eleusis, and Isis in Egypt. Pilumnus in Italy discovered the use of grain and spelt, and the rite of grinding and pounding; Tagus in Spain discovered the manner of sowing. Osiris in Egypt discovered the cultivation of vineyards, Liber among the Indians. Daedalus first made a table and chair. A certain Apicius first composed the equipment of the kitchen; in the end, after spending his goods on it, he died by his own choice.
Among the Greeks, Apollo was the author of medicine. His son Aesculapius enlarged it in fame and in practice. After he died by a thunderbolt, the care of healing was long interrupted and lay hidden for almost five hundred years, until the time of King Artaxerxes. Then Hippocrates, born on the island of Cos to his father Asclepius, called it back into the light.
Games are believed to have begun with the Lydians, who came from Asia and settled in Etruria under their leader Tyrrhenus. There, among the other rites of their superstitions, they established spectacles. The Romans imitated this custom after summoning performers from there, and from this games were called ludi from the Lydians.
The letters of the Hebrews are believed to have begun with Moses through the Law, and those of the Chaldeans and Syrians with Abraham. Isis discovered the letters of the Egyptians; the Phoenicians discovered those of the Greeks, which Cadmus the Phoenician brought into Greece. Carmentis, mother of Evander, whose proper name was Nicostrata, discovered the Latin letters.
Moses first wrote divine history. Among the gentiles, Dares the Phrygian first issued the Trojan history, which they say he wrote on palm leaves. After Dares, Herodotus was held to be the first historian in Greece; after him Pherecydes flourished in the same period in which Ezra wrote the Law. Alcmon of Croton is believed to have first invented fables.
Egypt is the mother of the arts; from there they came into Greece, and then into Italy. Grammar was first discovered there in the time of Osiris, the husband of Isis. Dialectic too was first discovered there by Parmenides, who fled cities and human assemblies, settled on a rock for quite some time, and so devised dialectic. From this the rock was called the rock of Parmenides.
After the death of Socrates his teacher, Plato moved to Egypt for love of wisdom. There, after receiving the liberal studies, he returned to Athens, gathered disciples at the Academy, his estate, and devoted himself to the studies of philosophy. He first established rational logic for the Greeks, which Aristotle, his disciple, afterward enlarged, perfected, and brought into an art. Marcus Terentius Varro first translated dialectic from Greek into Latin. Afterward Cicero discovered the Topics. Demosthenes, the son of a craftsman, is believed to have discovered rhetoric among the Greeks; Tisias among the Latins, and Corax at Syracuse. This art was written in Greek by Aristotle, Gorgias, and Hermagoras, and translated into Latin by Tullius, Quintilian, and Titianus.
Chapter 3. Which Arts Should Especially Be Read
From all the sciences listed above, the ancients singled out seven in particular for the education of students. They saw such usefulness in these, beyond all the others, that whoever had firmly grasped their discipline could afterward come to knowledge of the rest more by inquiry and exercise than by listening to a teacher. They are like the best instruments and first elements, preparing a road for the mind toward full knowledge of philosophical truth. From this came the names trivium and quadrivium, because by these, as by certain roads, the lively mind enters the secrets of wisdom. At that time no one seemed worthy of the name master who could not profess knowledge of these seven sciences.
Pythagoras is also said to have kept this custom in his studies: for seven years, according to the number of the seven liberal arts, none of his disciples was allowed to ask the reason for what he said. Each had to trust the master’s words until he had heard everything, and then he could find the reason for them by himself. Some are said to have learned these seven with such zeal that they held all of them plainly in memory; afterward, whatever writings they took up, whatever questions they proposed to solve or prove, they did not search through the leaves of books for rules and reasons to define what was doubtful, but had each thing ready at once in the heart.
This is why there were so many wise people then that they themselves wrote more than we can read. But students in our own day either do not wish or do not know how to keep a fitting method in learning, and therefore we find many students but few wise people. It seems to me that the reader must be guarded with no less care against spending his labor on useless studies than against remaining lukewarm in a good and useful pursuit. It is bad to do a good thing negligently; it is worse to spend much labor in vain. Since not everyone has the discretion to understand what is useful for him, I will briefly show the reader which writings seem more useful to me, and then add a few words about the manner of learning.
Chapter 4. On the Two Kinds of Writings
There are two kinds of writings. The first kind is made up of those properly called arts. The second is made up of those that are appendages of the arts. Arts are writings placed under philosophy, that is, writings that have some fixed and determinate part of philosophy as their matter, such as grammar, dialectic, and the rest of this kind. The appendages of the arts are writings that only look toward philosophy, that is, writings occupied with some matter outside philosophy. Sometimes, however, they touch on certain things torn from the arts, scattered and confusedly; or, if they are simple narration, they prepare the way to philosophy.
Of this kind are all the songs of the poets, such as tragedies, comedies, satires, heroic poems, lyric poems, iambics, and certain didactic poems, and also fables and histories. So too are the writings of those whom we now customarily call philosophers, who are used to stretching a brief matter through long windings of words, obscuring an easy sense by tangled speech, or even compiling diverse things together as if making one picture from many colors and forms.
Notice what I have distinguished for you. There are two things: the arts and the appendages of the arts. Between these there seems to me to be as great a distance as the poet says there is between the pliant willow and the pale olive, or between the lowly lavender and crimson roses. Therefore, whoever wishes to reach knowledge, if he leaves behind the truth of the arts and entangles himself in the rest, will find a great, not to say endless, matter for labor and only a small fruit. In short, the arts can make a reader complete without their appendages, but the appendages without the arts can bestow no perfection, especially since they have nothing desirable in themselves to invite the reader except what has been transferred from the arts and borrowed from them; nor does anyone seek anything in them except what belongs to the arts.
For this reason it seems to me that labor must first be given to the arts, where the foundations of all things are found and where pure and simple truth is opened, especially to those seven which I mentioned before, which are the instruments of all philosophy. Afterward the rest too may be read, if there is time, because playful things mixed with serious ones sometimes give more delight, and rarity makes a good thing precious. Thus we sometimes hold more eagerly a thought found in the middle of a fable. Nevertheless, in the seven liberal arts lies the foundation of all learning. They must be kept ready at hand before all the others, since without them philosophical discipline is not accustomed, and is not able, to explain and define anything. These arts cling together and need one another’s reasons in turn so closely that, if even one is lacking, the others cannot make a philosopher. Hence those seem to me to be mistaken who, not noticing this coherence among the arts, choose certain arts from among them and think they can become complete in these while leaving the others untouched.
Chapter 5. That Each Art Must Be Given What Belongs to It
There is another error, not much smaller than this one, and we must avoid it with all care. Some people, although they omit nothing from the things that should be read, do not know how to give each art what belongs to it, but read everything into everything. In grammar they dispute about the nature of syllogisms; in dialectic they inquire into case-endings. What is still more laughable, they read nearly the whole book in the title, and scarcely get through the “Here begins” by the third lesson. People of this kind do not teach others; they show off their own knowledge. Yet I wish they appeared to everyone as they appear to me.
Notice how perverse this habit is: the more superfluous things you pile together, the less you can grasp or retain the useful ones. In every art, therefore, two things must chiefly be discerned and distinguished by us: first, how one ought to treat the art itself; second, how one ought to apply the reasons of that art to other things. There are two things: to treat an art and to treat something through an art. For example, to treat an art is to treat grammar; to treat through an art is to treat something grammatically. Distinguish these two: to treat grammar and to treat grammatically. The one who treats grammar handles the rules given about words and the precepts belonging to this art. Everyone who speaks or writes according to rule acts grammatically.
Therefore treating grammar belongs only to certain writings, such as Priscian, Donatus, and Servius; but acting grammatically belongs to all writings. When, then, we treat any art, especially in teaching, where everything should be narrowed to brevity and made easy to understand, it should be enough to explain the matter at hand as briefly and openly as possible. If we multiply too many foreign reasons, we will confuse the reader more than build him up. Not everything should be said that we are able to say, lest the things we ought to say be said less usefully. Finally, in each art seek what is known to belong especially to it. Then, after you have read the arts and learned by disputing and comparing what is proper to each one, it will at last be permitted to compare the reasons of the individual arts with one another, and by looking at them alternately to investigate in turn the things you had understood less fully before. Do not multiply side paths until you have learned the footpaths. You will run about safely when you no longer fear losing your way.
Chapter 6. What Is Necessary for Study
Three things are necessary for students: nature, exercise, and discipline. In nature we consider whether a person easily perceives what he has heard and firmly retains what he has perceived. In exercise, we consider whether he cultivates his natural sense by labor and diligence. In discipline, we consider whether, by living praiseworthily, he joins his conduct to his knowledge. We will now touch briefly on each of these three by way of introduction.
Chapter 7. On Natural Capacity, as It Belongs to Nature
Those who give themselves to learning ought to be strong in both intellect and memory. These two cling together in every study and discipline in such a way that, if one is lacking, the other cannot lead anyone to perfection. Gains are useless where safekeeping is lacking, and someone fortifies storehouses in vain if he has nothing to store in them. Intellect finds wisdom, and memory keeps it. Intellect is a certain power naturally planted in the soul, capable in itself. It comes from nature, is helped by use, is dulled by immoderate labor, and is sharpened by measured exercise. Hence someone has said elegantly enough: “I want you at last to spare yourself; labor is in pages; run through the air.” Two things exercise intellect: reading and meditation. Reading is when we are instructed by rules and precepts from what has been written. Reading is of three kinds: that of the teacher, that of the learner, and that of one inspecting by himself. We say, “I read the book to him,” “I read the book from him,” and “I read the book.” In reading, order and manner must especially be considered.
Chapter 8. On the Order of Reading
Order is considered in one way among disciplines, as when I say that grammar is prior to dialectic, or arithmetic prior to music; in another way among books, as when I say that the Catilinarian comes before the Jugurthine; in another way in narration, which is found in a continuous sequence; and in another way in exposition. Order among disciplines is attended according to nature; in books, according to the person of the author or the subject matter; in narration, according to arrangement, which is twofold: natural, when a matter is reported in the order in which it happened, and artificial, when what happened later is narrated first and what happened first is told afterward.
In exposition, order is considered according to inquiry. Exposition contains three things: the letter, the sense, and the meaning. The letter is the fitting arrangement of words, which we also call construction. The sense is a certain easy and open signification that the letter presents at first sight. The meaning is a deeper understanding, which is found only by exposition or interpretation. In these the order is that first the letter, then the sense, then the meaning is sought. When this has been done, the exposition is complete.
Chapter 9. On the Manner of Reading
The manner of reading consists in dividing. Every division begins from finite things and proceeds all the way to infinite things. Everything finite is better known and can be comprehended by knowledge. Teaching begins from the things that are better known, and by knowledge of them reaches knowledge of the things that lie hidden. Moreover, we investigate by reason, to which dividing properly belongs, when we descend by division from universals to particulars and investigate the natures of individual things. Every universal is more determinate than its particulars. Therefore, when we learn, we ought to begin from the things that are better known, more determinate, and more comprehensive, and so, descending little by little and distinguishing individual things by division, investigate the nature of what is contained within them.
Chapter 10. On Meditation
Meditation is frequent thought with counsel, prudently investigating the cause and origin, the manner and usefulness, of each thing. Meditation begins from reading, but it is bound by none of reading’s rules or precepts. It delights to run through an open field, where it may fix a free gaze on the truth to be contemplated, now touching these causes of things, now those, and now penetrating the deepest matters, leaving nothing doubtful, nothing obscure. Therefore the beginning of learning is in reading, its completion in meditation. If anyone has learned to love meditation familiarly and has wished to give himself to it often, it makes life very pleasant and gives the greatest consolation in tribulation.
Meditation especially separates the soul from the noise of earthly actions, and even in this life lets it taste beforehand, in some measure, the sweetness of eternal rest. And when, through the things that have been made, it has learned to seek and understand the one who made all things, then it instructs the mind with knowledge and at the same time floods it with joy. From this comes the greatest delight found in meditation. There are three kinds of meditation. One consists in the circumspection of morals, another in the scrutiny of commandments, the third in the investigation of divine works. Morals are concerned with vices and virtues. A divine commandment is one thing when it commands, another when it promises, another when it threatens. The work of God is what power creates, what wisdom governs, and what grace cooperates in. The more attentively each person is accustomed to meditate on God’s wonders, the more he knows how worthy of admiration all these things are.
Chapter 11. On Memory
Concerning memory, I think this above all must not be passed over here: just as intellect investigates and finds by dividing, so memory keeps by gathering. Therefore the things we have divided while learning must be gathered when they are entrusted to memory. To gather is to reduce what has been written or disputed at greater length to a certain brief and compact summary, which the ancients called an epilogue, that is, a short recapitulation of the things said above. Every treatment has some principle on which the whole truth of the matter and the force of its meaning rests, and to which all other things are referred. To seek and consider this is to gather. There is one spring and many streams; why follow the winding courses of the rivers? Hold the spring and you have the whole.
I say this because human memory is dull and delights in brevity; if it is divided among many things, it becomes less in each. Therefore in every doctrine we ought to gather something brief and certain, to be stored in the little chest of memory, from which the rest may afterward be drawn when the matter requires it. This too must often be repeated and recalled from the belly of memory to the palate, lest it grow stale through long interruption. Therefore I beg you, reader, do not rejoice too much if you have read many things, but if you have understood many things, and not only understood them but been able to retain them. Otherwise neither reading much nor understanding it is of much use. For this reason I remember saying above that those who give themselves to learning need intellect and memory.
Chapter 12. On Discipline
A wise man, when asked about the manner and form of learning, said: a humble mind, zeal for inquiry, a quiet life, silent scrutiny, poverty, and a foreign land are the things that often unlock the obscurities of reading for many. I think he had heard the saying, “Character adorns knowledge.” Therefore he joined precepts for living to precepts for reading, so that the reader might know both the manner of his life and the reason of his study. Knowledge stained by an impure life is not praiseworthy. For this reason, anyone who seeks knowledge must take the greatest care not to neglect discipline.
Chapter 13. On Humility
The beginning of discipline is humility. Though there are many proofs of humility, three especially belong to the reader: first, that he hold no knowledge and no writing cheap; second, that he be ashamed to learn from no one; third, that when he has gained knowledge, he not despise others. Many are deceived by this: they wish to seem wise before the proper time. From this they break out into a kind of swollen pride, so that they begin to pretend to be what they are not and to be ashamed of what they are; and the farther they withdraw from wisdom, the more they think not that they are wise, but that they are thought wise. I know many of this sort. Though they still need the first elements, they deign to be present only for the highest things, and they think they become great by this alone: if they have read the writings of great and wise men or heard their words.
“We saw them,” they say. “We read from them. They often used to speak to us. Those highest and famous men knew us.” But I wish no one knew me and I knew everything. You boast of having seen Plato, not of having understood him. I suppose it is beneath you from now on to listen to me. I am not Plato, nor did I deserve to see Plato. It is enough for you: you have drunk from the very fountain of philosophy. But I wish you were still thirsty. A king, after golden cups, drinks from an earthen vessel. Why are you ashamed? You have heard Plato; hear Chrysippus too. The proverb says: “What you do not know, perhaps Ofellus knows.” There is no one to whom it has been given to know everything, and again no one who has not received something special from nature.
Therefore the prudent reader gladly listens to everyone, reads everything, despises no writing, no person, no teaching. Without preference he seeks from all what he sees is lacking in himself, and he considers not how much he knows, but how much he does not know. From this comes the Platonic saying: “I would rather learn another’s words modestly than thrust forward my own shamelessly.” Why are you ashamed to learn, and not ashamed not to know? This shame is greater than that. Or why do you reach for the heights when you are lying at the bottom? Consider rather what your strength can bear. The one who walks in order walks most suitably. Some, while they want to make a great leap, fall into a pit. Do not hurry too much, then. In this way you will come more quickly to wisdom.
Gladly learn from everyone what you do not know, because humility can make common to you what nature made proper to each person. You will be wiser than all if you are willing to learn from all. Those who receive from all are richer than all. Finally, hold no knowledge cheap, because all knowledge is good. If there is time, despise no writing, or at least do not despise reading it. If you gain nothing, you lose nothing, especially since in my judgment there is no writing that does not offer something desirable if it is treated in its fitting place and order, and no writing that does not have something special which the diligent searcher of words may pluck, not found elsewhere, and therefore the more gratefully because the more rarely. Yet nothing is good if it takes away something better. If you cannot read everything, read the more useful things. Even if you could read everything, the same labor should not be spent on all. Some things should be read so they are not unknown; others so they are not unheard of, because sometimes we think more highly of what we have not heard, and a thing is more easily valued when its fruit is known.
You can now see how necessary this humility is for you: that you despise no knowledge and gladly learn from everyone. It is similarly useful for you that, when you begin to know something, you not despise others. This vice of swollen pride happens to some because they look too carefully at their own knowledge, and when they seem to themselves to be something, they think others whom they do not know neither are nor could have been such. From this too it boils up that certain triflers today, boasting for reasons I cannot tell, accuse the earlier fathers of simplicity and believe that wisdom was born with them and will die with them. They say that in the divine utterances there is such a simple manner of speaking that there is no need to hear masters in them, and that anyone can penetrate the secrets of truth sufficiently by his own ability. They wrinkle their noses and twist their mouths at readers of divinity, and they do not understand that they wrong God, whose words they proclaim simple with a beautiful word, but insipid with a twisted sense.
