The Cmo Uato Baivjrsity, H. T . , Vdco Lmi Trid ’Bitjiratiu- W , M Odern
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This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly as received Mic G a : C i. lit v'i. L x . V-bL • J. I v' ll.'i L b AdA'dA,;. VbTbld; U The CMo Uato baivjrsity, h. t . , VdCO Lmi trid ’bitjiratiu- w , m odern University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan Copyright by Siegfried Wenzel I960 ACEDIA AND RELATED TERMS IN MEDIEVAL THOUGHT WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By SIEGFRIED WENZEL, B. A., A. M. * * * * * The Ohio State University I960 Approved by Adviser _ Department of"Engl TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter ^age Introduction ................................................... 1 I The Origins of the Concept.................... 11 II The Development of Acedia in Latin Theology to 1 5 0 0........................ 50 III Acedia in Middle English Devotional L i t e r a t u r e ................................................... 91 IV Acedia and the Mystics...................................155 V Acedia in Medieval Belles-Lettres . 156 VI Acedia and Melancholy........................................209 VII C onclusion...............................................................256 Bibliography ................................................... 25A i i LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Archiv Archiv fur das Sty.dium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen. Beitrage Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittel- Baeumker a l t ers. 1 oxte und Untersuchungen. Ed. Clemens Baeumker. Monster, 1895 PR* / / DSAI-l Dictionnaire de Spiritualite Ascetiaue et Mystique, doctrine et histoire. DThC Dictionnaire de Theologie Patholique. EETS Early English Text Society, Original Series. EETS, ES Early English Text Society, New Series. HThR Harvard Theological Review. JEGP Journal of English and. Gjjrmanif Philo logy. MLN Ik der n Language Notes. MLR Modern Language Review. MP Modern Philology. PG Migne, J.-P. (ed. ). Patrologiae Cursus Completu s . Series Graeca. PL Migne, J.-P. (ed. ). Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Latina. PMLA Publications of^ the Modern Language Association of America. RHE Revue d1Histoire Ecclesiastique. SP Studies in Philology. Spec. Speculum. YW Horstmann, Carl (ed.). Yorkshire W riters. Richard Rolle of Hampo1e, An English Father of the Church, and His Followers. 2 vols. London, 1895~96. i i i INTRODUCTION In his book on Matthew Arnold, Lionel Trilling has described Empedocles'—and young Arnold's—plight a° that of the split between imagination and reason. The ancient world, sunlit and warm and mysterious, is a world the weary Empedocles cannot believe in; imagination is quite dead for him, killed by his knowledge. Rationalism and materialism have de stroyed mystery "by rule and lin e," have clipped the angel's wing and emptied the once-haunted air and Empedocles feels that lif e is no longer to be sup ported.^- Trilling goes on to compare this feeling to eighteenth-century spleen and to the anhedonia, noia and ennui of Arnold's own contemporaries. 2 Then he says, "the Middle Ages called the same malady acedia. ..." Trilling was not the first or the only critic to relate the modern disenchantment with life to the medieval term. T. S. Eliot did the same in his essay on Baudelaire, though he made a rather in- 3 teresting distinction between acedia and ennui. The general tendency of many scholars and lite ra ry c ritic s has been to see in acedia a pred ecessor of various forms of modern melancholy and disgust with life. ^Lionel T rilling, Matthew Arnold (New York, 1959)> P* 85* 2Ibid., p. 8 5 . 5t . S. Eliot, Selected Essays, 1917- 1952 (New York, 1952), p. 559- 1 2 4 This trend, which has alm ost become a fash ion among the l i t e r a t i , began at least with Sainte-Beuve. In his history of Port-Royal he defined acedia as "l1ennui propre au cloitre . ; vine tristesse vague, obscure, tendre, 1‘ennui des apres-midi. Le besoin de 1*infini vous prend . ." and suggested that it was reflected in the infinite longings of Chateaubriand’s Rene.^ The Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique also makes acedia a close relative of melancholy and the mal-du-siecle.^ And Aldous Huxley, in a brilliant though very short essay, says that "accidie is still with us as an inspiration, one of the most poignant of literary themes." He considers it as the ances tor of Renaissance melancholy, Romantic mal-du-sieele, and nineteenth- century ennui, and claims that "the progress of accidie" was set in motion by the great disillusionments of the French Revolution, indus t r ia liz a t io n , and World War 1.