Defeating Eternity

How long has the universe existed? Has it been around forever? Did it have a beginning? Could it have a beginning? These questions troubled the ancients.

Aristotle in his Physics tried to answer this through reason. Everything that comes into being does so from something that already exists; matter is made from matter, after all. The matter of the universe would have to come into being from some underlying matter; it couldn't come from nothing. For the matter of the universe to come into being, some matter must have existed before it. This statement is ridiculously self-contradictory, and therefore could not be taken seriously. The universe must have always existed.

Others supported Aristotle. Critolaus (c.200-c.118 BCE) couldn't believe that human beings would ever stop simply procreating into eternity. In the Early Medieval Period, Proclus (412-485) produced De Æternitate Mundi (On the Eternity of the World) with 18 proofs.

This belief was about to collide headlong with Christianity, however. The Bible makes it clear that there was a moment of Creation. That being the case, the universe cannot have been eternal.

John Philoponus (490-570) was a prolific and controversial writer who realized that Aristotle needed to be questioned on some things. Although he would be condemned after his death as heretical for interpreting the Trinity as three gods instead of one God, he was known in his lifetime for defending the Biblical necessity of a universe with a starting point. He wrote "Against Proclus" in which he challenged every one of Proclus' arguments. The basis for his argument is simple, and referred to now as the Traversal of the Infinite. If the existence of something relies on the existence of something else prior to it, then you need to account for the existence of the prior thing. That prior thing would rely on the existence of something before that, and so on. You have to have an infinite series of assumptions that something existed before the thing that came afterward, and never actually explain where any of the substances came from. The world could not possibly be infinite, and must have been created by a divine being.

The Ring of Fire vs. The Flood

15th century portrayal of Ptolemy's map

Prior to the Age of Exploration, human beings in the western hemisphere did not attempt to travel long distances by sea and discover distant lands.* This was partially because ships that could handle a very long voyage were not able to be built or provisioned easily for such a journey.** Another reason is that the world was "known" to be shaped so that long voyages were fruitless.

Eratosthenes (c.276-c.195 BCE) had established in the Classical Era the spherical nature of the Earth through simple and clear experimentation; no one disputed that. (His math on Earth's diameter was probably a little off: the unit of measurement he used probably gave him an Earth 4000 miles larger around than it is.) What was up for debate was the question of what existed "over the horizon."

Aristotle (384-322 BCE), upon whose scholarly shoulders the Middle Ages tried to stand, loved symmetry. It made sense to him that there were five zones (from the Greek word meaning "girdle") around the Earth. The extreme top and bottom were icy cold and uninhabitable. Just inside of them were the temperate zones where humans and animals lived—note: he believed both temperate zones were inhabited. In the middle it was so hot—and clearly, the further south you go from Greece and the Mediterranean the hotter it got—that it was uninhabitable. Pliny (23-79) said that this central zone was so hot that it was actually a ring of fire and was unlivable and impassable, so we would never be able to visit the people living in the southern hemisphere.

Wait, said Christianity. That can't be. The Flood covered the whole world, and when the waters receded, the Ark of Noah came to rest on Mt. Ararat in Turkey, from which all the animals strolled away and repopulated the world. If the ring of fire at the equator is impassable, how can there be animals living beyond it? Worse, if there are people living in the southern temperate region, how are we going to reach them with the Word of God?

Proving that classical scholars did not always agree, Ptolemy presented different problems in geography. His Geography was translated and made available to Western Europe in 1406. His map (depicted above in a 15th century version printed in Ulm) showed that all you had to do was sail far enough south to reach the southern lands in the world, but he also extended the bottom of Africa eastward, enclosing the Indian Ocean. This meant you could not sail to the Indian Ocean and therefore to India, but would forever have to use the Silk Road (and incidentally pay tolls at every border crossing, something sailors get to avoid).

The Age of Exploration changed all this. In 1473, Aristotle was proved wrong with a Portuguese ship exploring the west coast of Africa passed south of the Equator. In 1488, another Portuguese ship sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and reached the Indian Ocean. India and the east were accessible by ship after all, and the Portuguese quickly established those shipping routes.

