The Elucidarium, Part 3

Book Three of the Elucidarium of Honorius Augustodunensis was called De futura vita, "Concerning future life." By "future life" he meant the afterlife.

There are seven chapters to Book Three: The Elect, The Damned, State of Souls Before the Judgement, The Antichrist, The Resurrection, The Judgement, Eternal Bliss.

It begins with an explanation of the moment of death of "The Elect"; that is, those who will go to Heaven:

Just as a bridegroom comes with a crowd of soldiers to fetch his bride and then, happily singing, leads her off, so when a righteous man comes to his end, his guardian angel comes with a crowd of angels and raises his soul, the bride of Christ, from the bodily prison and leads it into spiritual paradise and, with loud singing of the sweetest song and with bright light and the most pleasant odor, arrives at the heavenly palace.*

For those on the other end of the spectrum:

When the wicked reach their end, a great noisy throng of demons, awful to see and dreadful in their actions, comes to get them. They drive the soul from the body with terrible torment and lead it cruelly to the prisons of Hell.

Honorius describes nine tortures, and now I'm wondering if Dante got the idea of nine circles from the Elucidarium. A lot of time is spent on details of how much and how the damned will suffer. He also makes clear that no one in the afterlife who is no damned will care a bit for the suffering of those who deserve it.

The master explains how the Antichrist will come to power:

He will command the whole world and will subjugate the whole human race to himself in four ways: First, he will gain the noble by wealth, ... Second, he will subdue the common people by terror because he will rage with great savagery ... Third, he will win over the clergy by wisdom and unbelievable eloquence, ... Fourth, he will deceive those who have contempt for the world, ....

The Elucidarium became enormously popular, translated into several languages across Europe for centuries. (The illustration is the title page of a German edition.) What Honorius produced influenced the day-to-day understanding of Christianity for generations, and no doubt led to several of the common ideas people have even today about the afterlife.

The idea of the Antichrist started early in Christianity, and the Middle Ages was very wary of him, always on the lookout for whomever might be the one who subjugates the world in three and a half years and fools the faithful. Tomorrow we'll look at the evolution of this idea in the Middle Ages, and at some of the people who were accused of being the Antichrist. See you then.

*Nota bene: translated passages are from a 1979 translation made for a dissertation that can be found here.

The Elucidarium, Part 2

Book Two of the Elucidarium of Honorius Augustodunensis was called De regis ecclesiastics, which could be translated "On the matters of the Church." For Honorius, this was about explaining our current existence and our religious obligations. It begins by tackling the question of the source of evil and sin, since those things are in our hands:

Pupil: It is said that evil is nothing, yet if it is nothing, it seems to me a great marvel that God would damn angels or men, since they do nothing. If evil is something, then it seems to be from God, since all things come from him. It follows that God is the creator of evil and unfairly damns those who do it.

Master: Truly, all things come from God and he made all things to be very good. Therefore, evil is shown not to exist in substance. Everything which God made is substantial and all substance really is good. Evil, however, has no substance; therefore evil is nothing. What we call evil is nothing other than the absence of good, just as there is blindness when there is no sight or darkness when there is no light, even though blindness and darkness are not material.

...

Sin is nothing more than failure to do what has been commanded or doing other than that which has been commanded, just as evil is nothing more than the absence of good, that is joy. Evil has, at least, its name from God since it came about through that substance which God made. God properly damns or keeps joy from those who do not do or do otherwise than what he has commanded.

Fortunately, there are ways to be forgiven for your sin if you are truly penitent. Also, there are guardian angels:

Pupil : Do men have angels as guardians?

Master: Angels preside over each race and state, righteously dispensing and ordaining rights, laws and customs. Moreover, every spirit, when it is sent to a body, is entrusted to an angel who always urges it to do good and who reports all the spirit's works to God and the angels in heaven.

And sinners always have the opportunity for a deathbed confession and repentance, which the Master says does work.

Book Three enters the realm of Christian eschatology, what happens after death. We'll take a look at his views on the afterlife, the Antichrist, Final Judgment, and Eternity tomorrow.

*Nota bene: translated passages are from a 1979 translation made for a dissertation that can be found here.

The Elucidarium, Part 1

Written by Honorius Augustodunensis (c.1080 - c.1140) in the late 11th century, the Elucidarium was intended to make clear various things about Christianity and mundane understanding of the world. The author would have been quite young at the time of writing, and went on to write many more works, but the Elucidarium became a well-known way to explain the world around us in the context of Christianity. We have over 300 Latin manuscripts of it, showing how popular it was. It was also translated into Old English, Provençal (although that one alters the text to make it more compatible with Catharism), and Old Icelandic (which provided influence for Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, which I explained a couple days ago). It was later translated into Old French, Middle High German, Middle Welsh, Czech, and others.

The format is a Socratic dialogue between a Master and Disciple, spread over three books. The three are:

1. De divinis rebus (On divine things), covering Creation, the rebellion and fall of the angels, Eden and the Fall of Man and need for redemption, and the life of Jesus.

2. De regis ecclesiastics (On the matters of the church), explains the founding of the Church when the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles during Pentecost; it explains the divine nature of Christ and the manifestation of Christ in the Eucharist.

