One Soul To Guide Them All

Averroes (1126-1198) undertook to explain and comment on the works of Aristotle, in an attempt to clarify the Greek philosopher's concepts. One of those concepts was the idea of man's intellect, the debate over which was both stimulating and shocking for the medieval world.

Averroes (in turban); detail, "School of Athens" (Raphael)

Aristotle distinguished between a passive intellect, which is man's predisposition to accept and hold ideas, and an active intellect, which was the agent of analysis and creativity.* The active intellect was an outside force, and the blending or convergence of the external active intellect with the internal passive intellect differed in individuals, which is why we could strive to learn and think and better ourselves intellectually, but we were still different from each other. The connection between active and passive was not the same in each person. This accounted for different and individual personalities.

This was an obvious parallel to Aristotle's Realism: the idea that there exist "universal" abstract concepts—such as "dog"—outside of our direct experience, that allow us to directly experience multiple different dogs with different characteristics (which he called "particulars") and yet understand that they were all dogs.

Averroes explained this further, and created a religious controversy.

If the active intellect was external (and from a divine source) but the less-powerful passive intellect resided in man, and it was the blending of the two that created personality and human intelligence, then what happens at death when the external active intellect is removed? As a divine and lasting and (presumably) unchanging force, it stays as it is, unaffected by its temporary connection to an individual. The human-centered passive intellect dies with the human, the active intellect withdraws, and therefore there is no individual personality that exists anymore.

For Averroes, understanding Aristotle meant that there was no survival after death of a personality. Your personality—what makes you "you"—is gone when you die, and there is no room here for a soul with your personality to exist in an afterlife.

Orthodox Mohammedan theology did not agree with this, nor did Christian theologians such as St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas.

Averroes defense against the charge of heresy? That reason forced him to express these thoughts, but that of course he adhered to the truth as explained by his faith.

*Aristotle used the term "intelligences" to refer to the non-physical (divine, or spiritual) forces that moved the celestial spheres. Christian thinkers would later call these "angels."

Nominalism vs Realism

Realism [link]

At the foundation of philosophy is a question: what defines reality? There are several questions that are connected to this. Let us start with: when we say that a lot of different animals are all dogs, to what quality are we referring that makes the Dachsund and the Great Dane both dogs? Is there an essential quality of "dog-ness"? Some universal concept that is inclusive of all dogs, despite the particular differences between breeds?

There it is: universals and particulars.

Realism says that both universals and particulars exist. That is, we recognize that different dogs/houses/trees are those things because, although they have different particulars, there is a universal essence of dogs/houses/trees that exists. Plato and Aristotle were Realists.

Nominalism says that the world is made only of particulars. Things we see are put into categories by our thought processes and our language, not by the existence of some abstract universal. William of Ockham and Jean Buridan were Nominalists.

In the two diagrams shown, we see that in Realism, although John and David have different Particulars, they are defined by their Universal quality as human beings. Nominalism, however, shows John and David only defined by their Particulars. The category of Humanity is created by us. There is no abstract "Humanity" essence that exists independent of John and David.

Nominalism [link]

Getting at the truth produced some fascinating thought experiments. One—The Puzzle of Theseus' Ship—was posed by Plutarch (46-120 CE). The ship of Theseus was preserved in Athens for several generations. As pieces of it decayed, they were replaced with new wood, so that the ship would stay intact. If a thing is based on its particulars, then with the particulars of this ship having changed over the years, is it still Theseus' ship? If there is some universal of Theseus' ship (as Realism says) then it is still his ship. If there are only particulars (as Nominalism says) then it isn't.

British philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) took this a step further: if all the removed pieces were assembled into a complete ship, then which is Theseus' ship? Are they both Theseus' ship? He concludes that this would be absurd.

Even the early scholars understood that there were problems with these concepts, and struggled to reconcile the issues. Still, they did their best to understand how reality worked, and how that would help them to understand everything else.

...such as whether we have individual souls. That discussion will take us back to Averroes tomorrow.

The Commentator

Statue commemorating Averroes in Córdoba

Averroes (1126-1198) was born in Córdoba into a family of distinguished jurists and scholars at a time when Islamic culture was flourishing in Spain. He probably would have spent his life as a judge if not for his mentor and friend, the physician Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl, who told him that he should write commentaries on the works of Aristotle. The problem seen by ibn Tufayl was that Aristotle was too obscure either because of the ambiguity of his own writing or the shortcomings of his translators.

Averroes, whose real name was ʾAbū al-Walīd Muḥammad bin ʾAḥmad bin Rušd, embraced the task so thoroughly that, to the West, he became known as "The Commentator." His scholarship was embraced across cultures: Jacob Anatoli translated Averroes' Commentaries into Hebrew. Anatoli's colleague and friend Michael Scot translated some directly into Latin.

He analyzed and promoted most of Aristotle (and Plato's Republic) to the known world, as well as writing dozens of books of his own. So far as we know, he did not have access to original texts—there is no evidence that he knew Greek—and so his commentaries are based on Arabic translations of Aristotle.

Unfortunately for him, his rationalist views often got him into trouble when they came up against Islamic theology (which he had studied extensively). He was, in fact, banished by a caliph to whom he had been the personal physician, because some side remarks in Averroes' writing (such as "that Venus is one of the gods") struck the caliph as blasphemous. Fortunately, Averroes was allowed to return home prior to his death.

One of his most radical ideas, based on Aristotle, was that there were multiple intellects, but only one shared soul for all of mankind. To explain that raises more questions, however, unless first we look at a debate I have been putting off for months. Tomorrow, therefore, we will (finally) discuss Nominalism vs. Realism.

Jacob Anatoli

Daily Medieval has frequently mentioned the importance of Arabic texts in the transmission of knowledge to Western Europe. Arabic, however, was not a commonly known language, and Arabs did not have a strong presence in Western Europe. Arabic culture often brushed up against Latin culture in the southern Mediterranean, as mentioned Salerno, or when a scholar such as Michael Scot made it a point to learn Arabic. Scot probably had help in the form of Jacob Anatoli.

