History of Aesthetics, Volume 2: Medieval Aesthetics [Reprint ed.] 902791625X, 9789027916259

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HISTORY OF AESTHETICS Vol. Π MEDIEVAL AESTHETICS

WLADYSLAW TATARKIEWICZ

HISTORY OF AESTHETICS Vol. II

MEDIEVAL AESTHETICS

edited by

C. BARRETT

1970

MOUTON THE HAGUE · PARIS

ΡWN—POLISH SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHERS WARSZAWA

Copyright (g) 1970 by Paástwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe (PWN—Polish Scientific Publishers) Warszawa

No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any, form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers

This is a translation from the original Polish Historia estetyki • Estetyka sredrtiowicczna published in 1962 by "Ossolineum", Warszawa translated by R. M. Montgomery

Printed in Poland (DRP)

CONTENTS

TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS I . THE AESTHETICS OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES A. EASTERN AESTHETICS

1. Background 2. The Aesthetics of the Holy Scriptures A. Texts from the Holy Scriptures 3. The Aesthetics of the Greek Church Fathers B. Texts from the Greek Church Fathers 4. The Aesthetics of the Pseudo-Dionysius C. Texts from the Pseudo-Dionysius 5. Byzantine Aesthetics D. Texts from Byzantine Theologians B. WESTERN AESTHETICS

1. The Aesthetics of St. Augustine E. Texts from St. Augustine 2. Background to Further Developments a. Political Background b. Literature c. Music d. The Visual Arts 3. Aesthetics from Boethius to Isidore F. Texts from Boethius, Cassiodorus and Isidore 4. Carolingian Aesthetics G. Texts from Scholars of the Carolingian Period 5. Summary of Early Christian Aesthetics I I . THE AESTHETICS OF THE HIGH MIDDLE AGES

1. Social and Political Background 2. Poetics H. Texts on Medieval Poetics

vii 1 1

1 4 12 14 22 27 33 35 45 47

47 59 66 66 69 72 75 78 86 91 99 106 110

110 113 121

vi

CONTENTS

3. The Theory of Music I. Texts on Medieval Theory of Music 4. The Theory of the Visual Arts J. Texts on the Medieval Theory of the Visual Arts 5. Summary of the Theory of the Arts and Synopsis of Philosophical Aesthetics 6. Cistercian Aesthetics K. Cistercian Texts 7. Victorine Aesthetics L. Victorine Texts ·. . . 8. The Aesthetics of the School of Chartres and Other Schools of the 12th Century M. Texts of the School of Chartres and Other Schools of the 12th Century 9. The Beginnings of Scholastic Aesthetics N. Texts from William of Auvergne and the Summa Alexandra . 10. The Aesthetics of Robert Grosseteste O. Texts from Robert Grosseteste 11. The Aesthetics of Bonaventure P. Texts from Bonaventure 12. The Aesthetics of Albert the Great and Ulrich of Strassburg . . Q. Texts from Albert the Great and Ulrich of Strassburg . . . 13. The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas R. Texts from Thomas Aquinas 14. The Aesthetics of Alhazen and Vitelo S. Texts from Vitelo 15. Late Scholastic Aesthetics T. Texts from Duns Scotus and William Ockham 16. The Aesthetics of Dante U. Texts from Dante 17. Summary of Medieval Aesthetics 18. Ancient and Medieval Aesthetics 19. The Old and the New Aesthetics

124 131 138 170 178 183 187 190 197 203 209 213 221 225 229 232 236 240 242 245 257 263 267 271 276 279 282 285 293 298

NAME INDEX

305

SUBJECT INDEX

312

TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Section of the Church of St. Sophia in Constantinople (after O. Schubert) 153 2. Section of the Capella Palatina in Aachen (after O. Schubert) 154 3. The Church of San Vitale in Ravenna (after L. Niemojewski) . . . . 155 4. Horizontal projection of the Church at St. Gallen 156 5. Horizontal projection of Worms Cathedral 157 6. The façade of Notre-Dame in Paris 158 7. Section of the Church of San Petronio in Bologna (after an engraving of 1592) 159 8. Section of Milan Cathedral (after a drawing of 1391 by the mathematician Stornaloco) 160 9. The socles of a Gothic column based on a circle, a square and a triangle (from the goldsmiths' patterns, Basle, c. 1500, after M. Ueberwasser) . 162 10. Gothic baldachins based on a triangle and a rectangle (from the goldsmiths' patterns, Basle, c. 1500, after M. Ueberwasser) 162 11. The stratified architecture of Gothic altars (from the goldsmiths' patterns, Basle, c. 1500, after M. Ueberwasser) 163 12. Projection and structure of a dodecagonal Gothic baldachin (from the goldsmiths' patterns, Basle, c. 1500, after M. Ueberwasser) 164 13-17. Drawings by Villard de Honnecourt (Figs. 13, 14, 16 and 17 in the Manuscripts Department of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, Fig. 15, after H. R. Hahnloser) 166-169

I. THE AESTHETICS OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

A. EASTERN AESTHETICS 1. Background 1. CHRISTIANITY. Even before the 1st century B . C . , at a time when Hellenistic culture was still flourishing and Rome was at the height of her power, a change took place in men's attitude to life and the world. Their minds were drawn away from temporal things and turned to those of another world. In certain circles, a rational attitude gave place to mysticism; immediate needs took second place to the demands of religion. These new attitudes and demands produced new religions, sects, rituals and religio-philosophical systems, a whole new view of the world, and, with it, a new aesthetics. Materialistic and positivistic philosophies lost ground, and Platonism came into its own again. A special feature of the epoch was the appearance of the Neo-Platonic system of Plotinus; monistic, transcendent, emanative, with a theory of knowledge, ethics and aesthetics based on ecstasy. But most fruitful of all in its consequences was the rise of the Christian religion. For three centuries after its inception, when its adherents were still few and without influence in politics and in society generally, the old forms of life and thought lingered on. These centuries still belong to the period of antiquity. But from the 4th century, or to be more precise, from 313, when, by an edict of Constantine the Great, Christianity could be professed without hindrance, and especially from 325, when it became the state religion, the new ways of living and thinking gained the ascendancy over the ancient; a new period had begun in the history of the "inhabited world". The basis of Christianity lay in its faith, its moral law, its principle of love and its proclamation of eternal life. It had no need of science or philosophy, still less of aesthetics. "Love of God is the true philosophy", said John Damascene, and Isidore of Seville wrote: "The first task of science is to seek after God, and the second to strive for nobility of life". Thus, if Christianity were to propound a philosophy, it would be a philosophy of its own, different from any which had gone before. The Fathers of the Latin Church, living in the austere regions of Africa and the sober circles of Rome, preferred to renounce philosophy altogether. Not so the Fathers of the Greek Church. Living among' the philosophical traditions of Athens or Antioch, they realized that with the pagans, too, philosophy was shifting towards

2

THE AESTHETICS OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

a religious attitude. They understood the need for philosophy and the possibility of making use of Greek philosophy in the creation of a Christian philosophy. Tertullian tried to form a Christian philosophy on the basis of Stoicism, Gregory of Nyssa on the basis ofPlatonism, and Origen one based on Neo-Platonic philosophy. But the Church did not give its approval to these efforts. By the 4th and 5th centuries, however, a Christian philosophy, comprising Christian belief together with elements of ancient learning, was recognized by the Church, and it is to be found in the writings of the Greek Fathers and Augustine. Aesthetics was not of primary importance, but it had a place in this philosophy. It so happened that those who first developed early Christian philosophy had considerable interest and competence in aesthetics. Apart from Greek ideas, their aesthetics, like their whole philosophy, was derived from the Holy Scriptures. Thus, one should start a history of the aesthetics of the period with the aesthetic ideas contained in the Holy Scriptures. 2 . THE TWO EMPIRES. In this same 4th century which marked the beginning of the Christian era and in which the foundations of Christian philosophy and aesthetics were laid, another important change took place: the "inhabited world" split into an Eastern and a Western Empire. The Eastern and Western parts of the Roman Empire differed greatly in their political systems and mentality, but these differences were deepened when, in 395, the Empire became divided politically into East and West. From that time onwards, the political and cultural history of the two Empires went separate ways. The Western Empire soon disintegrated; the Eastern Empire survived a thousand years. And while the Western Empire underwent change, the conservative Eastern Empire tried to arrest development: and it succeeded. The Western Empire had to adapt itself, at least partially, to the customs and tastes of its northern conquerors, while the Eastern Empire, standing on the frontiers of Eastern Europe, was open to Asiatic influences. Most important, it was possible in the East to preserve the forms of ancient culture; in the West, they were destroyed and forgotten. The East was able not only to preserve and live by these ancient cultural forms, but also to develop them; the West, having lost its ancient and more perfect cultural forms, had to create new ones, starting from the beginning. In the East, an era was coming to an end; in the West, a new period of history was beginning. If the new forms of culture which were created in the West after the fall of Rome are to be called "medieval", then the East had no Middle Ages. True, the East too adapted itself to new forms of life and culture, but it did not start entirely from the beginning. It perpetuated those of antiquity. The history of Christian culture, art and aesthetics should therefore follow these two separate lines of development, and since its standpoint is directly connected with antiquity, one should start with the East. Here, for many centuries, the Byzantines continued to speak Greek and think in the Greek manner, while beginning to think in a Christian way. The Academy of Plato survived until the 6th century. Constantine the Great intended Byzantium to take over the heritage of Rome, and

BACKGROUND

3

it did in fact become the "New Rome". At the same time, by virtue of its geographical and historical position, it enjoyed the heritage of Greece. There was no lack of ancient models here: at the order of the emperors, ancient works of art throughout the Empire were seized and brought to Byzantium. In front of the church of St. Sophia alone, 427 Greek and Roman statues were erected. Such were the surroundings in which Christian music and the Christian visual arts began, and here the first great Christian shrines arose, foremost among them St. Sophia. It was here too that the Christians started thinking about aesthetic matters. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Historians, on the assumption that the Middle Ages were concerned with theology or at most with psychology and cosmology, did not think of looking for aesthetics in the medieval heritage; thus, for a long time there was no literature on medieval aesthetics. It was not dealt with in general works on the history of philosophy, and specialized works on the history of aesthetics passed the medieval period by: after dealing with ancient aesthetics, they passed directly to the treatment of modern aesthetics. Although the writers of the Middle Ages did not leave behind any treatises on aesthetics, we find certain principles and deductions of aesthetic interest in theological, psychological and cosmological treatises, which reflect a conception of beauty and art. Many texts of interest to the historian of aesthetics are contained in the publications of J. P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca (quoted below as PG) in its 161 volumes, and Patrologia Latina (quoted as PL) in 221 volumes, and also in later, and for the most part better, editions of medieval writers. Some of the works of these writers are still in unpublished manuscripts. The first works on medieval aesthetics were monograph studies of Augustine, and then of Thomas Aquinas, at the end of the 19th century. They were few and covered only a small part of the subject. After the Second World War, however, there immediately appeared a work on the whole medieval heritage: Edgar de Bruyne, Etudes d'Esthétique Médiévale, 3 volumes (Ghent University Press, 1946). Thanks to the work of this one man, a fuller collection of sources for the history of aesthetics is available for medieval than for ancient times. This material has been dealt with in great detail, but has not yet been condensed and collected from hundreds of monographs. It is on the material collected by de Bruyne that the present work is largely based; it calls for condensation and selection, since along with texts of importance to aesthetics, de Bruyne's work contains many that are not essential. Apart from the publication of these source studies, de Bruyne has twice published a systematic exposition of medieval aesthetics: in French, Esthétique du Moyen Age (Louvain, 1947), and in Flemish, Geschiedenis van de Aesthetica de Middeleeuwen (Antwerp, 1951-1955). The material collected by de Bruyne does not cover the aesthetics of Eastern Christendom, and it begins with the aesthetics of the West after Augustine. De

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THE AESTHETICS OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

Bruyne's Etudes deal with Boethius in vol. I, p. 3, with Cassiodorus I, 35, with Isidore I, 74, with Carolingian aesthetics I, 165, with medieval poetics I, 216 and II, 3, with the medieval theory of music I, 306 and II, 108, with the theory of visual artjl, 243, II, 69, and II, 371, with the aesthetics of the mystics III, 30, with Victorine aesthetics II, 203, with William of Auvergne, William of Auxerre and the Summa Alexandri III, 72, with Robert Grosseteste III, 121, with Bonaventure III, 189, with Albert the Great III, 153, with Thomas Aquinas III, 278, and with Vitelo ΙΠ, 239. De Bruyne writes in his foreword that he intended to give "un recueil de textes devant servir à l'histoire de l'esthétique médiévale", but he has fallen short of this intention. He has included the texts partly in the body of his own comments, partly in the notes, giving them mostly in the original, sometimes with a translation, and occasionally only in French. There is still no collection of sources for medieval aesthetics. In view of this, in the present work we have undertaken the task of collecting together, as has been done for ancient aesthetics, those texts which seem most important. The collection is not complete, but some ideas in the field of aesthetics were repeated so often by medieval authors that a complete collection would cease to be of use by its very monotony; a selection of typical texts seemed more appropriate. The only major collection of texts on medieval aesthetics to date is published in Italian translation in Grande Antologia Filosofica, vol. V (1954): R. Montano, L'estetica nel pensiero cristiano, pp. 207-310. Apart from the works of de Bruyne, it is the Italian literature on the subject that possesses the fullest synthetic treatment of medieval aesthetics, in the collective publication Momenti e problemi di storia dell'estetica, vol. I (1959), viz.: Q. Cataudella, Estetica cristiana, pp. 81-114, and U. Eco, Sviluppo dell'estetica medievale, pp. 115-229. This publication also contains the most complete bibliography on the subject (pp. 113-114 and 217-229). It had to be supplemented mainly by some works on the history of literature, music and the visual arts, covering general questions of an aesthetic nature. As a whole, the monographical literature on medieval aesthetics is very limited, and has enormous gaps. In the present History, the most important texts are given in references, in particular those connected with the Holy Scriptures (pp. 5-10), the aesthetics of the Fathers of the Church (pp. 15,18,19,20), Byzantine aesthetics (pp. 35, 37, 38,40,42,43), the aesthetics]of Augustine (pp.48, 50,55,56), of Thomas Aquinas (p. 246), the aesthetics of the visual arts (pp. 140,143,144,145,146, 150,151,153,159,160,169,170), of music (p. 125), and of poetry (pp. 114, 116).

2. The Aesthetics of the Holy Scriptures The early Christian writers who initiated Christian philosophy also initiated Christian aesthetics; they were, on the one hand, the Greek Fathers, especially St. Basil, and on the other, the Latin Fathers, led by St. Augustine. The former

THE AESTHETICS OF THE

Holy Scriptures

5

took Greek, the latter Roman sources as their point of departure; and both groups were acquainted with ancient theories of beauty and art and drew on them. This, however, was only one source of their aesthetics; another, naturally, was their own Christian beliefs, contained in the Holy Scriptures. Although the Holy Scriptures served other than aesthetic purposes, the early writers none the less found ideas on aesthetics in them, especially in the Old Testament. The word "beautiful" (kalos) occurs several times in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Holy Scriptures. Certain aesthetic questions are raised and treated there. Most of these aesthetic questions are raised in two books of the Old Testament, each of them completely different in character: Genesis and the Book of Wisdom. Beauty is also very prominent in the Song of Solomon. But in the Ecclesiastes and Proverbs, it is mentioned less frequently. 1 . THE BOOK OF GENESIS. The first chapter of Genesis contains a statement of great importance for aesthetics, because it concerns the beauty of the world. This chapter relates how God, surveying the world he had created, appraised his work. Genesis says : "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very beautiful" ,(1) This expression is repeated several times in Genesis (1, 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, and 31). Here one finds, first, the belief that the world is beautiful (the belief in pankalia), and secondly, the belief that it is beautiful because like a work of art it is the conscious creation of a thinking being. Though Genesis certainly contains these ideas in the Greek version, it seems that they are not to be found in the original, but were introduced by the translators. The sense of the Hebrew original, according to the experts*, is different: the word which the translators of the Septuagint, Jewish scholars of Alexandria in the 3rd century B.C. translated by the Greek kalos, "beautiful", was an adjective of wider meaning, denoting external and internal qualities (especially moral qualities: "valour", "usefulness", "goodness"), but not necessarily aesthetic ones. The real sense of the words of Genesis, in which God appraises his work, is that it was successful. These words contain a general, and not specifically aesthetic, approbation of the world, not a specific aesthetic appraisal. This accords with the general mood of the Old Testament and with the fact that beauty played practically no part in biblical worship and religion. Nonetheless, the translators had grounds for using the word kalos, which also had a wide sense, with many shades of meaning, and denoted not only aesthetic, but also moral beauty, and, in general, anything deserving praise and affording pleasure. It is possible that they used it without having aesthetic beauty especially in mind, and that it was only in later times that the word was understood in this sense. But it is also possible that the translators themselves interpreted it in this sense; for in the 3rd century B.C. the intellectual life of Alexandria was Greek, * Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, hrsg. v. G. Kittel (1938), vol. III, p. 539 (article καλός by W. Grandmami).

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THE AESTHETICS OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

and the Jews, too, were subject to Greek influence, and were therefore inclined not to take a purely moral attitude towards the world. One way or another, deliberately or not, by translating the biblical idea that the world was a success by the word kalos, the translators of the Septuagint introduced into the Bible a Greek idea about the beauty of the world. This was the result, if not the intention, of the translation. Once introduced, the idea continued to exert its influence. It did not pass into the Latin version of the Holy Scriptures', the Vulgate translated kalos by bonum, and not pulchrum. Nonetheless, it remained in both medieval and modern Christian culture. Though the Christian aestheticians, who put forward the view that the world is beautiful, appealed to the Old Testament, this idea did not have its source there. One cannot even say that it had two sources, a Greek and a biblical. It was entirely Greek. What appears to be biblical aesthetics, was in fact Greek in origin and found its way into the Bible through Greek influence, by way of translation into Greek. This idea of the beauty of creation, as stated in the Book of Genesis, recurs in the Book of Wisdom (XIII, 7 and XIII, 5) and Ecclesiasticus (XLIII, 9 and XXXIX, 16),(2) where the operation of Jehovah in nature and history is called in Greek kola. The same idea occurs in Ecclesiastes (III, 11),(3) and in Psalm XXV, 8: "Lord, I love the beauty of thy house" σύνολον, δτι ού θεούς, άλλά τήν τέχνην του γλύψαντος προσκυνοΰσιν. 2ως μέν γάρ δξυστός έστιν ó λίθος, καΐ ή ΰλη άργή, έπί τοσούτον ταΰτα πατοΰσι, καΐ τούτοις εις υπηρεσίας τάς έαυτών πολλάκις καΐ τάς άτιμοτέρας χρώνται· έπειδάν 6 τεχνίτης είς αύτά της Ιδίας έπιστήμης έπιβάλη τάς συμμετρίας, καΐ άνδρός καΐ γυναικός είς τήν ΰλην σχήμα τυπώση, τότε δή, χάριν όμολογήσαντες τω τεχνίτη, λοιπόν ώς θεούς προσκυνοΰσι, μισθού παρά του γλύψαντος αυτούς άγοράσαντες ... καΐ ά πρό όλίγου κατέξεε καΐ κατέκοπτε, ταΰτα μετά τήν τέχνην θεούς προσαγορεύει. έδει δέ, εΐπερ ήν θαυμάζειν ταΰτα, τήν τοΰ έπιστήμονος τέχνην άποδέχεσθαι, καΐ μή τά ύπ' αύτοΰ πλασθέντα τοΰ πεποιηκότος προτιμών, ού γάρ ή ΰλη τήν τέχνην, άλλ' ή τέχνη τήν ΰλην έκόσμησε καΐ έθεοποίησε.

17. In venerating stones and pieces of wood, they fail to see... that they are converting into sculptures and venerating in their foolishness what they formerly used to satisfy their needs. They fail to see or to think that it is not gods that they are honouring, but the art of the sculptor. As long as the stone was unworked and the material dead, they trod on them and often even used them for more inferior services. But ever since the artist introduced proportions into them, as dictated to him by his knowledge, and gave the material the form of man and woman, those thankful to the artist revere these likenesses like gods, having purchased them for money from the sculptor... What he has recently smoothed and cut, after completion he calls a god. And if these things are at all suitable to be admired, one should approach the art of a learned artist with appreciation, and not raise his works above it. For it is not the material which lends art form and divinity, but art the material.

ATHANASIUS, Sermo de sacris imaginibus

IN FAVOUR OF THE VENERATION OF IMAGES

(PG 28 p. 709). 18. τοΰτο δέ καΐ άπό τοΰ παραδείγματος της εικόνος τοΰ βασιλέως προσεχέστερόν τις κατανοήσαι δυνήσεται έν γάρ τη είκόνι τοΰ βασιλέως τό είδος καΐ ή μορφή έστι· και έν τω βασιλεϊ δή τό έν τη είκόνι εϊδός έστιν. άπαράλλακτός έστιν ή έν τη είκόνι τοΰ βασιλέως όμοιότης· ώστε τόν ένορώντα τήν είκόνα όραν έν αύτη τόν βασιλέα καΐ έπιγινώσκειν, δτι οΰτός έστιν ό έν τη είκόνι... Ό γοΰν προσκυνών τήν είκόνα έν αύτη προσκυνεί τόν βασιλέα, ή γάρ έκείνου μορφή καί τό εΐδός έστιν ή είκών.

18. One can observe this more precisely in the portrait of a king. For in this portrait there is shape and form, and in the king there is the same shape as in the portrait. The likeness of the king in the picture does not show any divergence (from the model), and so a man looking at the picture sees the king in it and recognizes that the king in the picture is the real king... In view of this, the man who venerates the picture venerates the king in it. For the likeness is his shape and form.