It is not my counsel to imitate such people. The good reader ought to be humble and gentle, wholly alien from empty cares and the enticements of pleasures, diligent and earnest, so that he gladly learns from all, never presumes on his own knowledge, avoids the authors of perverse doctrine as poisons, learns to handle a matter for a long time before he judges it, seeks not to seem learned but to be learned, loves the sayings of the wise once he has understood them, and always strives to keep them before his eyes like the mirror of his face. And if some things, perhaps more obscure, do not yield to his understanding, let him not at once burst out into blame, as though nothing were good except what he himself could understand. This is the humility of the discipline of readers.
Chapter 14. On Zeal for Inquiry
Zeal for inquiry belongs to exercise. In this the reader needs exhortation more than teaching. Whoever wishes to look carefully at what the ancients endured for love of wisdom, and what memorable monuments of their virtue they left to posterity, will see that his own diligence, however great, is inferior. Some trampled honors underfoot, some cast away riches, some rejoiced when they received injuries, some despised punishments. Others left the company of human beings, entered the remotest retreats and secrets of the desert, and dedicated themselves to philosophy alone, so that they might be freer for contemplation the less they had subjected the mind to any desires that usually hinder the path of virtue.
Parmenides the philosopher is said to have sat for fifteen years on an Egyptian rock. Prometheus is remembered as exposed to a vulture on Mount Caucasus because of his excessive care in meditating. Since they knew that the true good is hidden not in the opinion of human beings but in a pure conscience, and that those who cling to perishable things and do not recognize their own good are no longer human, they therefore showed by the very distance of their dwelling places how much they differed from others in mind and understanding, so that one habitation would not hold those whom one intention did not join. Someone was reporting to a philosopher, saying, “Do you not see that people laugh at you?” He answered, “They laugh at me, and donkeys laugh at them.” Consider, if you can, how highly he valued being praised by those whose blame he did not fear.
It is also read of another that, after all his studies of disciplines and refinements of the arts, he came down to the work of a potter. And when the disciples of another were praising their master, they boasted, among other things, that he did not lack skill in shoemaking. I would wish this diligence to be present in our readers, so that wisdom might never grow old in them. Abishag the Shunammite alone warmed the aged David, because love of wisdom does not desert its lover even when the body withers. Nearly all the powers of the body change in the old, and as wisdom alone increases, the rest decrease. For the old age of those who instructed their youth with honorable deeds becomes more learned with age, more sober through practice, wiser with the passage of time, and it gathers the sweetest fruits of former studies.
Hence that wise man of Greece, Themistocles, when he saw that he was dying after completing one hundred and seven years, is said to have grieved to leave life just when he had begun to be wise. Plato died writing in his eighty-first year. Socrates completed ninety-nine years in the grief and labor of teaching and writing. I pass over the other philosophers: Pythagoras, Democritus, Xenocrates, Zeno, and Eleantes, who flourished in the studies of wisdom at a very advanced age.
I come to the poets: Homer, Hesiod, Simonides, and Stesichorus, who in great age sang something swanlike and sweeter than usual when death was near. When Sophocles, after extreme old age and neglect of his household estate, was accused of madness by his sons, he recited to the judge the story of Oedipus, which he had recently written, and showed such a specimen of wisdom in an age already broken that he turned the severity of the courts into the favor of the theater. Nor is it surprising, since Cato the Censor, the most eloquent of the Roman race, was neither ashamed nor despairing of learning Greek letters in old age. Surely Homer relates that from the tongue of Nestor, already old and almost decrepit, speech flowed sweeter than honey. Notice, therefore, how greatly they loved wisdom, since even decrepit age could not call them back from seeking it.
This great love of wisdom and this abundance of prudence in the old is fittingly gathered also from the meaning of the name mentioned above. Abishag means “my father is overflowing,” or “the roaring of my father.” By this it is shown that the most abundant thunder of divine speech, beyond the human voice, dwells in the old. For overflowing in this place signifies fullness, not excess. Shunammite in our language is called scarlet, which can quite fittingly signify the fervor of wisdom.
Chapter 15. On the Four Remaining Precepts
The four things that follow are arranged alternately, so that one always looks to discipline and the next to exercise.
Chapter 16. On Quiet
Quiet of life, whether inward, so that the mind does not run about through unlawful desires, or outward, so that leisure and opportunity are available for honorable and useful studies, belongs to discipline in both ways.
Chapter 17. On Scrutiny
Scrutiny, that is, meditation, looks to exercise. Scrutiny seems to be contained under zeal for inquiry. If this is true, it is repeated unnecessarily, since it was counted in the earlier part. But there is this difference between the two: zeal for inquiry signifies persistence in the work, while scrutiny signifies diligence in meditation. Labor and love carry out the work; care and wakefulness bring forth counsel. In labor there is doing; in love, bringing to completion. In care there is foreseeing; in wakefulness, attending.
These are the four attendants who carry the litter of Philology, because they exercise the mind over which Wisdom presides. The chair of Philology is the seat of Wisdom. It is said to be carried with these beneath it because wisdom advances by exercising itself in them. Hence, beautifully, the young men are said to hold the front of the litter because of their strength: philos and kophos, that is, love and labor, because they carry out the work outwardly. At the back are the maidens, namely philemia and agrimnia, which mean care and wakefulness, because they bring forth counsel inwardly in secret. Some think that the chair of Philology signifies the human body, over which the rational soul presides and which four servants carry, that is, which the four elements compose. Of these, the two higher elements, fire and air, are masculine in act and name, while the two lower, earth and water, are feminine.
Chapter 18. On Frugality
He also wished to commend poverty to readers, that is, not to pursue superfluous things. This belongs especially to discipline. For, as they say, a fat belly does not beget a subtle understanding. But what will the students of our time be able to answer to this, who not only disdain to follow frugality in their studies, but even labor to seem richer than they are? Now no one boasts of what he has learned, but of what he has spent. Perhaps this is because they do not wish to imitate their masters; and I do not find what I could say worthily enough about them.
Chapter 19. On Exile
Finally, a foreign land is set down, and it too exercises a person. The whole world is exile for those who philosophize; yet, as someone says, “By some sweetness I do not know, native soil draws everyone and does not let them forget itself.” It is a great beginning of virtue for the practiced mind to learn, little by little, first to exchange these visible and transitory things, so that afterward it can also leave them behind.
The one to whom his homeland is sweet is still tender; the one to whom every soil is homeland is already strong; but the one to whom the whole world is exile is perfect. The first has fixed his love on the world, the second has scattered it, the third has extinguished it. I have been an exile from childhood, and I know with what grief the soul sometimes leaves the narrow floor of a poor hut, and with what freedom afterward it despises marble hearths and paneled ceilings.
Book IV
Chapter 1. On the Study of Divine Scriptures
Not every writing that speaks of God or of invisible goods should be called divine, and writings of that kind are not the only ones called divine. In the books of the gentiles we find many things written with sufficiently probable reason about the eternity of God, the immortality of souls, the everlasting rewards of virtues, and the punishments of the wicked; yet no one doubts that such books are unworthy of this name. Again, when we run through the sequence of the Old and New Testaments, we see that it is woven almost entirely from the condition of the present life and from events carried out in time, while only rarely are some things clearly set forth about the sweetness of eternal goods and the joys of heavenly life. Yet the Catholic faith is accustomed to call these Scriptures divine.
The writings of philosophers are like a mud wall that has been whitewashed: outside they shine with the brightness of eloquence, and if they sometimes put forward the appearance of truth, they cover the mud of error by mixing in false things, as if a color had been spread over it. By contrast, the divine words are most fittingly compared to a honeycomb: because of the simplicity of their speech they look dry, but within they are full of sweetness. From this it is clear that they have rightly received such a name, for they alone are found so free from the contagion of falsity that they are proved to contain nothing contrary to truth.
The divine Scriptures are the writings produced by worshipers of the Catholic faith and received by the authority of the universal Church for the strengthening of that same faith, so that they are counted among the divine books and kept for reading. Besides these, there are very many other little works written at different times by religious and wise people. Although the authority of the universal Church has not approved them, nevertheless, because they do not differ from the Catholic faith and also teach some useful things, they are counted among the divine utterances. Perhaps we show these better by enumerating them than by defining them.
Chapter 2. On the Order and Number of the Books
All divine Scripture is contained in the two Testaments, the Old and the New. Each Testament is distinguished into three orders. The Old Testament contains the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa; the New contains the Gospel, the Apostles, and the Fathers.
The first order of the Old Testament, that is, the Law, which the Hebrews call thorath, has the Pentateuch, that is, the five books of Moses. In this order the first is bresith, which is Genesis; the second hellesmoth, which is Exodus; the third vaiecra, which is Leviticus; the fourth vaiedaber, which is Numbers; the fifth adabarim, which is Deuteronomy.
The second order is that of the Prophets. This contains eight volumes. The first is Joshua ben Nun, that is, the son of Nun, who is also called Joshua, Jesus, and Jesus Nave; the second is sophtim, which is the book of Judges; the third is Samuel, which is the first and second books of Kings; the fourth is malachim, which is the third and fourth books of Kings; the fifth is Isaiah; the sixth Jeremiah; the seventh Ezekiel; the eighth thareasra, which is the Twelve Prophets.
Then the third order has nine books. The first is Job; the second David; the third masloth, which in Greek sounds as Parables and in Latin as Proverbs, namely those of Solomon; the fourth coeleth, which is Ecclesiastes; the fifth sira syrin, that is, the Song of Songs; the sixth Daniel; the seventh dabrehiamin, which is Chronicles; the eighth Ezra; the ninth Esther. All together, therefore, they make twenty-two. Besides these there are certain other books, such as the Wisdom of Solomon, the book of Jesus son of Sirach, the book of Judith, Tobias, and the books of the Maccabees, which are indeed read but are not written in the canon.
The first order of the New Testament has four volumes: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The second likewise has four: the Epistles of Paul, fourteen in number and woven together under one volume; the canonical Epistles; the Apocalypse; and the Acts of the Apostles. In the third order the first place is held by the Decretals, which we call canons, that is, regular writings. After these come the writings of the holy fathers and doctors of the Church: Jerome, Augustine, Gregory, Ambrose, Isidore, Origen, Bede, and many other orthodox writers, so many that they cannot be numbered. From this it plainly appears how great a fervor they had in the Christian faith, for whose defense they left so many and such great works to be remembered by posterity. It also accuses our own laziness, since we cannot even read what they were able to dictate.
In these orders the agreement of the two Testaments especially appears: just as after the Law came the Prophets, and after the Prophets the Hagiographa, so after the Gospel came the Apostles, and after the Apostles the Doctors followed in order. And by a certain wonderful plan of divine dispensation it has come about that, although full and perfect truth stands in each of them, none is superfluous. We have briefly touched on these things concerning the order and number of the divine books so that the reader may know what matter has been prescribed for him.
Chapter 3. On the Authors of the Divine Books
Moses wrote the five books of the Law. Joshua himself, whose name is inscribed on the book of Joshua, is believed to have been its author. They say that the book of Judges was edited by Samuel. Samuel himself wrote the first part of the book of Samuel, but David wrote the following parts down to the end. Jeremiah first gathered malachim into one volume, for before that it had been scattered through the histories of the individual kings.
Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel each made their own books, which are inscribed with their names. The book of the Twelve Prophets is also marked beforehand with the names of its authors. Their names are Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. They are called minor because their discourses are brief, and for this reason they are comprehended in one volume. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, however, are the four major prophets, each distinguished by his own volume.
Some believe that Moses wrote the book of Job, others that one of the prophets wrote it, and some that Job himself wrote it. David produced the book of Psalms, but Ezra afterward arranged the Psalms as they now are and added the titles. Solomon composed Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs. Daniel was the author of his own book. The book of Ezra is marked with the title of its author; in its text the words of the same Ezra and of Nehemiah are contained together. Ezra is believed to have written the book of Esther. The book of Wisdom is nowhere among the Hebrews, and for this reason even its title smells more of Greek eloquence. Certain Jews affirm that it belongs to Philo. Jesus son of Sirach, a Jerusalemite, grandson of Jesus the high priest whom Zechariah mentions, most certainly composed the book of Ecclesiasticus. It is found among the Hebrews, but is held among the apocrypha. As for Judith, Tobias, and the books of the Maccabees, the second of which, as Jerome testifies, is proved to be rather Greek, it is hardly clear which authors wrote them.
Chapter 4. What a Library Is
A library, or bibliotheca, takes its name from the Greek, since it is a place for storing books: biblio means books, and theca a repository. After the Law had been burned by the Chaldeans, when the Jews returned to Jerusalem, Ezra the scribe, inspired by the divine Spirit, restored the library of the Old Testament. He corrected all the volumes of the Law and Prophets that had been corrupted by the gentiles, and he set the whole Old Testament in twenty-two books, so that there would be as many books in the Law as there were letters.
Moreover, there are five double letters among the Hebrews: caph, mem, nun, phe, and sade. Through these they write the beginnings and middles of words in one way, and the ends in another. From this also five books are considered double by many: Samuel, malachim, dabrehiamin, Ezra, and Jeremiah with cynoth, that is, his Lamentations.
Chapter 5. On Translators
The first translators of the Old Testament were the seventy translators whom Ptolemy, surnamed Philadelphus, king of Egypt and most acute in every kind of literature, had translate the Scriptures of the Old Testament from the Hebrew language into Greek speech. In his zeal for libraries he was emulating Pisistratus, tyrant of the Athenians, who first established a library among the Greeks, and Seleucus Nicanor, Alexander, and the other earlier men who had devoted themselves to wisdom. He brought into his library not only the writings of the nations but also the divine writings, so that in his time seventy thousand books were found at Alexandria. Requesting the Scriptures of the Old Testament from Eleazar the high priest, he had them translated into Greek.
Separated one by one in individual cells, they translated everything through the Holy Spirit in such a way that nothing was found in the copy of any one of them that differed from the others even in the order of words. For this reason their translation is one. But Jerome says that faith should not be given to this matter. Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion make the second, third, and fourth translations. The first of these, Aquila, was a Jew, but Symmachus and Theodotion were Ebionite heretics. Nevertheless usage prevailed so that, after the seventy translators, the churches of the Greeks received and read their copies.
The fifth is the common version, whose author is unknown; hence it has claimed for itself especially the name fifth. The sixth and seventh are Origen’s, whose copies Eusebius and Pamphilus made public. The eighth is Jerome’s, which is deservedly preferred to the others, for it holds more closely to the words and is clearer in the transparency of its sense.
Chapter 6. On the Authors of the New Testament
Many wrote gospels, but some, without the Holy Spirit, tried more to arrange a narration than to weave the truth of history. Therefore the holy fathers, taught by the Holy Spirit, rejected the others and received only four into authority: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in likeness to the four rivers of Paradise, the four poles of the ark, and the four living creatures in Ezekiel.
Matthew first wrote his Gospel in Hebrew. Mark wrote second, in Greek. Luke, the most learned in Greek speech among all the evangelists, since he was a physician in Greece, wrote his Gospel to Bishop Theophilus, to whom the same man also wrote the Acts of the Apostles. John wrote the fourth and last Gospel. Paul wrote fourteen epistles: ten to churches and four to persons. Many say that the last, to the Hebrews, is not Paul’s, and some suspect that Barnabas wrote it, others Clement. The canonical Epistles are seven: one of James, two of Peter, three of John, and one of Jude. John the apostle, banished into exile on the island of Patmos, wrote the Apocalypse.
Chapter 7. That the Rest Are Apocrypha, and What Apocrypha Means
These are the writers of the sacred books, who, speaking through the Holy Spirit, wrote for our instruction the precepts and rule of living. Besides these, other volumes are called apocrypha. They are called apocrypha, that is, secret, because they come into doubt. Their origin is hidden, and it is not clear to the fathers through whom the authority of the true Scriptures has come down to us by a most certain and well-known succession. In these apocryphal writings, even if some truth is found, nevertheless because of many false things there is no canonical authority in them. They are rightly judged not to be by those to whom they are ascribed. For many writings are brought forward by heretics both under the names of the prophets and, more recently, under the names of the apostles; all these, under the name of apocrypha, have been removed from canonical authority by careful examination.
Chapter 8. The Meanings of the Names of the Divine Books
Pentateuch is named from five volumes, for penta in Greek means five, and teuchus means volume. Genesis is so called because the generation of the world is contained in it; Exodus from the departure of the children of Israel from Egypt; Leviticus because it follows out the ministries of the Levites and the diversity of sacrifices. The book of Numbers is called so because in it the tribes that went out from Egypt and the forty-two stations through the desert are numbered. Deutrus is a Greek word of two syllables and means second; nomia means law. From this Deuteronomy is named, as though a second law, because in it the things that were said more diffusely in the preceding three books are repeated.
