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ISIDORE'S WORLD VIEW

Is it possible to ascertain from the writings of Isidore what was the general view of the universe and the attitude toward life held in the sixth and seventh centuries?

Furthermore, even in writers far more consecutive in their thinking than Isidore, there are often fundamental preconceptions which are naively taken for granted, and which, although unstated, serve as points around which to mass ideas. If the reader does not happen to approach the subject with the same preconceptions, a misapprehension is likely to result. It is the business of the critic to grasp these preconceptions and place the reader on the same plane of understanding, as it were, so that he can follow the meaning as it lay in the mind of the writer. Sometimes this undertaking is possible, but in the case of a writer like Isidore, whose ideas are often hazy and whose work is a conglomerate of ten centuries, it may easily be impossible.

For example, Isidore evidently had a theory as to the origin and value of language, but he does not state it anywhere, although innumerable times he approaches the subject in an oblique sort of way. See p. 99. Again, he never tells us whether he believed the earth to be flat or spherical; he uses at one time language that belongs to the spherical earth, and at another, language that can have sense only if he believed the earth to be flat. Here we have not only no definite statement of the conception--although it must have existed in his mind, considering the frequency of his writings on the physical universe--but we have in addition the puzzle of deciding which set of expressions used in this connection was meaningless to him. See pp. 50-54 and Appendix.

However, it must be remembered that such an absence of an acute self-consciousness as is indicated in the condition just described, is exactly the thing that enables men to perform feats of an astonishing character in constructing a world-philosophy, if perchance they have a taste in that direction. Their minds, not being irritated or roused by any perception of inconsistency, rest happy in the conviction that all is explained, and remain oblivious of that sense of mystery which forms the background of modern scientific thought. As tested from this point of view the medieval period afforded the conditions for a complacent and authoritative world-philosophy, such as in fact it did possess.

The difficulties in ascertaining the world view held by Isidore are, then, considerable; but, since he was the leading representative of the intellect of the dark ages, and the only important writer on secular subjects in two centuries of western European history, the attempt to ascertain it seems worth while. In making this attempt, however, it is necessary to keep these difficulties of interpretation in mind; the danger is that we shall lay too much stress on the minor inconsistencies which he probably was not aware of, and so fail to see that large general consistency which, because of his lack of critical sensitiveness, he was able to believe that he found.

Isidore's physical universe in its form is geocentric, and is bounded by a revolving sphere which he believed to be made of fire, and in which the stars are fixed. The question of the number of spheres he treats in an inconsistent way, sometimes speaking of seven concentric inner spheres, and sometimes of only one. The relative size of sun, earth, and moon is accurately given--though, it appears, not without misgiving--and also the cause of eclipses of both the sun and the moon.

See 2, 24, 2 .

"Between these and the middle two are granted to wretched mortals by the gift of the gods."

Now, they who are next to the torrid circle are the Ethiopians, who are burnt by excessive heat.

De Quinque Circulis.

"In definitione autem mundi circulos aiunt philosophi quinque, quos Graeci ???????????--id est, zonas--vocant, in quibus dividitur orbis terrae.... Sed fingamus eas in modum dextrae nostrae, ut pollex sit circulus ???????, frigore inhabitabilis; secundus circulus ???????, temperatus habitabilis; medius circulus ??????????, torridus inhabitabilis; quartus circulus ??????????, temperatus habitabilis; quintus circulus ??????????, frigidus inhabitabilis. Horum primus septentrionalis est, secundas solstitialis, tertius aequinoctialis, quartus hiemalis, quintus australis....

"Quorum circulorum divisiones talis distinguit figura .

"Has inter mediamque duae mortalibus aegris Munere concessae divum.

The vastness of the physical universe is an idea not presented in Isidore's writings. It was for his mind really a small universe, and one limited sharply by definite boundaries both in time and space. It had begun at the creation, its matter being constituted at that time out of nothing, and it was to have an end as sharply marked. It extended from the earth to the sphere of the heavens which revolved about the earth, and what was beyond scarcely appears even as a question. It was a universe in which high winds might, and sometimes did, dislodge particles from the fiery heavens; and in which the sun approached so close to some of the inhabitants of the earth as to scorch them. In truth, Isidore's universe was reduced to rather stifling proportions.

A fundamental part of Isidore's world-philosophy was his view of the constitution of matter. This is closely bound up with his conception of the form of the universe, and it is also the most important of his ideas in the field of natural science.

He believed in the existence of the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water, and that they were the visible manifestations of one underlying matter. They were not mutually exclusive but "all elements existed in all", and it was possible for one element to be transmuted into another. Their properties were not invariable, but as a rule fire is spoken of as hot and dry; air, hot and wet; water, wet and cold; earth, cold and dry. It will be observed that each successive pair of elements had a common quality: thus fire and air shared the quality of 'hot'; air and water, that of 'wet'; water and earth, that of 'cold'; earth and fire, that of 'dry'. It was by the aid of these common qualities, which served as means, that the elements could be more easily thought of as passing into each other.