BASIL OF CAESAREA, Liber de Spiritu Sancto, VIII (PG 32 c. 149). 19. ή τοΰ εικόνος τιμή έπί τό πρωτότυπον διαβαίνει, δ οδν έστιν ένταΰ&α μιμητικώς ή είκών, τοΰτο έκει φυσικώς ó Υιός.

19. The veneration offered to a portrait is transferred to its prototype. For what a likeness is in imitative art, the Son of God is in nature.

THE AESTHETICS OF THE PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS

27

TERTULLIAN, De spectaculis, ΧΧΠΙ (PL 1, c. 730).

AGAINST IMAGES

20. Jam vero ipsum opus personarum, quaere an Deo placeat, qui omnem similitudinem vetat fieri, quanto magis imaginis suae Non amat falsum auctor veritatis (Exod. XX): adulterium est apud ilium omne quod fingitur.

20. I ask whether the making of human likenesses can please God, who forbids the creation of any likeness, let alone his own image. The creator of truth does not like falseness, and for him, all that is fictitious is adulterated.

LACTANTIUS, De falsa religione, XI (PL 6, c. 171-6).

TRUTH IN POETRY

21. Nesciunt enim, qui sit poëticae licentiae modus; quousque progredì fingendo liceat, cum officium poëtae sit in eo, ut ea, quae gesta sunt vere, in alias species obliquis figurationibus cum decore aliquo conversa traducat... Nihil igìtur a poëtis in totum fictum est: aliquid fortasse traductum et obliqua figuratione obscuratum, quo Veritas involuta tegeretur.

21. For they do not know how poetic licence can be used and how far one may go in invention, since the task of the poet is to lend real events a different, beautiful shape by means of metaphor. Nothing is entirely invented by poets, but rather transformed and obscured by metaphor for the veiling of the truth.

4. The Aesthetics of the Pseudo-Dionysius 1. CORPUS DIONYSIACUM. A further stage in the history of Christian aesthetics was reached by the Greek writings long ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, first Bishop of Athens, who lived in the 1st century A.D. They are not, however, by him, but by a later, anonymous writer, who, as their form and content show, was a Christian Platonist of the 5th century.* This anonymous writer is usually called the PseudoDionysius or the Pseudo-Areopagite. His writings are a peculiar fusion of Christian thought with late Greek philosophy, mainly with Neo-Platonic philosophy, which» by reason of its transcendentalism, could be relatively easily combined with religion. The writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius, the so-called Corpus Dionysiacum, are theological. They do not contain any specific treatise on aesthetics. In these theological writings, however, aesthetics is very much to the fore: they deal with beauty as one of the attributes of God. The Dionysian view of beauty is expounded most fully in the treatise on the Divine Names (IV, 7). But there are also casual remarks on aesthetics in other treatises: in the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, in the Heavenly Hierarchy, and in the Mystical Theology. The aesthetics of the Pseudo-Dionysius had much in common with the aesthetics of Basil and the other 4th century Greek Fathers of the Church. It brought patristic aesthetics to a close. But in so doing, it changed its character to a certain extent: it made it more speculative and abstract. In it, ideas scattered among the Fathers are * P. Godet, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, IV, 1 (1924), p. 340ff.

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THE AESTHETICS OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

collected into a system and derived speculatively from the most general a priori principles. If it constituted a step forward in the development of Christian aesthetics, it did so by systematizing Christian aesthetics, and certainly not by enriching aesthetic experience; Dionysian aesthetics was not based on experience. Neither before nor since has there been an aesthetics more transcendental, more a priori, and more divorced from the real world and from normal aesthetic experience. 2. ARCHETYPAL BEAUTY. The highest good and cause of all things, says the PseudoDionysius, is also called by the theologians "Beauty" and "the Beautiful". It is the highest Beauty; it contains and surpasses all beauty; it is a unified lasting state of beauty, which—as the Pseudo-Dionysius says,'1' writing in a style which originated with Plato, but with an even greater use of superlative and hyperbole—does not rise and perish, does not wax and wane, is not beautiful in one thing and ugly in another, and is not beautiful at one time and ugly at another. That it is beautiful does not depend on any particular standpoint, place or manner of contemplation ; it is constant, always the same, in itself and for itself. It is the source of all beauty. It is the object of all desires and aspirations; it is their end, their goal and their exemplar. It is identical with the Good; it is Beauty-and-Good. This Beauty-and-Good is the cause of al] that is beautiful and good in the world, of all being and becoming, all harmony and order, all perfection, all thought and all knowledge. "All being derives from Beauty-and-Good, all being subsists in Beauty-and-Good, and all being returns to Beauty-and-Good' '. The Pseudo-Dionysius continues with much more in this style, attempting to penetrate to the foundations of existence and to the ultimate metaphysical source of beauty. 3. CHRISTIANITY AND NEO-PLATONISM. The Pseudo-Dionysius' aesthetics, like his whole system, was based on two notions : a religious concept of God, derived from the Bible, and a philosophical concept of the absolute, taken from the Greeks. The Pseudo-Dionysius fused these two concepts into one. On this notion he based his conception of beauty as an attribute of God-absolute. The Book of Genesis and the Fathers of the Church had spoken of beauty in the sense of a property of created things. The Pseudo-Dionysius, however, ascribed it to the Creator. If God is beautiful, then the beauty which we see on earth is nothing in comparison with the beauty of God. If He is beautiful, then He alone is really beautiful. By ascribing Beauty to God, the Pseudo-Dionysius had to deny that the world is beautiful. If we see beauty in things, this may merely be a reflection of the one divine beauty. Divine beauty and its reflection in earthly things—these were new ideas, not to be found in the earlier stages of Christian aesthetics. The aspects of Greek philosophy from which the Pseudo-Dionysius drew his inspiration were not, of course, positivist or materialist, but those represented by Plato and Plotinus, especially in the more transcendental passages of their works : the Symposium (210-211) and the Enneads I, 6 and V, 8. He did not take over anything they had to say about aesthetic experience, but only their metaphysical ideas,

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their interest in transcendent beauty, their speculative method, their monism and their theory of emanation. The doctrines of the superiority of spiritual and ideal over empirical beauty, and of beauty as an object and a goal, came from Plato. Beauty as a property of the absolute, beauty connected with the good, the emanation of physical from absolute beauty—these came from Plotinus. But the PseudoDionysius went further than Plato and Plotinus. Plotinus, though connecting beauty with goodness, had nonetheless distinguished them from one another, regarding beauty as an outward appearance of goodness; but the Pseudo-Dionysius made no distinction between them; he identified and fused them in an all-embracing unity. 4 . ABSOLUTE BEAUTY. The intention of the Christian Platonists was to present a Christian conception of God and beauty; but they took over the necessary conceptual apparatus from the Greeks. Though it was God they had in mind, they spoke of "super-substantial" beauty, hyperousion kallos. To the concepts and vocabulary of Plotinus, they freely added superlatives; they spoke of "universal beauty" (pankalon) and "super-beauty" (hyperkalon).(u The shift towards transcendence in the use of aesthetic concepts, which began with Plotinus, was taken by the PseudoDionysius to the utmost possible limits. He introduced into Christian aesthetics the most abstract concept of beauty. He raised an empirical property to the status of an absolute and thereby brought about yet another change. Being conceived as an absolute, beauty became a perfection and a power; everything is said to derive from it; it contains everything; everything is directed towards it. All relations—substantial, causal and final—lead to it. It is the principle and goal of all things, their exemplar and measure. Thus the element of "Super-Platonism" came into Christian aesthetics. Beauty had never been more exalted. But it lost its individuality and ceased to be what is usually understood by beauty in the strict sense of the word. It became another name for perfection and power. It ceased to be an object of observation and experience, and became exclusively an object of speculation; it disappeared into the sphere of mystery. This, despite the Pseudo-Dionysius' personal sensitivity to normal visible beauty which one can discern in his writings, where he speaks of visible beauty as exemplifying absolute beauty and refers with competence and originality to the fine arts. 5. THE EMANATION OF BEAUTY. Apart from the concept of the absolute, the Pseudo-Dionysius took over from Plotinus the concept of emanation, the idea that absolute beauty radiates and gives forth emanations, from which earthly beauty results. The Fathers of the Church had understood the relation of God and world in a dualistic manner. God is perfect; the world in comparison with Him is insignificant. God's attributes are perfect; worldly attributes, including beauty, are imperfect. But for the Pseudo-Dionysius, the world had no beauty of its own at all, not even an imperfect beauty. It did, however, contain emanations of divine beauty. Since the beauty which can be perceived in the world is an emanation of divine beauty, there is only one beauty: divine beauty. Thus the Pseudo-Dionysius adopted a monistic view of beauty.

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It followed from this that, despite the imperfection of everything earthly, earthly beauty still contains something divine, and that divine beauty, though transcendent, manifests itself in the world. The Pseudo-Dionysius expressed this by saying that matter has within it echoes (apechema) of perfect, intelligible beauty(2) (as Augustine was to say, has "traces", vestigia, of perfect beauty), and that visible things are the "images" of invisible things.(3) By means of these echoes and images, man is able to arrive at perfect beauty; through visible beauty, he can attain to invisible beauty. The Pseudo-Dionysius' doctrine of art follows from his doctrine of beauty, and in particular, of the means by which art attains beauty. For this, the artist must direct his attention to, concentrate on and gaze deeply at "archetypal" beauty.(4) Creativity is "imitation", but imitation of perfect, invisible beauty. Secondly, in order to depict invisible beauty, the artist may use the forms of the visible world, because visible things are the images of invisible things. Human creativity is thus the imitation of invisible beauty by means of visible beauty .(5) Thirdly, the artist must reject everything in the visible world which might distract him from invisible beauty. Creativity thus consists in the removal of the superfluous.(6) 6. CONSONANTIA ET CLARITAS. The theory of emanation put forward by Plotinus and the Pseudo-Dionysius was founded on the analogy of light. It was assumed that Being has the nature of light, that it radiates like light, and that absolute beauty in particular radiates beauty in this way. Thus light entered as a fundamental concept into aesthetics. Frequent reference is made by the Pseudo-Dionysius to beauty as light, or brilliance (Jumen, claritas) ; and, in one place, he combines this new concept with the traditional concept of beauty as harmony (consonantia) : beauty is defined as consonantia et claritas (euharmostia kai aglaia) ;(1) that is, as harmony and light, or proportion and brilliance. In the history of aesthetics, few expressions have found such lasting acceptance as this. Thrown out rather casually by the Pseudo-Dionysius, it was to become one of the basic ideas of aesthetics, especially in the High Middle Ages. For the Pseudo-Dionysius, beauty—absolute beauty—was not only the source, but also the goal of Being; man should not only contemplate it, but love it and strive for it. Three kinds of movement lead to beauty. He called them, in his figurative language, cyclical, simple and spiral, probably to denote the fact that they lead by way of experience, ratiocination and contemplation. This exhortation to strive for beauty as the highest goal of man, was not, however, a form of aestheticism. Striving for beauty here means striving at the same time for goodness and truth. 7. THE INFLUENCE OF THE PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS. Today, the Pseudo-Dionysius' views are considered vague, with more apparent than real depth, and, in any case, purely verbal; it has even been said that his combination of Platonism with Christianity was inadequate.* But even if this were so, this combination of ideas fulfilled a need * H. F. Müller, "Dionysios, Proklos, Plotinos", Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, XX, 4-4 (1918).—Cf. G. Théry, Etudes dionysiennes (1932); Dionysiaca, I (Solesmes, 1937).

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at the time and met with a powerful response. It immediately found ardent supporters, foremost among them, Maximus the Confessor. By the 5th and 6th centuries, it had captured the Christian world and influenced all forms of Christian thinking, not merely aesthetic. Even when, later, Christian aesthetics developed in new directions, it still retained the ideas of Dionysius. At the height of scholasticism, Thomas Aquinas commented with the greatest respect on the opinions of the Pseudo-Dionysius on absolute beauty. People today would be inclined to leave the whole Corpus Dionysiacum to theology and pass it by in aesthetics; but historians cannot do this. Traces of it are still to be found after more than a thousand years. Whenever aestheticians have abandoned empirical investigation and begun to speculate on the source of beauty, this anonymous writer of the 5th century has been quoted. 8. THE THEISTTC THEME. The Pseudo-Dionysius's aesthetics had really only one central idea: that of absolute beauty. He conceived it theistically, modifying the pantheistic version of it which had appeared in late antiquity. He gave the concept a new meaning, and expressed it in different ways: beauty is of the absolute, in the absolute, and tends to the absolute. Or, in the theological language used by the Pseudo-Dionysius's successors : beauty is of God, in God and tends to God. This basic idea had far-reaching consequences—most important were: (1) The concept of absolute beauty came into Christian aesthetics, to the detriment of sensuous beauty from which aesthetics should start. (2) There came into Christian aesthetics at the same time the concept of the emanation of sensuous from absolute beauty, which caused sensuous beauty to take on a symbolical meaning as a representation of absolute beauty. (3) The concept of light also entered aesthetics. Beauty began to be defined as light, brilliance, or—in the combined expression—as harmony and brilliance, consonantia et claritas. (4) The development of a specific aesthetic concept of beauty, begun in antiquity, was halted and even reversed: the concept of beauty began to lose its aesthetic sense and to become a general metaphysical concept. (5) The Dionysian aesthetics transferred questions of beauty from the sphere of experience to that of speculation, and, to some extent, to the sphere of mystery. 9 . INFLUENCE ON PAINTING. The Pseudo-Dionysius's ideas affected art as well as aesthetics. Their influence on poetry was strongest; music, which was connected with poetry, and also the visual arts were indirectly affected. His ideas were responsible for the honorable place which the images of the saints occupied in churches, since saints were emanations of God. From the 6th century onwards, paintings decorated the walls of shrines in Eastern Christendom; from the 9th century, they were used for liturgical purposes. This did not happen in Western Europe, at least not in the countries north of the Alps, where these mystical doctrines had not penetrated. The Pseudo-Dionysius' theory also contributed to the veneration of images, since the sensuous world was regarded as an emanation of the divine.

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10. INFLUENCE ON ARCHITECTURE. Dionysian ideas had just as much influence on the symbolical and mystical conception of architecture. The contemporary mystics pictured the universe as a hexagon covered by the dome of the sky. While the Christian West adopted the basilica, an ancient functional building, for its churches, the architects of the Christian East constructed their buildings according to their mystical picture of the world, centrally planned buildings based on a hexagon under the hemisphere of a dome. They first built tombs and mausoleums of this shape, then churches, of which the greatest was the Church of St. Sophia in Constantinople. In the West, to which mystical ideas penetrated considerably later and then in a diluted form, we do not find this symbolical use of the central cupola. But in the East, in Byzantium, the Pseudo-Dionysius's sphere of influence, churches were built on a central plan, with their walls covered with paintings, for almost a thousand years; and even after the fall of Byzantium, the Eastern Church retained this shape in its architecture. The influence of the Pseudo-Dionysius extended also to architectural details. His concept of emanation inclined the builders to employ a symbolism different from that used before—a multiple symbolism—to symbolize both God and His works in the same building. This symbolism was developed, following the ideas of the Pseu do-Areopagite, by Maximus the Confessor in his work Mystagogia. A recently discovered Syrian hymn of the 6th century proves that Edessa Cathedral was erected on the basis of a symbolism drawn from the ideas of the Pseudo-Areopagite.* The church was now being treated as a triple symbol. First, as is shown by the hymn on Edessa Cathedral, as a symbol of God in the Holy Trinity: it had three identical façades, and the "only light" found its way into the choir through three windows; secondly, a s a symbol of the Church founded by Christ — "represented the foundations of the Church: apostles, prophets and martyrs"; thirdly, as a symbol of the cosmos: "It is most wondrous that, despite its smallness, it resembles the whole, vast world, not in its dimensions, but in its form". Its roof symbolized the sky, because, like the sky, it was spread out and vaulted; its dome symbolized the dome of the sky ; and the four arches of the dome represented the four corners of the earth. This was a different symbolism from that of the earlier Christian centuries, when the church represented God alone, whereas in the new symbolism, which bore the mark of the Pseudo-Dionysius's philosophy of emanation, the church represented not only God, but also the world emanating from God. This was only one feature which the symbolical architecture of the time owed to the Pseudo-Dionysius; another was the attempt to give expression to the "lofty mysteries concerning heaven * A. Dupont-Sommer, "Une hymne syriaque sur la cathédrale d'Edesse", Cahiers archéologiques, II (1947).—A. Grabar, "Le témoignage d'une hymne syriaque sur la cathédrale d'Edesse et sur la symbolique de l'édifice chrétien"; ibid., II (1947).

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and earth". A third was the special role which this architecture assigned to light. Apart from these, other, more specific ideas were taken from the Pseudo-Dionysius : e.g., if the Bishop's Throne rested on nine feet, this was because they represented the nine choirs of angels which the Pseudo-Dionysius had enumerated. C. Texts from the Pseudo-Dionysius PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS, De divinis nominibus, IV, 7 (PG 3 c. 701).

UNIVERSAL BEAUTY, SUPER-BEAUTY

1. Τοΰτο τάγαθόν υμνείται πρός των ίερών θεολόγων καί ώς καλόν, καί ώς κάλλος, καί ώς άγάπη καί ώς άγαπητόν, καί δσαι δλλαι ευπρεπείς είσι της καλλοποιοϋ καί κεχαριτωμένης ωραιότητας θεωνυμίαι. Tò δέ καλόν καί κάλλος διαιρετέον έπΐ της έν ένί τα όλα συνειληφυίας αίτίας· ταύτα γάρ έπί μέν των δντων άπάντων είς μετοχάς καί μετέχοντα διαιροϋντες, καλόν μέν είναι λέγομεν τί> κάλλους μετέχον, κάλλος Sè τήν μετοχήν της καλλοποιοϋ των δλων καλών αίτιας. Tò δέ ύπερούσιον καλόν κάλλος μέν λέγεται, διά τήν άπ' αυτού πάσι τοις ούσι μεταδιδομένην οίκείως έκάστω καλλονήν, καί ώς της πάντων εύαρμοστίας καί άγλαίας αίτιον, βίκην φωτός έναστράπτον άπασι τάς καλλοποιούς της πηγαίας άκτϊνος αύτοϋ μεταδόσεις, καί ώς πάντα πρί>ς εαυτό καλούν (δθεν καί κάλλος λέγεται) καί ώς όλα έν δλοις είς ταύτό συνάγον. Καλόν δέ ώς πάγκαλον αμα καί ύπέρκαλον, καί άεί δν, κατά τά αυτά καί ώσαύτως καλόν, καί οΰτε γιγνόμενον, οΰτε άπολλύμενον, οΰτε αύξανόμενον, οΰτε φθίνον, ούδέ τη μέν καλόν, τη δέ αίσχρόν, ούδέ τοτέ μέν, τοτέ δέ οϋ, ούδέ πρός μέν τό, καλόν, πρός δέ τό, αίσχρόν· οΰτε έ'νΟ-α μέν, £νθα δέ οΰ, ώς τισι μέν 3ν καλόν, τισί δέ ού καλόν· άλλ' ώς αύτό καθ' έαυτό μεθ' έαυτοϋ μονοειδές άεί δν καλόν, καί ώς παντός καλοΰ της πηγαίαν καλλονήν ύπεροχικώς έν έαυτω προέχον. Τη γάρ άπλη καί ΰπερφυεϊ των δλων καλών φύσει πάσα καλλονή καί παν καλόν ένοειδώς κατ' αίτίαν προϋφέστηκεν. Έ κ του κάλου τούτου πάσι τοις οδσι τό είναι, κατά τόν οίκεϊον λόγον έκαστα καλά, καί διά τό καλόν αί πάντων έφαρμογαί, καί φιλίαι, καί κοινωνίαι· καί τω καλψ τά πάντα ήνωται. καί άρχή πάντων τό καλόν, ώς ποιητικόν αϊτιον, καί κινούν τά

1. The holy theologians, in glorifying this good, say that it is beauty and beautifulness, love and the loved. They confer on it all manner of divine names, which are fitting for the comeliness which creates beauty and is itself full of charm. One should distinguish between beauty and beautifulness as the cause embracing at once all beauty. For, having made this distinction in all being between participation and| things participating, we call beautiful the thing which participates in beautifulness, and beautifulness we call the participation of the beauty-creating cause in all beautiful things. Supra-existential beauty is called beautifulness because from it is imparted to all reality the beauty appropriate to every thing, and also because it is the cause of proportion and brilliance, since, in the form of light illuminating all things and flooding them with its rays, it gives them a part in the creation of beauty, and also again because it summons everything unto it (hence its Greek name) and because it reduces everything in everything to unity. And beauty as universal beauty, and at the same time, super-beauty, eternal beauty, always the same and immutably beautiful, does not rise and perish, does not wax and wane, is not beautiful in one thing and ugly in another, is not beautiful at one time and ugly at another, is not beautiful in relation to one thing and ugly in relation to another, is not beautiful in one place and not beautiful in another, and is not beautiful for some and not beautiful for others. It is of itself and in itself uniform and eternally beautiful, in the highest degree embracing the original beauty of all beautiful things. All beauty and all beautifulness is the uniform foundation and the cause of the simple and supernatural nature of all beautiful things. From this beauty,

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δλα, καί συνέχον τω της οίκείας καλλονής έρωτι· καί πέρας πάντων, καί άγαπητόν, ώς τελικόν αίτιον (του κάλου γάρ Ινεκα πάντα γίγνεται)· καί παραδειγματικών, δτι κατ' αυτό πάντα άφορίζεται· Sii καί ταύτόν έστι τάγαθώ τό καλόν, δτι του κάλου καί άγα&οϋ κατά πδσαν αίτίαν πάντα έφίεται· καί ούκ ϊστι τι των βντων, δ μή μετέχει τοΰ καλοϋ καί. άγα&οΰ.

all existing things derive their being, each in its own way. It is because of beauty that all harmonies arise, and all friendships and relations. All is united by beauty. Beauty is the principle of all as an efficient cause, setting all in motion and joining all in love of real beauty. It is the limit of all things, an object of love and a final cause (for all arises because of beauty). It is also an exemplary cause, because through it everything receives its form. And because of this, beauty is identical with good, because all causes bid things strive for beauty and good. And there is no thing in existence which does not have a part in beauty and good.

PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS, De coelesti hierarchia, Π. 4 (PG 3, c. 144).

SPIRITUAL THINGS CAN BE REPRESENTED I N PHYSICAL F O R M S

2. έστι τοιγαροΰν ουκ άπαδούσας άναπλάσαι τοις ούρανίοις μορφάς, κάκ των άτιμωτάτων της ύλης μερών, έπεί καί αύτη, πρός τοΰ δντως καλοΰ τήν ΰπαρξιν έσχηκυϊα, κατά πδσαν αΰτης τήν ΰλαίαν διακόσμησιν άπηχήματά τινα της νοερδς ευπρεπείας έχει.

2. Thus one can create forms suitable for heavenly things even from the most miserable particles of matter, since the very matter, too, deriving its existence from true beauty, preserves in its whole arrangement certain traces of intellectual beauty.

PSEUD 0-DI0NYSIUS, Epistola Χ (PG 3, c. 1117). 3. άληθώς έμφανεϊς εικόνες είσι τά όρατά των άοράτων.

3. Indeed, visible things are the images of invisible things.

PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS, D e ecclesiastica hierarchia, IV, 3 : Paraphrasis Pachymeres (PG 3, c. 489). 4. εί πρός τό άρχέτυπον κάλλος 6 γραφεύς άκλινώς άφοροι μή περισπώμενος έν&εν κακεΐβ-εν, έξακριβώσει τό μίμημα. Cf. P. G. 3, c. 473. PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS, De coelesti hierarchia, 3 (PG 3, c. 121). 5. μηδέ δυνατόν έστι τ ω καθ-' ή μας νοΐ πρός τήν δΰλον έκείνην άναταθηναι των ούρανίων ιεραρχιών μίμησιν τε καί θεωρίαν, εί μή τη καί αύτόν ΰλαία χειραγωγία χρήσαιτο, τά μεν φαινόμενα κάλλη της άφανοΰς ευπρεπείας άπεικονίσματα λογιζόμενος· καί τάς αίσθητάς εύωδίας, έκτυπώματα της νοητης διαδόσεως και της άδλου φωτοδοσίας εικόνα, τά ύλικά φώτα.

ART A N D ARCHETYPE 4. Only if the painter gazes unswervingly at archetypal beauty, scattering his thoughts neither in one direction nor in the other, will he work his reproductive image with precision. T H R O U G H VISIBLE TO INVISIBLE BEAUTY 5. It is not possible for our mind to reproduce without material and contemplate the heavenly hierarchies other than by using material means. For the thinking man, phenomenal beauties become images of invisible beauty. Sensual fragrances are reflections of an intellectual cause, and material lights are images of the nonmaterial source of brilliance.

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PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS, Mystica theologia, II (PG 3, c. 1025).

CREATIVITY IS THE REMOVAL OF WHAT IS SUPERFLUOUS

6. τοϋτο γάρ έστι τό δντως ίδεϊν καΐ γνώναι καΐ τόν ύπερούσιον ΰπερουσίως ΰμνήναι διά της πάντων των βντων άφαιρέσεως, ώσπερ οί αυτοφυές άγαλμα ποιοΰντες έξαιρούντες πάντα τά έπιπροσ&οΰντα τη καθαρά τοΰ κρυφίου θέα κωλύματα καΐ αύτό έφ' έαυτοϋ τη άφαιρέσει. μόνη τό άποκεκρυμμένον άναφαίνοντες κάλλος.

6. Here is true seeing and true cognition: He who is above being is honoured supra-existentially when all reality is rejected. Similarly, in order to make a statue from natural material, sculptors rid themselves of the superfluous material which stands in the way of their pure vision of being. And only by rejecting it do they unveil beauty in its pure form.

5. Byzantine Aesthetics 1. THE ΒΥΖΑΝΠΝΕ WORLD VIEW. Byzantine aesthetics was a continuation of the aesthetics of the Greek Fathers and of the Pseudo-Dionysius. It was not the fruit of aesthetic experience, but of a general attitude to the world. This attitude was religious, inspired by the Gospel and by transcendentalist Hellenistic philosophy.* It can be summarized in the form of three theses: First there are two worlds, earthly and divine, material and spiritual. Of the two, the spiritual is primary. It has the archetypes on which the material world is modelled. It is separated from the material world by a hierarchy of beings. It is perfect. Secondly, the material world is not wholly evil, because God descended to it and dwelt in it. In the Byzantine view of the world, the mystery of the Incarnation constituted the entire hope and comfort of man. Thirdly, though man lives on earth, he belongs to a higher world. "Heaven is our true homeland", wrote the Byzantine theologian Nicephorus Blemmides. Man's purpose is to make his way to this homeland. "We were not born", wrote Nicephorus, "to eat and drink, but to show forth virtue, to the glory of the Creator". This religious dualism pervaded the aesthetics of Byzantium. Byzantine aesthetics, like that of the Pseudo-Dionysius, was concerned with transcendent beauty. Its contribution, however, was not so much its conception of beauty, as its particular view of art. But this was formulated by the writers only after it had already begun to guide the artists. Consistent with the mystery of the Incarnation, it was permitted to portray God in art, and the function of art was to raise people's minds from the material to the divine. 2. ATTITUDE TO ART. Beside the religious, transcendental view of the world, the

* N. v. Arseniev, Ostkirche und Mystik (München, 1925).—Ν. Gass, Genadius und Pletho, Piatonismus und Aristotelismus in der griechischen Kirche (Wroclaw, 1944).—V. Ν. Lazariev, Istoriya vizantiyskoy shivopisi, vols. I and II, (Moskva, 1947).—Recent works: O. Demus, Byzantine Mosaic, Decoration (2nd. ed. 1953).—P. A. Michelis, An Aesthetic Approach to Byzantine Art (1955). The former of these two books sees in Byzantine aesthetics a fusion of East and West, and the latter the exclusive heritage of Greece.

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ethnic, geographical and political conditions of the period were also reflected in Byzantine art and aesthetics. (a) The Byzantines considered themselves Greeks and were in fact for the most part Greek. They read the ancient Greek authors and had the example of the ancient Greeks before them. They wanted to, and did in fact, largely retain the tradition, forms and conceptions of art of the ancient Greeks. (,b) But as they lived on the eastern boundaries of Europe and their territory extended into Asia, they fell under Asian influence. It was from the East, and not from Greece, that they learnt to take pleasure in abstract forms, in splendour, precious stones, gilding and bright colours. The role of the Byzantines has been seen as that of preserving the heritage of antiquity, but they transformed it as much as they preserved it. (c) For centuries, Byzantium was a world power, and everything to do with it was on the grand scale. Its art surpassed that of the ancients in its ability to portray superhuman proportions, to sublimate forms, and to convey a sense of the sublime. This is reflected in Byzantine aesthetics. (d) The Byzantines felt that, amid the destruction and barbarism of Europe, they alone still retained power, greatness and culture. The desire to preserve these qualities contributed to their endurance and their conservatism. As Burckhardt said: Byzantine art possessed an uncommon obstinacy in perpetuating what was moribund, but at the same time it possessed one of the greatest qualities: endurance. (e) The Byzantine emperors wielded unlimited power, both secular and ecclesiastical. Their will was the supreme law. In their capital, power and culture were concentrated. Byzantine power was as centralized as it was autocratic and unified. The life of the country, not least its intellectual and artistic life, was controlled by the emperor and his officials, and they tolerated no form of opposition or innovation. Thus Byzantine culture and philosophy was more uniform though richer, and less internally differentiated than that of the West. Forms, once created, persisted for centuries. Attempts to transform established views of art, even if these were imposed by autocratic rulers, met with relentless opposition. 3. MYSTICAL MATERIALISM. The function of Byzantine art was conceived on a grandiose scale, after the manner of the imperial court. In Byzantine churches, all the arts were made to collaborate: the monumental architecture, the mosaics and paintings on the walls and vaults, the pictures, the liturgical ornaments and vestments, the ritual and the chants, the words and the melodies—all were designed to give aesthetic delight, and thus raise the soul to God. Byzantine ritual was characterized by what has been called "mystical materialism". Material splendour was used to put across mystical ideas and to lead to God through aesthetic experiences. It was inspired by that most abstract and mystical of philosophers, the Pseudo-Dionysius, but the Greek need for beauty and ceremony was also taken into account. Religious services were for the Byzantines what theatrical performances had been for the Athenians. "The Greeks believed only in what they could see and touch. Thus it was in the

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time of Phidias, and thus it was to remain during the Byzantine period. But the object of belief underwent a radical change. In ancient Greece, it was a pantheistic deity; in medieval Byzantium, a transcendent God, embodying the idea of the purest spirituality".* For all its sensuous magnificence and material splendour, Byzantine art was mystical and symbolical. It proceeded from a spiritual, transcendental aesthetics. The greatness of God was reflected in the greatness of its churches. The dazzling richness of its ritual, its gold, silver, precious stones and many-coloured marbles represented the splendour of heaven. The pleasures of sight and sound experienced during the religious ceremonies were promises of heavenly bliss. "If these earthly, transient splendours are so magnificent, what must the magnificence of the heavenly splendours be like, which are prepared for the righteous?" wrote Porphyrius, Bishop of Ghaza. Procopius, describing the Church of St. Sophia wrote: "Whosoever enters this church to pray feels that it was not built by human power or art, but at God's command". The patriarch Photius went even further: "The faithful enter a church as though entering heaven itselP'.t 4. IMAGE AND PROTOTYPE. The purest expression of the religious, spiritual Byzantine aesthetics was in painting. Painting was not only used in the service of God, but was also used to represent Him and His saints. It took only one form—the "icon" (eikori), or "image", "likeness" of Christ and the saints. The rest of the visible world was disregarded in favour of the human form. Theologically, this was justified because God Himself had assumed human form in the Incarnation. Though the human form was portrayed in Byzantine painting, it was not the body which the artist wished to portray, but the soul; the body was merely a symbol of the soul. "The good artist depicts the soul, not the body", wrote a contemporary theologian. To do this, the artist dematerialized the human body by reducing it to the most abstract, least organic form possible. This is the first thing to be noted about Byzantine icons. Secondly, the artist did not present a certain aspect of the human form, but its essence. The essence was identified with the idea, or eternal prototype. Here we find evidence of the dual outlook, the separation of the temporal and eternal, already referred to. Everything temporal had its exemplar in an eternal world. Icons were meant to present the prototypes of temporal forms, and, by fixing the mind of the beholder on these prototypes, to direct his attention to the eternal and raise his mind to the contemplation of God. The painting itself was only a means and not an end; its real object was invisible. "Through visible images, our mind, carried upwards by the spirit, should strive towards the invisible greatness of the godhead". The icons were not intended merely to be looked at, but to be prayed before in long and concentrated contemplation. The painter, therefore, portrayed the saints * Lazariev, op. cit., p. 27. t Quoted by O. Wulff, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, XXX (1930).

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THE AESTHETICS OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

motionless, and the spectator was expected to remain in motionless concentration, with his eyes fixed on those of the saint. Like the torso in ancient sculpture, the face, and, in particular, the eyes, became the focal point of the picture. The figure of the saint was elongated, and thus dematerialized and divorced from earth. He stood against a golden background, which removed him from real space and raised him above reality. This isolation from the world was heightened still further by the unnatural colouring of the picture; the local colours were always the same, as if proving the immutability and timelessness of the prototype. Even the fragments of nature, mountains or plants, sometimes shown on icons, were reduced to geometrical or crystalline forms, and also dematerialized, giving the impression that they belonged to another world. The art of Byzantium was so deeply imbued with religion that John Damascene could write: "If a pagan comes to you, saying: 'show me your faith', ... lead him into a church and set him before the holy images". Indeed, icons, representing eternal prototypes, were not only contemplated, but also venerated. Although three-dimensional plastic art was not officially excluded, it had no place in Byzantine art. It was too material and realistic to have a place in an art which was meant to represent only eternal prototypes. An aesthetics which demanded the representation of prototypes, rather than of the fleeting appearance of things, left little room for the fantasy of the artist or originality of ideas. This led to an established iconography and immutable canons. It limited the inventiveness of the artist. The role of the artist declined considerably from what it had been in the age of Hellenism; it became impersonal and anonymous. But, by concentrating the efforts of all the arts for generations on one single purpose, artistic results were produced which surprise us even today by their perfection.* 5. CONTROVERSY OVER THE VENERATION OF IMAGES. After a few centuries of its existence, Byzantine art was condemned in Byzantium itself by an appeal to the same general principles which had produced it. Apodictic Byzantine aesthetics brought about the most stubborn controversy in the whole history of aesthetics, the iconoclastic controversy. Byzantine theologians restricted the scope of painting to religious subjects so that the only subjects painted were Christ and the saints. These were venerated as well as admired. But there arose a belief that to venerate, and even to paint, pictures representing God was idolatrous and heretical, and that they should be destroyed. The authorities ordered their destruction and these orders were carried out. The course of the controversy was as follows.f In 725, the Emperor Leo III the Isaurian issued the first edict against images. A controversy at once flared up, be* A. Grabar, La peinture byzantine (Genève, 1953). t Κ. Schwarzlose, Der Bilderstreit, ein Kampf der griechischen Kunst um ihre Eigenart und ihre Freiheit (Gotha, 1890).—G. Ladner, "Origin and Significance of the Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy", Medieval Studies, Π (1940), pp. 127-149.

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cause the Pope, Gregory II, not only did not recognize the edict, but excommunicated the Emperor. The Emperor stood his ground.'It was not just a dispute between rulers. Both in Byzantium and Rome, the ordinary people, who were attached to images, were in a ferment. After the death of Leo III and Gregory II, far from dying down, the controversy became more heated under the succeeding Emperors and Popes. After the Synod of 731, which excommunicated the iconoclasts, the Emperor Constantine V (741-775) intensified his activities still more, justifying by orders and letters the condemnation of images of Christ and the saints. During his reign, the greatest destruction of works of art took place. The secular clergy yielded under pressure, but the religious orders held firm. They were therefore dissolved, and the monks in their thousands fled to the West. This was one of the rare cases in history where people have paid with their freedom, and sometimes even with their lives, for an attitude to art. It was only after half a centuiy, under the Empress Irene (780-802), that the Byzantine government inclined temporarily towards the side of the iconophiles, and the Nicene Council in 787 condemned iconoclasm and reintroduced the veneration of images. But the struggle against images found an echo elsewhere. At Charlemagne's wish, an assembly of bishops at Frankfurt in 794 partially revoked the decisions of the Nicene Council. A change soon took place in Byzantium also. From 813 onwards, under Leo V the Armenian (813-820), a second wave of iconoclasm began. Under the Emperor Theophilus (829-842), the struggle was still being waged with overt fanaticism, though now only in Constantinople itself. Only after his death in 842, after over a hundred years of strife, did it come to an end, with a decisive victory for the iconophiles. The dispute was doctrinal, but it had practical consequences. It led to the destruction of almost all Byzantine art prior to that time. It was religious in origin, but the actual subject of the dispute was aesthetic. Although theological arguments were employed, they concerned beauty and art, and so the matter cannot be omitted from a history of aesthetics. The basic cause of the controversy was the opposition between two theological doctrines and two views of art inspired by theology. It was also a clash of the two cultures which met in Byzantium: the "pictorial" culture of the Greeks, and the abstract culture of the East. And it was a clash of two social groups. The ruling dynasty, the court and the higher clergy associated with the court were against images, while the lower clergy, the monks and the mass of the people, faithful to tradition and needing the concrete representation for their faith, were in favour of them. The dispute also had a political motivation, which, in the second phase, was even stronger than the doctrinal. Many of the iconoclastic Emperors, especially Leo V, were soldiers and politicians, not theologians. They wanted to see a rapprochement between the Christians and the numerous groups in Byzantium who did not approve of images, Moslems, Jews and Manicheans. But they also wanted to weaken the clergy, as a necessary condition for maintaining their own absolute power.

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Hostility towards the cult of images had long been smouldering in Asia Minor which came under the influence of Eastern religions and sects, and from there, from time to time, it had penetrated to Byzantium. In a spiritualistic religion such as Christianity, this hostile attitude had always been present. In Byzantium, with its transcendental conception of Christianity, iconoclasm could not fail, sooner or later, to gain the upper hand. This happened as soon as the imperial throne was occupied by emperors from the Eastern part of the Empire. The predominance of the iconoclasts was a reflection of the predominance of a purely spiritual Eastern culture. The decisive iconophile victory, the victory of images over abstraction, was a victory for the Hellenic tradition. But this victory was secured by recourse to a mystical theory. Only mysticLm could save the cult of images in the Eastern Empire. The dispute went through two phases, separated by a period of peace under the Empress Irene. During the first phase, the iconophile position was formulated by John Damascene, a doctor of the Greek Church (700-749), in his Pro sacris imaginibus orationes tres. In the second phase, the defenders of images were Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople (at the turn of the 8th century) and author of Apologeticus pro sacris imaginibus and Antirrhetici tres, and above all, Theodorus Studites (759-828), a monk of Constantinople from the monastery of Studion, who was banished for a time and who wrote several works on the subject of images, in particular Antirrhetici tres adversus iconomachos. The writings of the iconoclasts have not been preserved. As the iconoclasts had destroyed works of art, so the iconophiles, after their victory, desti oyed the writings of the iconoclasts. However, one can discover the views they held and the arguments they put forward from the works of their opponents. 6. T H E VIEWS OF THE ICONOCLASTS. The aims of the iconoclasts were praiseworthy. They wished to reform religious worship, and to stamp out idolatry and the profanation of religion. If they succumbed to their opponents, it was because of their intellectualism, their inability to get through to the masses. Their argument was simple: the deity cannot be represented pictorially, "no image can portray the nature of the deity". Pictorial representation (perigraphe) of God is not only impossible, but improper. To attempt it implies a failure to recognize the distinction between the divine and the terrestrial. Veneration of images is even more improper. This view was put forward sometimes in a moderate, sometimes in extremely radical form. In its moderate form it was opposed to the veneration of images, and in its radical form to any use of images, and called for their destruction. To put it another way, in its moderate form it was opposed to the religious veneration (latreia) of images; in its radical form it was opposed to every kind of veneration (proskynesis).* 7. T H E ICONOPHILE POSITION.

Although the iconophile position was that of the

* G. Ostrogorsky, Studien zur Geschichte des byzantinischen Bilderstreites op. cit.

(1929).—Schwarzlose,

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simple man, the arguments used to support it were complicated, speculative and involved. They were not, of course, the arguments 'of the masses, but of theologians. The iconoclasts based their argument on the dualism of the terrestrial and the divine (the first of the fundamental ideas of the Byzantine world view), the iconophiles based theirs on the Incarnation which overcame this dualism (the second fundamental idea). To the objection that it is impossible to represent the deity, their first reply was simply that images of Christ portray Him in His human, and not His divine nature. It was evident to the Greeks that truth, even the most transcendental, can only be attained through the senses. In his defence of the veneration of images, John Damascene said that a purely intellectual union with God is absurd. We are united to our bodies in such a way that we cannot reach the spirit independently of them. We apprehend the spiritual by means of the images we see just as much as by the words we hear. It is natural that God should manifest Himself in visible things and, if God manifests Himself through them, they are not entirely material. This doctrine of the Pseudo-Dionysius was well known to the Byzantine theologians, and only required to be applied to painting. 8. JOHN DAMASCENE AND THEODORUS STUDITES. Byzantine painters took it for granted from the outset that the devout man, in contemplating an image, contemplates God, since the image resembles its divine prototype. This resemblance was enough, in the view of John Damascene, to justify the veneration of images.* In the second phase of the dispute, Theodorus Studites went even further by asserting that images of Christ not only resemble Christ, but are identical with Him. This is not an identity of matter (the matter in a picture is wood and paint) or even of essence, but of person. He justified this view of the divinity of images with reference to Neo-Platonic and Dionysian philosophy. It was not originally an article of Christian belief, but a philosophical speculation introduced by Theodorus himself. According to this theory, the lower orders of being emanate from the higher and are reflections of them. Every creature, and man in particular, is an emanation from and image of God. Applied to painting, this meant that images of Christ are also emanations from Him. The painter does not paint his notion of God, but God Himself, the prototype, who passes into matter by emanation. Hence the resemblance of image to prototype. The prototype not only can, but must manifest itself in the image; otherwise it would not be a prototype. The image is inseparable from the prototype, like a shadow from the thing which casts it; it carries the image within it and must bring it forth. There is a necessary relationship between prototype and picture. * "Material things do not of themselves deserve veneration, but if they portray someone who is full of grace, it is in accordance with the faith to hold that they partake of that grace." John Damascene, De imaginibus oratio (PG, vol. 94, c. 1264).