Ptolemy's Geography was erroneous in another way. He estimated the Earth's circumference at thousands of miles smaller than Eratosthenes. Since no one cared to duplicate Eratosthenes' experiments and determine the distances involved, Ptolemy might have been taken as truth by some. His estimates of the size of a spherical Earth would put Asia thousands of miles closer to Europe by sailing west. With Portugal dominating southern routes to the East, was it Ptolemy's miscalculation that prompted Spain's Columbus to try a bold plan to establish a different and (he thought) shorter route?

*Perhaps some day we'll get to some of the rare cases of accidental discovery of previously unanticipated lands.
**I have been aboard replicas of Columbus' ships; they are frighteningly small considering the journey they made.

Final Exams

Early copy of the Sentences

In the Middle Ages, The Bible was recognized as the most important book in existence. No book was more discussed and commented upon. Many of the commentaries themselves, such as those of the Early Church Fathers, became only slightly less significant objects of study. The Early Church Fathers did not always agree, however, which led to confusion, and (if you weren't careful in your reading and expounding on what they said) to heresy. Into this dilemma stepped Peter Lombard.

Peter Lombard (c.1095-1160) was born in Italy. He studied at Reims and Paris, and taught for ten years in the cathedral school at Notre Dame where he would have met some of the greatest theologians of the time. He was ordained by 1156, and was made bishop of Paris in 1159.

At some point he found time to write. Although he wrote commentaries of his own, his great work was the Libri Quatuor Sententiarum (Four Books of Sentences), in which he attempted to cover the entirety of biblical scholarship and knowledge by laying out passages from the Bible with relevant commentary from the Early Church Fathers and others. He tries to show where there is agreement among the commentators; where there is disagreement, he tries to reconcile the opposing viewpoints.

The four books covered the Trinity, Creation (and the world), Christ and salvation, and the Sacraments. The Sentences became the standard theology textbook for the next 400 years, and formed the basis for understanding the Bible and Christianity.

Because of the fundamental position the Sentences takes in theology, it was at the center of most theological study. Therefore, students were given a simple task: write your own commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Your masters would read your commentary to see if you understood the Bible and its learned analyses properly. If you did not, you were told to correct your commentary. If you corrected your commentary, all was well and good. If you decided that you were right and that you should argue with your masters, you ran the risk of (at the very least) not having your degree conferred, or (at worst) being declared heretical.

...and that's what one of the most famous medieval thinkers—the one whose name everyone today knows—did, and it got him expelled from Oxford University.

But that's a story for another day.

A Mother's Advice

Online version of this translation

Dhuoda's Liber manualis (Manual/Handbook) is a unique work by a female author from the 9th century. Fragments of a Carolingian era manuscript exist in a library in Nîmes, and a single 17th century copy of the original exists in the Biliothèque Nationale in Paris.

The Manual teases some biographical detail, such as in the Prologue when she asserts:

I, Dhuoda, though frail in sex, living unworthily among worthy women, am nonetheless your mother, my son William. To you the words of my handbook are directed now. For, just as playing at dice seems for a time most comely and apt to the young, amid other worldly accomplishments, or again, as some women are wont to gaze in mirrors, to remove their blemishes and reveal their glowing skin, concerned to please their husbands hear and now—in the same way I want you, when you're weighed down by hosts of worldly and temporal activities, to read this little book I have sent you, often, in memory of me: don't neglect it—use it as if it were a matter of mirrors or of games of dice.*

We know (she mentions this herself) that she is in Uzés near Nîmes, and it is not uncommon for men to leave their wives in charge of their estates, but this passage suggests—even while she shows familiarity with material concerns—that she resides in an abbey or convent. Still, wherever she lives and with whatever company, she is apparently managing estates (though with some difficulty):

To help my lord and master, Bernard—so that my service in his cause, in the Marches and in many places, should not be flawed, and that he should not sever himself from you or from me, as some men are wont to do—I realize I have burdened myself with great debts. To meet his needs, I have often had to borrow large sums, not only from Christians but also from Jews. I have repaid them as far as I could, ...