The theory of atoms is also stated by Isidore. See p. 235. It is not used, however, and is not fully stated. The part played in the theory by atoms of different sizes is not mentioned, and although "the void" is mentioned, its importance is not brought out.

The theory of the four elements, as has been already indicated, has a cosmological bearing. In the universe at large the elements were thought of as tending to arrange themselves in strata according to weight. Isidore says it is proved "that earth is the heaviest of all things created; and therefore, they say, it holds the lowest place in the creation, because by nature nothing but itself can support it. And we perceive that water is heavier than air in proportion as it is lighter than earth.... Fire, too, is apprehended to be in its nature above air, which is easily proved even in the case of fire that burns in earthy substance, since as soon as it is kindled, it directs its flame toward the upper spaces which are above the air, where there is an abundance of it, and where it has its place."

Thus the physical universe consists of the four kinds of matter, stratified according to the principle of weight. The notion was one in frequent use, and it was brought into relation with animate existence by assigning to each of the four strata a peculiar population. Thus the fiery heavens were occupied by angels; the air, by birds and demons; the water, by fishes; the earth, by man and other animals.

xiii, chaps. 4-6 chaps. 9-27 4-6

Fire Astronomy Astronomy, fuller Astronomy, briefer, the angels, the inhabitants of the element of fire

xiii, 7-12 28-39 7-8

Air The atmosphere and The same, fuller The same, briefer, meteorological with an account of phenomena demons, the inhabitants of the air

xiii, 12-22 40-44 9

Water A description of The same in very The same, briefer, water with a much abbreviated without the geography form geography of the water surface of the earth

xiv, 1-9 45-48 10-15

This table indicates the great stress Isidore laid upon the cosmological side of the theory of the four elements, as well as his tendency to use his large general ideas in relating the individual branches of knowledge. Here astronomy, meteorology, and geography are thus grouped together, and angelology is put into relation with astronomy and demonology with meteorology.

The theory of the four elements was fertile in every branch of the natural science of medieval times. Isidore uses it, for example, to explain the physical constitution of man:

Man's body is divided among the four elements. For he has in him something of fire, of air, of water, and of earth. There is the quality of earth in the flesh, of moisture in the blood, of air in the breath, of fire in the vital heat. Moreover, the four-fold division of the human body indicates the four elements. For the head is related to the heavens, and in it are two eyes, as it were the luminaries of the sun and moon. The breast is akin to the air, because the breathings are emitted from it as the breath of the winds from the air. The belly is likened to the sea, because of the collection of all the humors, the gathering of the waters as it were. The feet, finally, are compared to the earth, because they are dry like the earth. Further, the mind is placed in the citadel of the head like God in the heavens, to look upon and govern all from a high place.

In another passage Isidore tells us that fire has its seat in the liver, and that "it flies thence up to the head as if to the heavens of our body. From this fire the rays of the eyes flash, and from the middle of it, as from a center, narrow passages lead not only to the eyes but to the other senses".

Here blood and the element, air, are related; the passage quoted in the preceding paragraph shows a similar relation between blood and the element water. Such inconsistencies are extremely common.

That notions of such a loose, semi-philosophical nature should survive while the solid empirical content of medical science faded away, is characteristic of the decline of thought which culminated in the dark ages. The science of medicine had cut itself loose from concrete things, and attached itself almost exclusively to the vague philosophical conceptions from which even the best Greek thinkers had not been able to free it.

The phenomena of meteorology, also, were explained largely by the four elements. The upper air was believed to be akin to the fire above it, and was therefore calm and cloudless; while the lower air was supposed to be cloudy and disturbed by storms because of its proximity to water, the next element below it in the series. Further, the belief in the possibility of the transmutation of elements was of use here. Air, for example, might be transmuted into water, or water into air. As Isidore puts it: " being contracted, makes clouds; being thickened, rain; when the clouds freeze, snow; when thick clouds freeze in a more disordered way, hail; being spread abroad, it causes fine weather, for it is well-known that thick air is a cloud, and a rarified and spread-out cloud is air."

The most remote fields are invaded by the four elements. It is by reference to them that the seasons are explained. Here use is made rather of their properties than of the elements themselves. "The spring is composed of moisture and heat; the summer, of fire and dryness; the autumn, of dryness and cold; the winter, of cold and moisture." From this the transition is easy to another far-fetched application of the theory. The four quarters of the universe, East, West, North, and South, are connected with the four seasons, and thus with the four elements. This conception seemed to Isidore so important that he introduced a figure to illustrate it.

