PETER BRUEGEL AND ESOTERIC TRADITION

Contents i

Summary vii

Declaration and Statements ix

Foreword 1

Introduction 1. Bruegel in the view of art historians 7

Introduction 2. The Numbering at Bethlehem 29

Part I: The Perennial Philosophy

Chapter 1. Theory of the Perennial Philosophy and Esotericism

Modern Writers on the Perennial Philosophy 72

Esotericism 82

Chapter 2. Lineaments of the Perennial Philosophy in the Hellenistic World

Hellenic and Hellenistic Origins 87

Plotinus 90

Plotinian Psychology 92

Plotinian Cosmology 97

Man the Microsom 105

Iamblichus 109

i

Chapter 3. Lineaments of the Perennial Philosophy in the Christian World

The Primitive Church 111

Origen 113

Symbol of the Seed in John’s Gospel 116

Spiritual Freedom and the Church as Institution 119

Early Appearance of ‘Heresy’ 122

Pagan Traditions in Christianity 122

Esoteric Symbolism in the New Testament 126

The Church Institutionalised 129

Gnostics 130

Chapter 4. Lineaments of the Perennial Philosophy: Gnosticism and Christian

Platonism

Montanism 132

Gnosticism: The Way of Self Knowledge 138

Spiritual Exercises 141

The Tradition in the West: Dionysius the Areopagite 145

Origins of the Cathars: Paulicians, Montanists and Bogomils 148

ii Chapter 5. Lineaments of the Perennial Philosophy: Mysticism in the Late Middle

Ages

13th century Followers of Erigena 153

The Brethren of the Free Spirit 155

Devotio Moderna 157 [08]

Meister Eckhart and the Rhineland Mystics 158

The Friends of God 163

Meditation 164

John Tauler, 1300-1360 166

Henry Suso, 1296-1366 157

Theologica and Imitatio Christi 167

The Brotherhood of the Common Life 181

Chapter 6. Lineaments of the Perennial Philosophy: Renaissance Mysticism

Italy and Renaissance Mysticism 184

Solario’s portrait of Longoni 185

Renaissance Esotericism 189

Perennial Philosophy and Renaissance Mysticism 193

Hermeticism 196

Recapitulation: The Esoteric Way of Self-Knowledge 200

Application of Sacred Tradition in Practice 201

iii Chapter 7. The Family of Love

Lineage of the Family of Love 205

The Hiël Group 206

Bruegel’s Philosophical Circle 207

Abraham Ortelius 209

Sebastian Franck 212

Dirck Volckertz Coornhert 216

Justus Lipsius 220

Christophe Plantin 225

Esoteric Nature of the House of Love and Terra Pacis 227

Esoteric Symbolism in the Gospel 229

Terra Pacis: Text and Commentary: The Spiritual Land of Peace 232

Chapter 8. Esotericism in Art

Hieronymus Bosch 243

Bosch’s Connections to Esoteric Ideas 245

Meditation 247

Bosch’s Connection to the Teaching of Divine Love 251

Bosch and Bruegel’s relationship to the Church 253

Connection between meditation and art in Asia 257

Teachings of the Brethren of the Free Spirit a Survival of

Catharism 259

Ortelius’ Eulogy and the Analysis of H. Stein-Schneider 261

iv

Part II: The Paintings

Chapter 9. The Human Condition: Spiritual Darkness

The Adoration of the Kings 268

The Massacre of the Innocents 282

Chapter 10. Man’s Possibility: Spiritual Work

The Road to Calvary 302

The Harvesters 317

The Fall of Icarus 332

Chapter 11. Man’s Redemption: Spiritual Transformation

The Peasant Wedding Feast or The Marriage at Cana? 344

Appendix 385

Conclusion 433

Bibliography 437

v

vi

Mr

Temple

Richard Chartier Carnac

The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts

PhD

PETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER AND ESOTERIC TRADITION

Summary

The late paintings of Peter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525 – 1569) are full of symbolism and allegory whose meaning has been widely and differently interpreted. Some see Bruegel as a gifted, humorous peasant, others as a satirist and political commentator and yet others as a Renaissance humanist and mystic. There is no consensus on the significance of the paintings and hardly any documents to help the historian.

This thesis considers Neoplatonic humanist ideas at the heart of the Renaissance in Italy and in Flanders in the 16th century, relating them to the historical continuum known as the Perennial Philosophy. This concept is little understood today and this work traces its history and demonstrates that it was widely, if not universally, accepted in the Hellenistic era and in the Renaissance.

It also considers the tradition of religious mysticism in Germany, the Netherlands and Flanders throughout the late Middle Ages that led up to the Reformation and points out that this movement is also an expression of the Perennial Philosophy, citing the works of Meister Eckhart, the Rhineland mystics and the schools that came out of the Devotio Moderna.

The work considers the esoteric, ‘heretical’ school called the Family of Love that claimed among its adherents a number of highly illustrious artists, thinkers and politicians. Such men as Christoffe Plantin, Abraham Ortelius and Justus Lipsius spurned the religious turmoil of the period and rejected Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists alike in favour of an inner mystical state they called the ‘invisible church’. They were close to Bruegel, bought his paintings and, it cannot be doubted, shared his thought.

While there are no surviving documents to prove Bruegel’s personal connection with the Familists, the weight of circumstantial evidence, especially when seen in the context of the Perennial Philosophy, is compelling. However, it is the paintings themselves that open comprehensively and convincingly to an esoteric interpretation – once one has the key that unlocks their meaning. This thesis provides that key and leads the reader through an analysis of seven of Bruegel’s last paintings.

vii

viii Declaration and Statements

This work has not previously been accepted in substance for any degree and is not being concurrently submitted in candidature for any degree.

R. C. C. Temple

5th June, 2006

This thesis is the result of my own investigations, except where otherwise stated. Sources are acknowledged by footnotes giving explicit references. A bibliography is appended.

R. C. C. Temple

5th June, 2006

I hereby consent for my thesis, if accepted, to be available for photocopying and for inter-library loans after expiry of a bar on access approved by the University of Wales on the special recommendation of the Member Institution concerned.

R. C. C. Temple

5th June, 2006

ix

PETER BRUEGEL AND ESOTERIC TRADITION1

Foreword

Structure of the thesis

The Introduction consists of two sections; the first summarises the discoveries and opinions of scholars and art historians during the last seventy years and their differing and often incompatible views as to Bruegel‟s religious and social status and the significance of his art. The second section analyses in some detail his painting The

Numbering at Bethlehem along the line of esoteric ideas and symbolism that will be developed throughout the whole work

The form of the ideas of this thesis could be illustrated by a picture of three concentric circles of which the outer would be the Perennial Philosophy – what Renaissance thinkers regarded as the body of truth drawn by the ancients from their knowledge of the cosmos and which, like the universe, has no external boundary. In writing about the Perennial

Philosophy I have cited Plato and Hellenistic and Renaissance Neoplatonists as well as writers of the 20th-century, among whom are Ananda Coomaraswamy and René Guénon

1 In this work Bruegel‟s Christian name is given as Peter rather than the Flemish Pieter, except in citations that have the original form. Bruegel himself spelt his name Brueghel until 1560 when he changed it to Bruegel for reasons that are not clear. In this work the latter form is used except in citations.

1 and writers associated with their ideas; I have also quoted the theosophist W. Thackara.

Within this is the second circle containing aspects of the Perennial Philosophy that found expression in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance periods and which culminated in

Antwerp in the 16th-century. What may at first appear to be diverse influences are drawn from Renaissance „paganism‟, the mysticism of Meister Eckhart and his followers as well as „gnostic‟ or „heretical‟ schools such as the Adamites with whom Hieronymus Bosch was associated. At the centre of all this – in the innermost circle – is Bruegel or, rather, his paintings, for the man himself is more or less silent and invisible. Yet the testimony of the later paintings is like a kernel containing the wisdom of the Perennial Philosophy.

The paintings are there for all to see and yet their colours, forms and narratives are a veil

– albeit a veil of great beauty – that covers a high order of knowledge. They are, therefore, esoteric.

In fact the form of the ideas set out here is necessarily linear but we can remind ourselves that the right to speak of the ultimate truths of Man and the universe was regarded in the

16th-century as traditionally belonging to the realm of prophets, poets, mystics and artists.

Such men spoke in multi-layered symbols and their vision is not limited to mens and ratio only. Part I is mainly concerned with the now partly forgotten language and ideas in which such philosophical questions were considered.

Chapter 1, then, sets out the case for the Perennial Philosophy as it has been understood in the 20th century with quotations from, among others, Aldous Huxley, Rufus Jones, W.

Thackara and William Quinn who set out what they regard as its basic tenets. Among

2 ancient writers cited are Dionysius the Areopagite and Duns Scotus Erigena generally regarded as the agents through whom the Perennial Philosophy passed to the West.

Introduced here are the concepts of mysticism and esotericism – themes which naturally run throughout the whole work – which are presented to the reader in the light of traditional understanding.

Chapter 2 goes to the Greek sources of the European branch of the Perennial Philosophy: namely Plotinus and his followers the so-called Neoplatonists – among them Porphyry and Iamblichus. Outlines of Plotinian cosmology and psychology are given in some detail since they are the basis of so much of medieval and Renaissance spirituality.

Chapter 3 considers aspects of early Christian thought in the light of perennial ideas.

Here we find the early appearance of tension between the forces of institution and the forces of spiritual freedom. Origen, the father of the allegorical method of interpreting sacred scripture, is cited in connection with esoteric levels of symbolism in the Gospel.

The idea of gnosis is considered and the eventual isolation of various gnostic sects that came to be regarded as „heretics‟.

Chapter 4 discusses these problems further and emphasises the importance the mystical and esoteric aspects of spirituality both within and outside the doctrines imposed by the

Church. It traces the origins of 2nd-century gnostic sects whose beliefs and teachings survived into the 16th-century.

3 Chapter 5, drawing on the writing of Rufus Jones, traces the historical continuity of perennial philosophical thought and practice from antiquity up to the eve of the

Reformation. It considers the mystical tradition, inherited from Dionysius and passing through Eckhart and the Rhineland mystics, that produced the Imitatio Christi and the

Theologica Germanica. This chapter stresses the importance of contemplative prayer or meditation and shows how this practice was the basis of spiritual movements, under the name of the Devotio Moderna, such as the Friends of God and the Brotherhood of the

Common Life.

Chapter 6 looks at the Perennial Philosophy acting on Neoplatonist humanists and mystics of the Italian Renaissance. Reference is made to Edgar Wind‟s work on

Renaissance esotericism and Andrea Solario‟s portrait of Christoforo Longoni is analysed in the light of the idea of self-knowledge as a spiritual exercise and as a central concept of this thesis.

Chapter 7 brings us to immediate and direct influences on Bruegel. These were free- thinking humanists and mystics who occupied the no-man‟s-land between Catholics,

Lutherans and Calvinists; men like Sebastian Franck, Dirck Volckertz Coornhert and

Abraham Ortelius were adherents of the „invisible church‟ where God was understood as

„an event in the soul‟ which could be independent of external forms, rites and doctrines.

Many of them, such as Ortelius, Christophe Plantin and perhaps Justus Lipsius belonged to the sect known as the Family of Love whose leader, Hendrik Niclaes, was the author of the mystical allegory Terra Pacis that recounts the journey from the „Land of Ignorance‟

4 to the „Land of Spiritual Peace‟. Bruegel was closely associated with, if not a full member, of this group.

Chapter 8, drawing on the writings of Herbert Fränger, considers the art of Hieronymus

Bosch and his association with the movement known as the Brethren of the Free Spirit among whom was an extreme group called the Adamites for whom Bosch painted The

Garden of Earthly Delights. Common aspects of both Bosch and Bruegel are discussed.

This chapter discusses the direct relationship in sacred tradition between art and meditation and cites an example of Tibetan culture. It ends with a discussion of Abraham

Ortelius‟ remarks concerning Bruegel; in particular his observation that he „painted what cannot be painted‟.

In Part II, six of Bruegel‟s late paintings are looked at in detail with the aim of assigning their message to one of the three stages of man‟s possible spiritual evolution.

Chapter 9 deals with The Adoration of the Kings and The Massacre of the Innocents whose psychological commentary calls us to see the truth of the human condition – that human beings, enmeshed in the demands of temporal life, do not see that they live in spiritual darkness and ignorance.

Chapter 10, analysing The Road to Calvary, shows that it not only illustrates the consequences of man‟s stupidity but at the same time it indicates that hope of redemption lies in the evolution of consciousness. This possibility is further developed in the

5 symbolism embedded in The Harvesters and The Fall of Icarus where the work associated with plowing the land and harvesting the corn is an allegory of spiritual work.

Finally, in Chapter 11, it is argued that the painting known as The Peasant Wedding

Feast is in fact Bruegel‟s mystical commentary on The Marriage at Cana – the miraculous transformation, symbolised by the changing of water into wine, which takes place when God and man are united. According to Matthew Estrada, whose ideas influence parts of the chapter, this event is sometimes known as the alchemical wedding.

But the circumstances of this process are mysterious in that they do not take place in the material world. The main burden of the thesis is to investigate that „other world‟ to which

Bruegel had access and where, according to spiritual authorities, spiritual transformation takes place.

6

Introduction 1

The life of Peter Bruegel the Elder is a mystery.2 During the entire 44 years of his existence his name is mentioned no more than four times in routine official documents; twice en passant in letters and once, briefly, by a historian.3 Yet he was highly regarded by the intellectual and political elites of his day and by the end of his life, and immediately after, his pictures were sought by the richest in the land: kings, queens, bankers and the emperor Rudolph II.

The earliest contemporary written reference is when he was admitted into the painters‟ fraternity, the guild of St Luke, in Antwerp in 1551. Historians, working backwards from this date and assuming that he was about 25 – the usual age for a painter at that time to be so incorporated – give his date of birth variously as „circa 1525‟, „circa 1526‟ or „between

1525 and 1530‟. The fact that his birth appears not to have been recorded is thought to indicate that he was born of poor peasant stock, as his earliest biographer Karel van

2 For a recent account of his life by a scholar see Orenstein, N. „the Elusive Life of Pieter Breugel the Elder‟ in Orenstein, N. ed. Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Drawings and Prints, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, catalogue, 2001, pp. 3-11. 3 For a summary of all the documents relating to Bruegel‟s life see Marijnissem, R.H., Ruyflelaere, P., Calster, van P. and Meij, A.W.F.M. Bruegel; Tout l’ouvre peint et dessiné. Antwerp and Paris, 1988

7 Mander (1548–1606) states. Van Mander was a Dutch mannerist painter perhaps better known today as the author in 1604, 35 years after Bruegel‟s death, of the Schilder-Boek,4 an anthology of lives of Northern painters, written in response to Giorgio Vasari‟s famous Lives of the Painters, published in Florence in 1550.5 Although written long after the events and not corroborated from other sources, historians have relied heavily on the two or three pages that van Mander wrote about Bruegel because there is no other material relating to Bruegel‟s early life. He begins:

In a wonderful manner Nature found and seized the man who in his turn was

destined to seize her magnificently, when in an obscure village in Brabant she

chose from among the peasants, as the delineator of peasants, the witty and gifted

Pieter Brueghel, and made of him a painter to the lasting glory of our Netherlands.

He was born not far from Breda in a village named Brueghel, a name he took for

himself and handed on to his descendants. He learned his craft from Pieter Koeck

(Peter Coecke) van Aelst, whose daughter he later married … On leaving Koeck

he went to work with Jenoon Kock (Hieronymus Cock), and then he traveled to

France and to Italy. He did much work in the manner of Jenoon van den Bosch

(Hieronymus Bosch) and produced many spookish scenes and drolleries and for

this reason many called him Pieter the Droll. There are few works by his hand

which the observer can contemplate solemnly and with a straight face. However

stiff, morose or surly he may be, he cannot help chuckling or at any rate smiling

4 Karel van Mander, Schilder-Boeck, Haarlem: Paschier and Wesbuch, 1604 5 Vasari, Giorgio, 1511-1574. Lives of the most eminent painters, sculptors & architects, by Giorgio Vasari: newly tr. by Gaston du C. de Vere. With five hundred illustrations, London, Macmillan and co., ld. & The Medici society, ld., 1912-15. The later edition of 1568 mentions Bruegel.

8 … Brueghel delighted in observing the droll behaviour of the peasants, how they

ate, drank, danced, capered or made love … He represented [them] as they really

were, betraying their boorishness in the way they walked, talked, danced, stood

still or moved.6

Van Mander speaks of a voyage in France and Italy and mentions Bruegel‟s friend the merchant Hans Frankert and how they liked to travel into the country together, disguised as peasants in order to visit fairs and gate-crash weddings. He gives a racy account of how, in Antwerp, Bruegel lived with a servant girl of bad character and that later, having broken with her, he went to live in Brussels having married Peter Coeck‟s daughter whom he had known when she was a child. The piece ends with brief descriptions of a dozen or so of the paintings and a quotation from the Liege humanist Domenicus

Lampsonius comparing Bruegel to Hieronymus Bosch, where he says that he „brings his master‟s ingenious flights of fancy to life once more so skillfully with brush and style that he even surpasses him‟.7

Van Mander‟s references to Bruegel‟s early life were written some 80 years after the events. Much of what he writes about Bruegel‟s private life sounds more like reportage of popular hearsay rather than the result of research as we understand it today; there is no independent corroboration though some details of what he says of Bruegel‟s adult life

6 Van Mander, op. cit. from the translation by Grossman, F. Bruegel, the Paintings. London: Phaidon Press, 1955, pp. 7,8. 7 Lampsonius was an associate of van Mander and corresponded with Vasari. See Melion, W.S., Shaping the Netherlandish Canon: Karel Van Mander’s Schilder-Boeck. Chicago: university of Chicago Press, 1991

9 have been verified (for example his travels in Italy) by modern research.8 Some historians have doubted what he says about Bruegel‟s „peasant‟ origins in the light of his intellectual and artistic achievements.9 What Mander writes fits into what Melion calls a

„standard format‟ that served the aims and purpose of the Schilder-Boek in establishing the reputation of Northern painters worthy of humanist ideals and ideas on art, history and landscape current at the time.10 It is not a critique of his painting and it tells us nothing of the intellectual and philosophical outlook of the painter.

Another piece of routine documentary material while Bruegel was alive is the record of

Bruegel‟s marriage to Marijke (Mayken) Coecke in 1663 while a third document, dated

1565 (four years before the painter‟s death), is the banker Nicolas Jongelink‟s financial guarantee to the city of Antwerp in which he pledges his art collection. Among the paintings listed are „sixteen items by Bruegel‟.11 Then there are two letters from the

Bolognese geographer and humanist, Fabius Scipius to his friend Abraham Ortelius in which he asks news of, and sends „friendly greetings‟ to, Peter Bruegel.12 A sixth contemporary document is the mention in the Florentine historian Ludovico

Guicciardini‟s description in 1567 of the Low Countries. There he writes of „Peter

Bruegel of Breda, imitator of Jerome Bosch‟s science and fantasy: for which he has

8 A detailed account of the itinerary through France, Italy, Sicily, Austria and Switzerland is given by Claessens and Rousseau, in Our Bruegel. Antwerp: Mercatofonds, 1969. pp. 141-153 9 E.g. Gustave Glück, Peter Brueghel the Elder, Paris: 1936. Quoted in Claessens and Rousseau: „Gustave Glück refuses to admit Bruegel‟s peasant backround, p. 158 10 Melion, W.S., Shaping the Netherlandich Canon: Karel Van Mander’s Schilder-Boeck. Chicago: university of Chicago Press, 1991. 11 Claessens and Rousseau, p. 31. 12 Op. cit. p. 35.

10 earned the nick-name of Jerome Bosch the Second.‟13 Finally, there is a seventh document, dated January 18th 1569, in which „Master Peter Bruegel‟ is dispensed from billeting Spanish soldiers. Bruegel died on September 5th of that year and may have been too ill to fulfill that obligation.14

During, and immediately after, his life-time, Bruegel‟s admirers and clients were from the higher and highest strata of society. Dominique Allart has assembled all the reliable information regarding ownership of the paintings. From this we know that in 1565, as we have seen, the financier Nicolaes Jonghelinck owned sixteen of the pictures. In 1572 Jean

Noirot, Master of the Antwerp Mint, owned five. Giorgio Giulio Clovio, the celebrated

Croatian miniaturist and friend of Titian, with whom Bruegel as a young man had stayed in Rome, owned five or six paintings listed in an inventory of 1557 all which are now lost. In 1594 Balasius Hütter was secretary to the Archduke Ernest, Governor-General of the Netherlands and his accounts show that the archduke had owned the famous series of six paintings representing the Twelve Months (the great landscape paintings today in

Vienna, Prague and New York; one of these is now lost) together with three further paintings all of which are mentioned in the inventory drawn up after his death in the following year. Van Mander‟s Schilder-Boeck states that several of Bruegel‟s best paintings were by then in the collection of the Emperor Rudolph II. Among other seventeenth century documents we find the names of the statesman Cardinal Granvella

13 Ludovico Guicciardini, The Description of the Low Countries and the Provinces Thereof. London: Thomas Chard, 1593 14 There has been discussion as to whether the „Meesteren van Pieter Bruegel‟ is in fact Peter Bruegel the Elder and not Magister Brugelius, a doctor living at the time. See Claessens and Rousseau, p. 35.

11 (who, during Bruegel lifetime, had been prime minister of the Netherlands under

Marguerite of Parma), Ferdinand II of Prague and Queen Christina of Sweden.15

During the Enlightenment and throughout the Romantic Period, Bruegel‟s reputation reverted to that of „peasant painter‟ and his name disappears from the priority lists of collectors. His emergence from two hundred years of obscurity dates from the beginning of the last century and especially from the studies of the Michelangelo scholar and

Conservator of the Casa Buonarotti in Florence, Charles de Tolnay (1899-1958).16

Tolnay put forward the idea that Bruegel was anything but a peasant, that he belonged to a circle of Northern Renaissance humanists and men of the highest level of education, international renown and profound philosophical insight. More recent scholarship has tended to reject such views on the grounds that they cannot be proved. While it is true that almost no evidence exists establishing a direct source for Bruegel‟s spiritual and intellectual powers, there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence to be found in the wider context of the intellectual life of spiritual people associated with him. The purpose of this thesis is to assemble some of this material and present it in such a way that

Bruegel‟s place in it becomes apparent.

***

15Allart, D. „Did Pieter Bruegel the Younger See his Father‟s Paintings?‟ in Brink, van den, P. ed. Bruegel Enterpises, Bonnefatennmuseum, Maastricht, 2002. 16 Tolnay, de C, Pierre Bruegel l'ancien. 2 vols. Brussels: Nouvelle société d'éditions, 1935.

12 The recent publication of Perez Zagorin‟s survey of the Bruegel art historical literature from 1935 until the present time is a useful summary of what the academic historian regards as the „problems‟ of interpreting the master‟s work.17 Since the beginning of the

20th century Bruegel has „ceased to be seen simply as the naive artist Pieter the Droll and

Peasant Bruegel, chosen, as van Mander said, „from among the peasants‟ to be „the delineator of peasants‟, he has now „been generally ranked among the foremost artists of the Netherlands and northern Renaissance as well as one of the greatest of European painters.‟18 Commenting on Bruegel‟s „masterly sureness and economy of figural draftsmanship in the depiction of human beings in every kind of posture and action‟

Zagorin wonders that many of the paintings „seem to be animated by some idea‟ and that

„one cannot help wondering what attitudes, values, and particular philosophy underlie his works. On this question, however, he tells us „there has never been agreement‟.

As an example he refers to Bruegel‟s peasant scenes, and cites the Peasant Wedding

Feast, as having elicited „very divergent readings‟.19 He says that such paintings „have been variously perceived as comic and sympathetic representations of peasant life by a humane observer, as detached and accurate descriptions by an objective recorder, as graphic allegories of human folly, as visions of an organic community which is passing

17 Zagorin, Perez "Looking for Pieter Bruegel", Journal of the History of Ideas - Volume 64, Number 1, January 2003, pp. 73-96; The Johns Hopkins University Press. http://muse.jhu.edu/cgi- bin/access.cgi?uri=/journals/journal_of_the_history_of_ideas/v064/64.1zagorin.html

18 „Peasant Bruegel‟ and „Pieter the Droll‟ were commonly used appellations in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries to distinguish the painter from his sons; Peter Brueghel the Younger, popularly called „Hell Brueghel‟, and Jan Brueghel the Elder or „Velvet Brueghel‟. Altogether, four generations of painters belonged to the family. 19 Here Zagorin cites Raupp, Bauernsatiren, 271-73; Walter S. Gibson, “Bruegel and The Peasants: A Problem of Interpretation,” Pieter Bruegel The Elder: Two Studies (Lawrence, Kan., 1991); Ethan Matt Kavaler, Pieter Bruegel: Parables of Order and Enterprise (Cambridge, 1999), 24-28.

13 away, as products of a literary and pictorial genre of satirical commentaries on peasant crudity, gluttony, and lechery, and as an expression of the social condescension and moral superiority which humanist intellectuals and the dominant landed and urban classes of the painter‟s time are said to have felt toward peasants and popular culture. These differences and contradictions respecting his peasant paintings are merely an example of the more general problem of interpreting Bruegel which is repeatedly encountered in discussions of many of his compositions.‟ Zagorin points out that „there is no other sixteenth-century artist whose works have been understood in such different and opposite ways.‟20

The same writer says that „… in trying to answer such questions and to elucidate the meaning of various of his works, art historians, beside examining his artistic inheritance, milieu, and imagery in relation to the productions of contemporary artists and predecessors, have also looked for clues to Bruegel‟s thought in the influences that might have shaped his outlook as a result of his personal, social, and intellectual affiliations.‟

This thesis looks at the same clues but is not timid in following the direction they point in even if they lead the researcher out of familiar territory – away from the methodology of art history and into the fields of philosophy and mysticism. Zagorin laments that „the established facts of Bruegel‟s biography are few and much smaller than for that of any major artist of the sixteenth century. The section on his life in the catalogue of the

20 Here Zagorin points out that „Bruegel scholars have often commented on the differences and contradictions in the interpretations of the painter‟s work; see, for example Grossmann, Bruegel The Paintings, 37; the remarks by Marijnissen, passim; John E. C. White, Pieter Bruegel and The Fall of The Art Historian (Newcastle, 1980); Raupp, Bauernsatiren, ch. IV. The collection of essays in the volume on Bruegel in Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 47, ed. Jan de Jong et al. (1996), 24771, contains a comprehensive bibliography on the artist.‟

14 outstanding exhibition of his drawings and prints in 2001 at the Metropolitan Museum of

Art (New York) rightly described his personal history as “still largely a mystery.”‟21

Zagorin states:

The sparseness of documented knowledge about him has nevertheless not deterred

a succession of Bruegel scholars from propounding unsupported speculations and

hypotheses concerning his life, career, and associations. An early instance was

Charles de Tolnay‟s important book of 1935, which attempted to “penetrate the

artist‟s secret thought” and “strip away his masks” in order to identify his

philosophy.22 Tolnay visualized him as a cultured Renaissance humanist who

associated in Antwerp with a group of distinguished scholars, artists, and authors

such as the celebrated geographer Abraham Ortelius (1527-98), the great printer

and publisher Christophe Plantin (c. 1520-89), and the Dutch writer and engraver

Dirck Coornhert (1522-90), all described as religious libertines whose unorthodox

opinions Bruegel shared. Among these men, some belonged to the religious sect

known as the Family or House of Love, of which Tolnay suggested that Bruegel

was also a member. He believed the source of the painter‟s ideas lay in fifteenth-

century Platonic philosophers and humanists like Nicholas of Cusa and Marsilio

Ficino and in the writings of Erasmus and Sebastian Franck. As the dominant

theme in his depiction of human life, Tolnay attributed to him the conception of

an upside-down or topsy-turvy world, the realm of absurdity, fools, and folly.

Bruegel was the “platonicien” of this “monde renversé,” contemplating it with the

21 Orenstein et al. Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Drawings and Prints, New York: Metropolitan Museum, 2001. 22 Charles de Tolnay, Pierre Bruegel l’Ancien (2 vols.; Brussels, 1935), I, intro. and p.20

15 same detachment as he would another planet. In contrast to this attitude was the

artist‟s conception of the greatness and impersonality of nature, to whose eternal

laws human beings were subject. Other than Bruegel‟s friendship with Ortelius,

however, which can be documented, Tolnay had no proof of the artist‟s

relationships in Antwerp and the conclusions he drew from them or any evidence

that Bruegel could have been acquainted with the works of the particular thinkers

whom he identified as sources. Later Bruegel scholarship has been much less

inclined to such over-intellectualized explanations of the artist‟s work. Thus, a

leading contemporary historian of Bruegel and Netherlandish art has cautioned

against exaggerating the philosophical aspects of his art, noting that “there is little

evidence ... that Bruegel‟s pictures are as recondite or cryptic as is so often

believed.”23 In the scholarly literature‟s attempt to uncover the meaning of

Bruegel‟s work through an examination of his biography and personal

relationships, it is easy to find repeated examples of questionable suppositions and

doubtful inferences presented as facts. Tolnay was the first to affirm that the artist

was a religious libertine, a member of the Family of Love, and connected in

Antwerp with intellectuals of heterodox beliefs in religion. Although the only one

of these claims that can be substantiated, as I have said above, is his relationship

with the geographer Ortelius, they have nevertheless been repeated by Benesch,

Stechow, and other noted Bruegel scholars.24 Pierre Francastel‟s book on Bruegel

of 1995, while rejecting the importance of Platonist influences in the painter‟s art,

speaks nevertheless of his possible contacts with heretical groups and considers it

23 Walter S. Gibson, Bruegel (London, 1977), 10, 11. 24 Otto Benesch, The Art of The Renaissance in Northern Europe (Cambridge, Mass., 1945,

16 certain that together with Ortelius he frequented a select libertine milieu of

cultivated friends such as Plantin and Coornhert. In some recent essays by David

Freedberg, we encounter…similar instances of questionable statements about the

artist‟.25

The present work will offer an instrument for the interpretation of meaning in Bruegel‟s paintings based on a spiritual and philosophic outlook that is near to and even part of

Renaissance humanism just as it is near to and part of the insight of the Rhineland mystics. It is a way of looking at the world long known to exist though today accepted by few professional historians and philosophers. It has, and has had, different names and sometimes no name. It is an esoteric tradition and will be referred to here as the Perennial

Philosophy. A large part of this thesis (pp. 72 – 268) is devoted to an exposition of some outer aspects of its ideas – the exoteric and perhaps mesoteric aspects – its place in western thought of the last two thousand years, and to some of those who have been its adherents.

Zagorin‟s survey shows that, on the whole, the art historian‟s view ignores the role in

Bruegel‟s work of universal spiritual truths about man and his relation to earthly life and eternal life. He dismisses the idea of an esoteric philosophy and he refers to the adherents of the school known as the Family of Love as libertines, a word with misleading connotations. Zagorin repeatedly points out that „positive evidence is lacking to prove his involvement in a circle of Antwerp humanists or his religious heterodoxy‟. He lists the names associated with Bruegel: „Pieter Coecke van Aelst, a distinguished artist with

25 Zagorin, “Looking for Pieter Bruegel”, p. 76 ff.

17 whom he is reported to have studied and whose daughter he married; Hieronymus Cock, the well known publisher of his prints whose business was located in Antwerp; the

Antwerp merchant and government official Nicholas Jonghelinck, and the great prelate

Cardinal Granvelle, Philip II‟s principal minister in the Netherlands, both of whom were admirers and collectors of his work‟, and says that „neither these nor any of his other known associations can license the conclusion of another prominent Bruegel scholar Carl

Gustaf Stridbeck that the artist‟s friends numbered some of the most outstanding intellectuals of the time and that in Antwerp he was one of “a circle of political and religious radical humanists” that included Coornhert and Plantin.‟26

Views have been put forward by historians who see Bruegel‟s paintings as political statements against the oppression of the Spanish military forces in the Netherlands, The

Massacre of the Innocents, especially, has been seen as such a commentary, some seeing in the central figure a portrait of the terrible Duke of Alba though the probable date of the picture (1566) would preclude that possibility (Alba entered Brussels in August 1567).

Zagorin finds little support for these views. „If Bruegel meant to make a political statement … it is well hidden. The Massacre of the Innocents is similar to another of

Bruegel‟s paintings on a New Testament subject, The Numbering at Bethlehem in

Brussels, dated by the artist 1566, which also depicts a Flemish village in winter. This suggests that the two works are related and may both be simply unproblematic illustrations of the gospel story.‟ This essay will put forward the view that these paintings are neither political statements nor conventional religious pictures but commentaries on

26Stridbeck, C. G. Bruegelstudien. Stockholm, 1956

18 profound psychological and spiritual realities, traditionally studied in esoteric schools, whose meaning transcends historical time and is as valid today as at any other period.

Regarding the Family of Love and how it has been treated by historians, Zagorin takes a dismissive tone: „The Family of Love belonged to the spiritualist wing of the Protestant

Reformation, a type of religion that brushed aside the literal and historical sense of

Scripture as a dead letter and held that true Christianity had nothing to do with any visible church or creed. In their place, it exalted the spirit dwelling within the individual believer through which God communicates His presence and truth … Familism disdained rites and ceremonies, which it looked upon as childish toys suitable only for the uninitiated; the Familists considered themselves as having transcended the inferior external religion of the Protestant and Catholic churches.‟ This view reveals an attitude that fails to credit the Family of Love as an example of a teaching that can lead men and women to spiritual levels that transcend the human condition. This thesis will suggest the opposite: that the higher level is to be found by searchers for the Kingdom of God (Familists called it the

Land of Spiritual Peace) within themselves in accordance with Christ‟s declaration „For behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.‟27 What follows will show that Bruegel, transmitting perennial philosophical ideas, can lift people from the state of blindness and ignorance of the human condition that condemns humanity to the violence and disorder which characterize daily life.

Current academic thinking about Bruegel, as summarized by Zagorin, does not deny the relationship with the Family of Love of Ortelius, Lipsius, Arias Montano, and other

27 Luke 17:20-21

19 associates of Christophe Plantin. He cites René Boumans‟s comment that „Ortelius‟s religion applies to all of them: their Catholicism “was only intended for the outward world.”28 Connection with the sect, as Leon Voet noted, required from its adherents “the utmost secrecy and ... the necessity to blend, in the perception of the outer world, with the denomination that fitted them best, be it Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinist.”29 The

Familists‟ belief in their spiritual superiority to ordinary Christians was well suited to these humanists and scholars who regarded themselves as an intellectual elite‟. He says that „whether Bruegel himself shared this point of view is an unanswerable question‟. The present thesis shows that, with the help of the ideas of the Perennial Philosophy, this question can indeed be answered; that great psychological and philosophical truths common to the spiritual disciplines of the Familists and related groups can be discerned at the heart of Bruegel‟s painting. Zagorin states that „despite [Bruegel‟s] friendship with

Ortelius, no evidence has been produced that he had any tie to Familism or subscribed to its tenets. We have no reason to suppose either that he was ever anything but a Catholic.

Some of his religious paintings are clearly Catholic in character.‟ The present thesis offers analysis of the paintings to support the idea that Bruegel did subscribe to the tenets of the Familists, in particular to ideas found in Niclaes‟ book Terra Pacis and to ideas that belong to the Perennial Philosophy. As to his religious affiliations it will be shown that he was neither Catholic nor anti-Catholic but „trans-Catholic‟.30 It also shows that

Bruegel, a „thinker in images‟ reveals his attitude to religion in the way he depicts the church in his paintings. Among the pictures Zagorin cites to support his suggestion that

28 René Boumans, “The Religious Views of Abraham Ortelius,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 17 (1954) 377. 29 Voet, “Abraham Ortelius and His World,” in Broeke M, Krogt and P. Meurer, P. eds. Abraham Ortelius and the First Atlas, Westenren: 1998. 30 The phrase is Herbert Grundmann‟s; see below, p.255

20 Bruegel adhered to Catholicism rather than any Platonic or esoteric influences are The

Adoration of the Kings and Christ on the Road to Calvary. This thesis shows that these paintings can be read as illustrating the truth, deep in the human soul, that divine consciousness, represented by Christ and his family, is present at the human level though human beings are practically unable to acknowledge the fact. Further, these paintings, through the artists‟ visual realism – ever a cypher for his psychological realism – reveal the mental and emotional condition prevailing in the human psyche, the state traditionally called ignorance or sleep. Bruegel‟s sure grasp of this spiritual truth, taught throughout the ages by philosophers and sages, allows him – and us – to contemplate ultimate realities.

In this essay the interpretation of Bruegel‟s paintings is based on ideas that belong to the body of universal truth about human beings and their possible relationship to the Divine

World and Eternity. These truths are found in Christianity though not necessarily emphasised in the official theology of the Churches; rather, they are more often accessible through the „invisible church‟, and the „hermaic chain‟31 whose links constitute the strand of esoteric Christianity that belongs to what, for want of a better word, is called the Perennial Philosophy. Esoteric Christianity tends to be gnostic and has been regarded as heretical and therefore dangerous to the status quo maintained and controlled by the established churches. However, esotericism and the Perennial Philosophy, as will be shown, are not social or political movements; their teachings are directed to the search for self-knowledge and the inner life accessed through the practice of contemplative prayer, meditation and spiritual exercises.

31 The phrase is from Rufus Jones (see below and bibliography); today he would have said hermetic.

21

Almost no intellectual or verbal concepts can adequately convey the world of states of higher levels of consciousness, of gnosis, of the action of divine energy working through the human organism. Terms such as „Esoteric school‟, „Perennial Philosophy‟, „spiritual tradition‟, „mystical path‟ and similar expressions function as sign-posts for those who search for truth beyond the outward conventions of religion and morality. With the help of these signs-posts the seeker can find the way leading from his or her subjective state to a vision of objective reality. This Reality, according to ideas of the Perennial Philosophy that will be discussed in this thesis, exists beyond the realm of the senses, beyond the scope of the rational mind and outside our ordinary comprehension of space and time. It certainly lies beyond the realm of scientific method and the academic historian is bound to find attempts to see the influence of mystical tradition and primordial truth as

„questionable suppositions and doubtful inferences‟. Rigorously applied methodology is limited to a world bound by the senses and by the rational mind. This thesis purports to show that Bruegel‟s imagery necessarily includes the physical world while always showing us the wider context in which it exists. He also shows why those bound to the limitations of earthly existence cannot see or know of the higher world of divine energies constantly offered to humanity as spiritual food.

The concept of spiritual food is found in the Old Testament: „Then said the Lord unto

Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day … and it shall be twice as much as they gather daily.32

32 Exodus 16, 4-5

22 And in the New Testament Christ identifies himself thus: „I am the living Bread which came down from Heaven‟.33 This idea can be considered central to the spiritual tradition of the Perennial Philosophy. It is the „supersubstantial bread‟ of the Lord‟s Prayer.34

Elsewhere, as we see in The Harvesters and in The Fall of Icarus, Bruegel has a profound commentary on the symbolism where bread as physical food sustaining physical life is analogous to the spiritual „food‟ or energies that sustain eternal life. If eternal life, or the

Kingdom of Heaven, is within us as the Gospel insists, then we can discover within ourselves the higher truths that the imagery symbolically suggests. Bruegel then – like an icon painter or like any artist who works according to the authentic traditions of sacred imagery – is the agent through whom meaning, perhaps other than that apparently depicted, can pass. Here the function of art is to serve the teaching that helps man towards what the Perennial Philosophy would regard as his highest aspirations: his need to know himself, his need to transform himself and his need to know God. Since man in his material nature is bound to the world through the senses and the rational mind, his approach to a higher world must take physical reality into account while not falling into the error, characteristic of our times, of believing that to be the only reality. Gnostic tradition regards present reality as the point of departure for the spiritual journey that can lead man to realities that lie beyond the limitations of materiality.

This thesis will suggest that those higher realities are to be sought through aspects of the

Perennial Philosophy that Bruegel may have known. With its one message and in its many manifestations, it calls man to his highest possibility: the transformation of his

33 John 6:51 34 For a discussion of this concept see below, The Harvesters, p. 326

23 being. Man must, in the words of Christ, be „born again‟. But before he can begin the process of being reborn he must know himself in the fullest gnostic sense; that is to say that he has to know both his earthbound self and his higher self. He must align his lower nature so as to conform to the higher: „As above, so below‟ was perhaps the most famous of the Hermetic sayings central to Renaissance mysticism. What Bruegel so tellingly shows in his three paintings referring to the birth of Christ is the important gnosis-born realisation that our earth-bound consciousness ignores or denies and even destroys God in us. For the Perennial Philosophy the highest level of meaning in the Christian gospel is neither a code of ethics nor a guide to morality but a teaching, veiled in symbolism, on the entry of a human being into the kingdom of God. Christ tells Nicodemus „Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again (the Greek translates this more accurately as “born from above”); he cannot see the kingdom of God.‟35 According to traditional ideas the concept of the (spiritual) kingdom of God, and our possibilities regarding it, is the most consistent theme of the gospel and nearly all the parables are images referring to it.36

Throughout the Christian tradition there are commentaries on the innermost or esoteric aspects of sacred literature that tell us that such an event as access to the kingdom of God does not take place in what we think of as space and time. We see, for example, in the writings of the Desert Fathers, references to a realm beyond the perceptions of the rational mind and the physical senses.37 We further know that this inner journey has to be

35 see The New Greek-English Interlinear New Testament, Tyndale House, Illinois, 1990, John 3.3), 36 See P. D. Ouspensky, A New Model of the Universe, London, 1931, Ch. I, „Esotericism and Modern Thought' and Ch. IV, „Christianity and the New Testament‟) 37 See especially the Philokalia (see bibliography: Kadloubovsky, E. and Palmer, G.E.H.).

24 conducted according to long established traditions of discipline and practice. In the West, approximately during the last three hundred years, knowledge has tended to become detached from practice and today that balance is better maintained in Asia, as many recent and contemporary accounts by westerners testify.38 However, there are now signs of a revival within our own culture and the writings of Guénon, Coomaraswamy and their followers now constitute a body of material that, according to traditionalists, no serious searcher can ignore.

A recurring theme of Ananda Coomaraswamy, a leading 20th century exponent of the

Perennial Philosophy, is that in the ancient sacred traditions all the arts, including that of painting, served the priesthood and the aim of transformation.39 For the artist working in a traditional milieu the function of imagery was to convey psychological, theological and mystical truth. The master painter was also a spiritual master; for him there was nothing theoretical about ideas; they were the expression of knowledge, acquired through lived experience, of the great laws concerning the creation of the universe and man‟s place in it. The traditional view would be that such laws and such knowledge can neither be given to, nor received by, a mind linked only to the senses and to rationality. Traditional wisdom would regard our scientific rationalism as no more than a preparation for understanding the great truths of man‟s place in the divine plan. Thus Arnold Toynbee tells us: „the Subconscious, not the intellect, is the organ through which Man lives his

38 E.g. the writings of Goldstein J. and Kornfield, J. 39 See, for example, Coomaraswamy, A. K. On the Traditional Doctrine of Art Ipswich: Golgonooza Press, 1977.

25 spiritual life, it is the fount of poetry, music, and the visual arts, and the channel through which the Soul is in communion with God'.40

•••

Today, many see monasticism as little more than „escape from the real world‟ and its practitioners are often considered „useless to the community‟. In the medieval period monastic practise and those who followed it were acknowledged as the spiritual lifeblood of the community. The upheavals of the Reformation in 16th century Europe put an end to much that had become corrupt in the monasteries while the authentic spiritual life flourished in other, non-enclosed, communities such as the Brethren of the Common

Life.41

A central element of spiritual life is the practice of contemplative prayer or meditation.

While this is a principal feature for monastics, it is not exclusively so and today many young people find their way to it through the Zen or Vipassana teachers of the Buddhist tradition. One example is the instruction given by the well-known meditation master, the

Venerable Ajahn Tong Sirimangalo.42 The practice taught in his retreats provides first-

40 Quoted by Rev. Rama Coomaraswamy in The Problems that Result from Locating Spirituality in the Psyche, originally published in Sofia Perennis, it can be accessed at http://www.wandea.org.pl/spirituality- psyche.htm 41 See below, p.161. Note: all the ideas touched on in this Introduction will be discussed – with sources and references – in the body of the dissertation. 42 Venerable Ajahn Tong Sirimangalo, The Only Way: Vipassana Meditation Teachings, translated by Kathryn Chindaporn. Chomtong Thailand: Wat Phradhatu Sri Chomtong, 1999

26 hand experience through direct, practical participation, of much that would otherwise be theoretical about psychological and spiritual states of mind and body.43 In this experience several things about the nature of the mind‟s habitual state of dispersal and the arduous labour needed to focus it become clear. Likewise one sees how the body is unconsciously the slave of lower states of energy and how the same labour opens its susceptibilities to finer and undreamed of higher energies.

In many traditions – Zen brush drawing, Chinese calligraphy, icon-painting – there is an acknowledged correlation between simultaneous interior prayer together with the physical gesture of the artist‟s pen or brush. Insight is intensified in states of concentrated meditation and the meditator sees clearly how one aspect or other of the drama between spiritual labour and mystical insight is referred to in sacred art. Thus what is truly sacred in art will not be the subject depicted but the state of the man or woman who executes it: not what but how it is depicted. Methods, style and technique are no more than tools at the artist‟s disposal to be made use of or not, as the case may be, according to what he deems best. Spiritual work cannot proceed in conditions of inner disorder and ugliness and sacred art will always be perfect, orderly and beautiful. But if these qualities are subverted, as tended to happen in Europe in the modern era, and they serve merely an aesthetic or a bourgeois aim, truth will have given way to illusion and self-indulgence.

43 The retreat is rigorous, made up of long hours with short breaks and two meals taken at dawn and mid- day. The last three days are spent in continuous alternate „walking meditation‟ and „sitting meditation‟.

27 Here the remarks of Said Hossein Nasr on the „distinction between traditional, sacred and religious art … in the context of modern civilization, that is, a civilization no longer governed by immutable spiritual principles‟ are apt.44

In modern European civilization one observes first of all the appearance of an art

which is no longer based on supra-individual inspiration but which expresses

more the individual rather than the universal order, an art which is

anthropomorphic rather than theocentric. Once such a humanistic art, tending

towards psychologization of the human subject became prevalent, especially in

painting, the language of Western art rapidly lost its traditional character …45

Following these remarks and in the light of the visionary insights gained through spiritual endeavour, certain sacred works, often those not intended for public display – for example certain books before the invention of printing such as the Philokalia, or some gnostic documents, or certain icons intended as aids for private devotion – provide experience of mystical truth that can be can be more or less direct. But in works conceived on a grand scale such as sacred architecture or a cycle of paintings such as the

Bruegel series depicting the Months, the truth will be hidden, or partly hidden, by a veil.

But the veil will be of such beauty as to provoke the onlooker into a deeper search.