She asks William that, after her death, he determine her debtors and repay anything still owed. Her husband seems to be exonerated for any "exile" she has suffered when she says (italics are mine):

But when I had resided a long time in that city, lacking your presence, at my lord's command, happy at his exploits and missing you both, ...

She also shows herself to be well educated: she quotes from or alludes to the Bible throughout, and even quotes the great scholar Alcuin when counseling William against the temptations of the flesh:

O, how short, short indeed is that moment of fornication by which future life is lost! And how great is the strength and the enduring splendor of chastity, which makes a mortal man like a fellow citizen of the angels. (Liber de virtutibus et vitiis [Book of Virtues and Vices])

It is a very personal attempt by a mother to guide her son in the ways of the world as well as a good Christian life:

Even if, more and more, you acquire books, many volumes, may it still please you to read frequently this little work of mine—may you have the strength to grasp it profitably, with the help of almighty God. [...] So it is altogether necessary for you, my son William, to show yourself, in both ventures, as one who can be of service to the world and at the same time can always, through every action, give delight to God.

How he will be able to achieve this balance—to keep his mind on God while oppressed with worldly cares—is the purpose of the Manual, and it is a better Manual than other instruction because it comes from her:

My son, you will have teachers who will give you more lessons, and more valuable ones—yet not in the same way, with the heart burning within, as I with mine, my first-born one... .

Emphasis on her special role as his mother in teaching him is mentioned throughout the work. She also asks that he pass the book along to his younger brother, recently born and taken into his father's care almost immediately. It is an amazing work, written by a woman who devoted herself to duty to her husband and to her sons, even though she spent most of her life without their presence.

*Some quotations from Women Writers of the Middle Ages by Peter Dronke.

Funeral Practices

[In memoriam: William Shaw, 1917 - 2012]

Have modern funerary practices always been in place? Were there different methods (and reasons) for disposing of the deceased over the ages?

The 9th century Oseberg ship

Burials of pre-historic human beings have been found, showing that the practice of interment has been around for tens of thousands of years. We have not found tens of thousands of burials, however. It is entirely possible that time and shifting geography has simply eradicated traces of huge numbers of burials. It is also possible that nomadic peoples might have pushed a body into a river, or piled up some stones, and moved on.

The Judaic tradition was clearly for burial. Deuteronomy 34:6 tells us, of Moses, that "God buried him in the depression in the land of Moab opposite Beth Peor. No man knows the place that he was buried, even to this day." Early Christians favored burial over cremation or any other disposal. Tertullian (160-225 CE) discusses Christian funeral practices, and Christ's placement in the tomb reinforces the idea of keeping the body intact in preparation for resurrection.

The Viking image of the funeral pyre on land, or the ship ablaze and pushed out to sea, was another medieval attitude to death. The Viking cultures believed in an afterlife, but they knew it could not be a corporeal life—that was over. They (like the Egyptians) honored their dead by surrounding them with accoutrements that would accompany them into that afterlife. Because they were a sea-faring people, using a ship as a bier was appropriate. When those cultures began to adopt Christianity, they changed their funerary practice but did not give up their cultural symbols: they buried their nobles, but chose to bury them in a boat—like the Oseberg ship pictured above—or a boat-shaped grave-mound.

Bound body being carried, from the Bayeux Tapestry

There were debates about the state of the body at the time of burial. The Christian desire to keep the body intact ran up against reality at time. It may have been the Crusades that started the practice of "de-fleshing" a body. When someone was killed far from home, and burial in his homeland was a long time coming, his comrades would boil the body to reduce it to a nice clean and non-putrefying skeleton. This skeleton was considered sufficient to transport home and bury. Not only was this a grisly sight, but Pope Boniface VIII (1253-1303) made the action of treating a body thusly worthy of excommunication. Furthermore, such remains were to be denied Christian burial.