The old notion that man is a microcosm or parallel of the universe on a small scale, was familiar to Isidore. As has been shown, he believed that man was composed of the same four elements as the universe, and that they were distributed in him in much the same way as in it. It was going only a step further for him to declare that "all things are contained in man, and in him exists the nature of all things"; after which it was easy "to place man in communion with the fabric of the universe" by means of a figure.

The idea of the parallelism of man and the universe, when thus literally conceived, was a fruitful one. Man could be explained by the universe. And the process could be reversed and the universe also explained by man, since man may be observed in his entirety and his life history may be easily followed, while that of the universe may not. Isidore doubtless took this view, for he says: "The plan of the universe is to be inquired into according to man alone. For just as man passes to his end through definite ages, so too the universe is passing away during this prolonged time, since both man and the universe decay after they reach their growth." The division of the life of the universe, for example, into six definite ages, which he incorporated into his chronology, was given greater certainty and meaning from the similar division of man's life into six ages.

The wide scope assigned by Isidore to the action of the four elements--which scope includes the immaterial as well as the material--is completely alien to the modern way of thinking; as is, also, the bringing of the universe, the year, and man, into so intimate and specific a connection. Still more difficult is it for us to grasp such an idea as that the ounce "is reckoned a lawful weight because the number of its scruples measures the hours of the day and night"; or that "the Hebrews use twenty-two letters of the alphabet, following the books in the Old Testament". And the climax is reached when he expresses the notion that a man bursts into tears as soon as he casts himself down on his knees, because the knees and the eyes are close together in the womb.

Although these examples of Isidore's thinking afford excellent proof of his incoherence and lack of logical consecutiveness, their explanation goes deeper. Like all primitive thinkers, those of medieval times were firmly convinced of the solidarity of the universe; they felt its unity much more strongly than they did its multiplicity; what we regard as separate kinds of phenomena and separate ways of viewing the universe they regarded as of necessity closely inter-related. There were no categories of thought that were for them mutually exclusive; they carried their ideas without hesitation from the material into the immaterial, and from the natural into the supernatural. No conception established in one sphere seemed impertinent in any other. It was this state of mind that enabled the medieval thinker to take such erratic leaps from one sphere of thought to another, without any feeling of uncertainty or any fear of getting lost.

While this mode of viewing the universe had its origin in pagan antiquity, and even earlier, its scope was greatly enlarged by Christian thinkers. Living in a world whose general constitution and purpose they thought they thoroughly understood, they were confident that even in its smallest details there could be perceived a conscious adaptation to the whole. This idea they often carried so far as seemingly to leave no place for chance or convention. Each trifling matter was given a meaning that was greater than itself.

Perhaps nothing illustrates more clearly the erratic thinking to which this idea of the solidarity of the universe led, than the way in which Isidore reasons about number. To his mind the fact, for instance, that "God in the beginning made twenty-two works" explains why there are twenty-two sextarii in the bushel; and that "there were twenty-two generations from Adam to Jacob, and twenty-two books of the Old Testament as far as Esther, and twenty-two letters of the alphabet out of which the divine law is composed", were additional explanations for the same thing. A like connection is found in his statement that "the pound is counted a kind of perfect weight because it is made up of as many ounces as the year has months".

Isidore's conceptions in regard to number, indeed, deserve to be ranked closely after the theory of the four elements as affording to him "paths of intelligence" through the universe, material and immaterial. Both in the world at large and in the microcosm of man the harmony of "musical numbers" is an essential; and number is also an essential factor in every part and aspect of the universe. "Take number from all things," he says, "and all things perish." However, his idea of the importance of number in the world is equaled only by the vagueness with which he conceived its operations as a working principle. Here he takes absolute leave of the logic which, in his account of the four elements, he had already so often left behind. The best he could do, in describing the actual operation of this principle, was to make lists of instances in which the same number occurred, and no matter how unrelated the spheres of thought thus connected, to assume their close interrelation and explanation of one another.

It is now clear that according to Isidore's way of thinking, a fact belonging to one set of phenomena might be caused or explained by something totally different in another sphere. This being so, it was inevitable that there should be an effort to pass from the known to the unknown along the path thus suggested. When we reflect that, for the medieval thinker, there were three kinds of knowledge--namely, knowledge of the material, the moral, and the spiritual--and that they were in an ascending scale of value, it will appear equally inevitable that this effort to pass from the known to the unknown should be mainly an effort to pass from the material and obvious to the intangible and unseen, though more real, spiritual world. In this consideration we have the chief explanation of medieval allegory.