In the book of Joshua, which the Hebrews call Joshua ben Nun, the land of promise is divided for the people. The book of Judges is named from the rulers who judged the people of Israel before there were kings among that people. Some join the history of Ruth to it under one volume. The book of Samuel is named because it describes his birth, priesthood, and deeds. Although it also contains the history of Saul and David, nevertheless both are referred to Samuel because he anointed both. Malach in Hebrew means kings in Latin; from this malachim is named, because it sets out in order the kings of Judah and of the Israelite nation and their deeds.
Isaiah, an evangelist rather than a prophet, issued his book, whose whole text proceeds in the prose of eloquence. The Song, however, runs in hexameter and pentameter verse. Jeremiah likewise issued his book with his Threni, which we call Lamentations, because they are applied to sad matters and funerals. In them he composed a fourfold alphabet in different meter. The first two are written as if in Sapphic meter, because a heroic clause concludes the three little verses that are joined to each other and begin from only one letter. The third alphabet is written in trimeter, and the same three verses begin from three letters each. The fourth alphabet is held to be like the first and second. Ezekiel has a more obscure beginning and end. The Twelve Prophets are one volume.
Among the Hebrews, the beginnings and endings of the book of Job are woven in prose speech; but the middle of it, from the place where he says, “Let the day perish in which I was born,” to the place, “Therefore I reprehend myself and do penance,” all runs in heroic meter. The book of Psalms is called in Greek Psalterium, in Hebrew nabla, in Latin an instrument. It is called the Psalter because, when one prophet sang to the psaltery, the choir answered in harmony. From this they comprehend the book in five divisions and in one volume of psalms. David composed the Psalms, but Ezra later arranged them.
All the Psalms and the Lamentations of Jeremiah and almost all the songs of the Scriptures among the Hebrews were composed metrically, as Jerome, Origen, Josephus, and Eusebius of Caesarea testify. For after the manner of the Roman Flaccus and the Greek Pindar, they now run in iambic, now shine in Sapphic, proceeding in trimeter or tetrameter.
Scripture most clearly teaches that Solomon was called by three names: Idida, that is, beloved of the Lord, because the Lord loved him; Coeleth, that is, Ecclesiastes; and Peaceful, because there was peace in his kingdom. Ecclesiastes is named in Greek as one who gathers an assembly, that is, the church; we can call him a preacher, one who speaks not specially to one person but to the whole assembly of the people. According to the number of his names, then, he issued three volumes. The first, which in Hebrew is inscribed masloth, in Greek Parables, in Latin Proverbs, is so called because in it he shows figures of words and images of truth under comparative likeness. These Parables are woven alphabetically at the end, from the place where he says, “Who shall find a strong woman?”, just as the Lamentations of Jeremiah and certain other songs of Scripture are. The second, which in Hebrew is coeleth, in Greek Ecclesiastes, in Latin Preacher, is so called because his discourse is directed not specially to one person, as in Proverbs, but generally to all, as to the whole assembly and church. The third is sira syrin, that is, the Song of Songs, which is as it were an epithalamium, that is, a wedding song of Christ and the Church.
In Proverbs he teaches the little child and instructs him by sayings, as if about duties; for this reason his speech is often repeated to a son. In Ecclesiastes he instructs the mature man not to think that anything in the things of the world is perpetual, but that all things we perceive are perishing and brief. Finally, in the Song of Songs, he joins the already consummated man, prepared after trampling the world, to the embraces of the Bridegroom. Not far from this order of teachings, philosophers also educate their followers: first they teach ethics, then they interpret physics, and when they see that someone has advanced in these, they lead him all the way to theology.
Daniel among the Hebrews is not held among the Prophets but among the Hagiographa. The Catholic Church does not read him according to the seventy translators, because that version differs greatly from the truth. Daniel especially, and Ezra the prophet, and one part of Jeremiah, are written indeed in Hebrew letters but in Chaldean speech. Job also has very much kinship with the Arabic language. Among the Hebrews Daniel has neither the history of Susanna, nor the hymn of the three boys, nor the fables of Bel and the Dragon.
Chronicles is called Paralipomenon in Greek, which we may call things passed over or remaining, because in that book the things that were omitted or not fully related in the Law or in the books of Kings are explained summarily and briefly. In Hebrew it is called dabrehiamin, which means words of days; more significantly we can call it the chronicle of the whole divine history. The book of Ezra is one, in which the words of the same Ezra and of Nehemiah are contained under one volume. The second, third, and fourth books are apocryphal.
The book inscribed the Wisdom of Solomon is therefore called Wisdom because in it the coming of Christ, who is the Wisdom of the Father, and his passion are clearly expressed. The book of Jesus son of Sirach is called Ecclesiasticus because it was issued with great care and reason concerning the discipline of religious conduct for the whole Church. Concerning these two books Jerome speaks in this way: “The book Panaeretus of Jesus son of Sirach is reported, and another pseudonymous book inscribed the Wisdom of Solomon. I found the former in Hebrew, marked not Ecclesiasticus, as among the Latins, but Parables. Joined to it were Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs, so that it would equal the likeness of Solomon not only in the number of books but also in the kind of its matters. The second is nowhere among the Hebrews, because even its style smells of Greek eloquence. Some of the ancient writers affirm that this belongs to Philo the Jew. Therefore, just as the Church indeed reads the books of Judith, Tobias, and the Maccabees but does not receive them among the canonical Scriptures, so let it read these two volumes for the edification of the people, not for confirming the authority of ecclesiastical doctrines.”
Therefore, just as there are twenty-two elements by which we write in Hebrew everything we say, and by whose beginnings the human voice is comprehended, so twenty-two volumes are counted, by which, as if by letters and beginnings in the doctrine of God, the still tender and nursing infancy of the just man is instructed. Some, counting the history of Ruth and the Lamentations of Jeremiah separately by themselves among the Hagiographa, add these two to the preceding twenty-two and number twenty-four books of the Old Law under the figure and number of the twenty-four elders who adore the Lamb in the Apocalypse.
Chapter 9. On the New Testament
Just as every Scripture of the Old Testament can broadly be called Law, although specially the five books of Moses are called Law, so generally the whole New Testament can be called Gospel. Nevertheless those four volumes, namely Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in which the deeds and words of the Savior are plainly unfolded, have deserved to be called Gospel specially. Gospel means good news, because it promises eternal goods, not earthly happiness, as the Old Testament does when understood according to the letter.
Chapter 10. On the Gospel Canons
Ammonius of Alexandria first devised the canons of the Gospels; afterward Eusebius of Caesarea followed him and composed them more fully. They were made so that through them we may be able to find and know which of the remaining evangelists said similar things or things proper to themselves. There are ten in number. The first contains the numbers in which the four said the same thing: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The second, those in which three said the same: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The third, those in which three said the same: Matthew, Luke, and John. The fourth, those in which three said the same: Matthew, Mark, and John. The fifth, those in which two said the same: Mark and Luke. The sixth, those in which two said the same: Matthew and Mark. The seventh, those in which two said the same: Matthew and John. The eighth, those in which two said the same: Luke and Mark. The ninth, those in which two said the same: Luke and John. The tenth, those in which each of them said certain things proper to himself.
Their explanation is this. Beside each evangelist there is a certain number fixed to the chapters. Beneath these numbers lies a little space marked with red, which indicates the canon in which the marked number is placed. For example, if the space is first, you will be in the first canon; if second, in the second; if third, in the third; and so in order you will come to the tenth. Therefore, if after opening any Gospel you wish to know which of the remaining evangelists said similar things, you take the adjacent chapter number, and you look for that same number in its canon, which the mark indicates; there you will find who said what. Then at last, in the body of the text, when the passages indicated by those numbers have been sought out, you will find that they spoke about the same matters in the individual Gospels.
Chapter 11. On the Canons of Councils
Canon in Greek means rule in Latin. Rule is so called because it leads rightly and never draws aside elsewhere. Others have said that rule is so called either because it rules, or because it offers a norm of right living, or because it corrects something distorted and crooked. The canons of general councils began from the times of Constantine. In the preceding years, while persecution was burning, no opportunity was given for teaching the peoples. Christianity was therefore split into diverse heresies, because bishops had no liberty to assemble in one place until the time of the emperor just mentioned. He gave Christians the ability to gather freely. Under him also the holy fathers, coming together from the whole world in the council of Nicaea, handed down, according to evangelical and apostolic faith, the second creed after the apostles.
Chapter 12. The Four Principal Synods
Among the other councils there are four venerable synods that chiefly contain the whole faith, like the Gospels or the same number of rivers of Paradise. The first of these, the Nicene synod of three hundred eighteen bishops, was held while Constantine Augustus ruled. In it the blasphemy of the Arian unbelief, which Arius himself asserted concerning inequality in the holy Trinity, was condemned, and the same holy synod defined through the creed that God the Son is consubstantial with God the Father.
The second synod, of one hundred fifty fathers, was gathered at Constantinople under Theodosius the Elder. Condemning Macedonius, who denied that the Holy Spirit is God, it showed that the Holy Spirit is consubstantial with the Father and the Son, giving the form of the creed which the whole confession of Greeks and Latins proclaims in the churches. The third synod, the first of Ephesus, of two hundred bishops under Theodosius Augustus the Younger, condemned by a just anathema Nestorius, who asserted two persons in Christ, showing one person of the Lord Jesus Christ in two natures.
The fourth synod, of Chalcedon, of six hundred thirty priests, was held under Prince Marcian. In it Eutyches, abbot of Constantinople, who pronounced one nature of the Word of God and the flesh, and his defender Dioscorus, a certain bishop of Alexandria, and again Nestorius himself with the remaining heretics, were condemned beforehand by one judgment of the fathers. The same synod proclaimed Christ God as born of the Virgin in such a way that in him we confess the substance of both divine and human nature.
These are the four principal synods, proclaiming the doctrine of faith most fully. But if there are any councils which the holy fathers, filled with the Spirit of God, sanctioned, after the authority of these four they remain established in all firmness, and their acts are contained in this work. Synod means company or gathering in Greek. The name council is drawn from Roman custom; for at the time when cases were handled, all came together into one place and treated matters with common intention. Therefore council is so called from common intention, as though consilium; for cilia are the eyelids, and from this consilium, counsel, is named, because in it the intention of the eyes is directed.
Epistle is a Greek word, which means sent in Latin. The canonical, that is, regular, Epistles are said to be catholic, that is, universal, because they were written not to one people or city but generally to all nations. Acts are so called from the deeds of the apostles, which they contain as plainly woven history. For in them the beginning of the newborn Church is shown, and the history of the Christian faith among the gentiles is set forth. Apocalypse means revelation. In this book John is said to have made manifest, by revealing them, the things that were hidden concerning the end of the world and were to happen in the future.
Chapter 13. Those Who Made Libraries
Among us, Pamphilus the martyr, whose life Eusebius of Caesarea wrote, strove to equal Pisistratus in zeal for a sacred library. In his library he had nearly thirty thousand volumes. Jerome also and Gennadius, searching throughout the whole world for ecclesiastical writers, followed them in order and gathered their studies into a small index of one volume.
Chapter 14. Which Writings Are Authentic
Among our writers in Greek, Origen surpassed both Greeks and Latins in the labor of Scripture by the number of his works. Jerome confesses that he read six thousand of Origen’s books. Yet Augustine surpassed the studies of all these by his genius and knowledge, for he wrote so much that one could scarcely, day and night, even copy his books, much less read them.
Other Catholic men wrote many distinguished works: Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria; Hilary, bishop of Poitiers; Basil, bishop of Cappadocia; Gregory the Theologian and Gregory Nazianzen; Ambrose, bishop of Milan; Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria; John, bishop of Constantinople; Cyril of Alexandria; Pope Leo; Proculus; Isidore of Seville; Bede; Cyprian, martyr and bishop of Carthage; Jerome the priest; Prosper; Origen, whose writings the Church neither wholly rejects nor receives in every respect; Orosius; Sedulius; Prudentius; Juvencus; and Arator.
Rufinus also produced many books and translated certain writings, but because blessed Jerome censured him in some matters concerning freedom of the will, we ought to hold the views of Jerome. Gelasius wrote five books against Nestorius and Eutyches, and treatises in the manner of Ambrose. He also wrote two books against Arius, and composed sacramental formularies, prayers, and letters of faith.
Dionysius the Areopagite, ordained bishop of the Corinthians, left many volumes of his genius. The Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea and the books of his Ecclesiastical History are not altogether rejected by the Catholic Church, because of their singular knowledge of matters useful for instruction, although in the first book of his narrative he was lukewarm and afterward wrote one book in praise and defense of Origen the schismatic. Cassiodorus also wrote a useful enough work in explanation of the Psalms. There are still others whose names I pass over here.
Chapter 15. Which Writings Are Apocryphal
The Itinerary under the name of the apostle Peter, which is called Saint Clement’s, eight books, is apocryphal. Acts under the name of the apostle Andrew are apocryphal. Acts under the name of Thomas are apocryphal. Gospels under the name of Thaddeus are apocryphal. Gospels under the name of the apostle Barnabas are apocryphal. Gospels under the name of the apostle Thomas are apocryphal. Gospels under the name of the apostle Andrew are apocryphal. The gospels falsified by Lucian are apocryphal. The gospels falsified by Ytius are apocryphal. The book On the Infancy of the Savior is apocryphal. The book On the Birth of the Savior and Saint Mary, or On the Midwife of the Savior, is apocryphal. The book called The Shepherd is apocryphal. All books made by Leucius, disciple of the devil, are apocryphal. The book called Foundation is apocryphal. The book called Treasure is apocryphal. The book On the Daughters of Adam, or Genesis, is apocryphal. The Centimeter on Christ, joined together from Vergilian verses, is apocryphal. The book called Acts of Thecla and Paul is apocryphal. The book called Nepos is apocryphal. The book of Proverbs written by heretics and marked with the name of Saint Sixtus is apocryphal.
The revelation called Paul’s is apocryphal. The revelation called that of the apostle Thomas is apocryphal. The revelation called Stephen’s is apocryphal. The book called The Passing of Saint Mary is apocryphal. The book called The Penitence of Adam is apocryphal. The book under the name of the giant Diogia, who after the flood is said by heretics to have fought with a dragon, is apocryphal. The book called The Testament of Job is apocryphal. The book called The Penitence of Origen is apocryphal. The book called The Penitence of Cyprian is apocryphal. The book called Jannes and Mambres is apocryphal. The book called The Lot of the Apostles is apocryphal. The book Lusan is apocryphal. The book of the canons of the apostles is apocryphal. The Physiologus written by heretics and marked with the name of blessed Ambrose is apocryphal.
The History of Eusebius Pamphili is apocryphal. The little works of Tertullian or Africanus are apocryphal. The little works of Postumianus and Gallus are apocryphal. The little works of Montanus, Priscilla, and Maximilla are apocryphal. All the little works of Faustus the Manichaean are apocryphal. The little works of another Clement of Alexandria are apocryphal. The little works of Cassian, priest of the Gauls, are apocryphal. The little works of Victorinus of Poitiers are apocryphal. The little works of Faustus of Riez in Gaul are apocryphal. The little works of Frumentius are apocryphal. The letter of Jesus to Abgar is apocryphal. The Passion of Cyricus and Julitta is apocryphal. The Passion of George is apocryphal. The writings called The Contradiction of Solomon are apocryphal. All phylacteries that, as they falsely claim, were written not by an angel but rather by a demon, are apocryphal.
These and similar writings, together with all the heresies that Simon Magus, Nicolaus, Cerinthus, Marcion, Basilides, Ebion, Paul of Samosata, Photinus, Bonosus, Montanus with his most obscene followers, Apollinaris, Valentinus or Manichaeus, Faustus, Sabellius, Arius, Macedonius, Eunomius, Novatus, Sabatius, Calixtus, Donatus, Eustachius, Nibianus, Pelagius, Julian, Laciensis, Coelestinus, Maximianus, Priscillian from Spain, Lampedius, Dioscorus, Eutyches, Peter and another Peter, one of whom stained Alexandria and the other Antioch, Acacius of Constantinople with his associates, and all those whose names we do not retain, together with their disciples and schismatics, taught or wrote, we confess to be not only repudiated but eliminated from the whole Catholic and Roman Church, and, with their authors and the followers of those authors, condemned forever under the indissoluble bond of anathema.
Chapter 16. Certain Etymologies Pertaining to Reading
A codex is made of many books; a book is made of one volume. Codex is so called by transfer from the trunks of trees or vines, as if from caudex, because it contains from itself a multitude of books as of branches. Volume is named from rolling. Liber is the inner bark of a tree, on which the ancients used to write before the use of paper or parchment. Hence writers were called librarii, and from this a volume is called liber.
Scheda, whose diminutive is schedula, is a Greek name. Properly, a scheda is something still being corrected and not yet reduced into books. The use of paper was first discovered at Memphis, a city of Egypt. Paper is so called because the covering of papyrus is plucked off piece by piece and glued together, and in this way paper is made; there are several kinds of it. Parchment is named from Pergamum, where it was discovered. It is also called membrane because it is taken from the members of animals. At first membranes were yellowish; later, white parchment was discovered at Rome.