The image of bodily resurrection had taken such a strong hold on Christian doctrine that interfering with the body deliberately seemed sacrilegious. Cremation was likewise considered inappropriate. Which leads me to a personal observation: if resurrection of a body that has decayed for centuries is possible, I do not see how resurrection of a body turned into ashes would be significantly more difficult. Still, this distinction in how bodies should be treated provided a strong visual image for cases when the Church wanted to make a point: it became common practice to throw the corpse of a heretic into the river to be washed away. You may remember the case of Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake and had his ashes thrown into the nearest river, and Jan's inspiration, John Wycliffe, who, although he died in 1384, was declared a heretic in 1415, and whose body was dug up in 1428 so that it could be burned and then thrown into the nearest river!

The Flat Earth

In 1620, Sir Francis Bacon published Novum Organum ("The New Organon," by which he meant a new interpretation of nature). In it, he claimed that the ancient fathers of the Christian church did not tolerate a belief in a round Earth. It is probably this work that influenced the popular belief ever since that the Middle Ages, or religion, were steadfast in their belief in a flat Earth.

There is plenty of evidence to the contrary, however. True, there was "evidence" in the Middle Ages of a flat Earth. The Mappa Mundi (Map of the World), meant to portray the part of the world believed to be habitable, does make the world look flat and finite. Way back in he 3rd century BCE, however, Eratosthenes had coined the term "geography" and measured the circumference of the clearly round Earth by noting the difference in shadows of a stick at noon on two points many miles apart; the angles and length of the shadows told him that the sun was shining down on the surface at different angles, and the surface was therefore curved.

As revered an early christian as Boethius (480-524, mentioned here) in De consolatione philosophiæ (The Consolation of Philosophy) reminds us of how small we are in the grand scheme of things with this:

It is well known and you have seen it demonstrated by astronomers, that beside the extent of the heavens, the circumference of the earth has the size of a point; that is to say, compared to the magnitude of the celestial sphere, it may be thought of as having no extent at all.

Medieval sources even quote Pliny the Elder's figure of 29,000 miles for the circumference, a remarkably accurate figure.*

So was there a conflict between science and Christianity? Depends who you talk to, I suppose. William of Conches (1085-1154), who may have been a tutor to the young man who became King Henry II of England, wrote extensively on reconciling the origin of the cosmos in Plato's Timaeus with Genesis. The Bible may have described the earth as flat, but William knew this should not be taken literally, explaining:

The authors of Truth are silent on matters of natural philosophy, not because these matters are against the faith, but because they have little to do with the upholding of such faith, which is what those authors were concerned with.

As learning spread—specially with the advent of mass printing—perceptions of the Earth's shape would have spread thanks to re-printed classical works. Columbus' idea to go west to arrive at an eastward point was not a risky gamble or a brilliant insight. Other "facts" in the Bible were also understood to be not literal: Pope Innocent III, for instance, knew that the Moon shone with reflected light, even though the Bible refers to the Sun and Moon as "two lights."

So what account for the learned Bacon's statement? It may have something to do with the conflict between Galileo and the Church. Although the famous trial would not take place until 1633, Galileo had received a formal Admonition in 1616, warning him:

to relinquish altogether the said opinion that the Sun is the center of the world and immovable and that the Earth moves; nor further to hold, teach, or defend it in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing; otherwise proceedings would be taken against him by the Holy Office; which injunction the said Galileo acquiesced in and promised to obey.  [link]

It is very likely that Bacon and the rest of Europe's scientific community was aware of this growing conflict. In this historical context, Bacon's statement can be seen as a condemnation of the Church because of a recent action—even though for centuries the knowledge of a round Earth was common.

*In fact, the original figure might have been more accurate than we suspect: it was given in Greek stadia, a measurement which meant different things to different users. Our best interpretation is 29,000 miles, but if Pliny were using stadia of a slightly shorter length... .

6 October - Potpourri

A collection of notes related to the date and to this blog*:

St. Francis was first mentioned here, then the phenomenon of his stigmata here. Today is the Feast Day of St. Mary Frances of the Five Wounds (born into the very prominent Gallo family). Despite initial opposition from her family, she entered the Third Order of St. Francis in 1731, and she also experienced the stigmata.