44 Nasr, S.H. “Religious Art, Traditional Art, Sacred Art: Some Reflections and Definitions” in Sofia A Journal of traditional Studies, Vol. 2 No. 2, Winter 1966. p. 23. 45 Idem.

28 The experience of prolonged and intensive contemplative prayer or meditation shows that when the inner life lacks a guiding principle there is no attention. The writings in the

Philokalia constantly remind us that our mind is ceaselessly occupied with imaginary thoughts, conversations, emotional and dramatic scenarios that are playing in the background of our psyche. „Thanks to the habit of turning among thoughts the mind is easily led astray … is deceived and takes smoke for light.‟46 We occasionally glimpse this and sense our attachment to it, but without applied attention we no longer notice it and we do not notice its debilitating effect on our spirit. Not until we try to engage with the disciplines of contemplative work, does it occur to us what a great task lies before us.

But when we internally become contemplative mystics we have become the companions of the mythic heroes of tradition – from Theseus, the slayer of the Minotaur, to Frodo

Baggins, the Guardian of the Ring. Here, where the journey of the soul begins, we will understand the language of Bruegel‟s imagery.

***

I express my heartfelt gratitude to Khalid Azzam and to Keith Critchlow for the unfailing patience, help and encouragement they have extended to me.

R. C. C. T.

46 Saint Nilus of Sinai (d. 450) “Texts on Prayer” in Kadloubovsky and Palmer, Early Father from the Philokalia. London; Faber, 1964, p. 135

29 Introduction 2. The Numbering at Bethlehem

‘And there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed …

And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from

Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called

Bethlehem … to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.’1

Fig.1

Peter Bruegel the Elder, (1525-30 — 1569) The Numbering at Bethlehem, 1566. Oil on wood 115.5 x 163.5 cm. Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique.

1 Luke 2; 1-5

30

The Numbering at Bethlehem is a large panel in which Bruegel renders his vision of the event described in the gospel of Saint Luke. The theme (apart from copies made in

Bruegel’s workshop) is rarely found in western art and Bruegel’s treatment of it is enigmatic in that the event it purports to illustrate is partly hidden, or at least understated, in the midst of a scenario, that although rich and intriguing as pictorial anecdote, seems otherwise mundane.

The scene depicted is a typical event from contemporary Flemish village life. A tax official has set up his desk at a prominent inn where a green wreath is displayed. Next to it is a plaque decorated with the double-headed eagle, the Hapsburg insignia that gives the tax-collector his authority.

31 Fig. 2

A disorderly crowd of citizens and peasants has already formed around him while

32

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

others, singly or in groups of two or three, arrive from further afield.

33

Fig. 5

Those who are able pay with money, while others must pay with goods.

Fig. 6

The season is winter and, in the snow and on the frozen river, villagers and children are snowballing, skating, tobogganing and playing games on the ice. One notices how

Bruegel catches the moment where teenage exuberance turns to violence. (fig. 6).

34 Fig. 7

Fig. 8

Other details depict events of everyday life. Outside another inn a fire has been lit, possibly as a counter attraction to the tax office at the rival establishment. A group of peasants crowd around it drinking and warming themselves.

35 Fig. 9

At the principal inn a delivery of wine is being made and two great barrels on carts are parked in front of it.

Fig.10

While his two children look on, one impassively while his brother makes a football by blowing up a pig’s bladder

36 Fig. 11

the innkeeper expertly slaughters a pig for roasting while his wife, holding out a pan to catch its blood, instinctively flinches from the act of butchery

Fig. 12

There are other random details: a woodsman unloads a tree trunk from his cart, organizing his strength under its weight.

37 Fig. 13

The smallest figure in the picture: a tiny child – quickly painted in a few deft strokes of the brush – asserts her influence over a goose by waving her arms.

Fig. 14

A woman sweeps a path through the snow.

Fig. 15 Magpies perch on the top of a leafless tree.

38 Fig. 16

Oblivious of all the bustle and activity chickens peck away in the snow.

Fig. 17

It is evening and through the branches of the tree we see that the sun has already begun to set.

39 In the foreground approaching the crowd around the inn is a family group: the man on foot while after him come an ox and a young woman wrapped in a shawl and riding on a donkey. Bruegel, showing us the saw he carries on his shoulder, tells us he is a carpenter.

Fig. 18

They are integrated into the composition so as to pass almost unnoticed. They do not appear, at first, to have any special significance (fig. 18).

fig. 19

In the background, on one side, is a ruined castle now partly converted into a farmstead

(fig. 19)

41

Fig 20

and, in the corresponding place on the other side of the picture, there is a church but it is far away. (fig.20).

The attitudes and gestures of the peasants grouped around the tax office are depicted with a shrewd observation of human nature. Not only the physical attitude but the psychological state of each figure is individually and accurately drawn and these are so recognizable as to permit the viewer to speculate on the feelings and thoughts of each figure.

42 Fig. 21

Directly before the government agent‟s table is a fussy, careful, well-dressed man in a voluminous green coat (fig. 21). He is of some social rank for he wears a sword. His face is not shown but the inclination of his upper body and the angle of his head convey the considered attention he gives to the harsh business of paying the tax as, from the hand of his proffered right arm, while his left securely clutches his purse to his body,

fig. 22

43

the silver coins precisely and painfully clink into the hand of the agent (fig. 22). We can imagine the dismay of his companion, standing to his right, who suddenly realizes he has overpaid; however, he will get neither recompense nor sympathy for his error.

Fig. 23

Behind him, dressed in a striped blanket, a Levantine tries to be cheerful (fig. 23). With hands folded in front of his stomach he sways backwards with a sigh as though trying to persuade himself that „things could be worse‟. (These were the years of violent political and religious upheaval when atrocities were committed against heretics and also against the Moors).

44

Fig. 24

Next in line, standing patiently, silent and resigned, is a worthy in a brown coat (fig. 24).

He is isolated and helpless in his misery at the thought of parting with his last good money. Here, too, the state of mind is expressed through the attitude of the body.

45 Fig. 25

By his right shoulder are a couple of riffraff types (fig. 25). They are dressed as landsknechter or mercenaries and their attitudes suggest swagger and vanity. In a few days one of them will be helping the local military to massacre innocent children.51

51See below where a similar figure appears in The Massacre of the Innocents p. 285 (fig. 6)

46

Fig. 26

Next to them, directly in front of the base of the tree, is a separate situation also to do with money (fig. 26). By their clothes we know that they are not peasants, and Bruegel‟s understanding of how psychological states and energies translate directly into postures and attitudes enables him to depict what is going on, who the personnel are and what their relationship is with each other. It is a pay-out. The chief beneficiary is apparently the younger man in lilac-grey coat whose commanding stance gives him a presence that dominates the other three. Whatever the deal is, they are disappointed but helpless.

47 Fig. 27 Fig. 28

Elsewhere in the crowd we see gawping stupidity and illiteracy (figs. 27, 28).

Fig. 29

48 Best dressed of all is the tax-collector in his magnificent fur-lined coat (fig. 29).

Unctuous, self-righteous and merciless, he takes the money while his ignorant and underpaid clerk enters it up in the ledger — though probably not all of it.

Such is Bruegel‟s mastery: his observation of life, whether grim or comic, whether light- hearted or heavy, compels the viewer‟s interest and attention. All aspects of the human psyche are depicted here with the precision of a specialist which may account for the viewer‟s sense of recognition as he gazes at each person and enters into his life. The viewer senses that Bruegel understands the reality of man‟s psyche, his interior world of thoughts and feelings; but he also understands the body, the organic mechanisms of movement and motor reflexes that constitute a complex of energies ranging from external movement and gesture to the subtlest nuances of psychic energy. The pictorial force of his realism may be explained by his practical understanding of the actions and the energies of the laws of nature with their play on the lives of human beings.

There is a tradition that sees in a town or village a microcosm of humanity: the 150-odd figures represented in it, in the sum total of their behaviour, represent the human condition. Man struggles against the manifest forces of nature, represented here by the harsh conditions of winter. He lives to gratify his immediate physical needs for warmth, food, shelter, money, and the calls of nature (fig. 30).

49 Fig. 30

„Life‟ here, at first, appears to be restricted to the material level and terrestrial values. But there is another life: a life that, according to the age-old religious idea of the ladder, by which the divine can descend to Man and by which Man can ascend to God.52 But because of Man‟s earthbound state of being, symbolized by Adam‟s fall, he is ignorant of the higher realms which is why no one, not a single person in the painting, is aware of the presence of the Holy Family in their midst.

52 See below, pp. 80-84 for an elaboration of Plotinus‟ cosmology. See also R. Temple, Icons and the Mystical Origins of Christianity, (Element, 1990), pp. 35-50 for a summary of the idea of the cosmoses with bibliography and references. Here the author is influenced by platonic cosmology as set out in the Enneads of Plotinus. For a modern version see P.D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, Fragments of an Unknown Teaching; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950, especially Ch. V, pp. 82-98.

50 Fig. 31

The key figure of Mary is in contrast to everything else in the picture (fig. 31). Her presence reflects the stillness of the evening and the idea of what she represents, what she holds within her (symbolized by the basket she holds), adds an altogether new, but invisible, dimension to the whole scene.

51 Fig. 32

We see her wrapped against the harsh weather; but from her lowered eyes and the slight inclination of her head we have the impression that she is entirely self-contained (fig. 32).

Unlike everyone else she has no external concerns.

52

Fig. 33

It does not seem that Bruegel is painting a religious picture or even a history picture; his interest in anecdote and eye for details of behaviour, the precision of his look on the world, take us beyond the conventions of pious art. And yet the theme of the picture is taken from the Gospel. It has been suggested that Bruegel satirizes the holy text but though he does indeed appear to satirize the life of humanity, his treatment of Mary is different. She is a woman concentrated within herself (fig. 33). She does not participate in all the folly of the world, her interiorized state corresponds to one of contemplation and prayer: „I practice silence…I enter a state where my senses and my thoughts are

53 concentrated … with prolonging of this silence the turmoil of memories is stilled in my heart‟.53

She appears in the world as the bringer of the truth whose origin issues from a higher level in the cosmos than that of the surrounding humanity. Nobody sees her; indeed everybody has their back to her or looks away from her. Even we, the onlookers, do not notice them at first and could easily spend ten or twenty minutes „enjoying‟ the painting without ever doing so. Such is Bruegel‟s method that, as we shall see, when he wants to emphasise an idea he hides it or, rather, he partly hides it. All are engaged in their own activity, oblivious of anything else. Only in the movements of the little donkey on which she sits and the gentle ox that accompanies them is there an absence of agitation that corresponds to her modesty and stillness. Here, Bruegel follows the prophecy of Isaiah

„The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master‟s crib; but Israel doth not know, my people do not consider... they are gone away backward‟.54

On a later occasion Christ will enter the city (of Jerusalem) in triumph; here Christ, or the idea of the 'Christ within' arrives not in triumph but unnoticed. „The people‟ (Israel) do not see what is in their midst.

On this scenario of the human condition the sun sets. According to biblical context it is the end of the day, the last day of the ancient order. In a few hours a great drama in history will begin. When the sun rises tomorrow, it will be the dawn of a new era, a new

53 St Isaac of Syria (6th cent.) from “Direction on Spiritual Training” in Kadloubovsky and Palmer, Early Fathers from the Philokalia. London: Faber. 1964, p. 207) 54 Is. I; 3-4

54 equinoctial age. All nature is hushed as if holding its breath to see if anyone will notice, if anyone will turn his head, will glance up even for a second. The sun, the earth and all the planets, including — although we do not see it here — a new star to be seen for the first time tonight, align themselves in readiness for the great event, a drama of the universe of which only humanity is oblivious.

The ruined castle in the background of the picture can be read as a symbol of emptiness.

It has been interpreted as a reference to the destructive and oppressive forces of the

Spanish military occupation of the Netherlands. While this may be so, it may also have a more psychological meaning. In mediaeval country life, the local castle played a significant part in the life of the peasants. It signified security in contrast to the precarious conditions of the life of ordinary people. The castle offered protection in times of war and food in times of want; its lord owned the land on which the villagers worked and could influence the individual direction of anyone's life. Thus, both actually and symbolically, the castle stood as a bastion of strength, security and authority. But this castle is in ruins, destroyed by man's folly and greed, and the people are leaderless, with no one to direct their lives, with no immediate discipline and authority. Once again Bruegel, depicting a psychological condition, is following Isaiah‟s vision: „Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate...‟55 Could the way Bruegel depicts the church, and its correspondence in the composition to the ruined castle, be his way of saying that the church is ineffectual? It

55 Isaiah I, 7

55 will be demonstrated later that, as a follower of Hendrick Niclaes, that would indeed have been his view.56

Fig. 34

Bruegel has given prominence to the innkeeper (fig. 34). We do not see his face but, in his attitude, Bruegel has caught his character. He is a man with a grasp on life. He and his wife and their two sturdy children are comparatively well dressed; he is probably something of a disciplinarian and commands respect in the community. He runs a

56 See below, p. 254

56 thriving business and we see him at a peak moment of trade with a great number of customers to keep satisfied. Probably he has some deal arranged with the tax officials for the increase in business they bring; perhaps a percentage of the day’s takings and free bed and board while they are there. (We know from the testimony of the gospels that all the rooms are let on this particular night). He is a man who appears knows his business; not dishonest but knowing every trick in the book and so very capable of looking after himself. In fact, he is good at his job. We can imagine what sort of place he has: well run, clean and with good service. And yet this man, so much a man of the world, a good citizen, a good father, an honest tradesman – whose profession symbolises hospitality - misses the greatest opportunity of his life; the greatest opportunity ever offered to an innkeeper in all history.

The moment passes, and no one, neither the innkeeper nor anyone else, is aware of it.

Man is oblivious because he is intent on the immediate moment with which he is completely identified, to which he gives himself up entirely. He is the blind slave of circumstances that dictate his life but which he cannot question. Bruegel shows us this in the character of all those depicted in the picture. They are not there for our amusement, neither are they, primarily, a demonstration of Bruegel’s exceptional artistry. These gifts are used to serve what Bruegel serves: namely, the Truth. At the same time, through the way he alludes to the cosmic dimension by including both the sun, the centre of the solar system, and Mary, through whom God Absolute appears on Earth, he suggests the invisible and higher reality through which humanity can relate to the divine.

57

Fig. 35

He brings to the viewer’s attention the man in a red cap closing the shutter of his window

(fig. 35). We see this vignette on the first floor of the inn in the foreground just above the crowd around the tax-collector. This is unlikely to be an incidental detail without meaning; the moment is too powerful. The half-seen figure and the mystery of the darkened room behind him attract our curiosity. There is an intent and purpose in his gesture that suggests the willfulness with which he shuts himself into darkness in the face of the approaching sacrament. He is incapable of recognising his need for salvation and so cannot grasp its proximity.

Bruegel not only gives it a prominence in pictorial terms, he even emphasizes it by repeating it elsewhere in the picture

58 Fig. 34

at the window just above the fire outside the second inn (fig. 34). Here the image is tiny; hard to see even in the original work and more or less impossible to find in reproductions.

Only its symbolic meaning could explain its visual significance.

The carts with hogsheads of wine occupy a central place in the composition and it can be suggested that what they symbolize relates to the painting's deeper levels of meaning. In

Germany and Flanders there still exists the ancient custom of decorating the wine-houses with green branches for the festival of new wine which occurs in December. This is the probable explanation of the green wreath outside the inn. Traditionally, wine symbolizes

‘eternal life, like that divine intoxication of the soul hymned by Greek and Persian poets which enables man to partake, for a fleeting moment, of the mode of being attributed to the gods’.57 In the Old Testament, wine represents God’s eternal gift to Man: ‘he sendeth wine to make glad the heart of Man’.58 The arrival of the new wine suggests here the arrival of Christ’s New Testament, the new or higher truth that will supersede the old.59

In this connection it is interesting to remember the first of Christ's miracles, recounted in the Fourth Gospel where, immediately after the prologue, it begins the account of

57Cirlot. Dictionary of Symbols, London 1962. 58 Psalm 104:15. 59 See Maurice Nicoll, The New Man, London 1950, pp. 33-35 passim.

59 Christ’s life with the changing of water into wine at the marriage feast at Cana, thus establishing his ministry in the world, as the higher truth. Bruegel’s treatment of this theme will be discussed in a later section.60

Already in this commentary are the main themes that will be explored in this thesis.

 The necessity for hiding the important idea. This principle leads to the esoteric

tradition which this essay will suggest flows through the history of ideas and

through Bruegel’s paintings via the Perennial Philosophy. We shall trace this

from Plato and the later Platonic schools (sometimes called Neoplatonists),

through the schools of Hellenistic thought that immediately preceded

Christianity and which succeeded Christianity in Gnostic schools and in so-

called ‘heretical’ ideas that existed in Europe until the 16th century and later,

despite intense persecution, under different names but always following in the

direction of the same primordial truth.

 One of these was a movement known as the Family of Love or House of Love

(Domus Caritatis, Huis der Lief) that had grown out of the New Devotion and

from the mystics, such as Meister Eckhart, of the 14th century. It was founded

by Hendrik Niclaes and several of Bruegel’s close associates were part of a

small, close-knit fellowship of Familists known as the Hiël Group.

60 See below, The Marriage at Cana, p. 332 ff

60

 Bruegel’s visual references to biblical texts, from both Old and New

Testaments, suggest a profound psychological and spiritual understanding of

Christianity far from the politicized positions of the institutionalized churches

on either side of the Reformation divide. Here is the idea of the ‘invisible

church’ whose ideas belong to what has been called esoteric Christianity.

 Bruegel is a student of the human condition which he observes with biting

sarcasm and grim humour. His eye for truth and the basic realities that

motivate human behaviour is relentless and uncompromising yet he is never

without compassion. He shows us what all great religious and philosophical

teachers have shown: that Man is inwardly asleep, enslaved by the

circumstances of his life and blinded by them. But he sees this (and calls us to

see it too) from the point of view of man’s possible liberation. He understands

not only that Man must awaken, he shows us the ideas and the method by

which this can be done.

 Much of humanity’s difficulty comes from his loss of knowledge of a life

higher than his own. He has forgotten the existence of the higher world though

Bruegel never omits this dimension even though humans are oblivious to it.

The viewpoint in the paintings is nearly always from tree-top height.

Everything in the paintings takes place under invisible and higher influences

acting through the laws of nature and of the cosmos. Corresponding to the

61 cosmic dimension is the painter’s knowledge of Man’s inner world (the

microcsomos) and its possibilities that lead to knowledge of higher and lower

psychical levels or states of being.

 The depiction of Mary as a person in a concentrated, interiorized state shows

something of the practical method for realizing an active relationship between

God and a human being. It is as though she followed the injunction of

Albertus Magnus:

When thou prayest, shut thy door – that is the door of thy senses.

Keep them barred and bolted against all phantasms and images ...

Do not think about the world, or thy friends, nor about the past,

present or future; but consider thyself to be outside the world and

alone with God, as if thy soul were already separated from the

body and had no longer any interest in peace or war or the state of

the world. Leave the body and fix thy gaze on the uncreated light.

Let nothing come between thee and God.61

 For Bruegel the crowd populating a town, such as Bethlehem, is a symbol for a

person. In sacred tradition a city or a town is an allegory for a person, its

inhabitants denoting different sides of his or her character. The author of The

Teaching of Silvanus is referring to psychological states and events when he

employs the symbol of the city as an analogy for the inner life:

61 For the full quotation see below p. 148.

62

Throw every robber out of your gates. Guard all your gates with

torches … he who will not guard these … will become like a city

which is desolate since it has been captured, and all kinds of wild

beasts have trampled on it. For thoughts which are not good are

evil wild beasts. And your city will be filled with robbers and you

will not be able to acquire peace but only all kinds of savage wild

beasts … the whole city, which is your soul, will perish …

Remove all these … bring in your guide and your teacher. The

mind is the guide, but reason is the teacher.62

The ruined castle in the background of the painting could be an expression of this

idea. Bruegel, as we shall show, was almost certainly a follower of Hendrik

Niclaes for whom ‘The City is a spiritual City of Life’.63

The first part of this thesis will consider a body of philosophical and religious ideas that developed parallel to, but sometimes independently from, the theology of the established church. Its origins are diverse and some are older than historical Christianity. An example of such alternative thought are the ideas of the Gnostic schools of the 2nd and 3rd centuries which, despite severe repression, were periodically revived, for example, by the Cathars

62 ‘Teaching of Silvanus’, Nag Hammadi Library in English, p.347 63 See below, p. 398

63 in the 12th century. Gnostic interpretations of the account of the Fall provide a view of why the general life of humanity is condemned to exist far from the higher cosmic plane that is the soul’s true abode.64 It is also clear that it is from this terrestrial plane, so far from God, that the ‘return’, through the search for redemption, begins. Here, Bruegel appears to follow such an alternative mystical tradition by taking the concepts of the Fall and Redemption as psychical levels or states of being and that it is from the point of view of such ideas that he observes the human condition. Spiritually, Man is enslaved, and the condition of his slavery is both psychological and cosmological. Psychological, because of the neglected possibilities lying dormant in the psyche (the microcosm); cosmological, because of the low place in the universe in which he lives.

A characteristic of esoteric tradition in interpreting the gospel is the emphasis on the idea that the events described are not only historical but also taking place in the present moment; that they are not only geographical but also located in the inner life of the individual. In this context Meister Eckhart speaks thus about Christmas: ‘Here in time, we are celebrating the eternal birth which God the Father bore and bears unceasingly in eternity’ (Sermon One). Also St Augustine: ‘What does it avail me that this birth is always happening, if it does not happen in me?’65 From this point of view, Tradition takes the higher meaning of the Numbering at Bethlehem to be an event in the journey of self-realisation. Thus this experience exists as a possibility in the life of all men at all times; that is why the literal understanding of time is suspended here. What happened

64 See Geddes MacGregor, Gnosis: a Renaissance in Christian Thought, Illinois, Madras, London: Quest Books, 1979, pp. 21, 45; Jonas, H. The Gnostic Religion: The Message of an Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958, p. 214 ff; also G. R. S. Mead, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, (London 1900). 65 M. O’C. Walshe, Meister Eckhart, Sermons ad Treatises, Vol. 1. p. 1., London, 1979.

64 'then' is also happening 'now' and 'now' always exists. These truths are perennial and the questions to which they relate are outside time, that is to say they are permanently present, now. Bruegel succeeds in bringing us this perennial vision because, in the picture, time has stopped: suddenly and at an unexpected moment with everyone frozen into the attitude which he held. It gives Bruegel – and us – an opportunity to see people exactly as they are at that moment. It has the effect of reminding us that the situation is a constant one and that the problem it reveals is as relevant today as it was on the first

Christmas Eve. In other words, by updating the environment of the first Christmas Eve,

Bruegel makes it contemporary and relevant as a real and personal question and not just a historical event.

Contemplation of the painting’s inner meaning can confront the viewer with the question:

Am I the innkeeper? Bethlehem and its inhabitants symbolically represent contemporary humanity and, since each man spiritually typifies humanity, it can be thought of as a representation of the inner self: all the different figures in the picture represent characteristics of the self. No one is free from the doubt, vanity, stupidity, ignorance, self-importance – the full spectrum of the human condition that is portrayed here.

According to the wisdom of the Perennial Philosophy, all these characteristics are to be found in the multiplicity of an individual’s nature and no seeker of reality can long avoid this truth.

65 The second part of the thesis, analyzing the paintings, will show that Bruegel’s images represent a teaching – we have called it the Perennial Philosophy – that sees three stages in the spiritual journey of humanity.

1. Man asleep: the majority, unconsciously going about their worldly affairs – war

and politics or the pursuit of domestic, material and local needs.

The Numbering, The Adoration and The Massacre of the Innocents, deal

mainly with the ignorance and tragedy of man asleep and his inability to

comprehend even the idea man can awaken. The world of man asleep is

barbaric and chaotic. The Road to Calvary continues with this theme of

man enslaved by the forces of nature of which he has no knowledge. In

this picture Bruegel introduces clues about the necessary conditions for

awakening.

2. Man awake: represented pictorially as Christ sometimes with his Mother and

the apostles.

The members of Christ’s personal entourage in The Road to Calvary are

shown to be on a higher level than the mass of humanity bound to the

wheel of life. In the painting this is represented socially and

topographically but it has to be understood allegorically.66

66 See below, p. 302

66

3. Man in the process of awakening.

The next two pictures, The Harvesters and The Fall of Icarus, show us

man overcoming his passivity; he works: utilizing his intelligence and

innate faculties so that nature and the elements serve him; he becomes

their master and not their slave. What Bruegel actually depicts –

harvesting, ploughing etc. – are to be understood as symbols of spiritual

work: prayer, meditation, raising the level of consciousness.

Finally, in the (we suggest wrongly titled) Peasant Wedding Feast,

Bruegel reveals the miracle of inner transformation, of which water

changing into wine is a symbol, by which inner awakening for a person

can happen.

The reference to Bruegel’s Road to Calvary mentioned the wheel of life. This universal symbolic idea, well known to Buddhists as Samsara, passes into European thought and the Perennial Philosophy through the Neo-Platonists. ‘To Pythagoreans, the soul is immortal. When a body dies, the soul ascends to the One. After a judgment period, the

67 soul is allowed to descend and enter into another body and reside. This movement is circular, and Neo-Platonists therefore conceptualized all souls as on a wheel of life’.67

The Wheel of Life was widely depicted by artists and writers throughout the Middle

Ages. The theme appears to have been introduced in around 520 by Boethius in his

Consolation of Philosophy.68 Dante, for example, offers a description of the way that

Fortune influences human lives.

No mortal power may stay her spinning wheel.

The nations rise and fall by her decree.

None may foresee where she will set her heel:

She passes, and things pass. Man's mortal reason cannot encompass her. She rules her sphere as the other gods rule theirs.

Season by season her changes change her changes endlessly, and those whose turn has come press on her so, she must be swift by hard necessity.69

Shakespeare frequently depicts Fortune as a wheel: ‘Fortune good night: smile once more: turn thy wheel!70 ‘And turn the giddy round of Fortune's wheel’; 71 ‘Fortune's furious fickle wheel.’72

67 See The Relationship between Neoplatonic Aesthetics and Early Medieval Music Theory: The Ascent to the One (Part 1) by Glen Wegge (http://www.musictheoryresources.com/members/MTA_1_2.htm) 68 Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, tr. V.E. Watts (Penguin, 1969). 69 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow). http://www.everypoet.com/Archive/poetry/dante/dante. Inferno VII 82-90 70 Kent in Lear, act 2 scene 2 71 Rape of Lucrecia (stanza 136).

68

A 14th century miniature shows Fortune turning the wheel (fig. 35).on which humans rise and fall in a figure whose principle elements occur on the 10th card of Major Arcana the

Tarot.73

Fig. 35

72 Henry V act 3, scene 6.

73 Wheel of Fortune, 1342, Pisan School, from Ammaestramenti degli Antichi by Bartholomeo da Santa Concordio in Pettrocchi, George ed., Scrittori religiosi del Trecento, Sansoni, Florence 1974.

69

Of interest in this connection is the 14th century

Greco-Romanesque Cross located in front of the

Church of St. Nicholas at Gambatesa in South

Italy. This Cross, extracted from a single block of

solid stone, is inscribed in a wheel by undulating

curved lines. On one face of the Cross is the

crucified Christ with the Madonna, St. John and a

skull; on the other face is the triumphant Christ

who gives a blessing, surrounded by the symbols

of the Four Evangelists. The Cross, by its structure and carving, recalls the typical Celtic stone crosses with their wheels around the crucifix (fig. 36).74

Writers on symbolism necessarily draw on the wide range of allusions and references: the

‘Wheel of Life’, the ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and the ‘Wheel of the Year’ with their zodiacal and cosmological implications. ‘[The wheel] is, therefore, a symbolic synthesis of the activity of cosmic forces and the passage of time’.75

We note that Bruegel places a wheel in the relatively empty space at the centre of his painting (fig. 37) at the point where the two main diagonal movements of the composition intersect (fig. 38). Furthermore, the image of the wheel is repeated more than twenty times in the picture.

74 http://www.roangelo.net/gambatesa/ 75 J.E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, London, 1962, p. 351

70

Fig. 37

Fig. 38

71 Part I. The Perennial Philosophy

Chapter 1. Theory of the Perennial Philosophy and Esotericism

Modern writers on the Perennial Philosophy

Throughout the 20th century a number of influential writers revived the idea, well known in antiquity and in Renaissance times, of the Philosophia Perennis.1 According to this idea there exists a universal source of wisdom and knowledge common to philosophical and religious traditions throughout all ages. It is regarded as the fountain of primordial truth higher than man and said to reflect divine consciousness and eternal realities. The idea was first popularized by Aldous Huxley more than 60 years ago. His book The

Perennial Philosophy is a collation of sayings and commentaries demonstrating a concordance of thought among the great religious teachers and philosophers of all ages and different traditions.2 Whitall Perry, responding to A. K. Coomaraswamy‟s remark that „the time is coming when a Summa of the Philosophia Perennis will have to be written‟, published in 1971 his Treasury of Spiritual Wisdom, an 1100-page anthology of quotations and sayings from Hindu, Buddhist, Greek, Hermetic, Jewish, Christian and

Gnostic wisdom where the reader, according to the Introduction, „will encounter the heritage he shares with all humanity‟.3 Huxley‟s own definition of the perennial

1 A useful overview of modern writers on the perennial philosophy is William W. Quinn, Jr., The Only Tradition, SUNY, 1997. The book is an introduction to the work of René Guénon, A.K. Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon , Charles B. Schmitt and others. See also J. Needleman ed., The Sword of Gnosis, Baltimore, 1974 2 Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, Harper and Brothers 1945. Another good introduction is Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. 3 Whitall Perry, Treasury of Spiritual Wisdom, George Allen and Unwin, 1971. A.K. Coomaraswamy (1877-1947), “a cardinal figure in Twentieth-century art history and in the cultural confrontation between East and West,” (Princeton University Press Bollingen Series LXXXIX Vol. I Coomaraswamy: Traditional

72 philosophy is: „the metaphysic that recognizes a divine Reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with, divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of the immanent and transcendent Ground of all being – the thing is immemorial and universal. Rudiments of the Perennial Philosophy may be found among the traditional lore of primitive peoples in every region of the world, and in its fully developed forms it has a place in every one of the higher religions.‟4

W. T. S. Thackara, the theosophical writer, states that:

The idea of a perennial philosophy, of a common denominator rather, a highest

common factor – forming the basis of truth in the world's manifold religious,

philosophic, and scientific systems of thought, goes back thousands of years at

least. Cicero, for example, speaking about the existence of the soul after death,

mentions that not only does he have the authority of all antiquity on his side, as

well as the teachings of the Greek Mysteries and of nature, but that "these things

are of old date, and have, besides, the sanction of universal religion".5

Thackara, laying out the basic foundations of the Perennial Philosophy, lists the following tenets:

Art and Symbolism, Vol. II Coomaraswamy: Metaphysics, Vol. III Coomaraswamy: His Life and Work). He was described by Heinrich Zimmer as “that noble scholar upon whose shoulders we are still standing.” 4 Aldous Huxley, The Perennial Philosophy, Harper & Brothers, 1945; p. vii. 5 Tusculan Disputations, C. D. Yonge, trans., George Bell & Sons, 1904; Book I, xii-xiv. The author is W. W.T.S. Thackara writing in Sunrise Magazine, April/May 1984. Copyright © 1984 by Theosophical University Press.

73 1. This phenomenal world of matter and individual consciousness is only a partial

reality and is the manifestation of a Divine Ground in which all partial realities

have their being.

2. It is of the nature of man that not only can he have knowledge of this Divine

Ground by inference, but also he can realize it by direct intuition, superior to

discursive reason, in which the knower is in some way united with the known.

3. The nature of man is not a single but a dual one. He has not one but two selves,

the phenomenal ego, of which he is chiefly conscious and which he tends to

regard as his true self, and a non-phenomenal, eternal self, an inner man, the

spirit, the spark of divinity within him, which is his true self. It is possible for a

man, if he so desires and is prepared to make the necessary effort, to identify

himself with his true self and so with the Divine Ground, which is of the same or

like nature.

4. It is the chief end of man's earthly existence to discover and identify himself

with his true self. By doing so, he will come to an intuitive knowledge of the

Divine Ground and so apprehend Truth as it really is, and not as to our limited

human perceptions it appears to be. Not only that, he will enter into a state of

being which has been given different names: eternal life, salvation,

enlightenment, etc.

Further, the Perennial Philosophy rests on two fundamental convictions:

74 1. Though it may be to a great extent atrophied and exist only potentially in most

men, men possess an organ or faculty which is capable of discerning spiritual

truth, and, in its own spheres, this faculty is as much to be relied on as are other

organs of sensation in theirs.

2. In order to be able to discern spiritual truth men must in their essential nature

be spiritual; in order to know That which they call God, they must be, in some

way, partakers of the divine nature; potentially at least there must be some kinship

between God and the human soul. Man is not a creature set over against God. He

participates in the divine life; he is, in a real sense, 'united' with God in his

essential nature, for, as the Flemish contemplative, the Blessed John Ruysbroeck,

put it: “This union is within us of our naked nature and were this nature to be

separated from God it would fall into nothingness.”

Thackara‟s reference to the greatest of the Flemish mystics in the 14th century is apt for the ideas that will be developed in this study. In looking at the intellectual and spiritual background to the ideas that may have influenced Bruegel and even played a formative part in his inner world, we shall come across Gerard Groote (1340-1384) who venerated

Ruysbroek and who is considered the founder of the Brethren of the Common Life and of the Devotio Moderna, the religious movement that contributed so significantly to the

Protestant Reformation.6 Through Groote, Ruysbroeck's influence helped to mould the spirit of the Windesheim School, which in the next generation found its most famous

6 See below, p. 153

75 exponent in Thomas à Kempis whose writings, the Imitatio Christi, together with the

Theologica Germanica, will be considered at length.7 Thackara continues:

This is the faith of the mystic. It springs out of his particular experience and his

reflection on that experience. It implies a particular view of the nature of the

universe and of man, and it seems to conflict with other conceptions of the nature

of the universe and of man which are also the result of experience and reflection

in it.

There is a poem by the late Latin poet and philosopher, Boethius, which,

translated, opens as follows: „This discord in the pact of things,/ This endless war

'twixt truth and truth,/ That singly held, yet give the lie/To him who seeks to hold

them both ...‟ In the world, constituted as it is, men are faced not with one single

truth but with several 'truths,' not with one but with several pictures of reality.

They are thus conscious of a 'discord in the pact of things,' whereby to hold to one

'truth' seems to be to deny another. One part of their experience draws to one,

another to another. It has been the eternal quest of mankind to find the one

ultimate Truth, that final synthesis in which all partial truths are resolved. It may

be that the mystic has glimpsed this synthesis.8

William W. Quinn, a contemporary writer on the Perennial Philosophy, says „Recorded history evidences the existence of an esoteric, primordial tradition based upon a set of a

7 See below p. 167 ff. For notes on Groote‟s relationship with Ruysbroeck see http://www.bookrags.com/biography-gerard-groote/ 8 http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/general/ge-wtst.htm

76 priori and immutable first principles, true now as always, which in all places and at all times have had expositors.‟9 His book is an exposition of the ideas of René Guénon, of

Ananda Coomaraswamy and, to an extent, of Frithjof Schuon.10 It partly attempts to place these men and their thought in relation to that of more conventional academic and professional 20th-century philosophers and, more importantly, demonstrates the significance of the great historical beacons of light that Guénon, Coomaraswamy and their associates set out to rekindle. Following philosophical tradition, e.g. Origen‟s De

Principiis,11 well known to students of early Christianity, Quinn lists the following „first principles‟ of the Perennial Philosophy:

1. The Absolute and the One: „Being is one, or rather it is metaphysical Unity

itself...‟ (Guénon);

9 William W. Quinn, Jr., The Only Tradition, SUNY, 1997, p. xiv

10 Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy (1877 - 1947 Needham, Massachusetts) was the son of the famous Sri Lankan legislator and philosopher Sir Mutu Coomaraswamy and his English wife Elizabeth Beeby. He became a pioneering historian and philosopher of Indian art, and a great interpreter of Indian culture to the West. He was also a tireless campaigner for the regeneration of Hinduism. In 1917, he became the first Keeper of Indian art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He stressed the spiritual element in Indian art … Along with René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon, Coomaraswamy is regarded as one of the three founders of the Traditionalist School. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ananda_Coomaraswamy). René Guénon (1886- 1951) was a French-born author, philosopher, and social critic of the early 20th century. He was the founder of the Traditionalist School. (http://www.answers.com/topic/ren-gu-non). Frithjof Schuon (1907- 1998), is best known as the foremost spokesman of the religio perennis and as a philosopher in the metaphysical current of Shankara and Plato. Over the past 50 years, he has written more than 20 books on metaphysical, spiritual and ethnic themes as well as having been a regular contributor to journals on comparative religion in both Europe and America. Schuon's writings have been consistently featured and reviewed in a wide range of scholarly and philosophical publications around the world, respected by both scholars and spiritual authorities. (http://www.worldwisdom.com)

11 Origen “De Principiis” in Nicene and Ante-Nicene Fathers, Ser. II, Vol I: The Church History. http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/

77 2. Aeviternity: eternal existence, everlasting, immanent duration; the eternal

present as discussed in the Timaeus;

3. Periodicity: ebb and flow; flux and reflux; day and night; life and death; „An

absolutely fundamental law of the Universe‟;

4. Duality (or polarity): quoting Coomaraswamy: „every [traditional] ontological

formulation affirms the Duality of Unity and the Unity of Duality‟;

5. Cause and Effect (Karma): action, or action and reaction;

6. Gnosis: intellectual intuition. „In the hierarchy of subtle bodies ... the highest is

the seat of intellectual intuition‟.12

It will appear from what follows that the body of material, accumulated over more than two thousand years, which may be described as the western mystical tradition, overlaps or coincides with the ideas of the Perennial Philosophy. Thackara states that „Not only have mystics been found in all ages, in all parts of the world and in all religious systems, but also mysticism has manifested itself in similar or identical forms wherever the mystical consciousness has been present. Because of this it has sometimes been called the

Perennial Philosophy‟.13

The historian of religious mysticism Professor Rufus Jones says „I use the word mysticism to express the type of religion which puts the emphasis on immediate

12 William W. Quinn, Jr., The Only Tradition, SUNY, 1997 13 Thackara, op. cit.

78 awareness of God, on direct and immediate consciousness of the Divine Presence.14 It is religion in its most acute, intense and living stage … Religion of this mystical type is not confined to Christianity, but belongs, in some degree, to all forms of religion.‟15 From which the author‟s sympathy for the idea of the Perennial Philosophy can be inferred though the term was not in current use at the time (1909) that he was writing. Jones also emphasizes the idea of tradition‟s continuous chain: „There has been a continuous prophetical procession, a mystical brotherhood through the centuries, of those who have lived by the soul‟s immediate vision … The Church … has always had beneath its system of organization and dogma a current, more or less hidden and subterranean, of vital, inward, spiritual religion, dependant for its power of conviction, not on books, councils, hierarchies or creeds…but upon the soul‟s experience of eternal Realities.‟16 Elsewhere, like many authors sympathetic to the idea of the Perennial Philosophy, he speaks of an unbroken succession of teachers, or, as they themselves called it „a Hermaic chain‟17 from Plotinus to the closing of the Athenian Academy of Philosophy by order of Justinian in the year 529. In the latter period it had fallen under such corrupting influences as superstition and magic – „But the successive masters in the long line of Neoplatonic thought kept burning the torch which Plato had lighted, and passed it for the Christian scholars to take up when they were ready for it.‟18

14 Rufus Matthew Jones (1863-1948), American philosopher, mystical scholar, Quaker historian and social reformer, M.A, Harvard in 1901. He was the author of over 50 monographs; a world traveller, Jones met with Mahatma Gandhi at his ashram in India, and spoke with religious leaders in China and Japan.

15 Rufus M Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, Macmillan, 1909, p. xv 16 Jones, p. xiv 17 Today he would have said „hermetic‟. 18 Jones p. 77

79 This definition of mysticism is close to that of Eckhart‟s translator, M. O‟C. Walsh, who affirms that it is „very ancient‟ and „found in the religious traditions of the whole world.‟

The specifically Christian mystical tradition with some certainty can be traced back to

Alexandria. Its direct source was the Neoplatonism of Plotinus (ca. 204-270), who in

his Enneads taught that all things emanate from the One, the return to which can be

achieved by the contemplative path of detachment from all compounded things and a

turning to „pure simplicity‟. Neoplatonism was incorporated into Christian thought by

the anonymous writer who called himself Dionysius the Areopagite (ca. 500), who

pretended to be St Paul‟s Athenian disciple (Acts 17:34), and by his Latin translator

John Scotus Erigena (ca. 810-880).19

Thackara claims that „the most comprehensive modern presentation of "theosophia perennis," with proofs of its diffusion throughout the world in every age, may be found in the writings of H. P. Blavatsky, in particular in her magnum opus, The Secret Doctrine, subtitled "The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy." Taught herself by more advanced students of the theosophic tradition, she wrote that

The teachings, however fragmentary and incomplete, contained in these volumes,

belong neither to the Hindu, the Zoroastrian, the Chaldean, nor the Egyptian

religion, neither to Buddhism, Islam, Judaism nor Christianity exclusively. The

Secret Doctrine is the essence of all these. Sprung from it in their origins, the

various religious schemes are now made to merge back into their original

19 M. O‟C. Walsh, Meister Eckhart, Sermons and Treatises, Vol. I, London 1979, p.xiii

80 element, out of which every mystery and dogma has grown, developed, and

become materialized‟.20

*****

What follows is an outline connecting the history of some of these ideas from Plato until the 16th century. This outline is intended to show that there runs throughout European religious thought, often hidden like an underground stream, though always known to exist if at times only by a few, a current of mystical philosophy whose source is regarded as higher than human reason and which is the original and pure wisdom common to the great philosophical and religious traditions. In particular – and this will be a main argument of this thesis – it provides a key to a body of Christian ideas that has often been regarded by the theological authorities of the Church either as heresy or on the margins of orthodoxy. It will be suggested that ideas that resonate with the Perennial Philosophy provide a way of understanding the hidden (or partly hidden) deeper meaning of the paintings of Peter Bruegel the Elder.

It will be shown later that Bruegel was a student of the idea that man has „not one but two selves, the phenomenal ego, of which he is chiefly conscious and which he tends to regard as his true self, and a non-phenomenal, eternal self, an inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within him, which is his true self‟ and that he devoted his art to exploring the possibility given to human beings of making the transition from the one to

20 H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine I, Originally published 1888. Theosophical University Press electronic version ISBN 1-55700-124-3, p. viii

81 the other. The Perennial Philosophy has many images for this process: „awakening from sleep‟, „death‟ (i.e. dying to self) and „re-birth‟, „Fall and Redemption‟, „unconsciousness and consciousness‟ and many others. The idea will be put forward, for example, in an analysis of Bruegel‟s famously enigmatic The Fall of Icarus that the two principle figures in the composition, the ploughman and the shepherd, represent the essential duality in human nature.21

Esotericism

This essay will suggest that certain ideas today discredited by current scientific thinking or considered heretical by the Church only became decadent in the later stages of their development. What has been overlooked or forgotten is that they were pure in their original form. It is possible to trace the origin of certain ideas to what students of the

Perennial Philosophy regard as sources of universal wisdom. Schools, under such names as Gnosticism, Alchemy, Masonry, Theosophy, Occultism and so on, once originated from teachings that studied aspects of revealed teaching allegorically and psychologically, applying them to the inner or psychical part of a person rather than the material part. If we trace such ideas, both orthodox and non-orthodox, back to their source we may see that many of them originated as teachings of truth and wisdom that were later adapted by people who unknowingly distorted them through misunderstanding or who used them to advance their own ambitions. Later still, they are appropriated by outright charlatans. According to the Perennial Philosophy the great sages and prophets

21 See below, p. 322

82 who had access to wisdom also took steps to protect their knowledge from such depredation. They hid, or at least tried to hide, knowledge where only those worthy and pure in spirit could find it. Such hiding is the basis of the esoteric method whereby allegories and symbols of higher truth are embedded in works of art and literature – including folk art and folk literature – where the ideas they stand for will seem harmless.

Here, the term Perennial Philosophy, together with the terms mysticism and Primordial

Tradition (sometimes shortened to Tradition) will be used to refer to the original, unadulterated and uncorrupted truths of the universe revealed to humanity through the great sages of wisdom and enlightenment. Esotericism and its language of allegorical symbolism will be understood as what the Renaissance scholar and art historian Edgar

Wind calls „a protective veil beneath which these great truths can remain undefiled‟.22

The mysticism of the Perennial Philosophy is not easily accessible. As has been said, writers on the subject from Plato onwards tell us that it is intentionally veiled in symbolic language and imagery according to esoteric principles embedded in the heart of the

Philosophia Perennis and so its course through the world is for the most part hidden and known by only a few. The reason for this was the need to protect the great truths revealed to humanity from distortion. According to the theory of esotericism „higher truth‟ is susceptible to deformation by the adaptations and interpretations imposed on it by minds of inadequate understanding. Access to „higher knowledge‟ is a matter of gradual initiation through long years of preparation partly consisting of the study of sacred literature and sacred art, partly through communal participation in liturgical or theurgical

22 Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance, London 1958, 1968, p. 13.

83 ritual and partly though the practice of spiritual exercises. Another condition is that of a community, what Plato calls „life lived together‟. While much has been written on sacred literature and arts, the relative paucity of writing either on liturgical practice or on spiritual exercises presents the historian with an incomplete and consequently one-sided picture obliging him to draw almost exclusively on the literary tradition only.

Citations will be entered in this thesis from Plato (5th century BC), Plotinus and Origen

(3rd century), Dante (14th century), mystical writers of the 15th and 16th centuries and a number of 20th-century thinkers that indicate the perennial continuity of the idea that a hidden or esoteric universal and unchanging truth is to be found in sacred traditions and expressed in philosophy, art, literature, architecture and other forms by those who seek it.