Jacob ben Abba Mari ben Simson Anatoli (c.1194-1256) grew up in southern France, and gained such a reputation for scholarship that he was invited to Naples by Frederick II, who gathered several other academics to his court, such as Scot and Fibonacci. Anatoli became known for his translations of Arabic texts into Hebrew, and he very likely aided Michael Scot in his Arabic translations. Roger Bacon explains that Scot was aided by a Jew named Andreas, and some scholars believe "Andreas" to be a misunderstanding of "Anatoli."

Of his non-translations, the greatest work is the Malmad ha-Talmidim (the title is a pun, being interpreted either "Teacher of the Students" or "Goad to the Students"). The Malmad shows a wide range of knowledge, incorporating the Old Testament and Jewish commentators, but also the New Testament, Aristotle, Plato, and Averroes. His egalitarian approach to Christian and Muslim matters was refreshing, but Judaism still had special status; he wrote "the Greeks had chosen wisdom as their pursuit; the Romans, power; and the Jews, religiousness." He tells us that a non-Jew who seeks religious Truth should be respected by Judaism and not mocked.

Anatoli extended this intellectual courtesy to Frederick II, incorporating remarks by the emperor in his works. He also mentions a Christian whom Anatoli considers a second master (after Anatoli's own mentor, Samuel ibn Tibbon); this "master" has been equated to Michael Scot.

As for his Arabic translations, Anatoli's crucial contribution was exposing the West to the work of Averroes, one of two Arab scholars (the other was the medical expert Avicenna) whose work is considered fundamental to the Middle Ages.We'll look at Averroes tomorrow.

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.

William of Ockham

The goal of Daily Medieval is to present a sampling of the infinite array of information about the Middle Ages in small, digestible amounts. It offers a taste of the thousand years of people, events, and ideas that don't get covered in the streamlined history books of standard academic courses. To that end, it tries to avoid those things that people "already know" and focus on the lesser-known lights that shone at the foundation of modern civilization. Sometimes, however, the obscure overlaps the well-known, and I find myself "forced" to write about something or someone that I worry is known well enough that the daily entry won't give the reader anything "new." My goal then becomes to broaden the reader's knowledge in unexpected ways.

Which brings us to William of Ockham. I would be surprised if readers of Daily Medieval had not heard of Occam's (or Ockham's) Razor, a guiding principle that says one should not make more assumptions than absolutely necessary to try to explain something.

William of Ockham (c.1285-1349) was responsible for so much more, however. Believed to have been born in Ockham in Surrey, England, he wrote about metaphysics, logic, theology, politics, and more. All this writing, however, happened when he left Oxford University in 1320 without a degree in theology. The prevailing theory for this unexpected departure is that he would not acquiesce to changing his commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, a common part of the final examination for university students.

The basis for the theory is how the situation blew up years later. Ockham was summoned to Avignon to appear before Pope John XXII and a committee that would examine his writings. The committee, chaired by John Luttrell (an ex-chancellor of Oxford) found 51 heresies among William's commentary on the Sentences. It is believed that William escaped punishment by appealing to the Holy Roman Emperor (at the time, Louis IV), who was not always on good terms with the pope, saying to him "You defend me with the sword and I will defend you with the pen." In effect, he placed at the disposal of the Emperor his intellectual gifts, which (if this story is true) must have been known to be considerable for this ploy to work.

How did William earn his intellectual reputation? Between leaving Oxford in 1320 and arriving in Avignon in 1324, he spent three years in a Franciscan monastery, writing prolifically. One of the topics he put his mind to was whether priests should be allowed to own property. Franciscans believed priests should live a life of poverty. This put them into conflict with Pope John XXII, so the summons to Avignon and condemnation may have had more to do with that question than his Oxford writings.

Besides challenging the Church's ideas about material wealth, he was also challenging the ideas of people like Thomas Aquinas that reason was sufficient to determine everything we needed to know about the world.

But that's a story for another day.

He Who Would Be Santa

15th century woodcut of Nicholas

In the introduction to Arian Christianity I mentioned how discussion at the Council of Nicaea in 325 became so heated that Bishop Nicholas of Myra slapped Arius' face. Much of what we think we know about Nicholas is difficult to substantiate, but this has not stopped historians from talking about him. In fact, it is the least-documented information we have that has developed his reputation the most.

Nicholas (c.270-6 December 343) was born at Patara, in Asia Minor. As a young man he made a pilgrimage to Egypt and Palestine; upon his return he was made Bishop of Myra, not far from his city of birth. During the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, Nicholas was imprisoned, but freed once the Christian Emperor Constantine came to power.

He attended the first ecumenical council of the new Catholic Church in 325, which was called by Constantine in order to determine the (in)validity of Arianism (see the link above). Nicholas is counted among the numerous men who assembled there, and (as mentioned) became passionate about the debate.

Well, that's the story anyway. There are some lists of participants on which his name is not found, casting doubt on his presence at Nicaea. But his importance to legend is unquestioned. His popularity as a saint in Greece and Russia began early. Emperor Justinian I (483-565) built a church to Nicholas at Constantinople. He was revered in Germany during the reign of Emperor Otto II (955-983).

And you know you're an important person when they dig up your body in order to keep it safe (as monks had done in England with St. Cuthbert). In 1071 the Turks took control of most of Asia Minor. Among other things, this meant losing control of the burial site of Nicholas. Byzantium regained control under Emperor Alexios I Comnenus, but sailors from Bari in southern Italy took it upon themselves to save the saint's bones. They brought the relics to Bari in 1087, where they have remained. (Actually, they brought the major bones, leaving fragments. Venetian sailors during the First Crusade brought the remainder to Venice where they were put in a church. Scientific investigation in the 1990s proved that the bones in Bari and Venice belong to the same man.)