Homily is so called as popular speech, as when a word is made to the people. A tractate is a many-sided exposition of one matter. Dialogue is a conversation of two or more, which the Latins call sermo. Sermo is so called because it is sown between the two. Commentaries are so called as if “with the mind,” or from comminiscor, “to devise”; for they are interpretations, as commentaries on law or on the Gospel. Some say that the books of the gentiles should be called commenta, while those on divine writings should be called expositions. Gloss is Greek and means tongue, because it in some way speaks the meaning of the word placed beneath it. Philosophers call this an adverb, because it designates in one single word the voice whose meaning is being sought; for example, conticescere means tacere, to be silent.
Book V
Chapter 1. On Certain Properties of Sacred Scripture and the Manner of Reading
The diligent reader should not be troubled that we have treated the number, order, and names of the divine books in so many different ways. It often happens that when these smallest matters are unknown, they obscure the knowledge of great and useful things. Therefore let the reader settle these matters once, so that, after these little locks have been opened at first sight, he may later run the road set before him with a free step, without having to seek new rudiments in each book. With these things settled, then, we will next treat the other matters that seem useful for the work proposed.
Chapter 2. On the Threefold Understanding
First of all, we should know that divine Scripture has a threefold mode of understanding: history, allegory, and tropology. Yet not everything found in divine speech must be twisted toward this interpretation, as though each individual thing should be believed to contain history, allegory, and tropology at the same time. Although this can fittingly be assigned in many places, observing it everywhere is difficult or impossible.
For just as in harps and instruments of this kind not everything that is touched sounds tuneful, but only the strings, while the rest of the harp’s whole body exists so that there may be something to which the strings are attached and on which they are stretched for the artist who is about to shape the sweetness of song, so in the divine utterances some things are placed there because they wish to be understood only spiritually, some serve the gravity of morals, some are said according to the simple sense of history, and some can fittingly be expounded historically, allegorically, and tropologically.
Therefore, in a wonderful way, all divine Scripture has been so fittingly adapted and arranged in its parts by the wisdom of God that whatever is contained in it either sounds the sweetness of spiritual understanding in place of strings, or, by the sequence of history and the solidity of the letter, contains the sayings of mysteries scattered through it and joins them together into one. It is like hollow wood over stretched strings, receiving their sound into itself and returning it sweeter to the ears, a sound that not only the string produced but the wood also shaped by the measure of its body. So too honey is more pleasing in the comb, and whatever is sought with greater exercise is also found with greater desire.
Therefore divine Scripture must be handled in such a way that we do not seek history everywhere, nor allegory everywhere, nor tropology everywhere, but competently assign each thing to its proper place, as reason demands. Often, however, all these can be found together in one and the same letter, so that the truth of history both suggests something mystical through allegory and at the same time shows through tropology what should be done.
Chapter 3. That Things Also Signify in Divine Scripture
We should also know that in divine speech not only words but also things have signification, a mode not usually found so much in other writings. The philosopher knows only the signification of utterances, but the signification of things is far more excellent than that of utterances, because usage established the former and nature dictated the latter. This is the voice of human beings; that is the voice of God to human beings. This voice, once spoken, perishes; that thing, once created, subsists. A voice is a thin sign of the senses; a thing is an image of divine reason.
What the sound of the mouth, which begins and ends its existence at the same time, is to the reason of the mind, the whole span of time is to eternity. The reason of the mind is the inner word, which is manifested by the sound of the voice, that is, by the outer word. And divine Wisdom, which the Father uttered from his heart, invisible in itself, is known through creatures and in creatures. From this we surely gather how deep an understanding must be sought in the sacred letters, where one comes through voice to understanding, through understanding to the thing, through the thing to reason, and through reason to truth.
Because some less learned people do not consider this, they think there is no subtlety in sacred writings where minds can be exercised, and for this reason they turn to the writings of the philosophers, because there indeed they understand nothing except the bare surface of the letter, ignorant of the power of truth. That sacred utterances use the signification of things we will show by a brief and open example. Scripture says, “Be watchful, because your adversary the devil goes around like a roaring lion.” Here, if we say that the lion signifies the devil, we must understand not the word but the thing. For if these two words, that is, devil and lion, signify one and the same thing, the likeness of the same thing to itself is unfitting. It remains, therefore, that this word lion signifies the animal itself, and the animal designates the devil. All other things must be taken in this way when we say that worm, calf, stone, serpent, and other things of this kind signify Christ.
Chapter 4. On the Seven Rules
This too requires careful attention: certain wise men have said that, among the other rules of expressions in the holy Scriptures, there are seven. The first rule concerns the Lord and his body. It speaks from one to one, and in one person shows now the head, now the body, as Isaiah says: “The Lord clothed me with the garment of salvation, as a bridegroom adorned with a crown, and as a bride adorned with her jewels.” In one person named by a double word, he manifested both the head, that is, the bridegroom, and the Church, that is, the bride. Therefore it must be noted in the Scriptures when the head is specially written, when both head and body are written, or when from either one it passes to the other, so that the prudent reader may understand what belongs to the head and what belongs to the body.
The second rule concerns the true and mixed body of the Lord. Certain things seem to fit one person which nevertheless do not belong to one person, as in this: “You are my servant Israel; behold, I have blotted out your iniquities like a cloud, and your sins like a mist. Turn back to me, and I will redeem you.” This does not fit one person. For one part is the one whose sins he has blotted out and to whom he says, “You are mine,” and another is the one to whom he says, “Turn back to me, and I will redeem you”; if they turn back, their sins are blotted out. By this rule Scripture speaks to all in such a way that the good are rebuked with the evil and the evil are praised on account of the good; but the one who reads prudently will learn what pertains to whom.
The third rule concerns letter and spirit, that is, law and grace: law, through which the commandments to be done are admonished; grace, through which we are helped so that we may do them. Or it concerns the fact that the law must be understood not only historically but also spiritually. For it is necessary both to hold faith historically and to understand the law spiritually.
The fourth rule concerns species and genus, through which a part is taken for the whole and the whole for a part, as when God speaks to one people or city and yet is understood to touch the whole world. For although the Lord threatens one city, Babylon, through the prophet Isaiah, nevertheless, while he speaks against it, he passes from species to genus and turns his discourse against the whole world. Certainly, if he were not speaking against the whole world, he would not add below in general: “And I will destroy the whole earth and visit the evils of the world,” and the other things that follow concerning the destruction of the world. From this he also added: “This is the counsel that I have thought over the whole earth, and this is the hand stretched out over all nations.” Again, after he reproves the whole world under the person of Babylon, he returns again to that same city, as if from genus to species, saying the things that specially happened to that city: “Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them.” For when Belshazzar was reigning, Babylon was taken by the Medes. So too, under the person of the one Egypt, he wishes the whole world to be understood, saying: “I will make Egyptians run against Egyptians, kingdom against kingdom,” although Egypt is described as having had not many kingdoms but one kingdom.
The fifth rule concerns times. Through it either the largest part of a time is brought in through a smaller part, or the smallest part of a time is understood through a larger part. So it is with the three days of the Lord’s burial: although he did not lie in the tomb for three full days and nights, nevertheless from a part the whole three-day period is taken. Or it is like the statement in which God had foretold that the children of Israel would serve in Egypt for four hundred years and then go out from there. Yet while Joseph ruled, they ruled Egypt, and they did not go out immediately after four hundred years as had been promised, but left Egypt after four hundred thirty years had been completed.
There is also another figure concerning times, by which certain things that are future are narrated as if already done, as in this: “They dug my hands and my feet; they counted all my bones and divided my garments for themselves,” and similar passages, in which future things are spoken of as if they had already happened. But why are things that still had to be done narrated as already done? Because the things that are future to us are already done in God’s eternity. Therefore, when something is announced as needing to be done, it is said according to us; but when things that are future are said to be already done, they must be taken according to God’s eternity, with whom all things that are future have already been done.
The sixth rule concerns recapitulation. Recapitulation occurs when Scripture returns to something whose narration had already passed by. For example, when Scripture had remembered the sons of the sons of Noah, it said that they were in their languages and nations, and yet afterward, as if this too were required in this same order of time, it says, “The whole earth was of one lip, and there was one voice for all.” How, then, were they according to their nations and according to their languages, if there was one language for all, unless the narration by recapitulating returned to what it had already passed?
The seventh rule concerns the devil and his body. By this rule things are often said of the head himself that more properly fit his body; often, again, things seem to be said of the members and fit only the head. For from the name of the body the head is understood, as in the Gospel concerning the tares mixed with the wheat, when the Lord says, “An enemy man has done this,” calling the devil himself a man and designating the head from the name of the body. Again, the body is signified from the name of the head, as it is said in the Gospel, “I chose twelve of you, and one of you is a devil,” plainly indicating Judas, because he was the body of the devil. The apostate angel is the head of all the wicked, and all the wicked are the body of this head. Thus he is one with his members, so that often what is said to his body is rather referred to him; again, what is said to him is in turn derived to his members, as in Isaiah, where, after the prophetic speech had said many things against Babylon, that is, against the body of the devil, it turns the sentence of the oracle back to the head, that is, to the devil, saying, “How you have fallen from heaven, Lucifer, who rose in the morning,” and the rest.
Chapter 5. What Hinders Study
After assigning a certain material to the reader and determining by name the Scriptures that especially pertain to divine reading, it seems fitting that we should also say something about the manner and order of reading, so that from the things already said the reader may recognize what matter he should devote his study to, and from the things that are to be said he may receive the manner and reason of that same study. Because we understand more easily what should be done if we first recognize what should not be done, the reader must first be instructed about what he ought to avoid, and then informed how he should accomplish the things that must be done.
We must say why, from so great a crowd of learners, many of whom are strong in natural ability and vigorous in exercise, so few can be counted who actually arrive at knowledge. Leaving aside those who are naturally dull and slow to understand, this especially moves us and seems worthy of inquiry: why does it happen that two people of equal ability and equal study attend to one reading, and nevertheless do not obtain understanding of it with the same effect? One penetrates quickly and quickly grasps what he seeks; the other labors long and advances little.
One must know that in any undertaking two things are necessary: the work and the reason of the work. These are so joined to one another that one without the other is either useless or less effective. Nevertheless, as is said, prudence is better than strength, because by skill we sometimes lift weights that we cannot move by force. So it is surely in every study. The one who works without discretion does indeed labor, but he does not advance; striking the air, as it were, he pours his strength into the wind.
Look at two people crossing a forest together: one labors through trackless ways, the other chooses the shortcuts of the straight road. They make their course with equal motion, but they do not arrive equally. And what shall I call Scripture except a forest, whose thoughts, like very sweet fruits, we pluck by reading and chew over by treating them? Therefore, whoever does not preserve manner and order of reading in so great a multitude of books wanders, as it were, in the density of the woods and loses the path of the straight road; and, as it is said, they are always learning and never coming to knowledge. Discretion has so much power that without it every leisure is shameful and labor is useless. To embrace the matter universally:
There are three things that especially tend to obstruct the studies of readers: negligence, imprudence, and fortune. Negligence is when we either omit altogether the things that should be learned or learn them with too little zeal. Imprudence is when we do not keep a fitting order and manner in the things we learn. Fortune lies in the event, whether by chance or by something naturally occurring, when we are drawn back from our purpose either by poverty or sickness or a slowness that is not natural, or also by a scarcity of teachers, because either there are none who teach, or none who teach well. In these three things, concerning the first, that is, negligence, the reader must be admonished; concerning the second, that is, imprudence, instructed; concerning the third, that is, fortune, aided.
Chapter 6. The Fruit of Divine Reading
Whoever approaches divine reading to be educated should first recognize what its fruit is. Nothing should be sought without a cause, and nothing draws desire unless it promises usefulness. The fruit of divine reading is twofold, because it either instructs the mind with knowledge or adorns it with morals. It teaches what delights to know and what is useful to imitate. Of these, one, that is, knowledge, looks more to history and allegory; the other, that is, the instruction of morals, looks more to tropology. All divine Scripture is referred to this end.
Yet although it is more useful to be just than wise, I know that many seek knowledge rather than virtue in the study of sacred speech. But I, because neither is to be rejected and both are necessary, will explain both. First I will treat the one who embraces the grace of morality.
Chapter 7. How Scripture Should Be Read for the Correction of Morals
The one who seeks the knowledge of virtues and a form of living in sacred speech should read especially those books that persuade contempt of this world, kindle the mind to love of its Creator, teach the straight path of living, and show how virtues can be acquired and vices avoided. “Seek first,” he says, “the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” As if he were saying openly: desire the joys of the heavenly homeland, and diligently inquire by what merits of righteousness one may reach them. Love and seek both goods; both are necessary. If love is present, it cannot be idle. Do you desire to arrive? Learn how one arrives where you are going.
This knowledge is acquired in two ways, namely by example and by teaching: by example, when we read the deeds of the saints; by teaching, when we learn their words that pertain to our discipline. Among these I think the writings of blessed Gregory are especially to be embraced; because they have seemed to me sweeter than the rest and full of love for eternal life, I did not wish to pass them over in silence.
Whoever has entered this way must learn, in the books he reads, to be stirred not only by the color of expression but by the emulation of virtues, so that he may be delighted not so much by pomp or elegance of words as by the beauty of truth. He should also know that it does not lead to his purpose if, carried away by an empty desire for knowledge, he seeks obscure writings of deep understanding in which the mind is occupied more than built up, lest reading alone hold him in such a way that it makes him empty of good work. For the Christian philosopher, reading ought to be exhortation, not occupation; it ought to feed good desires, not kill them.
I remember that I was once told about a man of sufficiently approved life who burned with such love for the holy Scriptures that he gave continual study to them. As his knowledge increased day by day, so his desire also increased. At last, pursuing wisdom imprudently, he began to despise the simpler Scriptures and to search out every profound and obscure thing, and to press intensely upon untying the riddles of the prophets and the mystical understandings of the sacraments. But the human mind, unable to sustain so great a weight, soon began to fail both under the magnitude of the matter and under the constant strain of attention. It was so confused by the care of this untimely occupation that it now ceased not only from useful acts but even from necessary ones.
The event turned into its opposite: he had begun to read the Scriptures for the building up of his life, but because he did not know how to use the measure of discretion, he now had those same Scriptures as an occasion of error. At last, however, by divine mercy he was admonished through revelation not to devote himself any longer to the study of these Scriptures, but to become accustomed to frequenting the lives of the holy fathers and the triumphs of the martyrs, and other such writings composed in a simple style. Thus in a short time he was brought back to his former state, and he merited to receive such grace of inward quiet that you would truly say that in him was fulfilled that word of the Lord by which he, considering our labor and sorrow, wished kindly to console us, saying: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you,” and afterward: “You will find rest for your souls.”
I set down this example to show that for those who are placed in the discipline not of literature but of virtues, reading should not be a weariness but a delight. For the Prophet also says: “I have not known literature,” or “commerce”; “I will enter into the power of the Lord; Lord, I will remember your justice alone. God, you have taught me from my youth.” The one who reads the Scriptures as an occupation and, so to speak, as an affliction of spirit, is not philosophizing but trading; and such vehement and indiscreet attention can scarcely be free from the vice of pride. What shall I say about the reading of simple Paul, who wished to fulfill the law before learning it? This is certainly example enough for us: before God, not the hearers or readers of the law are just, but rather the doers.
It must also be considered that reading usually brings weariness to the mind and afflicts the spirit in two ways: by quality, if it is too obscure, and by quantity, if it is too long. In both of these one must use great moderation, lest what was sought for refreshment be taken up for suffocation. There are those who want to read everything. Do not compete. Let it be enough for you. It makes no difference to you whether or not you have read all books. The number of books is infinite; do not pursue infinite things. Where there is no end, there can be no rest. Where there is no rest, there is no peace. Where there is no peace, God cannot dwell.
“In peace,” says the Prophet, “his place was made, and his dwelling in Sion.” In Sion, but in peace: one must be Sion, but not lose peace. Contemplate, and do not be occupied. Do not be greedy, lest perhaps you always be in need. Listen to Solomon, listen to the Wise One, and learn prudence. “My son,” he says, “do not seek more than these; of making many books there is no end, and frequent meditation is affliction of the flesh.” Where, then, is the end? Let us all hear the end of speech together: “Fear God and observe his commandments: this is the whole man.”
Chapter 8. That Reading Belongs to Beginners, Work to the Perfect
Let no one think that, because of the things I mentioned above, I am criticizing the diligence of readers. Rather, I intend to urge diligent readers toward their purpose and to show that those who gladly learn are worthy of praise. But there I was speaking to the learned; now I speak to those who are to be taught and who are beginning doctrine, which is the beginning of discipline. For the former, the pursuit of virtues is the purpose; for the latter, meanwhile, the exercise of reading is the purpose, though in such a way that neither should be without virtue nor the former omit reading altogether. Often a work is less provident when reading does not go before it, and teaching is less useful when good action does not follow it.
Those who have advanced must take great care not to look back to the things behind; those who are beginning must be comforted if they desire someday to arrive where the advanced already are. Both, then, should be exercised and both should be advanced. Let no one go backward. It is permitted to ascend, but not to descend. If you cannot yet ascend, stand in your place. The one who usurps another’s office is not free from fault.