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We can apprehend and produce images which emanate from God, because we are created in the image of God. "He does not err who says that there is divinity in an image." The image is not, of course, identical with its prototype; they are materially different. But the two have a common form, and this form suffices for the prototype to transfer its power to the image. Thus, there are miraculous images; and images of God should be treated with reverence.* Because the world is the creation of God, it is also His image and reveals at least a glimpse of Him.(1) Thus, the artist who wishes to portray the divine prototype can use forms taken from creatures.(2> The image is an authentic likeness of the prototype.' 3 ' It "partakes" of the prototype (4> The artist produces his work by considering the prototype.' 5 ' Thus he reproduces it, at least partially, not in spirit, but corporeally/ 6 ' Whoever looks at the picture sees the prototype: God is in the picture.' 7-8 ' 9. CONSEQUENCES OF THE ICONOPHILE THEORY. Thus arose the most unusual theory of art in the history of aesthetics: a picture was apprehended as a fragment of the divine being, and was judged by its resemblance to the transcendent prototype. Never again, in the history of aesthetics, was such a radical theory been proposed, though there have been many theories about the role of the artist and of the objectivity of art related to it. There are probably few people who would accept the theory of the Byzantine iconophiles, but no one would deny that it was associated with exquisite works of art and in its own way contributed to the perpetuation of this kind of art. According to this theory, art could not be a simple reproduction of nature, because it was supposed to depict the transcendent prototype; but it had to take nature into account, since nature, too, is derived from the prototype. Byzantine art endeavoured to meet both these requirements: while it had its source in an extremely idealistic theory, it had realistic elements. Thanks to the theory of the iconophiles, works of art acquired a mystical value which they did not have in the West. This theory was also responsible for the creation of iconographical types, to which the Byzantines ascribed a supernatural origin and which survived in their art for many centuries. 10. ICONOCLASTIC INFLUENCES ON AESTHETICS AND ART. In a way, the activity of the iconoclasts had a constructive effect both on art and the theory of art. It led to the mystical theory of art of the iconophiles; and led the iconoclasts themselves to initiate realistic art. Up to then, there had been only idealistic, religious art in the religious Byzantine society. But the emperors who opposed and destroyed religious art, supported secular art and introduced it into the churches. Constantine V had scenes from the life of Christ in one of the churches at Constanti* Schwarzlose, op. cit.—Lazariev, op. cit.—G. Ladner, "Der Bilderstreit und die Kunstlehren der byzantinischen und abendlandischen Theologie", Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 3 Folge, Bd. 50, Heft I-II (1931).

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nople replaced by pictures of trees, birds and animals, peacocks and cranes—anything except a likeness of God. His opponents reproached him for making the church "a warehouse for fruit and a cage for birds".* In the palaces, for example the palace of the last iconoclast emperor, Theophilus, the walls were covered with pictures of landscapes, games, races, hunts and theatrical performances. Thus, thanks tp the iconoclasts, a new type of painting, realistic and devoid of spiritual and mystical content, was introduced into Byzantium. 11. AESTHETICS AND THEOLOGY. It may be doubted whether the iconoclastic controversy belongs to the history of aesthetics, and not to theology. In fact, it belongs to both: to theology, though with aesthetic consequences, and to an aesthetics which is based on theological assumptions. AN aesthetics with religious assumptions is by no means exceptional in the history of aesthetics. Much of ancient aesthetics, and most of medieval aesthetics was of this kind. The Byzantine controversy concerned not only the nature of God, but also the nature of beauty. When, by order of Constantine V, the mosaics of the life of Christ in one of the great churches of Constantinople were destroyed and replaced by pictures of animals and plants, contemporaries considered that "all beauty disappeared from the churches", as an extant text puts it. The Byzantines based their theories on the same theological premises, but from these the two factions derived two completely opposed aesthetics. The orthodox iconophiles, as well as the iconoclasts, accepted the existence of two worlds, the divine and the terrestrial, the intellectual and the sensuous; but the former believed that art can and should portray the divine world, whereas the latter considered that it cannot and should not; that it can only depict the world accessible to the senses. From the same metaphysical premises, the iconophiles arrived at a mystical aesthetics, and the iconoclasts at a naturalistic aesthetics. The mystical aesthetics acknowledged the existence of symbolical, spiritual, timeless and ultimate forms in art; this was denied by the iconoclasts. The mystical aesthetics of the iconophiles was a development of the aesthetics of the Greek Fathers and of the Pseudo-Dionysius. It was an extreme, but typical product of the Christian East. It found no response in the West. Just the opposite was the case with the positivist aesthetics of the iconoclasts. It remained an isolated feature in Eastern Europe, distinguished by its positivism without concern for the transcendent, spiritual and mystical, in a milieu whose outlook was religious, transcendental and spiritual. 12. ICONOCLASM OUTSIDE BYZANTIUM. Iconoclasm was not peculiar to Byzantium. It appeared at least three times, among different peoples, with a different culture and religious outlook. First, in the Mosaic religion of the Jews, next in the Moslem religion of the Arabs, and finally, in Byzantine Christianity. It occurred earliest * Vita Stephani. PG, vol. 100, pp. 1112-1113.—A. Grabar, L'Empereur dans l'art Recherches sur l'art officiel de l'empire d'Orient (Paris, 1936).

byzantin,

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THE AESTHETICS OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

among the Jews. The Mosaic law prohibited the making of any likeness of God or of any living thing. The Jews were for a long time unique in this, and were condemned by the Graeco-Romans. (Tacitus writes of ludaeorum mos absurdus sordidusque). The iconoclastic movement among the Jews influenced the Mohammedans, who were not originally opposed to the portrayal of living things. The Koran contains no prohibitions in this regard. It was only at the beginning of the 8th century that the Caliphs, Yazid and Omar II, opposed the cult of images. Nevertheless, Yazid II's edict against images in 722 anticipated the first Byzantine decree of Leo III by four years. The iconoclastic movement, which lasted many centuries and extended to many nations and cultures, arose for various reasons. Firstly, to prevent idolatry: this was Moses's reason for prohibiting the use of images. Secondly, it was directed against the claim that an artist can create; creation is an attribute of God alone. This was the reason behind the Moslem prohibition. Thirdly, and this was the predominant reason among Christians, because God is invisible, beyond the reach of imagination and incapable of being portrayed. Apart from these, the principal reasons, there were several others. The Jews were anxious to avoid what they regarded as the falsehood of representational art. Philo of Alexandria, their spokesman, wrote: "Moses condemned the arts of painting and sculpture because they corrupt the truth with falsehood". The Moslems, for their part, joined the condemnation of images with a condemnation of excess and extravagance in art, in the gilding of ceilings and ornate fabrics. The scope of iconoclasm varied. In Byzantium, only the portrayal of God in human form was forbidden (and sometimes only the veneration of His image). The Mohammedan prohibition covered the portrayal of man in general. The Jewish prohibition extended to all living things. For centuries, the Jews scrupulously observed the law concerning images. Although they disregarded it in the 2nd century A.D., it was restored in the 5th century, and the images were destroyed. The Mohammedans' ban on images was frequently broken. The Christian interdict, as we have seen, aroused opposition and controversy, and did not survive. Iconoclasm, being inspired by religion, took root only where conditions were suitable, where there was a limited need for art, creation and representation. It did not penetrate the Latin lands of the West, but remained an Eastern phenomenon. Even in the East, the Persians did not adhere to the Moslem prohibition against images. In Byzantium, the meeting point of Eastern and Western culture, the prohibition represented an intrusion of Eastern aesthetics into the Greek world; yet another intrusion, since there had been many during the ancient and Hellenistic period. Iconoclasm produced different results. Among the Jews, it led to a restriction of the visual arts, and to the disappearance of the representational arts for many centuries. It did not hinder the development of Moslem art, which, however, became

TEXTS FROM BYZANTINE THEOLOGIANS

45

abstract, and predominantly decorative, stylized, full of arabesques, purely imaginative and divorced from life. Byzantine iconoclasm did not hinder the production of representational art even among the iconoclasts themselves, much less among their opponents. Of all these iconoclastic movements, the Byzantine movement was unique in this that it came up against and succumbed to a spiritual metaphysics.

D. Texts from Byzantine Theologians JOHN DAMASCENE, De imaginibus oratio, I, 11 (PG 94, c. 1241).

CREATION AS AN IMAGE OF GOD

1. άρω μεν γαρ εικόνας έν τοις κτίσμασι μηνυούσας ήμϊν άμύδρως τάς θείας έμφάσεις.

1. In the creation we see pictures which vaguely show us glimmers of the deity.

JOHN DAMASCENE, De imaginibus or., I, 27 (PG 94, c. 1261).

DIVINE THINGS CAN BE PICTURED IN THE LIKENESS OF HUMAN THINGS

2. εϊ τοίνυν αναλόγως ήμϊν αύτοϊς αίσθηταϊς είκόσιν έπΐ τήν θείαν καΐ δϋλον άναγόμεθα θεωρίαν, καΐ φιλανθρώπως ή θεία πρόνοια τοις άσχηματίστοις καΐ άτυπώτοις τύπους καί σχήματα της ήμων 2νεκεν χειραγωγίας περιτίθησι, τί άπρεπές τόν σχήματι καί μορφή ύποκύψαντα φιλανθρώπως St' ήμας είκονίζειν άναλόγως ήμϊν αύτοϊς;

2. Since, with sensual pictures resembling ourselves, we elevate ourselves to contemplate divine and non-material things, and since, out of love for man, divine Providence, in order to guide us, lends shapes and forms to things unshaped and unformed, what is there improper in the fact that, like unto ourselves, we depict Him who, out of love for man, has lowered to us the hem of his shape and form.

JOHN DAMASCENE, De imaginibus or., I, 9 (PG 94, c. 1240). 3. εΐκών μέν ojv εστίν ομοίωμα χαρακτηρίζον το πρωτότυπον, μετά του καί τινα διαφοράν ίχειν πρός αΰτό· ου γαρ κατά πάντα ή είκών όμοιουται πρός το άρχέτυπον είκών τοίνυν ζώσα, φυσική καί άπαράλλακτος τοΰ άοράτου Θεοίί, ό Υιός... είσί δε καί έν τω Θεω εικόνες καί παραδείγματα των ύπ' αύτοΰ έσομένων... είτα πάλιν εικόνες είσί τά όρατά των αοράτων, καί ατύπώτων, σωματικώς τυπουμένων προς άμυδράν κατανόησιν... είκότως προβέβληνται των άτυπώτων οί τύποι, καί τά σχήματα των άσχηματίστων... πάλιν είκών λέγεται ή των έσομένων αίνιγματωδώς σκιαγραφούσα τά μέλλοντα... πάλιν, είκών λέγεται των γεγονότων, ή κατά τίνος θαύματος μνήμην, ή τιμής, ή αίσχύνης, ή άρετης, ή κακίας, πρός τήν ύστερον

CONCEPTION OF IMAGE 3. The image is a likeness reproducing the prototype, but also differing from the original: because it does not resemble the original in everything. The Son is the living, natural and faithful image of the invisible God. In God, there are also the images and models of his future creations. Apart from this, images are visible things standing for things which are invisible -and cannot be revealed: images depict them sensually for our weak conjecture. Through them we have notions of unimaginable things and forms of formless things set before us. Next, the name image is also given to that which in enigmatic form gives an outline of things to come. The conception of the image can also be referred to the past, whether for the recollec-

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THE AESTHETICS OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

των θεω μένων ώφέλειαν... διπλή δέ αυτη, δια τέ λόγου ταϊς βίβλοις έγγραφομένου... και δια θεωρίας αίσθητης υπόμνημα γάρ έστιν ή είκών· καί δπερ τοις γράμμασι μεμνημένοις ή βίβλος, τοϋτο καΐ τοις άγραμμάτοις ή είκών· καί δπερ vfj άκοη ó λόγος, τοΰτο -η) δράσει ή είκών.

tion of a miracle, of honour or shame, and of virtue or evil, to the advantage of those who will later contemplate the image. The image is twofold: by means of the word written in books, and by means of sensual contemplation. For the image is a means of reminding. What a book is for those initiated into writing, an image is for those who cannot read or write. What a word is for the sense of hearing, an image is for the sight.

THE PATRIARCH NICEPHORUS, Antirrheticus, I, 24 (PG 100, c. 262).

PARTICIPATION OF IMAGE I N PROTOTYPE

4. £ητέον δέ κάκεινο, ώς δτι ή ιερά του Σωτηρος ήμών είκών ... των τοΰ άρχετύπου μεταλαμβάνει.

4. It should also be said that a holy image of Our Saviour partakes in its prototype.

THEODORUS STUDITES, Antirrheticus, II, 10 (PG 99, c. 357).

THE ARTIST CREATES O N THE BASIS OF THE PROTOTYPE

5. έκ δυοίν θεηγόροιν τό δόγμα Διονυσίου μέν του 'Αρεοπαγίτου λέγοντος· τό αληθές έν τω όμοιώματι, τό άρχέτυπον έν τη είκόνι τό έκάτερον έν έκατέρω παρά τό της ουσίας διάφορον τοΰ δέ μεγάλου Βασιλείου φάσκοντος... πάντως δέ ή είκών ή δημιουργουμένη, μεταφερομένη άπό τοΰ πρωτοτύπου, την όμοίωσιν εις την ΰλην εϊληφε καΐ μετέσχηκετοΰ χαρακτηρος έκείνου δια της τοΰ τεχνίτου διανοίας και χειρός έναπόμαγμα ούτως ó ζωγράφος· ó λιθογλύφος, οΰτως ó τόν χρύσεον καί τόν χάλκεον άνδριάντα δημιουργών, ϊλαβεν ΰλην, άπεϊδεν είς τό πρωτότυπον, άνέλαβε τοΰ τεθεωρημένου τόν τύπον, έναπεσφραγίσατο τοΰτον έν τη ΰλη.

5. Of two theologians, Dionysius the Areopagite says: Truth is in the likeness, the prototype in the image, the one is in the other, and they differ only in substance; and Basil the Great says: The image painted by the artist, transferred from the prototype, carries the likeness into its material and participates in the character of the prototype by virtue of the idea of the artist and the impression of the hand. Thus the painter and the mason, thus, too, the maker of the gold and bronze statue takes his material, looks at the prototype, grasps the model of the person looked at, and makes an impression of it in the material.

J O H N DAMASCENE, De imaginibus or., III, 12 (PG 94, c. 1336).

T H R O U G H PHYSICAL TO SPIRITUAL THINGS

6. καί προσκυνοΰμεν, τιμώντες τάς βίβλους, δι' ων άκούομεν των λόγων αύτοΰ· ούτως καί διά γραφής εικόνων θεωροΰμεν τό έκτύπωμα τοΰ σωματικοΰ χαρακτηρος αύτοΰ, καί των θαυμάτων καί των παθημάτων αύτοΰ, καί άγιαζόμεθα, καί πληροφορούμεθα, καί χαίρομεν, καί μακαριζόμεθα, καί σέβομεν, καί τιμώμεν, καί προσκυνοΰμεν τόν χαρακτήρα αύτοΰ τόν σωματικόν· θεωροΰντες δέ τόν σωματικόν χαρακτήρα αύτοΰ, έννοοΰμεν ώς δυνατόν καί την δόξαν της θεότητος αύτοΰ. έπειδή γαρ διπλοί έσμεν, έκ ψυχής καί σώ-

6. We pay tribute to God when we honour the books by virtue of which we hear His words. Similarly, by virtue of painted likenesses, we look at the reflection of His physical shape, His miracles and human activities. We are sanctified, we know the fullness of faith, we rejoice, we experience bliss, we glorify, we venerate and pay tribute to His physical shape. In looking at His physical shape, we also penetrate, within the bounds of possibility, to the glory of His divinity. Because we have a double nature, composed of body and soul,

THE AESTHETICS OF ST. AUGUSTINE ματος κατεσκευασμένοι... αδύνατον ή μας έκτός των σωματικών έλθεϊν έπί τά νοητά... οδτω δια σωματικής θεωρίας έρχόμεθα έπί τήν πνευματικήν θεωρίαν.

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we cannot penetrate to spiritual things without physical things. In this way, through physical contemplation, we arrive at spiritual contemplation.

THEODORUS STUDITES, Antirrheticus, ΙΠ, 3 (PG 99, c. 425).

THE VENERATION OF IMAGES

7. πώς αν δύναιτο ταυτότης προσκυνήσεως έπί τε Χρίστου καΐ της αΰτοϋ εικόνος σώζεσθαι; εϊγε ó μέν Χριστός φύσει, ή δέ είκών θέσει; ... εί... δ έωρακώς τήν εικόνα Χρίστου, έν αύτη έώρακε τόν Χριστόν, άνάγκη πάσα της αυτής είναι λέγειν, ώσπερ όμοιώσεως οδτως καΐ προσκυνήσεως τήν εικόνα Χρίστου πρός Χριστόν.

7. The iconoclasts say: However can the identity of the veneration of Christ and the veneration of an image of Him be maintained when Christ exists by nature, and the image by virtue of human establishment?... To this the defenders of images reply: Whosoever sees an image of Christ sees in it Christ Himself. One should say with all firmness that in an image of Christ there is a resemblance to Christ, and it follows that the same reverence is due to the image as to Christ.

THEODORUS STUDITES, Antirrheticus, I, 12 (PG 99, c. 344).

THE DEITY IS IN THE IMAGE

8. οΰτω καί είκόνι είναι τήν θεότητα, ειπών τις ούκ αν άμαρτη του δέοντος... άλλ' où φυσική ένώσει.

8. He does not err who says that the deity is in an image... even though it is not present in the image through physical union.

B. WESTERN AESTHETICS The fundamental principles of Christian aesthetics were formulated by Latin authors in the West at almost the same time as they were being worked out in the East by the Greeks. Augustine, who lived a little later than those Greek Fathers who had been interested in aesthetics, was the founder of the Christian aesthetics of the West. He lived under the Roman Empire and had read the ancient authors who had written on aesthetics. Because of his greater ability in handling aesthetic problems and his more specific interests, he established a more complete Christian aesthetics than the Greek Fathers had done.

1. The Aesthetics of St. Augustine 1. AUGUSTINE'S AESTHETIC WRITINGS. Aurelius Augustinus (354-430), canonized by the Roman Catholic Church as St. Augustine, was one of the most eminent and influential thinkers of the early Christian period. He was born in Africa, where he lived until he settled in Italy. He first taught rhetoric at Tagaste, Carthage, Rome and Milan, and later became a philosopher and theologian. At first, he detested

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the Christian religion, but in 387 he became a Christian. Soon he became a priest, and, after 395, bishop of Hippo in Africa, and a pillar of the Christian Church. Before becoming a Christian philosopher, he had been a Manichee and Sceptic. Though he lived during the period when the Roman Empire was disintegrating, Roman cultural traditions were still very much alive. He did not foresee that the end of the great power was so near, although he witnessed Alaric's siege of Rome. He considered himself as much a Roman as a Christian and shared both the ancient and the new Christian culture. He made full use of the older culture, and at the same time created a new culture. Two epochs, two philosophies and two systems of aesthetics come together in his writings. He took over the aesthetic principles of the ancients, transformed them and transmitted them in their new form to the Middle Ages. He was a meeting point in the history of aesthetics. Through his writings run the threads of ancient aesthetics, and from them emerge the threads of medieval aesthetics. His earliest writings were concerned with aesthetics. When, later, he turned to theology and metaphysics, he did not lose his interest in aesthetics, since, like his Greek predecessors, he did not regard aesthetics as a separate branch of knowledge. Following the example of some ancient writers, such as Plato and Plotinus, he devoted a work specially to beauty, under the title De pulchro et apto, a work of his pre-Christian period (c. 380). In a poetry competition, it won the corona agonistica and this opened the way to fame, but he did not care much for this youthful work. He lost it before he came to write his Confessions twenty years later. Although the work itself has not been preserved, its main ideas can be reconstructed. Of Augustine's later writings, only his monograph on music {De musica, written between 388 and 391) was on an aesthetic subject ; but he touched on aesthetics in other writings, especially in De ordine (end of 386) and De vera religione (Rome 387-8, and completed at Hippo c. 405). His own attitude towards beauty and art can be reconstructed to some extent from the Confessions (Confessiones, written between 397 and 400).* Augustine's aesthetics, though closely linked with his general philosophical views, is less theocentric. This was due chiefly to the fact that his aesthetic ideas were formed and committed to writing before he became a Christian. This applies not only to De pulchro et apto, but also to De ordine and De musica. 2. AUGUSTINE AND ANTIQUITY. Augustine received a Hellenistic-Roman education of the widest kind. He studied rhetoric, which was the best organized of the humanities in the Empire. Here he encountered the aesthetics which, in his days, enjoyed the widest acceptance, an eclectic aesthetics, predominantly Stoic, with Ciceronian and Platonic elements. These views are reflected in his early work. * The most extensive treatment of Augustine's aesthetic views: K. Svoboda, L'esthétique de St. Augustin et ses sources (Brno, 1933).—Monographs: H. Edelstein, Die Musik, Anschauung Augustins nach seiner Schrift "De musica", Diss. (Freiburg, 1928/29).—L. Chapman, St. Augustine's Philosophy of Beauty (New York, 1935).