Traditional pawnbroker sign

The chief story of his giving nature—the story that eventually gave rise to the legend of Santa Claus—is about a man with three daughters for whom he did not have enough money for dowries. Without a dowry, marriage was unlikely, and the fear was that they would wind up as prostitutes in order to support themselves. Nicholas passed by on three consecutive nights and each night threw a bag of gold in the window, saving the future of the daughters. Because of this he has been made the patron saint of (besides children and sailors, etc.) pawnbrokers; some think the traditional image of three golden balls for a pawnbroker shop is because of the three bags of gold. A 15th century woodcut now in the British Museum (see image above) shows Nicholas laying three gold balls instead of bags into the girls' bed. (An alternate theory has the three balls connected to the Medici family heraldry.)

His feast day is today, December 6. In some countries, children put their shoes outside their doors on the evening of the 5th, and on the morning of the 6th find chocolate, coins, or trinkets.

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.

Pre-Inertia

Expositio & questiones manuscript

Jean Buridan (c.1300-c.1361) was a University of Paris scholar who was not afraid to tackle some of the big scientific and philosophical issues of the day. That meant, in some cases, taking a critical look at one of the most revered figures in science and philosophy, Aristotle. Buridan, like William of Ockham (c.1288-c.1348),  believed in the observable reality around him, and believed that observation of the world was the key to understanding it. Challenging Aristotle could be risky, but as more and more scholars observed the world around them, they realized that Aristotle's theories needed amendment. He wrote Expositio & questiones (Expoition and questions) to analyze Aristotle's work.

For example, Aristotle believed that an object set in motion—let's say, a rock thrown by a human hand—continues to move after it has left the hand because there must be some continuous external force exerted on it. He theorized that, in the same way a hand swished through water creates little eddies and swirls in the water around it, so the rock's movement is continued by eddies and currents of the air. If there were no movement in the medium that helped carry the rock forward, he believed, the rock would stop its forward course (and presumable drop the the ground). The currents eventually faded, allowing the rock to end its forward flight.

Buridan was not satisfied with this. Building on the work of others (such as John Philoponus and Avicenna, both of whom deserve their own entries some day), he believed that there must be a property in the rock itself that accounts for its action once it has left the motive force of the hand. He called this property of the object impetus (from Latin impetere, literally "to rush toward, to attack").

The property or quality of impetus was clearly changeable. To hurl a heavy rock required you to give it more impetus than to hurl a pebble. Also, impetus was obviously used up over time, allowing the rock to cease its movement and fall. He also explained that a falling object gained impetus the longer it fell (are you paying attention, Galileo?). Unlike Aristotle, who believed that the medium of air in which the object moves helps it along, Buridan saw the air as resistance, causing the object to use up its impetus.

He expanded this theory by looking up. A question had bothered some philosophers for ages: why don't the planets slow down? Will they move forever? Buridan extrapolated his theory to say that a thrown rock in a vacuum would experience no resistance and its impetus would last indefinitely. If the planets were moving in a vacuum...

Well, actually, he couldn't go that far. He agreed with Aristotle that a vacuum couldn't exist in space, since there was no container to keep matter from rushing into the empty area. If above our atmosphere were filled with quintessence, however, Aristotle's "fifth element" that was pure, unchangeable, and frictionless, then the impetus imparted to the planets by whatever initial agency would continue to move forever! The idea of an eternal universe was supportable by science!

Buridan's Ass

Buridan's Ass is the name given to a paradox: that a hungry and thirsty ass placed exactly in the middle between water and hay will be unable to choose because neither choice is preferable or closer; he will therefore die of thirst and hunger. The paradox is named for Jean Buridan (c.1300-c.1361), who studied and taught at the University of Paris. He had a reputation for being a bright and charismatic figure who had a way with the ladies, but that last part might have been spread by his detractors.

But Buridan, who wrote several works including answers to puzzles such as the liar paradox, never discussed the dilemma of the ass; he might have, because it had been around for hundreds of years.

Aristotle mocked the paradox in his De Caelo (On the Heavens). There was an idea circulating that one could explain the unmoving nature of the Earth simply because it was round and centered among all that existed, and therefore all forces acted upon it equally, maintaining an equilibrium. Aristotle mocked this idea by saying it was as ridiculous as if to say that "a man, being just as hungry as thirsty, and placed in between food and drink, must necessarily remain where he is and starve to death." Other early philosophers commented in this dilemma as well.

Why did it get ascribed to Buridan? In his works, he does consider that a rational choice could not be made by a rational person between two equally good options:

Should two courses be judged equal, then the will cannot break the deadlock, all it can do is to suspend judgement until the circumstances change, and the right course of action is clear.

This was just a "thought experiment" for him, however. He did not believe this would in fact lead to total inaction: he believed in a moral determinism that would lead one to a choice, even though that choice or preference might come through an unknowable thought process. Later writers mocked him by laying the burden of the ass paradox on him.

Buridan and Aristotle would cross paths on another issue, however: when a thrown object leaves the hand of the thrower, what keeps it moving? Aristotle had a theory that was clung to by many for centuries. Buridan had a different idea, one that anticipated Newton by about 300 years.

But that's a story for another day.

A Byzantine Princess

Anna Comnena in Byzantine mosaic

Anna Comnena (1083-1153) was the daughter of an emperor (Alexios I), the wife of a Caesar, and the mother of a Grand Duke. For many princesses in history, that would have been a sufficient claim to fame. For Anna, however, these were merely incidental facets of her life; she was so much more than a link in a dynastic chain.