If you are a monk, what are you doing in the crowd? If you love silence, why are you delighted to be constantly among declaimers? You ought always to devote yourself to fasts and tears, and are you seeking to philosophize? The simplicity of a monk is his philosophy. “But,” you say, “I want to teach others.” It is not yours to teach, but to weep. Yet if you desire to be a teacher, hear what you should do. The lowliness of your clothing and the simplicity of your face, the innocence of your life and the holiness of your conduct, ought to teach people. You teach better by fleeing the world than by following it.
But perhaps you still continue and say, “Surely, at least, if I wish, I may learn?” I said to you above: “Read, and do not be occupied.” Reading can be your exercise, but not your purpose. Teaching is good, but it belongs to beginners. You, however, had promised that you would be perfect, and therefore it is not enough for you if you are equaled with beginners. You must do something more. Consider where you are, and you will easily recognize what you ought to do.
Chapter 9. On the Four Steps
There are four things in which the life of the righteous is now exercised, and by which, as by certain steps, it is lifted up toward future perfection: reading or teaching, meditation, prayer, and operation. A fifth then follows: contemplation, in which, as by a certain fruit of the preceding things, one tastes beforehand even in this life what the future reward of good work will be. Hence the Psalmist, when he was speaking about the judgments of God and commending them, immediately added: “In keeping them there is great reward.”
Of these five steps, the first, that is, reading, belongs to beginners; the highest, that is, contemplation, belongs to the perfect. As for the middle steps, the more of them anyone has climbed, the more perfect he will be. For example: first, reading gives understanding; second, meditation supplies counsel; third, prayer asks; fourth, operation seeks; fifth, contemplation finds. If, then, you read and have understanding and already know what must be done, this is the beginning of the good, but it is not yet enough for you; you are not yet perfect. Climb, therefore, into the citadel of counsel, and meditate on how you may be able to fulfill what you have learned must be done. Many have knowledge, but few know how one ought to know.
Again, since human counsel without divine help is weak and ineffective, rise to prayer and seek the help of the one without whom you can do no good, so that the very grace which illuminated you by going before you may also, by following after, direct your feet in the way of peace and bring into effect what is still only in the will. Then it remains for you to gird yourself for good work, so that by working you may deserve to receive what you ask by praying. God wishes to work with you. You are not compelled, but helped. If you alone work, you accomplish nothing; if God alone works, you merit nothing. Let God work, then, so that you may be able; and you also work, so that you may merit something.
Good operation is the road by which one goes to life. Whoever runs this road seeks life. Be strengthened and act bravely. This road has its own reward. Whenever, wearied by its labors, we are illumined by the grace of a heavenly regard, we taste and see that the Lord is sweet. And so what was said above comes about: what prayer seeks, contemplation finds.
You see, then, how perfection comes to those who ascend by these steps, so that one who remains below cannot be perfect. Our purpose, therefore, ought always to be to ascend. But because the changeableness of our life is so great that we cannot stand in the same place, we are often compelled to look back to the things already passed, and, lest we lose what we are in, we sometimes repeat what we have gone through. For example: the one who is vigorous in work prays that he not fail; the one who persists in prayers meditates on what should be prayed for, lest he offend by praying; and the one who sometimes has less confidence in his own counsel consults reading. Thus it happens that, although it is always our will to ascend, necessity sometimes compels us to descend, yet in such a way that our purpose consists in the will, not in the necessity. What we ascend to is the purpose; what we descend to is for the sake of the purpose. Therefore the latter should not be principal, but the former.
Chapter 10. On the Three Kinds of Readers
It has been shown clearly enough, I think, that those who have advanced and promise something more of themselves do not have the same purpose as beginners. But just as something is licitly granted to beginners that the advanced cannot do without fault, so too something is required from the advanced to which beginners are not yet bound. Now, then, I return to fulfilling what I promised, namely, to show how divine Scripture should be read by those who still seek in it knowledge alone.
There are some who seek knowledge of divine Scripture so that they may gather riches, obtain honors, or acquire fame. Their intention is as pitiable as it is perverse. There are others who delight to hear the words of God and to learn his works, not because they are saving, but because they are marvelous. They want to search secrets and know unheard-of things, to know much and do nothing. They admire power in vain who do not love mercy. What else shall I say such people do but turn the proclamations of God into fables? We are accustomed to attend to theatrical games and stage songs in this way, feeding the ear, not the mind. Yet I judge that people of this kind should be helped rather than confounded, since their will is not malicious, but improvident.
Others read sacred Scripture so that, according to the command of the apostle, they may be ready to give an account to everyone who asks concerning the faith in which they stand: that they may bravely destroy the enemies of truth, teach the less instructed, recognize more perfectly the way of truth themselves, and, by understanding God’s secrets more deeply, love them more closely. Their devotion is certainly to be praised and worthy of imitation. There are, then, three kinds of people who read sacred Scripture: the first are to be pitied, the second helped, the third praised. But since we intend to provide for all, we desire what is good in all to be increased, and what is perverse to be changed. We want everyone to understand what we say, and everyone to do what we urge.
Book VI
Chapter 1. How Sacred Scripture Should Be Read by Those Seeking Knowledge in It
I set before you, reader, two things: order and manner. If you look at them carefully, the path of reading will open easily before you. In considering these things, I will neither leave everything to your own ability nor promise that my diligence will satisfy you completely. Rather, I will run through certain matters briefly, touching them beforehand, so that you may find some things set down for your instruction and others passed over for your exercise. Above I said that the order of reading is fourfold: one order in disciplines, another in books, another in narration, and another in exposition. I have not yet shown how these apply to divine Scripture.
Chapter 2. On the Order Found in the Disciplines
First, therefore, the divine reader should consider the order sought among the disciplines, among history, allegory, and tropology: which of these should come first in the order of reading. Here it is useful to recall what we see happening in buildings. First the foundation is laid; then the structure is built upon it; finally, when the work has been completed, the house is clothed with a coating of color.
Chapter 3. On History
So it must be in teaching: first learn history and the truth of the deeds done. Beginning from the start and going through to the end, carefully commit to memory what was done, when it was done, where it was done, and by whom it was done. These four things should chiefly be sought in history: person, action, time, and place. I do not think you can become perfectly subtle in allegory unless you have first been grounded in history.
Do not despise these small things. Whoever despises small things gradually falls away. If you had first despised learning the alphabet, you would not now have so great a name among grammarians. I know there are some who wish to philosophize at once. They say that fables should be left to pseudo-apostles. Their knowledge has the shape of a donkey. Do not imitate such people.
Once instructed in small things, you will safely attempt great ones.
I dare affirm to you that I have never despised anything that belonged to learning. I have often learned many things that seemed to others like jokes or nonsense. When I was still a student, I remember laboring to know the names of all things set before the eyes or coming into use, considering that no one can freely pursue the nature of things while still ignorant of their names. I often demanded from myself a daily account of my little sophisms, which for brevity I had marked on a page with one or two words, so that I would hold in memory the solutions and number of nearly all the sentences, questions, and objections I had learned. I often shaped legal cases and, arranging the controversies against one another, carefully distinguished the office of the rhetor, the orator, and the sophist.
I set pebbles in number and marked the pavement with black coals; with the example placed before my eyes, I clearly demonstrated the difference between an obtuse, a right, and an acute triangle. I learned, by measuring both ways with my feet, whether an equilateral square, by multiplying two of its sides together, filled its area. Often I kept watch through winter nights with the nocturnal horoscope. Often I would stretch a string over wood according to number, so that I might both perceive with my ear the differences of sounds and delight my mind with the sweetness of melody. These things were childish, but not useless, and I do not regret knowing them now.
I repeat these things to you not to boast of my knowledge, which is either none or little, but to show you that the one who walks in order walks most fittingly, and that some, while trying to make a great leap, fall into a pit. In sciences, as in virtues, there are certain steps. But you say, “I find many things in histories that seem to have no usefulness. Why should I be occupied with such things?” You speak well. There are indeed many things in Scripture which, considered in themselves, seem to have nothing worth seeking. Yet if you compare them with the things to which they are joined and begin to weigh them in their whole context, you will see that they are both necessary and fitting. Some things must be known for their own sake. Others, although they may not seem worthy of our labor for their own sake, must not be passed over negligently, because without them the former things cannot be known clearly. Learn everything; afterward you will see that nothing is superfluous. Narrowed knowledge is not pleasant.
If you ask which books seem useful to me for this reading, I think these should be frequented especially: Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Kings, and Chronicles; and from the New Testament, first the four Gospels, then Acts. These eleven seem to me to pertain especially to history, apart from those we properly call historians. If, however, we use the meaning of history more broadly, there is no difficulty in calling history not only the narration of deeds done, but the first meaning of any narration, expressed according to the proper sense of the words. In this sense I think all the books of both Testaments, in the order in which they were listed above, belong to this reading according to the literal sense. Perhaps, if it did not seem childish, I would insert here some precepts about the manner of construing, because I know that divine Scripture is more concise in its text than all other writings; but I wish to leave these aside, so that I do not stretch my purpose with too long an insertion. There are certain places in the divine page that cannot be read according to the letter. These must be discerned with great discretion, so that we neither pass over anything through negligence nor twist anything violently, by ill-timed diligence, toward something for which it was not written.
This, then, reader, is what I propose to you. This field of your labor, well furrowed by the plow, will return manifold fruit to you. All things were done in order; walk in order. Through the shadow one comes to the body: learn the figure and you will find the truth. I do not say this so that you should labor to unfold the figures of the Old Testament and search its mystical sayings before you come to drink from the streams of the Gospel. But as you see that every building lacking a foundation cannot be stable, so it is in teaching. The foundation and beginning of sacred teaching is history; from it, as honey from the comb, the truth of allegory is pressed out. Therefore, if you are going to build, first lay the foundation of history. Then, through typical signification, raise the structure of the mind into the citadel of faith. Finally, by the grace of morality, paint the building as if with the most beautiful color.
In history you have something by which to admire the deeds of God; in allegory, something by which to believe his sacraments; in morality, something by which to imitate his perfection. Read, then, and learn that in the beginning God made heaven and earth. Read that in the beginning he planted the paradise of delight and placed in it the man he had formed; that when the man sinned, God drove him out and cast him into the miseries of this world. Read how from one man the whole offspring of the human race descended; how afterward the flood covered sinners; how divine mercy preserved righteous Noah with his sons in the midst of the waters; how Abraham received the seal of faith; how Israel went down into Egypt; how God led the children of Israel out of Egypt through the Red Sea by the hand of Moses and Aaron, fed them in the desert, gave them the law, and settled them in the promised land; how, when they often sinned, he handed them over to their enemies, and again, when they repented, delivered them; how he ruled the people first through judges and then through kings. He took David his servant from behind the breeding ewes. He illumined Solomon with wisdom. He added fifteen years to weeping Hezekiah. Then he sent the transgressing people captive into Babylon by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, and after seventy years brought them back through Cyrus. Finally, when the world was already tottering, he sent his Son in the flesh and, sending the apostles into the whole world, promised eternal life to the penitent. He foretold that he would come at the end of the ages for judgment, to render to each according to his works: eternal fire to sinners, eternal life and a kingdom without end to the just. See that from the beginning of the world to the end of the ages, the mercies of the Lord do not fail.
Chapter 4. On Allegory
After the reading of history, it remains to investigate the mysteries of allegories. I do not think my exhortation is needed here, since the thing itself appears sufficiently worthy. Yet I want you to know, reader, that this study does not seek slow and dull senses, but mature minds: minds that hold subtlety in investigation without losing prudence in discernment. This is solid food, and unless it is chewed, it cannot be swallowed. Therefore you must use such moderation that, while you are subtle in seeking, you are not found rash in presuming. Recall what the Psalmist says: “He bent his bow and prepared it, and in it he prepared instruments of death.”
You remember, I think, that above I compared divine Scripture to a building, where first the foundation is laid and then the structure is raised on high. It is plainly like a building, for it too has a structure. Let us not be weary, then, if we pursue this likeness a little more carefully. Look at the work of the mason. Once the foundation has been placed, he stretches out a line, lowers the plumb-line, and then sets carefully polished stones in order. Then he seeks others and still others. If he finds some that do not answer to the first arrangement, he takes a file, cuts away what sticks out, smooths rough places, brings shapeless things back to form, and then joins them to the rest set in order. If he finds stones that can neither be reduced nor suitably fitted, he does not take them up, lest perhaps, while he labors to break flint, he break the file.
Pay attention. I have set before you a matter contemptible to those who look only outwardly, but worthy of imitation to those who understand. The foundation is in the earth and does not always have polished stones. The structure is above the earth and seeks an even arrangement. So the divine page contains many things according to the literal sense that seem to oppose one another and sometimes to present something absurd or impossible. Spiritual understanding admits no contradiction: in it there can be many diverse things, but none opposed. You also see that the first row of stones placed on the foundation is arranged according to the stretched line; on this the whole remaining work rests and is fitted. This is not without significance. It is like another foundation and the base of the whole structure. This foundation both carries what is placed upon it and is carried by the former foundation. Everything rests on the first foundation, but not everything is fitted directly to it. The rest both rests on and is fitted to this second foundation. The first carries the structure and lies under it. This one carries the structure and is not only under it but also within it. The foundation under the earth signifies history; the structure built above signifies allegory. Therefore the base of this structure also belongs to allegory. The structure rises in many rows, and each row has its own base.
Divine Scripture contains many sacraments, each with its own beginnings. Do you wish to know what these rows are? The first row is the sacrament of the Trinity, for Scripture contains this: that before every creature, God was three and one. He made every creature, visible and invisible, from nothing: this is the second row. He gave free choice to rational creatures and prepared grace for them, so that they might merit eternal blessedness; then he punished those who fell willingly and confirmed those who remained standing, so that they could fall no more. What the origin of sin is, what sin is, and what the punishment of sin is: this is the third row. What sacraments he first instituted under the natural law for the restoration of man: this is the fourth row. What was written under the law: this is the fifth. The sacrament of the incarnation of the Word: this is the sixth. The sacraments of the New Testament: this is the seventh. Finally, the sacrament of the resurrection itself: this is the eighth.
Here is all divinity; this is that spiritual structure which, containing as many sacraments as it has rows, is built upward. Do you also wish to know the bases themselves? The bases of the rows are the beginnings of the sacraments. You have come to reading, ready to build a spiritual building. The foundations of history have already been placed in you; it remains for you now to lay the bases of the structure itself. You stretch the line, set the square, place the squared stones in order, and trace, as you go around, certain outlines of the walls to come. The stretched line is the path of right faith. The bases of the spiritual work are certain beginnings of faith, by which you are initiated. The prudent reader should take care that, before he pursues the spacious volumes of books, he is so instructed in the individual matters that most belong to his purpose and to the profession of true faith that whatever he later finds he can build safely upon them. In so great a sea of books and so many winding turns of opinions, which often confuse the reader’s mind by their number and obscurity, a person will scarcely be able to gather any one thing unless he has first known, in summary form, some fixed principle in each kind, supported by firm faith, to which all things may be referred.
Do you wish me to teach how these bases should be made? Look at the things I listed a little earlier. There is the sacrament of the Trinity. Many books have already been written about it; many difficult opinions have been given, hard to understand and tangled to solve. It is long and burdensome for you to pursue them all now, and you may find many things in which you are more troubled than built up. Do not press on that way; you will never reach the end. First learn briefly and clearly what must be held concerning faith in the Trinity, what you ought soundly to profess and truly to believe.
When later you begin to read books and find many things written obscurely, many openly, many ambiguously, join what you find open to its base, if it fits. Interpret ambiguous things so that they do not disagree. Unlock obscure things if you can. If you cannot penetrate to their understanding, pass on, lest while trying to presume beyond your capacity you fall into the danger of error. Do not despise them, but rather venerate them, because you have heard what is written: “He made darkness his hiding place.” If you find something contrary to what you have already learned must be held with firmest faith, it is not useful for you to change your opinion day by day until you have first consulted those more learned than you and, above all, learned what universal faith, which can never be false, commands to be thought about it. You should do this with the sacrament of the altar, baptism, confirmation, marriage, and all the things listed above.
You see many readers of Scripture fall into various errors because they do not have the foundation of truth, and they change their opinions almost as often as they read new readings. You also see others who, according to the knowledge of truth by which they have been inwardly strengthened, know how to bend any Scriptures to fitting interpretations and to judge what disagrees or agrees with sound faith. In Ezekiel you read that the wheels follow the living creatures, not the living creatures the wheels: “When the living creatures went, the wheels went beside them; and when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up with them.” As holy minds advance in virtues or knowledge, they see the secrets of sacred Scripture to be profound; the things that seemed to lie on the ground for the simple and those still standing on earth appear lofty to those who are raised up. For it follows: “Wherever the spirit went, as the spirit went, the wheels also were lifted up, following it. For the spirit of life was in the wheels.” You see that these wheels follow the living creatures, and they follow the spirit.
