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The Mechanical Arts and Poiesis in the Philosophy and Literature of the Twelfth-Century Schools

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The Mechanical Arts and Poiesis in the Philosophy and Literature of the Twelfth-Century Schools The Mechanical Arts and Poiesis in the Philosophy and Literature of the Twelfth-Century Schools Anya Burgon Trinity Hall University of Cambridge October 2018 This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Declaration This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It is not substantially the same as any that I have submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for a degree or diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. I further state that no substantial part of my dissertation has already been submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for any such degree, diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It does not exceed the prescribed word limit for the relevant Degree Committee. The Mechanical Arts and Poiesis in the Philosophy and Literature of the Twelfth-Century Schools Anya Burgon The ‘mechanical arts’ or artes mechanicae were first named as a part of Philosophy in Hugh of Saint-Victor’s Didascalicon (1120s). They were identified as seven arts (fabric making, armament, commerce, agriculture, hunting, medicine, and theatrics), and positioned as a parallel to the seven liberal arts. Their inclusion in the Didascalicon has been taken by previous historians to signal a new interest in science and engineering, an effort to ‘give intellectual status to technology for the first time’. This study reconsiders the significance of the mechanical arts for schoolmen working in northern France in the twelfth century. It argues that while this category designated a set of everyday technologies, it also had a more covert, imaginative currency for certain authors – as an image or exemplum for the process of learning. Its procedures and activities could be held up as a mirror to those of the liberal and especially verbal arts, picturing these in the terms of poiesis – an ancient model for philosophy as ‘sense making’ or ‘world making’. This metaphorical utility of the artes mechanicae can be discerned in Hugh’s discussion, running underneath his more literal concern with the mechanical arts as everyday technologies. It was given fullest expression, I argue, in the later allegorical encyclopaedias of ‘Chartrian’ poets, Bernard Silvestris and Alan of Lille (1140s– 80s). The final part of the thesis discusses Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetria nova (c. 1215). Here the mechanical arts are enlisted to represent the student of the verbal arts as a technite, a technician and theorist. Geoffrey’s work is often considered a summa of medieval thinking about poet- craft. But its recruitment of the mechanical arts to picture theoretical mastery also marks the end – and a reversal – of the lesser-known invocation of mechanica by twelfth-century authors, the one I trace here: which cast the author and scholar as a maker proper, a ‘poet’ in the ancient sense of that word. Acknowledgements I would like to thank the University of Cambridge for providing me with the funding to undertake this project via the Cambridge Home and EU Scholarship Scheme. This thesis would also not have been possible without the teaching, inspiration, and support of my supervisor, Paul Binski. Particular thanks are also due to Nicky Zeeman, and Winthrop Wetherbee – both of whom gave generously of their time to read and comment on earlier versions or parts of this thesis. My thanks also to the examiners of my first-year report, Alexander Marr and Richard Oosterhoff, for their invaluable guidance and encouragement at an early stage. I thank Richard especially for his help with Latin; and Neil Wright who took the time to answer questions of translation as I set out with the poets. Finally, I would like to acknowledge the colleagues and friends who helped me along the way, especially Emily Guerry, Amy Jeffs, Robert Hawkins, Otto Saumarez-Smith, Emilija Talijan, Lizzie Marx, Christina Faraday, and Oliver Rowse. Contents Introduction………………………………………….…………………………………..1 Chapter I: Hugh of Saint-Victor ……………..….………….…………………..21 Chapter II: Bernard Silvestris.………….……….……………………………..…54 Chapter III: Alan of Lille………………..……….……………………………..….76 Chapter IV: Geoffrey of Vinsauf……….…………………….…...…….….….103 Conclusion……….……………………………..…………….……………………….127 Figures……………..…………….………….……….………..………………….…...136 Bibliography......................................................................................153 [Abbreviated chapter titles] List of Figures 1. Map showing the major French Schools in the first half of the twelfth century. 