The idea of esotericism presents difficulties for the historian, even when he has negotiated the negative connotations the word has acquired in recent times, through its appropriation by the „new age‟ movement, since much of esoteric thought appears to transcend the boundaries of „rationalism‟. The idea has been put forward that esotericism is based on the non-rational principle that certain „primordial truths‟ originate from a very high or divine „place‟ in the universe, i.e. from God or from what Plotinus calls „a presence overpassing all knowledge‟23 and that they have been vouchsafed to humanity

„from above‟ not through the mind but through „revelation‟; not through the modern idea of knowledge but through „gnosis‟. Such thinking emphasizes the deep contrast between the traditional knowledge and modern science; Guénon calls the former „sacred science‟

23 Plotinus, The Enneads, tr. Stephen MacKenna, London 1956, p. 617

84 and the latter „profane science‟.24 It is evident that he uses the word in the original Latin sense where scientia means knowledge. According to him, sacred science, or traditional science, is based on „intellectual intuition‟ on the one hand, and the acceptance of the hierarchy of being, on the other.25 We shall see that certain teachers of the tradition warn against book-learning unsupported by actual experience. Esotericism is a defense employed by the guardians of the higher truth so as to preserve it from being mixed with impure or less fine matter in the form of rationalizing explanations or interpretations which distort them. Thus D. H. Lawrence speaks of people „knowing the formulae, without undergoing the experience that corresponds … grow insolent and impious, thinking they have the all, when they have only an empty monkey-chatter‟.26 When divine truths emanating from God and descending in cosmic stages, as the 6th- century

Christian Platonist, Dionysius the Areopagite describes in his Celestial Hierarchies,27 pass through intermediate stages and finally meet the terrestrial plane of existence they necessarily mix with the worldliness and materialism of human ideas. Here the work of the true philosopher is needed to protect them from degeneration, from becoming mere

„treasures on earth where moth and rust do corrupt‟.28 He must make a corresponding interior ascent: „we must ascend to the Principle within ourselves; from many, we must become one; only so do we attain to knowledge of that which is Principle and Unity … thus what That sees the soul will waken to see‟.29 The true philosopher knows how to view human activities and events within a cosmic perspective; without his spiritual

24 René Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World, p. 37, 47. 25 Quoted in Islam and Science the Journal of Islamic Perspectives and Science, see www.cis-ca.org 26 Quoted by Manas in The Resources of William Blake, from Manas, September 6, 1978 in Sunrise Magazine, January 1979. Copyright © 1979 by Theosophical University Press.) 27 Dionysius. Celestial Hierarchies, Shrine of Wisdom, Godolming, 1923 28 Mat. 19, 6 29 Plotinus, Enneads, p. 616

85 guidance human beings too easily ascribe to themselves powers and status that are not rightly theirs, thus distorting the true picture of the reality of what a human being is in the universe and the significance of his place in it.

86

Chapter 2. Lineaments of the Perennial Philosophy in the Hellenistic World

Hellenic and Hellenistic Origins: Plato and Plotinus

Plato, in a passage in the Seventh Letter, where he untangles different strands of philosophical and spiritual practice, gives a reason for the absence of written material.

First he suggests how philosophy should be approached and the importance of acknowledging certain conditions:

One should show … what philosophy is in all its extent; what [its] range of

studies is by which it is approached, and how much labour it involves. For the

man who has heard this, if he has the true philosophic spirit and that godlike

temperament which makes him a kin to philosophy and worthy of it, thinks that

he has been told of a marvelous road lying before him, that he must forthwith

press on with all his strength, and that life is not worth living if he does anything

else. After this he uses to the full his own powers and those of his guide in the

path, and relaxes not his efforts, till he has either reached the end of the whole

course of study or gained such power that he is not incapable of directing his steps

without the aid of a guide … Those who have not the true philosophic temper, but

a mere surface colouring of opinions penetrating, like sunburn, only skin deep,

when they see how great the range of studies is, how much labour is involved in

it, and how necessary to the pursuit it is to have an orderly regulation of the daily

life, come to the conclusion that the thing is difficult and impossible for them, and

87 are actually incapable of carrying out the course of study; while some of them

persuade themselves that they have sufficiently studied the whole matter and have

no need of any further effort.

On the practice of inner work in the spiritual life he explains in the same passage why he has never written about the spontaneity of „light in the soul‟, („because it is only for a few and they can find it by themselves‟), why it cannot be written about and how it would only be treated contemptuously by those who did not understand it:

Thus much at least, I can say about all writers, past or future, who say they know

the things to which I devote myself, whether by hearing the teaching of me or of

others, or by their own discoveries – that according to my view it is not possible

for them to have any real skill in the matter. There neither is nor ever will be a

treatise of mine on the subject. For it does not admit of exposition like other

branches of knowledge; but after much converse about the matter itself and a life

lived together, suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that

leaps to it from another, and thereafter sustains itself … What task in life could I

have performed nobler than this, to write what is of great service to mankind and

to bring the nature of things into the light for all to see? But I do not think it a

good thing for men that there should be a disquisition, as it is called, on this topic

– except for some few, who are able with a little teaching to find it out for

themselves. As for the rest, it would fill some of them quite illogically with a

88 mistaken feeling of contempt, and others with lofty and vain-glorious

expectations, as though they had learnt something high and mighty.30

If the exploration of the inner life is a branch of knowledge that „does not admit of exposition like other branches of knowledge‟ what is the „little teaching‟ with the help of which men will „find out for themselves‟? Why will only „a few‟ find it? And why will others either despise it or become „vain-glorious‟? The Tradition tells us that those who practice spiritual exercises may discover, perhaps more easily than the bibliophile, that the preparation for inner enlightenment is long and rigorous and that it demands a special commitment in the face of perhaps never-to-be-resolved uncertainties.31 With experience the practitioner may see why sacred tradition regards much of what is ordinarily called reality as no more than illusion; human existence is seen as a kind of hypnotic sleep from which men should try to awaken.32 Only then will reality be understood as an attribute of the cosmic laws that act everywhere in the universe, both on humanity and on the eternal realm of which the terrestrial world, according to Neoplatonic cosmology, is but a particle. Adherents of what we are calling the Perennial Philosophy believed that its wisdom could lead to knowledge that transcends the limitations of human perception; in particular the perceptions of the rational mind and of the physical senses.

30 Plato, Seventh Letter, trl. J. Hardward http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/seventh.letter.html 31 I am referring here to accounts of the contemplative such as Rev. Mother Rosemary‟s unpublished Amravati Journal, 1990, an unpublished paper in the Library of the Temple Gallery, The Value of Uncertainty, date unknown, or my own journal of Vipassana meditation When You Hear a Dog Bark, 1995, unpublished. See above , p. 20. 32 cf Plato‟s image of the cave. Republic, bk. VII

89

Plotinus

The great Plotinus (A.D. 204-270), perhaps together with his follower Iamblichus, may be regarded as one end of the bridge between philosophy and Christianity. „In him we find the supreme exponent of an abiding element in what we might call “mystical philosophy” ‟.33 (The other end of the bridge is Dionysius the Areopagite whose writings will be discussed below.34) The distinguished classicist E. R. Dodds says that in Plotinus

„converge almost all the main currents of thought that come down from eight hundred years of Greek speculation; out of it there issues a new current destined to fertilize minds as different as those of Augustine, Boethius, Dante, Eckhart, Coleridge, Bergson and T.

S. Eliot‟.35 Plotinus himself, referring to the Tradition, says:

These teachings are … no novelties, no inventions of today, but long since stated,

if not stressed; our doctrine here is the explanation of an earlier one and can show

the antiquity of these opinions on the testimony of Plato himself.36

Plotinus, the founder in 3rd-century Rome of the Neoplatonist school, is, as we have seen,

„the supreme exponent of ... mystical philosophy‟. Through his follower Iamblichus and

33 Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, Oxford, 1981, p. 37. 34 See below, p. 145 35 E. R. Dodds, „Tradition and Personal Achievement in the Philosophy of Plotinus‟, in The Ancient Concept of Progress, Oxford, 1973, p. 126 36 Plotinus, Enneads, V, I, 8

90 later through Dionysius the Areopagite, Platonic mysticism is almost universally regarded by philosophers as the bedrock on which is founded both eastern and western

Christian spirituality.

The school of Platonic mysticism that was established around Plotinus would reverberate down the ages. Plotinus evidently considered himself to be a Platonist though subsequent generations have referred to his ideas as Neoplatonism. For the purposes of finding the relationship to Bruegel‟s work, two aspects of Plotinus‟ thought will be touched on here that were revived by Italian Renaissance scholars and philosophers. Yet the essentials of these ideas had not been lost, having survived through a different route in the mystical tradition that passed through such men as Ruysbroek and Eckhart. This thesis will suggest that both the late medieval German mystical schools and the Italian Renaissance converged in Bruegel‟s outlook in 16th-century Flanders. Plotinus‟ mysticism, generally regarded as synonymous with the Perennial Philosophy, is founded in his cosmological view of humanity. It is based on the Socratic way of self-knowledge maintained by disciplines and spiritual exercises while his sense of the cosmos emphasises the relationship between macrocosm and microcosm – the relationship between the universe and man.

91

Plotinian Psychology

During his active life Plotinus taught orally the group of followers who came to his school outside Rome. Only at the end of his life, at the insistence of his pupils, did he commit his teaching to writing. After his death his pupil and biographer Porphyry organised Plotinus‟ essays into a systematic form which we know as the Enneads.37 It is through this book that Plotinus is recognised as the incomparable genius whose philosophy deeply influenced the greatest minds of the Middle Ages, of Byzantium, of

Renaissance Italy and of the Arab world. Plotinus was not a writer in the conventional literary sense; he seems to have cared little for style, and he was unwilling to simplify for the sake of his readers. There are definite indications that he lived and practised the life of a spiritual master and that the cosmic and psychological ideas that he spoke about derived from the insights and real experiences of his inner life. A revealing statement to this effect is made by Porphyry who tells us that he was able to live at once within himself and for others: „he never relaxed his interior attention‟, and, further, that he

„maintained an unbroken concentration on his own highest nature‟.38 Plotinus himself tells us in a passage on imagination that „philosophy‟s task is that of a man who wishes to throw off the shapes presented in dreams, and to this end recalls to waking the mind that is breeding them.‟39 In this case the word philosophy can be taken as the „true philosophy‟, a term frequently employed by the early Christian contemplatives who lived, first, in the Egyptian desert and, later, in the monasteries of Mount Athos whose

37 Stephen MacKenna tr., Plotinus The Enneads, London 1969. See esp. Porphiry‟s „Life‟ pp. 1-20 38 Porphiry, „On the Life of Plotinus‟, in Enneads, p. 7 39 Enneads, p. 206. My emphasis

92 writings are found in the anthology known as the Philokalia.40 For them, as for Plotinus and his followers, philosophy meant spiritual work, rather than academic philosophy.41

Plotinus says that „our task is to work for liberation from the sphere of all this evil‟42 by which he means man‟s identification with the body and the senses and his ignorance regarding the soul. The psychological side of Plotinus‟ teaching is close to that of his contemporaries and near contemporaries, the Christian authors of the homilies in The

Philokalia. These men were known as hesychasts from the Greek hesychia meaning stillness or silence. For him the fall of the soul accounts for its state where it is

unstable, swept along from every ill to every other, quickly stirred by appetites,

headlong to anger, hasty to compromises, yielding at once to obscure imaginations, as

weak in fact as the weakest thing made by man or nature, blown about by every breeze,

burned away by every heat.43

40 The writings date from the 4th to the 14th centuries and were preserved as manuscripts and privately circulated in the monasteries of Mount Athos until 1782 when they were published for the first time in Venice. Translations into Church Slavonic were made soon after and then into the Russian Dobretolubiye („Love of the Good‟) in the five volume edition edited by Theophan the Recluse (1815-1894). The first English edition appeared in two volumes of translation by Kadloubovsky and Palmer: Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, London 1961, and Early Fathers from the Philokalia, London, 1964. A complete edition in four volumes published in London between 1979 and 1995 translated by Palmer, Sherrard and Ware, is The Philokalia, The Complete Text. 41 For a discussion on the relationship between Christianity and Neoplatonism in the 3rd century see Enneads, p. lxix. In MacKenna‟s „Introduction‟ we find „In the passage of Augustine‟s Confessions which is most directly inspired by the Enneads … the words of Plotinus are “Now call up all your confidence; you need a guide no longer; strain and see.” And Augustine quoting from the Psalms, writes: I entered even into my inward self, Thou being my guide, and able I was, for Thou wert become my helper” (tr. Pusey). In this inversion of thought lies all the distance between Neoplatonic and Christian mysticism‟. 42 Enneads, p. 76 43 Idem.

93 The Christian hesychast contemplatives, contemporaries of Plotinus and his followers, living in the Egyptian desert and later on Mount Athos followed similar psycho-spiritual disciplines of „watching and guarding the mind‟.44 Their concerns were that „thoughts change instantly one to the other; what gives them power over us is mostly our own carelessness‟,45 or that „our mind is volatile … it never stops wandering‟.46 Buddhist meditation masters make similar observations.

Plotinus eloquently calls us to see that the possibility for spiritual evolution is found in the inner life and gives indications for special spiritual exercises.

He that has the strength let him arise and draw into himself, forgoing all that is

known by the eyes, turning away for ever from the material beauty that once made

his joy. When he perceives those shapes of grace that show in body, let him not

pursue: he must know them for copies, vestiges, shadows and hasten away towards

That they tell of.

„Let us flee then to the beloved Fatherland‟47 this is the soundest council. But what is

the flight? How are we to gain the open sea? For Odysseus is surely a parable to us

when he commands Circe or Calypso, not content to linger for all the pleasure

offered and all the delight of sense filling his days.

The Fatherland to us is There whence we have come, and There is the Father.

44 Hesychius of Jerusalem in Kadloubovsky and Palmer, eds., Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, London 1961, p. 299 45 St Gregory of Sinai in op. cit. (note 22), p. 49 46 St Isaac of Syria, in op. cit., p. 257 47 Plotinus is quoting Homer; see MacKenna, Enneads, „Explanatory Matter‟

94 What then is our course, what is the manner of our flight? This is not a journey of the

feet; the feet bring us only from land to land; nor need you think of a coach or ship to

carry you away: all this order of things you must set aside and refuse to see: you must

close the eyes and call instead upon another vision which is to be waked within you, a

vision the birthright of all, which few turn to use.48

This passage continues with the invitation to „withdraw into yourself and look‟ and proposes a work of interior self-perfecting which he compares to the task of a sculptor who

cuts away here, smoothes there, he makes a line lighter, this other purer, until a

lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive,

straighten all that is crooked, bring to light all that is overcast.49

He speaks with authority about working on one‟s inner self and the aim of achieving a state

when you are self-gathered in the purity of your being, nothing now remaining that

can shatter that inner unity.50

Plotinus, concurring always with authentic spiritual tradition, takes the view that the senses and the bodily organs are useful functions in so far as they can aid man in his

48 Enneads, p. 63. The emphasis is mine 49 Ibid 50 Ibid

95 search for right perception. To indulge the senses for the sake of pleasure or curiosity he considers a waste of energy and to be the sign of suffering or deficiency. He refers to the inner world as „an area [where] we cannot be indolent‟.51

Plotinus teaches that the soul of man is a particle of the All-Soul which is one of the three

Persons (or Hypostases) of the Divine Realm. This particle has fallen from a higher cosmic place into one of the lowest places in the universe, namely matter.

This is the fall of the Soul, this is entry into matter: thence its weakness; not all the

faculties of its being retain free play, for Matter hinders their manifestation; it

encroaches upon the soul‟s territory and, as it were, crushes the soul back; and it

turns to evil all that it has stolen, until the Soul finds strength to advance again.52

He compares the experience of the soul fallen into matter with that higher level which must be our spiritual goal. He makes a sharp distinction between our sense-bound life and the higher life of the soul.

Thus far the beauties of the realm of sense, images and shadow pictures, fugitives

that have entered into matter … But there are earlier and loftier beauties than these.

In the sense-bound life we are no longer granted to know them, but the Soul … sees

51 Enneads, p. 47 52 Enneads, p. 77

96 and proclaims them. To the vision of these we must mount, leaving sense in its own

low place.53

However, the Enneads of Plotinus are not primarily commentaries on the practice of spiritual life as is, for example, the Philokalia. The Enneads are a dense and sometimes bewildering exposition of the Platonic doctrines of man and the universe whose common link is the Soul and the relationship of the All to God or the One. Plotinus assumes in his hearers at least a familiarity with the practice of spiritual work. He makes occasional references to „mastery of our emotions and mental processes‟,54 „conscious attention‟,55 and so on, while his main preoccupation is to understand man‟s extension, or possible extension, in eternity. From this lofty viewpoint, the life of earthly man is of little interest except that it defines the lower reaches of the universe and is the starting point of the

Soul‟s return journey to its origin.

Plotinian Cosmology

The present writer, regarding Plotinus as the sine qua non of the Perennial Philosophy in

European thought, sets out here, in abridged form, the Neoplatonist vision of the cosmos known as the Doctrine of Degrees: the gradations of densities of matter in the universe from higher to lower; the soul, fallen from a high place, making its return journey; the principle that everything is related.

53 Enneads, p. 59 54 Enneads, p.133 55 Enneads, p. 263

97

A theme that frequently recurs is that of the image. This is especially relevant to the idea later developed by Dionysius the Areopagite that the lower imitates, or is an image of, the higher. Hence the role of the symbol which describes, by reference to the knowable and visible, that which cannot be known and seen: „All teems with symbol‟.56 The idea that things and events in the universe are similar but existing at different levels implies a unifying principle by which everything is related; everything, including man, is part of the whole. Thus the idea of man as the microcosm, the cosmos in miniature, is an example of the universal principle acting everywhere in Creation. For Renaissance scholars such as Pico della Mirandola57 it was „eminently worthy‟ to undertake the

„comparative study of sacred images … and the extraction from them of philosophical wisdom‟.58

The Totality, or One, or The All, is the Divinity from which flow „all the forms and phases of Existence‟;59 at the same time they „strive to return Thither and remain

There‟.60 The Divinity, or Divine Realm, in Neoplatonism is approached through an ideal, a philosophical concept, or possibly a mathematical symbol, but it is not personified.

56 Enneads, p. 97 57 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), Humanist and Neoplatonist, he published in 1486 his Oration on the Dignity of Man, generally regarded as the „manifesto‟ of the Italian Renaissance.

58 Wind. Op. cit., p. 9 59 Enneads, ‘Explanatory Matter‟, p. xxv 60 Ibid.

98 In the Enneads the universe is understood as an absolute totality, a perfect and ideal being. It consists of a hierarchical scale of cosmic beings some of which are perceptible to the senses, such as planets and stars; but the higher more divine beings are beyond the range of ordinary human perception. Man himself is placed low down in the cosmic system, though in his soul he bears a particle of the great cosmic being known as the All-

Soul, with which he has the possibility of ultimately reuniting himself.

The All-Soul is one of the three beings or hypostases who together constitute the Divine

Realm. It is generated by, or is the emanation of, the hypostasis that stands next highest in the cosmic hierarchy and who is the second hypostasis of the Divine Realm. This second hypostasis is named the „Divine Mind‟ or the „Intellectual Principle‟ (in Greek; nous).

The first hypostasis of the Supreme Divine Triad is variously referred to as the One, the

Absolute, the Infinite, the Unconditioned; also sometimes the Father. At the same time we have to try to grasp that the Absolute, or the One is also the Many, since it is itself the

Totality of All That Exists and contains all within itself. Likewise the Divine Mind contains all intelligences. According to MacKenna, Plotinus‟ translator,

the Intellectual or Intelligible Universe contains, or even in some senses is, all

particular minds or intelligences; and there, in their kinds, are images,

representations, phantasms, shadows of this universal or Divine Mind. All phases of

existence down even to matter, the Ultimate, the lowest image of Real-Being are all

99 Ideally present from Eternity in this realm of the divine Thoughts, this Totality of the

Supreme Wisdom or mentation.61

In a similar way, the All-Soul is the origin and container of all souls, who by the fact of their identity with the Universal Soul of the All are themselves potentially divine. The

All-Soul is known as the Eternal Cause of All that Exists, the Vital Principle of all that is lower than the Divine Triad.

Below the three hypostases of the Divine Realm comes the Material or Sense-Grasped

Universe. The highest stage of this level is the Gods; also known as Ideas, Divine

Thoughts, Archetypes, Intellectual-Forms of all that exists in the lower spheres, the

Spiritual Universe, Real Beings or Powers.

Descending further from the Divine Realm we come to the stage of beings known by the following names: Supernals, Celestials, Divine Spirits, or Daimones.

Yet further down comes Man, who is constituted in three phases, or images, of the Divine

Soul:

1 the Intellective-Soul, or Intuitive, Intellectual or Intelligent

Soul; or the Intellectual Principle of the Soul;

2 the Reasoning Soul;

3 the Unreasoning Soul.

61 Enneads, „Explanatory Matter‟, p. xxv

100 In Christian terminology these three phases of man correspond to:

1 Spirit (or Mind, or Intellect)

2 Soul

3 Body

Below Man comes Matter, the lowest and least emanation of the creative power. And beyond Matter there is the level of Absolute Non-Being.

A simplification and an approximation of this scheme can be expressed in this final reduction which remains a true image of the universe:

The Absolute

The Divine Mind

The All-Soul

The Intelligible Universe

Celestials

Man

Matter

Absolute Non Being

The higher levels of the universe have progressively more being and less matter and, conversely, the lower parts of the universe have less being and more matter. Matter is

101 described as indefinite: matter is essentially indefiniteness,62 The higher spheres come progressively closer to the Reason-Principle which defines and delimits matter, bringing it under order. Throughout the whole universe the presence of matter (or Indefiniteness) is one of degree or phase according to the level of being in relation to the Reason-

Principle. Plotinus defines the difference between phases of Indefiniteness as the difference between Archetype and Image. Thus each cosmic phase is at once an image of the phase superior to it and the archetype for the phase inferior to it.

This correspondence of the lower to the higher is probably the most ancient and universally held philosophical idea, expressed, in the Hermetic formula (from the

Emerald Tablets) As above so below and in the words of the Lord‟s Prayer, „Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’

The idea of archetype and image seems not far from the teaching of the Christian theologians who, in defence of icons, spoke of prototype and image. In the latter case the icon is understood to be the image, made in the lower world, of a heavenly principle or prototype whose actual existence is in the divine world. It is he contention of this thesis that Bruegel applied this principle to his paintings, having first realised it in himself.

It is worth making the point here that an artist, capable of envisioning the higher world through spiritual endeavour and a corresponding higher state of consciousness, can become the instrument through which the higher life enters the world. For the Byzantine icon-painter and his counterpart in the medieval west there were established forms and

62 Enneads, p. 116

102 rituals that guided the inner life of the painter for such undertaking. Although in the

Renaissance evidence for such an approach remains hidden, it cannot be discounted that for some exceptional individuals, among them Peter Bruegel, similar practices were used.63

In a passage on the Universe which has a ruling principle and a first cause operative downwards through every member, Plotinus calls us to understand the structure of the universe, the relationship of the parts to the whole, and our relationship with everything that exists.

We may think of the stars as letters perpetually being inscribed on the heavens or

inscribed once and for all and yet moving as they pursue the other tasks allotted to

them: upon these main tasks will follow the quality of signifying, just as one

principle underlying any living unit enables us to reason from member to

member.

All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read

another, a process familiar to us all in not a few examples of everyday experience.

But what is the comprehensive principle of co-ordination? Establish this and we

have a reasonable basis for the divination.

63 Similar claims have been made for Hieronymus Bosch, Piero della Francesca, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Rembrandt and other painters.

103 All things must be enchained; and the sympathy and correspondence obtaining in

any one closely knit organism must exist, first, and most intensely, in the All.

There must be one principle constituting this unit of many forms of life and

enclosing the several members within the unity, while at the same time, precisely

as in each thing of detail, the parts too each have a definite function, so in the All

each several member must have its own task but more markedly so since in this

case the parts are not merely members but themselves alls of great power.

Thus each entity takes its origin from one principle and, therefore, while

executing its own function, works in with every other member of that All … each

receives something from the others, every one at its own moment bringing its

touch of sweet or bitter. And there is nothing undesigned, nothing of chance, in

all the process: all is one scheme of differentiation, starting from the Firsts and

working itself out in a continuing progress of kinds.64

The idea of the soul‟s descent into matter and its striving to return to its high origin show that man is a dynamic element in the universe and that his position is neither fixed nor static. His possibilities for cosmic mobility are emphasised in the imagery of early

Christian art, either literary or iconic, where we see man, either as Christ or Adam, or sometimes as saint or prophet, as fallen or risen. We see him in caves (Nativity and

Harrowing of Hell), beside mountains and on mountain-tops (Transfiguration). We see

64 Enneads, p. 96

104 him borne up into the sky by angels (Ascension). These higher and lower places are symbols describing the soul‟s relationship with Eternity.

Man the Microcosm

It is through Plotinus that the idea of the microcosm – man as the microcosm or the universe in miniature – becomes a basic tenet of Jewish, Christian and Arab thought from

Hellenistic times until the rise of modern science. We find in the Talmud „All that the

Holy One created in the world He created in man‟;65 one of many formulations of this idea. It was to be developed and elaborated exhaustively in the Renaissance.

The literary source of the idea of the microcosm is one of Plato's dialogues.66

In that dialogue Socrates says that just as there are four elements in the universe,

so there are in us … So we would say that the hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and so

65 Talmud, Abot de Rabbi Nathan, 31 66 Philebus (29).

105 on that compose our bodies are identical with the same elements in the nonhuman

world.67

But there is more to a human being than a body … This can only be explained, as

Greek scientists would say, by some agent. And that agent is the soul. But if this

is true of the human body, then it must also be true of the universal body, the

cosmos. The cosmos, says Socrates, must have a soul just as we have, a soul

which in the Middle Ages was called, after Plotinus … the “Soul of the World”

(anima mundi). Our soul is primarily rational; we are rational animals. The Soul

of the World must have a corresponding rationality and the idea of a rational

universe was thus launched … Plato argued in this same dialogue that the Soul of

the World, like our own, must have wisdom (sophia) and intelligence (nous). This

idea is repeated in … the Timaeus, where the cosmos is said to be an image of the

Demiurge, endowed with soul and intelligence and thus duplicates the individual

human being.

The microcosm was also used when discussing the state. In Plato's Republic we

find that there are three kinds of people, the appetitive, the irascible or spirited,

and the rational. All men have appetites, some have both appetites and irascibility,

and a few have these two faculties plus reason. It is their reason which keeps the

other faculties under control. In the state, seen as a large human being, there are

three classes of men who correspond to three psychological types. They are the

67 George Boas in Dictionary of the History of Ideas http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi- local/DHI/dhiana.cgi?id=dv3-16. The Platonic dialogue is 30A

106 artisans (the appetitive type), the military (the irascible), and the philosophers (the

rational).68

A Renaissance-educated man such as Bruegel would have been familiar with these ideas, or versions of them that abounded in the 16th century. In the later part of this thesis, where his paintings are interpreted in the light of the ideas being put forward here, it will be suggested that certain recurring figures: holy persons, aristocrats, farmers, soldiers, clerks and others, represent psychological types and psychological states. Boas continues:

Each serves a legitimate function but trouble arises when one or the other of the

two lower classes gets control of the state and usurps the power of reason. The

state then becomes like a man who is a lustful glutton or a belligerent captain.

Therefore things must be so arranged that the three classes will be kept in their

proper places and philosophers will be rulers.

To understand the symbolism here it is necessary to remember that „the state‟ refers to the psychological and spiritual situation within man – the myriad different „personalities‟ that constitute his being. Thus for Boas:

Such ideas only hint at a full-fledged theory of the identity between microcosm

and macrocosm, but at least they use the human being as a basic metaphor of

something larger and not obviously human … we find the idea of the microcosm

in both the Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria, and in the Hermetica. Philo,

68 ibid

107 like so many other theologians, was worried over the biblical verse, “Let us make

man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26), he points out that the

likeness could not be corporeal and must therefore be psychical.69 The psychical

image of God in man is the intelligence (nous), which rules us exactly as God

rules the world. He thus takes over from the Platonic tradition that the world is a

world of order and reason. This bolsters his use of the allegorical method of

interpreting the Bible, for were he to take it literally, he would have to grant the

existence of things which would be almost nonrational by definition.70

We further learn from Boas that:

The 10th-century Jewish Neoplatonist, Isaac Israeli, borrowing from Al-Kindi

(ninth century), said that philosophy is self-knowledge, and that self-knowledge

expands to knowledge of all things; he says: “For this reason the philosophers

called man a microcosm” (Israeli, p. 28). The source of the idea that self-

knowledge is cosmic knowledge is probably a treatise by Porphyry, On Know

Thyself. This exists only in fragments and the following can be found in Stobaeus:

[Those] “who say that man is properly called a microcosm say that the term

implies knowledge of man. And since man is a microcosm, he is ordered to do

nothing other than to philosophize. If then we seriously wish to philosophize

without taking a false step, we shall be eager to know ourselves, and we shall

acquire a true philosophy from our insight, ascending to the contemplation of the

69 De opificio mundi (23, 69) 70 ibid

108 Whole”.71 That self-knowledge is cosmic knowledge is based upon an identity

between the self and the cosmos, an identity of a “spiritual” rather than a

corporeal nature…Godefroy de Saint Victor (d. 1194) said in so many words in

his Microcosmus (Ch. 18) that man is called a world not because of his body but

because of his spirit.72

Iamblichus

Porphyry‟s student Iamblichus is one of the key figures in the transmission of perennial philosophical ideas, indeed we shall find his name mentioned in a direct reference to

Bruegel by his friend Abraham Ortelius. Iamblichus (c. A.D. 250-325) is among the most important of the Neoplatonic philosophers, second only to Plotinus. His influential treatise Theurgia or On the Mysteries of Egypt deals with a 'higher magic' which operates through the agency of the gods. The Renaissance philosopher Agrippa of Nettesheim refers frequently to Iamblichus in his Occulta Philosophia.73 Iamblichus also had a strong influence on other Renaissance occultists like Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, and

Giordano Bruno. Gregory Shaw, defending Iamblichus‟ theurgy from the negative connotations of „occultism‟ and „magic‟, presents him as breaking „away from Porphyry

71 Joannes Stobaeus, compiler of a valuable series of extracts from Greek authors. Of his life nothing is known, but he probably belongs to the latter half of the 5th century AD. Vol. 3, Ch. 21, no. 27, p. 580 72 Ibid. 73 "In his influential work De occulta philosophia libri tres (1531), Agrippa combined magic, astrology, Qabbalah, theurgy, medicine, and the occult properties of plants, rocks, and metals. This work was an important factor in the spread of the idea of occult sciences." ; "The magical interpretation of Qabbalah reached its peak in Henri Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim's De occulta philosophia.". Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade ed. in chief, MacMillan Publishing Company, New York 1987, article on Occultism by Antoine Faivre.

109 and Plotinus in order to reestablish – in theurgical Platonism – what he believed to be the true teachings of Plato and Pythagoras‟.74 He concludes that „this theurgical vision shaped the thinking of later Platonists such as Syrianus, Proclus and Damascius, and its influence extended beyond Platonic circles and may well be reflected in the sacramental theology of Christian thinkers. Indeed, the Church, with its ecclesiastical embodiment of the divine hierarchy, its initiations, and its belief in salvation through sacrificial acts, may have fulfilled the theurgical program of Iamblichus in a manner that was never concretely realized by Platonists … the Church many well have become the reliquary of the hieratic vision and practices of the later Platonists.75

74 Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul. The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus, Pennsylvania State University Press, Pennsylvania, 1995, p. 238. 75 idem, p. 242

110 Chapter 3. Lineaments of the Perennial Philosophy in the Christian World

The Primitive Church

The first Christian society, the so-called primitive Church, as described in Acts was, according to the American professor Rufus Jones, writing at the beginning of the 20th century on the history of mysticism, „clearly a mystical fellowship, i.e. a fellowship bound together, not by external organization, but by the power and experience of the

Divine presence‟.1 The external organization was to come later and eventually hammered out on the anvils of the Ecumenical Councils beginning with that of Nicea in 325.

Jones cites the great German scholar Otto Pfleiderer2 on the Apostle Paul, reminding us of Paul‟s wide-ranging grasp of perennial traditions available to him at that time: „[he uses] the forensic conceptions of Jewish theology, or the imagery of the apocalyptic writers, or the animistic speech of popular usage, or the symbolism of the Greek

Mysteries, or the religious philosophy of the Hellenistic schools, or the Pantheistic ideas of the Stoics, for all these elements of culture are combined in him, and are in evidence in his epistles.‟ He goes on to say that Paul „cares not at all for the shell of religion … his aim is always the creation of a „new man‟, the formation of the „inward man‟, and this

„inward man is formed, not by the practice of rite or ritual, not by the laying on of hands, but by the actual incorporation of Christ – the Divine Life – into the life of man … The proof of this inwardly formed man is not ecstasy, tongue or miracle. It is victory over the lower passions – the flesh – and a steady manifestation of love … nobody has ever

1 Jones, R., Spiritual Reformers of the 16th and 17th Centuries, Illinois, 1914, 2 Otto Pfleiderer, Primitive Christianity, tr. 1906-11, vol. I, p. 96

111 expressed in equal perfection and beauty the fervor and enthusiasm of the initiated mystic, inspired by union with God, as Paul has expressed them in his two hymns of love

– the hymn on the love of God (Rom. viii. 31 ff), and the hymn on the love of men (1

Cor. xiii) 15. Love is the Kingdom of God.‟ 3

We see here the restitution of the true idea of love: its meaning in the universe and its proper function in the life of humanity. The modern associations of the word give many misleading meanings that tend to obstruct our comprehension when we read of it in sacred literature. This should be born in mind especially in the case of Hendrick Niclaes‟

„House of Love‟, the „heretical‟ esoteric sect with which, as will be shown, Bruegel was closely connected. What is also useful is to be reminded that the inner life is the perspective by which reality is to be perceived. This idea was central to the traditions of religion and philosophy until the rise in recent times of what Guénon and his school call scientism4.

3 Jones p. 15 4 In understanding Guénon‟s notion of science…one can hardly overemphasize the significance of the relation between the Principle and its adaptations. For Guénon, metaphysics studies the Principle and provides principial knowledge whereas the sciences of nature investigate its earthly, relative, and multi- layered manifestation in the cosmos. Scientific theories, even when enunciated as empirically established and universal truths, cannot function as substitutes for higher principles but only as further corroborations of the principles of which they are but applications. In this regard, metaphysics, as Aristotle has said, is the science of all sciences, namely it is a knowledge that provides a total framework for all other forms of knowledge, whether based on theoria or praxis. Consequently, metaphysics connects all branches and forms of knowledge, supplying a frame of reference within which the physical sciences function. To carry this point a step further, Guénon reverses the relation between theory and experiment and gives priority to “preconceived ideas” – a point of view remarkably close to Kuhn‟s concept of paradigm. For Guénon, it is a “peculiar delusion, typical of modern „experimentalism‟, to suppose that a theory can be proved by facts whereas really the same facts can always be equally well explained by a variety of different theories”. (René Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World, London, 1962, p. 42).

112

Origen

In Christianity the esoteric tradition can be traced through Origen, the master of the

School of Alexandria in the 3rd century and regarded as one of the greatest theologians of the early Christian era. His approach incorporated a long established tradition of allegorical interpretation of sacred literature. For him allegory was the envelope of esotericism within which the truth was to be found. Writing against literalism he asserts that „very many mistakes have been made, because the right method of examining the holy texts has not been discovered by the greater number of readers ... because it is their habit to follow the bare letter.‟5 Further, he ascribes „false opinions‟ and „ignorant views‟ about God because „the Scripture on the spiritual side is not understood but is taken in the bare literal sense‟.6

Origen quotes Solomon‟s advice to „thrice record the Scriptures‟.7 He comments: „a man ought then in three ways record in his own soul the purposes of the holy Scriptures; that the simple may be edified by, as it were, the flesh of the Scripture (for thus we designate the primary sense), the more advanced by its soul, and the perfect by the spiritual law.‟8

5 George Lewis, ed., The Philokalia of Origen, Edinburgh 1911, 8: 3-9. 6 Ibid. 9: 3-7 7 Proverbs 22: 20f 8 Lewis, op. cit. 9: 3-7

113 It is the same idea, with its esoteric implications, that Dante is developing a thousand years later when he says:

The Scriptures can be understood, and ought to be explained, principally in four

senses. one is called literal ... The second is called allegorical ... the third sense is

called moral ... the fourth sense is called anagogical, that is, beyond sense

[sovrasenso] and that is when Scripture is spiritually expounded, which, while true in

the literal sense, refers beyond it to the higher things of the eternal glory, as we may

see in the Psalm of the Prophet, where he says that when Israel went out of Egypt

Judaea became holy and free. Which, although manifestly true according to the letter,

is none the less true in its spiritual meaning — viz., that the soul, in forsaking its sins,

is made holy and free in its powers.9

Origen, insisting on sacred scripture‟s mystical meaning exhorts his readers to

see what distinction there is between a sensible Gospel and an intellectual and

spiritual one. What we have now to do is to transform the sensible Gospel into a

spiritual one. For what would the narrative of the sensible Gospel amount to if it

were not developed to a spiritual one? It would be of little account or none; any

one can read it and assure himself of the facts it tells – no more. But our whole

energy is now to be directed to the effort to penetrate to the deep things of the

9 quoted in „Keys to the Bible‟, Frithjof Schuon in J. Needleman ed., The Sword of Gnosis, Baltimore, 1974, p. 355

114 meaning of the Gospel and to search out the truth that is in it when divested of

types.10

He develops the idea that there are different levels of meaning in sacred scripture: from the outer or literal level that speaks to the senses (the word he uses is „sensible‟) to the

„intellectual‟ and „spiritual‟. Chapter 4 of his Commentary on John begins: „Scripture contains many contradictions and many statements that are not literally true but must be read spiritually and mystically‟. He continues:

And in some places they tack on to their writing, with language apparently

implying things of sense, things made manifest to them in a purely intellectual

way. I do not condemn them if they even sometimes dealt freely with things

which to the eye of history happened differently, and changed them so as to

subserve the mystical aims they had in view; so as to speak of a thing which

happened in a certain place, as if it had happened in another, or of what took place

at a certain time, as if it had taken place at another time, and to introduce into

what was spoken in a certain way some changes of their own. They proposed to

speak the truth where it was possible both materially and spiritually, and where

this was not possible it was their intention to prefer the spiritual to the material.

The spiritual truth was often preserved, as one might say, in the material

falsehood.11

10 Origen, Commentary on John Book 1, http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/origen-john1.html 11 Ibid.

115 These remarks are especially helpful in the light of Bruegel‟s treatment of gospel themes.

What is regarded as his unconventional or idiosyncratic approach signifies his licence to

„deal freely‟ with historical events and his freedom to make them „subserve the mystical aim‟.

Symbol of the seed in John’s Gospel

The idea is put forward that the role of John the Evangelist and Paul the Apostle in the earliest, and, as will be shown, more or less purely mystical phase of Christianity, is entirely spiritual. Evidence for this can be seen in the Fourth Gospel and in Acts. The accounts of the sayings and the events around Christ can be understood at a profound level if the symbolism is grasped. „John‟s language is simpler than Paul‟s‟, writes

Professor Jones; „he puts the profoundest truth into a parable which may be taken at any height, according to the spiritual nature of the reader, and his most important terms are themselves parables – “Light”, “bread”, “water”, “seed” – and so, like the winged seeds of nature, his truths have floated across the world and germinated in multitudes of hearts, while Paul’s deepest message has been missed and the world has got out of him only what the theologians formulated.‟12

12 (my italics) Jones p. 17

116 The symbolism of the seed and associated ideas, bread and water, having originated in

Egypt, was widely employed in the Hellenistic world, in Greek and Roman religion and it can also be found in the magic cults of South and Central America. The seed, or the ear of corn, was a symbol surrounded by elaborate ritual in the Eleusinian Mysteries.13 This thesis will suggest that they are also central (though hidden) ideas in the art of Bruegel; most notably in The Fall of Icarus where the central figure, and indeed the central theme of the composition, is the ploughman‟s elaborate and careful preparation of the ground for the reception of the seed;14 and in the Harvesters where the produce of the cornfield – bread (which is itself a symbol of the action of the law of three forces represented by flour, water and fire), nourishes the workers. And this symbolism is itself an allegory for the spiritual life.15

These ideas are emphasized here not only for the study of Bruegel‟s art but for the study of sacred art in general. For, as Jones reminds us,

In John‟s word „Life‟ means something divinely begotten. It is a type of life,

above the „natural‟, human life as that is above the animal or as the animal is

above the vegetable … I call this idea mystical because it is a direct and

immediate experience by which the soul partakes of God.

13 See Wind, op. cit; also Carpenter, The Origins of Pagan and Christian Beliefs, London 1920; also Frazer, The Golden Bough, London, 1922. 14 See below, p. 320 ff. 15 See below, p. 305 ff.

117 No word which John uses conveys this truth better than „seed‟: „Whoever is

born of God does not commit sin, for His seed is in him and he cannot sin because

he is born of God‟ (John iii, 9). It is a word that mystics have used again and

again to express the implanting of the Divine Life within the human soul … the

same idea is expressed by „water‟ and „bread‟: „The water that I shall give him

shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life‟ (John iv, 14). „I

am the Bread of Life‟ (John vi, 35-63). „If any man eat of this bread he shall live

for ever‟ (ditto). Through both figures – „you must drink me‟; „you must eat me‟,

the profound truth is told that man enters into Life, or has Life in him, only as he

partakes of God; Christ is God in a form which man can grasp and assimilate …

This Lord‟s supper calls for no visible elements, no consecrated priest … It is

actual transubstantiation, but it is not bread and wine that changes to literal body

and blood of Christ. „As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the

father, so he that eateth me, he also shall live because of me‟… takes us beyond

all ordinary biology, beyond all traditional theology, and brings us to a new level

of life altogether – human life fed from within with, and that is „Eternal Life‟, the

life of God.16

16 John vi. The citation is from Jones p. 17-18

118

Spiritual freedom and the Church as institution

The period of Christianity when men and women could directly receive mystical energies was not long; attempts to institutionalize what had been given as revelation were being made already by the end of the first century. Jones considers that the actual presence of divine energies in the world belongs to Christ‟s lifetime and that of his immediate successors; it led to a revival of a form of Old Testament ecstatic prophesy which, after much controversy, was incorporated into the New Testament as the Book of Revelations.

Another outcome was the formation of an organized institution i.e. the Church. „What had been a free, spontaneous, divinely or mystically charged Christianity changed into an ecclesiastical system, a doctrine; the prophet speaking by revelation [yielded] to the bishop ruling with authority‟.17 Direct knowledge of God or gnosis was no longer the perceived route for personal spiritual evolution. This tendency can be traced back to

Ignatius of Antioch (d. circa 110) who was „possessed of a passion to leave behind him an authoritatively organized church. He had no faith that a body gathered together on the loose basis of brotherhood and fellowship and obedience to an invisible Head could survive in the midst of chaotic beliefs and growing heresies‟.18 He puts the bishop [head of the local church] in the place of Christ.

17 Jones p. 27 18 Ibid

119 Ignatius instituted the administration of the sacraments of the Eucharist and baptism by the bishop: „Let there be a proper Eucharist by the bishop … It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or celebrate a love feast‟.19

When the church emerged from its battle with Gnosticism the bishop was

supreme, and the idea of his succession in the apostolic line was well established,

and with it the view that the faith is the deposit of truth received through the

apostles and preserved by the hierarchy of the Church.

As soon as the sense of the Divine Presence vanished from men‟s hearts, the

religion which Christ had initiated underwent a complete transformation. Magic

and mystery took the place of the free personal communication. The real presence

of Christ was sought in the bread and wine and in the bath of regeneration rather

than within the soul itself.20

19 Ignatius, Letter to the Philadelpheans, tr. Roberts-Donaldson, 1885, Ch. Iv. The love feast, or agape feast, was an early Christian tradition comprising a communal meal which, celebrated in conjunction with the eucharist, was known as the Lord‟s Supper. 20 Jones pp. 35, 36

120 Early appearance of ‘Heresy’

From this point onwards, i.e. already in the 2nd century, the division between spirit and institution begins to appear. In view of the growing number of adherents to Christianity and the consequent need for organization, this was perhaps unavoidable. What is clear, however, is that followers of the purely spiritual way could not be stifled or repressed despite the antagonism, sometimes well-meaning, sometimes malicious, of a church already making compromises with the material world and its politics. The mystical tendency, when it ignited the popular imagination, would appear again and again in the form of popular movements, sometimes mass movements, often persecuted by a combination of church authority, state power and heresy hunting.

In the late 2nd century one such movement was Montanism. It seems to be the first spiritual-mystical popular movement, sweeping North Africa, that revived prophesy.

Tertullian was its chief sympathetic exponent. The Montanist leaders were „possessed‟ with the idea that the promises of John xiv-xviii were now being fulfilled in them.21 It will be seen below that a version of Montanism, i.e. Catharism in 13th-century France, survived in Flanders and influenced Hieronymus Bosch who can be regarded in certain ways as Bruegel‟s predecessor as we shall see below.22

21 These are the chapters containing „I am the way, and the truth and the life‟, „because I live, you will live also…you in me and I in you‟, „my peace I give to you…let not your hearts be troubled‟, „Abide in me‟, etc. Jones p. 47 22 p. 231

121

‘Pagan’ traditions in Christianity

There was another route for the mystical tradition that passed, on the whole safely, through the mainstream of the church. This was the mysticism of Greek philosophy that comes from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle – but mainly from Plato through his interpreter,

Plotinus. The Stoics (whose philosophy was revived in Renaissance times by Bruegel‟s friend Justus Lipsius), also influenced Christian mysticism. Many authors sympathetic to the idea of the Perennial Philosophy affirm that there was an unbroken succession of teachers. We have seen Jones referring to the „Hermaic chain‟ from Plotinus to the closing of the Athenian School of Philosophy.23 It is a remarkable fact that the Platonic

Academy survived in Athens for more than 500 years after Christ. It was closed by the order of the Emperor Justinian in the year 529. Professor Jones tells the story.

The edict of a Christian emperor closed the doors of the Academy and drove the

little band of philosophers out into exile. There were seven of them and they took

their beloved books and started out from the famous seat of philosophy, to seek a

quiet retreat in Persia – the wise men of the West going towards the East with no

star for guide. It was a pathetic end. The mighty stream of truth seemed at last,

after eight hundred years, to be losing itself in the desert sand. The church would

brook no rival in the field of truth and it proposed to ban all unbaptized teachers,

23 Jones p. 77

122 and to taboo all streams of truth that did not flow from the canon. The Christian

emperor reckoned ill if he thought he could suppress the contribution of Greek

wisdom by lock and key. He could banish the feeble relic of the school, and then

settle down in the fond belief that the world was now rid of the philosophic brood.