I have mentioned, more than once, the alteration of the calendar to correct inaccuracies. Because of the change described here, and the implementation of the Gregorian reform, 6 October 1582 does not exist in the historical calendars of Italy, Poland, Spain or Portugal.

In the entry on Good King Wenceslaus, I mentioned that he was never a king, but that there was a King Wenceslaus of Bohemia. King Wenceslaus of Bohemia was born on 6 October 1289.

The entry "Not One Iota of Difference" has an image showing what is called the Trinitarian shield. That design, shown here, is the heraldic emblem attributed in the Middle Ages to St. Faith, also known as Sainte Foy to the French and Santa Fe to the Spanish. She was reputedly tortured to death in Rome in about 287 or 290 CE for refusing to make pagan sacrifices. Her name and life seem more legendary than historical, but there is an Abbey of Sainte-Foy in Conques in southern France that holds her relics, and the area has centuries of tales of miracles—often amusing and "prank-like—attributed to her.

Wycliffe's daring translation of the Bible into English was first described here. The death sentence offered or anyone with a copy kept the idea of an English language Bible "off the table" for a long time. William Tyndale (c.1492-1536) produced the first complete English language Bible that was mass-produced on a printing press and that was a translation from Greek and Hebrew versions that were earlier than the Latin version. Tyndale left England in order to be able to produce his Bible, and moved around Europe to avoid authorities who wished to stop him. He was eventually arrested, imprisoned, strangled as a heretic, and then his body burned at the stake, on this date in 1536.

*Plus two UNrelated to this blog: it is the date Frodo gets stabbed on Weathertop, and years later, the date on which Maeve is born.

The Price of a Man

Murder has long been considered the worst crime in many societies. Unlike theft, or vandalism, it cannot be paid back. The only "proportional response" for avenging the death of a friend or loved one was to use the Old Testament values of "an eye for an eye" and slay the slayer. This, unfortunately, could lead to a Hatfields and McCoys situation, with death after death on both sides, an escalating cycle of inter-family murders.

But does it have to?

In the early Middle Ages, Anglo-Saxon and Germanic societies found a way to establish, as a community, a way to settle the matter of a death in a legal and tidy system: wergild (Old English wer = "man"* + gild = "tribute/gold").

The practice was first established by Æthelbert of Kent (c.560-616). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that Æthelbert held sway over the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in Britain. He was the first English ruler to convert to Christianity, and perhaps wergild was his attempt to cool the hot blood of the Anglo-Saxon culture. Within a couple centuries, wergild was being used for theft, rape, breach of peace and many other crimes and misdemeanors. Wergild allowed a community to move on after monetary retribution.

How much retribution? It was different for different areas and times. In Kent in the 8th century, a cow was worth a shilling; a freeman was worth 100 shillings, and a nobleman 300. Elsewhere, a sheep might be worth a shilling, and a nobleman worth 1200 sheep. Only slaves were worth too little to account for.

Exchanging money for people had uses beyond crime. In the later Middle Ages, ransoms for captured prisoners were a regular occurrence, and money was more valuable than eliminating an enemy in a military engagement that was far removed from the emotional setting that might have led to homicide in a different time and place. The 20th century hasn't forgotten about wergild, even if we do not use it widely. You may recall the revelation that the U.S. was using financial compensation for deaths and injuries to civilians in Afghanistan. Wergild also appears in The Lord of the Rings, when Isildur refuses to throw the One Ring into Mount Doom when he had the chance, instead claiming it "as wergild for my father and brother." In his case, however, wergild created a larger problem than it solved.

*Think "werewolf"="man+wolf."

4 Stages of Gothic—History & Culture

[This is Part 1; the other 3 parts address Gothic Architecture, the Gothic Revival, and Fiction.]

From the Middle Ages until 1974, the Kings of Sweden claimed the title Rex Sweorum et Gothorum (King of Swedes and Goths). This was a very old title, connoting not control over the subculture begun in 1980s England, but the rule over a people that have long since been diluted from the European scene.