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A few years later, however, about 385, Plotinus's treatise On Beauty came into his hands. This work, which was opposed to the Stoic-Eclectic aesthetics, made a great impression on him. Traces of it are to be found in the Confessions.* What specially impressed Augustine was the connection between aesthetics and ultimate questions in philosophy. This fitted in with his own way of thinking. Plotinus's thought was directed towards the transcendental and religious as was Christianity, to which Augustine had at that time been converted. Augustine retained his former views on beauty, to which he added various ideas from the Bible and Plotinus, so that there are, as it were, two strata in his aesthetics. 3. THE OBJECTIVITY OF BEAUTY. Augustine took over from ancient aesthetics its most widespread and typical fundamental ideas. Firstly, that beauty is an objective property, not merely an attitude. Augustine was much more interested than the ancients in the attitude to beauty and the pleasure derived from beauty, but he was convinced that this pleasure establishes the existence of beauty independently of us, and that we contemplate and do not create beauty. Here, he was in agreement with the main current of ancient thought, but he carried the matter further, in that he regarded as problematical something which the ancients had taken for granted. He formulated this problem with great precision. "Is a thing beautiful because it pleases", he asked, "or does it please because it is beautiful?" His answer was: "It pleases because it is beautiful".(1) 4. THE BEAUTY OF MEASURE AND NUMBER. The second fundamental idea which he took over from the ancient aesthetics concerned the questions: In what does beauty consist? What things are beautiful and why are they beautiful? He held that they are beautiful when "their parts are similar to one another and their relationship results in harmony". In other words, beauty consists in harmony, in proper proportions, or in the relationship of parts: lines, colours and sounds. If we perceive beauty by sight and hearing only, it is because the other senses are incapable of perceiving relationships. When the parts are properly related, the beauty of the whole results. For this reason, a whole often gives pleasure, although its parts, taken in isolation, do not.' 2 ' The beauty of a man, a statue, a melody or a building is not determined by the individual parts, but by their interrelationships. The proper relationship of parts produces harmony,^3' order*4' and unity,(5) and it is in these three that beauty consists. But what relationship of parts is "proper"? That which has measure. Measure is determined by number/ 6 ^ 7 ' Even the birds and the bees, says Augustine, build according to number, and man should do so consciously. His classic formula runs as follows: "Reason... perceived that it is pleased only by beauty; and in beauty, by shapes; in the shapes, by proportions; and in the proportions, by numbers". (,) Measure and number ensure order and unity and, therefore, beauty. Augustine also expressed this idea in another form, by relating the three con* P. Henry, Piotiti et l'occident

(Louvain, 1934).

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cepts: measure, form and order.m These three properties determine the value of a thing. Everything which contains measure, form and order is good; the degree to which it contains them makes it more or less good; where they are' absent, goodness too is absent. Here, Augustine used the word "good", but he clearly meant to include beauty. The word species denoted both beauty and form. This Augustinian triad—modus, species et ordo, measure, form and order—became part of the stock-in-trade of medieval aesthetics. These ideas are to be found in ancient aesthetics and in the Book of Wisdom, from which Augustine was able to quote: "God has arranged everything according to measure, number and weight". He thus drew on both his sources. Here was the Pythagorean notionof proportion and harmony, which had acquired a twofold meaning in late antiquity. The Pythagoreans interpreted it in a purely quantitative sense and this led to a mathematical aesthetics. Later, however, the Stoics and Cicero gave it a qualitative interpretation: they made beauty dependent on the proper relationship of parts, but this relationship was not understood mathematically. Augustine's opinion fluctuated between these two interpretations. He based his aesthetics largely on number, and conceived beauty, especially in music, mathematically. The basic concept of his aesthetics was equality, temporal equality'10' and "numerical equality" 01 ' {aequalitas numerosa). Sometimes, however, he conceived beauty as a qualitative relationship of parts. This fluctuation is understandable. As an aesthetician, he tended towards a mathematical conception of beauty, but, as a Christian, he could not abandon the notion of internal beauty. Thus he had to treat beauty in a wider sense. This becomes apparent in two concepts which had a prominent place in his aesthetics, the concept of rhythm, and the concept of contrast. 5. THE BEAUTY OF RHYTHM. The concept of rhythm belonged to ancient aesthetics,* where it was conceived mathematically. The Romans even called it number, numerus. It was employed almost exclusively with reference to music. Augustine, however, made rhythm the basic concept of his whole aesthetics. He regarded it as the source of all beauty. In doing so, he extended its meaning to include visual rhythm, bodily rhythm, the rhythm of the soul, rhythm in man and rhythm of perception and of memory, the transient rhythm of phenomena and the eternal rhythm of the universe. By bringing the concept of rhythm into the foreground of aesthetics and extending it in this way, its quantitative, mathematical aspect ceased to be essential. 6. THE BEAUTY OF EQUALITY AND THE BEAUTY OF CONTRAST. Though Augustine connected beauty with "numerical equality", he saw that it was also connected with inequality, difference and contrast. In his opinion, they too contribute to the beauty of a thing, especially to human beauty or the beauty of history. The beauty of the world (saeculi pulchritudo) arises from contrast/ 12 ' The order of historical events (ordo saeculorum) is a beautiful poem built up "of antitheses" . (l3) In say* E. Troeltsch, Augustin, die christliche Antike und das Mittelalter

(1915).

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ing this, Augustine was adopting a notion of Heraclitus rather than the Pythagorean notion. This conception makes beauty dependent on the relationship of parts, rather than on number. In Augustine's writings, there are other passages in which he departs not only from mathematical aesthetics, but even from the view that beauty consists in the relationship of parts. Following the Stoics, he held that beauty depends not only on a suitable relationship of parts (congruentia partium), but also on pleasing colour (icolorís suavitas).(14) He reintroduced the doctrine of Plotinus that beauty consists in light, even though Plotinus used this in arguing that beauty does not consist in the relationship of parts. Augustine was acquainted with all the definitions and Conceptions of beauty current in antiquity, and employed all of them at one time or another. But his basic view was the predominant view of antiquity: that beauty is the relationship or harmony of parts. 7 . PULCHRUM AND APTUM; PULCHRUM AND SUAVE. Though Augustine's conception of beauty covered spiritual as well as physical beauty in keeping with late ancient and Christian aesthetics, he distinguished carefully between the "beautiful" and such related concepts as the "appropriate" and the "pleasant". a. Hellenistic aestheticians distinguished between the "appropriate" (aptum, decorum) and the "beautiful" {pulchrum) in the narrower sense, but Augustine was perhaps the first (in his early work) to contrast(1S) them clearly. A thing is "appropriate" when it is adapted as a part to the whole, as an organ is to an organism, or to the purpose it serves, as a shoe is to walking. There is always an element of utility and aptness in the concept of the "appropriate" and this does not belong to beauty proper. Appropriateness has certain analogies with beauty, but differs from it at least in that it is relative. The same thing can be appropriate to one purpose and inappropriate to another, but order, harmony and rhythm are always beautiful. b. Augustine also distinguished the beautiful from the merely pleasant. He called shapes and colours, but not sounds, beautiful. It is not, he thought, so much by their relationships that sounds give pleasure, intoxicate and gladden us, but by their direct charm. He called them suaves, that is, pleasant. This distinction between the beautiful and the pleasant, and the restriction of beauty to the visible world was not in fact an original idea. In antiquity, the concept of beauty was sometimes so wide as to include spiritual qualities, at other times so narrow as to exclude even sounds. 8. T H E EXPERIENCE OF BEAUTY. Augustine's aesthetics had yet another aspect. This was concerned with the effect of beauty, what we today call "aesthetic experience" and class under the psychology of beauty. He was more concerned with these problems than the classical aestheticians had been. Though he depended on the ancients in his analysis of beauty, his analysis of aesthetic experience was carried out independently. He distinguished between two constituent elements of the aesthetic experience: one direct, from the senses — sense impressions and perceptions, colour, sound, etc. ;

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the second, indirect and intellectual: what colours and sounds express and depict. He discovered the two elements not only in poetry and music, but also in the dance. He held that what is expressed and depicted in artistic representation is no less essential to aesthetic experience than what is perceived. We perceive equality, a determining factor of beauty, with the mind, not with the eye/ 16) The senses usurp the position of supreme arbiter of beauty. The recognition of two elements in experience was the first of Augustine's theses on the psychology of beauty.(17) His second thesis was that the genesis of an aesthetic experience depends not only on the object beheld but also on the beholder. There must be a harmony and similarity between the beautiful thing and the soul, otherwise the soul will not respond to its beauty. It is not enough for the thing to be beautiful; we must admire beauty and desire it for its own sake. As long as we regard things merely as useful, we will fail to see their beauty. We must have a liking for beautiful things; otherwise they will not reveal their beauty. Augustine observed that when we show someone dear to us a beautiful, but too familiar landscape, our feelings towards it, which have grown cold, reawaken, because we transfer to the landscape our love of the friend, and thus the scene again reveals its beauty to us. In Augustine's opinion, the experience of beauty has the essential feature of beauty itself, namely, rhythm. As there is rhythm in a beautiful thing, so there must be rhythm in the experience of it ; without rhythm, aesthetic experience is impossible. Augustine distinguished five kinds of rhythm :(18) 1. rhythm of sound (sonans), 2. rhythm of perceptions (occursor), 3. rhythm of memory (recordabilis), 4. rhythm of actions (progresser), and 5. an innate rhythm of the mind itself (judiciabilis). The ancients analysed and classified rhythms mathematically (the Pythagoreans), or pedagogically and ethically (Plato and Aristotle). By differentiating between the rhythms of perception, memory, action and judgment, Augustine introduced psychological theory. The special feature of his psychological theory of rhythm was that man has an innate rhythm, implanted in him by nature, a constant rhythm of the mind. This is the most important rhythm of all, because without it we would fail both to perceive and produce rhythm. In spite of his dependence on ancient aesthetics, Augustine, by introducing psychology, made an advance on ancient aesthetics. In his analysis, he not only isolated the intellectual element in aesthetic experience, but also what he called visiones— living, expressive images, such as can be evoked by poets and orators. He also emphasized the diversity of human attitudes. One person pursues what is beautiful, while another has his interest aroused by what is not beautiful at all, and reacts equally strongly to what is not beautiful. Augustine explained the differences in human taste, of which he was as well aware as the Sceptics and the modern psychologists, by these different attitudes. Finally, Augustine noted something which had been remarked in late antiquity, namely, that we are better able to apprehend beauty than to explain it; that it is easier for us to put forward aesthetic theories than to justify them.

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9. THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. For Augustine, beauty was a reality, not an ideal. He regarded the real world as a "beautiful poem". He dwelt as much on beauty as the Stoics, Basil and the Greek Fathers. He more closely followed the ancients in explaining it by the ancient "measure, proportion and rhythm". But the source of this aesthetic optimism was the belief, which he shared with the Greek Fathers, that the world cannot but be beautiful since it is the creation of God. We are not always aware of the beauty of the world,(19) Augustine explained, because we don't have an intellectual grasp of it as a whole. Like a statue in a church, which, if it had eyes, would not see the whole beauty of the church, but only the part of it before its eyes ; or, like a syllable in a poem, which, if it were alive and had feelings, would know nothing of the beauty of the poem as a whole, in spite of its own contribution to it, so we, being part of the world, do not see the beauty of it as a whole. This idea is also found in antiquity. 10. UGLINESS. While aware of the beauty of the world, Augustine was not blind to its ugliness. Where, as in Christian philosophy, aesthetics was connected with theology, the question of ugliness acquired a significance which it did not have in antiquity. Augustine had to ask himself how ugliness is possible in a world created by God. It was, no doubt, with a view to justifying the presence of ugliness in creation, that he developed a particular conception of ugliness. It is not something positive, but a deficiency. In contrast to beauty, which is characterized by unity, order, harmony and form, ugliness consists in lack of these qualities. It can never be more than partial, because, while things may possess unity and order in varying degrees, they cannot be entirely without them. There can, therefore, be no complete and absolute ugliness. Ugliness is necessary; it is to beauty what shade is to light.(20) In this way, Augustine upheld the beauty of the world without denying the existence of ugliness. He could assume that there are "traces" (vestigia) of beauty in everything, even in what is considered ugly. 11. THE BEAUTY OF GOD AND THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD. There is beauty of body and of soul, sensible and intelligible beauty. The sensible world delights us with the brilliance of light and colour, the sweetness of melodies, the scents of flowers and perfumes, the taste of manna and honey. All this, however, is pleasant rather than beautiful. In the physical world, in Nature, it is life and the manifestations of life that are the most beautiful things. The songs of birds and the sounds and movements of animals please us as an expression of life. Everything living pleases us, because it possesses rhythm, measure and harmony, which are implanted in it by Nature. But above physical beauty, there is spiritual beauty. This also consists in rhythm, measure and harmony, but it is a higher beauty because its harmony is more perfect. Human song is more perfect than the song of the nightingale, because, apart from melody, it contains words which have a spiritual content. In Augustine's aesthetics, the ideal of beauty had ceased to be purely physical. Christ and the saints were the ideals of beautiful, and not, as with the Greeks, naked heroes. If the world is beautiful, it is so principally on account of its spiritual beauty.

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Augustine's infatuation with the "poem of the world" does not seem to be in accordance with Christian moral teaching. The proper course for a Father of the Church to have taken would have been to repudiate beauty. But Augustine did not take this course. Instead, as Troeltsch says, he shifted his attention to the world of spiritual beauty. He found true beauty not in the sensuous image of the world, but in the order and unity, that is accessible only to the intellect, in the beauty of the soul. The supreme beauty, which transcends the beauty of the world, is God: God is "beauty itself". (21) His beauty contains none of the transient charms, the glittering lights, the pleasant melodies, which delight our senses. It is entirely beyond the senses; no image can represent it. Thus Augustine, unlike the writers of classical antiquity, disapproved of religious images. In this he was in agreement with the Old Testament. He thus foreshadowed the iconoclastic movement. Divine beauty is not contemplated with the senses, but by the spirit; and it must be contemplated in truth and virtue, and not with the eyes; only pure souls, only saints really apprehend it. By introducing the notion of divine beauty, Augustine made his aesthetics, in spite of its autonomous foundations, theocentric. Physical beauty is not without its value, since it is the work of God; but it is only a reflection of the highest beauty; it is a transitory and relative beauty, whereas the highest beauty is eternal and absolute. In itself, it may appear imposing, but in comparison with divine beauty, it is insignificant. It has as much value as any other temporal good, such as health or wealth, neither more nor less. Augustine once said, following the Stoics, that physical beauty is neither good nor bad in itself, but becomes good or bad according to the use to which it is put. Speaking of the good use to which beautiful things can be put, he says: "The sun, moon, sea, earth, birds, fish, water, grain, vine and olive— all help the devout soul to extol the mysteries of the faith". But they can be bad if they obscure eternal beauty, if pleasure in terrestrial beauty becomes an obstacle to the contemplation of perfect beauty. But though sensuous beauty thus loses much of its immediate value, it gains an indirect, religious value. It becomes a means rather than an end. It is, therefore, improper to take pleasure in works of art—vases, pictures and statues—for their own sake. But sensuous beauty, the only form of beauty which we apprehend directly, becomes the point of departure for meditations on beauty in general. It is now valued as a symbol rather than for its own sake. The sun is to be admired less for its brilliance than as a symbol of the divine light. Thus Augustine, together with, though prior to, the Pseudo-Dionysius, was responsible for formulating the concept of divine beauty. Plato and Plotinus had a concept of perfect, supra-sensible beauty, a beauty more perfect than sensuous beauty. They believed that sensuous beauty derived its beauty from supra-sensible beauty. But Augustine gave these ideas a new meaning by combining aesthetic with theological considerations. And his ideas, with all that was profound as well as dangerous and questionable in them, became the foundation of the aesthetics of the whole of the Middle Ages.

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12. A R T AND BEAUTY. Augustine devoted as much consideration to art as to beauty. He took his concept of art from the ancients. First, like the ancients, he believed that art is based on knowledge. Bird song is not art or music ; art is the prerogative of man. But when a human song is merely imitative, and not based on knowledge, it cannot be called art. Secondly, like the ancients, Augustine conceived art in a broad sense, extending the concept to every form of skilled activity, including craft. Centuries of Hellenism, however, had left their mark, and Augustine distinguished craft more explicitly than the Greeks from the arts concerned with beauty. As ancient aesthetics developed, such arts as painting and sculpture had come to receive special status, not as fine arts, but as imitative or illusionistic arts. Augustine, for whom God was the goal of every activity, including art, could not accept imitation and illusion as the proper function of art. When mimetic and illusionistic theories were abandoned, the field was open for a new theory and a different principle on which to discriminate between these and the other arts. If the proper function of painting and sculpture is neither imitation nor the creation of illusions, what can it be but the imparting of measure and harmony? Since beauty consists in measure and harmony, the function of painting is to create beauty. Thus Augustine brought the concepts of art and beauty closer together, something the ancients had never done. In spite of this, he did not break with the mimetic conception of the arts altogether, since the arts do, in fact, imitate nature. Nor did he break with the illusionistic conception of art; the arts do, in fact, deceive. But neither imitation nor illusion is an essential feature of art. Both remained in the background of his theory of art. He combined them with one another as the Platonists had done, by saying that art is deceptive only when it imitates the outward appearance of things. He also combined the theory of imitation with the view that art aspires to beauty. And in doing this, he so transformed the notion of imitation that it became the very opposite of naturalism. Assuming that everything possesses a beauty of its own and that there are traces of beauty'22' in everything, he held that, wherever art imitates, it does not imitate every aspect of a thing, but discovers and heightens these traces of beauty. An eminent historian* has expressed the opinion that it is impossible to combine in one formula the naturalistic and idealistic elements of art (both indispensable to a work of art) better than Augustine has done. 13. A R T AND ITS INEVITABLE FALSEHOODS. Many of Augustine's ideas, such as the idea that the ability to produce works of art (which is spiritual) is superior to the work itself (which is material)'23', are to be found in antiquity. But many of his ideas were foreign to the ancients, and in keeping with those of other Fathers of the Church. Such were the ideas that nature resembles art; that it is itself a work of art; and that it is the divine art which guides the artist and makes his work beautiful. Augustine also differed from the ancients in his treatment of a problem which had particularly troubled them—can a work of art contain falsehoods, and, if so, how can * A. Riegl, Die spätrömische Kunstindustrie (1904), p. 21 Iff.

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we come to terms with this? His solution was that works of art are indeed partially false, but falsehood is indispensable to them; without falsehood they would not be true works of art. Failure to reconcile oneself to the falsehood of a work of art amounts to a failure to reconcile oneself to art in general. A horse in a picture must be an unreal horse, because otherwise the picture would not be a true picture. Hector on the stage must be unreal, because otherwise the actor playing him would not be a true actor. And in his work Against the Academicians, he contrasted philokalia, or love of beauty, with philosophy. Later, in his Confessions, he repented of his aestheticism as something sinful, and in the Retractions, he no longer praised his fable, as he called it, of philosophy and philokalia. 15. POETRY AND THE VISUAL ARTS. Augustine saw and emphatically pointed out something of the greatest importance to the theory of art, which had been overlooked or omitted by other aestheticians. Namely, that all the arts cannot be covered by one theory. Each art has a different character; the visual arts are very different from literature. Painting is looked at in one way, and works of literature in another.(26) Whoever has seen and contemplated a picture knows it and can pronounce a judgment on it. In a literary work, however, it is not enough to contemplate the letters, however beautifully they are written; they must be read and understood. To put it in modern terms : in painting, form is essential, and in literature, content is equally important. Augustine formulated this simple, but most fundamental distinction in the Commentary to the Gospel of St. John, not in one of his aesthetic writings.* Thus it passed unnoticed in the history of the theory of art. 16. THE EVALUATION OF THE ARTS. Augustine was guided in his evaluation of art by ancient as well as medieval principles. At first, he was guided entirely by the spirit of antiquity; later by the religious principles which were to become the typical principles of evaluation in the Middle Ages. (a) At first, Augustine did not regard all the arts as of equal value. Music he considered the highest form of art, the art of number and precise proportion. He also praised architecture for its mathematical qualities. He set painting and sculpture considerably lower on his scale of value, because they are concerned with the imperfect imitation of sensible reality, do not operate with number, and have hardly any rhythm. (b) In his later years, religious considerations predominated over aesthetic. * M. Schapiro, "On the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Art", in: Art and Thought, issued in honour of A. K. Coomaraswamy, ed. Κ. Β. Iyer (London, 1947), p. 152, has drawn attention to this text and evaluated its importance.