Not so. Before Justinian was in his grave, this Neoplatonic philosophy was …

translated into Christian terms, and was made into the spiritual bee-bread on

which many Christian generations fed.24

He goes on to say that „the [Christian] Greek fathers were all influenced by the philosophy of Greece, and from the time of Origen (A.D. 185-254) there is a strong

Neoplatonic flavour in all their work. „The immanence of God is the very warp and woof of their thinking … Clement, Origen and Athanasius … were interpreting Christianity to the Greek mind through the historical forms of Greek thought and [they] … hit upon elemental facts of universal religious experience.‟25 We are reminded of Greek philosophy‟s central philosophical practice by Clement‟s „harmonized man‟, the goal of human perfection … „it is then, the greatest of all lessons to know oneself. For one who knows himself will know God, and knowing God, he will be made like God‟.26

The mysterious Ammonius Saccas, who left no writings and whose ideas are inferred from the works of his pupils, was an important link in the chain of schools of the

Perennial Philosophy. After long study and meditation, Ammonius opened a school of

24 Jones p. 79. „Bee-bread‟ is an American expression for pollen 25 Jones p. 84 26 Clement, The Instructor, Book III, chap. i. 83

123 philosophy in Alexandria in 193. His principal pupils included both pagans and

Christians: Herennius, the two Origens, Cassius Longinus and Plotinus. Hierocles, writing in the 5th century AD, states that his fundamental doctrine was eclecticism, derived from a critical study of Plato and Aristotle. His admirers credited him with having reconciled the quarrels of the two great schools. He is regarded by some as a theosophist and may also perhaps be considered the first Neoplatonist. Among other things, he warned about the dangers of drawing too rigid a division between pagans and

Christians. Although people spoke of him as theodidaktos, or “god-taught,” he was a modest man who considered himself merely a philalethian, or lover of truth. The aim of his school was universal brotherhood, a view of the essential unity of all religions, and making the study of philosophy a living power in people’s lives.27

We shall also see how this stream of the Tradition passed into the Latin world in the early middle ages and from there into the arena of thinking men, mystics and spiritual seekers in northern European cities such as Antwerp and Brussels in the 16th century. However, it is a pathway leading to spiritual awakening whose route is often outside the conventions of institutional religion, whether Catholic or Protestant. The attempts by historians to identify Bruegel‟s religion have been contradictory and inconclusive. Yet Bruegel‟s religion, or his attitude to religious ideas, must be an important key to the meaning of his paintings. If it is the case that he actively studied and applied mystical ideas that correspond to what has been called the Perennial Philosophy, the researcher is necessarily

27 Drawn from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonius_Saccas and http://www.alcott.net/alcott/home/champions/Ammonius.htm

124 led to the Hellenistic milieu of early Christianity where the origins of Christian mysticism are to be found. From here the seeker must pick out the thread that connects Bruegel with that source. He will find that this thread links together groups or schools of religious mystics nearly always regarded by the established church as „heretical‟.

In the early, and still Hellenistic, Christian tradition, the communities or schools of men and women who devoted themselves to the mystical path were the monastic brotherhoods and sisterhoods that first came into being in the Roman Empire.

The early Christian monks formed an international society that flourished in all

the Greek territories of the late Roman Empire, as well as Syria and Persia, in

Egypt gathered around the Nile, and as far into Africa as Nubia (modern Sudan)

and the highlands of Ethiopia. They inhabited the rocky and desert terrain of

Sinai, Palestine, Arabia and Turkey (ancient Cappadocia); and in the great capital

of the late Roman Empire, Constantinople, they became almost a civil service, so

great were their numbers, and many dedicated scholars and aristocrats among

them. After the fifth century, monasticism became popular in the West too, where

Gaul (modern France) and Italy became centres of activity. Soon over the whole

early Christian world, which was drawn like a circle around the Mediterranean

basin, Christian monks could be found living in small communes of hermits

125 gathered together in remote valleys, or in small houses, usually a few dozen living

the communal life together.28

The same author goes on to describe the elaboration of „spiritual theology‟ based on such men as Origen of Alexandria, „one one of the most elegant Platonist philosophers of his age [who had] created an extensive and elegant system for scriptural exegesis and the methods needed for purifying the soul and assisting its illumination and ascent‟.29

Professor McGuckin points out that the literature emanating from this milieu was not concerned with the disputes over doctrinal issues which were being debated elsewhere under the imperial eye and where the resulting decisions were given the force of Roman law. „The monastic texts, by contrast, were largely uninterested in controversial argument. It was a literature dedicated to the secrets of the inner life.‟30 We see in these remarks the beginning of that tension, sometimes leading to violence and cruelty, that has nearly always existed between those following the mystical path and the religious institutions of the state.

Esoteric symbolism in the New Testament

It is in this tradition that P. D. Ouspensky, writing in 1911, says esotericism is the

„kingdom of heaven‟ about which, in public, Jesus only spoke indirectly; though, even in

28 McGuckin, The Book of Mystical Chapters, Shambala. p. 4. 29 Idem. p. 5. 30 Ibid.

126 the parables, the sternness and severity of the teaching cannot be hidden‟.31 After giving the parable of the wheat and the tares32 Christ „sent the multitude away and went into the house‟. He ends his explanation of the symbolism, which he gives privately to a small group of people, namely the disciples, saying „the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of the world‟.33 And later, of the net cast into the sea, into which was

„gathered of every kind‟ and of which „they cast the bad away‟ he declares „So shall it be at the end of the world: and the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.‟34 The central idea of esotericism in the gospels is summed up in well-known, but not well understood, phrases: „many are called but few are chosen‟35 and „great is the harvest but the workers are few‟.36 The concept of the many and the few, clearly stressed by Christ, had long before been stated by Plato who declared that „philosophy was a mystical initiation‟ limited to „the chosen few‟.37

Another important exponent of the perennial tradition in the 20th century, Frithjof

Schuon tells us that in the Bible „word-for-word meaning practically never suffices by itself and [that] apparent naiveties, inconsistencies and contradictions resolve themselves

31 P. D. Ouspensky, A New Model of the Universe, London, 1931, Ch. I, „Esotericism and Modern Thought' and Ch. IV, „Christianity and the New Testament‟. 32 Mat. 13: 24-30 33 Idem, 39-40 34 Idem, 47, 49-50 35 Mat. 22 36 Luke 10.2, Mat. 9. 37-38. Also Thom. 73 37 Edgar Wind, referring to Phaedrus 244E in Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance, London 1958, p. 14). Likewise, discussing exoteric and esoteric meanings in the mysteries (Phaedo 67-69), „Many are the thyrsus bearers but few are the bacchoi‟. (idem, p. 15).

127 in a dimension of profundity of which one must possess the key. The literal meaning is frequently a cryptic language that more often veils than reveals and that is only meant to furnish clues to truths of a cosmological, metaphysical and mystical order‟38

An example of the cryptic language, traditionally employed in esoteric literature, might be the apparently straightforward description, quoted above, which tells us how Jesus

„sent the multitude away and went into the house‟. A mystical interpretation would see in the idea of the multitude, the idea of multiplicity, the „many‟, as opposed to the „one‟.

The former referring to man („my name is legion‟39) or, more specifically, unredeemed man‟s level of consciousness which is multiple, divided and lacking order, as opposed to

God who is „one‟, undifferentiated, the highest or divine level of consciousness. The

„house‟ that Christ „enters‟ might be seen as what writers in the Philokalia,40 call the

„house of spiritual architecture‟ or, in St Catherine of Sienna‟s phrase, „the cell of self- knowledge,‟ whose location is at the inner centre of a man‟s being and accessible through mystical contemplation.

38 see J. Needleman ed., The Sword of Gnosis, Penguin books, 1974, p. 354 39 Mk 5;9 40 Translated into English by Kadloubovsky and Palmer in 2 vols: Prayer of the Heart, London 1961 and Early Fathers from the Philokalia, London 1964. The quotation is from the latter vol., 14th century monks, Ignatios and Callistos.

128 The Church Institutionalized

The questions of the sources for the synoptic gospels are still a matter of debate.41 It can be supposed that those who had been with Christ memorized and wrote down what they had personally seen and heard. Such notes were shared, passed on to others and copied with varying degrees of accuracy and, later still, groups of people around a particular teacher, gathered these notes into collections of sayings, editing and collating them with accounts of significant and miraculous events. By the middle of the second century a wide variety of material abounded purporting to reflect Christ‟s words and actions. Small and not so small groups of Christians were to be found all over the so-called civilized world, i.e. the Roman Empire: in southern France and Italy, in Egypt and North Africa, in the eastern Mediterranean countries and throughout the Balkans and Asia Minor who treasured these materials. (There are also traditions of the spread of Christianity into

China and India.) Some were slaves, some were well-born, some were philosophers and some were Gnostics. For some, Christianity was a message of hope in a world of social oppression, injustice and cruelty; for others it brought meaning to this present life as well as to the soul‟s longing for union with the divine in eternity. Such a variety of class, race, language and education tended to produce a corresponding variety of versions of what

Christ had said and done. Men, such as Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, who regarded themselves part of the „apostolic succession‟ and who had influence and ability felt a need to unify and universalize these varied accounts of the sayings and actions of Christ.

41 G. R. S. Meade‟s The Gospels and the Gospel, London, 1902 remains a good introduction. See also M. H. Smith A Synoptic Gospels Primer http://virtualreligion.net/primer/ with summaries of the positions taken by Weisse, Griesbach amd Farrer.

129 Part of Irenaeus‟ authority came from his having been a disciple of Polycarp, the last of the sub-apostolic age, who had died in 155 A.D.42

Gnostics

In the second century, that is, still before the Church Fathers imposed dogmatic and doctrinal strictures on how to interpret certain mysterious and mystical ideas, there were a number of different groups, loosely associated under the term „Gnostics‟, who sought the way to actualize in themselves certain proposals implicit in what Paul and John had understood and taught. The „Gnostics‟ (the term is loose and it may help at this stage to think of them as mystical seekers or perhaps mystical philosophers) through working to know themselves, discovered that the human being consists of two different opposing halves. Each half was itself seen as consisting of two parts. First there was the visible body which was made of a subtle element, such as had constituted Adam‟s body before the Fall, which they called the hylic body. Later, after Adam and Eve had eaten of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the hylic body was enclosed within a covering of gross matter which was called the choical body. According to Rufus Jones the idea of the body‟s „outer sheath‟ was based on the scriptural text „Unto Adam also and his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them‟.43 The second half of a human being was invisible and also consisted of two parts: the psychical being which

42 See passage in St. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer., III, 3) which brings out in fullest relief St. Polycarp's position as a link with the past. 43 Gen. iii. 21. A.V. cited by Jones, R. in Spiritual Reformers of the 16th and 17th Centuries, Illinois, 1914, p. xiii.

130 belonged to the Demiurge who was the creator of the world (though he is not the highest deity) and the pneumatical being who was above the psychical. This pneumatic or spiritual part was a seed planted in man by the highest being of all – that which the

Gnostics called the Pleroma and which Christian mystics (for example the 14th century

German writer and preacher Meister Eckhart) called the Godhead.

In the third book of his famous treatise Against Heresies, Irenaeus makes his celebrated appeal to the „successions‟ of the bishops in all the Churches which he uses to justify his opposition to „heretics‟ who professed to have a kind of esoteric tradition derived from the Apostles.44 „To whom, demands St. Irenaeus, would the Apostles be more likely to commit hidden mysteries than to the bishops to whom they entrusted their churches? In order then to know what the Apostles taught, we must have recourse to the „successions‟ of bishops throughout the world‟.45 Irenaeus was especially concerned about a widespread movement, later called Montanism, which he regarded as spurious and outside the succession.

44 See The Gnostic Society Library Irenaeus: Against Heretics, http://www.gnosis.org/library/advh1.htm. 45 Catholic Encyclopedia, www.newadvent.org/cathen/12219b.htm,

131 Chapter 4. Lineaments of the Perennial Philosophy: Gnosticism and Christian

Platonism

Montanism

It may be interesting to follow this movement which, incidentally, is one of many, since it is possible to link it with a subsequent chain of related schools that are connected along a period of more than a thousand years and which crossed over into the west and whose ideas were still available to those who sought them in 16th -century Flanders. It arose in

Phrygia (today western Turkey) and was referred to by contemporaries as the New

Prophecy. Its leaders were Montanus, Priscilla and Maximilla who emphasized the role of the Holy Spirit: “Behold, man (i.e. the human being) is like a lyre and I come upon him as a plectrum. Man is asleep and I am awake”. “Behold, the Lord is raising [to ecstasy] the hearts of men and he is giving them [new] hearts”.46

According to Jones, the Montanists „launched a movement for a „spiritual‟ Church composed only of „spiritual‟ persons. They called themselves „the Spirituals‟ and they insisted that the age of the dispensation of the spirit had now come. The Church, rigidly organized with its ordained officials, its external machinery, and its accumulated traditions, was to them part of an old and outworn system to be left behind. In place of it was to come a new order of „spiritual‟ people [who were] … born from above, recipients

46 Epiphanius, Panarion 48,4,1. from Studia Patristica 26 (1993) pp. 147-150; see www.womenpriests.org).

132 of a divine energizing power, partakers in the life of the spirit and capable of being guided on a progressive revelation into all the truth.'47 In other words they claimed to be directly inspired by the Holy Spirit as had those of the apostolic age, about whom we read in the New Testament, of prophetic visions, ecstasies and the power to work miracles. This movement, and others that relied on visions and prophecy such as the group around the theologians Valentinus and Ptolemy, attracted enormous numbers of followers both in Rome and throughout the Christian communities. However there was an equally forceful opposition to them from Irenaeus and other high-ranking Christians who denounced them as spurious and as false prophets. The position of the Church‟s „big hitters‟ – Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, Tertullian, Hippolytus – was eventually victorious; so much so that the writings of those who made the „wrong choice‟, i.e. „heretics‟ were more or less totally destroyed and their authors vilified and smeared for two thousand years.

According to one authority Montanism „was simply a reaction of the old, the primitive

Church against the obvious tendency of the Church of the day – to strike a bargain with the world, and arrange herself comfortably in it‟.48 Such reaction against institutionalism, against the external forms of worship rather than the internal spiritual experience, is a feature of reform movements throughout the history of Christianity and intensifying in the period between the end of the Middle Ages and the explosion of the Reformation in the 16th century. Together with relatively recently discovered writings such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip and other texts found at Nag Hammadi in the mid-

47 Jones, op. cit.

48 W. Möller, "Montanism," Philip Schaff, ed., A Religious Encyclopaedia or Dictionary of Biblical, Historical, Doctrinal, and Practical Theology, 3rd edn, Vol. 3. Toronto, New York & London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1894. pp.1561-1562.

133 20th century, we can today see more or less clearly what had hitherto only been hinted at: the essence of that „spiritual church‟ or „invisible church‟ that the Church Fathers were so anxious to suppress and which can be called esoteric Christianity.

From the bishop‟s point of view, of course, the gnostic position was outrageous.

These heretics challenged the right to define what he considered to be his own

church; they had the audacity to debate whether or not catholic Christians

participated; and they claimed that their own group formed the essential nucleus,

the “spiritual church”. Rejecting such spiritual elitism, orthodox leaders

attempted instead to construct a universal church. Desiring to open the church to

everyone, they welcomed members from every social class, every racial or

cultural origin, whether educated or illiterate – everyone, that is who would

submit to their system of organization. The bishops drew the line against anyone

who challenged the three elements of this system: doctrine, ritual and clerical

hierarchy – and the gnostics challenged them all. Only by suppressing gnosticism

did orthodox leaders establish that system or organization which united all

believers in a single institutional structure. They allowed no distinction between

first- and second-class members than that between the clergy and the laity, nor did

they tolerate any who claimed exemption from doctrinal conformity, from ritual

participation and from obedience to the discipline that the priests and bishops

administered. Gnostic churches, which rejected that system for more subjective

134 forms of religious affiliation survived, as churches, for only a few hundred

years.49

Was the destruction meted out to the Gnostic churches wholly successful? There is a case for saying that the teachings lived on, reappearing in one form or another throughout the history of Christianity sometimes disguised within orthodoxy; sometimes, like the

Cathars, openly and so attracting severe retribution; sometimes hidden unsuspected in the art, architecture and music of the church.

No one has yet succeeded in defining „gnosticism‟ adequately, or indeed in

demonstrating whether this movement preceded Christianity or grew from it.

Certainly Gnostic sects were spreading at the same time as Christian ones; both

were part of the general religious osmosis. Gnostics had two central

presuppositions: belief in the existence of a secret code of truth, transmitted by

word of mouth or by arcane writings. Gnosticism is a „knowledge religion‟ – that

is what the word means – which claims to have an inner explanation of life.

Christianity [acting as a host] fitted into this role very well. It has a mysterious

founder, Jesus, who had conveniently disappeared, leaving behind a collection of

sayings and followers to transmit them; and of course in addition to the public

sayings there were „secret‟ ones, handed on from generation to generation by

members of the sect.50

49 Elain Pagels The Gnostic Gospels, New York, 1979, p. 118

50 Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (London: Penguin, 1988), p.45

135 This introduces the idea of another dimension to gnosticism, namely the role in it of ancient or „pagan‟ philosophy. Tertullian named Marcion with other Gnostics, whom he regarded among the pagan philosophers, when he wrote the famous line, „What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the

Church? What between heretics and Christians?‟51

The pre-20th-century understanding of Gnosticism was that it was primarily a

product of synthesis between Greek philosophy and Christianity. This was the

view of Tertullian and his anti-heresy peers in the second century and a view

largely shared by scholars through the modern era. Even Harnack (1896) defined

Gnosticism in this way.52 More recently Hans Jonas53 saw Gnosticism's origins in

the synthesis of Greek and Eastern religion. But, the discovery of the library at

Nag Hammadi in Egypt has forced a different view of the origins of Gnosticism.

Because the Nag Hammadi corpus of Gnostic materials included pseudo-

Christian, Jewish-Gnostic, and Hermetic-Gnostic (Persian) documents, the

51 Tertullian,‟ On Prescriptions Against Heretics‟, 7, in Ante-Nicene Fathers (ANF), vol. 3, edited by Cleveland A. Coxe. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963, p. 246.

52 Harnack, Adolf (1851-1930) leading German scholar and theologian of his time. Son of the Lutheran scholar Theodosius Harnack (1817-89). He taught at Leipzig (1874) before becoming professor at Giessen (1879), Marburg (1886), and Berlin (1889-1921). The last appointment was challenged by the church because of Harnack's doubts about the authorship of the fourth gospel and other NT books. His unorthodox interpretations of biblical miracles including the Resurrection and his denial of Christ's institution of baptism. (see his History of Dogma, 7 vols. 1894-99) (New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, J.D. Douglas, 1974, p 452)

53 See Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: the Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity, Boston 1958. An astonishing work considering it was published before the discoveries at Nag Hammadi were known. It remains one of the best introductions to Gnosticism. Another invaluable work is Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, Random House, 1978.

136 origination of Gnosticism should be considered to be a broader world-view

transcending both Christianity and Greek philosophy.54

With the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, the doors on the first centuries of

Christianity are wide open.55 The light now streaming in has proved too much for some; the Churches themselves even after 50 years seem quite unable to respond. One is grateful therefore to Dr Pagels who, as well as publishing scholarly work in leading academic journals, shares her views with a wider readership in her books; views that endorse those 19th- and 20th-century writers such as Mead, Jonas and others who have sought to rehabilitate gnosticism.56

Many of the books from Nag Hammadi were written between the later part of the first century and the end of the third century AD. They belonged to a community of Egyptian monks who studied a Christianity rather different from what would soon become the canonical New Testament and the dogmas of orthodox doctrine. The establishment of the

Church as a secular institution after the passing of the apostolic age (i.e. those who had actually known Jesus Christ and had been taught by him or by his immediate followers) created, already in the second century, the beginnings of a division between those who sought to live a purely spiritual life in direct contact with divine energies or the Holy

Spirit and those who wanted to establish the religion of Christ as a social movement in the world. The latter, under the powerful and influential Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, established Christian practices and beliefs laid down within specific boundaries and

54 Marcion and Marcionite Gnosticism By Cky J. Carrigan, Ph. D. (11/96) http://ontruth.com/marcion.html 55 James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English, Harper and Row, 1977 56 Among Dr Pagels‟ works this writer would recommend The Origin of Satan, 1995; Adam, Eve and the Serpent, 1989; The Gnostic Gospels, 1979; The Gnostic Paul: Exegesis of the Pauline Letters, 1975 The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis, 1973.

137 which excluded many of the writings and ideas of the former group. Later, in the fourth century, Athanasius the bishop of Alexandria ordered the destruction of all „heretical‟ texts. The order seems to have been successful and, until the Nag Hammadi discovery, access to their ideas – in written form at least – was almost exclusively through the polemical essays of its opponents.

The direction taken by those Gnostic groups in the second century reveals a recurring tendency within Christianity; a tendency that goes against the often rigid conventions of the institutionalized, established churches; adherence to which was nearly always disapproved of and often persecuted. Once the church had entered into an alliance with the state at the beginning of the fourth century, its ideals were too easily compromised in favour of political aims such as state security and state unity. For the individual the compromise was at the level of conscience. For the next 1200 years some aspects of the church had a tendency to become an organization comparable in some ways with the business world or the civil services of modern times; it provided the best opportunities for men of ability to advance their personal status to high levels within society. Dissent, then as now, was a sure way to oblivion and ignominy.

Gnosticism: The Way of Self-knowledge

The scholar Elaine Pagels has convincingly suggested that Gnosticism is, in essence, the way of self-knowledge, that the abiding idea of the spiritual life, the measure of all

138 spiritual knowledge, is self-knowledge.57 Furthermore it is an esoteric way much of which „remained, on principle, unwritten‟.58 „A wise man does not blurt out every word‟59 and „Be not as the merchants of the word of God. Put all words to the test before you utter them‟.60

Gnostic teachers usually reserved their secret instructions, sharing it only

verbally, to ensure each candidate‟s suitability to receive it. Such instruction

required each teacher to take responsibility for highly select, individualized

attention to each candidate. And it required the candidate, in turn, to devote

energy and time – often years – to the process. Tertullian sarcastically compares

Valentinian instruction to that of the Eleusinian mysteries which „first beset all

access to their group with tormenting conditions; and they require a long initiation

before they enroll their members, even instruction for five years for their adept

students, so they may educate their opinions by this suspension of full knowledge,

and, apparently, raise the value of their mysteries in proportion to the longing for

them which they have created. Then follows the duty of silence …‟61

Pagels points out that „for gnostics, exploring the psyche became explicitly what is for many people today implicitly – a religious quest. Some who seek their own interior direction, like the radical gnostics, reject religious institutions as a hindrance to their

57 Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, See Chap. VI „Gnosis: Self-Knowledge as Knowledge of God‟, pp. 119- 141 58 Ibid. p. 140 59 „The Teaching of Silvanus‟, in Nag Hammadi Library in English, p. 352 60 Ibid., p. 361 61 Pagels, p. 140. The quotation from Tertullian is from his Adversus Valentinianos I

139 progress. Others, like the Valentinians, willingly participated in them, although they regard the church more as an instrument of their own self-discovery than as the necessary

“ark of salvation” ‟.62 And further, „Both gnosticism and psychotherapy value above all, knowledge – the self-knowledge which is insight‟.63

The spiritual exercises of the Gnostics, then, are not specifically described in their writings, though they are hinted at and obliquely referred to. The author of The Teaching of Silvanus is referring to psychological states and events when he employs the symbol of the city as an analogy for the inner life and the imagery in some of Bruegel‟s paintings, such as the Numbering at Bethlehem or the Massacre of the Innocents, can be viewed in the light of such meaning.

Throw every robber out of your gates. Guard all your gates with torches … he

who will not guard these … will become like a city which is desolate since it has

been captured, and all kinds of wild beasts have trampled on it. For thoughts

which are not good are evil wild beasts. And your city will be filled with robbers

and you will not be able to acquire peace but only all kinds of savage wild

beasts…the whole city, which is your soul, will perish…Remove all these…bring

in your guide and your teacher. The mind is the guide, but reason is the teacher.64

62 Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels, p. 123 63 Ibid. 124 64 „Teaching of Silvanus‟, Nag Hammadi Library in English, San Francisco, 1977, p. 347

140

The great G. R. S. Mead wrote that „Gnosis was to be attained by definite endeavour and conscious striving along the path of cosmological and psychological science‟.65

„Conscious striving‟ and „psychological science‟ refer to the kinds of inner exercises familiar today to students of Vipassana or Zen meditation and which are being studied and even revived in Christian monasteries and churches that put emphasis on contemplative prayer. There are signs, for example on Mount Athos, that the hesychast tradition is being once more revived.66

Spiritual Exercises

It is implicit in the writings coming from the Philosophia Perennis tradition that philosophy only begins to have meaning when it is fully lived and practised. Today philosophy is an academic subject and students studying it for their degrees are not expected to practice it. But in former times contemplation or theoria was an essential foundation of the tradition of true philosophy. We see this in the life of the groups that formed around great teachers in antiquity such as Pythagoras at whose school on the island of Croton disciplines were imposed in matters of diet, silence and daily conduct.

We also learn from the French scholar and theologian Pierre Hadot that „Plato had given

65 G. R. S. Mead, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, London 1900, p. 175. 66 See Mitchell B. Leister in Quest Magazine, March-April 2000, http://www.theosophical.org/theosophy/questmagazine/

141 his Academy an extremely solid material and juridical organization. The leaders of the school succeeded one another in a continuous chain until Justinian‟s closure of the school in 529, and, throughout this entire period, scholarly activity was carried out according to fixed, traditional methods.‟67 The same author goes on to remind us that „the tradition was continued, both in the Arab world and in the Latin West, up until the Renaissance

(Marsilio Ficino)‟.68 Similar spiritual exigencies, as we shall see, were applied among the

„heretical‟ groups of Germany, Holland and Flanders in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Hadot shows that, in the Perennial Philosophy, Reality is not perceptible to the rational mind or the physical senses; it has to be sought by the cultivation of inner, spiritual energies. Such energies are acquired through the practices of contemplation, prayer and meditation; though these alone are insufficient. „Techniques by themselves used by a person working alone will not advance him in the path; a spiritual step can be taken only with the co-operation of the Holy Spirit‟.69 This may be a non-rational or, according to some, supra-rational idea but it is the traditional view and is found frequently, for example, in the Philokalia. There we find, for instance, St Isaac of Syria, writing in the

6th century, saying, „Spiritual mysteries are above knowledge and cannot be apprehended by the physical senses or the reasoning power of the mind‟.70

67 Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, Blackwell, 1995, p. 71 68 Ibid. p. 72. 69 Author‟s interview with a monastic spiritual adviser, Vatopaidi Monastery, Mount Athos, May, 2005 70 Kadloubovsky and Palmer, Early Fathers from the Philokalia, London 1964, p. 227.

142 For human beings to perceive the world of Reality via the descent of the Holy Spirit it is necessary, according to Dionysius the Areopagite, to sense what he called a „hierarchical succession‟ of intermediate and higher worlds that are perceptible to our spiritual faculties but not to our physical senses.

Each order in the hierarchical succession is guided to the divine co-operation, and

brings into manifestation, through the Grace and Power of God, that which is

naturally and supernaturally in the Godhead, and which is consummated by him

superessentially, but is hierarchically manifested for man‟s imitation, as far as is

attainable, of the God-loving Celestial Intelligences.71

Man, or rather man‟s soul, can aspire to „imitate‟ Reality by what Iamblichus calls

„cosmogonic mimesis‟ which can be understood as aligning the inner cosmos, the microcosm, with the structure of the macrocosm.72 This is not a matter of „taking thought‟ by which a man „cannot add one cubit to his stature‟,73 it can only be done by interior prayer and attention – what the Philokalia calls „tending the vineyard of the heart‟.74

71 Dionysius the Areopagite, The Mystical Theology and The Celestial Hierarchies, Shrine of Wisdom ed., Godalming, 1963. 72 Gregory Shaw, Iamblichus Theurgy and the Soul, 1995 73 Matthew 6:24 74 Kadloubovsky, E. and Palmer, G.E.H. Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart. London: Faber and Faber, 1961.

143 Hadot suggests that religion and philosophy, for Pagans, Jews and Christians in late antiquity and the Early Middles Ages, held much in common and even, it may be said, were essentially the same. „Both Judaism and Christianity sought to present themselves to the Greek world as philosophies; thus they developed, in the persons of Philo and Origen respectively, a biblical exegesis analogous to the traditional pagan exegesis of Plato‟.75

More important for this study is Hadot‟s demonstration that the conduct of philosophy was based on the practice of spiritual exercises, and, further, that such exercises were similar from antiquity to the Renaissance.

Ignatius‟ exercitia spiritualia are nothing but a Christian version of a Greco-

Roman tradition … In the first place, both the idea and the terminology of

exercitium spirituale are attested, in early Latin Christianity well before Ignatius

of Loyola, and they correspond to the Greek Christian term askesis. In turn,

askesis − which must be understood not as asceticism, but as the practise of

spiritual exercises − already existed within the philosophical tradition of antiquity.

In the final analysis, it is to antiquity that we must turn in order to explain the

origin and significance of spiritual exercises.76

75 Hadot, op. cit., p. 72 76 Ibid. p. 82

144

The Tradition in the West: Dionysius the Areopagite

An important exponent in Christianity of Plotinus‟ ideas is the 5th-century Christian

Platonist, Dionysius the Areopagite. Just as there is a suggestion of an „unbroken chain‟ connecting Pythagoras and the pre-Platonists through to the last of the Neoplatonists, so there is the idea of continuity in Christian mysticism. According to Andrew Louth: „With

Denys (Dionysius the Areopagite) we come to the end of the development of Patristic mystical theology. For with Denys are completed all the main lines of the mystical theology of the Fathers … In Denys the tradition of apophatic theology, which has its roots in Philo and Gregory of Nyssa, is summed up by the tiny, but immensely influential, Mystical Theology … For Denys is the most well-known exponent of the

Negative or Apophatic Way, where the soul flees from everything created and is united with the Unknowable God in Darkness.77

The trans-cosmic principle, as set out by Plotinus, whereby each phase of the universe is the image of the phase above it and, at the same time, the archetype for the phase below, becomes, in the works of Dionysius, the „imitation of Divine Power‟.

77 Louth, op. cit. p. 159.

145 According to the same law of the material order, the Fount of all order, visible and

invisible, supernaturally shows forth the glory of its own radiance in all-blessed

outpourings of first manifestation to the highest beings, and, through them, those

below them participate in the Divine Ray. For since these have the highest

knowledge of God, and desire pre-eminently the Divine Goodness, they are thought

worthy to become first workers, as far as can be attained, of the imitation of Divine

Power and Energy, and beneficently uplift those below them, as far as is in their

power, to the same imitation by shedding abundantly upon them the splendour which

has come upon themselves; while these, in turn, impart their light to lower choirs.

And thus, throughout the whole hierarchy, the higher impart that which they receive

to the lower, and through the Divine Providence all are granted participation in the

Divine Light in the measure of their receptivity. The holy orders both lead and are

led, but not the same ones, nor by the same ones, but that each is led by those above

itself, and in turn leads those below it.78

In 827 a set of Dionysius' writings was sent to Louis I, son of Charlemagne, who turned them over to the Abbey of St Denis. It can be seen today with its decorated cover in the

Louvre. During the reign of Charles the Bald (843-876) John Scotus Erigena received a royal command to translate the works of Dionysius into Latin. He also wrote an original work which was permeated with Dionysian views and which was destined to have a great influence on later generations. The importance of Dionysius and his translator and

78 Dionysius the Areopagite Mystical Theology and Celestial Hierarchies, Godalming, 1965, p. 44.

146 commentator Erigena cannot be exaggerated. Nearly every medieval scholar made use of these writings; the 19th-century French scholar Dulac says „If the works of Dionysius had been lost, they could be almost reconstructed from the works of Aquinas.‟79

It was [Dionysius‟] formulation of the celestial order which fed the imagination of

the Middle Ages and … furnished Dante with the „nature of the ministry

angelical‟. It was here too that Spenser got those „trinical triplicities‟ which

„About him wait and on his will depend‟. And we get an echo … in Tennyson‟s

lines:

The Great Intelligences fair

That range above our mortal state.

The ninefold order of the heavenly hierarchy came to be as much a necessary part

of human thought as the pictorial facts of the gospel were … so that not only

poets and theologians made general use of [it] but … it was taken up everywhere

by the popular mind.80 The „celestial ladder‟ leading back to God became, too, the

common property of all later mystics, and there is hardly a single mystical writer

who does not have somewhere in his book a description of the „upward steps‟ by

79 L‟ Abbé J.Dulac, Oeuvres de St Denys l’Areopagite, 1932 80 The „Nine Choirs of Angels‟, connecting Man to God are, in ascending order: Angels, Archangels, Powers, Dominions, Thrones, Virtues, Principalities, Cherubim and Seraphim.

147 which the soul flees from the world and the flesh to an inexpressible union with

the One Reality who is above knowledge.81

One example the influence of Dionysius is Walter Hylton’s Scala perfectionis or The ladder of perfection, published in 1494.82

John Scotus Erigena announced at the beginning of one of his tracts that true philosophy and true religion are identical.83 Elsewhere he says „There is nothing in the visible and material world which does not signify something immaterial and reasonable‟84. Jones tells us that he „seized the pantheistical elements of the system and brought to full emphasis the doctrine of the „progression of God‟ into all things and the return of all things into God‟.85 Erigena‟s own book On the Division of Nature „marks a philosophical epoch which, together with the Dionysian writings, turned the stream of Greek Mysticism into Christian Scholasticism‟.86

Origins of the Cathars: Paulicians, Montanists, Manichaeans and Bogomils

Many of the ideas that Erigena was concerned with resonate with the movement we know as Catharism which came to France via Eastern Europe and which historians have shown had its roots in oriental Christian „heresies‟ dating back to the earliest Christian times.

81 Jones p. 107. 82 [Westminster:] Wynkyn de Worde, 1494, Bv. 2. 7 83 Erigena, De Divina Praedestinationae, c. 851 84 De Divisione Naturae, v. 3 85 Jones p.108 86 Jones p. 124

148 Catharism was a revived form of Manichaeism and Montanism. Its appearance is recorded in Bulgaria about the middle of the ninth century. It seems to have come from

Armenia, where sects of Paulicians held similar views. According to Jones, the Paulicians were probably named from Paul of Samasota, not far from the ancient „Ur of the

Chaldees‟, today in north western Iraq, where they originated as a separate sect around the middle of the seventh century. The patriarch of the sect was a certain Constantine, who had come under Gnostic and Manichaean influences. He had a copy of St Paul‟s

Epistles which he considered to be the foundation of his own gnostic ideas. By allegorical interpretation he harmonized St Paul‟s Christianity with Oriental theosophy and the product was the „Paulicianism‟… Later [it] became „Catharism‟ in the West.87

According to Lynda Harris in her book on Hieronymus Bosch, it was Manichaean/Cathar dualism, surviving in 15th-century Flanders that was the foundation of Bosch‟s mystical ideas and symbolism.88 She cites a significant group of authors who consider that

Catharism, which came to France via Eastern Europe, had its roots in oriental Christian

„heresies‟ dating back to the earliest Christian times.89

Steven Runciman finds a gnostic origin for the Paulicians especially in the dualism that was characteristic of the gnostics and their answer to the problem of the origin of evil. He also suggests a Zoroastrian influence through the Christian or Zoroastrian heretic

87 Columbia Encyclopedia, http://www.bartleby.com/65/pa/Paulicia.html See also Medieval Church, http://www.medievalchurch.org.uk/h_paul.html, Jones p. 143, Herzog, “Paulicians,” Philip Schaff, ed., A Religious Encyclopaedia or Dictionary of Biblical, Historical, Doctrinal, and Practical Theology, 3rd edn, Vol. 2. Toronto, New York & London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1894. pp.1776-1777. 88 Lynda Harris, The Secret Heresy of Hieronymus Bosch, Floris Books, Edinburgh, 1985, p. 24. See below, p. 143. 89 These are usefully summarized in Lynda Harris, The Secret Heresy of Hieronymus Bosch, Floris Books, Edinburgh, 1995, 2002

149 Bardaisan who, in the second century, taught that „Buddha and Zoroaster … Hermes and

Plato, as well as Jesus, taught God‟s message to man‟.90 The Paulicians survived and even thrived in Byzantine times until the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787) that saw the end of iconoclasm. After this date Paulicians were oppressed by the authorities. The emperor Constantine V transplanted colonies of them to Thrace, a policy adopted by subsequent emperors. There they lingered on until their teachings were revived in 10th- century Bulgaria by a group known as the Bogomils.91 They were named after a priest named Bogomil („loved of God‟). Runciman states that „by the end of the eleventh century the main body of the Bogomils was definitely Gnostic in its ideas‟.92

The Bogomil heresy was born amidst peasants whose physical misery made them

conscious of the wickedness of things. The Christianity imposed on them by their

masters seemed alien and without comfort. The creed of the Paulicians, settled

nearby, was fitter; it taught simple Dualism and explained the misery of the

world. An unknown priest adapted it for the Slavs … As time went on the new

faith developed; the heretics came in touch with the Messalians, who gave them

access to all the wealth of Orientalized Gnostic tradition. And thus a new

Christianity was formed, based on early Christian legend and Eastern Dualism …

to become one of the great religions of Europe.93

90 Steven Runciman, The Medieval Manichee, Cambridge, 1947, p.12; „the main Zoroastrian element in Mani‟s teaching, the opposition of Light and Darkness, he probably derived from Bardaisan‟. 91 Runciman, op. cit. p. 67 92 Idem, p. 89 93 Idem, p. 93

150 In the 12th and 13th centuries the Bogomil teaching, that is, Catharism, spread to the West finding followers in Lombardy and in France. It had become the state religion of Bosnia where it survived until Turkish rule in the 16th century. Historians such as Runciman account for these movements mainly on political grounds and it is true that the rivalries and alliances of powerful dynastic clans and ecclesiastic authorities played the Bogomil heresy as a card when it suited their drive for influence and ascendancy. At the same time there was in the West a strong anti-clerical movement and a desire for the original purity of religion that important elements of the „heresy‟ seemed to offer. These elements reflect the Perennial Philosophy. Harris notes, interestingly, „a number of scholars have begun to

… see [that] Catharism and Bogomilism were unexplained revivals of primitive

Christianity, which had somehow been influenced by Gnosticism. Any similarity between them and Manicheism are explained by the universal Gnostic ideas that were shared by all of them‟.94

Making the connection with Manichaeism, Harris discusses the Tammuz myth cited as an early example of the symbolism of spiritual death and resurrection with its parallel in

Manichean and Cathar literature and the forgetfulness that overtakes the soul (or Adam) once it is ensnared in the body.95 „Widengren … says … the chief doctrines of

Manichaeism are the same as those of all other Gnostic systems.96 Manichaeism developed in Mesopotamia in the third century AD. „It was an amalgamation of many earlier systems, including Gnostic Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and even Buddhism.

94 Harris, p. 32 95 Harris, p. 27 96 Widengren, G., 1946, Mesopotamian Elements in Manichaeism (King and Saviour II), Uppsala and Leipzig.

151 Mani, who died in 277, claimed Buddha, Zoroaster, Hermes, and Plato as his predecessors. He always called himself “Mani, Apostle of Jesus Christ”.97 According to

Runciman, Obolensky, Loos and other scholars … Manichaeism remained strong in the

Middle East … it influenced a seventh century sect called the Paulicians [who] arrived in

[Byzantium and] the Balkans in the eighth century.‟98 Harris points out that in the tenth century Manichaeism and Messalianism combined to become Bogomilism. Bogomilism was Catharism. „Virtually all of today‟s experts … accept that West European Catharism had direct links with East European Bogomilism.‟99

97 www.factmonster.com 98 Harris, p. 29 99 Harris, p. 34

152 Chapter 5. Lineaments of the Perennial Philosophy: Mysticism in the Late Middle

Ages

13th-century followers of Erigena

It is clear that the „heresies‟ listed in the papal condemnation of 1271 contain views distinctly and definitely taught by Erigena. Jones tells us that „Cardinal Henry of Ostia … says: “the doctrine of the wicked Amaury 1 is comprised in the book of Master John the

Scot, which is called Peryphision (i.e. De Divisione Naturae), which the said Amaury followed”… The papal bull (of 1225) says: “We have heard that this book is to be found in various monasteries and other places, and several monastic and scholastic persons … give themselves eagerly to the study of the said book.” Further, „Numerous copies of [this book] were found among the Albigensians in the South of France.‟2

The council of 1209 denounced another follower of Erigena, David of Dinant, of equal fame with Amaury. They wrote:

David of Dinant held that God, intelligence, and matter are identical in essence,

and unite in a single substance, that consequently everything in nature is one –

[and that] individual qualities which distinguish beings are only appearances due

1Amaury (or Amalrich) de Bene, „a master in the university [of Paris] and a person of wide and commanding influence‟ Jones, p. 179 2 Quoted by Jones, op. cit.

153 to the illusion of sense. These pantheistic ideas are further confirmed by Saint

Thomas Aquinas, a disciple of Albert the Great, who gives this further account of

David‟s doctrine. „David of Dinant divided the beings of the universe into three

classes – bodies, souls, and eternal substances. He said that matter is the first and

indivisible element which constitutes bodies, that intelligence (nous) is the first

and indivisible element which constitutes souls, and that God is the first and

indivisible element which constitutes eternal essences; and finally that these three

– God, intelligence and matter – are a single thing, one and the same. From which

it follows that everything in the universe is essentially one.3

We are reminded that „there is a very strong tinge of Neoplatonic mysticism in the Arab interpretation of Aristotle (in the version that came to the West), and it is well-nigh certain that „one particular book on physics‟ gave a basis for David‟s doctrine. It is possible that one of the sources of the teaching both of David and Amaury, and through them of the mysticism which followed, was the writings of Alexander of Aphrodisias, the great commentator of Aristotle in the second century. Alexander taught that the active reason in man is divine, and all the ideas which are the prototypes of the universe have their origin in this „active „reason‟, and thus have their origin in God, so that everything real is divine‟.4

3 Cited by Jones, p. 184 4 Jones p. 185

154 The Brethren of the Free Spirit

There was already by 1209 a widespread „society‟ in and about Paris, evidently loosely held together and yet showing some indications of internal organization. We learn of a specific ministry through „prophets‟ and we find an important stress placed on ecstatic states and inspirational speaking derived from what was considered to be direct contact with God. The members of the sect rejected, as suitable only to the condition of the ignorant and unspiritual, the traditional formulae, rites and ceremonies of the Church.

They denounced as superstition the worship of saints and the veneration of relics.

Goodwill and spiritual insight, they held, are more efficacious than the sacraments.

According to the contemporary chronicler Caesar of Heisterbach:

They denied the resurrection of the body. They taught that there is neither heaven

nor hell, as places, but that he who knows God possesses Heaven, and he who

commits a mortal sin carries hell within himself … they treat as idolatry the

custom of setting up of statues and burning incense to images. They laughed at

those who kissed the bones of martyrs … [They taught that] The direct inward

work of the Holy Spirit brings salvation, without any exterior act or ceremony …

[An Amaury follower] asserts that “God spoke through Ovid as much as through

Augustine” … They believe in the incarnation, the birth, the passion, and the

resurrection of Christ, but they mean by it the spiritual conception, spiritual birth,

spiritual resurrection of the perfect man. For them the true passion of Jesus is the

155 martyrdom of a holy man, and the true sacrament is the conversion of a man, for

in such a conversion the body of Christ is formed‟.5

Only a few years after the death of Amaury a powerful sect came to light, with mystical and pantheistic ideas which seem like a propagation and expansion of the views of this group. It was called in its earlier stage the „Sect of the New Spirit‟, though this name was soon superseded by the name Brethren of the Free Spirit. The sect appears to have sprung up in Strasbourg, and to have owed its origin to a man named Ortlieb, who was almost certainly an Amaurian.6

Finally, „The document by the „Anonymous of Passau‟ (formerly supposed to have been

Rudolph Sacchoni, who wrote Summa Catharis et Leonistis, and who died in 1259) contains 97 propositions setting forth the doctrines of the Sect of the New Spirit. (These

97 propositions have been traced back to Albert the Great, and were evidently in their earliest form drawn up by him)‟.7 It is generally considered that Hieronymus Bosch – in some senses Bruegel‟s predecessor – belonged to the Brethren of the Free Spirit.8

5 According to the chronicler Caesar of Heisterbach, Book v. chap. xxii. p. 386) cited by Jones, pp. 187- 191. 6 According to Nauclerus, Swiss chronicler, 1215; Jones p. 192 7 Jones, p. 192 8 Lynda Harris, op. cit

156 Devotio Moderna

We are now in the territory of the Brethren of the Free Spirit where the world of „new thought‟ or New Devotion was being explored by a variety of diverse groups: Beghards,

Beguines, Eckhart and the Rhineland mystics, Humanists, Spirituals, Friends of God, the

Brotherhood of the Common Life and the House of Love.

„New thought‟ was the popular product studied of the speculations [up till now] of

the somewhat abstract doctrines of Dionysius, Erigena and Amaury … [They]

were being changed … to practical truths …The Teaching of the Allness of God

and the possibility of every person being an expression of his nature … spread

through the world and became a popular doctrine … and soon became the spirit

of the epoch.

The societies of Beguines and Beghards offered splendid opportunity for the

spread of the leaven of „Free Spirit‟, as the popular doctrines evolved from the

teachings of Amaury and Ortlieb were called … [These] societies were … trans-

formed into the „Brethren of the Free Spirit‟.

The metaphysics of this movement are quite plain and simple, for every time we

get a glimpse of the doctrine the central idea is they same. God is all. He goes out

of his unity into plurality and differentiation. In this universe of multiplicity every

thing real is divine. The need of all things is a return to the divine unity. Man has

157 within himself the possibility of return – he can become like Christ, like God. He

can even become God. In man‟s state of perfection God does all in him that he

does. The Church therefore is unnecessary. Man himself is a revelation of God.