Again it is said elsewhere: “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” The divine reader must be solidly grounded in the truth of spiritual understanding and must not let the points of letters, which can sometimes be understood perversely, bend him into every bypath. Why was that ancient people, which had received the law of life, rejected, except because it followed only the killing letter and did not have the life-giving Spirit? I do not say this to give anyone an occasion to interpret Scripture according to his own will, but to show that one who follows the letter alone cannot walk long without error. We must follow the letter in such a way that we do not set our own meaning before the divine authors; and we must not follow it in such a way that we think the whole judgment of truth depends on it. The spiritual person, not merely the lettered person, judges all things. Therefore, so that you may safely judge the letter, you must not presume from your own sense, but first be taught and formed, and lay a kind of base of unshaken truth on which the whole structure may rest. Do not presume to teach yourself, lest, while you think you are leading yourself in, you are instead leading yourself astray. This introduction must be sought from teachers and wise people, who can both give and open it to you as needed by the authorities of the holy fathers and the testimonies of Scripture. Once introduced, confirm by reading, through the testimonies of Scripture, the individual things they have taught.
So it seems to me. If anyone wishes to imitate me in this, I gladly accept it. If anyone thinks it should not be done this way, let him do as he pleases; I will not contend. I know that many do not keep this custom in learning, and I also know how some of them advance. If you ask which books are especially useful for this reading, I think: the beginning of Genesis on the works of the six days; the last three books of Moses on the sacraments of the law; Isaiah; the beginning and end of Ezekiel; Job; the Psalter; the Song of Songs; especially two Gospels, Matthew and John; Paul’s epistles; the canonical epistles; and the Apocalypse. Above all, Paul’s epistles are useful, since even by their number they signify that they contain the perfection of both Testaments.
Chapter 5. On Tropology, That Is, Morality
At present I will say nothing about tropology except what has already been said, apart from this: the signification of things seems to pertain to it more than the signification of words. In it is natural justice, from which the discipline of our morals, that is, positive justice, is born. By contemplating what God has done, we recognize what we ought to do. All nature speaks God; all nature teaches the human being; all nature brings forth reason; and nothing in the universe is barren.
Chapter 6. On the Order of the Books
The same order of books should not be kept in historical and allegorical reading. History follows the order of time. The order of knowledge belongs more to allegory, because, as was said above, teaching must always take its beginning not from obscure things but from clear ones, and from those that are better known. It follows that the New Testament, in which manifest truth is preached, should be set before the Old in this reading, where the same truth is foretold obscurely, shadowed under figures. The truth is the same in both; but there it is hidden, here manifest; there promised, here presented.
You heard, when it was read in the Apocalypse, that the book was sealed and that no one could be found to loose its seals except the Lion from the tribe of Judah. The law was sealed, and the prophecies were sealed, because the times of the coming redemption were foretold obscurely. Does that book not seem sealed to you which said, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel”? And another: “You, Bethlehem Ephrata, are little among the thousands of Judah; from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity”? And the Psalmist: “Will not Zion say: Man and man was born in her, and the Most High himself founded her?” and again, “The exits of death belong to the Lord, the Lord”; and again, “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand”; and shortly after, concerning the same one: “With you is the beginning in the day of your power; in the splendors of the saints, from the womb before the morning star I begot you.” And Daniel: “I saw in the night vision, and behold, with the clouds of heaven one like a Son of Man came, and he came to the Ancient of Days, and he gave him power and honor and kingdom; and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve him. His power is an eternal power that shall not be taken away.”
Who, do you think, could have understood these things before they were fulfilled? They were sealed, and no one could loose the seals except the Lion from the tribe of Judah. Therefore the Son of God came, put on our nature, was born of the Virgin, was crucified, buried, rose again, ascended into heaven, and by fulfilling what had been promised opened what lay hidden. I read in the Gospel that the angel Gabriel is sent to the Virgin Mary and foretells that she will bear a child; I recall the prophecy: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive.” I read that when Joseph was in Bethlehem with Mary his pregnant wife, her time to give birth came and she bore her firstborn son, whom the angel had foretold would reign on the throne of David his father; I recall the prophecy: “Bethlehem Ephrata, you are little among the thousands of Judah; from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel.” I read again: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”; I recall the prophecy: “His going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity.” I read: “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us”; I recall the prophecy: “You shall call his name Emmanuel,” that is, God with us. And lest I weary you by pursuing each thing one by one: unless you first know the birth of Christ, his preaching, passion, resurrection, and ascension, and the other things that he did in the flesh and through the flesh, you will not be able to penetrate the mysteries of the ancient figures.
Chapter 7. On the Order of Narration
Concerning the order of narration, this especially must be considered here: the text of the divine page does not always preserve the natural or continuous order of speech. Often it sets later things before earlier ones, as when, after enumerating certain things, the discourse suddenly runs back to earlier matters as if narrating what follows. Often, too, it joins things separated by a long interval as if they followed one another immediately, so that no span of time seems to have separated things between which the discourse marks no interval.
Chapter 8. On the Order of Exposition
Exposition contains three things: letter, sense, and meaning. In every narration there is letter, for the spoken sounds themselves are also letters. But sense and meaning are not found together in every narration. Some narration has letter and sense only; some has letter and meaning only; some contains all three together. Every narration, however, must have at least two. A narration has letter and sense only where something is openly signified by the utterance itself in such a way that nothing else is left to be understood beneath it. A narration has letter and meaning only where the hearer can conceive nothing from the utterance alone unless exposition is added. A narration has sense and meaning where something is openly signified and something else is also left to be understood beneath it, which is opened by exposition.
Chapter 9. On the Letter
The letter is sometimes complete, when nothing beyond what has been set down needs to be added or removed to signify what is said, as in “All wisdom is from the Lord God.” Sometimes it is diminished, when something is left to be understood, as in “The elder to the elect lady.” Sometimes it is superfluous, when the same thing is repeated for emphasis or because of a long insertion, or when something not necessary is added. Thus Paul says near the end of the Epistle to the Romans, “Now to him,” and after inserting many things adds, “to whom be honor and glory.” Something here seems superfluous; by superfluous I mean not necessary for making the statement.
Sometimes the letter is such that, unless it is resolved into another construction, it seems to signify nothing or to be improper. Such is “The Lord in heaven his seat,” that is, “The seat of the Lord is in heaven”; and “The sons of men, their teeth are weapons and arrows,” that is, “The teeth of the sons of men”; and “Man, his days are like grass,” that is, “The days of man.” In these, the nominative of the noun and the genitive of the pronoun are put in place of one genitive of the noun, and there are many similar cases. Construction and continuity belong to the letter.
Chapter 10. On Sense
Sense is sometimes fitting, sometimes unfitting. Unfitting sense is sometimes unbelievable, sometimes impossible, sometimes absurd, sometimes false. You find many things of this kind in Scripture, such as “They have eaten Jacob,” and “under whom those who bear the world bend,” and “My soul has chosen hanging,” and many others.
There are certain places in divine Scripture where, although the meaning of the words is open, there seems to be no sense, either because of an unusual manner of speaking or because of some circumstance that impedes the reader’s understanding. For example, Isaiah says: “Seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying, We will eat our own bread and be clothed with our own garments; only let your name be called upon us; take away our reproach.” The words are plain and open. You understand, “Seven women shall take hold of one man.” You understand, “We will eat our own bread.” You understand, “We will be clothed with our own garments.” You understand, “Only let your name be called upon us.” You understand, “Take away our reproach.”
But perhaps you cannot understand what the whole together is meant to signify. You do not know what the prophet wished to say, whether he promised good or threatened evil. Thus it happens that you believe something must be understood only spiritually because you do not see how it was said according to the letter. You say, therefore, that the seven women are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, which take hold of one man, that is, Christ, in whom all the fullness of grace was pleased to dwell, because he alone received the Spirit without measure, and he alone takes away their reproach, so that they may find one in whom they rest, since there was no one else living as the gifts of the Holy Spirit required. Behold, you have interpreted spiritually, and you do not understand what it means according to the letter.
Yet the prophet could have signified something by these words even according to the letter. Since he had spoken above of the destruction of a transgressing people, he now adds that so great a disaster will come upon that people, and the male sex will be destroyed to such an extent, that seven women will scarcely find one man, though now one woman is accustomed to have one man. And since women are now accustomed to be sought by men, then, with custom reversed, women will seek men. And lest one man fear to marry seven women at once, since he would not have the means to feed and clothe them, they say to him: “We will eat our own bread and be clothed with our own garments. You need not be anxious about us. Only let your name be called upon us, so that you may be called our husband and be such, lest we be called rejected and barren and die without seed,” which at that time was a great reproach. This is what they mean when they say, “Take away our reproach.” You find many such things in Scripture, especially in the Old Testament, said according to the idiom of that language; although they are clear there, they seem to signify nothing among us.
Chapter 11. On Meaning
Divine meaning can never be absurd and can never be false. Although, as was said, many contrary things are found in the sense, meaning admits no contradiction: it is always fitting, always true. Sometimes one statement has one meaning; sometimes one statement has many meanings; sometimes many statements have one meaning; sometimes many statements have many meanings.
When, therefore, we read the divine books, amid so great a multitude of true understandings drawn from few words and protected by the soundness of Catholic faith, let us love above all the meaning that clearly appears to have been intended by the one we read. If this is hidden, let us love at least the meaning that the context of Scripture does not prevent and that agrees with sound faith. If the context of Scripture cannot be handled and examined, let us at least love only what sound faith prescribes. It is one thing not to discern what the writer especially meant; it is another to stray from the rule of piety. If both are avoided, the fruit of the reader is perfect. But if both cannot be avoided, even if the writer’s will remains uncertain, it is not useless to draw out a meaning that agrees with sound faith.
Again, in obscure matters very far removed from our eyes, if we read anything written about them, even in divine writings, that can give rise to different meanings while preserving faith, let us not rush headlong by rash affirmation into any one of them, so that if truth, examined more diligently, should shake it, we fall. We would then be fighting not for the meaning of divine Scripture, but for our own, wishing the meaning that is ours to be Scripture’s, when rather we ought to wish the meaning that is Scripture’s to be ours.
Chapter 12. On the Manner of Reading
The manner of reading consists in dividing. Division is done both by partition and by investigation. We divide by partition when we distinguish things that are confused. We divide by investigation when we open things that are hidden.
Chapter 13. That Meditation Is to Be Passed Over Here
Those things that pertain to reading have now been explained as clearly and briefly as we could. Concerning the remaining part of teaching, that is, meditation, I omit saying anything at present, because so great a matter needs a special treatise. In such matters it is more fitting to be wholly silent than to say something imperfectly. Meditation is a very subtle and also delightful matter, one that both instructs beginners and exercises the perfected. It has not yet been treated by my pen, and so should be pursued all the more. Let us now therefore ask Wisdom to deign to shine in our hearts and illuminate us in its paths, so that it may bring us to the pure supper without animal things.
Chapter 14. A Division Containing Philosophy
There are three things: wisdom, virtue, and necessity. Wisdom is the comprehension of things as they are. Virtue is a habit of the soul, consenting to reason after the manner of nature. Necessity is that without which we cannot live, but without which we would live more happily. These three are remedies against the three evils to which human life is subject: wisdom against ignorance, virtue against vice, necessity against weakness.
For the uprooting of these three evils, these three remedies were sought; and for the finding of these three remedies, every art and every discipline was discovered. Theoretical philosophy was found for wisdom, practical philosophy for virtue, and mechanics for necessity. These three were first in use, but afterward logic was discovered for eloquence. Although logic was last in discovery, it should be first in teaching. Thus there are four principal sciences from which all others descend: theoretical, practical, mechanical, and logical.
Theoretical philosophy is divided into theology, physics, and mathematics. Theology treats invisible substances; physics treats the invisible causes of visible things; mathematics treats the visible forms of visible things. Mathematics is divided into four sciences. The first is arithmetic, which treats number, that is, discrete quantity in itself. The second is music, which treats proportion, that is, discrete quantity in relation to something. The third is geometry, which treats space, that is, continuous immovable quantity. The fourth is astronomy, which treats motion, that is, continuous movable quantity. The element of arithmetic is unity. The element of music is unison. The element of geometry is the point. The element of astronomy is the instant.
Practical philosophy is divided into solitary, private, and public. The solitary teaches how each person should shape his own life by morals and adorn it with virtues. The private teaches how members of a household and those joined by bodily affection should be governed. The public teaches how the whole people and nation should be governed by its rulers. The solitary pertains to individuals, the private to heads of households, the public to rulers of cities.
Mechanics treats human works and is divided into seven: first weaving, second armament, third navigation, fourth agriculture, fifth hunting, sixth medicine, seventh theatrics. Logic is divided into grammar and the art of reasoning in discourse. The art of reasoning in discourse is divided into probable, necessary, and sophistic. The probable is divided into dialectic and rhetoric. The necessary belongs to philosophers; sophistic belongs to sophists.
In these four parts of philosophy, this order should be kept in teaching: logic first, ethics second, theory third, mechanics fourth. First eloquence must be acquired; then, as Socrates says in the Ethics, the eye of the heart must be cleansed through the study of virtue, so that afterward in theory it may be clear-sighted for the investigation of truth. Mechanics follows last; by itself it is in every way ineffective unless it is supported by the reasoning of the preceding disciplines.
Chapter 15. On Magic and Its Parts
The first discoverer of magic is believed to have been Zoroaster, king of the Bactrians, whom some assert to be Ham, the son of Noah, under a changed name. Later Ninus, king of the Assyrians, defeated him in war and killed him, and caused his books, full of the arts of evildoing, to be burned with fire. Aristotle writes of this same man that his books handed down to the memory of posterity as many as two million two hundred thousand verses dictated by him on the art of magic. Democritus later enlarged this art at the time when Hippocrates was considered distinguished in medicine.
Magic is not received into philosophy, but stands outside it by a false profession. It is the mistress of all iniquity and malice, lying about the true and truly harming souls. It seduces from divine religion, urges the worship of demons, brings corruption of morals, and drives the minds of its followers toward every crime and outrage. Taken generally, it embraces five kinds of evil arts: mantic, which means divination; vain mathematics; sortilege; malefice; and illusion.
Mantic contains five species under it. The first is necromancy, which means divination among the dead; necros in Greek means dead in Latin. Hence necromancy is divination performed through a sacrifice of human blood, which demons thirst for and delight to see poured out. The second is geomancy, divination in earth. The third is hydromancy, divination in water. The fourth is aerimancy, divination in air. The fifth is divination in fire, called pyromancy. Varro said that there are four things in which divination consists: earth, water, fire, and air. Thus the first, necromancy, seems to belong to the underworld; the second to earth; the third to water; the fourth to air; the fifth to fire.
Vain mathematics is divided into three species: haruspicy, augury, and horoscopy. Haruspices are so called either as horuspices, inspectors of hours, because they observe times in doing things, or as inspectors of altars, because they consider future things in the entrails and fibers of sacrifices. Augury or auspice sometimes belongs to the eye, and is called auspice as if bird-watching, because it is attended to in the movement and flight of birds. Sometimes it belongs to the ears, and then is called augury as if from the chattering of birds, because it is perceived by the ear. Horoscopy, also called constellation, occurs when human fates are sought in the stars, as the genethliacs do, those who observe births, who were once specially called magi and of whom we read in the Gospel.
Sortilegers are those who seek divinations by lots. Malefactors are those who accomplish wicked deeds through demonic incantations, bindings, or any other execrable kinds of remedies, by the cooperation and prompting of demons. Illusions occur when, through fantastic deceptions concerning the changing of things, human senses are mocked by demonic art.
There are therefore eleven in all: under mantic, five, namely necromancy, geomancy, hydromancy, aerimancy, and pyromancy; under vain mathematics, three, namely haruspicy, auspice, and horoscopy; after these, three others, namely sortilege, malefice, and illusion. Mercury is said to have first discovered illusions. The Phrygians discovered auguries. Tages first handed haruspicy down to the Etruscans. Hydromancy first came from the Persians.
Appendix
Soliloquy on the Pledge of the Soul
Prologue
To the beloved brother G. and the other servants of Christ dwelling at Hamersleben, H., however unworthy a servant of your holiness, sends greeting: to walk in one peace and arrive at one rest. I send to your charity this soliloquy of love, inscribed On the Pledge of the Soul, so that you may learn where you should seek true love and how you should stir your hearts, by the study of spiritual meditations, toward heavenly joys. Receive it in memory of me with the others. That it is specially sent to you should not exclude the rest, and that it is given commonly to all should not lessen the privilege of the gift. I do not wish to stir you here by ornament of style, but I could not hide the affection of my devotion toward you. Greet brother B., brother A., and all the others whose names I cannot now list one by one, though I desire them all to be written in the book of life. Farewell.
Man
I will speak secretly to my soul, and in friendly conversation ask of her what I wish to know. No stranger shall be admitted; with conscience opened, we shall speak alone. Tell me, my soul, what do you love above all things? I know that your life is love and that you cannot be without love. Look at the world and everything in it. You will find many beautiful and alluring forms that entice human affections: gold, precious stones, bodily beauty, woven tapestries, dyed garments, and countless other things. Which of all these have you made your one thing, to embrace singularly and enjoy always?