For one thing, like most Byzantine royal children, she was well-educated in history and literature, rhetoric, and the sciences such as astronomy and math. Medicine was to become her specialty, however: her father established a hospital in Constantinople where she taught medicine and treated patients, including her father in his final days. Her fame was known to Sir Walter Scott, who said of her:

During his latter days, the Emperor was greatly afflicted with gout, the nature of which has exercised the wit of many persons of science as well as of Anna Comnena. The poor patient was so much exhausted that, when the Empress was talking of most eloquent persons who should assist in the composition of his history, he said, with a natural contempt of such vanities, 'The passages of my unhappy life call rather for tears and lamentation than for the praises you speak of.' [Sir Robert of Paris]

Whether we can trust Scott's characterization of the Emperor's attitude toward his biography—and whatever her reputation for medicine—what is true is that Anna is best known to us for a fifteen-volume history of her times. True, it was begun by her husband, Nikephorus Bryennius, who was calling it Materials for History, but Anna turned it into an encomium for her father and his ancestors and finished it (as it has come down to us in history) as The Alexiad. Although she was not an eye-witness to much of what she describes, and is surely using hearsay (and filtering through her personal lens that saw her father in a better light), it is still the definitive first-hand work on that period in Byzantine history.

A rare example of political and military history produced by a woman, one of the insights it offers is the Byzantine horror at the masses of Western Europeans come on Crusade to disturb the peace of the Eastern Mediterranean. Although she wrote it decades after the fact, she would have seen the Latin armies approaching, and watched the siege of Constantinople in 1097, when her husband (at 14, she was already married) defended the walls of the largest city in the world against Godfrey of Bouillon (c.1060-1100), before Godfrey went on to conquer Jerusalem.

She also believed that she should have been empress and tried to make it so, but that's a story or 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.

A Carolingian Mother

Bernard of Septimania, whose fate interweaves the recent posts on Carolingian civil wars, married Dhuoda on 24 June 824. She bore him two sons: William on 29 November 826, and Bernard II on 22 March 841. Although she traveled with her husband for a few years, she spent most of the years between births in Uzés in what is now southern France. What little we know about her comes from details in the Liber Manualis (Book of instruction) which she wrote for her elder son. There are, however, assumptions we can make that are fairly safe and will serve to flesh out her background.

Liber Manualis, MS at Nîmes [source]

For one thing, it is likely that she came from a noble family, and that she and Bernard met through court connections. It was probably not simply a marriage of political convenience, since he not only bothered to have her with him for at least a few years, but also trusted her to run his estates from Uzés near Nîmes and visited her when he could—certainly in summer of 840, around the time of the death of Emperor Louis the Pious, just before Bernard ran off and got involved (disastrously for him) in the chaos fomented by Louis' remaining sons.

She would have seen her elder son very little, and her second son was taken from her by her husband before he was baptized or named. This separation, and concern for the shifting politics and her husband's risky involvement, may be what prompted her to write to William, to help him to steer clear of personal and professional dangers. She gives him practical advice for living, not just spiritual advice for the care of his soul.

We also know that Dhuoda learned Latin. This is not unusual, especially considering the emphasis Charlemagne put on education for all children. True, her Latin is far from polished, but she clearly knows the Bible as well as secular authors, and she manages to come across with both humor and gravity in 73 chapters. Her writing provides a unique glimpse into attitudes toward family structures. Unlike the Mirrors for Princes, her manual is highly specific: it focuses on her as a wife and mother caring and advising her son and only her son; she never suggests that this is a general purpose guide for anyone else. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "it is a treatise on Christian virtues, revealing the author's remarkable qualities of heart and mind, her intense affection for her sons and her husband."

Her position as his mother makes her uniquely suited to instruct him. As she says in the opening (I have added the italics):

You will be able to discover fully what rules you must fulfill for my sake. My son, you will have teachers who instruct you in many more useful lessons than I do but they do not have equal status with me or have hearts burning in their breasts as I, your mother, do, my firstborn child.

She tells us in the Liber that it was started 30 November 841 and finished 2 February 843. She speaks of herself as being weak and near death, and the Catholic Encyclopedia suggests that her death, probably shortly after completing the manuscript, spared her the news of her husband's execution by Charles the Bald in 844.

Tomorrow we shall look at some of her advice from the Liber.

A Carolingian Son

Uzés was founded around an early Roman aqueduct

Back here I mentioned that Bernard of Septimania married a woman named Dhuoda, whom he had travel with him for awhile; then he sent her to live at Uzés in what is now southern France. As is the case with many political figures involved in military or court jobs, he rarely spent time with her after that. This is not to say that he no longer cared for her; just that his job came first. The circumstantial evidence is that he wanted her there for her safety: he became involved in every civil strife caused by the sons of Louis the Pious. When not involved directly at Court (that is, when he was exiled), there is evidence that he returned to the south to see her. It is certain that he fathered a second son on one of these visits. Dhuoda wrote a book of advice for her elder son; there is, however, no evidence that he ever read or even received it. In fact, it seems highly unlikely, if he did read it, that he took any of it to heart.

William of Septimania (29 November 826-850), was first raised by his uncle, Theodoric of Autun, until Theodoric's death when William was four; then he was sent to the court of Louis the Pious, where his father was chamberlain. William stayed with Louis throughout the emperor's life, although he seems to have traveled to Toulouse with his father at times, and also spent time at Uzés with his mother. After Louis' death in 840, Bernard used his son as a go-between, sending him to pledge loyalty to Charles the Bald. William stayed with Charles, asking for (and eventually receiving) Theodoric's lands in Autun.

Barcelona castle from William's era

When Bernard was executed in 844 by Charles, William joined Pepin II in his attempt to keep control of Aquitaine (Louis had given it to Charles, but the Aquitaine nobles had preferred Pepin). Pepin offered him his father's territory of Toulouse, although Charles had given it to Fredelo (who was actually a cousin of William's: William of Gellone was grandfather to both men). William was present in Toulouse and was able to defend it, but in 849 he went to Barcelona to take control of an area his father had once ruled, leaving Toulouse unguarded for Charles to take over; Charles confirmed Fredelo in possession of Toulouse. William made no friends in Barcelona—having taken it, it was said, "more by cunning and lies than by force of arms"—and in 850 when he fled back there to escape the wrath of Charles after a later military defeat, Charles' supporters killed him.

Clearly, his political choices and personal behavior were no more commendable than his father's. Would he have made different choices if he had read his mother's book of advice? Let's look at what was in it and see what we think.