Heaven and Hell are allegories.9

Meister Eckhart and the Rhineland Mystics

The name most readily associated with the Devotio Moderna is that of the German mystic and theologian Johannes Eckhart (1260?-1328?). He was a Dominican friar who wrote a large number of works dealing with man's inner spirituality and the ability of the individual to develop this spirituality. It was thought that these ideas diminished the importance of the clergy and the sacraments of the Church. In 1327 Eckhart faced charges of heresy and recanted many of his propositions. Although his teachings were declared heretical, Eckhart‟s ideas had far-reaching influence and many consider them to be the precursors of Protestantism. He studied at Erfurt and then at Cologne where

Albertus Magnus (1193-1280) and his pupil Thomas Aquinas 1225-1274) were the great names. We learn from Jones‟ commentary that „Meister Eckhart … was able to absorb the mystical teaching of … Augustine, Dionysius, Erigena, Albertus Magnus and Thomas

Aquinas [also Pagan authors], and by his real endowment of genius and his fertility of

9 Jones pp. 202-206. see also http://www.etss.edu/hts/MAPM/info3.htm

158 mind he was able to become the interpreter of this mystical message to the people. He was at the storm centre of heretical mysticism – the mysticism of the „Free Spirit‟.10

Magnus begins his treatise De Adhaerendo Dei with the following unusually explicit description of the practice of meditation or contemplative prayer including a telling gloss on Christ‟s instructions on prayer:

When St John says that God is a spirit, and that he must be worshipped in spirit,

he means that the mind must be cleared of all images. When thou prayest, shut thy

door – that is the door of thy senses. Keep them barred and bolted against all

phantasms and images. Nothing pleases God more than a mind free from all

occupations and distractions. Such a mind is in a manner transformed into God,

for it can think of nothing and love nothing, except God; other creatures and itself

it only sees in God. He whom I love and desire is above all that is sensible, and all

that is intelligible; sense and imagination cannot bring us to him, but only the

desire of a pure heart. This brings us unto the darkness of the mind, whereby we

can ascend to the contemplation even of the mystery of the Trinity. Do not think

about the world, or thy friends, nor about the past, present or future; but consider

thyself to be outside the world and alone with God, as if thy soul were already

separated from the body and had no longer any interest in peace or war or the

10 Jones, p. 217

159 state of the world. Leave the body and fix thy gaze on the uncreated light. Let

nothing come between thee and God.11

In 1311 Eckhart returned to his studies in Paris. When he left for his great career as a preacher in Strasbourg, he certainly carried away with him as part of himself the mystical world-view of Dionysius and Erigena which he was to translate in scores of sermons to the people of Strasbourg. There is a passage in one of his Strasbourg sermons which is in sympathy with the views of the Brethren of the Free Spirit:

That person who has renounced all visible creatures and in whom God performs

His will completely – that person is both God and Man. His body is so completely

penetrated with divine light and with the soul essence which is of God that he can

properly be called a divine man. For this reason, my children, be kind to these

men, for they are strangers and aliens in this world. Those who wish to come to

God have only to model their lives after these men; no one can know them unless

he has within him the same light, the light of truth.12

Eckhart himself provides marvelously clear commentaries on the esoteric meaning of scripture. In one of his sermons on the Nativity of Our Lord, he calls us away from the historical, literal narrative: „Here in time, we are celebrating the eternal birth which God the Father bore and bears unceasingly in eternity, because this same birth is now born in

11 Cited by Jones, p. 219 12 Pfeiffer p. 127, line 38 ff. cited by Jones p. 223

160 time, in human nature. St Augustine says: “What does it avail me that this birth is always happening, if it does not happen in me?” ‟13 Eckhart is referring to classic meditation techniques when, further on, he states that „the soul in which this birth is to take place must keep absolutely pure ... quite collected and turned entirely inward; not running out through the five senses, but all inturned and collected in the purest part – there is His [i.e.

God‟s] place.14

Professor Jones summarizes Eckhart thus.

We shall find in [Eckhart] the main … lines of thought which are now familiar to

us in the great systems of Plotinus, Dionysius and Erigena. In his profoundly

original style of speech we shall hear again of the undifferentiated Godhead, the

Divine Procession, and of the soul‟s return home …The first point that must be

grasped is the distinction between „God and the „Godhead‟. There is – and this is

the core of Eckhart‟s doctrine – there is a central mystery which for ever lies

beyond the range of knowledge. He whom we call „God‟ is the divine nature

manifested and revealed in personal character, but behind this revelation there

must be a Revealer – One who makes the revelation and is the Ground of it, just

as behind ourself-as-known there must be a self as knower – a deeper ego which

knows the me and its processes. Now the Ground out of which the revelation

proceeds is the central mystery – is the Godhead. It cannot be revealed because it

13 ibid. 14ibid.

161 is the ground of every revelation, just as the self-as-knower cannot be known

because it is precisely that which does the knowing, and this cannot itself be

caught as object.

The unrevealable Godhead is the Source and Fount of all that is, and at the same

time the consummation of all reality, but it is above all contrasts and distinctions.

It is neither this nor that, for, says Eckhart, in the Godhead, „all things are one

thing‟ – all the fullness of the creatures (i.e. created things) can as little express

the Godhead as a drop of water can express the sea.

All that is in the Godhead is one. Therefore we can say nothing. He is

above all names, above all nature. God works; so doth not the Godhead.

Therein they are distinguished – in working and not working. The end of

all things is the hidden Darkness of the eternal Godhead, unknown and

never to be known.15

Nobody has gone further than Eckhart in removing all anthropomorphic traits

from God, i.e. the Godhead, but the result is that He is left with no thinkable

characteristics ... He entirely transcends human knowledge … No word that

voices distinctions or characteristics, then, may be spoken of the Godhead,

Eckhart‟s favourite names are: „the Wordless Godhead‟; „the Immovable Rest‟;

„the still Wilderness, where no one is at home‟. All mystics have insisted that God

15 Pfeiffer, p. 173

162 in his essence is beyond „knowledge‟, for „knowledge‟ must deal with a finite

„this‟ or a finite „that‟, while God in His absolute reality must be above any „this‟

or „that‟. Eckhart‟s „nameless Nothing‟ is only a bold way of saying that the

Godhead must be above everything that limits or defines – above everything that

can be „thought‟ or envisaged. As he himself says: „In the Naked Godhead there is

neither form nor idea ... He is an absolute, pure, clear One … the impenetrable

Darkness of the eternal Godhead‟. The unoriginated Being, the Ground of all that

is, is the central mystery, and he who would fathom this mystery must transcend

knowledge, must have recourse to some other form of experience than that which

defines and differentiates as the knowing process does.16

The Friends of God

The group known historically as the Friends of God (Gottesfreunde) was formed in Basle between 1439 and 1444. Its influence extended along the Rhine as far as the Netherlands, the cities most prominent in its history being Basle, Strasburg, and Cologne. Its associates, among whom are the greatest names of German mysticism, were devoted to the practices of the interior life.17

16 Jones pp. 225-6 17 Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06306a.htm

163 The title Friends of God does not cover a sect, or even a „society‟… it names a …

type of Christianity which found its best expression in [prophets], both men and

women, who powerfully moved large groups … by their preaching, their writing,

and their extraordinary lives. All the leaders of the movement were profoundly

influenced by … Eckhart. [as well as by St Hildegarde, St Elizabeth of Schonau,

and St Matilda of Magdeburg] …The Friends of God formed small groups or

local societies, gathered about some spiritual leader or counselor. There was little

or no organisation. The type of each particular group was characterized by the

personality of the „leader‟. These … groups were widespread [in Germany, the

Netherlands and Switzerland] … There was a voluminous exchange of letters

among the leaders and frequent personal visits …The leading figures … are

Rulman Merswin of Strasbourg; Nicholas von Lowen; John Tauler, Henry Suso,

Jan Ruysbroek; Margaret and Christina Ebner; Henry of Nördlingen and the great

unknown, who wrote the little book called German Theology.18

Meditation

A document giving „Advice‟ ascribed to Merswin includes the following, stressing the necessity of daily meditation:

18 Jones p. 242-245

164 All those … who desire to begin a new and spiritual life, will find great profit in

a withdrawal into themselves every morning when they rise, to consider what they

will undertake during the day … Likewise, in the evening, on going to bed, let

them collect themselves and consider how they have spent the day.19

John Tauler, c. 1300 - 1361

According to Tauler: „Great doctors of Paris read ponderous books and turn over many pages. The Friends of God read the living book where everything is life.‟ And he tells us that one of the greatest Friends of God he had ever known was a simple day labourer, a cobbler, who had no magic of ordination and no wisdom of scholarship. Tauler, like all true mystics, insists on an inner light, „an inward divine light which illuminates [the

Friends of God] and raises them to union with God‟. By merely looking at their neighbour they can tell his inward state; they know whether he belongs to God or not, and what hinders him from spiritual progress.20

God is a hidden God – he is much nearer than anything is to itself in the depth of

the heart, but he is hidden from all our senses. He is far above every outward

19 Quoted by Jones, p. 256 20 Sermon LIX, Jones p. 276

165 thing and every thought and is found only when thou hidest thyself in the secret

places of the heart, in the quiet solitude where no word is spoken, where there is

neither creature, nor image nor fancy. This is the quiet desert of the Godhead, the

Divine Darkness – dark from His own surpassing brightness, as the shining sun is

darkness to weak eyes, for in the presence of its brightness our eyes are like the

eyes of the swallow in the bright sunlight – this abyss is our salvation!21

Tauler constantly insists on the religion of experience: „The man who truly experiences the pure presence of God in his own soul knows well there can be no doubt about it … this knowledge is not be learned from the masters of Paris‟; it can only come through the experience of „entering and dwelling in the Kingdom of God … what this is and how it came to pass is easier to experience than to describe.‟22

Henry Suso, 1296-1366

Henry Suso was a disciple of Eckhart. As a youth he received ecstatic visions. He then lived a life of terrible self-privations and self-inflicted pain. The ultimate reality for Suso, as for Eckhart, is the „eternal, uncreated truth‟. „Here the devout man has his beginning and his end‟. Whatever flows out from the source, the Godhead, can turn back again into

21 Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, Hutton‟s The Inner Way, being Tauler’s Sermons for Festivals. Jones, p.278

22 Sermon XXXVI, Sermon XLVIII

166 its source, and so come to reality and bliss, and even while he is living on earth „a man may be in eternity‟.23

The literary gem of this religious movement is Theologica Germanica; the writer is plainly influenced by Eckhart and shows the family characteristics of the Friends of God.

He quotes from Tauler, and he holds much the same views. This work together with the other great classic of the period, the Imitatio Christi of Thomas À Kempis, represents the culmination of the perennial philosophy in 16th-century northern Europe that had been operating through the mysticism of the church since the early middle ages. Widely read at the time, these two books constitute a large part of the basic spiritual resource of the mystics, philosophers, humanists and thinkers of the period and from among whom Peter

Bruegel cannot be excluded.

Theologica Germanica and Imitatio Christi24

„The Theologica Germanica and the Imitatio Christi were, after the Bible, the two most universally and widely read books by educated religious people in the 16th century.‟25 For

23 Jones, p. 289 24 Thomas À Kempis (1380-1472), Imitatio Christi, trl. 1952 by Leo Shirley-Price, Penguin Classics, London. The author of Theologica Germanica (1380) remains anonymous. The version well known today is that published by Martin Luther in 1518. See The Theologica Germanica of Martin Luther, trl. Bengt Hoffman, Paulist Press, New Jersey, 1980. These two works, perhaps together with the writings of St Augustine, were the mostly widely read, after the Bible, of the Western spiritual tradition throughout the late Middle Ages and especially in the first half of the 16th century.

167 reasons that will be outlined below, it can be said that they would certainly have been known to Peter Bruegel and the circle known as the Hiël Group that, under Jansen

Barrefelt, was profoundly influenced by the teachings of Hendrik Niclaes (in fact

Barrefelt had been his follower) and which was part of the rather widespread movement variously known as Domus Caritatis, the House of Love, the Family of Love or the

Familists.26

A number of quotations have been selected from these two books that express ideas that belong to the body of traditional mystical and esoteric teaching referred to in this thesis as the Perennial Philosophy in the form that was current in the 16th century. Interestingly, the editor of the Imitatio is among those who object to the term Perennial Philosophy.

Apparently wanting to dismiss the idea, he says: „there is a common tendency today to represent the Saints as experts in “natural” religion or “perennial philosophy” ‟.27 In this writer‟s opinion he confuses the Perennial Philosophy with „nature mysticism‟ and dismisses it as „[un]worthy of serious consideration‟. Yet two pages later we find:

It is hardly surprising that a man of Thomas [à Kempis‟] spiritual and mental

powers was widely and soundly read in the best both of pagan and Christian

literature. Every page glows with the reflected light of Holy Scripture, which he

knows so intimately; but he loves also to draw from the wisdom of the Christian

25 A. Hamilton, The House of Love, Cambridge, 1981, p. 6. 26 Hamilton, p. 6. see also „English Dissenters‟ in Ex Libris. (http://www.exlibris.org/nonconform/engdis/familists.html) for a comprehensive bibliography. 27 Imitatio, Introduction, p. 12.

168 fathers, and from the great philosophers of Greece and Rome, in order to confirm

and illustrate his teaching. Anyone familiar with the writings of St. Bernard, St.

Augustine, and S. Thomas Aquinas can readily detect the thought of these great

theologians, while Thomas also draws from Ovid, Seneca, and Aristotle.28

The last sentence suggests, in outline, a parallel with the Perennial Philosophy already laid out in this thesis.

The Theologica Germanica predates the Imitatio Christi by a century. Its author is unknown but its tradition can be related to Tauler29 whose thought was influenced by the great Eckhart who may have been his teacher.30

The selection of the material set out below, like the interpretation that will be offered of the deep meaning hidden in Bruegel‟s paintings, is based on the premise that the seeker of truth begins with the acknowledgment that he is spiritually lost, that he needs a method of work and practice of a psychological or psycho-spiritual nature. The search has to be indefatigable and the struggle between a person‟s human nature and spiritual nature is sometimes compared to war in much the same sense as references to „unseen warfare‟ or

„hidden warfare‟ are found in commentaries on the spiritual life in the Philokalia. A number of quotations are grouped together here under the heading „warfare‟.

28 Imitatio, Introduction, p. 14 29 Hoffman-Bengt, Theologica, Introduction, p. 9 30 Catholic Encyclopaedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14465c.htm

169

Other quotations are selected on the basis of the proposition in this thesis that the central activity for the pursuit of spiritual perfection is the practice of contemplative prayer or meditation. It has been shown that the cultivation of attention or mindfulness within oneself was a concept widely understood and widely practiced, albeit in varying forms, in

Antiquity, throughout the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance rather in the way that bodily health and the practice of physical exercise is cultivated and practiced today.31

From this basic principle, central to the inner life of cultures and civilizations of all periods, a vast literature springs, some fragments of which have been cited in these pages, that has become the common culture of humanity. Great sacred writings are variously interpreted as artistic or poetic or historical; though from the esoteric idea as defined by

Origen, Dante and others, they should be considered as alluding to different levels of meaning: (1) the literal, (2) the moral, (3) the spiritual and (4) the esoteric or anagogic. It is the last that contains insights and images or descriptions of states of being and states of consciousness not ordinarily available to people concerned only with mundane affairs.

However, it is said, particularly in Christianity, that all people possess the faculty, even if undeveloped, for perceiving aspects of God or higher truth and most people have known momentary insights or, at least, intimations of the existence of „another reality‟. Once in every generation or so an exceptionally gifted teacher appears who has more continuous or even permanent access to states of higher consciousness. But their message is almost invariably misunderstood or ignored or distorted. Eckhart, as we have seen, calls them

„strangers and aliens in this world‟. It is the lot of humanity to fall into the „forgetfulness‟

31 See above, e.g. p. 131

170 and „sleep‟ that spiritual teachers warn against, but to know this is to be a seeker and it is to seekers that the spiritual teachings try to speak.

Here follows a brief anthology of quotations chosen from Theologica Germanica

(referred to as TG) and the Imitatio Christi (referred to as IC) that this writer considers central to the themes of this thesis.

Warfare, Work and Trial

Your eternal home and the joys of the heavenly country draw your heart. But the

time for this has not yet come; there remains warfare, work and trial. (IC p. 160) 32

Who has a fiercer struggle than he who would conquer himself? Yet this must be

our chief concern – to conquer self, and by daily growing stronger than self, to

advance in holiness. (IC p. 31)

Job says „man‟s life on earth is warfare‟. (IC p. 40)

Without labour, no rest is won; without battle, there can be no victory (IC p. 118)

Frailty and weakness

À Kempis reminds us of our difficulties caused by the fact that:

32 References are given in the text after each quotation. IC = Imitatio Christi, TG = Theologica Germanica

171 We are not free from passions and lusts, nor do we strive to follow the perfect

way [and] when we encounter even a little trouble, we are quickly discouraged,

and turn to human comfort. (IC p. 38)

Here man is defiled by many sins, ensnared by many passions, a prey to countless

fears. Racked by many cares, and distracted by many strange things, he is

entangled in many vanities. He is hedged in by many errors, worn out by many

labours, burdened by temptations, enervated by pleasures, tormented by want. (IC

p. 157)

Keep me, also, from becoming a servant to my body‟s many needs. (IC p. 129)

The New Man

The writer points out that our reward cannot come until we have completed our spiritual journey and that, during its course, a fundamental change has to occur:

You desire to be filled with the supreme Good, but you cannot attain this blessing

now. I am that Good; wait for Me, says the Lord, until the coming of the

Kingdom of God. You must be proved in this life and many trials await you.

Consolation will sometimes be granted you, but not in its fullness. So be strong

and courageous both in doing and enduring what by nature is repugnant to you. It

is necessary for you to become a new man, and to be changed into another person.

(IC p. 160)

172 The Human Condition (‘original sin’)

Man‟s difficulties are very great; we are the inheritors of events associated with our origin

Man is an exile here … he can put his trust in nothing in this world. (IC p. 39)

Man has lost the blessing of original happiness. (IC p. 40)

[Man] lies under the curse common to all men. (IC p. 129)

Self Knowledge

According to the views of Thomas Á Kempis, a pathway exists along which the journey will be taken. It is an inner journey called the path of Self Knowledge. It is superior to worldly knowledge, including academic learning.

A humble knowledge of oneself is a surer road to God than a deep searching of

the sciences … where are all those Masters and Doctors whom you knew so well

in their lifetimes in the full flower of their learning? Other men sit in their seats,

and they are hardly ever called to mind. (IC p. 3)

The unknown author of Theologica Germanica takes the question of sin out of the field of morality and links it firmly to the practice of „knowing within‟:

Sin … is to know within that man has strayed and will stray from God. (TG p. 119)

173

And he warns against the love of knowledge for its own sake:

Knowledge and learning … have become more loved than that which is the object

of knowledge. Yes, the false natural light [i.e. not the spiritual light] loves its

knowledge and its learning more than that which should have been the object of

knowledge.

It is conceivable that this natural light could really know and grasp God and

unadulterated, simple truth as it is in God were it not for one thing: it cannot

become liberated from its nature, which is concerned about itself and things of the

self.

In this sense we face here a mental and spiritual knowledge without love for that

which is known. It rises and climbs so high that it finally develops the fanciful

notion that it can actually know God and the unadulterated, simple truth. But what

it really loves is still itself. (TG p. 124)

Attention

Attention is the means or the tool with which the seeker engages inwardly with the forces that pass within him. In the Greek Philokalia the term used is προσοχή (prosochi) and corresponds to the Buddhist sati (mindfulness). It is our lack of attention and mental instability that renders men so helpless and prone to evil.

174

The beginning of all evil temptation is an unstable mind and lack of trust in God.

Just as a ship without a helm is driven to and fro by the waves, so a careless man,

who abandons his proper course is tempted in countless ways. Fire tempers steel

and temptation the just man. We often do not know what we can bear, but

temptation reveals our true nature. We need especially to be on our guard at the

very onset of temptation, for then the enemy may be more easily overcome, if he

is not allowed to enter the gates of the mind: he must be repulsed at the threshold,

as soon as he knocks. Thus the poet Ovid writes, „Resist at the beginning; the

remedy may come too late‟. First there comes into the mind an evil thought: next,

a vivid picture: then delight, and urge to evil, and finally consent. (IC p. 41)

We should carefully examine and order both our inner and our outer life, since

both are vital to our advance. (IC p. 48)

Where are you when you fail to attend to yourself? (IC p. 73)

Enter deeply into inner things. (IC p. 91)

Keep guard over your whole life. (IC p. 127)

Absence of attention makes the seeker prey to random thoughts that distract him and take him out of himself.

175 I am usually beset by many distractions. Often, indeed, I do not really remain in

my body at all, but am carried away by my thoughts. (IC p. 158)

It is … better that a man deeply within himself learns the what and the how of his

life. (TG p. 69)

The truth of spiritual teaching is severe and tells us that we live in illusion. Only „When a person comes to know and see himself‟ (TG p. 72) can man become free of the imaginary person he pretends to be.

Man fancies himself to be what he is not. He fancies himself to be God, yet he is

only nature, a created being. From within that illusion he begins to claim for

himself the traits that are the marks of God. (TG p. 115)

Even the power of thought that man is so proud of is not properly within his control.

The usual trivial thoughts of men [are] involuntary rather than deliberate. (IC p.

100)

176 Practice

The practice of daily meditations and spiritual exercises is the indispensable discipline that will enable the seeker on the path to develop attention and self knowledge.

We fail in our purposes in various ways, and the light omission of our spiritual

exercises passes without certain loss to our souls. (IC p. 48)

Although we cannot always preserve our recollections, yet we must do so from

time to time, and at least once a day (IC p. 49)

Enter into your room and shut out the clamour of the world, as it is written,

„Commune with your own heart, and in your chamber be still‟.33 (IC p. 51)

Only direct experience, gained through spiritual practice, delivers the truth. Anything else, however admired in the eyes of the world, is illusion.

Let no man believe that he can come to this true Light and this inner knowledge

or to the Christ Life with the aid of much questioning or secondhand information

or by way of reading and studying, or with high skills and academic mastery, or

with high natural reasoning. (TG p.83)

33 Ps. iv, 4; Isa. xxvi, 20

177 Inner Knowledge (Esotericism)

The development of spiritual understanding is not a worldly undertaking and it can be said that it has no place at the mundane level. It cannot be spoken of directly and its utterances, lacking the logic and structure of the world, often seem shocking or incomprehensible.

God and man are one. (TG p. 89)

God is a light and an inner knowing. (TG p. 102)

Man recognizes with inner knowledge. (TG p. 110)

It is the inner man who receives God‟s law. (TG p. 114)

God is the true light, void of all I and self. (TG p. 115)

For he who is not on this path is unable to put it into words. And he who is on the

path and knows is equally unable to voice it. (TG p. 85)

One is to come to inner knowledge of the one truth … (TG p. 123)

… a true inwards life. The inward life begins as follows. When a man tastes the

perfect Being, as far as that is possible in an earthly life, all created things, yes,

even his own self, become like nothing to him. (TG p. 147)

In silence and quietness [learn] the hidden mysteries of the scriptures. (IC p. 51)

178 The true esoteric event has to be entirely within and not in the world.

No good action … can make man and his soul virtuous, good, or blissful so long

as it occurs outside the soul. (TG p. 69)

Death

On the mystical path the inevitable death of the body is not such an important issue other than the obvious need to:

Realize that all things are passing and me with them. (IC p.131)

And so:

Whoever puts his confidence in men or in any creature is very foolish. (IC p. 34)

More importantly, a different idea of death is referred to:

Grant that I may die to all things in this world. (IC p. 113)

Man should die to himself, that is to say, man, self and his I should die. (TG p. 77)

Lo, where the old man dies and the new one is born again, the second birth takes

place about which Christ says: For unless you are born again and thus renewed

you will not come to the kingdom of God. (TG p. 78)

179

Man is lost because of his „attachment to his lower self‟ (TG p. 79). But he must take into account the realities of his dual-nature. He belongs both to the higher world as well as the lower one and should take steps accordingly.

Man should order his life with respect to the external and the internal. (TG p. 66)

Christ‟s soul had to visit hell before it came to heaven. This is also the path for

man‟s soul. (TG p. 72)

This experience of hell and heaven is like two trustworthy paths for a man in his

earthly life and happy is the man who travels on them properly and well. (TG p.

73).

This material shows that certain universal truths of the inner life, central to the practice of mystical religion (a form of the Perennial Philosophy at that time) were taught and followed in Europe in the 16th century. Liberated from dogma, creed, politics and the power structures of this or that church, this teaching allows us to glimpse truths resulting from the actual experience of the writers. They do not hide behind any party line or doctrine but speak to us directly from the heart and the enlightened mind.

180 The Brotherhood of the Common Life

One author at least has attempted to explore the level lying beyond the historical data assembled by academic historians. Ross Fuller‟s Brotherhood of the Common Life successfully reveals much of the richness and variety, high intelligence and deep inner spirituality of the movement to reform the Christian Church in the Late Middle Ages.34

Among the themes touched on at a deep level, Fuller reminds us of the place of self- knowledge in spiritual work. He shows, quoting from the Meditations of St Bernard, how „the New Devotion emphasized the growth of the attention of the heart through self- knowledge‟.

Many there be that know & understand many other things & yet they know not

their own self. They take much heed of others, but they look not well to

themselves. They leave their inward & spiritual things and seek God among

outward things. The which is within them. Therefore I shall turn from those things

that be outward to inward things, & from inward things I shall lift my mind to

things above. That I may know whereof I came and whither I go, what I am and

whereof I am. And so, by knowledge of myself I may ascend & come to

knowledge of God.35

34 Fuller, R. The Brotherhood of the Common Life. New York: SUNY, 1997. 35 Fuller, op. cit. p. 123. The quotation is from the Meditations of Saint Bernard (Westminster 1496, W. de Worde, STC, 1917, BL C11a22)

181 Likewise the author of the Imitatio Christi:

Even … God Himself can never make a man virtuous, good or blessed, so long as

he is outside his soul; that is, so long as he casts about outwardly with his senses

and reason, and does not withdraw into himself and learn about his own life, who

and what he is … for wholly to know oneself is above all learning.36

We are reminded that „Wessel Gansfort, whose outlook owed much to the long period he spent with the Brethren [of the Common Life] as a young man stated, in De Oratione that, to be able to pray freely a man must disengage himself, in a certain way, from the

“outward man”. Recollecting all of himself so that the three powers of “the inward man” might work more as they were intended …The three parts of the interior man, memory, intelligence and will, each have their proper work, but without “circumspect and attentive” meditation they cannot function rightly.‟37

Whatever things undermine the first foundation of the inner man, namely,

meditation, are obstacles to all piety and the reformation of the inner man. In

meditation, however, although he may not withstand the multitude and variety of

inner speakers, with attention and deliberation he may plainly withstand.38

36 Theologia Germanica, Joseph Bernhart ed., London 1950, p. 127 37 Fuller, op. cit. p. 130 38 idem

182 Fuller is writing intimately and knowledgeably about the methods and practice of inner or spiritual work; inner work practiced by those who participated in the New Devotion and its offshoots, generally known as Anabaptists. One of these Anabaptist groups, regarded as obscure, was known variously as the „Family of Love‟, the „House of Love‟ or the

„Familists‟. Its leader was Henry Nicholas or Hendrik Niklaes. As will be shown, it is through the Family of Love that important aspects of Bruegel‟s psychology and spirituality may be sought.39 Though not exclusively; Bruegel‟s travels in Italy, and perhaps particularly to Rome, where he may have been in contact with the followers of

Marsilio Ficino and Agostino Steuco, are another likely source.

39 See below, p. 216

183 Chapter 6. Lineaments of the Perennial Philosophy: Renaissance Mysticism

Italy and Renaissance Humanism

Fig. 1, Andrea Solario‟s portrait of Pietro Longoni, Milan 1519, National Gallery, London

184 Solario’s portrait of Longoni

The National Gallery in London possesses a portrait dated 1519 of a man (identified as

Giovanni Cristoforo Longoni) by the Milanese painter, Andrea Solario (see fig. 1). It conventionally represents the sitter half-length, soberly dressed in black and gazing calmly and confidently towards the spectator. Behind him is a low wall and, beyond that, stretching far into the distance, we see an exquisite tranquil landscape with meadows, river and trees and filled with quiet evening light. A mysterious half-smile plays on the subject‟s mouth and his look is quizzical and almost playful (fig. 2).

Fig. 2 Solario, detail

The Renaissance produced many such portraits, both in Italy and in Flanders and we might pause before it only long enough to savour its melancholy thoughtful mood were not our eye caught by one unusual detail. Just below the lip of the black marble parapet

185 on which the subject‟s hands rest, is an inscription painted so as to simulate letters carved into the stone: • IGNORANS QUALISFUER • QUALISQUEFUTURUS • SIS QUALIS • STUDEAS POSSE

VIDERE DIV • (You know not who you were nor who you will be; strive diligently to know who you are).1

It would be difficult not to see in these words an invitation to ponder the ultimate philosophical question that confronts Man: Who am I? This reminder of Socrates‟ exhortation to „know thyself, as the Delphinian inscription says‟,2 aptly resonating with the revival of Platonism in Italy in the middle of the 15th century, was axiomatic for

Renaissance mystagogues like Pico della Mirandola, Marsilio Ficino and his follower

Agostino Steuco.

Whitall Perry lists 70 quotations taken from spiritual masters of all religions stressing the concomitance of self-knowledge and knowledge of God or knowledge of the All.3 These quotations show, perhaps more explicitly than the sayings around any other theme that this principle stands at the centre of esoteric philosophical ideas throughout the ages.

1 I have not yet been able to trace the origin of this saying but Shakespeare would seem to be drawing on the same source when Ophelia says „We know what we are but know not what we may be‟ (Hamlet VI, 5) 2 „Know Thyself‟. This famous Greek maxim is attributed to any number of ancient Greek philosophers, including the great Socrates. However, according to the ancient historian Plutarch, "Know Thyself" was originally the admonition "Gnothi se auton" ("Know Thyself") inscribed on the Sun god Apollo's Oracle of Delphi, a temple in ancient Greece. Plutarch should know about the inscription on the Oracle, since he was once one of its caretakers. http://astrology.about.com/cs/basics/l/aa100102a.htm 3 Whitall Perry, A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom, (London, 1971, p. 855ff.)

186 Origen says the soul‟s quest of God comes by self observation, if she knew

herself she would know God also. (Eckhart)

I say, no man knows God who knows not himself first. (Eckhart).

Let me know myself, Lord, and I shall know thee. (Augustine).

If a man knows himself, he shall know God. (Clement of Alexandria).

Let us enter the cell of self-knowledge. (Catherine of Sienna).4

Solario‟s portrait is one of the very few instances where a Renaissance artist presents an esoteric idea is more or less openly. Present research has so far not discovered for whom the portrait was made and where it was originally hung. Esoteric groups traditionally met together in a suitable private house for instruction, meditation and discussion, not necessarily in secret but discreetly. The picture may have first hung in such a milieu.

If „know thyself‟ is the axiomatic concept of the Perennial Philosophy it is necessary to acknowledge the profound esoteric meaning that philosophers in antiquity and the

Renaissance gave to it. The quotations selected above are a few examples chosen

4A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom, London, 1971, p. 855ff.

187 specifically from the Christian mystical tradition to show the continuity of the idea from

Antiquity.

Throughout the Middle Ages the idea of freedom of religious thought was a luxury tolerated only in those who wrote in Latin and even so, only to a limited degree. In the later part of the medieval period (1200 – 1600) the growing reaction to the Church‟s power and materialism was fuelled by the rediscovery, through Greek scholars fleeing to

Italy from Ottoman-occupied Constantinople, of the philosophical ideas of Pythagoras,

Plato, and their followers in late antiquity: Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus and Iamblichus.

Western theologians had been introduced to the works of Aristotle through the Arabs in the 11th century and this had led to scholasticism and nominalism,5 but the mysticism of

Neoplatonism was little known until the appearance, in 1438, of Gemistus Plethon who, as one of the delegates chosen by the Byzantine Emperor, traveled to Italy for the Council of Florence. Officially Plethon was designated as one of the six champions of the

Orthodox Church but he spent his time discoursing on Platonism to the Florentines. It was his enthusiasm for Platonism that inspired Cosimo de Medici to found a Platonic

Academy in Florence.6 Cosimo selected Marsilio Ficino, the son of his chief physician, and provided for his education in Greek philosophy. Ficino‟s natural aptitude was so great that he was able to complete his first work on the Platonic Institutions when he was only 23 years old. At the age of 30, after translating the Theogony of Hesiod, the Hymns

5 Nominalism (Latin nominalis, „of or pertaining to names‟), granted no universality to mental concepts outside the mind. It evolved from the thesis of Aristotle that all reality consists of individual things and thus it stood in opposition to the extreme theory of realism first enunciated by Plato in his doctrine of universal archetypal ideas. 6 Philip Sherrard, Christianity, Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition, Edinburgh 1998, esp. Ch. 5 „Christianity and the Challenge of Georgios Gemistos Plethon and Friedrich Nietzsche‟

188 of Proclus, Orpheus and Homer, and all of the works of Hermes Trismegistus that could be found, Ficino completed his translations of Plato. When that was finished, he turned to the Neoplatonic writers, and left behind him excellent translations of Plotinus,

Iamblichus, Proclus and Synesius.7

Renaissance Esotericism

The mystical or esoteric tradition of Christianity in Europe can thus be traced from Plato

(though its origin is much older) through Plotinus and, in the East, to the Desert Fathers

(4th to 9th centuries) and later the Athos Fathers (10th to 14th centuries), whose writings, gathered together in the anthology known as the Philokalia (Love of the Good) was published in Venice in 1792 and in English in 1964. In the West, Dionysius the

Areopagite, as we have seen, was translated by Duns Scotus Erigena from whom the tradition passed on to Hugo of St Victor in Paris in the 12th century and to the great St

Bernard of Clairvaux and the whole of the western mystical tradition. In the East, as can be seen in the Philokalia, the tradition was rich and unbroken from the 4th century up until the fall of Constantinople in 1453 if not beyond. By this date Greek scholars such as

Gemistus Plethon and Cardinal Bessarion were in Italy where the study of Plato and

Neoplatonism fired Renaissance mystics such as Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola

7 THEOSOPHY, Vol. 26, No. 4, February, 1938, pp. 146-152; see http://www.wisdomworld.org/setting/revival.html

189 and Ficino‟s follower, Agostino Steuco who died in Rome only a few years before

Bruegel visited there in 1551 and with whose school he is likely to have had contact. This would have been possible through humanist links made at the House of the Four Winds when he was still an apprentice in Antwerp.

Edgar Wind‟s essay The Language of the Mysteries helps us to see how the Renaissance saw the methods of the Neoplatonists and their contemporaries, the early Christian

Fathers.8 The esoteric current flowed from philosophy into art because „As Dionysius says, the divine ray cannot reach us unless it is covered in poetic veils‟.9

„Our interest in Renaissance mysteries might indeed be slight were it nor for the

splendour of their expression in Renaissance art. But the fact that seemingly

remote ideas shine forth through a surface of unmistakable radiance is perhaps a

sufficient reason for pursuing them into their hidden depth. For when ideas are so

forcibly expressed in art, it is unlikely that the importance will be confined to art

alone‟.10

Wind quotes Plotinus on the problems of comprehending and expressing knowledge of the highest truth, God or the ultimate One, „we can but circle, as it were about its circumference, seeking to interpret in our speech our experience of it, now shooting near

8 Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance, Introduction, Faber, 1958. He gives patristic sources for Renaissance Platonism, see his note 30. 9 In librum primum sentenarium Commentationes ad mentem Platonis, Cod. Vat. Lat., 6325, fols 13 f, Eugenioe Massa ed., cited by Wind, p. 14. 10 Wind, p. 14

190 the mark, and again disappointed of our aim by reason of the antinomies we find in it.

The greatest antimony arises in this, that our understanding of it is ... by a presence higher than all knowing ... Hence the words of the Master [Plato], that it overpasses speech and writing‟.11 Plotinus adds: „And yet we speak and write, seeking to forward the pilgrim on his journey thither.‟ It is a spiritual or inner journey for, as we already noted,

Plotinus states „it is not a journey of the feet‟.12

The language of esotericism is born of the paradox of speech and silence. Wind calls it the „disparity between verbal instrument and mystical object‟.13 According to Wind,

Pico‟s style, which has been described as „contrived‟ and „conceited‟, derives from „the parabolic fervour and “tenebrosity” he had found in the late-antique Platonists and the early Christian Fathers‟. We are referred to the French author Marrou14 who, writing about the „secretive style‟ of ancient writers, says „the obscurity of the expression, the mystery surrounding the thought thus dissimulated is [the tradition‟s] finest attribute, a powerful cause of attraction ... Let us honour esotericism‟s veil (Vela faciunt honorem secreti).‟ Marrou also cites Festugière: „the more truth is hidden and secret, the more it has force‟.15 Pico‟s writings „were regarded by his contemporaries as models of how to adumbrate an ineffable revelation through speech‟.

11 my italics 12 See above p. 95 13 Wind, op. cit. p. 18. 14 St Augustin et la fin de la culture antique, 1938, pp. 488ff 15 Father André Jean Festugière (1898-1982). French Dominican considered a leading authority on the thought of late Antiquity. His books include: L'Idéal religieux des Grecs et l'Évangile, 1932; Le Monde gréco-romain au temps de Notre-Seigneur, 1935; La Révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste, 1944-1949 and Hermétisme et mystique païenne, 1967.

191

Where Wind supposes that it is unlikely that the importance of great Renaissance art will be confined to art alone, the implication is that we ourselves must try to become initiated into the same mysteries: „the greatest Renaissance paintings ... were designed for initiates, hence they require initiation.‟16

This implies, then, that the seeker himself must have a similar, or at any rate related, spiritual search that aims to penetrate the veils in himself that hide the sacred from the profane among which latter can be included curiosity and intellectual greed. Without such a subjective personal search, the historian remains puzzled as, for example, when

William Manchester albeit with intuitive perception, writes: „The most baffling, elusive, yet in many ways the most significant dimensions of the medieval mind were invisible and silent‟.17 Writing about the builders of the gothic cathedrals he speaks of „medieval man‟s total lack of ego. Even those with creative powers had no sense of self ... They were glorifying God. To them their identity in this life was irrelevant.‟ But later, remarking on the need in the 13th century for opposition to nominalist philosophy, he declares that „Men of faith who might have challenged them, such as Thomas à Kempis, seemed lost in a dream of mysticism‟.18

16 Wind, op. cit., p. 14 17 A World Lit Only by Fire, London, 1992, p.21, 18 ibid. p. 25.

192 Traditional wisdom would claim an opposite view: that those engaged in the affairs of the world are the ones who are „lost‟ and that mysticism – where we understand it as the rightly conducted mystical esoteric practice („the pilgrim‟s journey thither‟ as Plotinus puts it) towards the „presence higher than knowing‟ – is the only true access to reality and that, rather than being a dream, it is exactly the opposite and provides the means of escape from the prison of illusion.

Perennial Philosophy and Renaissance Mysticism

It is Thackara who finds the origins of the terms Perennial Philosophy in Renaissance

Rome at the beginning of the 16th century: 19

It was the 17th-century German philosopher Leibniz … who popularized the

Latin phrase philosophia perennis. He used it to describe what was needed to

complete his own system. This was to be an eclectic analysis of the truth and

falsehood of all philosophies, ancient and modern, by which "one would draw the

gold from the dross, the diamond from its mine, the light from the shadows; and

this would be in effect a kind of perennial philosophy”. A similar aim, with the

goal of reconciling differing religious philosophies, was pursued by Ammonius

Saccas, founder of the eclectic theosophical school of Alexandria in the 3rd

century A.D. and inspirer of Plotinus and the Neoplatonic movement.

19 From Sunrise magazine, April/May 1984. Copyright © 1984 by Theosophical University Press)

193 Leibniz, however, laid no claim to inventing the phrase. He said he found it in the

writings of a 16th-century theologian, Augustine Steuch, whom he regarded as

one of the best Christian writers of all time. Steuch described the Perennial

Philosophy as the originally revealed absolute truth made available to man before

his fall, completely forgotten in that lapse, and only gradually regained in

fragmentary form in the subsequent history of human thought. Orthodox

Christianity, in his view, was its purest restoration, and the history of redemption

includes the long quest for this wisdom.20

As far as is known the term Philosophia Perennis is not mentioned before Agostino

Steuco, to give the Latinized version of his name, but similar terms expressing the same idea are to be found both in antiquity as well as in 20th-century authors. William Quinn cites many of these, discussing some in depth, that are more or less closely related and which could be said to belong to the same general terminology. There is traditio legis, the

„handing over of the law‟, a prevailing idea in late antiquity and adopted by early

Christianity. Quinn suggests this idea of traditio as the basis for „Tradition‟, the term favoured by Guénon and Coomaraswamy in their writings on comparative religion and culture, esotericism, and natural metaphysics. In his later writings Guénon would use

„Primordial Tradition‟ while Coomaraswamy preferred „Philosophia Perennis‟. Quinn has a chapter on „Theosophia‟ primarily dealing with theosophia antiqua in contradistinction to modern „Theosophy‟. Elsewhere we read that in the Renaissance the terms prisca theosophia and prisca scientia are found. 21

20 "Perennial Philosophy," Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Philip P. Wiener, ed., Charles Scribners Sons, 1973, III, 457-63. 21 William W. Quinn, Jr., The Only Tradition, SUNY, 1997

194

It is the contention of this thesis that the Perennial Philosophy pervades the mysticism of the medieval church and the Platonic mysticism of the Renaissance, two great streams that converge in 16th-century Flanders where Bruegel was ideally placed to draw on both traditions.

The historian of philosophy Charles B. Schmitt develops Plotinus‟ remark that „these teachings are … no novelties, no inventions of today, but long since stated‟22 when he cites Marsilio Ficino (who uses the term prisca theologica):

One of the most important facts with regard to Ficino‟s revival of Platonism was

his conception of the Platonic tradition with a supposedly earlier tradition of „pre-

Platonism‟ to which he gave the name prisca theologica. According to him, the

legitimate strand of true knowledge goes back to a long time before Plato: that is,

wisdom did not start with Greeks but can be traced back to very ancient Egyptian

and near and Middle Eastern sources, which were themselves later taken into

Greece and became the foundations for the development of Greek philosophy. At

the root of Ficino‟s concept lie several writings attributed to pre-Greek (or

considered at that time to be pre-Greek) authors, especially Zoroaster, Hermes

22 C.f. Thackara, cited on p. 73.

195 Trismegistus, and Orpheus, which according to his interpretation were transmitted

to Plato by Pythagoras and Aglaophemus.23

Hermeticism

It would hardly be possible to exaggerate the influence of Marsilio Ficino‟s revival of

Hermeticism on the thinking of artists and intellectuals in the 16th century. Hermetic books dealing with philosophy and mysticism were preserved during the Middle Ages by

Byzantine scholars and collectors. The group of texts now known as the Corpus

Hermeticum finally returned to the Latin West during the Italian Renaissance when the

Florentine philosopher, Prince Cosimo de Medici obtained a set of manuscripts from one of his agents in the Greek East and commissioned Ficino to translate the Corpus into

Latin.

Hermeticism, or Hermetism, takes its name from the mythical sage (considered by some to be a god) Hermes Trismegistos or Thrice-Greatest Hermes. Trismegistos, in turn, was so-called because of his identification with the great Egyptian God of Wisdom and

Magic, Thoth. Hermeticism was one of the many products of the meeting of the ancient

23 Schmitt, Charles B. “Perennial Philosophy: from Agostino Steucco to Leibniz.” Journal of the History of Ideas 27, No. 4 (1966): 505-32, p. ix. Se also http://phoenixandturtle.net/excerptmill/yates4.htm: „Aglaophemus, who had been initiated into the sacred teaching of Orpheus, was succeeded in theology by Pythagoras, whose disciple was Philolaus, the teacher of our Divine Plato. Hence there is one ancient theology (prisca theologia) . . . taking its origin in Mercurius and culminating in the Divine Plato‟ from Ficino‟s preface to Pimander.

196 Hellenic and Egyptian cultures in the centuries surrounding the beginning of the Christian era. A useful summary is given by „Cassiel Sofia‟:

Hermetism combined Egyptian and Greek theology, philosophy, and spiritual

practice. It found its most fertile home in the great syncretic Græco-Egyptian

metropolis of Alexandria, when that city was the cultural capital of the

Mediterranean under the Pax Romana. Religious and philosophical wisdom

flowed from many cultures into the city, the great spiritual Krater or Mixing Bowl

which gave birth to the new synthesis of religion, philosophy, and practice which

was Hermetism … [This] Hermetic elixir was composed of ingredients from all

the great Traditions active in Alexandria. To the millennia-rich stock of Egyptian

religion, philosophy and magic were added many elements from Greek Paganism

(itself influenced throughout its development by Egypt, Anatolia, Phoenicia, and

Syria), particularly the Mysteries and the philosophical schools of Platonism,

Neoplatonism, Stoicism, and Neopythagorism; Alexandrian Judaism, with its

Angelology, Magic, and deep reverence for the sacred Book; the many forms of

Christianity (Gnostic and otherwise); Persian Zoroastrianism, with its deep

concern with good and evil; as well as the new developments springing up

alongside Hermetism and cross-fertilizing with it, such as Alchemy and

Iamblichan Theurgy.

Ficino and other Renaissance philosophers, magicians, and artists who studied the

Hermetic texts … believed that Hermetic philosophy was an ancient forerunner of

Christianity rather than its contemporary. So when the Hermetic texts showed

197 influence from Jewish or Christian myth, this was understood not as the

syncretism of a late age, but as the prophetic prefiguring of an earlier one. As

such, the Hermetica could be viewed as predicting the supposed triumph of

Christianity and their obvious Paganism forgiven.

Because of this mistaken assumption of prophetic antiquity, conjoined with the

self-proclaimed Orphic Ficino‟s simultaneous re-interpretation of Magic in a

much brighter and less controversial form than that of the Mediæval period

(which itself contained many clandestinely preserved elements of Hermetism), the

new figure of the Hermetic Renaissance Magus entered the cultural consciousness

of the era. Ficino‟s „Natural Magic‟ moved out of the shadows of the grimoires

and once more into the light of general philosophical and theological

consideration. A student at Ficino‟s Florentine Platonic Academy, the brilliant …

Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, added the crucial catalytic element of the

Jewish Qabalah to the new Pagan-Christian Hermetic amalgam, and transformed

Hermetism forever. It is here that Hermeticism was born of ancient Hermetism,

once more entering into a syncretic union, this time with Christianity,

Renaissance Neo-Classicism and Humanism, Natural Magic, and Qabalah.

The resulting vigorous Hermetic influence spreading out from the court of the

Medicis and the Academy of Ficino clearly served as one of the most potent

inspirations for the spiritual, artistic, and scientific renewal of the Renaissance.

Hermeticism is also called the Western Esoteric Tradition, and embraces that essential outpouring of the Light known as the Philosophia Perennis, the Prisca Theologia, the

198 Wisdom Tradition, and the „Ageless Wisdom‟. Esoteric legend holds that this is a body of spiritual teachings that have been passed down through the millennia from generation to generation, teacher to student. The Tradition is said to have been the inner impetus for the blossoming of arts and sciences in many ages and the common inspiration of that which is truest in the world‟s religions.24

24http://www.meta-religion.com/Esoterism/Hermeticism/hermeticism.htm

199 Recapitulation: the Esoteric Way of Self-Knowledge

A basic tenet of the Perennial Philosophy is that the world – the cosmos – has its counterpart in man. Man is the miniature of the universe; man is the microcosm: ‘As above, so below’,1 ‘in earth as it is in heaven’.2 But Man, according to traditional ideas, is excluded from his proper place in the cosmic scheme because of what allegory calls

‘Adam’s sin’ which condemns him to lead a false life, a life away from his rightful inheritance. This is the central difficulty of the human condition, a riddle that calls man to awaken to the reality of his situation and become a seeker of truth. If he hears this call he will learn that he must undergo an inner transition or transformation and that this has to take place before he can once again participate in real life. This transformation – sometimes called rebirth – is very difficult to achieve and costs a man dearly because it takes place in opposition to everything he values in material life; but that is an illusory life which he mistakes for the other. The seeker of truth begins to see the contradiction between what he is at present and what he is called to become and, seeing this, he cannot avoid suffering. If he has the courage to continue and if, in spite of suffering and other difficulties, he remains on the true path, he will eventually come to what tradition refers to as ‘dying to oneself’ – in Sufism, ‘die before you die’ and, in Christianity, the esoteric meaning of this ‘death’ is symbolised in the allegory of the Cross which is why we are told that it leads to eternal life.