2. Orpheus from a homily In sancta lumina of Gregory Nazianzen, in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Gr. Coislin 239, fol. 122v (c. eleventh century). 3. Hugh of Saint-Victor in Leiden, Bibliothek der Rijksuniversiteit, MS Vucanius 45, fol. 130 (thirteenth century). 4. Boethius’ Lady Philosophy in a manuscript of the Consolatio: Leipzig, Universitäs Bibliothek MS 1253, fol 3r (c. 1230). 5. The Marriage of Philology and Mercury on the Quedlinberg Tapestry (fragment), The Quedlinberg Treasury (c. 1200). 6. Reproduction of Philosophia et septem artes liberales in the Hortus deliciarum (begun 1167). 7. Possible portrait of Bernard Silvestris in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 46, fol. 1v (c. 1350–1375). 8. Possible portrait of Bernard Silvestris in Cambridge University Library, MS Kk.iv.25, fol. 118v (early thirteenth century). 9. Diagram of Scientia in the Commentary on Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii attributed to Bernard Silvestris, in Cambridge University Library, MS Mm.I.18, fol. 5v (c. 1200–1220). 10. The cosmos according to Honorius Augustodunensis’ Clavis Physicae, in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Lat. 6734, fol. 3v (twelfth century). 11. Portrait of Alan of Lille, in dialogue with Peter the Chanter, in London, British Library, MS Add. 19767, fol. 217 (1228–1246). 12. The south portal of the west façade of Chartres Cathedral (c. 1144–1145). 13. Donatus on the south portal of the west façade of Chartres Cathedral (c. 1144–1145). 14. Aristotle on the south portal of the west façade of Chartres Cathedral (c. 1144–1145). 15. Wisdom’s Heavenly Journey in Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus, in London, Wellcome Library, MS 49, fol. 68r (c. 1420). 16. Deduccion Loable (‘Praiseworthy Composition’) from Les Douze Dames de Rhétorique, Cambridge University Library, MS Nn.3.2, fol. 36v (c. 1467). 17. Cicero on the south portal of the west façade of Chartres Cathedral (c. 1144–1145). Introduction I. The Mechanical Arts and Poiesis in the Twelfth-Century Schools In his Didascalicon of the 1120s, Hugh of Saint-Victor (c. 1096–1141) was the first medieval encyclopaedist to make the artes mechanicae, ‘mechanical arts’, a valid component of Philosophy, Scientia. This category of arts (known in shorthand as mechanica) had first been named in a philosophical commentary of the ninth century by the theologian, John Scotus Eriugena (c. 800–877).1 But Hugh – a teacher at the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris – was the earliest scholar to elaborate on the category. He divided it up into seven individual artes – fabric making, armament, commerce, agriculture, hunting, medicine, and theatrics – to parallel the traditional seven liberal arts (made up of three verbal arts known as the trivium: grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic; and four mathematical arts known as the quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy).2 While the liberal arts liberate man from material and sensible concerns, the mechanical arts are wholly concerned with the material realm, which they adapt to human utility and comfort. Hugh introduced the mechanical arts by positioning them as the lowest of three works, opera, making up the cosmos: The work of God, the work of nature, and the work of the artificer, who imitates nature. The work of God is to create that which was not … the work of nature is to bring forth into actuality that which lay hidden … the work of the artificer is to put together things disjoined or to disjoin those put together. Among these three works … the human work which is not nature, but imitates nature is fitly called mechanical, that is adulterate.3 1 This was Eriugena’s commentary on Martianus Capella’s De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, discussed in depth in Chapter One (and passim). 2 Hugh of Saint-Victor, Didascalicon 2.20. I use the Latin edition by Brother Charles Henry Buttimer (Washington, D. C. 1939), pp. 38–39. I use the translation by Jerome Taylor, The Didascalicon of Hugh of Saint Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts (New York 1961), pp. 74–75. 3 ‘... opus Dei, opus naturae, opus artificis imitantis naturam. opus Dei est, quod non erat creare … opus naturae, quod latuit ad actum producere … opus artificis est disgregata coniungere vel coniuncta segregare … neque enim potuit vel terra caelum creare, vel homo herbam producere, qui nec palmum ad staturam suam addere potest. in his tribus operibus convenienter opus humanum, quod natura non est sed imitatur naturam, mechanicum, id est, adulterinum nominatur.’ Didascalicon 1.9, ed. Buttimer, p. 16; trans. Taylor, p. 55. 1 He explains that unlike animals, man was brought forth ‘naked and unarmed’, and has to work ‘from nature’s example’, ‘to devise for himself by his own reasoning those things naturally given to all other
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