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His conception of art did not change, but his evaluation of it did. His judgments became thoroughly condemnatory. He began to treat poetry as false, unnecessary and immoral. He condemned the use of fiction. He called for censorship. In the Confessions, he; condemned the literary culture of antiquity, of which he himself was a product. Like Plato and Aristotle, he condemned the theatre, but for a different reason, not, as they had done, because it arouses emotion, but because it arouses false emotion. He placed the actor on the same level as the gladiator, the coachman and the courtesan. In these judgments, ethical, pedagogical and religious criteria took precedence over aesthetic. 17. SUMMARY. Augustine's aesthetics is included under Christian aesthetics, but it has been suggested that it was, rather, the culmination of ancient aesthetics. There is nothing contradictory in this. He heralded a new era and lived in the era that was passing. Because he lived at its decline he could draw on all its experience and bring together its achievements more completely than any of his predecessors. In fact, no fundamental aesthetic idea of antiquity is absent from his works. Among these may be included, first and foremost, the conception of beauty as proportion and measure, the distinction between sensuous and intellectual beauty, and a belief in the beauty of the world. He handed on the Pythagorean notion of measure, the Platonic notion of absolute beauty and the Stoic notion of the beauty and harmony of the world. But to these he added others of his own. He brought about a rapprochement between the theory of art and the theory of beauty; gave prominence to the analysis of aesthetic experience; broadened the concept of rhythm; put forward the theory of the "traces of beauty", and clarified the distinction between poetry and the visual arts. These were strictly aesthetic ideas. Besides this, using the conceptual system of the ancients, he erected a new religious superstructure, an aesthetic theodicy. Thus Augustine's aesthetics contained various elements. In part, it was already medieval, but in part still ancient. It was religious, transcendental, theocentric and, as it were, supraterrestrial. But Augustine also had a clear, keen eye for earthly things: the complexity of art, the fluctuations in aesthetic attitude, and the presence of ugliness side by side with beauty in the world. Like the aesthetics of Aristotle and Cicero, Augustine's aesthetics contained two kinds of ideas. Some were central, and he constantly returned to them; for example, the theistic motif or the motif of measure. These he shared with either antiquity or the Fathers. They had a powerful influence on the Middle Ages. Other ideas occurred only incidentally, as though he attached no importance to them at all. Among these were such ideas as the "traces of beauty", the combination of art and beauty, and the distinction between poetry and the visual arts. These were his most independent ideas. They awakened little response in the Middle Ages, but today they are regarded as very much to the point. 18. EAST AND WEST. Christian aesthetics came into being almost at the same time in the East and the West. Augustine was a generation younger than Basil, and prob-

58

THE AESTHETICS OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

ably a generation older than the Pseudo-Dionysius. At first, Christian aesthetics in East and West was similar, because it drew on the same Greek (Platonic) philosophy and adapted it to the same faith. In both East and West, spiritual beauty was valued above physical, divine above human. Nevertheless, there were differences between the aesthetics of East and West. Basil's aesthetics came direct from Greece; Augustine's came through Rome. The former drew more on Plotinus, and the latter on Cicero. Basil's aesthetics was concentrated on the most general problems of beauty; Augustine's included specific problems of art. The former celebrated the beauty of the world; the latter was aware of its ugliness also. The one praised art for the divine element in it; the other issued a warning against it, perceiving human elements in it. After Basil and Augustine, however, the aesthetics of East and West diverged considerably. The Pseudo-Dionysius and Theodoras Studites, the representative of the Byzantine iconophiles, were the most speculative aestheticians known to history, while the successors of Augustine, Boethius and Cassiodorus, were mere encyclopaedists and collectors of positive information, definitions and classifications. 19. AESTHETICS AFTER AUGUSTINE. For a millenium, Augustine remained the authority in Christian aesthetics. His importance was equalled only by the PseudoDionysius. Centuries later, the scholastic summae, in dealing with beauty, based themselves solely on these two men. It was from them that the Middle Ages drew its metaphysical conception of beauty (and, from Augustine, many specific ideas on beauty and art also). The religio-metaphysical conception of beauty which formed the basis of medieval aesthetics was thus worked out in the 4th and 5th centuries. Though it maintained its position right up to the end of the Middle Ages, it was not developed, but was merely repeated, sometimes in new terms, but more often in the exact words of the Pseudo-Dionysius and Augustine. It afforded the framework, rather than the content, of the aesthetics of the High Middle Ages, which was metaphysical only to a small extent ; it was mainly empirical and scientific. An unbroken line of development led from classical antiquity to Augustine. But immediately after him, it was broken by the fall of Rome. In the ruin of ancient culture which followed, all trace of ancient aesthetics, and of the new aesthetics of Augustine, temporarily disappeared. He had no successors; his contribution to Christian aesthetics was momentarily interrupted. At this stage, the historian of aesthetics must: (a) describe the events and the conditions of life which account for the catastrophe which overtook the ancient world and interrupted the development of aesthetics, (b) He must turn for his material to the art of the period, since the output of written work had almost ceased. But since people continued to sing, paint and build, it is possible to deduce their attitude to beauty and creativity from their art. (c) He must also say a word about Boethius, Cassiodorus and Isidore of Seville, who, while not claiming to create a new aesthetics, at least tried to salvage the remnants of ancient aesthetics from the ruins. This will lead to the aesthetics of the "Carolingian Renaissance".

TEXTS FROM ST. AUGUSTINE

59

E. Texts from St. Augustine AUGUSTINE, De vera religione, XXXII, 59. 1. Sed multis finis est humana delectatio, nec volunt tendere ad superiora, ut iudicent, cur ista visibilia placeant. Itaque si quaeram ab artifice, uno arcu constructo, cur alterum parem contra in altera parte moliatur, respondent, credo, ut paria paribus aedificii membra respondeant. Porro si pergam quaerere, idipsum cur eligat, dicet hoc decere, hoc esse pulchrum, hoc delectare cementes; nihil audebit amplius. Inclinatus enim recumbit oculis, et unde pendeat, non intelligit. At ego virum intrinsecus oculatum, et invisibiliter videntem non desinam commonere, cur ista placeant, ut iudex esse audeat ipsius delectationis humanae. Ita enim superfertur illi, nec ab ea tenetur, dum non secundum ipsam, sed ipsam iudicat. Et prius quaeram, utrum ideo pulchra sint, quia delectant, an ideo delectent, quia pulchra sunt. Hie mihi sine dubitatione respondebitur, ideo delectare, quia pulchra sunt. Quaeram ergo deinceps, quare sint pulchra, et si titubabitur, subiciam, utrum ideo quia similes sibi partes sunt et aliqua copulatione ad unam convenientiam rediguntur.

THE OBJECTIVITY OF BEAUTY I. But for many the ultimate aim is human satisfaction; they do not want to strive for higher things in order to judge why visible things are pleasing. Thus if I ask an architect why, having constructed one arch, he builds another equal to it on the other side, he will reply, I believe, that it is in order that equal parts of a building may correspond to equal parts. If I then ask why he chooses this particular arrangement, he will say that this is fitting and beautiful and that it pleases those who look at it; he will not dare say more. For he remains with his eyes directed to the earth, and does not understand on what basis to make an evaluation. But I shall not cease to pester the man who looks into the depth and sees the invisible with the question of why these things please us; let him dare to be the judge of human pleasure. In this way he is raised above it and is not held down by it, because he does not judge according to it, but he judges it itself. And I especially ask whether things are beautiful because they please or whether they please because they are beautiful. Here I shall doubtless receive the reply that they please because they are beautiful. And so I ask next why they are beautiful, and if he wavers, I shall prompt him, asking whether it is because the parts are similar to one another and are brought into one concordance by a certain combination.

AUGUSTINE, De vera rei., XL, 76.

THE BEAUTY OF A WHOLE

2. Ita ordinantur omnes offieiis et finibus suis in pulchritudinem universitatis, ut quod horremus in parte, si cum toto consideremus, plurimum placeat.

2. Thus all men, according to their duties and aims, have a place in the beauty of the universe, so that what repels us in isolation, pleases us greatly if we consider it on the background of the whole.

AUGUSTINE, De vera rei., XXX, 55.

THE BEAUTY OF HARMONY

3. Sed cum in omnibus artibus convenientia placeat, qua una salva et pulchra sunt omnia, ipsa vero convenientia aequalitatem unitatemque appetat vel similitudine parium partium, vel gradatione disparium...

3. Because harmony pleases in all skills, and by virtue of it all things are enduring and beautiful, harmony also tends to equality and unity either by the similarity of equal parts or by the gradation of unequal parts.

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THE AESTHETICS OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

AUGUSTINE, De vera rei., XLI, 77.

THE BEAUTY OF ORDER

4. Nihil enim est ordinatimi, quod non sit pulchrum.

4. For there is no ordered thing which is not beautiful.

AUGUSTINE, Epist., XVIII (PL 33, c. 85). 5. Omnis... pulchritudinis forma unitas. AUGUSTINE, De libero arbitrio, Π, XVI, 42. 6. Intuere coelum et terram et mare et quaecumque in eis vel desuper fulgent, vel deorsum repunt, vel volant, vel natanti formas habent, quia numéros habent: adirne illis, haec nihil erunt. A quo ergo sunt, nisi a quo numerus? Quandoquidem in tantum illis est esse, in quantum numerosa esse. Et omnium quidem formarum corporearum artifices homines in arte habent numéros, quibus coaptant opera sua... Quaere deinde artificis ipsius membra quis moveat, numerus erit.

THE BEAUTY OF UNITY 5. Unity is the form of all beauty. THE BEAUTY OF NUMBER 6. Behold sky and earth and sea, and all in them that shines above, or creeps below, or flies, or swims; all these things have forms, because they have numerical dimensions. Remove these, and the things will be nothing. From whom do they derive but from him who created number? And number is a condition of their existence. And the human artists, who make material objects of all forms, use numbers in their works. So if you seek the strength which moves the hands of the artist, it will be number.

AUGUSTINE, De musica, VI, XII, 35. 7. Si ergo quaeramus artem istam rhythmicam vel metricam, qua utuntur, qui versus faciunt, putasne habere aliquos numéros, secundum quos fabricant versus? ·— Nihil aliud possum existimare. — Quicumque isti sunt numeri praeterire tibi videntur cum versibus an manere? — Manere sane. — Consentiendum est ergo ab aliquibus manentibus numeri prae'.creuntes aliquos fabrican.

7. If we study this rhythmical or metrical art used by those who write poetry, do you not think that it has certain numbers according to which they compose their verses?—I cannot imagine it otherwise.—And do you think that these numbers whatever they are, pass away together with the poetry, or remain?—They certainly remain.—So you must agree that transient numbers are made from certain lasting numbers.

AUGUSTINE, De ordine, II, 15, 42.

SHAPE, PROPORTION AND NUMBER

8. Hinc est profecía in oculorum opes et terram coelumque collustrans, sensit nihil aliud quam pulchritudinem sibi piacere et in pulchritudine figuras, in figuris dimensiones, in dimensionibus numéros.

8. Thence reason came into the realm of the eyes, and surveying earth and sky, perceived that it pleased only by beauty; and in beauty, by shapes; in the shapes, by proportions; and in the proportions, by numbers.

AUGUSTINE, De natura boni, 3 (PL 42, c. 554).

MEASURE, FORM AND ORDER

9. Omnia enim quanto magis moderata, speciosa, ordinata sunt, tanto magis utique bona sunt; quanto autem minus moderata, minus speciosa, minus ordinata sunt, minus bona sunt. Haec itaque tria, modus, species et ordo, ut de

9. For the more measure, shape and order there is in all things, the better they are; and the less measure, form and order they possess, the less they are good. Thus these three, measure, form and order—not to men-

61

TEXTS FROM ST. AUGUSTINE innumerabilibus taceam, quae ad ista tria perti-

tion the innumerable properties clearly pertain-

nere monstrantur; haec ergo tria, modus, spe-

ing to them—these three are, as it were, general

cies, ordo, tamquam generalia bona sunt in

goods in things made by God,

rebus a D e o Factis, sive in spiritu, sive in

spirit or in body... And where the three are

corpore... Haec tria ubi magna sunt, magna

great, there are great goods; and where they

bona sunt; ubi parva sunt, parva bona sunt;

are small, there are small goods; and where

ubi nulla sunt, nullum bonum est.

they are absent, there is no good.

A U G U S T I N E , D e musica, VI, 10, 26.

whether in

THE BEAUTY OF PARITY

Quid est quod in sensibili numerositate

10. What is the reason for the pleasure we

diligimus? Num aliud praeter parilitatem quan-

take in sensual numbers? Is it anything but

dam et aequaliter dimensa intervalla? An ille

a certain parity and equally measured inter-

pyrrhichius pes, sive spondeus, sive anapaestus,

vals? Would the beauty o f the iambus, the

10.

sive dactylus, sive proceleusmaticus, sive dis-

trochee and the tribrach etc... please us other-

pondeus nos aliter delectaret, nisi partem suam

wise than by fitting its own part into a greater

parti alteri aequali divisione conferret?

part by equal division? THE BEAUTY OF NUMERICAL EQUALITY

A U G U S T I N E , D e musica, V I , 12, 38. Num possumus amare nisi pulchra...

11. What can we love but beautiful things?...

Haec igitur pulchra numero placent, in quo

11.

And these beautiful things please us by their

iam ostendimus aequalitatem appetì. Non enim

number, in which we have already shown that

hoc tantum in ea pulchritudine, quae ad aures

equality is sought. F o r this is not found only

pertinet atque in motu corporum est, invenitur,

in that beauty which pertains to the ears or is

sed in ipsis etiam visibilibus formis, in quibus

in the movement o f bodies, but also in those

iam usitatius dicitur pulchritudo. A n aliud quam

visible forms in which there is more commonly

aequalitatem numerosam esse arbitraris cum

said to be beauty. D o you think that it is any-

paria

respondent?...

thing but numerical equality when two equal

Quid ergo aliud in luce et coloribus, nisi quod

members of double length correspond to one

nostris oculis congruit, appetimus... In his ergo

another?... And what else do we seek in light

cum appetimus convenientia pro naturae nostro

and colours than what suits our eyes... Here

modo et inconvenientia respuimus... nonne hic

we seek things which accord with our nature

etiam

laetamur?...

and reject all that is not in accordance with

H o c in odoribus et saporibus et in tangendi

it... Are we not glad at this law o f equality

sensu

est

among sounds as well?... This can be observed

horum sensibilium quod nobis non aequalitate

in smells and tastes and in the sense of touch...

aut similitudine placeat. Ubi autem aequalitas

for there are no sensual things which do not

aut similitudo, ibi numerositas: nihil est quippe

please us with their equality and similarity. And

tam aequale aut simile quam unum et unum.

where there is equality or similarity, there, too,

paribus

bina

membra

quodam aequalitatis iure animadvertere

licet...

nihil

enim

is number. F o r nothing is as equal or similar as one and one. A U G U S T I N E , D e civitate Dei, X I , 18. 12. Contrariorum oppositione saeculi pulchritudo componitur.

12. The beauty o f the world consists in the contrast of antitheses.

A U G U S T I N E , D e ordine, I, 7, 18. 13. Ita quasi ex antithesis quodammodo... id est ex contrariis, omnium simul rerum pulchritudo figuratur.

13. The beauty o f all things is derived, as it were, from antitheses, or contrasts.

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THE AESTHETICS OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

AUGUSTINE, De civitate Dei, ΧΧΠ, 19.

THE OLD DEFINITION OF BEAUTY

14. Omnis... corporis pulchritudo est partium congruentia cum quadam colons suavitate.

14. All beauty of body is a congruence of parts in conjunction with a certain pleasantness of colour.

AUGUSTINE, Confessiones, IV, 13.

BEAUTY AND APTNESS

15. Quid est ergo pulchrum? Et quid est pulchritudo?... Et animadvertebam et videbam in ipsis corporibus aliud esse quasi totum et ideo pulchrum, aliud autem quod ideo deceret, quoniam apte accomodaretur alicui, sicut pars corporis ad universum suum, aut calciamentum ad pedem.

15. What is beauty? And what is beautifulness?... I noticed and saw in bodies themselves that one is, as it were, entire and therefore beautiful, and that another pleases because it is fittingly adapted to something else, as a part of the body to its whole, or a shoe to the foot.

AUGUSTINE, De vera rei. XXXI, 57.

REASON AS THE JUDGE OF BEAUTY

16. Summa aequalitate delector, quam non oculis corporis sed mentis intueor, quapropter tanto meliora esse iudico, quae oculis cerno, quanto pro sua natura viciniora sunt iis, quae animo intelligo. Quare autem illa ita sint, nullus potest dicere.

16. I am delighted by the highest equality, which I apprehend not with the eyes of my body, but with those of my mind. I, therefore, believe that the more what I see with my eyes draws near to what I apprehend with my spirit, the better it is. But no one can say why this is so.

AUGUSTINE, De vera rei., XXXII, 60. Unde illam nosti unitatem, secundum quam iudicas corpora, quam nisi videres, iudicare non posses, quod earn non impleant: si autem his corporeis oculis earn videres, non vere díceres, quamquam eius vestigio teneantur, longe tamen ab ea distare? Nam istis oculis corporeis non nisi corporalia vides: mente igitur eam videmus.

Whence do you know the unity according to which you judge bodies? If you did not see it, you would not be able to judge that they do not achieve it. If you saw it with these physical eyes, you would be wrong in saying that, although they preserve a trace of it, they are far removed from it. For you see nothing but physical things with these physical eyes: it is with the mind that we see that unity.

AUGUSTINE, De musica, VI, 10, 28. 17. Quaerit ergo ratio et carnalem animae delectationem, quae iudiciales partes sibi vindicabat, interrogai, cum eam in spatiorum temporalium numeri aequalitas mulceat, utrum duae syllabae breves quascumque audierit vere sint aequales.

17. Reason will ask the bodily pleasure of the soul which has tried to assume the role of judge : are any two short syllables we hear really equal? Yet it is the equality of rhythms in span of time which pleases the soul.

AUGUSTINE, De musica, VI, 2, 2-5.

THE FIVE KINDS OF RHYTHM

18. Responde, si videtur, cum istum versum pronuntìamus "Deus creator omnium", istos quattuor iambos quibus constat... ubinam esse arbitreris, id est in sono tantum qui auditor, an etiam in sensu audientis qui ad aures pertinet, an in actu etiam pronuntiantis, an quia notus

18. Let us assume that we are reciting the poem Deus creator omnium. Where do you think those four iambi which it comprises lie, that is, only in the sound which is heard, or also in the sense impression which pertains to the ears, or also in the act of the reciter, or because

63

TEXTS FROM ST. AUGUSTINE nostra

hos

this kind o f verse is known, should we also

vellem

jam

grant it a place in our memory?... I should

quaerere, quod tandem horum quattuor gene-

now like to ask which o f these kinds o f rhythm

rum praestantissimum judices, nisi arbitrarer...

you consider the most perfect, but look... a fifth

apparaisse nobis quintum genus, quod est in

kind appears, which is contained in the natural

versus est, numéros

in memoria quoque

esse

fatendum

est?...

ipso naturali iudicio sentiendi, cum delectamur

appraisal o f the audial impression and rests o n

parilitate numerorum vel cum in eis peccatur,

the fact that we are pleased by the regularity o f

offendimur... Ego vero ab illis omnibus hoc

values and offended by their faults... I consider

genus distinguendum puto, siquidem aliud est

that this kind should be distinguished from all

sonare, quod corpori tribuitur, aliud audire,

the others, because it is one thing to produce

quod in corpore anima de sonis patitur, ?liud

a sound (this we ascribe to the body), another t o

operari numéros vel productius vel correptius,

hear the sound (under the influence o f the sound

aliud ista meminisse, aliud de his omnibus vel

the soul experiences this in the body), another

annuendo vel abhorrendo quasi quodam natu-

to produce faster or slower numerical values,

rali iure ferre sententiam.

another to remember, and another to pronounce a judgment on all this, as it were, on the strength of some natural law, accepting or rejecting it.

A U G U S T I N E , D e musica, VI, 6, 16. Quinqué genera numerorum... vocentur ergo primi

judiciales,

secundi

progressores,

tertii

occursores, quarti recordabiles, quinti sonantes.

O f the five kinds o f rhythm, let the first be called

rhythm

o f judgment,

the

second

rhythm of action, the third rhythm of perception, the fourth rhythm of memory, and the fifth rhythm of sounds.

A U G U S T I N E , D e musica, VI, 11, 30. 19.

THE BEAUTY OF A WHOLE

Quoniam si quis, verbi gratia, in amplis-

19. F o r if, for example, a man is placed

simarum pulcherrimarumque aedium uno aliquo

like a statue in a corner o f an extremely large

ángulo

pulchri-

and beautiful building, he will not be able to

tudinem illius fabricae sentire non poterit, cuius

tamquam

statua collocetur,

perceive the beauty o f this building, of which

et ipse pars erit. Nec universi exercitus ordinem

he is a part. Nor can a soldier in the line dis-

miles in acie valet intueri. Et in quolibet poëmate

cern the array of the whole army. And if the

si quanto spatio syllabae sonant, tanto viverent

syllables in a poem were alive and able to

atque sentirent, nullo modo illa numerositas

perceive for as long as they sound, they would

et contexti operis pulchritudo eis piacerei, quam

by no means be pleased with the rhythm and

totam perspicere atque approbare non possunt,

beauty of the poetic diction, which they are

cum de ipsis singulis praetereuntibus fabricata

unable to perceive and appraise as a whole,

esset atque perfecta.

because it is made and accomplished of these selfsame fleeting, individual syllables.

A U G U S T I N E , D e natura boni, 14-17 ( P L 42, c. 555-6). 20.

UGLINESS

In omnibus quaecumque parva sunt,

20. In all things, what is small receives, by

in maiorum comparatione contrariis nominibus

comparison with the greater things, the opposite

appellantur: sicut in hominibus forma

name to them. F o r example, since the beauty

quia

maior est pulchritudo, in ejus comparatione

of the human form is greater than that of the

simiae pulchritudo deformitas dicitur: et fallit

ape, so by comparison with it, the beauty of

imprudentes, tanquam illud sit bonum et hoc

the ape is called ugliness. This deceives the

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THE AESTHETICS OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

malum; nec intendunt in corpore simiae modum proprium, parilitatem ex utroque latere membrorum, concordiam partium, incolumitatis custodiam, et cetera quae persequi longum est.

unthinking, who imagine that good is in the former, and evil in the latter; they fall to observe, in the body of the ape, the appropriate harmony, the bilateral symmetry of members, the concordance of parts, the ability for self-defence, and other things, which would take a long time to enumerate.

Cuique naturae non est malum nisi minui bono.

No nature has any evil, but a decrease of good in it.

AUGUSTINE, Contra epistolam Manichaei, 34 (PL 42, c. 199). Natura nunquam sine aliquo bono.

Nature is never without some good.

AUGUSTINE, Confessiones, X, 34.

THE BEAUTY OF GOD

21. Pulchras formas et varias, nitidos et amoenos colores amant oculi. Non teneant haec animam meam; teneat eam Deus, qui fecit haec, bona quidem valde, sed ipse est bonum meum... Quam innumerabilia, variis artibus et opificiis, in vestibus, calceamentis, vasis, et cuiuscemodi fabricationibus, picturis etiam diversisque figmentis atque his usum necessarium atque moderatum et piam significationem longe transgredientibus, addiderunt homines ad illecebras oculorum... pulchra traiecta per animas in manus artificiosas, ab illa pulchritudine veniunt, quae super animas est, cui suspirat anima mea die ac nocte. Sed pulchritudinum exteriorum operatores et sectatores inde trahunt adprobandi modum, non autem inde trahunt utendi modum.