1 Hermes Trismegistus, The Emerald Tablets, 2 Matt. vi, 10

200 If a person sees only as far as the literal and moral meaning in the narratives of sacred literature and has no sense of the mystical or esoteric meanings to which symbolism and allegory refer, then nobody can convince him otherwise. But if, desiring these yet higher meanings, he studies the world and himself impartially he may come to see the truth about what his life is and what it could be. The aim and the constant companion of the soul’s journey on the mystical path is, therefore, self-knowledge.

The seeker who undertakes a programmed study of himself – his interior self that traditional literature refers to as the heart – awakens to a new and unknown world. ‘The heart is only a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and lions, there are poisonous beasts, and all the treasures of evil, there are rough and uneven roads, there are precipices; but there too is God and the angels, life is there and the Kingdom, there too is light …’3

Application of the Sacred Tradition in practice

We have explored the idea that traditional sacred art and literature are vehicles for transmitting knowledge of what philosophers associated with the Perennial Philosophy regarded as eternal truths. We have also examined the idea that such knowledge comes veiled in symbolism and allegory. Here a further stage needs to be looked at in considering how the action of such knowledge can be a transforming and even transubstantiating event in the life of a person. For actual transformation a person has to come out from the ambience of ideas and into the spiritual battleground within himself or

3 St Makarios the Great (fl. circa 400). Quoted in J. A. McGuckin The Book of Mystical Chapters, Meditations on the Soul’s Ascent from the Desert Fathers and Other Early Christian Contemplatives. Boston and London, 2002.

201 herself where those ideas are applied in practice. Sacred texts and images refer allegorically to the series of ascending steps that are specific to the spiritual journey. In literature classic examples are St John Climacus’ the Ladder of Divine Ascent4 and

Walter Hylton’s, The Ladder of Perfection.5 The image of the ladder is also found in art, among notable examples is the 12th-century Byzantine icon preserved at St Catherine’s

Monastery on Mount Sinai.6 The principle of ascending steps or stages in the mystical path reflects the idea of the cosmic hierarchy that Christian mystical Tradition inherited from Plotinus. The implication of all the texts – and Hendrik Niclaes’ Terra Pacis, which will be discussed below, is typical – is that a preliminary phase of the journey is the period when the seeker awakens to the reality of his present situation. This is a long and difficult stage in which the seeker studies, and begins to know intimately, every illusion and pretence that sustains his or her present life in order to become free from them.

These last words are emphasized because they throw light on an important aspect of the group of paintings by Bruegel that will be discussed later in this thesis. The idea is proposed that the path of self-knowledge through spiritual exercises is a central, though perhaps hidden, element in Bruegel himself and in his art. Rightly conducted spiritual exercises create a heightened state of consciousness or ‘attentive awareness’ that corresponds to the Greek proseche – a frequently recurring term in the Philokalia – or the state of sati or ‘mindfulness’ in Buddhist terminology. When developed, this quality liberates the seeker from the entanglements of his personal psychology (the thoughts and

4Saint John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Revised Edition, Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston, Massachusetts, 1991. 5 W. Hylton (1340-1396), The Ladder of Perfection, Penguin Books, 1957 6 See Evans and Wixom, The Glory of Byzantium, New York, 1996, p. 376

202 feelings with which he blindly and habitually reacts to the world around him) and allows him to see objectively. The capability to see what is and, therefore, to know truth is the attribute of a high degree of interior development in a man. According to St Isaac the

Syrian: ‘He who succeeds in seeing himself is better than he who has been graced with seeing the angels’.7 Or, to quote from the Sufi tradition, we find Rumi writing in the

Mathnawi, ‘The vision in you is the only thing that matters …Transform your whole body into vision, become seeing, become seeing.’8 It is the contention of this thesis that

Bruegel was a man of wisdom in the perennial tradition. It will be shown that the means available to Bruegel and his circle in Antwerp in the 1550s were the teachings of the group that can be regarded as inheritors of the Perennial Philosophy; they are known as the Family of Love or the Familists. This inheritance was the tradition of esoteric

Christianity surviving in the West that has been outlined above.

Antwerp in the first half of the 16th century was the leading mercantile city in Europe; a metropolis of world class at every level, ‘the Manhattan of the sixteenth-century’.9 It had a dazzling life of arts and letters and had been the home of many illustrious figures, among them the great Erasmus. A few Bruegel scholars, Tolnay among them, acknowledge the humanist influences on Bruegel.10 The French historian and writer on heresy Stein-Schneider sees a Cathar connection but he is unsympathetic to the idea of

Bruegel’s connection to an esoteric school.11 Claessens and Rousseau briefly

7 Philokalia, op. cit. St Isaac the Syrian, ‘Direction for Spiritual Exercises’. 8 Djalậl ed-Din Rumi, Mathnawi, VI, 1463, 4 9 Derek Blyth, Flemish Cities Explored, Pallas Athene, London, revised edition, 1996, p. 147 10 C. De Tolnay Pierre Bruegel L’Ancien, Bruxelles, 1935, pp. 8-14. 11 See below, p. 262.

203 acknowledge Auner’s remarks.12 But no documents – other than his paintings – exist that throw direct light on what might have been Bruegel’s inner life and what role he played in the intellectual life of his contemporaries. No one has investigated in depth traditional mystical ideas in their relationship to Bruegel and to the idea that the Familists and the humanists reflected principles of the Perennial Philosophy.

12 Auner; Claessens and Rousseau, Our Bruegel, Antwerp, p. 210, 1969: ‘the arguments on which Auner bases himself are rather compelling…’. See.M. Auner, Tahrbuch der Kunsthistorische Sammlungen in Wien. Vienna: 1956.

204 Chapter 7. The Family of Love

Lineage of the Family of Love

The Family of Love, whose ideas, this thesis argues, are central to Bruegel‟s intellectual and religious outlook, was not an isolated phenomenon and can be shown to be a link in the chain of schools – more or less hidden – stretching alongside the more visible history of Christianity in Europe. This essay has followed the sequence traced by Rufus Jones and others beginning with the primitive Church itself, mysticism in classical literature and in the Church Fathers followed by Dionysius the Areopagite in the 6th century and

Duns Scotus Erigena in the 7th. 1 Later, in the 12th century, these teachings were to be a source for various mystical groups most of whom were violently persecuted as heretics, these include the Waldenses, who may have been related to the Cathars, and the followers of Amaury (or Amalrich) de Bene. In the 13th century we find the Franciscan brotherhoods (Beghards) and sisterhoods (Beguines) who were later to be transformed into the „Brethren of the Free Spirit‟. The teachings of Meister Eckhart and the Rhineland

Mystics in the 14th century opened the way to the loosely structured „Friends of God‟ and the Theologica Germanica. Later still, in the Netherlands, the New Devotion and the

Brotherhood of the Common Life were to represent the tradition that Jones calls the

„invisible church which never dies, which must always be reckoned with by official hierarchies and traditional systems and which is still the hope and promise of that

1 See above p. 72 ff. For similar historical sequences see Underhill, E. Mysticism, 12th edition. New York: Meridian Books, 1955; also Bruce B. Janz, Who’s Who in the History of Western Mysticism, http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/gthursby/mys/whoswho.htm

205 kingdom of God for which Christ lived and died‟.2 From there it was passed to such men as Sebastian Frank, Volkerz Coornhert and Hendrick Niclaes.3 Today some people would see the Quakers among its descendants.4 Both its apologists and its detractors variously wrote about the Familists in the 16th and 17th centuries,5 the latter often in violent and abusive terms. They seem to have been more or less forgotten until the beginning of the

20th century when historians rediscovered them.

The Hiël Group

Terra Pacis and other books by Hendrick Niclaes were printed in secret by his disciple

Christophe Plantin (1520-1589), the leading printer and publisher of his day and a member of a small group within the Familist Movement known as the Hiël Group. It was under the direction of Jansen van Barrefelt who was later to break with Niclaes and start

(in 1569) the Second House of Love.6 He took the name Hiël (in Hebrew, „God Lives‟) presumably because of its symbolism associated with the rebuilding of Jericho.7

According to one scholar, members of this group „represented a much higher stratum of society and numbered literary and scientific men of renown among them‟.8 Research indicates that, apart from Plantin, among other participants were Benito Aria Montano

(1527-1598), chaplain to Europe‟s most powerful monarch, Phillip II of Spain. Montano

2 Jones, op. cit 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 A bibliography of primary sources is given in Hamilton, A. 1981. The Family of Love, (Cambridge) pp. 167-171. 6 http://www.exlibris.org/nonconform/engdis/familists.html 7 1 Kings, 16 8 Rekers, B. 1972. Benito Arias Montano, (London)

206 was in Antwerp to oversee the printing of the Polyglot Bible, the illustrated, multilingual publication in eight volumes that was to immortalize Plantin‟s name. He was renowned as a scholar and played a significant role in the high politics of the day.9 Among other members of the group were the orientalist Andreas Masius and the cartographer and pupil of Mercator, Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598). Another was the Stoic and humanist scholar, painted by Rubens and Van Dyke, Justus Lipsius (1547–1606).10 All of these men knew Pieter Bruegel in one way or another and at least two of them, Ortelius and

Plantin, are known to have been close friends of his.

Bruegel’s Philosophical Circle

Bruegel the man – as opposed to his paintings – remains more or less invisible to history.

There is nothing written by him and, with one exception – Abraham Ortelius‟ remarks in his Album Amicorum which will be discussed below11 – there is nothing by his contemporaries that provides a glimpse into his intellectual, psychological, philosophical or spiritual outlook. But those with whom he is known to have associated are among the most brilliant and outstanding men of their time; many of them were men of renown in the world. The writers, artists and religious thinkers whose names are linked with Bruegel

9 See Henry Kamen, The Duke of Alba, Yale, 2004, pp. 117-119 10 Moss, J. D. 1981. “Godded with Love” Hendrik Niclaes and his Family of Love, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. (Philadelphia). p. 20. 11 See p. 261.

207 were men of the humanist movement who, inwardly at least, rejected the politics and dogmatic rigidities of conventional religion in favour of a search for such philosophical and mystical truths as can be approached through methods of contemplative spirituality.

Like the gnostics before them they cultivated the art of complete inner freedom from conventions and preconceptions. Outwardly, like Lipsius, they could maintain the appearance of conformity, even if lightly. Others like Niclaes, the founder of the House of Love, more openly declared themselves „filled with God‟ and set themselves up as teachers, though Niclaes himself encouraged his followers to disguise their innermost convictions and let themselves be counted among the Church‟s faithful.12 Theirs was a form of gnosticism in that they gave priority to the action of knowledge granted by the

Spirit over the disciplines of conformity to church regulations. It can be argued that they were students of esoteric Christianity and heirs of the Perennial Philosophy.

12 A practice known as Nicodemism, a position whereby Christians could hide their dissenting beliefs while conforming to mainstream religious rituals, See Veen M. van. De polemiek van Calvijn met nicodemieten in het bijzonder met Coornhert. Volume LX of Bibliotheca Humanistica & Reformatorica. Goy-Houten (Utrecht): Hes & De Graaf Publishers, BV. 2001.

208 Abraham Ortelius

A key that may help to unlock the mystery of Bruegel‟s relationship to such men is provided by Abraham Ortelius. He and Bruegel, together with Christophe Plantin who would become Europe‟s leading printer and publisher, were close contemporaries, all born within a few years of each other, and as young men incorporated into of the guild of

St Luke in Antwerp.13

Abram Ortel was a native of Antwerp who latinised his name, according to the custom of the day, as Abrahamus Ortelius, is known to the world as a geographer, the some time associate of Mercator and for his publication of the Theatrum Orbis Mundi, the world‟s first atlas, published in 1570. We learn that „his youthful reading was very much that of the humanist-in-the-making; that is, it reflected the humanist‟s conviction, supremely expressed in the life and work of Erasmus, that the wisdom of Greece and Rome and the teaching of Christianity constituted, when examined, a seamless fabric. „Saint Socrates!‟

Erasmus had famously exclaimed – to emphasize the unbroken line that stretched from

Greek philosophers to the Church Fathers‟.14 Humanism is a broad category of thought that defies precise definition as a philosophical system. It comprises the thought of such men as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Emanuel Chrysoloras, Cardinal Bessarion, Lorenzo de Medici, Politian, Pico della Mirandola, Erasmus and Thomas More who translated the works of classical authors and in whose styles they themselves wrote. Some were accused

13 Paul Binding, Imagined Corners, Review, London, 2003, p. 39 14 Binding, p. 30

209 of paganism or semi-paganism but the rigor and energy of their scholarship gave them great power and influence and many worked under (and for) the Church‟s authority. It inspired much of the reform movement of 14th-, 15th- and 16th-century Europe. Much of humanism can be seen as the exoteric aspect of the Perennial Philosophy.15

Early in his life Ortelius himself had an experience of Christ which was to remain

with him, strong and lucent, throughout its length. He had taken Christ into

himself just as, a century and a half before, Groote‟s Devotio Moderna movement

had advised all true believers to do, and only among those who believed in the

supreme importance of this process, of an inner life dwarfing all dogmas and

disputes, all hierarchies and rites, would Ortelius feel truly at home spiritually.

And such a group Ortelius found: the Family of Love under the charismatic

leadership of Hendrik Niclaes.16

From remarks noted by friends and from the contents of his library, Ortelius was deeply influenced by Sebastian Franck (1499-1542), a one-time Catholic priest, then a Lutheran pastor who later became an „independent and highly influential spiritual teacher‟. He stressed „the longing for oneness with God [who was] so frequently impeded by doctrines and church obligations … [He] was an enemy of all religious division between believers

… Franck had his roots in those two works … Imitation of Christ and Theologica

15 Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/h/humanism.htm 16 Binding, p. 58

210 Germanica.17 He was also well versed in writers at the foundation of the Perennial

Philosophy, often referring to Plato, Plotinus and Hermes Trismegistus as „his teachers‟ who had „spoken to him more clearly than Moses did‟.18

Ortelius, a man of deep spirituality, together with his close friend and colleague

Christophe Plantin – and there is no evidence to suggest that Bruegel was not with them – joined the movement known as the Family of Love in the late 1540s.19

For Ortelius in particular the movement had roots in earlier traditions in which he

had himself partaken. It‟s clear from the books he owned and read and from his

letters … which abound in references to the spiritual life – that Ortelius was

steeped in the pietistic, quietist Netherlandish religious tradition the roots of

which are to be found in the Devotio Moderna (Modern Devotion) movement

founded in 1397 by Geert Groote … The movement‟s influence was far-reaching,

not least because of the effect of the extraordinarily popular Imitation of Christ

(1518) of Thomas à Kempis, its fullest written expression, which itself relates to

roughly contemporaneous works such as the Theologica Germanica. [The

Devotio Moderna] was a major factor in Netherlands social life mainly through

schools. Axiomatic to Groote‟s belief was a reformed system of education more

humanistically inclined than the dominant one. The Brethren of the Common

17 Binding, p.59 18 „Apologia‟ in Sebastian Franck, Das verbütschierte Buch (The Seven-sealed Book), 1539. Jones, op. cit. p. 52. 19 Binding, p. 59

211 Life, as Groote‟s followers were called, combined attention to classical language

and literature with a somewhat anti-intellectual approach to religion, dismissing

the tortuously complicated arguments of scholasticism. (Erasmus … was

Brethren-educated.) Common Life schools appealed to a newly prosperous, level-

headed and influential middle-class with little time or regard for the rarefied hair-

splitting of orthodox theology. A practical outer life and a developed inner one sit

well together; the one can safeguard the other, can give it appropriate, even

encouraging conditions in which to flourish. Such a cast of mind could well mean

that you stayed within the Catholic fold but developed a private spirituality, and

this … was the position of many a Family member.20

Sebastian Franck

Franck switched his religious allegiance several times led by the combination of his humanist passion for freedom with his mystic devotion to spirituality. He came to believe that God communicates with individuals through the fragment of the divine assigned to every human being. He felt that this communication had to be direct and unfettered and wrote that „to substitute Scripture for the self-revealing Spirit is to put the dead letter in the place of the living Word‟.21 He believed that the only true church is an entirely

20 Binding, p. 55

21 Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Franck.

212 inward matter comprising what he called, in a phrase echoing the Gnostics of the second century, the „invisible church‟.

The true Church is not a separate mass of people, not a particular sect to be

pointed out … not confined to one time or place; it is rather a spiritual and

invisible body of all the members of Christ, born of God, of one mind, spirit and

faith, but not gathered in any one external city or place. It is a fellowship, seen

with the spiritual eye and by the inner man. It is the assembly and communion of

all truly God-fearing, good-hearted, new-born persons in all the world, bound

together by the Holy Spirit – a communion outside which there is no salvation, no

Christ, no God, no comprehension of Scripture, no Holy Spirit and no Gospel. I

belong to this fellowship. I believe in the communion of Saints, and I am in this

church, let me be where I may, and therefore I no longer look for Christ in „lo

heres‟ and „lo theres‟.22

For Franck the church of the spirit is an event within the soul; „an entirely inward event‟ as Jones comments.23

Love is the one mark and badge of fellowship in [the True Church].24

22 Sebastian Franck, Paradoxa, 1533 or 4, sec. 8. cited in Jones, op. cit. p. 58 23 Jones, op. cit. p. 59 24 Sebastian Franck, Paradoxa, 1533 or 4, sec. 8. sec. 9

213 External gifts and offices make no Christian, and just as little does the standing of

a person, or locality, or time, or dress, or food, or anything external. The kingdom

of God is neither prince nor peasant, food nor drink, hat nor coat, here nor there,

yesterday nor tomorrow, baptism nor circumcision, nor anything whatever that is

external.25

As a result of his study of the early Church Fathers Franck declared in, a letter:

I am fully convinced that, after the death of the apostles, the external Church of

Christ, with its gifts and sacraments, vanished from the earth and withdrew into

heaven, and is now hidden in spirit and in truth, and for these past fourteen

hundred years there has existed no true external church no officious sacraments.26

As Jones points out:

„His valuation of scripture fits perfectly into this religion of the inward life and

the invisible Church. The true and essential word of God is the divine revelation

in the soul of man. It is the prius of all scripture and it is the key to the spiritual

meaning of all scripture.27

25 Ibid. sec. 45 26 „Letter to Campanus‟ in Schellhorn‟s Amoenitatis Literariae, (1729), xi. pp. 59-611. Cited in Jones op. cit. p. 60 27 Jones R. Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries, Macmillan, London, 1914

214

Elsewhere Franck declares his „dissatisfaction with ceremonies and outward forms of any sort, his refusal to be identified with any existing empirical church, his solemn dedication to the invisible church, and his determination to be an apostle of the spirit‟.28 Franck, dismissing the Lutheran, Zwinglian29 and Anabaptist30 cults of his day, all of which had large followings, foretells the birth of a church that

…will dispense with external preaching, ceremonies, sacraments and office as

unnecessary, and which seeks solely to gather among all peoples an invisible,

spiritual church in the unity of spirit and faith, to be governed wholly by the

eternal invisible word of God, without external means, as the apostolic church

was governed before its apostasy, which occurred after the death of the apostles.31

Jones tells us that Franck is „without question saturated with the spirit of the mystics; he approves the inner way to God and he has learned from them to view this world of time and space as shadow and not as reality.‟ He reminds us that Franck had translated

Erasmus‟s In Praise of Folly and Agrippa‟s Vanity of Arts and Sciences32 and, in the

28 Jones. op. cit. p. 49 29 Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) led the Protestant Reformation in Switzerland. He was independent from Luther but had arrived at a similar position through humanism of which he was a leading scholar. 30 Anabaptists („Rebaptisers‟) are associated with the Radical Reformation that took a different stance from both Lutherans and Calvinists. „Anabaptist‟ was, and still is, often used as a term of abuse usually with little or no understanding of their practice and belief. 31 Sebastian Franck, Chronica und Beschreibung der Turkey, Nürnberg, 1530, K. 3 b 32 "Recent historical investigation ... assigns Agrippa a central place in the history of ideas of the Middle Ages; he is seen as characterizing the main line of intellectual development from Nicholas of Cusa to Sebastian Franck. Modern opinion evaluates him on the basis of his Platonic, Neoplatonic, and Hermetic influences - primarily in the De occulta philosophia..." Agrippa von Nettesheim. In Dictionary of

215 tradition of such works and of mysticism, he is very harsh on the role of „reasoning‟: which is „a good guide in the realm of earthly affairs. It can deal wisely with matters that effect our bodily comfort and our social welfare, but it is “barren” in the sphere of eternal issues. It has no eye for realities beyond the world of three dimensions‟.33

Dirck Volckertz Coornhert

If Franck, who was a generation older, was a favourite writer of Ortelius, his friend and contemporary was Dirck Volckertz Coornhert (1522-1590): artist, historian, philosopher, humanist and writer, also a pupil of Franck.

Coornhert worked as principal engraver for the great Maarten van Heemskerck together with his pupil, Philip Galle who would later become a famous engraver in his own right and who would work closely with Bruegel. For art historians, Coornhert‟s importance lies in the fact that he inspired artists whose designs he engraved – among them Heemskerck,

Scientific Biography. American Council of Learned Societies. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1970; vol. I, 79-81

33 Jones, op. cit. p. 56

216 Adriaen de Weerdt and the young Goltzius – to create images that expressed his own philosophical outlook,34 Many of the themes of his prints are paralleled in his literary work.35 A similarly significant intellectual and philosophical symbiosis seems to have existed between Galle and Bruegel.

The names of Galle, Bruegel, Coornhert, Montano and Ortelius all come together in the story of the engraving of The Death of the Virgin. The painting, a haunting work in grisaille that hangs today at Upton House near Banbury, had originally belonged to

Ortelius. A large number of Bruegel‟s drawings were done specifically for the popular market in engravings but his paintings were private commissions and were not produced as editions of prints. The print of The Death of the Virgin is an exception and, even so, there was never a popular edition. Some years after Bruegel‟s death Ortelius engaged

Galle to produce a very limited edition intended for members of the intimate circle that had constituted the Hiël group. A letter (dated 1578) exists from Coornhert to Ortelius thanking him for his copy and in 1591 Arias Montano wrote having received his.36

Coornhert openly acknowledged a spiritual outlook formed under the influence of Franck and, like his mentor, devoted energy to translating great masterpieces of the perennial tradition including Boethius‟ Consolation of Philosophy, Cicero‟s On Duties, Erasmus‟

Paraphrases of the New Testament and Homer‟s The Odyssey. At first, as a humanist, he

34 The themes include moral allegories and scenes from classical Antiquity. 35 Abstracted from Grove‟s Dictionary of Art http://www.oup.com/online/groveart/ 36 See Manfred Sellink in Nadine Orenstein, Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Drawings and Prints, New York: The Metropolitan Museum, 2001, pp. 258-261

217 was passionately committed to the cause of freedom of religious thought and opposed the rigidity and doctrinaire stance of Calvin.37 Later he came under the influence of Franck as well as other spiritual reformers such as Hans Denck and Sebastian Costellio and

„received from them formative influences which turned him powerfully to the cultivation of inward religion for his own soul and to the expression and interpretation of a universal

Christianity‟.38 Coornhert makes a distinction between the forms of institutional religion, which he calls „outer or external religion‟, which he allows as a preparatory stage and

„inward religion‟ which is the establishment of the kingdom of God in men‟s hearts.

„Only God has the right to be master over man's soul and conscience; it is man's right to have freedom of conscience‟.39 „With his intransigent defense of tolerance, even toward nonbelievers and atheists, the Dutch Catholic humanist and controversialist Coornhert made a substantial and permanent contribution to the early modern debate on religious freedom‟.40

Rejection of the institutionalized reform movements on the basis of their new

dogmatism and formalism … motivated the believers in a more “inward”

spiritualized faith. Like the reformers, Spiritualists advocated free Bible research,

but as a result of the notion of a direct personal relationship with God – and

individual approach that we also find in Erasmus – they attach great importance to

an unimpeded access to the Spirit of the individual. At the same time they tend to

37 Dirck Volckertz Coornhert, Epitome processus de occidentis haereticus et coscientiis inferanda (Gouda, 1591) and Defensio procssuset non occidentis haereticis (Hannover, 1593) are, according to Jones, „powerful pleas for the freedom of the mind‟. 38 Jones, op. cit. p. 107. 39 Coornhert, Oordelen van een ghemen Landts Leere, in Werken, vol. 1, fol. “643C” According to Voogt „should be 463C‟ 40 Gerrit Voogt, Constraint on Trial: Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert and Religious Freedom.. Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies 52. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2000. p. 104

218 minimize the importance of “externals”: ceremonies, sacraments, the church,

often also the supreme authority of the Bible, for they consider the Spirit of prior

significance; the Bible without the Spirit becomes a “paper pope” as Frank put

it.41

The same author points out that while Erasmus and humanism were a significant influence on men like Sebastian Franck, spiritual seekers were also influenced by late- medieval mystical traditions found in Eckhart and Tauler.42 Voogt acknowledges the importance for 16th century exponents of radical dissent of the anonymous Theologia

Germanica (German Theology) which they frequently used and quoted from.

Henry Niclaes, founder of the Family of Love was profoundly influenced by this

work (and by Thomas à Kempis‟ Imitation of Christ). He, and his main disciple

(and later rival) Barrefelt, felt attracted to the Theologia’s theme of the return to a

Platonic oneness and of the freedom of the will. They embraced the notion, found

in this small book, that incarnation continued after the Ascension of Christ. This

incarnation – known among Familists as Vergottung (godding) – takes place, they

believed, whenever the spirit entered the individual.43

One element of the Theologia that does leave a strong imprint on Coornhert ...

mostly through the mediation of Sebastian Frank … was the idea of the invisible

church, vested in the hearts of true Christians wherever they may be found.44

41 Idem, p. 48 42 Idem, p. 48 43 Idem, p. 49 44 Idem, p. 50

219

Justus Lipsius

We could scarcely find a better candidate to represent our idea of the Perennial

Philosophy in the 16th century than Justus Lipsius or Joest Lips, to give the Flemish version of his name. The famous professor of Leiden University was a close friend and associate of Plantin. While there is certainty of Plantin‟s affiliation with Hendrik Niclaes and the Family of Love, Lipsius is more enigmatic on this point though he lived for a period in Plantin‟s house in Antwerp and his philosophical views and indifference to external religious forms would suggest an attitude that resonated with the teaching of the invisible church and the universality of the true inner life. „Greek philosophy … is the hedge and enclosure of the Lord‟s vineyard‟ he wrote, and later, „there is one road to truth, but in that road, just as in an everlasting river, many brooks from other places flow into and meet this common road‟.45 One biographer, J. L. Saunders, makes no mention of the Family of Love or of Niclaes46 whereas Moss, on the other hand, places him in the group around Barrefelt, the former pupil of Niclaes.47 Given his cautious nature and the characteristic guardedness of the Familists about their affiliation, it is reasonably sure that

Lipsius shared a similar outlook and similar convictions to members of this intimate

45 Lipsius, Manductio, I, 3 (IV, 628, 630) the author is quoting Clement of Alexandria, Strom. I) 46 Jason Lewis Saunders, Justus Lipsius, The Philosophy of Renaissance Stoicism New York, 1955 47 Moss, J. D. 1981. “Godded with Love” Hendrik Niclaes and his Family of Love, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. (Philadelphia). p. 20.

220 circle. He typically remarks: „Nature has begotten us for [two] purposes, for theory

(contemplation) and for practice (action).‟48

Lipsius was born near Brussels in 1547 and, at 13, was a schoolboy at the Jesuit College at Cologne where he „devoured‟ Latin philosophical and humanist texts and was profoundly influenced by his Jesuit teachers despite the fact that they confiscated some of his books and disapproved of his passion for Stoic philosophy and the monuments of antiquity. Soon after, through his father‟s connections with the court of the Emperor

Maximilian II, he studied in Vienna. From 1563 he attended the University of Louvain, then at the height of its fame. Noted for his brilliance he became, when still a young man, secretary to Cardinal de Granvella who, during the Reformation, was „one of the ablest and most influential princes of the church‟.49 In the 1560s de Granvella was secretary of state to the emperor Charles V and later prime minister to the regent of the Netherlands,

Margaret of Parma. He was to acquire at least two of Bruegel‟s paintings which, it can be assumed, he commissioned directly from the artist.50 De Granvella was recalled to Rome in 1567 where Lipsius, still in his employ, immersed himself in the Vatican Library in the study of antiquity and meeting the most notable scholars. Later he was to make his name as a Christian interpreter of Stoic philosophy.51 By 1578 Plantin‟s „Officina Plantiniana‟

(which in Antwerp today can be visited as a Museum) was the most famous printing

48 Manductio, ii, 2 (IV, 694) 49 Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th edition) 50 At this period an artist such as Bruegel would have been known to the public through engravings published in popular editions. Paintings were privately commissioned by connoisseurs. 51 J. L. Saunders, Justus Lipsius, The Philosophy of Renaissance Stoicism, New York, 1955.

221 works in Europe and a centre of humanism and learning. Lipsius had his own study there before taking up his post as Professor of History at the University of Leiden.

In his writings Lipsius quotes copiously from Plato, Plutarch, Apuleus, Hermes

Trismegistus and Philo Judaeus. „Aristotle is much in evidence. Epictetus is quoted more often than his near contemporary, Marcus Aurelius. The Scriptures are frequently quoted, as are many of the Greek and Latin Fathers; there are many references to Tertullian,

Clement of Alexandria, John of Damascus, Eusebius, St Augustine, Minucius Felix,

Orosius and Isidore of Seville. Lipsius has often been criticized for gathering his materials from such widely separated sources, and … he did read into many writers specifically Stoic notions. Views which are the common property of many Schools,52 including Stoicism, are occasionally quoted by him to show that one man or another, pagan or Christian, had Stoic leanings‟.53

The Stoic philosophy, as can be seen in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, laid emphasis on philosophy as practice, as „work on oneself‟.54 One is led to the impression that for Lipsius Stoicism shared the values of the Perennial Philosophy.

52 My italics 53 Saunders, op. cit, p. 60

54 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/stoicism/#Phil

222 Justus Lipsius‟s philosophical reputation rests upon his status as the principal figure in the Renaissance revival of Stoicism. Stoicism was one of the great

Hellenistic schools of philosophy and dominated ancient intellectual life for at least 400 years ... In the first two centuries AD it reached its height of popularity under the influence of Musonius Rufus and Epictetus. In the second century AD it found its most famous exponent in the form of the Roman Emperor Marcus

Aurelius. However, after the second century Stoicism was soon eclipsed in popularity by Neoplatonism.

Despite this decline in late antiquity, Stoicism continued to exert an influence. Its ideas were discussed by Church Fathers such as St. Augustine, Lactantius, and

Tertullian. In the Middle Ages its impact can be seen in the ethical works of Peter

Abelard and his pupil John of Salisbury, transmitted via the readily available

Latin works of Seneca and Cicero. In the fourteenth century Stoicism attracted the attention of Petrarch who produced a substantial ethical work entitled De

Remediis Utriusque Fortunae („On the Remedies of Both Kinds of Fortune‟) inspired by Seneca and drawing upon an account of the Stoic theory of the passions made by Cicero. With the rediscovery of the works of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus by famous Humanists such as Perotti and Politian in the fifteenth century, interest in Stoicism continued to develop. However, the

Renaissance revival of Stoicism remained somewhat limited until Justus Lipsius.

223 Among Lipsius‟s friends was his publisher, the famous printer Christopher

Plantin, with whom he often stayed in Antwerp. Among his pupils was Philip

Rubens, brother of the painter Peter Paul Rubens who portrayed Lipsius after his

death in „The Four Philosophers‟.55 Among his admirers was Michel de

Montaigne who described him as one of the most learned men then alive.56

Historians and biographers of Lipsius, describing different academic posts he held at

Lutheran, Calvinist and Catholic institutions after leaving de Granvella, are critical of what they regard as his lack of steadfastness. One author refers to „a long line of incidents

… which illustrate his mobility of character, his … faulty decisions regarding ways out of difficult situations, his facility for adopting the current opinions or the locality in which he was at the time residing, his rather lame reasons for professing one thing openly and rejecting it in his heart‟.57 Another says „His decisions … were seldom such as his classical masters, Epictetus and Seneca, would have admired‟.58 But Lipsius would have learned from Hendrick Niclaes that external forms of religion have practically no meaning compared with the true experience of God which is entirely within. „The central idea in all Henry Nicholas‟s writings is his insistence on real righteousness and actual holiness as contrasted with the fiction of a merely imputed righteousness and a forensic holiness, or holiness based on a transaction outside the person himself.‟59 It is clear that

Lipsius „remained quite indifferent to the various doctrines of religion, considering them all of equal value‟. Saunders cites a letter from Lipsius‟ friend Conrad Schlusselburg who

55 c. 1611, now in the Pitti Palace, Florence. An „old copy‟ is in the Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp 56 John Sellars in Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/l/lipsius.htm, accessed 04/04/04. The reference in Montaigne is Essais 2.12 57 J. L. Saunders, op. cit. p. 10 58 R. Kirk (ed.) Tvvo Bookes of Constancie, by Justus Lipsius. Transl. By Sir John Stradling. New Brunswick, 1951. Quoted in Saunders, op. cit. note 9. 59 Jones. op. cit. p.433.

224 quotes Lipsius: “Nam omnis religio et nulla religio sunt mihi unum et idem.” (to me all religion, or no religion, is one and the same thing).60 Saunders remarks: „if we have a clear indication that Lipsius spiritually never left the Catholic Faith, it is abundantly clear

… that he could not conceal his indifference to dogmas and [the] secular concerns of the

Church and clergy‟.61

Christophe Plantin

Born in France, Plantin later settled in Antwerp where, through a combination of superb skill as a typographer and good business sense he became the leading printer and publisher of his time. In 1562 he was indicted for his involvement with the Familist leaders Hendrik Niclaes and Jansen Barrefelt and was obliged to flee from Antwerp. He succeeded, however, in dissipating the suspicions against him, and it was only after two centuries that his relations with the Familists, or „Famille de la Charité‟ came to light, and also that he printed the works of Barrefelt and other „heretics‟.62

The editor of the Polyglot Bible with whom Plantin worked closely in Antwerp was the scholarly Spanish Benedictine monk, Benito Arias Montano. The last volume contains essays, illustrations and maps by Montano that show the wide range of his scholarship as a philologist, an expert in Oriental languages, an antiquarian, a geographer and as a

60 Saunders, op. cit. p. 19. 61 Saunders, op. cit. p. 36 62 Catholic Encyclopaedia http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12148b.htm, this work, incidentally, regards his relations with the Familists as a „blot‟ on his reputation.

225 specialist in the practice of visualizing and tabulating knowledge. „He designed his maps both as study aids and as devotional-meditative devices. Moreover, the maps reflect his wider philosophical outlook, according to which Holy Scripture contains the foundations of all natural philosophy. Montano's case encourages us to re-examine early modern

Geographia sacra in the light of the broader scholarly trends of the period.‟63 Montano was also part of the Family of Love circle around Barrefelt.

The revolutionary changes in religious thought that were taking place in the 16th century did not stop with Luther and Protestant theology. The movement that has come to be called the Radical Reformation sought to go much further. Its leading thinkers, according to Jones, „were not satisfied with a programme that limited itself to the correction of abuses, an abolition of medieval superstitions, and a shift of external authority … They placed a low value on orthodox systems of theological formulation … insisting that a person may go on endless pilgrimages to holy places, he may repeat unnumbered

“paternosters”, he may mortify his body to the verge of self-destruction, and still be unsaved and unspiritual; so too he may “believe” all the dogma … he may take on his lips the most sacred words … and yet be utterly alien to the kingdom of God, a stranger and a foreigner to the spirit of Christ.‟64

63 Zur Shalev, ‘Sacred Geography, Antiquarianism and Visual Erudition: Benito Arias Montano and the Maps in the Antwerp Polyglot Bible‟ in Imago Mundi: The International Journal for the History of Cartography, Routledge, Department of History Princeton University New Jersey [email protected]., part of the Taylor & Francis Group Volume 55, Number 1 / 8 October 2003, pp. 56 - 80 64 Jones, op. cit.

226 The radical reformers brought a new and fresh interpretation of God who, they declared,

„is not a suzerain, treating men as his vassals, reckoning their sins up against them as infinite debts to be paid off at last in a vast commercial transaction only by the immeasurable price of a divine life, given to pay the debt which had involved the entire race in hopeless bankruptcy‟. In the same way, they would not accept the Almighty as a sovereign, „meting out to the world strict justice and holding all sin as flagrant disloyalty and appalling violation of law, never to be forgiven until the full requirements of sovereign justice are met and balances and satisfied‟. These extreme reformers would not accept that God‟s Salvation could be thought of in such ways. They insisted that he is a personal God „who is and always was eternal Love‟ and who has to be found through a personal relationship. Here Jones formulates an idea that would be echoed in more or less the same words a generation later by Coomaraswamy when he says that „Heaven and

Hell were for them inward conditions, states of the soul‟.65 In other words Heaven and

Hell are not to be put off into the afterlife but are encountered and experienced as the actual psychological realities of each present moment.

Esoteric nature of the House of Love and Terra Pacis

This writer considers that the House of Love was essentially an esoteric movement, a 16th century manifestation in Europe of the Perennial Philosophy, and that the writings of its founder, Hendrick Niclaes, can be interpreted in its light. Niclaes‟ vision of the „Land of

Ignorance‟ where everything goes „wonderfully absurdly‟ is not so far from the

65 Jones, op. cit.

227 contemporary (or near contemporary) writings of Erasmus, in particular In Praise of

Folly,66 or Rabelais who repeatedly focused on dogmas that fetter creativity, institutional structures that reward hypocrisy, educational traditions that inspire laziness, and philosophical methodologies that obscure elemental reality. But it would be a mistake to regard Terra Pacis as satire for it is, in fact, esoteric allegory.

To follow the esoteric idea it is necessary to distinguish between two realities: the material world in time and the spiritual world in Eternity.67 The formulaic, „pagan‟ idea sees a separation between spirit and matter, but the universe of Plotinus, and of Dionysius the Areopagite, shows us a graded world that, descending, understands spirit gradually becoming less spiritual and more material; while, ascending, it sees matter becoming gradually less material and more spiritual.68 Pure spirit and pure matter only „exist‟ at the extreme poles of the universe: the level of „The Absolute‟ and the level of „Absolute non- being‟.69 This hypothesis takes on another meaning in the light of the idea that man is the universe in miniature, the microcosm. It means that all gradations of matter exist in him, though some are so fine as to be imperceptible to the physical senses and, it could be said, are not of the material world. Man‟s lack of self-knowledge (lack of inner self- knowledge) leaves his psychological and spiritual worlds in darkness. Never entering within himself, he has only the vague or distorted and inaccurate ideas about his inner universe. Esoteric and gnostic teachings hold that, for „light‟, or „love‟, or „Christ‟ to

66 Erasmus of Rotterdam, Praise of Folly and Letter to Martin Droop 1515, Penguin Books, 1971. 67 c. f. Eckhart „Why celebrate the Birth of Christ in time, if I do not celebrate his birth in eternity, in me‟. Eckhart attributes the remark to Augustine. See O. M. Walshe Eckhart, vol. I, p. 1 68 Dionysius the Areopagite, Mystical Theology and Celestial Hierarchies, Shrine of Wisdom, Godalming, 1965 69 Plotinus, The Enneads, ed. McKenna, London 1956. Intro. pp.xxvi and xxxi.

228 enter into a man, certain conditions have to be prepared through the help of methods of contemplation and prayer that lie at the heart of all religions – often partly buried or hidden behind external forms and rituals. These methods can create what the Hindu masters call an „inner structure‟ and what, in the Philokalia, is called „the house of spiritual architecture‟.70

Esoteric symbolism in the Gospel

Many commentators hold that an esoteric aspect of prayer can be understood from the words of Jesus in the gospel.71 Before discussing these in detail it will be helpful to remember that the entire passage, chapters 5, 6, and 7 of St Matthew‟s Gospel, begins with a symbolic description hinting that this part of the teaching is esoteric. „And seeing the multitudes, [Jesus] went up into a mountain; and when he was set, his disciples came unto him. And he opened his mouth and taught them.72 The movement away from „the multitudes‟ and the fact that he „went up a mountain‟ esoterically symbolizes Jesus‟ withdrawal from the level of worldliness and multiplicity to a spiritually higher place where very few could follow him, i.e. only the disciples and not the crowd. It is while still in this exalted state of being that he tells them: „When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy father which is in secret; and thy father which seeth in secret shall reward thee‟.73 The Greek έισελθε εις τό ταμείον σοσν

70 The Monks Ignatius and Callistos in the Philokalia. See Kadloubovsky and Palmer (eds.) Prayer of the Heart, London, 1957, p.181. 71 Matt. 6:6. (A.V.) 72 Matt. 5:1, 2. (A.V.) 73 Matt. 6:6

229 και κλείσας την θύραν σοσ προσεσζαι τώ πατρί σοσ τώ έν τώ κρσπτώ (literally: „enter into your hidden room and having shut your door pray to the father, the one in secret‟) lends itself to mystical interpretation. For example the „hidden room‟ corresponds to the

„house of spiritual architecture‟; the term „father‟ in Neoplatonism is a synonym for „The

Absolute‟, the centre of the universe and origin of all.74 As far as the individual is concerned the „father which is in secret‟ is unknown to all other parts of the self, and cannot be known by the „normal‟ process of thought, the process called by Hendrik

Niclaes „knowledge of the flesh‟. The early 4th-century mystic, Aphrahat the Persian puts it thus:

From the moment you start praying,

Raise your heart upwards

And turn your eyes downward.

Come to focus in your innermost self

And there pray in secret to your heavenly father.75

The text fragments discussed below are from the English translation of 1649. Hendrik

Niclaes‟ Terra Pacis is a classic in the genre of allegorical mystical literature that describes, in images taken from the visible world, events whose reality is in the invisible world. These events refer, often directly and intimately, to the adventures of the human soul – indeed, our own soul – on its evolutionary journey. Examples of the genre are found throughout all ages and may be amongst the oldest and most enduring literature

74 See above, p. 101 75 McGuckin, op. cit. p. 19.

230 known to humanity. The 3rd-century philosopher Plotinus leaves us in no doubt that, for him at least, Homer‟s Odyssey is just such an example „For Odysseus is surely a parable to us…it is not a journey of the feet‟.76

76 Plotinus, The Enneads, p. 63, 1956 edition, trls. MacKenna, (London)

231

Fig. a, Title page, Terra Pacis, courtesy the Bodleian Library

232

Terra Pacis

Introduction

Terra Pacis, The Land of Spiritual Peace was first published in Antwerp in 1574 by

Hendrik Niclaes, the founder of the mystical religious sect known as the Family of Love or the House of Love (Domus Caritatis, famille de la charité, huis der liefde, etc.). The title page (see fig. a) gives the author as H. N. This is in fact an abbreviation for Helie

Nazarenus (Elijah the Nazarene), the name bestowed on him for his mission as a prophet.

He founded the Family of Love in the early 16th century and it attracted converts in quite large numbers in Brabant, Flanders, Friesland, Holland, Antwerp and, later, in France and

England, where it seems to have petered out around 1690 after long harassment and condemnation by both the Crown and the Church.

Last published in English in 1649 and little read after the end of the 17th century, Terra

Pacis has the status of a lost classic more or less unknown today. The commentary aims to show that a symbolism can be discerned in the text that corresponds, in part, to the hidden sense in Bruegel’s art and that such spiritual allegories are part of a continuous tradition dating at least as far back as the origins of Christianity.

In the introductory ‘Epistle’, Niclaes makes it clear that his intention is to ‘know the

Truth in the Spirit’. His only concern is with the inward, spiritual life though, as he

233 explains, spiritual truth cannot be directly communicated to those who have not the necessary special preparation. The realities of the Kingdom of God are so far from anything we can perceive with the physical senses – which he calls ‘knowledg (sic) of the flesh’ or ‘wisdom of the flesh’ – as to be incomprehensible to those living in the material world. The term ‘knowledg of the flesh’is not, of course, a coy way of referring to sex. Its meaning is psychologically precise and refers to the fact that, at the earthly or material level, our thoughts, attitudes and outlook on the world depend on information from the physical senses. Science, or what René Guénon calls ‘scientism’, and much of Western thinking are founded on the rational mind’s ability to weigh, measure, analyse and classify matter perceived by the senses, so it is difficult for us today to conceive of a faculty of knowing that is situated ‘beyond reason and beyond sense-perception’. Niclaes says towards the end of his text ‘The Kingdome of God of Heavens is come inwardly in us’.77 To those of us who have yet to make the ‘journey’ from the psychological or spiritual condition allegorised as the ‘Land of Ignorance’ to the inner state represented by the ‘Land of Spiritual Peace’ he can only speak, as Christ did to the ‘multitude’, in parables.

For I will open my mouth in similitudes, reveal and witness the riches of the

spiritual heavenly goods as parables, and figure forth in writing the mystery of the

Kingdom of God or Christ according to the true beeing.

77 See below, p. 407. The emphasis is mine.

234 I look and behold: to the children of the kingdom (of the Family of Love of Jesus

Christ) it is given to understand the mystery of the Heavenly Kingdom; but to

those that are therewithout, it is not given to understand the same. For that cause

all spiritual understandings do chance to them by Similitudes, Figures and

Parables.

He goes on to say that the use of ‘parables and similitudes’ is provisional. Later, they will not be necessary, but only after the occurrence of an event that he calls ‘a new birth’.

What has been said so far uncovers a theme consistent with the perennial Philosophy and, as this author intends to demonstrate, common to the ideas implicit in Bruegel’s paintings. Man’s inner world is, or rather should be, and could be, the microcosm, the image in miniature of the universe; but in his present state, Man fails to reach this in himself and his inner world is in disorder. There are different stages, or states of being, in the journey from chaos and darkness towards true life. Various traditional literary images describe the human condition before the journey begins. For example, the Gospel refers to ‘blindness’ and ‘deafness’. Saint Anthony the Great defining ‘intelligence’ implies that we are not even worthy to be called men;78 Terra Pacis, as we shall see, employs the symbol of humanity living in the land of ‘Ignorance’. The first part of the journey consists of a stage called by the Greek Fathers Praktikos, this is the stage of self- study through the practical disciplines of prayer and work through which the seeker

78 ‘He alone can be called a man who can be called intelligent (true intelligence is that of the soul), or who has set about correcting himself. An uncorrected person should not be called a man. St Anthony the Great (251? -356) in Kadloubovsky and Palmer (ed.) Early Fathers of the Philokalia, London 1954, p. 22.