^ g What, then, is acedia? Although, to my knowledge, the concept has never been analyzed at length, several short studies have 4See, for example, John Ciardl'• s recent article in the Saturday- Evening Post, March 19, I960, p. 22. ^Sainte-Beuve, Port-Royal, ed. M. Leroy, Bibl. de la Pleiade (Paris, 1952), vol. I, p. 252, n.; cf. also p. 240. ^E. Vansteenberghe, "Paresse," DThC. vol. XI, part 2 (Paris, 1952 ), col. 2026. ^Aldous Huxley, On the Margin. Notes and Essays (London, 19 25 ), pp. 18-25. g In the Middle Ages the form accidia was used interchangeably with acedia. For the sake of consistency I shall use the spelling acedia throughout my study, except, of course, in quotations and in reference to Petrarch’s concept. 5 been published from which a fairly clear account can be drawn. The nineteenth century produced a small number of investigations into the history of the term. Sainte-Beuve*s short footnote, published in 1840, has already been mentioned. In 1852 the French scholar A. de Martonne issued an article on "Recherches sur 1'acedia,"^ which de pends somewhat on Bourquelot's studies of legal aspects of suicide^ and considers medieval acedia as straight ennui de vi e, creating a picture that strongly foreshadows Huizinga's Waning of the Middle Ages. The first landmark in the historical study of acedia, however, was the "Introductory Essay Concerning Accidie" by Bishop Francis Paget of Oxford.^ Paget examined the term as it appeared in patristic litera ture from Cassian on, in Thomas Aquinas, Dante and Chaucer, and in some seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theological handbooks. He also pointed out the survival of the sentiment in various nineteenth-century lite r a r y men. The sharp distinction between the word acedia and the "thing" it signified was also made by H. Cochin, who studied the Greek and Latin history of "accidia," failing however to see its connection with ^A. de Martonne, "Recherches sur l'acedia," Annales de la Societe academique de Saint-Quentin. IX (1852), 187-199. ■^Felix Bourquelot, "Recherches sur les opiniong et la legisla tio n en m atiere de mort v o lo n ta ire pendant le moyen age," B ibliotheque de l'ficole des Chartes. Ill (1841-42), 559-560; IV (1842-45), 242-266, 456-475. •^Francis Paget, The Spirit of Discipline, 4th ed. (London, 1892), pp. 1- 50. 4 the seven deadly sins. 1 ^ Cochin, as well as all other inves+igators, owed much to previous philological studies, notably the article on acedia in Du Cange's Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae latinitatis^ and Dom Gazet's (or Gazaeus') commentary on Cassian's works printed in volume forty-nine of the Patrologia Latina. In comparison with such pioneer work, A. Ernout's recent philological considerations of the term^ have very little to offer. The most comprehensive modern presentations of acedia are found in two encyclopedias. G. Bardy, in the Dictionnaire de Spjri- tualite Ascetique e;t Mystique,^ gives a rich historical portrait of the concept together with many references to the sources. By defini tion, of course, his summary is restricted to auteurs snirituels. The same restriction qualifies E. Vansteenberghe's article on "Paresse" in the Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique,^ which is a solid pres entation of the historical development of acedia as well as of its doctrinal aspects. In contrast, Tarocchi's treatment of "Accidia" ^•^Henry Cochin, Le Frere de Petrarque et l_e Livre "Du repos des r eligieux" (Paris, 1905), Appendix "Accidia," pp. 205-221. ^5"Acedia," new ed. (Paris, 1755), vol. I, cols. 90-91. *^A. Ernout, "Accidia," in Melanges Desrousseaux (Paris, 1957), pp. 161-165- 1 5 G. Bardy, "Acedia," PSAM, vol. I (Paris, 1957), cols. 166-169- ■^Vanste enbergne, ojd. e f t., cols. 2025- 50. 5 in the Enciclopedia Cattolica^ presents no historical material. Wider in scope than these articles is the previously mentioned essay by Huxley, which gives an excellent precis of the history of the phenomenon through fifteen centuries. Many historical data are also contained in a study by P. Alphandery, who analyzed acedia during the centuries from Cassian to St. Thomas from the medico-psychological point. of- view.. 18 Besides the information contained in such individual studies of acedia, much can be learned about the concept from general discus sions of subjects that are closely related to it. Above all, the literature on the system of the seven cardinal sins refers constantly to acedia. Professor Morton W. Bloomfield's comprehensive study of The Seven Deadly Sins^ is basic for the understanding of the origins and history of this thought pattern and represents the point of de parture for my own investigation. Furthermore, acedia is frequently touched upon in works on the origin of monasticism. 20 In this Tarocchi, "Accidia," Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. I (Vati can City, 19^9), cols. 194-195* Alphandery, "De quelques documents medievaux relatifs a des etats psychastheniques," Journal de Psychologic Normale et Pathologiaue. XXVI (1929), 765-787. ■^■^Morton W. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins. An Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept with Special Reference to Medieval English Literature ([East Lansing], 1952). ^ E s p e c ia lly James 0.