21. The eyes love beautiful and diverse shapes and splendid and pleasant colours... These things do not hold my mind in their sway; but rather it is held by God, who made them— valuable goods indeed, but my good is God... How immensely men have added to visual attractions with their multifarious arts and crafts in clothing, footwear, vessels and all manner of products, and also in pictures and various works of sculpture, which by far exceed necessary and moderate use and devout content... Beautiful works, transferred by the soul, higher than the soul, for which my soul yearns day and night. But the makers and adherents of external beauties derive thence only their means of recognition, and not their means of using beauty.

AUGUSTINE, De vera rei., XXXII, 60.

TRACES OF BEAUTY

22. Quis non admonitus videat neque ullam speciem, neque ullum omnino esse speciem corpus, quod non habeat unitatis qualecumque vestigium, neque quantumvis pulcherrimum corpus, cum intervallis locorum necessario aliud alibi habeat, posse adsequi eam quam sequitur unitatem?

22. For who, without having his attention drawn to it, will perceive that there is no form, nor any body at all lacking some trace of unity, and that, because every body, even the most beautiful, has its parts of necessity arranged at intervals in space, each in a different place, it cannot attain the unity which it seeks?

AUGUSTINE, De vera rei., XXVII, 43.

CREATIVITY HIGHER THAN THE OBJECT CREATED

23. Itaque, ut nonnulli perversi magis amant versum quam artem ipsam qua conficitur versus, quia plus se auribus quam intelligentiae dediderunt.

23. So it is that some perverse people like the verse more than the actual art of writing verse, since they have cultivated their hearing more than their intellect.

TEXTS FROM ST. AUGUSTINE

65

AUGUSTINE, Soliloquia, II, 10, 18.

FICTION AND TRUTH IN ART

24. Quia scilicet aliud est falsum esse velie, aliud verum esse non posse. Itaque ipsa opera hominum velut comoedias aut tragoedias, aut mimos, et id genus alia possumus operibus pictorum fictorumque coniungere. Tam enim verus esse pictus homo non potest, quamvis in speciem hominis tendat, quam illa quae scripta sunt in libris comicorum. Neque enim falsa esse volunt aut ullo appetitu suo falsa sunt; sed quadam necessitate quantum fingentis arbitrium sequi potuerunt. At vero in scaena Roscius volúntate falsa Hecuba erat, natura verus homo; sed illa volúntate etiam verus tragoedus, eo videlicet quo implebat institutum; falsus autem Priamus eo quod Priamum assimilabat, sed ipse non erat.

24. For it is one thing to want to be false, and another to be unable to be true. Thus such human works as comedies, tragedies, mimes and others of this kind we can class with the works of painters and other imitators. For a painted man cannot be real, although he endeavours to assume the appearance of a man, just as the stories told in the works of the writers of comedies are untrue. These works do not seek to be false and are not false by any desire of their own, but, in a way, they cannot be anything else, in so far as they have been able to follow only the will of their makers. And Roscius on the stage was by will a false Hecube, but a real man; but of his own will, he also wanted to be a true actor, because he was playing a role chosen by himself ; on the other hand, he was not a real Priam, because he was imitating Priam, and was not Priam himself. And thence is born the strange conclusion. All these things are only partially true, in so far as they are partially false, and can only attain their truth by being for the rest untrue... For on what basis would the Roscius I have mentioned be a true tragic actor, if he did not want to be a false Hector... and how would the picture of a horse be a true picture, if the horse in it were not a false horse?

Ex quo iam nascitur quiddam mirabile... haec omnia inde esse in quibusdam vera, unde in quibusdam falsa sunt, et ad suum verum hoc solum eis prodesse, quod ad aliud falsa sunt... Quo pacto enim iste, quem commemoravi, verus tragoedus esset, si nollet esse falsus Hector... aut unde vera pictura esset, si falsus equus non esset. AUGUSTINE, Confessiones, IV, 13. 25. Amabam pulchra inferiora et ibam in profundum et dicebam amicis meis: Num amamus aliquid nisi pulchrum? AUGUSTINE, In Joannis Evangelium, tract. XXIV, cap. 2 (PL 35, c. 1593). 26. Sed quemadmodum si litteras pulchras alicubi inspiceremus, non nobis sufficeret laudare scriptoris articulum, quoniam eas pariles, aequales decorasque fecit, nisi etiam legeremus quid nobis per illas indicaverit: ita factum hoc qui tantum inspicit, delectatur pulchritudine facti ut admiretur artificem: qui autem intelligit, quasi legit. Aliter enim videtur pictura, aliter videntur litterae. Picturam cum videris, hoc est totum vidisse, laudare: litteras cum videris, non hoc est totum; quoniam commoneris et legere.

AESTHETICISM 25. I loved beauty of a lower order and descended into the depths, saying to my friends: do we love anything but beauty? (Cf. No. 11 above) LITERATURE AND PAINTING 26. But if we were looking somewhere at beautiful letters, it would not be enough for us to praise the skill of the writer for making them equal, symmetrical and ornate, unless we also read what he has expressed for us by means of the letters. Thus, whosoever looks only at the work is pleased by its beauty, for which he admires the artist; but whosoever understands has, as it were, read the book. For a picture is looked at in one way, and letters in another. When you see a picture, the matter is ended: you have seen, and you praise. When you see letters, this is not yet the end, because you also have to read.

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2. Background to Further Developments (a) POLITICAL B A C K G R O U N D 1. T H E DESTRUCTION OF THE OLD CULTURE. In the first half of the 6th century, the whole of the former Western Roman Empire was in the hands of new warrior tribes. Italy was ruled by the Ostrogoths, Spain by the Visigoths, Gaul by the Franks, North Africa by the Vandals, and Britain by the Anglo-Saxons. Their coming led to the disappearance of nations, the breakdown of ancient civilization and culture. It divides the new era from the old. In his Historia Gothorum, Isidore of Seville writes of Spain: "In the year 408, the Vandals, Alemanni and Swabi occupied Spain, making cruel expeditions over the land, sowing murder and devastation, firing cities, pillaging, and exhausting supplies to the extent that the population, forced by hunger, devoured human flesh, mothers ate their sons, and wild animals threatened the living with destruction". Procopius in his De bello gothico, writing of Italy at the time of Justinian's struggle with the Ostrogoths (536 to 548), says that people perished, so emaciated with hunger, that animals, feeding on the carrion, found nothing but bones and dried skin. Bede in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum describes Britain after the attack by the Angles in 449: "Public and private buildings were destroyed, and leaders as well as people, regardless of position, fell victim to fire and sword, so that no one was left to bury those who had been cruelly slain". In these circumstances, little could be preserved of the ancient culture, material or intellectual. A new start had to be made almost from nothing. These conditions were scarcely favourable for the development of aesthetics. True, culture was revived relatively quickly. Isidore of Seville in the 7th century wrote that "the famous tribe of the Goths, after many victories... rejoiced in peace and happiness amid royal crowns and immense riches". But soon fresh upheavals disrupted this "peace and happiness". The culture of the conquerors differed completely from that of the Greeks and Romans. They lived in tribal communities, without distinct social classes, without slaves ; a rural culture, without towns. They properly belonged to prehistory. Their education, intellectual needs and interests, their technical achievement, industry and science bear no comparison with those of Rome. They had not reached the level of development of the Romans at the beginning of the Republic. History was starting all over again from the beginning. The situation might have been different, if these primitive peoples had assimilated the advanced culture of the vanquished. But they began by destroying it and lived within their own primitive culture. 2 . GEOGRAPHICAL CHANGES. The Barbarian invasions altered the geography of Europe. The Mediterranean region, where ancient civilization originated and flourished, now ceased to be the main centre of political and cultural life. It took second place to the Northern and Western regions of Europe. It had lost its attraction: towns and villages, roads and aqueducts, everything lay in ruins. The tribes remained

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in the North where they felt at home. Here they created strong states. The Moslem advance in the 8th century shifted the centre of European civilization even more definitively towards the North. There were two regions that flourished in the Middle Ages—the North Sea and Atlantic coastal regions. The Germanic population of the former lived mainly by conquest. They attempted to conquer their Slavonic and Romanic neighbours. The Scandinavian Vikings, in their raids into distant countries, reached as far as Normandy and even Sicily. The settlers in the Atlantic region, on the other hand, lived mainly by the resources of the region. From here, especially from Gaul (what was later to become France, which also had a Mediterranean seaboard), by the intermingling of the Celtic Gauls, the Franks, and the strong influence of Roman culture, there emerged "creators of a new human type".* The greatest of the early medieval political and cultural institutions, the Carolingian state, was the joint product of both regions. The Middle Ages remained a long time in a state of political flux. States, more or less accidental groupings of lands and tribes, were easily formed and as easily disappeared. Even Charlemagne's great empire disintegrated as early as 843, after the Treaty of Verdun. No state of this size emerged again in medieval Europe. Meanwhile, empires arose on the frontiers of Europe: the Arab Empire in the 7th and 8th centuries, the Mongol Empire in the 13th century, and the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century. They conquered large areas of Europe and their incursions were halted only on the frontiers of Central Europe. This is one of the reasons why this area took such a leading role in the formation of European culture. But even this area was torn by wars, civil wars and wars between neighbouring states, each leaving the lands in ruins and the population depleted. Medieval art and culture grew up in the midst of strife. 3. ROMANIA. The Goths, after conquering Europe, did not drive out the existing population. They themselves were few in number, probably no more than one per cent of the population. In spite of prohibitions, fusion with the conquered people was inevitable, and they became latinized. This was not decided by demographic considerations alone. The Goths' struggle with Rome was not ideological. They had no ideas which they could have imposed on the vanquished. They admired Rome and her civilization: they had nothing to compare with her organization, her technical achievements and her culture. In Italy and Gaul, despite turmoil and strife, the way of life remained for the moment largely unchanged. Latin continued to be spoken until the 8th century; it was corrupt, but still genuine, Latin. Latin unified politically divided areas and brought "Romania" into being. Roman script, coinage, weights and measures, law, the administrative, fiscal and economic system, and commerce survived. Art to a great extent retained its provincial Roman character. Christian poets continued to write Latin verse according to the ancient rules of poetry. * H. Focillon, L'An mil (Paris, 1952).

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The powerful and magnificent Byzantium was the great repository of ancient culture and influenced the West through trade, if not politically. Luxury goods flowed in from Byzantium. The Byzantine way of life was being absorbed by Western Europe; the West was "on the way to being Byzantinized". Then events happened which changed everything.* 4 . DECLINE INTO BARBARISM. The Moslems, in their victorious advance, had reached Spain. After gaining control of the southern and western shores of the Mediterranean, they cut the sea routes, the most important link between the West and Byzantium and the whole East. Only then did the West, left to itself, begin to decline extremely rapidly into barbarism. This was in the 8th century—more than three centuries after the barbarian invasions. During these three centuries, Europe had still retained much of its ancient heritage. But now it was almost all suddenly lost. The import of goods from the East ceased. There was a scarcity of papyrus, which had to be replaced by parchment. Eastern merchants no longer arrived, and commerce in general dwindled to such an extent that even local merchants became redundant. Business was reduced to a minimum, gold coins disappeared, and the monetary system was now based only on silver. Trade was restricted to barter between local peasants; and the only source of supply was village domestic industry. Even agricultural products were no longer regularly available. Oil, hitherto used for the lighting of churches, was unobtainable. The movable goods, even those of the most powerful personages, were few. The only wealth a ruler possessed was land. Towns ceased to exist as centres of administration, trade and industry; they survived only as fortresses. Civilization regressed to a purely agricultural stage; there was no need for trade, credit, exchange, fiscal administration or specialization of labour. After the 8th century, the economy sank to a primitive level; it became an economy of nature and pillaging. Forests enveloped Europe. Intellectual life regressed even further perhaps. The level of literacy fell. Aristocrats at Pepin's court were illiterate, as was the king himself. Latin, no longer controlled by writing, became corrupt and developed into the various Romance languages. By about 800, Latin was used only as a learned and ecclesiastical language. Apart from the clergy, practically no one understood it. Colloquial speech became estranged from the learned or liturgical language. Poetry, with which only those who could read and write were concerned, was ecclesiastical, written in Latin, and hence unintelligible to the majority of people, and esoteric. 5. DEROMANIZATION. With the scarcity of ships and the dangers of venturing on seas controlled by corsairs, sea communication broke down; Italy could be reached only by way of the Alps. The Mediterranean countries became the most difficult of access, the most isolated, and soon, the poorest part of Europe. The cultural centre shifted to the North. Rome lost its privileged position as an administrative and episcopal centre, a position it had enjoyed up to the 7th century. The Germanic * H. Pirenne, Mahomet et Charlemagne, 5 ed. (1937).—Histoire de l'Europe, des invasions au XVI siècle (1936).

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nations began to play a more active part in the government of Europe. From the time of Charlemagne, Roman civilization was replaced by a Romano-Germanic civilization and the "deromanization" of society had begun. 6. THE CHURCH. In the second quarter of the 7th century alone, about two hundred monasteries were founded in Neustria, Austrasia, Burgundy and Aquitaine. They covered an area thirty to forty times greater than that of Paris.* The Merovingian kings had been entirely secular rulers, but from the time of Pepin, relations between Church and State took on a completely different form. The Church began to rule the kings. While the Merovingians had appointed bishops from among their officials, their successors now appointed their officials from among the bishops. One reason for this was that the clergy, though themselves not particularly well educated, were still the only section of society with some degree of education; "cleric" (clerc) became a synonym for someone who could read and write.1· This sketch of the political background of the period has been necessary in order to understand why there was so great a decline in artistic culture; why some remnants of ancient culture were still preserved; why the new culture acquired a religious and ecclesiastical character; and why it developed in entirely different directions in East and West. Art, influenced by the contemporary way of life, became religious: Christian and ecclesiastical. As Byzantine art had incorporated oriental elements, so Western art adapted certain Germanic motifs. At one moment Western art sank to the level of a primitive art. In Byzantium, there was only a theology of art, but in the West hardly any thought was given to art at all. If any views of an aesthetic nature were expressed, they were for the most part repetitions of earlier ideas. The new peoples had a definite attitude towards beauty and art, but this attitude was not stated explicitly in any theory. It was merely implicit in works of art and in the instructions of rulers. This attitude differed from the former Roman and contemporary Byzantine attitude. Some features of it are to be found in music, and others in poetry and the visual arts. (b) LITERATURE 1. THE NEW FUNCTION OF LITERATURE. At the beginning of this period, some men of letters were still pagan and many Christian writers grew up in a pagan environment. But soon society was wholly Christian and writers knew no other outlook on life than the Christian.

* J. Hubert, L'art pré-roman (1938). t L. Kurdybacha, Dzieje oswiaty koscielnej do konca XVIII wieku (1949).—L. Kurdybacha Éredniowieczna oswiata koscielna (1950).—Encyclopaedic works: J. Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (1910-34).·—A. Baudrillard, A. Vogt and others, Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastique (1912).—M. Buchberger, Lexicon für Theologie und Kirche (1930), η. 8.— F. Cabrol'and G. Leclercq, Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie (1907).—Α. M. Bozzone, Dizionario Ecclesiastico (1953).—M. Nowodworski, Encyklopedia koscielna (1873-1933).

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The early Christians were ardent, and completely devoted to their faith. The primary purpose of their literature was to profess their faith and serve God. Hymns occupied the principal place in poetry, and lives of Christ and of the martyrs and saints, in prose. 2. THE ATTITUDE TO ANTIQUITY. At the beginning of the period, literature, like other cultural forms, developed in the Mediterranean region—in Rome and North Africa, if not in Syria and Egypt. Among the Latin Fathers, Ambrose came from Rome, and both Tertullian and Augustine from North Africa. Among the poets of the 4th and 5th centuries, Martianus Capella came from Carthage, Prudentius from Spain, Paulinus from Nola and Apollinaris Sidonius from Gaul. Christian literature could draw on the examples of antiquity. The poetry of the leading writers, though Christian in content, was pre-Christian in form. Even the content was a mixture of Christian and pagan themes, of mythology and the Gospel. The popular work, The Marriage of Philology with Mercury, by Martianus Capella, was presented in the form of a mythological allegory. Some of the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers had been brought up in the ancient culture, and they also had a command of Ciceronian Latin. St. Jerome, Minucius Felix (born in the middle of the 2nd century), and Lactantius (born at the end of the 3rd century), belonged to the Roman literary tradition. Their knowledge of ancient literature, however, was incomplete ; and, as for Greek literature, Homer and the Athenian tragedians were unknown in the West. Christians were not acquainted with the best poetry. Contemporary taste selected certain ancient poetic motifs which were religious, and conferred on others a religious significance. Besides ancient literature, the Bible was also taken as a literary model. The writings circulating under the mythological name of Hermes, "the Thrice Great" (known later in the Middle Ages as the "Hermetic" writings) were Platonic in content, but biblical in style. Even those Christian writers who, like Jerome, had a good knowledge of ancient literature, were suspicious of it, as they were of the whole of ancient culture. "What", wrote Jerome, "has Horace to do with the Psalter, Vergil with the Gospel, and Cicero with the Apostles?" {Epist. ad Eust., Op. I, 112). The opposition to everything pagan and secular was led by Tertullian (in the 3rd century) and later (at the turn of the 6th century) by Pope Gregory the Great, a talented writer and great reformer of church music, but a stem pastor. 3. THE ASCETIC AND THE WORLDLY SPIRIT. T h e pagan spirit and the Christian

spirit—or rather, the worldly spirit and the ascetic spirit—were at this time strongly contrasted. Though they were in many ways connected with one another, they were fundamentally in conflict. At this early period of Christianity, faith, ascetism, and the renunciation of the attractions of the world were stronger and more widespread among the newly converted than at any other time. It must be said, however, that, even then, ascetism was not completely dominant; the degree of ascetism and worldliness fluctuated. The pagan spirit was still very much alive. While Pope

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Gregory the Great inculcated the spirit of asceticism, the Emperor Charlemagne disseminated a spirit of liberalism and worldliness, and his influence on culture and writing was no less than that of Gregory. 4. N E W LITERARY FORMS AND THEMES. Charlemagne, however, lived two centuries after Gregory, and in the meantime, a considerable change had taken place in the West. The centre of literature and culture had shifted from the Mediterranean region. At one time it was the British Isles; under Charlemagne it was Central Europe. Latin was confined to official documents, the liturgy and learned books; the spoken language was the sermo vulgaris, plebeius or rusticus, from which the various Romance languages developed. But before these new languages came to be used in literature, Latin poetry had been transformed. Long and short vowels ceased to be distinguished in speech, and poetry was adapted to the rhythm of the vernacular. Even the principle of versification was altered. Syllables were no longer arranged according to length, but by quantity and fixed stress. Rhyme, which had not been used in ancient poetry, was introduced. It was to remain for many centuries one of the most important formal elements in poetry. After the 4th century, Christians were no longer martyred for their faith, and fervour diminished. With the transfer of the centres of culture northwards, writers lost touch with Greece and Rome; ancient themes and forms became more and more remote. With the incursion of the barbarians other themes became popular. In the 6th century, Gregory of Tours wrote his Historiae Fraticorum, in the 7th century, Isidore of Seville wrote Historiae Gallorum, and in the 8th century Paulus Diaconus his Historiae Longobardorum and Nennius his Historiae Britorum. Although under Charlemagne and his immediate successors ancient themes increased in popularity, even then topical subjects, such as Angilbert's Carmen de Carolo Magno or Eginhard's Vita Caroli, occupied a predominant place in literary production. The literature of the period began with hagiography and mythology, and ended with history. 5. THE BLURRING OF THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN FICTION AND REALITY. A special feature of the period was the blurring of the boundary between belles-lettres and scholarly literature, above all, between history and narrative fiction. The best prose writers devoted their talents to writitìg the histories of the Germanic peoples or of Charlemagne. Romantic descriptions of the Seven Wonders of the World and the Mirabilia Romae constituted a popular literary genre. An even more popular genre was the lives of saints. By a collective effort, beginning with St. Jerome, hagiography developed over the centuries, until, in the later Middle Ages, we arrive at a work like the Golden Legend. The boundary between belles-lettres and natural science was also blurred. The encyclopaedias, typical of the period, while they were scientific works or substitutes for science, were written by men of letters, such as Cassiodorus, Isidore and Bede, and hence part belles-lettres, part science. Learned works were presented in poetic

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form. AJcuin, the chief literary and cultural adviser to Charlemagne wrote his history of the Archbishopric of York in verse. Poetry was even more closely connected with theology. The greatest of the early theologians, Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome and Gregory I, were poets. Two masterpieces of the period, Augustine's Confessions and Boethius' Consolations of Philosophy, belong to the borderland between philosophy and literature. Even stranger than the blurring of the boundary between belles-lettres and scholarly literature, was the blurring of the boundary between fiction and reality which occurred within belles-lettres itself. At the beginning of the period, the Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri XVII by Valerius Maximus was a mine of historical fact, legend and fiction. And the legend of King Arthur was recorded not only in the epics of the Round Table cycle, but also in Nennius' History of the Britons. In the lives of the saints, the most fantastic inventions were interspersed with genuine historical information. This was due not only to the lack of historical sources and historical criticism, but also to the attitude of the writers. They confused fiction with reality. True stories about martyrs, great kings and conquerors had the charm of romance and were told in the same way as later writers were to recount the adventures of fictitious heroes. As the scholastic philosophers put it: res fictae no less than res gestae are the subject of poetry. This blurring of the boundary between poetry and science, fiction and reality was typical of the period. (c) MUSIC

1. THE LIMITATIONS OF MUSIC. Christian music* was deliberately limited in its means and effects, far more so than ancient music. It was exclusively ecclesiastical. Enharmonic and chromatic tonality were abandoned. Light-weight rhythms were avoided, as being, in Clement of Alexandria's view, suitable only for the orgies of courtesans. Musical instruments were forbidden in churches in the 4th century. As Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea (3rd-4th century) said: "We praise God on a living psaltery. The harmony of the whole Christian people is dearer and more pleasant to God than any instruments. Our zither is our whole body, through which the soul sings a hymn to God". During those early centuries, the human voice was the only form of Christian music. The Church rejected every form of music that merely charmed the senses. As late as 813, the Council of Tours ordered priests to beware of anything that works on the eyes and ears, and has a debilitating effect on the soul. If music was heard in church, it was not to please men, but to serve God by arousing in the listener a virtue of love, ad amoris virtutem excitare. It was thought (as the Greeks had also thought) that the effect of some rhythms and melodies was dissolute, that of others sublime. The former were to be avoided, the latter to be cultivated and regarded * J. Combarieu, Histoire de la musique, I (1924).—G. Reese, Music in the Middle Ages (New York, 1940).