Soul
As I cannot love what I have never seen, so among visible things I have not yet been able to love nothing; yet I have not found among them what should be loved above all. By many experiences I have learned that the love of this world is deceitful and fugitive. I am forced to change it whenever what I chose perishes, or whenever something more pleasing appears. Thus I still waver in uncertain desires, unable to be without love and unable to find true love.
Man
I rejoice that you are not fixed in temporal love, but I grieve that you do not yet rest in eternal love. You would be more unhappy if you made exile your homeland. Since you wander in exile, you must be called back to the road. It is already a great beginning of salvation that you have learned to change your love for the better; you can be drawn away from every temporal love if a greater beauty is shown to you.
Soul
How can what cannot be seen be shown? How can what cannot be seen be loved? If there is no true and lasting love in visible temporal things, and if what cannot be seen cannot be loved, then eternal misery follows the one who lives forever without finding lasting love. No one can be happy without love.
Man
If you think temporal and visible things should be loved because you see some beauty in them, why not rather love yourself, since by your own form you surpass the beauty of visible things? If you saw your own face, you would know how blameworthy you were when you thought anything outside you worthy of your love.
Soul
The eye sees everything and does not see itself. By the light with which we see other things, we do not see the face in which that light is placed. People learn their faces by others’ judgment and know their appearance more by hearing than by seeing, unless you bring another kind of mirror in which I may know and love the face of my heart.
Man
One is not solitary when God is with him. Love is not extinguished if its desire is restrained from base and worthless things. First each person must consider himself and, knowing his own dignity, not love what is beneath him. You do not want solitary love; do not have prostituted love. You seek one love; seek one uniquely chosen. Love is fire and seeks fuel, but beware lest you throw into it what produces smoke or stench. The power of love is such that you become like what you love.
You have a bridegroom, though you do not know it. He is the most beautiful of all, though you have not seen his face. He has seen you, for if he had not seen you he would not love you. He has not yet presented himself, but he has sent gifts, a pledge, a sign of love. Look at the world and consider whether anything in it does not serve you. Heaven, earth, air, seas, and all that is in them serve your needs and delights. The gift is manifest; the giver is hidden. Love him, love yourself because of him, love his gifts because of him. Love him so that you may enjoy him; love yourself because you are loved by him. This is pure and chaste love: nothing sordid, nothing bitter, nothing passing away, beautiful in chastity, sweet in delight, stable in eternity.
Soul
Your words have inflamed me. Though I have not yet seen him whom you declare so lovable, you kindle me toward his love by the sweetness of your speech. I am compelled to love above all the one from whom I see that I have received all things as pledges of love. Yet one thing remains that lessens the happiness of this love unless your hand of consolation wipes it away.
Man
Open what troubles you, so that by reason you may be strengthened and grow more in desire for him.
Soul
You cut off what was moving me rather than rooting it out. I was complaining that, loving uniquely, I am not loved uniquely, because I see the pledge of my love granted equally to others. Your reasoning persuaded me to believe that even those things were given to me singularly which seemed to have been given commonly for the use of the things that serve me. In this I admit that you have spoken fittingly enough, but not sufficiently, about what was troubling me. From this I learn that all the things that foster the life of irrational creatures are assigned instead to my dominion, because those very creatures nourished by them are also appointed for my use. Yet from this no privilege of singular love is proved, because these things are known to be subject not to me alone, but similarly to all human beings, and to many even more than to me.
Therefore, in all those things commonly granted for human use, even if others do not justly claim anything more for themselves, anyone who ascribes something singularly to his own dominion is mistaken. There is, then, a certain special love of the Creator toward human beings, in which human beings may glory beyond other creatures, but not beyond one another. And when you say, in asserting singular love, that human fellowship was also given to me among other things, since what is mine has been granted to them as much as what is theirs has been granted to me, I can find nothing singular in this. In that fellowship, not only does the lost glory of singularity wound me, but also the baseness of participation. For there are many unbelieving, criminal, impure people who can glory in this fellowship in the same way.
Man
You should not be disturbed because good and evil people share alike in the use of temporal things, nor should you therefore think that they are loved by God in the same way because you see them share all these things with you. For just as beasts were created not for themselves but for human beings, so evil human beings live not for themselves but for the good. And just as their life serves the usefulness of the good, so everything by which their life is nourished must without doubt be referred to the increase of the good.
The wicked are permitted to live among the good so that their fellowship may exercise the life of the good. By their happiness they warn the good to seek goods greater than these, goods which the wicked cannot share; by their iniquity they compel the good to love virtue more closely. Finally, when the good see them, deserted by divine grace, rushing through every precipice of vice, they learn how great thanks they should give the Creator for their own salvation. The logic of divine dispensation required this for the increase of our salvation and the instruction of our glorification: just as we say that the highest happiness is not to use the life of beasts, so also in the life of evil human beings we learn that the highest happiness is not to rule over them. Therefore these temporal things had to be granted similarly to the good and the evil, because otherwise the good would not believe that better things were reserved for them unless they saw these things common to both good and evil.
Do not complain any more, then, about the fellowship or happiness of the wicked. Do not think that they should be counted with you in the privilege of singular love because you have them as companions in the use and dominion of passing things; for even in this, as we have already said, they profit your salvation, because they can not only use these things with you but also rule them.
But what shall I say about the fellowship of the good? This alone remains now: consider whether you cannot glory in the singular love of your bridegroom because you are loved by him along with the fellowship of the good. Therefore I want you to remember the saying I brought forward above in support of this, which then you judged less fitting for proving the matter being treated there. I repeat it now, so that I may discuss it more carefully before you, to see whether its truth supports what we are trying to demonstrate. I said that human fellowship was also granted to you by the gift of the Creator, so that from it you might receive consolation for living and not waste away, deserted in a solitary and idle life. As the life of the wicked is exercise for you, so the life of the good is consolation; and surely these are people whose sharing in your happiness you should not reject, nor should you despise having them as partners in your love. For if you truly love the good, whatever benefit is bestowed on them, the charity that is in you rejoices over it not as something alien but as something proper to itself.
Although it would be blessed for you to enjoy this love even alone, it is much more blessed to delight in it with the rejoicing of many good people. When the affection of love is expanded even toward those who share it with you, the joy of charity and the sweetness of delight are enlarged. Spiritual love becomes more singular for each person when it is common to all. It is not diminished by the participation of many, for its one and same fruit is found whole in each. Therefore the fellowship of the good does not count against the privilege of your singular love, because your bridegroom loves you in all those whom he loves for your sake; and therefore he loves you singularly, because he loves nothing without you.
Do not fear that his spirit is drawn apart into the love of many as if by divided affection, and that it is therefore less toward each because it seems somehow parceled and divided among all. He is present to each as to all, because he would not bestow another or greater affection of love on each one if he loved each without the participation of all. Therefore let all love one uniquely, so that all may be loved uniquely by one. No one except the one is to be loved uniquely by all, and no one except the one can love all uniquely. Let all love themselves in the one as one, so that by love of the one they may become one. This love is unique but not private, alone but not solitary, shared but not divided, common and singular, individual to all and whole to each, neither decreasing by participation, nor failing by use, nor growing old with time, ancient and new, desirable in affection, sweet in experience, eternal in fruit, full of delight, refreshing and satisfying, and never producing weariness.
Soul
Your assurances are pleasant enough to me, and I confess that from the very thing by which I had begun to dislike this love more, I now begin to desire it more ardently. Yet one thing still remains for my desire. If I can obtain it through you, I will not doubt that I have been satisfied in every respect. This is it: whether it can be shown how this bridegroom of chastity is present, in affection and in effect, to each of those whom he loves as if to all. I will not be able to doubt the affection if I know that this is true in the effect.
Man
O my soul, if you persist so firmly in what you have begun, and do not judge yourself satisfied unless you recognize that an altogether singular benefit of your bridegroom has been bestowed on you, I gladly yield to your petition even in this, because I know that this insistence of yours arises from devotion rather than from importunity. In this too your best lover provided for you, so that there would be something in which you could glory singularly concerning him. Just as he gave common and special gifts, so also he bestowed singular ones. Common gifts are those that come into the use of all, such as the light of the sun and the breath of air. Special gifts are those that are granted not to all, but as it were to a certain fellowship, such as faith, wisdom, and discipline. Singular gifts are those imparted as proper to each person, such as Peter’s primacy among the apostles, Paul’s apostleship among the nations, and John’s privilege of love.
Consider, then, my soul, what common gifts you have received with all, what special gifts with some, what singular gifts alone. In all these he loved you: those he gave commonly to all with you, those he gave specially to certain people, and those he gave singularly to you alone. Again, he loved you with all those with whom he joined you by participation in his gift. He loved you before all those whom he set beneath you by the gift of singular grace. You were loved in every creature; you were loved with all the good; you were loved before all the wicked. And lest it seem little to you that you were loved before all the wicked, how many good people are there who received less than you?
But because, in your desire for singular love, I see that you press more toward those things that were singularly given, although many things could still be said about those in which and with whom you were loved, I want what has already been said to suffice. Yet I do not want you to think it a small thing that you were loved in such great things and with such great companions, where you have all the good as partners and the wicked, like all created things, as subjects. You have seen, therefore, my soul, how great the things are in which you were loved; you have seen what kind of companions they are with whom you were loved. Now consider, as far as you can, before whom you were loved.
I am speaking to you, my soul. You know what you have received, and you need to know it still better, lest you begin either to presume about things you did not receive or fail to give thanks for the things you did receive. Would that I could recall them as is useful for you and as pleases him who gave them to you. For he gave them to you so that you would always hold them in memory and never grow lukewarm in his love through forgetfulness.
First consider, my soul, that once you were not, and that you received from his gift that you might begin to be. It was his gift, then, that you came to be. But had you given him anything before you came to be, so that this might be returned to you by him, that you should come to be? Nothing at all. You had given nothing; you could have given nothing before you existed. Freely you received from him that you should exist. To whom, then, were you preferred in being made? Who could receive less than the one who received that he might exist? And yet, if this were not to receive something, one who was not could not begin to be; and if it were not better to be than not to be, one who is would have received nothing more than one who is not.
Why, then, my God, did you make me, unless because you willed that I should be rather than not be? You loved me more than all those who did not merit to receive this from you. When, then, my God, you gave me being, a good and great thing, you gave me your good, your beautiful good; and when you gave this to me, you preferred me to all those to whom you did not will to give such a great good of yours. O my soul, are we saying something when we say this to our God? To our God, by whom we were made, made when we were not, and by whom we received more than all those who were not made? Yes, surely, we say something, and we say much when we say this; and this we should always say, lest we ever forget the one from whom we received so great a good. If he had given nothing more, he would still always deserve to be praised and loved by us for this alone.
But now he gave more, because he gave not only being, but beautiful being, shapely being. As much as this surpasses nothing by existence, so much does something that is formed stand before something that has mere being, in which what is pleases much, and what is such pleases more. In this, my soul, see that you were preferred to all those whom you see not to have received such and so excellent a good of existing. Nor could the generosity of the best giver end here. He gave still something more and drew us more toward his likeness; he wished to draw by likeness those whom he drew to himself by love. Therefore he gave us being and beautiful being; he also gave us life, so that we might excel both those things that are not, by essence, and those things that are unordered or uncomposed, by form, and those things that are inanimate, by life. You are bound by a great debt, my soul. You received much, and you had nothing from yourself. For all these things you have nothing to give back except that you love. For what was given through love can be repaid in no better or more fitting way than through love. You received all this through love. God could have given life also to his other creatures, but he loved you more in this gift. Nor did he love you more because he found more to love in you; rather, because he freely loved you more, he made you such that now he rightly loves you more.
Soul
The more I hear, the more I long to hear. Go on, I beg you, and tell what follows.
Man
After being, after beautiful being, after living, sensing too was given, and discerning was given; and it was given through the same love which, if it had not gone before, nothing would have been given by the giver and nothing received by the needy one. How lofty and how beautiful you were made, my soul. What did so great an adornment mean, except that the very one who clothed you was preparing a bride for his chamber? He knew for what work he made you; he knew what adornment suited that work; and therefore he gave what suited it, and gave it so greatly that he himself, who gave it, would love it.
He adorned you outwardly with senses and illumined you inwardly with wisdom, giving sense as an outer garment and wisdom as an inner one. He hung the senses outside like gleaming jewels, and inside he adorned the face of your countenance with wisdom as with natural beauty. Behold, your adornment conquers the beauty of all jewels; behold, your face surpasses the loveliness of all forms. It was wholly fitting that she who was to be led into the chamber of the heavenly king should be such. How much you were loved, and before how many you were loved, when you were made such. What a singular gift, not granted to all, but granted only to those loved and to be loved. You could have gloried much, and you should have guarded much, lest you lose such a gift, defile such an ornament, corrupt so great a beauty, and, if it were lost or defaced, become more wretched than you would have been if you had not received it or if it had not been perfected. It had to be guarded, then, and that had to be avoided, so that the guarded gift would remain and the feared disaster would not happen.
But see what you did, my soul. You abandoned your bridegroom and prostituted your love with strangers. You corrupted your integrity, fouled your beauty, scattered your adornment. You became so vile, so ugly, so unclean, as if you were no longer worthy of the embraces of such a bridegroom. You forgot your bridegroom and did not give worthy thanks for such great benefits. You became a harlot, and by your excessive fornications your breasts were loosened. Your forehead became wrinkled, your cheeks withered, your eyes languid and stupefied, your lips covered with pallor, your skin dried up, your strength broken, hateful even to your lovers.
Soul
I hoped those great praises were tending toward another end, but as I see it, you said these things for my greater confusion, so that you might show me more worthy of hatred, the more you proved me ungrateful for having received such great benefits and failing to guard them. I would wish either that what has been said had not been done, or at least that what was done had not been said, so that forgetfulness might cover the confusion if presumption did not avoid the guilt.
Man
These things were said not for your confusion but for your instruction, so that you may become more bound to him who both made you when you were not and redeemed you when you had perished. I recalled that too in asserting his love, so that, taking occasion from it, I may now begin to tell you how much this bridegroom of yours, who appeared so lofty when he created you, deigned to be humbled when he restored you. There so exalted, here so humble; yet here not less lovable than there, because here not less wonderful than there. There he powerfully conferred great things on you; here he mercifully endured terrible things for you. In order to lift you back there from where you had fallen, he deigned to descend here where you lay; and in order that what you had lost might be justly restored to you, he deigned mercifully to suffer what you endured. He descended, assumed, endured, conquered, restored. He descended to the mortal, assumed mortality, endured passion, conquered death, restored man.
Behold, my soul: be stunned by such wonders, such benefits displayed for your sake. Think how much he loves you, who deigned to do such things for you. You had been made beautiful by his gift; you became foul by your own iniquity. But again you were cleansed and made beautiful by his goodness, while charity was at work in both. Long ago, when you were not, he loved you so that he might create you. Later, when you were foul, he loved you so that he might make you beautiful, and to show you how much he loved you, he would free you from death only by dying, so that he might not only bestow the benefit of mercy but also show the affection of charity. Now he loves you with such sincere charity as if you had always stood with him; he neither reproaches you with guilt nor casts his benefit in your teeth. And if from now on you are willing to persevere faithfully with him, to love him as is fitting, and to preserve your love uncontaminated for him, he promises to give greater things than the former ones.
Soul
I begin now, in some way, to love my fault, because, as I see, it has profited me not a little to have harmed me, insofar as through it the thing I desired with all my prayers to know becomes clearer than light. O happy fault of mine, to wash which away he is drawn by charity, and by which that very charity of his is opened to me as I desire it and long for it with all my heart. I would never have known his love so well if I had not experienced it in such great dangers. O how happily I fell, since after the fall I rose more happy. No affection is greater, no love more sincere, no charity holier, no desire more ardent. The innocent one died for me, finding nothing in me that he might love. What, then, Lord, did you love in me, and love so much that you would die for me? What did you find in me for which you willed to endure such great and hard things?
Man
O my soul, accuse yourself before the Lord because until now you have been ungrateful for such great benefits and did not wish to recognize his many mercies. But so that you may understand still better how much you owe him, I want you to attend diligently while I pursue the rest of his benefits according to the order begun.
Soul
I always desire to hear this, which is so sweet to me that I would want you to repeat the same thing without ceasing, if I were not also hastening to hear the other things that remain.
Man
You had gone away and had perished; and because you had been sold under your sins, he came after you to redeem you. He loved you so much that he paid the price of his blood for you, and by such a bargain both brought you back from exile and redeemed you from bondage.
Soul
I did not know that God loved me so much. I ought no longer to be worthless to myself, since I pleased God so much that he chose even to die for me lest he lose me.
Man
And what if you begin to think how many, and what kind of people, were cast aside in comparison with you, who could not obtain this grace that was given to you? Certainly you have heard how many generations of human beings passed from the beginning until this day, all of whom, without the knowledge of God and without the price of their redemption, slipped into everlasting destruction. Your redeemer and lover preferred you to all of them when he lavished on you this grace which none of them merited to receive. What will you say? Why do you think you were preferred to all of them? Were you stronger, wiser, nobler, richer than all of them, because you merited to obtain this special grace before all of them? How many strong people, how many wise, how many noble, how many rich were there among them; and yet all, left and cast aside, perished. You alone were taken up before all of them, and you can find no cause why this was done in you except the free charity of your Savior.