[continued]

Civil War Witness, 3

Charlemagne's grandsons were not satisfied with the way their father, Emperor Louis the Pious, divided up his realm while still alive so they could have territories to rule. They frequently rebelled against him and each other in order to grab more. On these occasions, a sometime adviser to Louis, Bernard of Septimania, once chose the losing side, once chose the winning side, and then tried a different approach.

In 837, Louis the Pious was becoming more devoted to Charles the Bald, his son by his second wife. He made Charles king of Alemannia and Burgundy, including a portion of the land that had been given to Louis the German, Louis' youngest son by his first wife. Louis the German (understandably) objected, invaded Alemannia (for the second time: he had invaded Alemannia as his part of the 2nd civil war). In 838, Pepin died, and Charles was named King of Aquitaine. Unfortunately, the nobles of Aquitaine decided to name Pepin's son, Pepin II, their new king. Lothair actually sided with his father this time; their combined forces quickly deposed Pepin II, forced Louis the German to retreat quickly (but gave him Bavaria), and then granted the whole eastern part of the Empire to Lothair, including Italy.

This was merely a prequel to the free-for-all in 840, when Louis the Pious died.

Pepin was gone, but there were still three (half-) brothers capable of alliance or discord, whichever suited their goals.* Louis the German, with little land, allied himself with the now-more-powerful ruler of the western half of the empire, Charles, and they attacked Lothair. While they marched their armies eastward, Pepin II reared his head again and claimed kingship of the now-deserted Aquitaine, offering his support to Lothair. A decisive battle was fought in June 841, in which Charles and Louis forced Lothair to flee.

Division after the Treaty of Verdun [link]

But where was Bernard? He and a small force had arrived at the battle to offer support, but he obviously knew that picking the losing side again would be disastrous. He sat out the battle, waiting to see who won so that he could offer support. After the battle, he sent his son to Charles with pledges of loyalty and promises that he could talk Pepin II into giving up. He apparently had no intention of doing this, however, nor did his tepid support please Charles. While Charles marched on Aquitaine, he deprived Bernard of Toulouse, his only remaining territory. Bernard, refusing to accept this, allied himself with Pepin II.

Events were not in Bernard's control, however. The Treaty of Verdun in 843 made an arrangement between the three brothers—Lothair, Louis the German, and Charles the Bald—to divide the empire. Pepin continued to make trouble in Aquitaine for many years. Bernard was captured a year later near Uzés in the south, where he had sent his wife years earlier when he became more involved in politics, and brought before Charles where his execution was arranged. A sad end for a man on the fringe of great events; if only he had been the recipient of good advice. For that, he would have had to spend more time with his wife; more on that tomorrow.

*Historians consider this the same war that began in 837-8.

Civil War Witness, 2

Lothair, rebel with a cause

After Louis the Pious dealt with an insurrection by his three sons (see yesterday's post), Bernard of Septimania was free to return from Barcelona, but any holdings that were given to him by Louis went to Berengar the Wise, the Count of Toulouse. The lands that gave Bernard the title Duke of Septimania were no longer in his possession.

A mere two years after the first civil war, however, filial trouble reared its head again. Pepin of Aquitaine, still smarting from his treatment after rebelling a few years earlier, was summoned to his father's court, where he was treated so poorly that he departed without permission. Louis assumed Pepin would start trouble, and so he gathered an army to quell what he was certain was an imminent uprising. Louis declared the Aquitaine to be now the possession of Charles the Bald, his son by his second wife; the rest of his empire was promised to his eldest, Lothair. This move, however, did not satisfy Lothair. Not only was he bothered by seeing lands go to his half-brother, but he was also anxious that he not have to wait to rule it all.

Lothair had a friend in the pope, Gregory IV (ruled 827-844), whom he had helped establish on the Throne of Peter—a slap to his father, since the choice of pope was supposed to be ratified by the emperor.* Lothair asked Gregory to join him and help reconcile the hostile posturing between father and son. Pope Gregory joined Lothair, which annoyed the bishops who had sided with Louis. The conflict between the pope and bishops became as significant as that between the temporal lords, as they threatened to excommunicate each other.

Gregory spoke to Louis, returned to Lothair to continue negotiations, and was prevented by Lothair of returning to Louis. The appearance this created was that the pope was supporting Lothair rather than peace, and Louis' troops began to desert him. Louis, his wife Judith, and son Charles were all sent to house arrest in different locations.

In the formal procedure for deposing Louis and transferring all power to Lothair, however, the treatment of the one-time emperor was so demeaning that the nobles turned against Lothair. Louis returned to the throne in March 834, less than a year after his exile.

Where was Bernard in all this? He and the dispossessed Pepin had remained loyal to Louis. After the return of Louis to his throne, Bernard requested the return of his lands. Louis was conflicted, because he didn't want to annoy Berengar. Fortunately, fate intervened: Louis summoned both men to his court in June 835, and Berengar died on the way. Bernard was free to take back his lands.

Bernard had joined one civil war on the losing side, then one civil war on the losing side that turned out to be the winning side. There was a third option, however, and he would try it a few years later, in the free-for-all that followed the death of Louis.

[continued]

*There was a fuss made, and Gregory needed to wait to be ratified by Louis, but Lothair's actions still rankled.

Civil War Witness, 1

Coronation of Louis the Pious, by Jean Fouquet (1455)

Yesterday's post about William of Gellone didn't mention his family at all, but he had four sons, Barnardo, Guitcario, Gaucelm, and Helmbruc. I want to talk about Barnardo, are as he is better known, Bernard.

Bernard (795-844) was Duke of Septimania by heredity and Count of Barcelona by conquest (once his father took it from the Moors, as mentioned yesterday). He was one of the closest advisers to Charlemagne's son, the Emperor Louis the Pious, who ruled from 814-840. He would have been well-known to Louis' sons, and would have known them well in return—this will become very important a little later.