235 learns to master the physical and psychological machinery that constitute his lower or worldly self. The next stage is that of Theoretikos or contemplation; the mystic is able to see what is, he is liberated from worldly matters towards which he is now objective – indifferent even – and is able to work on specific difficulties in his personal path. The final stage, Gnostikos, knowledge of what John of Apamea in the 5th century called

‘invisible realities’,79 refers to a realm that cannot be described in ordinary human language. These stages, Praktikos, Theoretikos and Gnostikos constitute the three main themes that inform Bruegel’s paintings. Every image, whether a detail or in the broad plan, serves the search for the meaning of humanity within God’s universal plan.

Much of the text of Terra Pacis – all the part that describes the ‘Land of Ignorance’ – refers to the first stage of the spiritual journey, that of the seeker’s awakening to the reality of his or her situation and accurately identifying the nature and quality of each difficulty. The grim absurdity of all human endeavour, which would be comic if it were not so tragic, is revealed for what it is. The philosophical point from which Bruegel views the world is very much that of Niclaes: humanity’s error in looking to the material world to solve questions that only the higher world can answer. But humanity in general is ignorant of the higher world, as Bruegel demonstrates in his Numbering at Bethlehem and

Adoration of the Kings, and especially when he implies that access to it is nearby: within and through oneself. (‘The Kingdom of Heaven is within you’.) Humanity compounds this error by accepting, in the place of the higher life, a substitute; people allow themselves to be satisfied with the external formalities of pseudo-religion. ‘Their

79 McGuckin op. cit. p. 21.

236 Religions or godservice is called the Pleasure of Men. Their doctrine and ministration is called Good Thinking’.

The text of Terra Pacis, like the anecdotes in Bruegel’s paintings, has higher significance only when considered from an esoteric point of view. Mystical literature has little meaning outside the psychological or spiritual realm. Every description is an account of subtle mental events and emotional currents whose energies, vibrating at varying tempos, animate our psycho-physical world. Our comprehension of what passes in our inner world depends on the quality and on the level of our consciousness; and consciousness, in its turn, depends on our ability to focus and hold a disciplined interior attention upon ourselves.

This will be clear to anyone who has experimented with meditation (with the proviso that it be conducted in an authentic context such as, for example, a traditional Vipassana or

Zen school). The same would be true from the contemplative prayer traditions of

Christianity such as were once readily available, as we see in the Philokalia anthology, to those who sought them and which today are difficult to find. Here, it may help to remind ourselves of the point already made that, in such work, the seeker studies the waywardness of the undisciplined and untrained mind as well as the unwillingness of the body to submit itself to stillness and silence. These are attributes of the confused and unredeemed world that is the human race’s inheritance from Adam, the ‘Old Man’. But if he persists he will discover intimations of another life within himself waiting to be awoken: the ‘Buddha nature’, the ‘Christ within’ or the ‘New Man’. The nomenclature

237 varies in the different cultures and civilizations that have existed but the essential truth that they describe is the same.

Thus when Niclaes exhorts his readers to ‘fly now out of the North and all Wildernessed

Lands; rest not yourselves among the strange people, nor among any of the enemies of the House and Service of Love; but assemble you with us, into the Holy City of Peace, the New Jerusalem, which is descended from heaven and prepared by God’, the ideas of the Perennial Philosophy would insist that we follow with our psychological understanding, because Niclaes is describing psychological events and places within ourselves. The author is telling us to make an inner movement, to mobilize an inner attention, by whose action we can withdraw from the myriad thoughts and feelings that occupy our subconscious; we may then find the ordered place in ourselves where we can be open to a higher influence beneficial to our search for eternal values.

The language of Terra Pacis may sound quaint sometimes and the syntax is occasionally a little obscure. But, honouring the fact that this is the period of English literature that produced the Authorised Version and the Book of Common Prayer, the present writer has not sought to modernize the passages he has chosen. But we should not let the writing’s archaic cadences obscure the fact that H. N. speaks with spiritual authority and psychological accuracy about the human condition. Terra Pacis is a forgotten work, virtually unknown since the end of the 17th century. For that reason, as well as its

238 considerable literary merit,80 more than half of the original text is reproduced in the

Appendix.81

The principle according to which psychological or spiritual transformation can take place is self-knowledge, the study of one’s inner world, called by writers of the mystical tradition ‘watching over oneself’ or ‘guarding the heart’. The mystical seeker is a

‘traveler’ visiting and observing in himself all those aspects of thought, memory, imagination, feelings, inner attitudes, habits of mind and so on that make up the subconscious interior world that Niclaes describes as ‘wildernessed lands and ignorant people’.

We have gone through and passed beyond many and sundry manner of

wildernessed lands and ignorant people and so have considered the nature of

every land and people. Into all which we found the strange ignorant people very

unpeaceable and divided in many kinds of manners, dispositions and natures, as

also vexed with many unprofitable things to a great disquietness and much misery

unto them all.

The whilst we considered diligently hereon, so we found by experience that every

people had their disposition and nature, according to the dispositions and nature

of the land where they dwelt or where they were born.

80 Jones (op. cit.), amongst others, points to its affinity with The Pilgrim’s Progress, which it predates. 81 See pp. 389-421.

239

Niclaes, a master in the school of self-knowledge, is telling us of the subconscious world

(the people are ‘ignorant’ due to the absence of conscious awareness) where attitudes and thoughts are subjective. It is this lack of objectivity that causes everything to be

‘unpeaceable and divided’.

Here H. N. touches on a central theme of the perennial tradition: man’s multiplicity

‘divided’, as he says, ‘in many kinds of manners, dispositions and natures’. The situation for the interior state of unredeemed man is chaos, disorder and contradiction; the opposite of the condition of the heavenly city: ‘Jerusalem is a city built at unity within itself’.82

The outline of the spiritual predicament for humanity in all its grandeur and complexity becomes apparent. The solution to the difficulties of the situation is by the esoteric path, little known and difficult to find.

It is true that the whole earth is unmeasurable, great and large, and the lands and

people are many and divers, but the most part of the lands are beset by grievous

labor, and with much trouble the people are captivated with sundry unprofitable

vexations.

82 Psalm 122. v. 3.

240 But the children of the kingdom have a land that is void of all molestation and a

City which is very peaceable. Verily, without this one City of Peace or Land of

the Living there is no convenient place of Rest on the whole earth.

But this land of peace (which with his people is ful of joy and liveth in concord) is

a secret land and is severed from all other lands and people. It is also known to no

man but of his inhabitants. But the entrance into the same is very straight and

narrow, for that cause it is found of few, but there are many that run past it or

have not any right regard thereon. Therefore remaineth this good land of the

living unloved and unknown of the most part of the strange people.

The founder of the Family of Love, offering himself as a guide, warns of the difficulties that beset the spiritual traveler and tells him that all will be well, provided that he himself wishes to make the journey.

We will show forth the neerest ways and the needfullest means and guides that

lead thereunto, because that every traveller may keep the right High Way and

keep the more diligent watch until he comes through the gate.

Seeing now that this way to the Holy Land is perilous to pass through, for him

that is unexpert therein, so have we thought good to testifie and show forth

distinctly (and that altogether to the preservation of the traveller) the most part of

241 the wildernessed places of the strange people, and the perils of deceit, each one

according to his pernicious disposition and nature; to the end that everyone may

be of good cheer and may, without fear, pass through the way rightly and without

harm, and that no man should remain lost, except he would himself.

The main part of the text of Terra Pacis can be read in Appendix I; this writer has added commentary where it may be helpful in bring the reader’s attention to Niclaes’ ideas relating to the teaching of the Perennial Philosophy and Peter Bruegel’s paintings. Of particular importance are passages with the themes of the ‘bread of life’, i.e. spiritual nourishment, employing the images of ‘corn’ and ‘seed’.

Later, a description of arms, armour and instruments of war corresponds to imagery in

Bruegel’s Adoration of the Kings in the London National Gallery. Elsewhere there are lists of names indicating the behaviour of different types of people that could describe the characters in Bruegel’s ‘crowd scenes’ as seen in The Numbering at Bethlehem (1566) in

Brussels and The Road to Calvary (1564) in Vienna. In another passage the text gives names for a group of suffering people that could be Jesus’ mother and her entourage in

The Road to Calvary.

242 Chapter 8. Esotericism in Art

Hieronymus Bosch

Similarities of artistic style and intellectual ideas between Bosch and Bruegel

As a young man Bruegel was hailed as a „new Hieronymus Bosch‟ and we see that some of his early works have affinities both of style and of imagery, sometimes so close as to be indistinguishable, with the works of that master. It has been suggested that the reasons for this may have been commercial. We learn from Van Mander,1 writing a few years after Bruegel died that his first employment was at the House of the Four Winds, the business operated by the publisher, painter and printmaker, Peter Coecke van Aelst

(1502-1556).2 Coecke, a pupil of Bernard van Orley, was also an architect, sculptor, designer of tapestries and stained glass, a writer and a publisher. He worked in Antwerp and had travelled to Rome and to Constantinople; the drawings he made on his journey were later published by his widow Mayken Verhulst (later to become Bruegel‟s mother- in-law) as woodcut illustrations (The Manners and Customs of the Turks). He ran a large workshop and was regarded as one of Antwerp‟s leading painters. However, he is more important for his publishing activities. The translation (1539) of the architectural treatise

The Five Books of Architecture of the important Renaissance architect and writer

Sebastiano Serlio, played a large part in spreading Renaissance ideas in the Netherlands.3

Coecke, who was also a translator of Vitruvius, became the teacher not only of Bruegel but also Hieronymus Cock, who became an artist, engraver and publisher. By the 1550s,

1 Van Mander Schilderboek, op. cit.. 2 According to Delevoy this is confirmed by Coeck‟s biographer Fransiscus Sweertius (Robert L. Delevoy Bruegel, Skira, 1959) 3 Kim H. Veltman, http://www.mmi.unimaas.nl/people/Veltman/books/vol1/ch2.htm

243 Coecke's publishing house, At the Four Winds, played an important role in the spread of texts on perspective and the ideas of Renaissance humanism. The press was later taken over by the engraver Philip Galle where he rendered many of Bruegel‟s compositions as engravings.

Bosch‟s work was still extremely popular and a talent such as Bruegel‟s, readily able to produce drawings in the Bosch manner, would not be short of employment. But the

House of the Four Winds was also a rendezvous for people whose talents and interests surpassed commercial interests. Most historians agree that it was a meeting-place for intellectuals, artists, humanists, members of sects such as the Brethren of the Free Spirit, the Brotherhood of the Common Life and the House of Love.

What can be learned by comparing the work of Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450-1516) with that of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569)? Art historians have devoted considerably more energy to investigating the meaning of Bosch‟s work than that of Bruegel. Problems of interpretation are sometimes similar in respect of both artists but some writers have tended to see Bruegel as no more than an imitator or follower of Bosch. This may be true of Bruegel‟s earlier works but his later paintings are from a man who was, in every sense, a master, philosophically as well as artistically. In the case of the older painter such works as The Garden of Earthly Delights, The Temptation of St Anthony or The Haywain, both the thematic material and the detailed imagery are sufficiently provocative as to demand investigative response. Bosch appears to work from an idea, or a set of ideas whose intellectual sources are hard to identify. Historians have attempted variously to

244 place him in the context of the primitive religious and folk traditions of medieval Europe, or Rabelaisian Renaissance humanism, or among the sexually perverse and Anti-Christ worshippers of a mad heretical sect. Yet none of these theories convincingly provide insight into the mystery that attends Bosch. With Bruegel the mystery is less obviously a feature of his work, though many people sense it as can be seen from the number of fictional and fantastic books that have been inspired by his paintings.4 The present writer wants to show that if he possessed the same „secret‟ as Bosch, he hid it more deeply and with greater skill and subtlety. So much so that some art historians, who refer to the fame of Bosch after his death and the fact that he was widely admired in the first half of the

16th century, acknowledge Bruegel as no more than the best of the imitators but deny that he came near Bosch‟s achievement.5

Bosch’s connections to esoteric ideas

The first study of Bosch that relates to the ideas of this thesis is that of the Berlin art historian W. Fränger (or Fraenger), working in the 1930s and 40s.6 According to him

Bosch‟s symbols do not represent the world that we perceive with the physical senses but another to which the mystic could be initiated and which he „undoubtedly … deliberately and consciously revealed‟.7 Fränger, Harris and others demonstrate that Bosch‟s imagery can be shown to relate to ideas of Gnostic or Neo-Platonic character that would have been regarded in his time as heretical and which can be shown to be part of the Perennial

4 c.f. non-academic books by Michael Frayn, Headlong, Faber, 1999; Rudy Ruckers As Above So Below, New York, 2002; Claude-Henri Rocquet, Bruegel or the Workshop of Dreams, Chicago, 1991. 5 Lynda Harris, The Secret Heresy of Hieronymus Bosch, Floris Books, Edinburgh, 1985, p.44. 6 Wilhelm Fränger, The Millennium of Hieronymus Bosch, Faber and Faber, London 1952. 7 Fränger, p.2

245 Philosophy. Where Fränger detects alchemical allusions he sees the universality and the continuity of the Tradition flowing in Bosch‟s thought and imagery. He says, for example, with reference to alchemy, the study of which was at that time emerging from the shadows, „recently … investigation into alchemy … makes it possible to recognise it for what it really is: namely, a striving towards perfection, a doctrine that saw in the transmutation of matter a symbol of man‟s spirit and the mysteries of creation, death and eternal life‟.8

Fränger was among the first to consider Bosch‟s association with the Brethren of the Free

Spirit, and, in particular, with a group within that movement called the Adamites: „The

Homines Intelligentiae of Brussels belonged to a radical sect of the Free Spirit, the so- called Adamites. In calling themselves “men of the spirit” they gave the term intelligentiae the scholastic definition, which contrasted intelligentiae as a supra sensual power of perception, comprehending things still uncreated (intuitive vision), with ratio, the empirical mode of understanding (discursive thinking)‟.9 This terminology, pointing to a state of knowledge higher than reason corresponds to a level of mystical understanding at the heart of the perennial tradition which, in the words of Frithjof

Schuon, „is called, anagogical, that is, beyond sense‟.10 The Adamites were a 13th-

8 Fränger, p.7, the italics are mine 9 Fränger, p. 17 10 c.f., for example, „Keys to the Bible‟, Frithjof Schuon in J. Needleman ed., The Sword of Gnosis, Baltimore, 1974, p. 355

246 century revival in Europe of a 3rd-century sect described by the heresy hunter in the early

Christian period, Epiphanius of Salamis.11

Fränger cites Herbert Grundmann12 who compares the spirituality of the Free Spirit with that of Eckhart who, like them, sought the „earthly possibility of the ‘homo perfectus’, a concept that …„to the very end remains the basis of Eckhart‟s moral teaching‟.13 The indications are that the term esoteric is applicable to the Adamites: „We attribute the sect‟s ill-fame to malicious slander, due to the fact that the Adamite mysteries were kept strictly secret. All such secrecy brings suspicion in its wake‟.14

Meditation

Meditation was the principal means for ascent in the spiritual path and a central activity for the Adamites. It leads to the innermost core of the self, the central and highest faculty for gnosis that could be symbolically expressed by the image of the eye: „The tiny reflected image in the eye is regarded as the individual‟s „self‟, his soul, which is a microcosm inter-radiating with the sun, the world-eye of the macrocosm.‟

11 Frank Williams, Translator, "The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salami", (4th century), Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies, Vol. 35. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994. 12 Herbert Grundmann: Studien űber Joachim von Floris, Zur Biographie Joachims von Fiore und Rainers von Ponza. In: Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 16, 1960, S. 437-546. 13 Fränger, p. 22 14 Fränger, p. 23

247 A similar idea is found in Indian belief regarding the sun and in the pupil of the eye:

„Purusha in the mirror – on him I meditate‟15 Fränger points out that the idea is found in

Plotinus and in Goethe‟s „sunniness of the eye‟. He tells us that „medieval Platonism practiced this pupillary concentration in its “speculation” and that it was an instruction for meditation: „by means of [such] concentration … the individual in meditation endeavoured to move out of the “ego self” to the “world-self” or the sun-like “God-self”‟.

This shows the central significance that a yoga-like discipline of systematic meditation had for the sect „whose assemblies apparently were based on the principle of communal exercises in concentration and the esoteric experiences resulting from such exercises‟.

Further, according to Fränger, it is evident that „Bosch, too, was familiar with this discipline and an experienced traveler on the unusual paths of visionary illumination‟.16

Such discussion of esoteric themes, with quotations from the Upanishads, Erigena, the

Gnostics and Eckhart, is reminiscent of the writings of Ananda Coomaraswamy; so much so that one can suppose Fränger to have been in touch with the work of that writer if not actually associated with the Philosophia Perennis movement with which he was contemporary. The comments cited above on the role of meditation in relation to mysticism and to art are central for Fränger to the understanding of Bosch, as they are to the ideas put forward on these pages and thus to Bruegel. The passage quoted below reinforces a theme already emphasized in these pages.

15 Khandogya Upanishad 1, 6-7: 16 In this case the picture referred to is Bosch‟s Garden of Earthly Delights, today in the Prado Museum.

248 Fränger, in line with tradition, explains that „the first step in all exercises in concentration is to exclude completely the external world and all activities of the will, in order to reach a mental state that is at first completely free of thoughts, words and ideas, a mere

“staring” – as this perfectly self-forgetting condition of abandonment is called in the language of medieval mysticism‟.17 A further stage consists of summoning an image into the meditative vision and, remaining in the contemplative state, letting the emptiness of the initial state of consciousness be permeated with a new energy.18 Fränger continues

„for now the image contemplated unfolds of its own accord, fanning out into a dream-like wealth of association; and the field that up to now was empty of intellectual and sensual perception suddenly becomes charged with the energy of a magnetic field, pulling together as though by a series of shocks the associations belonging to the guiding image.‟

He decribes how, „without any active participation on the part of the individual in meditation, the image before him discloses its own meaning. Here Fränger uses the word

Innewerden that his translator renders as „comprehension‟, though it more accurately means „inner becoming‟. In any case it is entirely different from Begreifen, that is, ordinary understanding. At this stage the contemplative condition, or what Buddhists call

„access concentration‟ is reached, in which „clear perception‟ of truth appears to the practitioner. According to the same author, Suso describes this state when says that „the setting of the senses is the rising of truth‟ and „if any man cannot grasp the matter, let him be idle‟ (i.e. he has to remain perfectly still) „and the matter will grasp him.‟19

17 Here Fränger refers to Jan van Ruysbroek 18 Similar methods are used in Tibetan Buddhist „Dzogchen‟ meditation; see below p. 245. 19 Fränger, p. 65

249 Fränger, referring to Bosch‟s Garden of Earthly Delights in Madrid, says that

„The Brethren who performed their devotions before this panel intended as an aid

to meditation, detached themselves from the ordinary world by gazing at the focus

of concentration and so were drawn into the spell of a spiritual world that opened,

step by step, in ever deeper significance as they returned to it in complete

concentration again and again. In this way the beholders in fact became co-

creators and active interpreters of the symbols that stood before their eyes in

solemn, mysterious and enigmatic silence.‟20

The same author is explicit on the subject of the mysteries of that „other world‟ that

Bosch „deliberately and consciously‟ set out to reveal:

„to put it in Gnostic terms, we are drawn out of the Pleroma, that is, the world of

being that is permeated with divine energy, and down into the Kenoma that is

devoid of substance; and so we are confronted with an abyss of nothingness. It is

to this void [that our attention is directed]. [This] conforms to the fundamental

condition insisted on by all mystics as essential to contemplative illumination, the

“shedding of all concepts, images and forms” or the casting off of all that is, not

only what exists outside oneself, but one‟s own being also, as Meister Eckhart

expresses it. Now we have got the exact terms to describe the central point. It is a

20 Fränger, p. 66

250 focus of concentration such as has always been used in the practice of

meditation‟.21

Bosch’s connection to the teachings of Divine Love

The study of Bosch‟s paintings and the spirituality of the Free Spirit movement opens onto another universal central theme, namely that of love. The Brethren‟s „way to the heights of sinless perfection‟ can be understood in terms of Platonic love. This must be qualified in terms of the original meaning of what in the Symposium is called the „greater and more hidden‟ mysteries. We read there of „ascending under the influence of true love‟ by stages of perfection and beauty until the aspirant will see with the „eye of the mind … the true beauty – the divine beauty … not images of beauty but realities‟ and finally to „become the friend of God and be immortal‟.22 „What mattered to the disciples of the Free Spirit … was precisely love itself, and what is more, love in its highest ideal form as a sacrament, and not as a convenient social institution‟.23

We can trace several different sources for the theological system of the Adamites; among them the identification of Adam with Christ, which derives from the Jewish-Christian

21 Fränger, p. 63, my italics 22 Plato, Symposium, Jowett Trsl. 209e-212c 23 Fränger, p. 22

251 Ebionites, the eschatological prophecies of Giacomo di Fiore24, and finally Origen‟s doctrine of the return of all things. But there is no doubt that Neoplatonic philosophy, with its long tradition in Europe, also played a part. „The original contribution of the Free

Spirit movement was the unparalleled daring with which it applied theories to reality and carried out the dangerous experiment of living a philosophy in precisely the most exposed area of existence, namely that of love. The three different doctrines could be welded only in the form of spiritual eroticism, dominated by the image of Adam and Eve and their innocent love‟.25

Fränger agrees that these ideas were shared by David Joris (1505-1556), who saw himself as Adam-Christ, and the man who he identifies as „the most likely candidate to be

Bruegel‟s spiritual father‟, Hendrick Niclaes (1502-1581) who founded the huis de Liefde in Amsterdam, „that is to say, a “house of love”, as a temple for quietistic contemplation in which the Familia Caritatis that was under his guidance assembled for mystical celebrations. According to his doctrine, Moses was the representation of the Kingdom of the Father. As a herald of hope Moses had only entered the forecourts of the Temple, and although Christ as the salvation-bearer of faith had penetrated into the inner Temple, it was reserved for himself, Heinrich Niclaes, as the embodiment of love, to enter the Holy of Holies and … inaugurate the kingdom of the Holy Ghost‟.26

24 Or Joachim of Floris (1135-1202) according to Bernard McGinn „the most important apocalyptic thinker of the whole medieval period, and maybe after the prophet John, the most important apocalyptic thinker in the history of Christianity‟.www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/explanation/joachim.html 25 Fränger, p. 23 26 Fränger, p. 42

252

Bosch and Bruegel’s relationship to the church

The spiritual aims of the various schools of the Free Spirit movement and those associated with them such as Joris, Niclaes and others, far surpassed the narrow, confined thinking imposed by the church. The esoteric nature of the Perennial Philosophy and the traditions of its oral transmission render much of its doctrine obscure or invisible to the conventional researcher. And where its teachings are given form in the world they tend to be veiled behind symbols and allegory. The doctrine of the three ages of the world was one such teaching that passed into Free Spirit circles from the 12th-century Italian mystic, theologian, and philosopher of history, Giacomo di Fiore, a man both acclaimed as a prophet and denounced as a heretic.27 According to his theory of universal evolution the world had began with the Kingdom of the Father, revealed in the Old Testament. Its place was taken by the Kingdom of the Son, which was fulfilled by the New Testament and continued down to the time of Saint Benedict; in the year 1260 it reached its fullness of perfection and dissolved into the Kingdom of the Holy Ghost. This last kingdom was to be one of peace and pure love, of hermit-like contemplation in which the „dead letter of the two testaments‟ would be quickened into a purely spiritual understanding of the evangelium aeternum.28 When attempts to realize Giacomo di Fiore‟s doctrine of the three kingdoms were made by the Spirituals of the Franciscan Order, and in the lay world by the brotherhoods of the Beghards and sisterhoods of the Beguines, and above all by the extreme disciples of the Free Spirit „the effect … was to drive a breach into the ecclesiastical system. For if man in his last kingdom were granted spiritual perfection, a

27 http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article?tocId=9368578 28 Fränger, p. 39

253 direct vision of God, and an ambiguous liberty, then the traditional sacraments of the church would be superfluous‟.29

Fig. a, The Harvesters, detail with church

Fig. b, Bridal Procession, detail with church.

29 Fränger, p. 41

254 Such observations may be part of the explanation as to why, in Bruegel‟s paintings, the status of the church is not emphasised. There are several instances in his work, most notably the Harvest (New York, fig. a) and the Bridal Procession (Brussels, fig. b) where the church is there in the middle or far distance but inaccessible, usually because of a ditch or dense foliage. We have seen in The Numbering at Bethlehem (p. 12) that the church is far away and how, in the composition, its situation corresponds to the castle in ruins. It is possible to interpret the presence of the church as irrelevant to the psychological and philosophical themes of the painting and therefore practically useless.

This may be an example of Bruegel‟s caution – compared to Bosch – in exposing esoteric truths. It is likely that he, like Bosch, understood that „the Free Spirit rejected all authority of the church. Giacomo‟s three principles: perfectio, contemplatio and libertas, which Herbert Grundmann has brilliantly called „not anti-Catholic so much as trans-

Catholic‟, inevitably brought about … disregard for the church‟s authority‟.30

If Bosch and, in his own day, Bruegel were cast in the role of prophets, or at least as witnesses, of the unknown teaching, as painters they could communicate different strands of thought at different levels of meaning. These could range from humor, irony and satire behind which are philosophical, psychological and, beyond them, mystical ideas.

According to Fränger the satirical elements in Bosch‟s work derive from a „bitterly malicious satire on the church‟. But both artists used satire as a corrective against

„fanatical excesses of mysterious sectarian cults‟.31 Following the revolutionary strand in

Bosch‟s work back to its origin we will find that „his metaphorical images are a system of

30 Fränger, p. 42 31 Fränger, p. 3

255 hieroglyphs – half generally acceptable, half a riddling game of hide-and-seek – that we can now recognise as a secret revelation‟.32 „Bruegel, as his whole cycle of Virtues and

Vices shows in a thoroughly realistic manner and with a vivid awareness of his own time, was attacking contemporary pagan cults. [Such movements] had become a cancerous threat to the movement‟s morally pure endeavour‟.33

32 Fränger, p.6 33 Fränger, p. 99

256 Connection between meditation and art in Asia

The idea of homo perfectus and the methods of contemplation are seen as central to the traditions of European medieval religious art and sacred architecture as, for example,

Titus Burckhardt‟s work on Chartres shows.34 The present writer‟s work on icons echoes this theme.35 The correlation between art and contemplation can be readily observed in the field of Asian sacred art. Ian Baker‟s recently published book on a unique group of

Tibetan monastic paintings is helpful in the clarity with which images and meditation are shown to be reflections of each other.36 The murals, Baker writes: „introduce an extraordinary series of paintings on the walls of the Lukhang, the Dalai Lama‟s private meditation chamber in Tibet. The spiritual practices illustrated in these murals belong to the highest level of Buddhist Tantra and, in particular, to Dzogchen, the teachings of the

“Great Perfection”… [they] convey a timeless vision of one of the world‟s most profound systems of spiritual illumination‟.37 And further on he writes: „The paintings on the

Lukhang‟s western wall illustrate a range of contemplation techniques unique to a

Tibetan system of meditation called Dzogchen, the Great Perfection. Unlike Tantric

Yogas based on inner transformation, the methods of Dzogchen directly reveal the enlightened essence that underlies all experience and perception‟.38 Baker quotes a well- known insight of William James: „our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely

34 Titus Burckhardt, Chartres, Golgonooza, 1995 35 R. Temple, Icons and the Mystical Origins of Christianity, Luzac, Oxford, 2000. 36 Ian Baker, The Dalai Lama’s Secret Temple, Thames and Hudson, 2000. 37 Baker, p. 9 38 Baker, p. 113

257 different‟39 and goes on to say that „the Lukhang murals are windows onto this expanded world of consciousness which transcend culture, time and space‟. It is in the light of this universality that Baker suggests that „the gestures and subtler emotions in the faces of the

Rishis and Mahasiddhas bear comparison with the works of Bosch and Bruegel.‟40 He does not develop this idea but the implications for this thesis are significant. (See fig. 1.)

Fig. 1, Lukhang, 17th century mural

39 Baker p. 40; he is citing William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, New York and London, 1902 and 1982. p. 388 40 Baker, p.39. (I have corrected his spelling from Brueghel)

258 The inference is that Bosch and Bruegel, both associated with schools of esotericism or mysticism, knew about and practiced forms of meditation capable of leading to that higher level of consciousness that permits a true vision of man‟s place in the cosmic scheme. These schools were regarded as heretical by the authorities and it was sensible to be circumspect about participation in the practice. But, as discussed above, there is also a deeper and more important reason for the complete silence that surrounds these mysteries.

Whatever is sacred,

Whatever is to remain sacred,

Must be clothed in a mystery.41

Mallarmé is stating, or rather re-stating, the ancient principle of the necessity for guarding certain knowledge from profane eyes.

The Teachings of the Brethren of the Free Spirit: a Survival of Catharism.

Lynda Harris sees the Brethren of the Free Spirit as an anomalous survival of

Catharism.42 It has been shown how she traces the history of that movement and presents the case for its Gnostic origins via the Bogomils in Bulgaria in the Middle Ages,43 thereby suggesting an unbroken chain for the transmission of mystical ideas and esoteric

41 Stephan Mallarmé, Art for All, 1862. Quoted by Baker, op. cit. 42 Lynda Harris, The Secret Heresy of Hieronymus Bosch, Floris Books, Edinburgh, 1995, 2002. 43 See above p. 133.

259 teachings, from the Hellenistic Mystery Religions to Bosch and the Brethren of the Free

Spirit; an idea that can be extended to their immediate successors, i.e. Bruegel and the

House of Love. Harris writes:

Catharism is … indisputably … a Gnostic religion. The Gnostic systems … see

the material world as a world of darkness and death, governed and even created

by, its own deity. The spiritual world, in contrast, is seen as a totally separate

realm of light and life, ruled by a separate god. Birth into the physical world is

viewed by the Gnostics as a trap from which it is very difficult to escape. The

soul, fallen into the world of matter and caught in the wheel of repeated births and

deaths, is seen as “drunk” “asleep” or even “dead.” It is in a state of drugged

oblivion and has forgotten its origins in the world of spirit. But its entrapment

need not be permanent, for a Saviour is sent out from the realm of light to rescue

it. Walker says “Gnosticism is born at the crossroads of many ancient cultures.” 44

Myths, symbols, and ideas from all the main religions of the world, all the way

from Rome through to India contributed … The most important influences

include certain ideas and myths from Egypt, dualistic doctrines from the

Babylonian religion of Zoroaster, philosophical theories developed in the Greek

world, and, above all, concepts from Judaism and Christianity.45

44 Walker, B., 1983, Gnosticism. Its History and Influence, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. 45 Harris, p. 24

260 Ortelius’ Eulogy and the analysis of H. Stein-Schneider

The one extant contemporary document giving a hint at the depth of Bruegel‟s thought is provided by Abraham Ortelius who left this statement, recorded in his Album Amicorum not long after the artist‟s death. It is typically translated as follows:

Peter Bruegel was the most perfect of his century; this could be denied only by

the ignorant, by a rival, or by someone knowing nothing of his art. He was taken

from us while still in his full manhood. I hardly know whether to incriminate

Death, which perhaps thought him old enough, considering the matchless talent it

had observed in him; or whether Nature feared to see herself distained, since he

had imitated her with so much art and talent.

Eupompos, the painter, on being asked whom of his predecessors he had chosen

as master, replied by pointing to a crowd of men: it is nature herself that we must

imitate, not an artist. This observation well applies to our friend Bruegel, so that I

prefer to call him, not the painter‟s painter, but the painter‟s nature, and I mean by

this that he deserves to be imitated by all. Our Bruegel has painted – as Pliny says

of Apelles – many things that cannot be painted. In all his works there is always

more thought than paint. Eunapius makes the same claim for Timanthus in

Jamblicus. Painters who paint graceful things in the bloom of life and go out of

their way to add to the painting an elegance which they derive from themselves,

261 denature the whole image represented, and in departing from the chosen model

likewise fail to achieve true beauty. Our Bruegel never committed this error.46

The heresiologist and writer on Neo-Catharism, H. Stein-Schneider, offers the commentary that:

Ortelius instructs us, in a surprising passage, that the „drolleries‟ of his friend

Brueghel (sic) and the naturalistic images that he paints have a completely hidden

meaning. All his pictures, his friend [Ortelius] tells us, had a secret, hermetic

meaning beyond that of the represented image. Pieter Brueghel hid, behind his

innocent images, an arcane dimension, with the implications of which Ortelius,

we understand, was cognizant. Brueghel certainly was, as Ortelius is telling us, a

painter capable of imitating nature as no other [artist] of his time. But beyond

Brueghel‟s natural [power of] imitation, he tells us, lies the representation of an

entirely different dimension of which Ortelius gives us a vague indication by

means of a typically Renaissance riddle. Literary allusions abound in this text that

is full of remarkable images. Everything in this text is unusual, at the antipodean

opposite to [the usual idea of] „Peter the Droll or „Peter the Realist‟ with which

we are so familiar.47

The original Latin of the latter part of Ortelius‟ text is as follows

46 Bob Claessens, Jeanne Rousseau, Bruegel, New York, 1984, p. 187. 47 H. Stein-Schneider, „Les Familistes Une secte néo-cathare du 16e siècle et leur peintre Pieter Brueghel Ancien‟ in Cahier d’Etudes Cathares, XXXVI, Printemps 1985, 11e Serie No. 105, p. 8.

262 Multa pinxit, hic Brugelius, quae pingi non possunt, quod Plinus de Apelle.

In omnibus omnis operibus intelligitur plus semper quam pingitur. Idem de

Timanthe Eunapius in Iamblicho. Pingunt voluntque picture lenocinium quoddam

et gratiam de suo adjicere, Totam depravant representatum effigiem et ab

examplari proposito partier et a vera forma aberrant.

Following Stein-Schneider, we can arrive at the following:

He painted many things, this Brueghel, that usually cannot be expressed by

painting, as Pliny says of Apelles. In every one of his pictures we have to search

for a meaning beyond that which appears on the surface. (Jamblichus makes the

same claim for Timanthe as does Eunapius.) Painters who add to their work an

element of enticement or cheap allurement completely change the meaning of

everything that is represented and they put a distance between the object they

depict and its truth.

Apelles is generally regarded as the greatest painter of antiquity and, though none of his works survive, he was idealized by Renaissance humanists. He lived from the time of

Philip of Macedon till after the death of Alexander. He combined Dorian thoroughness with Ionic grace. Attracted to the court of Philip, he painted him and the young

Alexander with such success that he became the recognized court painter of Macedon .

His picture of Alexander, holding a thunderbolt, was likened to the statue of Alexander with the spear of the sculptor Lysippus. Other works of Apelles had a great reputation in

263 antiquity, among them the noted painting representing Aphrodite rising out of the sea.

This, and other themes, were recreated by Botticelli and other Italian artists of the

Renaissance.48 The painter Timanthus (4th century BC) was another admired figure in the

Renaissance; for example by Alberti who, following Pliny, ascribed a famous fresco in

Pompeii, dating from the 1st century AD and depicting the Sacrifice of Iphigenia, as a copy of a lost work by that artist.49

The references to Eunapius and especially to Iamblichus, whose importance has already been mentioned, are significant here. These men, renowned in the late-antique and early

Christian period, were of great interest to Renaissance humanists and we see that Ortelius makes a connection between Bruegel and the Neoplatonist schools of the 4th century.

Iamblichus has already appeared in the pages of this thesis.50 Eunapius, a Greek sophist and historian, was born at Sardis, A.D. 347 and, while still a youth, went to Athens.

Initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, he was admitted into the college of the

Eumolpidae (the sacred priestly families) and became a hierophant. There is evidence that he was still living in the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II (408-450).

Eunapius was the author of the Lives of the Sophists, which deals chiefly with the contemporaries of the author.51

Stein-Schneider points out:

48 Adapted from an article by P. G. in http://15.1911encyclopedia.org/A/AP/APELLES.htm. 49 See http://www.philipresheph.com/a424/gallery/course/gtod/ch6.htm 50 Iamblichus is „one of the key figures in the transmission of perennial philosophical ideas‟. Part I. p.109. 51 See http://44.1911encyclopedia.org/E/EU/EUNAPIUS.htm

264 that the last lines of Ortelius‟ texts are a variation on Iamblichus‟ citation. The

Sophist has in effect declared that the addition of a personal element on the part of

the painter transforms the portrait from an objective truth to a subjective one.

Here, Ortelius applies Iamblichus‟ idea to Bruegel‟s method which [implicitly]

parallels that of the philosopher. Ortelius tells us that this transformation is

accomplished by two means: one is by the appending an element of „enticement

or cheap allurement‟52 – the Latin word lenocinium being in effect the trickery by

which a harlot attracts her clients. The second means of transformation is gratia,

grace or embellishment, a freely-given indication and, thus, an element that does

not belong to the represented object and so a kind of symbol. Such a sign can be

snow covering the ground which indicates cold [suggesting that] frost means

infertility. Or it can be a bird, either caged or free, by which we understand the

possible starting-point of the soul‟s journey. Bruegel, Ortelius tells us, was prone

to employ signs of this kind in order to transform totally the primary meaning (the

vera forma) of his picture and thus to present an entirely new message and so

different [in meaning] as to have nothing to do with the objective reality of what

was first represented.

Stein-Schneider goes on to assert that Bruegel‟s entire work (omnibus omnis operibus) cannot support an interpretation based on his realism or any external appearances; that the external aspects are no more than veils hiding the truth. „Bruegel could, according to

52 Stein-Schneider has „sexual provocation‟ which this author finds too distracting in already obtuse passage.

265 Ortelius, paint something and, at the same time, signify the opposite of what it seemed to be saying‟.53

The same author insists that Ortelius‟ text „clearly‟ tells us of a secret and hidden dimension in Bruegel‟s work inaccessible to those who lack the key to their proper understanding. This leads to the famous drawing, preserved in the Albertina in Vienna, known as The Painter and the Art Lover where the artist, perhaps Bruegel himself, with a poised brush in his hand and a determined expression, gazes with intensity and vision into the unknown (see figure 1).

Fig. 1

Behind him stands the client, an obviously weak character, clutching his wallet and looking with hopeless incomprehension at the picture. Late medieval art employed glasses as a symbol of the inability to see. We shall come across a similar figure in the

National Gallery‟s Adoration of the Kings where spectacles indicate the person‟s inability

53 Cahier d’Etudes Cathares, p. 11

266 to understand what is before him (see fig. 2). „It is this “veil” before the non-initiated spectator‟s eyes that Brueghel demonstrates in the drawing that some see as a self- portrait‟.54

Fig. 2, detail, Adoration of the Kings.

Stein-Schneider offers the following challenge:

The text of Ortelius and Bruegel‟s self-portrait seem then to be compelling

indication that all the pictures of our painter contain secret messages,

comprehensible only to initiates. The panel-paintings of our Brueghel would be

‘peintures à clef’. But what would then be the key to these paintings that his

friend Ortelius described as „secret’ (Appelles) „veiled’ (Timanthus) and

‘expressing by their message the opposite of what is seen’ (Iamblichus)?

With these questions in mind we are now in a position to continue looking at Bruegel‟s paintings in the light of the ideas of the Perennial Philosophy.

54 Idem.

267 Part II The Paintings Chapter 9. The Human Condition: Spiritual Darkness

Adoration of the Kings

Fig. 1

Peter Bruegel the Elder, (1525-30 –1569). The Adoration of the Kings, 1564. Panel:

112 x 84 cm. The National Gallery, London (fig. 1)

268 The event of the adoration of the Kings (also known as adoration of the Magi) is recounted in the Gospel of St. Matthew (2:1-12). We read that Magi (Wise Men) from the

Orient came to Jerusalem, asking, 'Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We observed the rising of his star, and we have come to pay him homage.' (Mat. 2:2-3). King Herod and ‘all Jerusalem’ were greatly perturbed on hearing this; he asked the Magi to bring him their report after they found the child, so that he too could go and worship him.

Guided by the star, the Magi discovered the infant in a house at Bethlehem, worshipped him and presented him with their gifts. A dream warned the Magi not to return to Herod’s court and they set off instead for their own country by another route.

Apocryphal gospels have enriched and embellished Matthew's story. In the 2nd and

3rd centuries A.D. the Wise Men were also referred to as kings. In, approximately, the 9th century they were given names: Caspar, (or Jaspar), usually the oldest, Balthazar, and

Melchior, usually the youngest. Though Matthew did not reveal the number of the Magi, they are traditionally thought to be three because of the number of symbolic gifts they presented to Christ: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Later the three Magi (or kings) came to personify the three parts of the known world: Europe, Asia, and Africa.1

This theme was widely known and depicted in art throughout the Middle Ages and the

Renaissance both in Italy and in the Low Countries. It was employed by Hans Memling for example (fig. 2), Perugino (fig. 3) or Dürer (fig. 4) and can be seen in western galleries where Mary, aristocratic, beautiful and exquisitely dressed in rich costume

(often depicted in lapis lazuli), introducing the Christ child to the royally and

1 http://www.abcgallery.com/religion/adorationmagi.html

269 extravagantly attired kings. The setting, in a tranquil landscape in the soft light of a warm, early summer morning, is idealized and poetic.

Fig. 2. Memling

Fig. 3. Perugino

270 Fig. 4. Dürer

At the first glance Bruegel’s painting, which includes the main elements of the traditional composition, seems to place us on familiar ground. But we soon see that many details are oddly contradictory. The idealized poetry and tranquility are absent, the faces and the body language of the figures are depicted with an unconventionally harsh realism that seems rather shocking, until we remember that Bruegel is famous for his grim and satirical views of life. But, even so, why should Bruegel want to satirize this traditional holy event?

To try and find an answer this question we will return to the theme that Bruegel suggests in his image of the Numbering at Bethlehem: Man’s inability to acknowledge the presence of the divine. The Adoration, according to the conventional chronology established by tradition, takes place on the morning following the journey of Joseph and

271 Mary to Bethlehem and we may expect Bruegel to pursue the same esoteric theme that underlies his interpretation of the Numbering at Bethlehem.

It is interesting that in the three pictures associated with the birth of Christ, The

Numbering at Bethlehem, The Adoration of the Kings, and The Massacre of the

Innocents, as with his other paintings based on religious themes, Bruegel chooses scripturally minor or secondary events, rather than the more usual and conventional set- piece compositions – less explored themes where the Gospel is silent, or at best laconic, and around which patristic commentary and pious tradition have established meanings not obviously discernable in the primary text.

This is especially so in the story of the Three Kings which is based on the Gospel of St

Matthew but is not mentioned in Mark, Luke or John. ‘Now when Jesus was born in

Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem2 . . . And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him . . .’ 3. The gospel provides no further information and all other details of the story come from sources external to the Bible.

Bruegel does not follow the scriptural text. The figures are not the Persian Magi of the earliest mosaic depictions of the 6th century but they are closer to the conventions of his

2 Mathew 2:1 3 Idem, 2:11

272 day. Bruegel uses this imagery as a platform from which to advance his own searing vision of actuality.

The Child, representing naked truth, does not welcome the two kings who kneel before him but recoils from them in horror (fig. 5)

Fig. 5

273

They represent the highest values of the worldly realm: power and riches, and Bruegel, at least in the case of the two figures on the left, suggests the barbarous and brutal means by which these have been achieved. Their looks express their insincerity; if they seem to perform an act of generosity and humility it is for the sake of appearances; the real motive is expediency.

Fig. 6

274

The figure of Melchior in the foreground does not kneel: he grovels (fig. 6). His magnificent clothing may tell us what he is externally, but inwardly he is old and shriveled; he believes in nothing. His companion Caspar regards him with jealousy and suspicion;4 his ravaged face suggests the unspeakable cruelties and corruption that support his kingship.

Fig. 7 Fig. 8 Fig. 9

There could be no greater contrast than that between the nakedness, innocence and purity of the child and the rottenness and malignity of the representatives of the world that confront him (figs. 7, 8, 9).

4 For the identity of the three Kings or Magi see Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Wise_Men.

275 According to the Protevangelium5 the Nativity of Christ takes place in a cave in the desert. An elaborate cosmological symbolism is implied here part of whose meaning is that Christ’s incarnation takes place at the lowest level of existence;6 the level that

Neoplatonism calls that of ‘Non-being’7. Ontologically, this imagery can be understood as referring to spiritual states (and non-states) in Man. Where Byzantine iconography (as in the icon illustrated below, fig. 10) chooses a topographical symbolism – cave, desert, mountain – Bruegel shows us the same idea expressed as actual human behaviour.

Fig. 10

5 The second century apocryphal document recounting the sacred events in the life of the Virgin Mary and the chief iconographic source for depicting the events of her life throughout the middle ages; ed., M. R. James, Oxford 1924 6 see R. Temple Icons and the Mystical Origins of Christianity, New Edition, Luzac Oriental, 2001, p. 20 7 See McKenna, ‘Explanatory Matter’, p. xxxi in Plotinus the Enneads, London: Faber, 1956

276

The whole scene is set in a rough and rather claustrophobic barnyard into which little light enters. Where there is a small amount of sky it is barred with weapons of war: ferocious-looking pikes, lances, battle-axes, halberds and other instruments of bloodshed and cruelty.

Fig. 11

A disorderly, slack-jawed and probably drunken crowd of soldiers gaze curiously and uncomprehendingly at Christ and Mary. Any suggestion that what they witness could have interest or significance for them would be met with derision (fig. 11).

277 Fig. 12

The goggle-eyed country boy in his ill-fitting armour is a comic figure, but in a few days he and his comrades will be butchering small babies (fig. 12).

The types Bruegel has chosen to represent the world here are low-life and ordinary. It is exactly how people are. Bruegel renders the situation without judgment or criticism.

Withholding his personal opinion he shows us the truth, the actuality of Man’s lack of true being, even at the moment when the One Who Is is revealed before him.8

Fig. 13

8 An early Christian tradition, preserved in the Russian and Greek icons, ascribes this title to Christ. The ‘Ο ΏΝ’ inscribed in the nimbus around his head is variously translated as ‘I AM THAT I AM’, ‘The Being’, ‘He Who Is’ and etc. The icon reproduced above (fig. 10), for example, has it around the diminutive head of the Child in the cave; however, it is not possible to read it clearly in the reproduction.

278

Over on the right the theme of ignorance and blindness is continued in the faces of the two peasants behind the Moorish king. For artists in the 16th century, to wear glasses was a visual cypher for the inability to see. And, next to these two, lies and intrigue: the urgent pressure of the pasty-faced boy’s fingers on Joseph’s shoulder and the latter’s not so unwillingly bent ear are just the sort of incident one might see in any crowded

Saturday night bar-room where a tidbit of indecent gossip about someone’s wife is being traded (fig. 13). Here Bruegel echoes an early medieval Byzantine tradition whereby the

Devil, disguised as a shepherd, tempts Joseph concerning the propriety of his wife’s birth giving (see below, fig. 14, detail of fig. 10).

Fig 14, detail of fig. 10

279 While a common theme in icons, where indeed it is traditional, it is rare in western art [I have not come across another example] and suggests, in Bruegel, an unusually high degree of knowledge of theology and iconography outside the western canons of art.