Your bridegroom, your lover, your redeemer, your God therefore chose you and chose you beforehand. He chose you among all, took you up from all, and loved you before all. He called you by his own name, so that his memorial would always be with you. He willed you to share in the name, to share in the truth of the name, because he anointed you with that oil of gladness with which he himself was anointed, so that from the Anointed there might be an anointed one, who from Christ is called Christian.
Soul
Much, I confess, has been bestowed on me. But I ask you: if, as you assert, I have already been taken up, why am I still delayed, since I cannot yet come to the embraces of the bridegroom?
Man
Do you not know, my soul, do you not know how foul you were before, how polluted, how deformed and squalid, torn and scattered, full of every horror and enormity? And how quickly do you seek to be introduced into that chamber of modesty and chastity unless first, by some care and zeal, you are cultivated and restored to your former beauty? This is why you are now kept waiting; this is why your bridegroom still withdraws his presence from you and does not yet admit you to mutual embraces and sweet kisses: because the polluted should not touch the clean, nor is it fitting for the ugly to see the beautiful. But when you have been prepared and fittingly adorned, then at last you will enter without confusion into that chamber of the heavenly bridegroom, where you will remain. Then you will not be ashamed of your former ugliness, since you will have nothing ugly, nothing worthy of shame. Therefore first strive to cultivate your form, adorn your face, arrange your habit, wipe away stains, restore purity, correct morals, keep discipline, and finally, with all things changed for the better, make yourself a bride worthy of a worthy bridegroom.
I want to say something by which I may make you more cautious, lest, because you hear that you are chosen, pride swell you or negligence make you slack. Have you never heard what King Ahasuerus did when he rejected Queen Vashti because of her insolence? A remarkable deed, a useful example, a grave danger. She was cast aside because of her pride, and the king’s command was given that beautiful young virgins should be gathered from his whole kingdom and brought to the city of Susa and handed over to the house of women under the hand of Hegai the eunuch, who was set over and kept the royal women. There they were to receive women’s adornment and the other things necessary for use. Thus, with everything abundantly supplied according to royal ambition, they were cultivated and adorned. For six months they were anointed with myrrh oil; for another six they used certain perfumes; and so, arranged and adorned, they passed from the women’s banquet-hall to the king’s chamber, so that the one who pleased him most from among all would sit on the throne of the kingdom in place of Vashti. See how many were chosen so that one might be chosen: the one, namely, who appeared more beautiful and more adorned than the rest to the eyes of the king. The king’s ministers choose many for adornment; the king himself chooses one for the chamber. The first choosing of many was made according to the king’s command; the second choosing of one was made according to the king’s will.
Let us consider, then, whether this example may perhaps be adapted to the present matter we are treating. The king, the Son of the highest King, came into this world, which he himself had created, to betroth to himself a chosen wife, a unique wife, a wife worthy of royal nuptials. But because Judea scorned to receive him appearing in the form of humility, she was cast aside. The king’s servants, that is, the apostles, were sent throughout the whole world to gather souls and bring them to the city of the King, that is, to the holy Church, in which there is the house and dwelling of royal women, that is, holy souls, who are made fruitful and bear children not for servitude but for the kingdom. Because they serve God not from fear but from charity, they bring forth, as it were, the offspring of good works into freedom. Many, therefore, called by faith, enter the Church, and there receive the sacraments of Christ as certain ointments and antidotes prepared for the restoration and adornment of souls. But because it is said by the mouth of Truth, “Many are called, but few are chosen,” not all who are admitted to this adornment are to be chosen for the kingdom, but only those who so study to cleanse and cultivate themselves through these things that, when they are introduced into the presence of the king, they are found such as he would rather choose than reject.
See, then, where you have been placed, and you will understand what you should do. Your bridegroom has placed you in the banquet-hall, where women are adorned. He has given various perfumes and diverse kinds of spices, and commanded royal foods to be served to you from his table. Whatever can help toward health, whatever toward refreshment, whatever toward restoring appearance, whatever toward increasing beauty, he has bestowed. Beware, therefore, lest you be negligent in cultivating yourself, lest in your end, when you are presented before the sight of this bridegroom, you be found unworthy, which may it not happen, of his fellowship. Prepare yourself as befits the bride of a king, and the bride of the heavenly King, the bride of an immortal Bridegroom.
Soul
You have again made me bitter and struck me with no small fear. As far as can be understood from your words, I have changed my purpose but have not escaped danger. I have changed my purpose because I have turned from the one who once distracted me with wandering and unstable love to a single love. I have not escaped danger because, as you assert, unless I strive in every way to show myself worthy, I do not reach the fruit of this love. It remains, then, for you now to explain to me more carefully this banquet-hall in which royal women are nourished, the royal food given to them, the ointments with which they are anointed, and all the other things supplied for adornment and beauty. Love of him stirs me to devote my study hereafter to those things without which I see that I cannot arrive at the affection of love. Would that I might merit to be that one whose beauty and adornment the king will praise. How happy she is, and how much more chosen than the chosen, who will bring her study to this end. How slight I would now reckon every labor, if I could bring my study to this end. I beg you, then, not to be weary of teaching me one by one what those remedies are by which I should reform my face toward this beauty, because I greatly desire to please him whose charity toward me I recognize as so kind and whose love as so sweet.
Man
This is truly what you must do. And I pray that he who has already given you the will to do this may also wish to give you the strength to accomplish it. You ask what the banquet-hall is; ask also what the king’s chamber is. Set these two dwellings before yourself, because you need to consider them. There is the banquet-hall; there is the king’s chamber. In the banquet-hall brides are prepared for marriage; in the chamber the weddings are celebrated. The present Church is like the banquet-hall, in which the brides of God are now prepared for future weddings. The heavenly Jerusalem is like the chamber of the King, in which the weddings themselves are celebrated. After the times of adornment they pass from the banquet-hall to the chamber of the King, because after the times of doing good they come to receive the fruit of their good work. The present Church is called a banquet-hall because of the three orders of the faithful: the married, the continent, and the rulers or virgins.
Let us see next what the ointments are, what kinds of perfumes, what foods, what garments are prepared for the adornment of brides. Nor should this be passed over: just as the bridegroom first loves the foul and ugly freely, so he also freely supplies every aid for their adornment. They have nothing from themselves unless they receive from him what may please him, so that you may know that this too belongs to love, that you have something with which you can adorn yourself, since from yourself you have nothing unless you have received it from him.
First there is the font of baptism placed here, and the washing of regeneration, in which you wash away the filth of former crimes. Then chrism and oil, in whose anointing you are smeared with the Holy Spirit. After this, having tasted and been bathed with the anointing of gladness, you come to the table, and there receive the nourishment of the body and blood of Christ. By it, inwardly filled and refreshed, you drive away that harmful thinness of your former fasts, and, restored to your former fullness and strength, you become young again in some way. Then you put on the garments of good works, and by the fruit of alms, with fasts and prayers, with sacred vigils and other works of piety, you are adorned as with a varied ornament. Last come the spices of virtues, whose sweet-breathing odor drives out all that stench of old filth, so that you seem somehow wholly changed and transformed into another, and you become more joyful, more eager, more sound. Sacred Scripture is also given to you as a mirror, so that there you may see your face, lest the arrangement of your adornment be too little or otherwise than is fitting.
What, then, do you say, my soul? Do you know whether you have already received any of these things? Certainly you were washed in the font; certainly you ate the same food and drank the same drink from the table of the King. But perhaps you have again been polluted: you have tears with which you may wash yourself again. Again the anointing has withered in you: anoint yourself again through good and pious devotion. Again you have been wasted by long fasting: washed again with tears and renewed by the anointing of pious devotion, return to your refreshment. See how a loving dispensation meets you everywhere. You did not have, and it was given to you; you lost, and it is restored to you. Nowhere are you abandoned, so that you may know how much he loves you by whom you are loved. He does not wish to lose you, and therefore with such patience he waits, and kindly allows you, if you will, to repair again and again what has so often been lost negligently.
O how many have already perished who received these things with you, but did not merit to receive them again with you after they had been lost. Therefore you are loved more than all those, because what was lost is restored to you so kindly, while what was lost was denied to them so strictly. Has the grace of doing good not been given to you? Yet by his giving, a good will has not been denied. If you do great works, you are mercifully raised up. If you do not do great works, perhaps you are healthfully humbled. He knows better than you what is useful for you, and for this reason, if you wish to think rightly about him, understand that everything done to you by him is done well. Perhaps you do not have the grace of virtues; but while you are shaken by the impulse of vices, you are better strengthened in humility. Weak humility smells sweeter to God than proud virtue.
Therefore dare to prejudge nothing in his dispensation, but always with fear and reverence pray to him that he may help you in whatever way he knows. If any evils still remain in you, may he gently wash them away; if any goods have been begun, may he kindly perfect them; and may he lead you to himself by whatever road he wills. What more shall I say to you? Is there anything still that we can say to show love? I speak to you, my soul: is there anything? What do you say? If you tell what is yours, you will not be able to tell what belongs to others. If you tell what is others’ and yours, still not all. For who can tell all? And yet we know that charity is the origin of all things. Behold, two are born, the same nobility of birth belongs to both, the same hour of birth. One is left in poverty, the other is raised up by riches, and charity works both, because it humbles this one by poverty and consoles that one by abundance. This one is weak and that one strong. That one is restrained so that he may not accomplish evil; this one is strengthened so that he may prevail for good work. Charity proves both; it does not reject them. One is illumined by wisdom, another is left in the simplicity of his own sense; yet charity willed to be present to both, to this one so that he might despise himself, to that one so that he might strive to know his Creator. Such is the love of God toward us, and human weakness endures absolutely nothing that he, so far as lies in his goodness, does not arrange for our good.
Confession
I confess your mercies to you, Lord my God, because you have not abandoned me, sweetness of my life and light of my eyes. What shall I return to you for all that you have given me? You wish me to love you; and how shall I love you? How much shall I love you? Who am I, that I should love you? And yet I will love you, Lord, my strength, my firmness, my refuge, my deliverer, my God, my helper, my protector, the horn of my salvation and my receiver. How much more shall I say? You are the Lord my God.
O my soul, what shall we do for the Lord our God, from whom we have received so many and such great goods? For he was not content to bestow on us the same goods as on the rest; even in our evils we recognize him as a singular lover, so that we may love him singularly for all our goods and all our evils alike. You gave me, Lord, to know you, and to understand, beyond many others, things revealed from your secrets. You left others of my own age in the darkness of ignorance, and before them you poured into me the light of your wisdom. You gave me to know you more truly, to love you more purely, to believe in you more sincerely, to follow you more ardently. You gave me a capable sense, easy understanding, tenacious memory, eloquent tongue, pleasing speech, persuasive teaching, effectiveness in work, grace in conduct, progress in studies, success in things begun, consolation in adversity, caution in prosperity; and wherever I turned, everywhere your grace and mercy went before me.
You did all things for me. Often, when I seemed to myself consumed, you suddenly freed me; when I wandered, you brought me back; when I was ignorant, you taught me; when I sinned, you corrected me; when I was sad, you consoled me; when I despaired, you strengthened me; when I fell, you raised me up; when I stood, you held me; when I went, you led me; when I came, you received me. All these things you did for me, Lord my God, and many others about which it will always be sweet for me to think, always to speak, always to give thanks, so that I may praise and love you for all your benefits, Lord my God.
Behold, my soul, you have your pledge, and in your pledge you know your bridegroom. Preserve yourself untouched for him; preserve yourself unpolluted; preserve yourself whole; preserve yourself uncontaminated. If once you were a harlot, now you have been made a virgin, just as his love is accustomed to restore integrity to the corrupted and to preserve chastity in the whole. Always think what great mercy he has shown you, and in this weigh how much you are loved by him, because you know that his benefit has never been lacking to you.
Soul
Truly, I confess, this love is rightly called singular, which, although it pours itself out into many, nevertheless embraces each one uniquely. Truly this good is beautiful and wondrous: common to all and whole for each. Presiding over all, filling each, present everywhere, caring for all, and yet providing for each as if for all. So it certainly seems to me, when I attend to his mercies around me, that, if it is right to say it, God somehow does nothing except provide for my salvation. I see him wholly occupied with guarding me, as if he had forgotten all others and wished to be free for me alone.
He always shows himself present, always offers himself ready. Wherever I turn, he does not abandon me; wherever I am, he does not depart. Whatever I do, he stands by alike. And that he is at last the perpetual inspector of all my actions and thoughts, and, as far as his goodness is concerned, an undivided co-worker, he shows openly by the effect of his work. From this it is clear that, although his face cannot yet be seen by us, his presence can never be avoided.
But I confess that when I consider this more diligently, I am confounded by great fear and shame together, because I behold him whom I so greatly desire to please present to me everywhere and seeing all my hidden things. O how many things there are in me about which I blush before his eyes, and for which I now fear more that I displease him than I trust that I can please him by the praiseworthy things in me, if there are any. O that for a little while I could be hidden from his eyes, until I wiped away all those stains, and only then appeared spotless and unstained before his sight. For how will I be able to please him in this deformity, when in it I also greatly displease myself?
O old stains, O foul and ugly stains, why do you cling so long? Go away, depart, and do not presume any longer to offend the eyes of my beloved. Do not deceive yourselves: with his help you will not always remain with me, although because of my laziness you have not yet been driven out. I have sworn over you that I will neither keep nor love you any longer, because I wholly detest and utterly abominate your ugliness. And from now on, even if I could not be seen by my Bridegroom, I would still not wish to be stained by you. How much more now, since I am openly before him, and since offending him certainly saddens me more than even my own ugliness. Depart, then. In vain you cling to me any longer, because even while remaining with me, you are not mine. I judge you alien from my lot, and from now on I wish to have no communion with you. I have another pattern to which I desire to be conformed, and I look constantly to another; and as much as I can, I draw from it always more and more likeness. From it I have also learned that I must drive you out, and now I know how I shall do this.
Man
A wonderful thing is happening with us; perhaps you do not wonder at it because you do not yet understand what I mean. I consider how, from the beginning of our speech, you have brought forward many things that seemed opposed to love, and from them the power of love has not been weakened but more fully proved. You said that love could not be singular and common at the same time; but from this it was proved more wonderful, because it was shown to be both common and singular. Again you said that you were not perfectly loved because you had heard that you were chosen for adornment and had not yet seen yourself taken up into the chamber. Yet again it is shown that the love toward you is so much greater because his patience waits more fully for your perfection.
Finally, now you began to doubt whether, in this deformity that you suffer unwillingly, you could be loved by him. But when you doubted this, you did not remember that long ago you were wholly foul and yet loved. If, then, he deigned to love you when you were wholly ugly and had not yet any beauty, how much more will he love you now, when you have already begun to be adorned and to put off your former ugliness? This too belongs to the praise of his love: that he deigns to love the imperfect. And although he still sees certain things in you that do not please him, he nevertheless loves this very thing, that you too have already begun to hate in yourself the things that displease him. For he does not look so much at the state as at the purpose; he attends not to what you are, but to what you wish to be, provided that you strive as much as you can to merit becoming what you have not yet begun to be.
Soul
I ask you to receive kindly this last question of mine. What is that sweet thing which sometimes touches me in remembering him, and affects me so vehemently and sweetly that I now begin somehow to be wholly alienated from myself and drawn away I know not where? Suddenly I am renewed and wholly changed, and it begins to go well with me beyond what I can say. Conscience is gladdened, all misery of past sorrows falls into forgetfulness, the spirit exults, understanding grows clear, the heart is illumined, desires are made joyful. Now I see that I am elsewhere, I know not where, and as if I hold something within in the embraces of love; and I do not know what it is, and yet with all effort I labor always to hold it and never lose it. The spirit struggles somehow delightfully not to withdraw from that which it always desires to embrace, and as if it had found in it the end of all desires, it exults supremely and ineffably, seeking nothing more, desiring nothing beyond, always wishing to be so. Is that my beloved? I beg you, tell me so that I may know whether it is he, so that if he comes to me again, I may beseech him not to go away, but always to remain.
Man
Truly it is your beloved who visits you. But he comes invisible, he comes hidden, he comes incomprehensible. He comes to touch you, not to be seen by you; he comes to warn you, not to be comprehended by you; he does not come to pour himself wholly in, but to offer himself to be tasted; not to fill desire, but to draw affection. He extends certain first-fruits of his love; he does not present the fullness of perfect satisfaction. And this especially belongs to the pledge of your betrothal: that he who in the future will give himself to you to be seen and possessed perpetually now sometimes offers himself to you to be tasted, so that you may know how sweet he is. At the same time, meanwhile, you are consoled concerning his absence, when you are ceaselessly refreshed by his visitation lest you fail. I beg you, my soul: we have already said many things. After all these things, know one, love one, follow one, grasp one, possess one.
Soul
This I choose, this I desire, this I long for with all my heart.
The latin text used for this translation has this written as “Fronto quoque philosophus scripsit librum Strategematon, id est, militaris suavitatis”. Hugo is most likely referring to Sextus Julius Frontinus, who was the author of the Stratagemata, not Fronto.