On 29 June, 824, he was married in the Chapel of Aachen to a woman of whom little is known prior to this. Dhuoda was her name, and she was no doubt from a noble family. At first she accompanied her husband on his military missions: Louis asked him to patrol the Spanish Marches, in which trouble from Moorish incursions was only to be expected. In 826 they had a son, named William for Bernard's father. At some point afterward, Bernard sent her away to Uzés in southern France, keeping William to be raised at court. His reasons are unknown; we would like to assume it had something to do with her safety. (Reports that Bernard was having an affair with Louis' wife, the Empress Judith, are suspect because they were all made by known political enemies.)

Bernard seemed to make enemies when he was brought to court. The Emperor had sent his son Lothair to take up the Iron Crown of Lombardy in 829, and asked Bernard to take the position of chamberlain and watch over another son, Charles. Bernard asked his brother Gaucelm to handle his affairs in his absence. The choice to send Lothair away and give him a title was wise, because he was in frequent conflict with Louis' second wife Judith, who was trying to secure a realm for her son, Charles the Bald.

Louis did give Charles something: Alemannia, which reduced the size of what Lothair would inherit from his father. Lothair accused Charles of illegitimacy—of being, in fact, the son of Judith and Bernard. Lothair held his temper in check, and it was another son, Pepin of Aquitaine, who would be the first to start a war.He gathered an army and marched toward Paris; he was joined by his younger brother, Louis the German. Their father came home from a campaign in Brittany to find his country in turmoil; he was surrounded by Pepin's forces and captured. Judith was imprisoned. Bernard fled to Barcelona.

Lothair set out with an army to take control of the situation for his own ends. Louis, meanwhile, offered his two captors/sons a larger share of lands upon his death, so they freed him and swore loyalty to him again. This larger force now faced Lothair's army of Lombards; Lothair was forgiven his insurrection and sent to Italy for good. Pepin returned to Aquitaine. Judith was returned after swearing to her innocence. Bernard was exonerated. The civil war was over.

A few years later, it would happen again.

[continued]

From France to NYC

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is an area called The Cloisters. Built in the 1930s, it incorporated elements of several medieval abbeys. Part of the Cloisters comes from the abbey of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert (picture here), whose founder is the subject of today's post.

William of Gellone (755-814) was a cousin of Charlemagne's and the second count of Toulouse. When Hisham I of Cordoba declared a holy war against the Christians in southern France in 793, William was asked to respond to the threat. William met Hisham's army; he was unable to defeat them, but resisted so strongly that he wore down the invading Moors by attrition and they gave up their attempt to conquer southern France. Some years later, William was part of a large force that re-captured Barcelona. His military exploits are celebrated in literature and legend.

Piece of the True Cross

In 804 he founded a monastery in the valley of Gellone. Later named Saint-Guilhem after him, a village of the same name developed around it. He donated to the abbey a piece of the True Cross that had been a gift to him from Charlemagne. The location of the abbey and its possession of such an important relic made it a popular stopping place on the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

Two years later, William himself became a monk there. He became well-known as the abbey's benefactor and a pious man; supposedly, upon his death the church bells rang without anyone touching them. His will left even more to the monastery. His legend grew so much that his body was eventually transferred to a spot in the abbey church where it could be seen better.

It was during the French Revolution that the abbey started to suffer; much of it was dismantled. Thanks to the interest and financing of John D. Rockefeller, part of the structures found a new home overlooking the Hudson River in New York.

Black Monday

Today is known in the USA as Black Friday. The term was coined in 1966 to refer to the practice of kicking off the Christmas shopping season with big sales on the day after Thanksgiving, and is "black" because the increased revenue is supposed to lift companies out of red ink and into solvency.* "Black" has been used historically to denote particular days when disaster has struck. There is more than one Black Sunday, and Black Tuesday will forever be linked with the USA stock market crash on 29 October, 1929. The markets crashed again on 19 October, 1987—though not so spectacularly as in 1929. There are also a number of Black Mondays, but I want to focus on two of them.

In The antiquities and history of Ireland (1705) by Sir James Ware and Sir John Davie, we find this:

The occasion of Black-Monday, and the Original remembrance thereof rose at Dublin. The City of Dublin, by reason of some great Mortality, being waste and desolate, the Inhabitants of Bristol flock'd thither to Inhabit, who after their Country manner, upon Holy-days, some for love of the fresh Air, some to avoid Idleness, some other for Pastime, Pleasure, and Gaming-sake, flock'd out of the Town towards Cullen's Wood upon Monday in Easter Week. The Bitanes, Tooles, (the Mountain Enemies) like Wolves lay in Ambush for them, and upon finding them unarm'd, fell upon them, and slew 300 men besides Women and Children, ...

Also called "The Cullenswood Massacre," the event in 1209 was commemorated by Dubliners every year for a few centuries afterward.

Hailstones from a storm in the Philippines

The other Black Monday (in fact, there are several, but I'm talking about the medieval ones) took place in 1360. The Hundred Years War was in a particularly busy phase, and Edward III's forces were all over France. While he was approaching Chartres, a storm of great severity struck his encamped forces on 13 April (Easter Monday that year). It brought thunder, lightning, high winds, hailstones as big as pigeon eggs that dented armor. One report described it as “A foul dark day of mist and hail, and so bitter cold, that sitting on horseback men died.” We are told that 1000 men and 6000 horses died from the storm. According to Froissart, this storm was taken by many of Edward's advisers to be an omen; they convinced him to make peace, and on 8 May the Treaty of Brétigny was first concluded (it was formally ratified months later at Calais).

*Calendar note: given the way Thanksgiving is calculated, today (the 22nd) is the earliest date that Black Friday can take place; the latest is 29 November.

To Make an Antipope

What makes a pope into an antipope?

In 355, the Roman Emperor Constantius II (317-361) wasn't happy with the pope. Constantius was an Arian Christian, and he did not care for the Council of Nicaea's decision to outlaw Arianism. Since St. Athanasius of Alexandria was instrumental in that decision, Constantius wanted Pope Liberius (ruled 352-366) to condemn Athanasius. Liberius refused to do so, and the Emperor sent him into exile in Thrace.