3. De futura vita (On the future life), in which he discusses the Antichrist, the Second Coming, the Last Judgement, Purgatory, and the eternity that awaits you in either Heaven and Hell.

Honorius uses many analogies to help the reader (or listening audience) understand his concepts. For example, the Holy Trinity has three parts like the sun. The sun has fire (God), light (Son), and heat (Holy Spirit). He also describes Paul's reference to three heavens (from 2 Corinthians 12's "third heaven" comment) and explains that the first heaven is the physical one we see, the second is spiritual and where angels exist, and the third is for the Holy Trinity.

These were the kinds of explanations that comforted people, that gave them a better understanding of what was being said in the Bible, something to "hang their hat on" so to speak. Honorius goes into detail on the order of the six days of Creation, and offers a timeline for other events in Genesis. Satan (a name that never appears in the Bible) lasted not even a single hour in Heaven before thinking himself better than God and being cast down. Angels had the ability to sin because they had free will, but after the fall the good angels became even more good and lost the ability to sin. He then goes into detail about angels and devils.

For the rest of Book One, he discusses Jesus' time on Earth, his death and resurrection and ascension into Heaven, declaring that once Jesus passed the clouds his physical body transformed into a more godly form.

Tomorrow we'll look at Book Two.

Honorius Augustodunensis

Yesterday I briefly mentioned the Elucidarium. Its name signified that it was intended to elucidate the details of Christian theology and its relationship to mundane folklore. Today I'll tell you about its author, and tomorrow we will look at the work itself.

The author was Honorius Augustodunensis. The surname has been questioned. Some thought he was from Autun, whose Latin name was Augustodunum, but he was as likely to be from St. Augustine's Abbey in Canterbury (where he would have known Anselm). Additionally, since he refers to contemporary events in Germany, some suggest that he could be from Augst near Basle or even Augsburg in Swabia. The Catholic Encyclopedia calls him "Honorius of Autun," despite acknowledging the German connections.

He was influenced by the writings of John Scotus Eriugena and his Division of Nature, and by Anselm of Canterbury. In fact, we can partially date its origin in the late 11th century because it refers to Anselm's Cur Deus Homo, published in 1098.

He was a monk (or hermit: he describes himself as solitarius which could mean either) who certainly spent some time in England; later in life he went to  the Scots Monastery in Regensburg, Bavaria, lending credence to the idea that he was originally German.

Honorius also imitated the style of John Scotus Eriugena, used the same definition of philosophy as Eriugena ("Philosophy is the comprehension of things visible and invisible"), wrote a summary of the first four books of Eriugena's) Division of Nature (and copied the fifth into it), and praised him highly, suggesting that he may have spent time in Ireland with the man.

Besides the Elucidarium, he wrote many other works. We believe the Elucidarium was one of his first, which means he was a very young man when he wrote it. He lived until about 1140, and his birth is estimated to have been about 1080.

He wrote a set of lessons for celebrating the Assumption of Mary, a commentary on the Psalms, a collection of his sermons (you can read one here), a commentary on the Timæus of Plato, a bibliography of Christian authors (including himself of course), and Imago Mundi ("Image of the World") that combined cosmology, geography, and a history of the world.

Tomorrow we will look at the influential Elucidarium.

Elves

Early Anglo-Saxon texts show the Old English term ælf, which morphed into our Modern English elf. The word was cognate with the Old Icelandic alfar, and Old High German alp ("evil spirit").

Some of these earliest Anglo-Saxon references are contained in medical texts such as Bald's Leechbook, a collection of remedies. Elf influence was blamed for many otherwise unexplainable ailments, especially sudden stabbing pains that were often attributed to "elf-shot," an arrow or other projectile from an unseen elf attacker. The illustration shows the victim of "elf-shot" by demons, depicted as arrows, from the 12th-century Eadwine Psalter.

What did elves look like?  The consensus is that they looked like human beings, often depicted as very attractive physically. Interactions in folklore do not suggest that they were diminutive. They were also seen as their own race or people: the use of Old English ylfe in Beowulf is a grammatically plural ethnonym, the term for a people or tribe.

Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, written about 1200, even lists different elf races: he talks about svartálfar, dökkálfar and ljósálfar ("black elves," "dark elves," and "light elves"). Snorri, however, is the only source for these different species of elf, and it is thought that he was "elf-ing" (my term) the existence of dwarves, demons, and angels; trying to take some spreading Christian concepts and "paganizing" them (again, my term).

The spread of Christianity turned elves from invisible creatures living alongside humans and occasionally helping or hurting into evil forces that must be defied and destroyed. Scottish witchcraft trials frequently refer to the evil influences of elves. Eventually, the word "elf" began to be replaced by the French loan-word "fairy." Chaucer, writing in the 14th century, has Sir Thopas set out to find the elf-queen in the "countree of the Faerie." Iceland has retained some belief in alfar as we saw in yesterday's post.

I want to talk about the reference to Snorri Sturluson's "paganizing" Christian concepts that were spreading across Europe. The spread of Christianity was enhanced by a particular text created to explain it to ordinary people who had no education. It attempted to explain common folklore in the context of Christianity. This work was called the Elucidarium, and we'll open its pages tomorrow.