The explanation suggested accounts for the prevalence of allegory in medieval times. Among the less comprehensive and not characteristically medieval causes for it must be reckoned the influence of the parables that are explained in the New Testament, the occasional grossness of Biblical characters and language which called for an interpretation that would remove offence and offer edification, the congenial activity which allegorizing offered to the pious mind, and, finally, the fact that by a clever use of allegorical interpretation some desired end might be obtained.

The view held in the dark ages of the natural and the supernatural and of their relative proportions in the outlook on life, was precisely the reverse of that held by intelligent men in modern times. For us the material universe has taken on the aspect of order; within its limits phenomena seem to follow definite modes of behavior, upon the evidence of which a body of scientific knowledge has been built up. Indeed at times in certain branches of science there has been danger of a dogmatism akin to, if the reverse of, that which prevailed in medieval times with reference to the supernatural. On the other hand, the certainty that once existed in regard to the supernatural world has faded away; no means of investigating it that commands confidence has been devised, and any idea held in regard to it is believed to be void of truth if inconsistent with the conclusions reached by science. In all these respects the attitude of Isidore and his time is exactly opposite to ours. To him the supernatural world was the demonstrable and ordered one. Its phenomena, or what were supposed to be such, were accepted as valid, while no importance was attached to evidence offered by the senses as to the material. It may even be said that the supernatural universe bulked far larger in the mind of the medieval thinker than does the natural in that of the modern, and it was fortified by an immeasurably stronger and more uncritical dogmatism.

It is evident, therefore, that if we compare the dogmatic world-view of the medieval thinker with the more tentative one of the modern scientist, allowance must be made for the fact that they take hold of the universe at opposite ends. Their plans are so fundamentally different that it is hard to express the meaning of one in terms of the other.

Isidore's method of apprehending the supernatural world can hardly be called mysticism. With mysticism we associate intuition and exalted feeling, and the examples that have been given of Isidore's thinking in terms of allegory and number, show that he thought of the supernatural in the same prosaic and literal way as he did of the natural; there was no break for him between them, nor was there any change of intellectual atmosphere when he crossed the line. So the higher sense at least of the term 'mystic' must be denied him. His share in the mysticism of his age, which he accepted unquestioningly, was not a positive one; he exhibits rather the negative side of mysticism, the intellectual haziness, slothfulness and self-delusion by which it was so often accompanied in medieval times.

Isidore believed that in point of time the supernatural preceded the natural. He says that God "created all things out of nothing", and, again, that "the matter from which the universe was formed preceded the things created out of it not in time, but in origin, in the same sense as sound precedes music". It is evident that he regarded the material as an emanation from the spiritual. With such an origin the material world was naturally subservient to spiritual control, and miracles caused little wonder. They "are not contrary to nature, because they are caused by the divine will, and the will of the Creator is the nature of each created thing.... A miracle, therefore, does not happen contrary to nature, but contrary to nature as known." The supernatural thus not only preceded, but dominated, the natural. Finally, the universe was to disappear at the end of six ages, and all was to be reabsorbed in the supernatural. The world of nature, then, was merely a passing incident in a greater reality that contained it.

As in the universe at large, so in man the supernatural completely overshadows the natural. The soul is all-important and theory in regard to it is precise and dogmatic. "As to the soul," Isidore says, "the philosophers of this world have described with great uncertainty what it is, what it is like, where it is, what form it has, and what its power is. Some have said it is fire; others, blood; others that it is incorporeal and has no shape. A number have believed with rash impiety that it is a part of the divine nature. But we say that it is not fire nor blood, but that it is incorporeal, capable of feeling and of change; without weight, shape, or color. And we say that the soul is not a part, but a creature of God, and that it is not of the substance of God, or of any underlying matter of the elements, but was created out of nothing." He says further, that the soul "has a beginning but cannot have an end". All the activities by which life is manifested are considered as parts or functions of the soul. Dum contemplatur, spiritus est; dum sentit, sensus est; dum sapit, animus est; dum intelligit, mens est; dum discernit, ratio est; dum consentit, voluntas est; dum recordatur, memoria est; et dum membra vegetat, anima est.

In contrast with the soul the body scarcely deserves to be spoken of except with disparagement. Its goods are to be unhesitatingly sacrificed to those of the supernatural element in man, or rather, they are not regarded as goods at all. "It is advantageous," Isidore says, "for those who are well and strong to become infirm, lest through the vigor of their health they be defiled by illicit passions and the desire for luxury". The present life of the body has no value; it is brief and wretched. "Holy men desire to spurn the world and devote the activity of their minds to things above, in order to convey themselves back to the place from which they have come, and withdraw from the place into which they have been cast." Thus philosophy of the supernatural culminated in asceticism.

Isidore's supernatural world has its inhabitants, and in dealing with these he has a theology, an angelology, and a demonology; in all of which fields his ideas are more precise and clear-cut than where he speaks of the material world.

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