In his place, the Emperor installed Pope Felix II. The politics of papal succession were far more flexible then. It wasn't until Celestine V that formal voting by the body of cardinals began to be the expected method. So temporal rulers often put their favorites on the Throne of St. Peter. Little is known of what Felix accomplished. Records from the 4th century are scarce, and his name was later confused with St. Felix. After two years, the people of Rome begged Constantius to bring back Liberius; it took another year for him to return. Felix was still present, and Constantius wanted the two to rule jointly, but the people of Rome objected and drove Felix out. Tradition says he was forced to retire to Porto, near Rome, where he died on 22 November 365.

To declare Felix II an antipope seems easy—he was appointed randomly by a temporal ruler who ousted the previous pope—but what about situations like the chaos connected to Benedict VIII? How do you untangle that mess? And if cardinals are split, and some elect one pope and some elect another, how do you determine legitimacy? The Annuario Pontificio (the Pope's Yearbook) puts it thusly:

we come across elections in which problems of harmonising historical criteria and those of theology and canon law make it impossible to decide clearly which side possessed the legitimacy whose factual existence guarantees the unbroken lawful succession of the successors of Saint Peter. The uncertainty that in some cases results has made it advisable to abandon the assignation of successive numbers in the list of the popes.

Felix II, for instance, has not had his number altered, and so the next pope to take the name Felix is called Felix III, even though he is only the second "true" pope to be named Felix. Forty-one names in papal records are listed as antipopes. The last was Felix V, who reigned from 1439-1449. Since that time, the College of Cardinals has been more careful in its elections, and has reached consensus before declaring Habemus papam! ("We have a pope!") The illustration above is of Saint Hippolytus of Rome, (c.170 - 235), considered the first antipope.

Other Popes Who Quit

Pope Celestine V might have needed Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani to find a justification for him to resign, but papal resignations had taken place previously. The 11th century saw two papal resignations that might have saved a little time in the 13th century, had they been remembered.

The Chair of Peter

One of them was largely a political pawn—albeit probably a willing one. Phasanius became pope in January 1004, taking the name John XVIII.* Like several decades of popes prior to him, he owed familial allegiance to the head of the Crescentii clan, a patrician Roman family who wielded great power in Rome, controlling much of the City as well as the popes. Unlike Celestine V, John XVIII was an administrator, and the records of his papacy show that he worked at various initiatives: he established a base, the See of Bamberg, from which to begin christianizing the Slavs to please King Henry II of Germany. He confirmed archbishops, including Elphege of Canterbury. He arbitrated disputes between religious figures. Even in Constantinople he gained Eastern Orthodox recognition as the Bishop of Rome; it is assumed he somehow reached out to the Eastern Church and established (however briefly) some kind of détente.

Details of his departure from the Throne of Peter are missing. A catalog of popes lists him as having been a monk at St. Paul's near Rome at his death in June 1009. At some point he must have stepped down; perhaps he wasn't doing enough for John Crescentius III, the had of the Crescentii clan. He was replaced by Pietro Martino Buccaporci (Peter Martin Pigsnout), who was no doubt glad to take the name Pope Sergius IV. Sergius and John Crescentius both died in the spring of 1012, and the Crescentii influnce over the papacy faded away.

About the same time that Sergius and John Crescentii were dying, Theophylactus of Tusculum (c.1012-c.1056) was born in Rome. Son of the Count of Tusculum, he achieved the papacy as a young man in 1032 through the efforts of his father, taking the name Benedict VIII. He clearly had no qualifications for being pope; it was said of him that he "feasted on immorality" (St. Peter Damian) and that "a demon from hell in the disguise of a priest... occupied the chair of Peter and profaned the sacred mysteries of religion by his insolent courses." (Ferdinand Gregorovius)

It can be said that he left the papacy several times, some of them of his own volition. He was driven from Rome in 1036, but returned with the help of Emperor Conrad II. He was driven out again in 1044 and Pope Sylvester III was elected, but Benedict returned again in April 1045 and drove out Sylvester (who never stopped calling himself pope). In May 1045, Benedict resigned in order to get married; he sold the papacy to his godfather, Fr. John Gratian, who took the papal name Gregory VI.

Papal coat of arms

He changed his mind, however, and returned to Rome months later, taking back the throne by force until July 1046. For most residents of Rome, however, Gregory VI was the true pope now. It did not help when Sylvester III pushed his own previous claim forward. King Henry III of Germany intervened, and at the Council of Sutri in December 1046, it as decided that all three popes were to be replaced. A bishop from Germany named Suidger became Pope Clement II. Clement died less than a year later, however, and Benedict tried to seize power again but was driven away by German troops. Poppo of Brixen was elected Pope Damasus II, and things finally started to settle down.

*Note: although he was the 18th pope to take the name John, he is officially considered the 17th John, because John XVI (pope from 997-998) has been declared an antipope and does not count in the true reckoning of popes. The historical numbers taken by the popes has never been "corrected."

The Pope Who Quit

Yesterday referred to the resignation of Pope Celestine V, and that there was some confusion about it. It was not common for popes to resign, but it did happen.

Pope Celestine is crowned

Celestine V (1215-1296) was born Pietro Angelerio to a family of humble farmers. His mother wanted better for him; it may be through her urging that he joined a Benedictine monastery in 1232. After several years, he chose the life of an ascetic, and lived in a succession of caves, including one at Monte Morone, because of which he was sometimes called Pietro di Morone. His penitential activities were severe: he wore a chain of iron, fasted every day except Sunday, spent four Lents each year while living on bread and water, and prayed continuously. As we have seen previously, such holy men draw others to them, and soon Pietro had a following who wished to live by his example. This following became a sub-order of the Benedictines, and were called the Celestines. He seemed content to live an exemplary life for other devout ascetics.