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as a precious gift from God. John Chrysostom said that God, knowing the negligence of men and desiring to make the reading of Scripture easier, added melodies to the words of the Prophet. Thus the charm of music might help us sing to Him with joy. 2. THE UNIFICATION OF MUSIC. The forms of Christian music were borrowed from various sources: from pagan litanies, and Hebrew psalms and antiphones. Its origins were mainly Eastern. It came into being principally in the monasteries of Syria and Egypt. Until the 3rd century, Greek was used in the Roman liturgy. After the Great Schism (11th century), Eastern music no longer reached the West. It even ceased to develop in the East. Western music developed independently. At first, the Northern nations, however, took no part in the development of Christian music. In contrast to the poetry and visual arts of the period, it was uniform; it was based on a uniform aesthetics. It consisted principally of hymns, psalms and antiphones. The hymns were its most original feature. Exquisite hymns were written as early as the 4th and 5th centuries in both East and West. In the East, they were arranged by St. Ephraim, a Father of the Syrian Church, and, in the West, by St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. The hymns, psalms and antiphones were poems set to music, and they were part of the everyday life of the faithful. Their recital was governed by liturgical rules. St. Benedict prescribed the appropriate hymns for every hour of monastic worship. Christian liturgical music was originally arranged in different ways and there were many local variations: for example, the Milanese ("Ambrosian"), Gallican and Spanish ("Mozarabic"). By the tum of the 6th century, it was unified in the West by Gregory the Great (Pope in 590-604). He produced the antiphonary, which prescribed the music for the various offices and ceremonies. He was not the innovator but the codifier of what came to be called "Gregorian" chant. Gregorian chant was accepted practically universally in the Church. Its purity was preserved by the "Scola Cantorum" in Rome, established by Gregory himself. It was propagated not only by the Pope, but also by the Emperor Charlemagne. Both regarded it as a means of strengthening the unity of the Latin Church. In the lands subject to Emperor and Pope there were many languages and many folk melodies, which the Church sought to control by a uniform chant. The Latin language was used everywhere for the same reason. Though the aim was political, not artistic, it had considerable influence on art: it produced a very widespread and enduring artistic canon. 3. GREGORIAN MUSIC. Gregorian music, for centuries the exclusive ecclesiastical music used in most of Europe, was extremely austere. It dispensed with accompaniment and relied on the voice alone. Choirs were permitted to sing in unison only. The texts were taken exclusively from the psalms, and there was no attempt to adapt it to the melody. Only one form of rhythm was accepted. Beautiful voices were not required, since it was not intended for listeners. There were, in fact, no listeners, only performers, since the whole congregation joined in the sing-

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ing. Not only musical effects, but also progress were renounced. It remained faithful to its canons, from which no deviation was tolerated. Its simplicity limited its possibilities from the start. For this reason it became, as it were, a timeless music, incapable of development. For a long time, the medieval writers regarded it as the only music, the highest which art could attain. Never was there an art less concerned with sensuous pleasure. Never did art achieve greater detachment from real life. But it had a powerful effect on the mind and the feelings. It expressed and produced the most sublime spiritual states. With the loftiness and simplicity of its melodies, it kept the mind in a state of almost superhuman purity and austerity. The state of mind evoked by Gregorian music (writers of the time called it "sweetness", suavitas) was marked above all by tranquillity and peace. There has probably never been a more religious music than Gregorian chant. Though it was exclusively vocal, the words were not the most important thing about it. With the keen psychological insight peculiar to him, St. Augustine wrote (in his commentary to the 169th Psalm), even before the coming of Gregorian chant: "He who rejoices, pronounces no words; his joyful song is without words ; it is the voice of a heart melting in its joy and striving to express its feelings, even when it does not understand their meaning". The aesthetics inherent in this early Christian music is quite distinctive. It is a heteronomous aesthetics, because it subordinates art to religious life; ascetic, because it is consciously limited to its effects; an aesthetics of sublimity rather than of beauty, or of an intellectual rather than a sensuous beauty. 4. THE THEORY OF MUSIC. The Middle Ages inherited from antiquity the view that music is not a form of free creativity, but an exact science, the application of a mathematical theory. The theory of music thus seemed more perfect than music itself; the music was merely applied theory. Ancient music was poor, but its theory was magnificent. It aspired to be a theory not only of music, but of the harmony of the universe. Both the art and the theory were called "music". The medieval reverence for music was, strictly speaking, reverence for a theory, which happened also to be applied to practice. This view had many supporters in Greece, and later, in Rome, including Boethius. In the medieval mind, music, being primarily theory, was classed with the sciences. It was called art only in the sense in which the term was used of logic, geometry and astronomy, not in the sense in which it was applied to painting and sculpture. According to Boethius's contemporary, Cassiodorus, "music is the science which deals with numbers" (musica est disciplina, quae de numeris loquitur)', "music is the science of related sounds; it is an investigation into the way they accord and differ" (musica est disciplina, quae rerum sibi congruentium, id est sonorum, differentias et convenientias perscrutatur). This leads to the paradoxical conclusion that, if music is a mathematical science, sound is not essential. Boethius praised Pythagoras for dealing with music without referring to the sense of hearing (relicto aurium iudicio). "How much more perfect is the learning of music in rational understanding

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than in its production... A musician is a man who, by his reason, has engaged in the science of music, not in order to practise it, but from speculative interest." And in the Middle Ages, Boethius, a philosopher and theorist, not a composer, was considered the chief exponent of music {panditor nostrae artis), the one who explained, criticized and developed it (translator, corrector et ampliator ipsius musicaé). The laws of the universe, it was said, are musical laws. This did not mean that the universe resounds with music, but that it is harmonious and governed by number. The laws of music are numerical: "the pleasure of music results from number" (iquidquid in modulatione suave est, numerus operatur). This applied both to the external and the internal world: "We find in sound the same relationship which we find in the body and the soul". Proportions in things give pleasure to the mind (iucunditatem mentibus intonai), because the same proportions are in the soul (animae ex eisdem proportionibus consistunt). The mathematical conception of music did not, of course, represent the aesthetic attitude of the majority of those who listened to ecclesiastical music and sang Gregorian chant. It was the aesthetic attitude of the specialists who arranged the chant. It is to be found in the writings of medieval philosophers and musicologists, and was the basis of the early treatises on music. It was an extremely rationalistic and cosmological aesthetics, which reduced the laws of art and beauty to those of reason and of the universe. The music of the time was always associated with poetry, since it was exclusively vocal; though not all poetry was set to music. Rationalistic and mathematical aesthetics were not applied to every kind of poetry. The contemporary conception of the visual arts was still further removed from that of music. Music was overwhelmed by theory; the visual arts were almost unaffected by it. (d) THE VISUAL ARTS 1. EARLY CHRISTIAN ART. Early Christian art had its origins in antiquity, at a time when Christian communities lived as a minority in a pagan society, without rights, state protection or wealth. They were subjected to periodic persecutions until the Edict of Milan in 315. Their art was practised underground; it was an art of the catacombs. The early Christians did not set out to produce an original or magnificent kind of art, but merely an art which would satisfy the needs of religious worship. Poverty, persecution, the need to remain in hiding, as well as religious and moral requirements outweighed aesthetic considerations and put magnificence out of the question. The earliest works were designed to meet practical needs; later works (sarcophagi and liturgical ornaments) were intended to help spread and inculcate the doctrines of the Christian faith and commemorate its triumphs. It thus became symbolical and illustrative. It was an art in which beauty and harmony were not pursued for

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their own sake. It reflected the preoccupations of people chiefly interested in religious and moral matters.* The early Christians lived in a Hellenistic Roman culture. They drew on the artistic techniques and motifs of that culture, and only introduced such changes as worship and their conditions of life demanded. Their buildings were the same as those of the pagans, with the exception of their tombs, and later, their churches, which were usually designed on the ancient model of the basilica. Not all the achievements of Greece and Rome were emulated. Sculpture, which had so prominent a place in ancient civilization, declined and almost disappeared. The most important early Christian art forms were painting and mosaic. The walls of the catacombs, and, later, the walls of churches were decorated with pictures of the saints and symbols of the faith. The fall and destruction of Rome naturally brought this art, which had been developing in the shadow of Roman art, to an end. Although early Christian art was not the product of an aesthetic theory, it was based on a particular conception of beauty and art. Beauty and art were valued, not for their own sake, but because they gave expression to spiritual, divine and revealed truths. We find the same conception of beauty and art in the philosophy of Basil and Augustine; it underlay early Christian music and poetry, as, for example, the hymns of St. Ambrose or the lives of the saints. 2. BARBARIAN ART. After the conquest of Rome, the barbarians continued to practise their own primitive and simple form of art, which is called "Merovingian", after the dynasty which fostered it, or "Barbarian", after the period. It survived for many centuries: on the continent until the 9th century, even longer in Scandinavia. * The genesis of Christian art is disputed, especially since J. Strzygowski and D. Ainalov in 1901 raised the question whether it originated in Rome or in the East. According to the older view, it originated in Rome, but the predominant view now is that its main source was in East. But there are other views. E. S. Swift lists four: a Hellenistic Greek origin, an Eastern Hellenistic origin, an Eastern Roman origin and a Western Roman origin. Recent archaeological discoveries at DuraEuropos on the Euphrates in 1920 have lent support to the view that Christian art originated in the East. It reached its maturity in Byzantium, and the Dura-Europos finds prove that the Byzantine type of painting originated at least as early as the 1st century. The major works on the subject are: J. Strzygowski, Orient oder Rom (1901).—D. Ainalov, Ellenisticheskiye osnovy wizantiyskogo iskusstva (1901).—E. Weigand, "Baalbeck und Rom, die römische Reichskunst in ihrer Entwicklung und Differenzierung", Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, X X I X (1914).—J. Wilpert, Die römischen Mosaiken und Malereien der kirchlichen Bauten vom IVbis XIII Jahrh., 4 vols. (1917).— C. Diehl, "Les origines orientales de l'art byzantin", in: L'Amour de l'art, V (1924).—J. Breadstead, Orientai Forerunners of Byzantine Painting (1924).—E. Diez, "Das magische Opfer in Dura, ein Denkmal synkretischer Malerei", Belvedere, VI (1924).—F. Cumont, Les fouilles de Dura-Europos (1926).—G. Galassi, Roma o Bisanzio (1930).—W. Molè, Historia sztuki bìzantyjskiej i wczesnochrzescijañskiej (1931) and Sztuka starochrzescijanska (1948).—M. Rostovtzeff, "Dura and the Problem of Parthian Art", Yale Classical Studies (1934) and Dura-Europos and its Art (1938).— R. Grousset, De la Grèce à la Chine, les documents d'art (Monaco, 1948).—E. S. Swift, Roman Sources of Christian Art (1951).—Ch. R. Morey, Medieral Art (1942) and Early Christian Art (Princeton, 1953).

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Though art was practised by different tribes, it had certain common features, since all the tribes were on the same cultural level. Its stylistic forms were to some extent primitive. They persisted for a long time unchanged and evolved slowly. They were completely different from those of classical antiquity and also those of early Christian art, belonging as they did to a different cultural level and responding to a different taste. Dynamism was one of their characteristics, and in this they contrasted with the static art of the Mediterranean. Their abstract nature, their distinctive feature, also stood in contrast to the realism of Mediterranean art. Since man was neither the subject nor the touchstone of Barbarian art, it marks a break in the humanistic tradition, coming between the ancient and the late medieval periods of humanistic art. The extant works of the period—sculpture and illuminated manuscripts—are characterized by wreathes of dynamic, intertwining lines. These are so numerous and every available space so filled with them that one is tempting to think that some horror vacui must have seized the artists. The love of abstract form which is reflected in these lines remained, side by side with Romanesque and classical elements taken over from ancient and Mediterranean art, a feature of medieval art to the end. The scope of early medieval art was unusual. Architecture developed to some extent; sculpture disappeared; painting was confined to manuscript miniatures. On the other hand, the decorative and ornamental arts flourished; art was, in fact, largely restricted to ornament and apparel. There was a preference for splendour, richness and variety in costly materials. This is all the more striking in view of the poverty of the age. Never had precious stones and precious metals been so important in art as they were then. Different countries developed their own form of art: the Franks in Gaul under the Merovingians excelled in ornamental art; illuminated manuscripts flourished in Ireland; architecture flourished in Italy among the Lombards. This art, dynamic, abstract, non-humanistic, exclusively ornamental, was founded on an aesthetics totally different from that of the ancients, an aesthetics which was never explicitly expressed in writing (the barbarian peoples were not concerned with learning), but can be inferred from their art. The medieval people learnt from the ancients to admire art and from the early Christians to distrust, if not to condemn, it outright. Hence the continual fluctuation during the Middle Ages between admiration and condemnation. During the Barbarian period, however, religious fervour was not so strong that art should be condemned, nor was culture sufficiently advanced for art to receive special attention. 3. THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE. A change came about, however, when, in the 8th century, Charlemagne extended his patronage to art. He gathered a cultural elite around him and set up an organization to further art and learning. It was natural that, as Holy Roman Emperor, he should want to continue the Roman Imperial traditions. Thus, under his influence, the first renewal of the art of antiquity, the first renaissance, took place. This renewal was revealed both in style

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and subject. It marked a return to a larger scale in architecture and the reintroduction of man as the subject of figurative art. Surviving fragments of the art of antiquity were put to a new use and also copied. Charlemagne's policy was later adopted by the Ottonian emperors. The introduction of Romanesque elements did not, however, mean the elimination of Barbarian elements. In spite of the enthusiasm of Charlemagne's court for distant Rome, it was too deeply attached to its traditional forms to reject them. In the transition from Merovingian to Carolingian art, native, primitive forms were combined with those of antiquity; the one was not rejected in favour of the other. This combination of two different and indeed conflicting artistic tendencies, and the dual aesthetics, which it involved, resulted in tensions and contradictions. This was the first syncretic art in Europe. There was a concern for architecture on the grand scale, as in antiquity, but also, as in primitive art, for ornament. The human form was represented, as in ancient art, but a love of abstract form and wreaths of cursive lines remained. Side by side with the representation of the real world went a preference for symbols. Contact with Rome made the peoples of the North turn their attention to colossal, monumental art, and gave their art a universalism which contrasted with the regional art of the barbarian tribes. These characteristics of Carolingian art were reflected in the aesthetics of Charlemagne's court.* 3. Aesthetics from Boethius to Isidore 1. BOETHIUS. St. Augustine, a metaphysician with a great speculative flair, was the only philosopher in the West comparable to Plato and Plotinus. Between the time of Constantine the Great and Charlemagne, little thought was given to beauty and art, and what there was, was simple and down-to-earth. Augustine and the Greek Fathers endeavoured to include beauty and art within their religious view of life, a task which was not within the power of everyone. Instead, most writers were content to rescue what they could of the vanishing ancient learning. Therefore, one should not look to these authors for new ideas but for what they remembered, recorded and bequeathed. The most outstanding, and the first, of these authors was Boethius (Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus Boethius, c. 480-525).^ He lived about a hundred years after Augustine and was known as "the last of the Romans", though he lived after the fall of Rome; a witness of the barbarian invasions and counsellor of their * A. Grabar and C. Nordenfalk, Les grands siècles de la peinture: le haut Moyen Age du IV au XI siècle (Genève, 1957). This collection of the best works on painting of the time clearly demonstrates the variety both of contemporary art and of the aesthetic assumptions on which it was based. t E. de Bruyne, Boethius en de Middeleeuwsche Aesthetick (Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium, 1939).—L. Schrade, "Die Stellung der Musik in der Philosophie des Boetius", Arch. f . Gesch. d. Phil. XLI (1932).

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leader, Theodoric; an adherent of the new, Christian religion, though by mentality and culture a Roman. Boethius recorded what remained during his lifetime and since the fall of Rome of ancient aesthetics. In his treatise on music, De Institutione Musica, especially in the chapters on proportion, one can find an aesthetic theory that was basically that of antiquity. It was taken from Claudius Ptolomeus and Nicomachus and incorporated the Neo-Pythagorean theory of music. Throughout the succeeding centuries and the Middle Ages, this theory exerted an influence no less powerful than his other writings, his logic and his Consolation of Philosophy. 2. THE PYTHAGOREAN MOTIF. BEAUTY AS FORM. Boethius agreed with Augustine and the classical writers of antiquity on basic matters of aesthetics. He retained the Pythagorean notion that beauty consists in form, proportion and number.' 1 ' That he followed the mathematical trend in aesthetics was only natural, since his main interest was music. Music is well suited to numerical treatment and had for centuries been connected with Pythagorean philosophy. The notion of beauty which he derived from music was reflected in other fields: in his treatment of beauty and art. He claimed that beauty consists in proportion of parts and that the simpler the proportion the greater the beauty. Form (species) has the peculiarity that it has an aesthetic effect. It is pleasant (grata) both to perceive directly (intuitus) and to think about. In recording these ideas, though they were not his own, Boethius, together with Augustine, performed the important service of transmitting to future generations the central core of ancient aesthetics. But whereas Augustine understood proportion in a qualitative sense, Boethius bequeathed it in its original, quantitative and mathematical sense. 3. THE SUPERFICIAL VALUE OF BEAUTY. An ancient source is evident inBoethius's views on the essence and nature of beauty. It was not the Pythagorean but the Stoic view, and, in this view, beauty is relegated to an inferior position in the hierarchy of values. Beauty consists in harmony, but a harmony which lies on the surface of things. The ancients held that beauty consists in the arrangement of both the internal and external parts of things. Boethius conceived it as the mere external arrangement or outward appearance. In this, too, he had an influence on subsequent centuries. Without doubt, his views formed an important link in the development of the idea of beauty and the transition from the ancient to the modern conception. He introduced an ambiguity into aesthetics: the word species, which had denoted beauty of form and beautiful composition, now came to signify beautiful appearance. This ambiguity persisted. In future aesthetics the statement: Beauty lies in "form", could mean that it lies either in composition or in outward appearance. If beauty is a value which belongs only to appearance, there must be other values higher than beauty. Boethius considered health a more important bodily value than beauty, and spiritual values were more important still. The Christian attitude,

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which put a value on the internal and spiritual, could naturally reduce the value of beauty. With the Greek Fathers this did not happen. With Augustine it led to the devaluation of art but not of beauty. Boethius, on the other hand, devalued beauty as well. He believed that admiration for beauty is a symptom of the weakness of the human senses. If the senses were more perfect, there would be no beauty. If we could see better and further, well enough, that is, to see inside a man, would we still admire the body? "It is not your nature but the weakness of the eyes of the onlookers that makes you appear beautiful". Beauty as a symptom of the weakness of human perception was a conception which had not occurred to the ancients, not even to the Sceptics and Stoics. 4 . LIBERAL ARTS. Boethius adhered to ancient tradition also in his conception of the nature of art. He regarded it as an ability. The ancients conceived art as what we would today call a practical ability, that is, an ability to produce something, though they sometimes conceived it more broadly, extending the concept to every kind of ability, even theoretical abilities, as, for example, the ability to do arithmetic. Boethius accepted this enlargement of the concept. Art, for him, included every kind of ability: knowledge, theory, principles, rules. Art belonged to the mind, not to the hands, of the artist. Boethius used the term artificium to denote manual work and its products. This was the opposite of ars. Ars, for him, was intellectual, and artificium, manual.(3) This opposition can be understood in two different ways. Ars can signify the ability of the artist, and artificium his workmanship. Or, again, artificium may mean practical skill or craftsmanship, and ars, ability in theoretical matters. It was, in fact, an old distinction, well known to the ancients: it corresponded to their division of the arts into liberales and vulgares. Boethius, however, went further than that. Though the ancients regarded the crafts as incomparably inferior to the liberal arts, they nevertheless regarded them as arts. Boethius gave them another name; he regarded only the liberal arts as ars. And he did not include architecture or painting among the liberal arts. Among the fine arts, Boethius included music only, for music was the only art which he considered liberal. The Middle Ages preserved his concept of art. Although the "mechanical" arts were sometimes referred to, Boethius's refined concept was the one most often in use. When art was spoken about without further qualification, it was liberal art that was meant. They took over Boethius's concept of Uberai art, which is not really of great importance to aesthetics, but they derived no concept of fine art from Boethius, because he had none. Nor did they ever arrive at this concept for themselves. 5. Music AND POETRY. Boethius's conception of music, which he honoured by including it among the liberal arts, was broad. It included what is today called theory of music. He even considered theory as music properly so called.