Current belief is that the various groups that are collectively (and perhaps erroneously) called "Goths" in classical and early medieval texts probably sprang from a single ethnic group that existed in the first millennium BCE. The word from which their name comes is related to the Geats of Beowulf fame, to Götaland and the island Gotland in southern Sweden, and of course lends itself to the tribes that were instrumental in the Fall of Rome: the Ostrogoths and Visigoths. Various sources, for instance the history Getica by the 6th century Roman Jordanes, tells us that Goths left Scandinavia in waves due to overcrowding and settled in various parts of eastern Europe. Eventually, they moved westward, attacking Byzantium and migrating as far as Crete and Cyprus. An attempt in 269CE to invade Italy was defeated by the Roman army, with heavy casualties on both sides. Two centuries later, however, the Goths would succeed in taking Rome.

The Goths were willing to absorb ideas from people they met. Their art was influenced by Greek and Roman styles. In turn, their methods of embedding gems and colored glass into objects made of gold was adopted by others and used for centuries.

Gothic alphabet and number symbols.

One idea they absorbed was Christianity. Bishop Wulfila (c.310-383) was a Greek-Goth Christian who fled with his followers to northern Bulgaria to escape persecution. There he developed the Gothic alphabet so that he could translate the Bible into the Gothic language. Although he managed to convert many Goths to Christianity, it was Arian Christianity. Arianism had been declared heretical, so when Arian Goths met other Christian groups, they were not always welcomed with open arms. In fact, some modern scholars believe Romans felt more threatened by the Arianism of the Goths than by the political changes that would result from conquest. As for Wulfila's alphabet and Bible: we have very few examples of Gothic writing. It is one of the earliest Germanic languages recorded, but it has completely died out and no modern languages are descended from it.

Although the Goths died out, however, their name endured.

The English Bible

John Wycliffe (c.1320-1384) was politically active and a reformer whose brilliance as a theologian was originally admired widely. Eventually, as some of his ideas began to be put into practice, he became labeled a heretic. One of his greatest (and, in the church's opinion, most heretical) acts was to produce a complete translation of The Bible into English, because "it helpeth Christian men to study the Gospel in that tongue in which they know best Christ’s sentence."*

"In ye bigynyng iwas ye word", Wycliffe Bible.

We are pretty sure that Wycliffe didn't do the whole book himself. Nor was he the first: the Bible had been translated into Old English centuries before Wycliffe, but manuscripts were rare and piecemeal. The Venerable Bede (c.673-735) and Aldhelm (c.639-709) had each translated parts of the Bible into Old English. The oldest existing manuscript we have is the Lindisfarne Gospels, a 10th century Latin text of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John with Old English translation inserted between the Latin.

Many so-called Middle English Bibles were in fact paraphrases or commentary rather than strict translations.

For Wycliffe, the Bible held more truth than the church hierarchy, and he wanted people to be able to directly study the word of God. When the church objected—the traditional approach was that the clergy were best suited to explain the Bible to the people—Wycliffe replied “Christ and his apostles taught the people in that tongue that was best known to them. Why should men not do so now?”

So he set about making a careful translation with his friend, Nicholas of Hereford. Although using familiar English words, they stuck to Latin syntax, and so a sentence that we know as "And God said, Let there be light, and there was light." which is a fairly sensible translation of the Latin, came out (following Latin word order) as "And God said, Be made light, and made is light." In the years after Wycliffe's death in 1384, a follower of his (probably John Purvey) revised it, changing the word order to "And God said, Light be made, and light was made."

The Bible was popular—over 250 copies exist—but the church objected to it and to Wycliffe's increasing influence on the common people, especially after the Peasants' Revolt and the increasingly vocal and active Lollard movement. The early 1400s saw some extremely strict censorship laws put into place to prevent any more unauthorized translations. The problem was that, since the Wycliffe Bible had been translated from the Latin (whether carefully or not) without editorializing, it was not easily distinguishable from "authorized" translations. This may be why so many copies survived. Of course, 1453 and Gutenberg were just a couple generations away, which meant that the production of "unauthorized" texts was about to become frighteningly easy.

*N.B.: "sentence" in the Middle Ages did not mean just a collection of words expressing a complete thought. From the Latin sententia, it signified concepts such as "meaning" or "thought" or "opinion."