The simple life would not be his forever. The Catholic Encyclopedia explains the turning point:

In July, 1294, his pious exercises were suddently[sic] interrupted by a scene unparalleled in ecclesiastical history. Three eminent dignitaries, accompanied by an immense multitude of monks and laymen, ascended the mountain, announced that Pietro had been chosen pope by unanimous vote of the Sacred College and humbly begged him to accept the honour.  [source]

A deadlocked committee of cardinals spent two years and three months after the death of Pope Nicholas IV, unable to agree on a candidate, until Cardinal Latino Orsini (d.1294) proclaimed that a good and saintly man would come to Rome and admonish them if they did not come to agreement. Supposedly, they all knew to whom he referred: the hermit of the Morone. King Charles of Naples liked the idea that one of his subjects would become pope. Thousands of members of spiritual orders believed this was the best election in centuries.

He was crowned August 1294 as Celestine V (note that he was almost 80 years of age), and quickly showed that he was not going to be a good pope. He had no organizational skills, and no memory (he would give the same benefice to more than one person). He would appoint bishops and cardinals without observing proper protocols. He quickly created many cardinals, the majority of them French; this would help lead to the Avignon papacy which led to the Great Schism. He tried to make the cardinals adhere to a strict schedule of prayer, and wanted to give away papal treasure to the poor.

Letter from the cardinals to Angelerio, asking him to be pope

He wasn't exactly enjoying the life. Administrative matters began to press on him, which left him no time for his devotions. Resigning the position seemed like a good idea, but could it be done? Were popes eligible for resignation? Cardinal Benedetto Gaetani advised that common sense and the need to preserve the church allowed for resignation when the pope was incapable of performing the job. The aged pope summoned his cardinals and resigned after only five months and eight days, leaving to them the task of finding his replacement. Within two weeks, they had one: Benedetto Gaetani—who had provided the argument allowing Celestine to resign—would become Pope Boniface VIII. His first acts were to revoke many of the decrees of his predecessor. He also took Celestine into custody, lest the old man become a tool for some unscrupulous person who might challenge the change in pontiff. He imprisoned Celestine for the remainder of his life. To us this seems cruel, but for the reluctant pope it meant a return to the solitary life he had enjoyed for decades, left with silence and the time to pray. He died 13 December, 1294.

One Faith

When Pope Boniface VIII wasn't excommunicating people for treating corpses in unapproved ways, he was very busy doing lots of other things.

Maybe we should start at the beginning.

Benedetto Gaetani was born about 1235 in Italy. A younger son of minor nobility, his religious career began when he was sent to a monastery. He became secretary to a cardinal in 1264, which put him close to Vatican politics. He had a busy career in international affairs, accompanying a cardinal to England to put down a rebellion, going to France to supervise a collection, and acting as a diplomat to France, Naples, Sicily and Aragon.

In December of 1294, stating "the desire for humility, for a purer life, for a stainless conscience, the deficiencies of his own physical strength, his ignorance, the perverseness of the people, his longing for the tranquility of his former life," Pope Celestine V resigned. A contemporary said that it was Benedetto Gaetani who convinced him to resign; other reports say that he was only one of several, or that Gaetani was the person who convinced Celestine that a papal resignation was legal. Whatever the case, Benedetto Gaetani was elected pope by the conclave on Christmas Eve.

That's when the fun began. His first act was to imprison his predecessor. A few years later he formalized the Roman Jubilee, a tradition that established a year of pilgrimages to Rome for pardoning of sins. This influx of tourists seeking forgiveness turned into a big money-maker for the pontiff. This may be why Dante put Boniface into the 8th circle of Hell in Inferno, with the simonists. He enriched the lives of his relatives, and used his position to war against the Colonna family (rivals of the Gaetani); he even offered a pardon for one's sins equivalent to that granted when one goes on Crusade if you would join in his war against the Colonna. He was the epitome of a power-mad ruler.

Then, on 18 November 1302, Boniface made his boldest move: the papal bull called Unam Sanctam (One Faith). The document establishes that salvation is only available through the Church, and that the Church wields "two swords" that represent both spiritual and temporal power. Among other pronouncements, it concludes with

Furthermore, we declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.

...and that has been the source of endless conflict between the papacy and others ever since.

Refuting Astrology

As attractive as astrology was in the Middle Ages, not everyone was willing to accept the premise that it was "easy" to use it for predictive purposes, or even that it was likely that the existence and movements of observable heavenly bodies had a direct influence on events and people on Earth.

We have seen how some sources, such as the University of Paris, spoke against astrology's predictive uses not because it believed they were in error, but because they were believed to contravene God's wishes for human beings. There were others who objected to the reliance on astrology because they could not believe that it was likely to work.

Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya (1292-1350) was a Sunni Islam theologian and commentator on the Qu'ran. Not given to flights of fancy, and accustomed to arguing the details of the law, he put a critical lens on astrology. One of the lynch pins of his refutation of astrology came from the fact that hundreds of stars were not included in astrological calculations. Astrologers told him that the stars were too far away and to small to matter. To Al Jawziyya, this was an intolerable double-standard:

And if you astrologers answer that it is precisely because of this distance and smallness that their influences are negligible, then why is it that you claim a great influence for the smallest heavenly body, Mercury? Why is it that you have given an influence to al-Ra's and al-Dhanab, which are two imaginary points?

Astrologers accepted at the time, through their calculations, that the stars appeared small because they were far away, but were actually enormous compared to the world. They also knew that the Milky Way was "a myriad of tiny stars packed together in the sphere of the fixed stars"; Al-Jawziyya said that it was impossible to know what effect, if any, they would have. Astrology had too many variables, and was just so much guesswork.

What were the "two imaginary points" mentioned in the above quotation? He was referring to "orbital nodes," the imaginary point in space where the line of "an orbit crosses the plane of reference to which it is inclined." Astrologers made much out of these points, which had no physical existence, and yet ignored actual physical stars. They neglected stars as being too small to matter, and yet put all their attention on planets that were a ridiculously small fraction of the size of a star. To the keen legal and theological mind of Al-Jawziyya, this suggested that astrology was not, in fact, based on any kind of rational thinking.