Fig. 15

The cloaked and veiled figure of Mary is in contrast to the sinister kings before her and the unpleasant aspects of humanity around her. The detail (fig. 15) shows her with a look that is unusual in western painting though it is recognisable enough to anyone familiar with the traditions of sacred oriental art, especially those which express the contemplative

280 state. Her gesture indicates what she has brought to the world, but her face expresses little emotion; she has no reaction to anything taking place outside her. Her state is concentrated inward; she is serene: completely within herself. Any student of meditation will recognise that Mary’s state is one of steadily focused inward attention – a state that needs long preparation and long practice. Students of Buddhist culture and especially students of meditation practice will understand the implications of these remarks. Similar practices are central to the Islamic mystical tradition and yogic practices within Hinduism follow the same principles.9 Part I of this thesis discusses how similar contemplative methods were practiced in Europe throughout the Middle Ages and in the 15th and 16th centuries both within the established church as well as within the so-called heretical circles. Since the Enlightenment and the predominance of science, the west has, in the last two or three hundred years, more or less lost this feature that, according to the perennialist school of thought, should be at the foundation of any civilisation.

This painting, together with The Numbering at Bethlehem and The Massacre of the

Innocents, represents the first stage of the spiritual path which is the acknowledgement of spiritual darkness. This important stage has to be not theoretical but knowledge acquired in the experience of life.

9 Michaela M. Özelsel, Forty Days: the Diary of a Traditional Solitary Sufi Retreat. Vermont, 1996.

281 The Massacre of the Innocents

Fig. 1. (Version 1) Peter Bruegel the Elder, (1525-30 - 1569) The Massacre of the Innocents, 1565-7. Oil on wood 109.2 x 158.1 cm. Version 1 (cleaned in 1981-2 and today regarded by the majority of scholars as ‘original’ but not in good condition): Royal Collection, Hampton Court

Palace (fig. 1). Version 2 (less securely associated with Bruegel’s hand, though probably from his workshop): Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (fig. 2). 1

1 Unless stated otherwise, in this essay the pictorial references are to Version 1

282

Fig. 2 (Version 2)

‘A voice is heard in Ramah, Lamentation and bitter weeping,

Rachel is weeping for her children: She refuses to be comforted for her children,

Because they are not. ‘2

‘Then Herod … killed all the male children in Bethlehem’.3

At the narrative level the story is told rather graphically, depicting perhaps just such a scene of rape and pillage as remote and oppressed peasant villages experienced all too frequently in the grave political and religious unrest of 16th-century Flanders.

2 Jer 31:15 3 Mat 2:17

283 Fig. 3

What we see is a body of twenty-four ‘ironclad’ mounted cavalrymen, with a sinister black-clad figure at their head. They form a tightly knit group at the centre of the picture

(fig. 3). Their faces are dark and indistinct and we cannot read their expression. Seven have been detailed off to deal directly with events in the village;

Fig. 4

one has dismounted and relieves himself against the wall of a nearby house (fig. 4),

284 Fig. 5 two others confer with red-coated sergeants (fig. 5),

Fig. 6

another supervises a violent break-in (fig. 6)

285 Fig. 7

and yet another guards the bridge in the background with a soldier (fig. 7).

Fig. 8

286 Another two have dismounted and, together with a group of foot soldiers, are spearing children, under the eye of the bearded commander (fig. 8). In the background we see the horses of the knights who have dismounted tethered to trees.

Fig. 9

Three sergeants in brilliant scarlet jackets and a trumpeter in yellow and green livery, all of whom seem to be better mounted than the cavalry, occupy the left foreground (fig. 9).

287 Fig. 10

Another sergeant accompanies a herald on a dappled grey who shrugs off the pleas of the villagers (fig.10). The soldiers doing the actual dirty work seem to be irregulars; oddly clad riffraff types.

Fig. 11

288 Two barrels, staved-in and their contents spilt, lie abandoned in the frozen pond (fig. 11).

If they are the same barrels we have seen delivered to the inn of the Numbering at

Bethlehem whose ‘new wine’ symbolises the appearance of the Saviour on Earth, then

Bruegel’s commentary confirms the fate that Truth encounters in the world of violence and cruelty.

In the Hampton Court version there were later overpaintings, now partially removed, which appear to have been done with the definite intention of changing and distorting the original meaning and substituting another. According to the picture’s official cataloguer,

‘at an early date (certainly before 1660 and perhaps before 1621), presumably at the request of a squeamish owner, almost all the Innocents were painted out and all references to the Biblical narrative were suppressed. Farm animals, poultry, parcels, crockery and other objects took the place of the babies and flames were added so that some of the houses on the left appeared to be burning. The flames were removed during a partial cleaning in 1941-2. The picture was consequently transformed into the Sacking of a Village.’4 Paintings of such ominous themes were a fashion in the 16th and 17th centuries, classified in inventories of the period as boerenverdriet, or ‘peasant distress.’

They were developed, according to one scholar, out of a ‘core idea’ of Bruegel.5 We further learn from Campbell that the standard floating above the knights originally carried an image of crosses in a design that resembled that of the coat-of-arms of Jerusalem and presumably referred to king Herod who was responsible for the massacre of the innocents

4 Lorne Campbell, The Early Flemish Pictures in the Collection of her Majesty the Queen, Cambridge, 1985, pp 13-19 5 Larry Silver, ‘The Importance of Being Bruegel: the Posthumous Survival of the Art of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’ in Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Drawings and Prints, ed. Nadine M. Orenstein, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2001, p 75

289 and ‘who may have been represented as the leader of the knights’. The herald’s tabard has also been overpainted but underneath are traces of ‘an imperial double-headed eagle, which would have referred to the Roman Empire, under which Herod exercised his authority ... The building on the right is an inn: presumably the inn at which there was no room for the Virgin and Joseph. The inn sign has been overpainted, but originally showed a star, traces of which are visible in raking light, The inscription is ‘Dit is inde ster’, but the last three letters have been damaged. It was perhaps felt that ‘Star Inn’ was too direct a reference to Bethlehem, and it seems that ‘the star was suppressed and the inscription altered at the same time as the other changes were made.’6

This ‘disguise’ was imposed 50 years or more after the picture was painted. Campbell’s

‘presumably at the request of a squeamish owner’ is not be entirely convincing; partly because squeamishness is a reaction of the Victorian and the modern age rather than of the early 17th century and squeamishness would not account for the suppression of all references to the biblical narrative. Whatever the reason was, and however elusive now, it was compelling at the time. It is possible that whoever imposed the disguise was perhaps intentionally deepening the disguises already there. Perhaps they were actually hiding or suppressing ‘heretical ideas’.

Scholars have sought to find meaning in the picture as either a rendering of the gospel account, albeit in a contemporary setting; or as a cryptic reference to contemporary events, in particular the brutalities ordered by the Duke of Alva upon his arrival in

Flanders in 1567. These arguments are summarized succinctly and thoroughly by

6 Campbell, op. cit.,

290 Campbell,7 but they do not acknowledge – much less offer a reason for – the anomalies thrown up by the narrative’s failure to produce an emotion in the viewer that corresponds to the story.

This writer has tried to show in an earlier part of this thesis that in the writings of Origen,

Dante and others, it is axiomatic that a great work of art, made according to the principles of the Perennial Philosophy, should contain simultaneous, multiple meanings. Today, conventional scholarship attributes to religious, socio-economic, political and, more tentatively, psychological or moral meaning to Bruegel’s work,8 but we must look further if we wish to place him among the Neoplatonists and Neopythagoreans of Renaissance mysticism, or among the so-called heretical sects of the Low Countries in the 16th century.

The existence of mysterious or more subtle meaning is perhaps suggested by the incongruity we have referred to between the picture’s emotional tone and its subject matter. Despite the problems of its condition, the beauty and harmony of the colours in the Hampton Court version, as well as the delight to be found in its forms and linear rhythms, can have a spellbinding effect on the viewer’s sensibilities. The picture (but unfortunately not the reproductions) is radiant with violet evening light like that seen at sunset on clear days in northern Europe when there is snow on the ground. Here, Bruegel shares an understanding of the effects of light reflected off large areas of translucent white matter with, among others, the builders of the Taj Mahal, and – if only we could

7 Campbell, op. cit. 8 See references in several of the introductory essays in Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Drawings and Prints, ed. Nadine M. Orenstein, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2001, p 75

291 see them in their original state when they were clad with white alabaster – the pyramids of Egypt. The pulsating clarity of the light, breaking up into its component elements of pure colour (all the tones of the spectrum are here) can have an effect on the onlooker’s sensibilities that does not correspond appropriately with the anguish of the narrated events. Seen from across the room the colours – scarlet, green, blue, yellow, light and dark ochre, black and white, are joyful and festive; whereas from an intermediate distance the eye takes pleasure in the forms and dancing linear rhythms such as those of the horsemen in the lower left (fig. 12)

Fig. 12

292 Fig. 13

or the play of the two lurchers behind the herald (fig. 13). None of this provokes the feelings of dismay and pity that a viewer immediately finds in himself on viewing say,

Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ (fig. 14),

Fig. 14

or any other painting intended to inspire horror, of which there are many. The question must be asked therefore, in the light of the emotional distance between image and subject matter: what is it that Bruegel intends to convey?

293 As an art historian, Campbell is naturally cautious in interpreting the picture’s meaning and motives for the changes he describes. But our task now is to try to penetrate below the surface, even if this means exploring the territory of the subconscious. As we have suggested above in The Numbering at Bethlehem, The Adoration, and as will be shown in discussing several further paintings, there is a case to be put forward that Bruegel, in the spirit of the tradition of Marsilio Ficino and other Renaissance mystagogues, definitely intended to hide, or partially hide, the esoteric or gnostic aspects of his thought in his pictures.9 His method being to present to the onlooker a narrative situation in all its myriad human diversity, letting the symbolism of the imagery resonate in the viewer’s subconscious associations. Such impressions, falling on a person’s inner world, originating from the mind and hand of a master, can be considered a kind of energy, or psychological nourishment – perhaps even theurgy – for what G. R. S. Mead refers to as the ‘subtle body’.10

Coomaraswamy, Guénon, Schuon, Burckhardt and other 20th century exponents of the perennial tradition have shown how the sacred art of the great ancient traditions served the cultural outlook of entire civilizations that understood the ideas of man’s higher possibilities. The religious arts of Hinduism and Buddhism in Asia, of Islam in the Near

9 See above: Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance, Faber, 1958; also the remarks of Stein- Schneider. 10G. R. S. Mead (1846-1933), ‘Hermeticist and scholar was one of the great early researchers into arcane wisdom in our age. At a time when the 'esoteric' tended to mean little more than table tapping and spirit trumpets, he was busy translating into English the gems of Neoplatonic and Egyptian philosophy. In works such as Thrice Greatest Hermes, Pistis Sophia, Orpheus and Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, he almost single-handedly put back together the lost esoteric tradition of Classical Athens and Alexandria, which goes by under the general heading of Gnosticism.’ From the Foreword to A. G. Gilbert’s Introduction to the 1919 edition of Mead’s The Doctrine of the Subtle Body, Second Edition, London: Vincent Stuart and John M. Watkins Ltd, 1967.

294 East and, until only a few hundred years ago, of Christianity, took mathematical ideas from their study of the celestial world and physical imagery from the material world and made of them a language in which to speak of the numinous cosmos. An example would be the tradition of the icon whose art, surviving from ancient Slav and Byzantine times more or less into the present era, conveys higher reality through images that are recognizable from the physical world yet with which we do not identify literally.

Fig. 15

A medieval Russian icon of St George typically demonstrates this where we see the saint surrounded by exquisitely beautiful scenes on the border depicting his torture and martyrdom.

295

Fig. 16 Fig. 17 Fig. 18

But, despite their violent subject matter, these scenes do not illustrate violence but, instead, spiritual transcendence: ‘the racking, flailing, stone-pressing, freezing and scourging ... and other scenes are painted in a way that does not disturb the icon’s stillness. All remains golden and luminous – a world without shadows. The violence of these happenings has been rendered ineffectual; they have no power to harm St George and cause him no agitation. The spiritual warrior has transformed violence into non- violence.’11

Bruegel painted The Massacre of the Innocents about 50 years after this St George icon was made and, while he may not have known directly the icon-painter’s tradition, it can be supposed that both painters drew on sources originating in the same universal tradition. Thus, when our attention finally comes to rest on terrible details in The

Massacre of the Innocents, we are insulated from their horror. Our feelings have been guided on to another plane so that we look at the scene with dispassion and detachment.

11 R. Temple, Icons and the Mystical Origins of Christianity, Luzac Oriental, 2001, p. 126

296 Bruegel’s image here is painted to correspond to the non-attached state of meditation of the Adamites that Fränger describes.12

Fig. 19 (Version 2)

Fig. 20. (Version 1, before cleaning) Fig. 21 (Version 1, after cleaning)

Comparison of details taken from two versions of the painting, or of details of the same painting before and after the removal of the overpainting, suggests that, despite the alterations, the essential sense of the picture is little changed. The later 'disguising' of the

12 See above, p. 247.

297 Hampton Court version achieved little; the picture’s innermost meaning was already disguised. The idea that our reading of the Hampton Court picture is ‘corrected’ when we compare it with the version in Vienna does not take us far. In the latter picture the dead children have not been overpainted yet the mystery is still present. Art historians have pointed out that the events, that is to say, the actual massacres, are painted with ‘much restraint’ and the violence muted.13 It is as though Bruegel, rather than dwelling on the literal story, passes beyond it, as though the image is a portal, directly through to another level of understanding so that we enter with him and contemplate, in tranquility, another world altogether: a terra pacis where violence has been transformed into silence and stillness.

Matthew’s gospel recounts the fact of Herod’s massacre of children in Bethlehem in a single terse sentence. His next verse, ‘A voice is heard in Ramah’, is a quotation from the

Old Testament, used to demonstrate the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy.

Jeremiah is typical of Old Testament prophets in that he describes states – whether historical or psychological – that veer between two extreme poles. The greater part (a whole book, Lamentations) dwells on the themes of destruction, punishment, desolation, abandonment, exile, slavery, guilt, defilement – a long list. All this is the result of transgression, the refusal to ‘listen to the Lord’ or ‘walk in his ways’, consequently God in his anger has taken terrible revenge, bringing the people to dust, rottenness, distress,

‘corpses like refuse in the streets’. In contrast there are passages where joy and light prevail: salvation, comfort, abundance, peace, wisdom, understanding, meekness,

13 Michael Gibson, Bruegel, Wellfleet Press [English edition] New Jersey, 1989, p. 122

298 feasting and righteousness, people eat curds and honey, ‘the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord’. The switch from one condition to the other is often sudden and unexpected. For example, the preceding verses to Jeremiah 14:31 are a song of thanksgiving for the restoration of the ‘fortunes of the tents of Jacob’, ‘life shall be like a watered garden’. The next four verses are as follows:

(14)

I will feast the soul of the priests with abundance,

And my people shall be satisfied with my goodness

(15)

Thus says the Lord:

A voice is heard in Ramah,

Lamentation and bitter weeping,

Rachel is weeping for her children:

She refuses to be comforted for her children,

Because they are not.

(16)

Thus says the Lord:

Keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears;

299 For your work shall be rewarded, says the Lord,

And they shall come back from the land of the enemy.

(17)

There is hope for your future, says the Lord,

And your children shall come back to their own country.

16th-century humanist thinkers would not have taken such material literally, even less so followers of Hendrick Niclaes, who, as has been shown above, speaks of ‘similitudes

[that] reveal and witness the riches of the spiritual heavenly goods as parables, and figure forth in writing the mystery of the Kingdom of God or Christ’. So we may assume, with some confidence, that the inconsistency of verse 15, sandwiched between two verses of contradictory import, had a meaning for Bruegel that could be explored through its translation into imagery. The power of Bruegel’s art helps the viewer to enter a spiritual terrain where subtle truths, inaccessible to the mind in its ordinary state, can be contemplated. In these conditions he may see another meaning in the attitudes of grief displayed by the groups of women at the centre of the picture.

Bruegel, the master of depicting body language, has adopted conventional classical poses from the ‘lexicon of rhetorical poses’ that any traditionally trained actor would know, and the postures, together with the emotion they express, seem staged and artificial when we consider them at face value. It is as though the crowd of horsemen, sergeants, peasants,

300 soldiers and children were so many actors and extras on a film set at the moment when the director has called for ‘action’. What we witness, then, is a contrived image, an aspect of the great teaching, called here the Perennial Philosophy, whose significance will be fully understood in the context of spiritual transformation.

Fig. 22 Fig. 23

301 Chapter 10. Man’s Possibility: Spiritual Work The Road to Calvary

Peter Bruegel the Elder ca.1525-1569. The Road to Calvary (1564) , oil on wood panel,

124 x 170 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (fig. 1).

Fig. 1

The artist sets the scene of Christ’s journey on the road to Calvary in a wide landscape peopled with hundreds of figures the majority of whom are engaged in the kind of activities one would expect to see at a fairground or carnival rather than at a solemn religious occasion. The whole town has turned out on a blustery spring day to see the

302 execution of two local criminals and the ‘misguided fool’ who tried to raise a revolution against the state.

Fig. 2

The two thieves in the cart sloshing through slime and mud attract plenty of respectful, if horrified, attention (fig. 2);

303

Fig. 3

but the stumbling figure of Christ, surrounded and taunted by the bully-boys of the town garrison, is merely a joke, a minor incident on a day otherwise given over to a fun outing

(fig. 3). The path to the cross follows the painting’s circular composition and we have the impression that the whole picture, in which is included the incident of The Carrying of the Cross, represents the Wheel of Life.1

1See above p. 69 ff for a discussion on this central idea in the Perennial Philosophy.

304

Fig. 4

305 At the centre is a windmill on top of a fantastic rocky spindle (fig. 4). This incongruous detail alerts the viewer to the possibility that the artist engages with significant philosophical ideas.

Giorgio de Santillana & Hertha Von Dechend’s book, Hamlet’s Mill is an important exposition of the symbolism of a theme in world mythology in which a mill turns on a spindle representing the earth turning under the heavens.2 The authors argue that, contrary to our contemporary theory of evolution, people of prehistoric cultures were adept at observing and accurately measuring celestial events. Further, they inscribed the knowledge thus derived in mythological dramas and stories of the struggles and wars of great gods or kings or powerful rulers:

cosmological myths are understood to be stories that come from the sky, encoded

maps about the arrangement of celestial features and the movement of planets and

stars during the year. The universal storyboard of the night sky is viewed around

the globe and, in this way, similar cosmologies and metaphors arise to explain the

great questions: human origins, the mystery of life, time, and death, and the

exploits of deities (who are really stars and planets). Echoes of a unified Neolithic

world religion? Even in Greco-Roman myth it is obvious that Saturn, Jupiter and

other mytho-cosmic deities refer to planets.

2 Giorgio de Santillana & Hertha Von Dechend Hamlet's Mill’ An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and Its Transmission Through Myth. Nonpareil Books, 1969.

306 … ancient people around the globe observed the slow shifting of the celestial

framework, what we call the precession of the equinoxes. Among academics and

without good reason, the suggestion of this knowledge in ancient times has been

dismissed out of hand, and this is exactly the problem. It is considered to be so

patently impossible that no rational examination of the mythic forms describing

precession has ever taken place. Hamlet's Mill is the first study to seriously

address this question.3

Much of humanity's oldest myths were derived from celestial observations. The important ideas that Hamlet's Mill offers were met with little academic acceptance when it was published in 1969 though that is less the case today and the book has become something of a classic.

‘Hamlet's Mill’ is one of the common themes running through the world's

mythology: that of a mill which turns on a spindle representing the Earth turning

under the heavens (or more precisely: the heavens turning over the earth; or more

precisely still, the heavens turning over the ‘four-cornered earth’. Some major

event occurs and the mill is destroyed. In the process, a great ruler/king/god is

overturned and a new ruler/king/god comes into power. This is not just an

adventure story but rather is a scientific explanation of precession. The

ruler/king/god associated with the old astrological sign is overthrown by the new

4 one.

3 Commentary on Hamlet's Mill by John Major Jenkins, http://edj.net/mc2012/mill1.htm 4 Craig Rairdin http://www.craigr.com/books/hamlets.htm

307

The authors contend that knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes – the ‘wobble’ of the earth’s axis during its 26,000-year cycle – was known long before its ‘discovery’ by

Hipparchus in the second century BC.5 This knowledge helps humanity locate itself in cosmic space and cosmic time – what Plato called the ‘dance of the stars’ – and was derived from observing in which constellation the sun rises on the vernal equinox and the fact that, over a long period, this changes. At present the sun rises in Pisces and formerly

(i.e. between two and three thousand years ago) it rose in Aries. Hamlet’s Mill demonstrates that the intention of myths was to transmit the knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes from one generation to another across very long periods of time. This mythology was transmitted in traditional songs or stories such as the Kalevala, the

Finnish National Epic. They are magical in character and filled with sky lore. The Finnish cultural heritage, like its language, is not of Indo-European origin, and suggests an origin in Central Asia rather than Europe. Some of the Kalevala stories, according to Jenkins,

‘describe a sacred Mill called the Sampo (derived from Sanskrit skambha = pillar or pole) with a "many ciphered cover". He continures:

This spinning Mill is a metaphor for a Golden Age of plenty and the starry sky

spinning around the Pole Star (known as the ‘Nail of the North’), which in the Far

North is almost straight over head. The Mill at some point is disturbed, its pillar

being pulled out of its peg, and a new one – a new ‘age’ – must be constructed.

This becomes the chore of Ilmarinen, the primeval smith. In this legend, ancient

5 Some calculations arrive at the figure 21,600; see Naomi Bennet, Has the Age of Aquarius Arrived? http://www.accessnewage.com/articles/astro/ageaq1.htm. For a more comprehensive article see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precession_of_the_equinoxes.

308 knowledge of precession among unsophisticated ‘peasants’ who were nonetheless

astute sky watchers, was preserved via oral tradition almost down to modern

times.6

It has already been suggested in this thesis that Bruegel grasped the cosmological dimension of great religious events. For him, the gospel narratives were never only historical. He saw, in The Numbering at Bethlehem, the birth of Christ as a cosmic event.

An elaborate mythology associates Christ’s birth with the age of Pisces (it is cryptically referred to in early Christian art by the acronym ІΧΘΥΣ [ichtus, fish]). The idea is very ancient; it is said by theologians to have been foretold by Virgil and it fits seamlessly into the humanist ideal of the integration of classical and Christian ideas.7 A Renaissance humanist of intellectual grandeur such as Bruegel could hardly see otherwise.

The wind blows, the wheel turns, and the gigantic merry-go-round of life moves on.

Bruegel observes every figure, both from the point of view of their relation to the central event of whose significance they are ignorant, and also in relation to every fleeting influence that momentarily attracts their attention. He observes what a man is and depicts him through his understanding that a person’s thought and awareness go no further than what his attention is attached to.

6 Jenkins, op. cit. 7 Meer, Van der and Mohrmann, F. Atlas of the Early Christian world, Nelson: London, 1958

309 Fig. 5

A man chasing his hat is a man chasing his hat: no more and no less (fig. 5). The situation involves him totally: his movements and his posture, his thoughts and feelings, all his energies, all his awareness, are identified with the circumstance of the moment.

Fig. 6 Fig. 7

310 The next moment he may be a man running to catch up with his friends (fig. 6) and the next, a man goggling at the prospect of the gallows (fig. 7).

In discussing The Numbering at Bethlehem, and The Adoration of the Kings this thesis has proposed the idea that in Bruegel’s pictures people – at least ordinary people – are depicted in various circumstances and engaged in various activities but always in the state that the gospels refer to as blindness, or sleep, and which in today’s language can be understood as unconscious identification. People, occupied with the distraction of the moment and lacking higher awareness, are not conscious of the larger situation in which the events are taking place. By including the windmill, Bruegel shows us what they cannot see: the higher, unseen influences that create the circumstances in which men live out their lives.

Every figure is caught up both momentarily and by the larger events. Bruegel shares with us his observation of how each person is identified with what has attracted his interest. It may be just the fun of the day’s outing, the curiosity of watching soldiers arresting a citizen, Simon of Cyrene, and pressing him into service (fig. 8),

311 Fig. 8

or the macabre fascination of an execution. It is fun to see something spectacular or dramatic, even if it is horrific — and, for some, especially if it is horrific. But, then, your hat gets blown off in the wind

312 Fig. 9

or you have to wade through the flooded meadow (fig. 9),

Fig. 10

or you get hired to help on a digging job (fig. 10).

313 Above it all, the windmill turns, spinning the vast panorama of life on its up-and-down, merry course (fig. 5). The mill, itself, is turned by the winds: unseen forces, laws of nature and laws of the cosmos – perhaps one could say the law of karma – that are beyond man’s awareness, beyond his comprehension, but to which he is subject and on whose actions he is dependent.

Such is life and such is man’s situation. In our present usual state of consciousness, according to traditional esoteric ideas, we do not know Reality; our faculties of perception are inadequate and our view of the world is illusory. From Plato to

Schopenhauer, philosophers constantly return to this archetypal theme. If we accept the symbolism of the Gospels, we will find the same message: Man is described as being blind, deaf, lame, possessed by devils and, in some cases, even dead. According to an esoteric interpretation of these afflictions they symbolise Man’s low psychological or spiritual level – his low level of consciousness.8 Bruegel is direct; he shows how things actually are, leaving his viewers to draw the conclusion that Man’s awareness does not extend to the existence of a higher level of consciousness. At the same time he shows us that the higher level, represented by Christ and the Holy Family group in the foreground, is clearly present here in the midst of ‘life’ with implications for all to see – if they wish.

8 cf. Maurice Nicol, The New Man. Dr Nicol worked with C. G. Jung and later with P. D. Ouspensky; but his work on the gospels is also influenced by Origen, in particular, the latter’s Commentary on the Gospel of Saint John.

314 Fig. 11

Bruegel shows that consciousness is a matter of degree and that not everybody stands on the same level. This is clear from the presence of the Mary and her attendants on the raised promontory in the foreground (fig. 11). This group represents the possibility for human beings to stand in a different relationship to the mechanical forces that drive our lives. Even so, the higher awareness of the Holy Family does not free them from the consequences of humanity’s psychological blindness and stupidity – for we see that, like

Christ, they must suffer for this. Bruegel’s composition separates them from the general run of events and from the circular composition, the wheel of Fortune. He has gone to some lengths to define the difference between them and the masses of people who represent ordinary humanity. Their scale is proportionately quite different. He has even adopted the artistic style of a previous generation, working in the manner of Hans

315 Memling or Hugo van der Goes; these figures are thus idealised; their elegant, aristocratic bearing signifying a level of being beyond that of the general mass of the people.9

In the paintings we have considered so far – The Numbering at Bethlehem, The Adoration of the Kings, The Massacre of the Innocents – we have suggested that, behind the pictorial anecdote, Bruegel illustrates basic flaws in the human condition. He shows us how the mass of humanity lives in ignorance of the higher laws of the universe and the divine influences that come to the earth with the specific purpose of redeeming us.

Such, too, is one of the underlying themes in The Carrying of the Cross; though into it

Bruegel has introduced a new element. The figures placed on the raised foreground do not belong to the general condition of men blinded by their identification with the immediate moment and unable to see the influences under which they live. They are on a higher level in several senses of the term. How this level is found is revealed in the next two paintings that we shall discuss: The Fall of Icarus and The Harvesters

9 Hans Memling (Memlinc) (c. 1430 -1494) was an Early Netherlandish painter, born in Germany, who was the last major fifteenth century artist in the Netherlands, the successor to Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, whose tradition he continued with little innovation.

Hugo van der Goes (c. 1440 - 1482) is generally regarded as the greatest Netherlandish painter of the second half of the 15th century. In 1475 he became dean of the painters' guild at Ghent. His masterpiece is a large triptych of the Nativity known as the Portinari Altarpiece is in the Uffizi, Florence. This was commissioned by Tommaso Portinari, the representative of the House of Medici in Bruges for the church of the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence.

.

316 The Harvesters

Fig. 1

The Harvesters (1565) Oil on wood panel, 177 x 163 cm. Metropolitan Museum, New

York. ( Fig. 1)

317 Fig. 2 Fig. 3 June and July from the months of the Tres Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry, the de

Limbourg brothers, circa 1410. Musée Condé, Chantilly.

It has been shown that, from the art historical point of view, Bruegel comes out of the traditions of late medieval miniature illumination painting10 of which the finest example is generally considered to be the famous Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry (figs. 2,

3), preserved today at Chantilly just north of Paris. Books of Hours had developed through the Middle Ages as aids for the private devotion of lay people. The feast days celebrating the major events in the life of Christ (his Birth, Death, Resurrection, and

Ascension) were set within longer periods of time known as ‘seasons’ or ‘times’

(tempores).11

10 Catalogue, Illuminating the Renaissance, Royal Academy, 2004

11 Wieck, Roger S. Time Sanctified: The Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life. With essays by Lawrence R. Poos, Virginia Reinburg, and John Plummer. New York: George Braziller, 1988.

318 The Hours made for the Duc de Berry in 1410, in common with Bruegel’s Seasons series of paintings, depict human activities appropriate for the time of year in a wide landscape context and taking place under the appropriate astrological sign. Although the signs are not actually seen in Bruegel’s Harvesters it is not difficult to sense their influence in the vast sweep of the ‘cosmic landscape’ referred to by many writers. This thesis has suggested, in the case of The Numbering at Bethlehem and The Road to Calvary, that

Bruegel provides a vision of cosmological time and its influence on human affairs though most of humanity remains oblivious to it because of its imprisonment within planetary time. So it is likely that, like the de Limbourg brothers 150 years before him, Bruegel had in mind the great cycles of time involving man’s relationship to nature, to the cosmos and to God. The commentary in Bruegel’s case – and it is a theme running through many of his later works – being that man, without a higher influence to help him, is ignorant of the world around him and the higher presence acting in it. This ignorance is the spiritual sleep from which man needs to awaken that mystics traditionally speak of.

Turning to The Harvesters we see that Bruegel has placed a group of people in the foreground of the composition and, with regard to the topography of the landscape, on a relatively high level, overlooking the valley. In the light of other ideas symbolised in the painting it seems likely that Bruegel means us to understand that the group placed at this point are situated in a different relationship to the theme of the painting than those down in the valley. The main theme is the idea of work of the harvest; but we shall return to this below. As in The Carrying of the Cross, (and also in The Fall of Icarus) the locating of certain figures at specific places – ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ – in the topography of the image

319 indicates that Bruegel alludes to a psychological and cosmological principle that accords with the traditional idea of the correspondence between the macrocosm and the microcosm:12 psychological, in that it refers to higher and lower levels within an individual person’s being or consciousness (the inner cosmos); cosmological in its reference to higher and lower levels in the created universe. Christian sacred texts abound with references to mountains and valleys13 and patristic commentators, such as the 4th- century Cappadocian bishop Gregory of Nyssa,14 differentiating between the anecdotal and the symbolic, speak specifically of the ‘Mountain of God’.15 This writer has shown elsewhere that in the Byzantine artistic tradition, at least in the older icons, mountains have this allegorical significance.16

We have seen how Bruegel, through his association with Plantin, Ortelius and others, would have had access to such ideas. Hendrick Niclaes’ Terra Pacis is an example of an allegorical landscape providing a context in which a mystical journey is undertaken and

Bruegel’s association with its author, the founder of the House of Love, can be inferred not only from the overwhelming weight of circumstantial evidence but from the paintings themselves when correctly interpreted. This thesis has also suggested the school of

Agostino Steuco in Rome, where Bruegel was between 1525 and 1530, as well as the tradition of the Rhineland mystics and the Brotherhood of the Common Life, of which

12 See above, pp. 105 ff. 13 Christ ascends a mountain in order to deliver the beatitudes and ascends Mount Thabor to be transfigured by God’s ‘uncreated’ light; he descends into hell to redeem Adam and Eve 14 4th century bishop in Cappodocia. A product of the School of Alexandria, he was trained the the Allegorical Method of Origen and in the oral (or esoteric) tradition of Ammonius Saccas. 15 E.g. ‘Sandaled feet cannot ascend the mountain of God’. Gregory of Nyssa Commentary on the Life of Moses. The Classics of Western Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press , p. 59 16 R. Temple, Icons and the Mystical Origins of Christianity, ‘The Topographical Background’, Element Books, 1990, pp 127-134

320 the House of Love is a product – all more or less tending towards gnostic or cases, esoteric ideas.

It has recently been suggested that Van Eyck had access to, and made use of, Byzantine imagery during a supposed visit to Italy.17 The significance of the resulting impact on

Van Eyck’s paintings would not have been lost on so perceptive an eye as Bruegel’s. If

Bruegel’s art corresponds to immutable laws of nature, as Ortelius suggests,18 then it is not a surprise to find such ideas – whether explained by ‘influences’ or not – any more than it is a surprise to find the Fibonacci series in a pinecone. The laws of nature could not permit otherwise.

In The Harvest, the first of several mystical ideas is found in the composition itself which is based on a series of triads. The cornfield is divided into three separate areas by lanes that pass through it.

17 Craig Harbison devotes a chapter ‘Van Eyck’s Modern Icon’ to this idea in his Jan Van Eyck, the Play of Realism, Reaktion Books, 1990, pp. 158-167. Scholars are somewhat exercised over the absence of evidence supporting what has to be no more than a supposition that Van Eyck visited Italy. However Greek Scholars have unearthed material proving that there was a flow of Byzantine icons from Crete to Flanders in the 15th century. See M. Catapan, ‘Nove elenchi e documenti dei pittoni di Creta dal 1300 al 1500’ in Thesaurismata, 9 (1972) docs. Nos. 6-8, pp. 211-13; M. Constantoudaki-Kitromiledes, Taste and the Market in Cretan Icons in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, From Byzantium to El Greco, London, 1987, pp 51-3. 18 See above, p. 261 ff for the discussion of Ortelius’ remarks in his Liber Amicorum.

321 Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Fig. 6

In the foreground on the left are two men scything and one carrying water (fig. 4); three women, two of whom are carrying sheaves, are walking up the central pathway (fig. 5); on the far right are three more figures, two of them gathering pears that have fallen to the ground (fig. 6) while the third –

Fig. 7 – (you have to look rather carefully to find him) is half-way up the tree; all three are gathering the fruit (fig. 7).

Fig. 8 To the right of the central tree are a group of three figures (fig. 8); one is scything, one is cutting and binding a sheaf while the third, a woman, bends to pick up a sheaf before joining her companions walking down the hill.

322

Fig. 9

Under the tree, eating their midday meal are nine workers: three times three (the triple triad) (fig. 9). The principle of ennead has its roots in Egypt (the ‘nine gods’ of

Heliopolis) and in Neoplatonism (The Enneads of Plotinus); there are schools of thought that consider the number nine to combine the Law of Seven and the Law of Three.19

The picture speaks to us about the abundance of nature and how her riches reward those who earn them by work. The fact that in the basket under the tree are loaves of bread and that the peasants are eating bread – the product of the corn field – emphasises the higher meaning of the triad for which bread, the product of flour, water and fire, expressing the interaction of three forces, is a traditional symbol.

19 Enneagram theory has seen a popular explosion in New Age literature of the last 20 years but see P. D. Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, London, 1950, pp. 294-5, 376-8 for a traditional exposition.

323

No word which John uses conveys this truth better than ‘seed’: ‘Whoever is born

of God does not commit sin, for His seed is in him and he cannot sin because he is

born of God’. (John iii, 9). It is a word that mystics have used again and again to

express the implanting of the Divine Life within the human soul … the same idea

is expressed by ‘water’ and ‘bread’: ‘The water that I shall give him shall be in

him a well of water springing up into everlasting life’ (John iv, 14). ‘I am the

Bread of Life’ (John vi, 35-63). ‘If any man eat of this bread he shall live for

ever’20

In Bruegel’s art the symbolism is allegorical and, beyond that, anagogical. It is necessary to search for meaning beyond the allegorical. With Bruegel we can go further than the idea of contagious magic. As van Reyl writes:

A more potent example of the symbolism of bread is in the Catholic mass. In the

act of transubstantiation the host, the wafer of bread that is taken during

communion, becomes the body of Christ. Bread becomes not just physically life

giving but spiritually life-giving. This is a strong example of what James George

Frazer in The Golden Bough termed contagious magic, where some aspect of one

object is transferred into another through the two things being brought into

contact in some way. Here, like in Dionysian rites, the worshipper is ingesting

god and so is taking on some of the nature of god … I believe it is not bread per

se that is carrying the meanings, but the whole cycle from planting to eating. In

20 See above p. 118, note 16.

324 fact, not until the bread is eaten can the cycle be complete ... Let me draw a

parallel. A traditional English folk song tells the tale of John Barleycorn. John is

the barley plant, more particularly the barley seed. In the song men come into the

field and cut down John Barleycorn, then beat him (threshing), grind him between

two stones and bung him in a vat, effectively killing him. The punch line, though,

is that John Barleycorn ‘lives to tell the tale, for they pour him out of oaken vat

and they call him nut brown ale’. This is a story of resurrection, as of course are

the stories of Christ and of Persephone … The common thread in all of this is the

cycle from seed to plant to product, through which the properties of this whole

cycle are incorporated into the human consumer through contagious magic. To the

pre-scientific mind the transformation of seed under the earth into grass, of flower

into seed again, of powdered seed and water into a pulpy lump must have seemed

miraculous.21

The peasants have worked. This is the first thing we notice about them. We see that the physical demands of the harvest are total and demand all of their strength. Their utter exhaustion is expressed by the sleeping figure beneath the tree and by the urgent need with which they replenish themselves with food: bread, milk and fruit. The strength, power and movement of their work are vividly suggested by the rhythm of the two scythes on the left. Touching, and even sacred, in its simplicity is the posture of the peasant woman bending forward to tie a sheaf of corn. She expresses the essential

21 Paul van Reyk, http://www.arts.adelaide.edu.au/centrefooddrink/articles/symbolismofbread.html

325 loneliness and devotion of the worker. We do not see her face yet, in her anonymity, as

Van Gogh was to show, there is great human dignity.

An alternative title for this painting could be The Workers for its theme is the essential truth of indefatigable commitment to work. Though this work, while certainly true literally, should also be considered in the light of the ideas that are present but hidden in the painting that call the viewer to consider a spiritual dimension.

It is the lot of humanity to bear a hard life: people must work to live. Bread represents the necessities of life earned only by great effort and sweat. At the same time it means the divine or higher nourishment that enables man’s spiritual nature to grow: the

‘supersubstantial’ bread of the Lord’s Prayer, translated (incorrectly according to some commentators) as ‘daily bread’. Christ himself instructeded his followers saying, ‘I am the Bread of life, who came down from Heaven. If any man shall eat of My Bread he shall live forever.’22 Scriptural scholarship is in agreement with the early tradition of the

Greek and western Fathers, who concur in their interpretation that Jesus' prayer teaches us to pray for the supersubstantial bread, the Bread of Life, which is Jesus Himself in the mystery of the Eucharist and to ask for this daily. The Greek text of the Lord’s Prayer in

St. Matthew (originally in Aramaic), ton arton hemon ton epiousion, ‘our super- substantial bread’ is accurately translated in the Latin Vulgate as panem supersubstantialem. St. Luke's Latin translation renders it ‘our daily bread’, panem quotidianum. St. Jerome – the great Doctor of the Church who translated the Holy

Gospels from Greek into Latin – states that give us this day our daily or supersubstantial bread means that we ask for heavenly bread, the bread of the Eucharist. St. Ambrose, St.

22 John 6, 51.

326 Augustine, St. John Chrysostom have dwelt in their sermons and in their writings upon our daily bread, which is Jesus Christ in the form of the sacrament. The sacrament was the daily practice, hence daily bread, of the early Christians. St. Luke tells us this in the

Acts of the Apostles (2; 46). And so does St. Cyprian, a saint and martyr of the early

Church.23

The representation of the ‘peasants’ as workers can be considered to have an anagogical meaning. This means that Bruegel is inviting the viewer to experience the events’ mystical meaning as a real event in the world of gnosis, an insight into the knowledge of man and the world that lies beyond the short boundaries of sense perception and of rational thought. The ‘peasants’ belong to Nature (creation and the great laws of the cosmos) to whom they must give their life and work, looking for no reward other than to live and eat. And here Bruegel introduces the marvellous idea that Nature grants a further gift. There is another harvest.

Above the scene depicted, reaching up out of the picture, up into the sky – up onto a higher level – is a pear tree laden with fruit. The pears are so ripe and so heavy that they fall unbidden, or with only a shake. On the right we see a man in the branches of another smaller pear tree shaking them out onto the ground where they are being gathered.

Bruegel was clearly interested in all this and was at pains to recount the details fully and precisely. Looking carefully we see a ladder by the tree and a basket into which the pears are gathered; he has even painted the moment when the pears are actually falling through

23 See Bishop Roman Danylak in Heart Of The Harvest, September 1996, www.heartofjesus.ca/Theology/spiritualCommunion.htm

327 the air.24 This and the prominence of the central pear tree with its burden of fruit thus attain significance and whose meaning is related to the parallel imagery of the harvest.

Thus the spiritual writer Valentin Weigel, a follower of Sebastian Franck and a contemporary of Bruegel, in a passage under the title That the Contemplation of the

Eternal Deity and of the Six Works of Creation, and also the Knowledge of Oneself, are

Most Useful emphasises that the cycle of concepts – work, life, nature, reward – operates on both the visible level and the spiritual plane. He says that:

the visible physical tree remains in the invisible spiritual tree … whence does the

tree come? Indeed, from the astrum or invisible seed. Whence comes the pear?

From the tree … from the invisible astra of the stars that make the invisible

visible. Whence the human being? Out of the limus terrae, which is to say from

the clump of earth that is the entire world. Invisibly Adam lay in the world and

[then] became visible. Spiritually, he lay within the world, and [then] became

visible. That out of which one has been made one has and also bears within one:

the pear is of the tree, the seed of the pear.25

We may ask what work. And what reward? This thesis holds that this must be a matter of enquiry on the basis of psychological and philosophical ideas associated with a profound allegory of the mystical life and, in particular, with the symbolism of different spiritual levels and the use of landscape as the symbolic Terra Pacis makes clear. While depicting

24 This detail cannot be seen in any reproduction. 25 Valentin Weigel, Selected Spiritual Writings, Paulist Press, 2003

328 the scene of the harvest in terms of the eternal cycles of nature and the zodiac in relation to man,26 Bruegel also conveys the idea of man’s possible spiritual evolution, his

‘escape’, in the gnostic sense, from the terrestrial sphere. Neoplatonic and gnostic traditions tell us that man’s true ‘home’ is much higher; St Paul tells us ‘If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God’.27

We see in the painting that down in the valley life seems more pleasant; it is cool and green; people do not work, they play games in the field and swim in the pond. The group of peasants/workers is already a certain distance up the hillside where they are rewarded by the pear tree. Even a little further up the hill is the church.

26 The Harvest is generally supposed to be one of a series of six paintings depicting the Months. Others are the Haymakers, the Dark Day, the Return of the Herd and the Hunters in the Snow. One is lost. 27 Colossians 3;1

329 Fig. 10

But the church is obscured,28 in front of it is an awkward ditch, and around it has grown up a tangle of dark trees and unkempt shrubs so that, though it is there at a relatively higher point, with its spire reaching up into the sky, access to it has become difficult (fig.

10). Here, Bruegel is not necessarily passing a judgement, though the crisis of the

Reformation in the Low Countries was at its height in the middle of the 16th-century; he states no more than the truth – objectively and compassionately that access to spiritual truth via the church is difficult. But the pear tree and the law it signifies reaches higher than the church. It is the climax of the whole design of the picture, drawing everything below it towards its roots and trunk after which all its lines ascend, spreading upwards and outwards into a level altogether above the picture (fig. 11).29

28 Religion is no more than an outer shell; see above p. 254 29 For discussion of the symbolism of the tree see Parabola Magazine, Vol. XIV, No. 3, The Tree of Life, August 1989. Also Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, London 1962, pp. 328-332.

330 Fig. 11

331 The Fall of Icarus

The Fall of Icarus, tempera and oil on canvas, 73.5 x 112 cm. Musées royaux des Beaux-

Arts de Belgiques, Brussels, (1567).

Fig.1

These, as the angler at the silent brook,

Or mountain-shepherd leaning on his crook,

Or gaping ploughman, from the vale descries,

They stare, and view 'em with religious eyes,

And strait conclude 'em Gods; since none, but they,

332 Thro' their own azure skies cou'd find a way.30

Bruegel‟s theme of work in relation to nature and laws is further elaborated in one of his most famous and enigmatic works: The Fall of Icarus. Once again Bruegel departs from the prototype, in this case not a painting or a gospel text but Ovid‟s poem. Typically he illustrates one story while telling another in order to express ideas relevant to the possible spiritual development of man.

The highest point in the composition is a promontory in the foreground of the picture where the main narrative is taking place. Here we find the red-shirted ploughman situated at the intersection of the two main diagonals of the composition. This compositional device is also used in The Marriage at Cana to draw attention to the blue-jacketed server, a figure whose proportion dominates the over-all design in a similar way (figs. 2, 3).

Fig. 2 Fig. 3 In both cases the artist has chosen to give the principal visual emphasis to a figure who – apparently – plays an unimportant role in the narrative.

30 Ovid, Metamorphosis, VIII:183-235, Sir Samuel Garth (1661-1719), John Dryden, et al trans. The Internet Classics Archive: http://classics.mit.edu/Ovid/metam.html

333

Fig. 4

He is a young man, perhaps not more than 20 years old, working with skill and intelligence. He does not crack the whip he holds in his left hand but lays it in the horse‟s hind quarters, maintaining contact between man and animal. This connection is also established through the reins held in the right hand, which also guides the plough. Thus horse, plough and ploughman are intimately co-ordinated, collectively engaged in humanity‟s oldest task. The scene – so often depicted in art – has perhaps never been observed with such compassion or invested with such meaning: its three components expressing the triadic law that defines the elemental constituent parts of man. Platonic and, later, Christian Neoplatonic ideas saw man as a „tripartite being‟ consisting of body, soul and spirit. In The Republic we find:

334 … with regard to that which is within and in the true sense concerns one‟s self …

It means that a man must not suffer the principles of his soul to do each the work

of some other and interfere and meddle with one another, but that he should

dispose well of what in the true sense of the word is properly his own, and having

first attained to self-mastery and beautiful order within himself, and having

harmonised these three principles … and having linked and bound all three

together and made of himself a unit, one man instead of many, self-controlled and

in unison, he should then and only then turn to practice.31

From this it is clear that the imagery refers to inner life, inner order.

A famous example of ancient art, dating from the 5th-century BC, The Charioteer of

Delphi (now without horse or chariot), once constituted a similar symbolic triad. The same idea is found in Plotinus where he speaks of the necessity of the driver‟s presence and „intelligence‟ without which the horse‟s motion is haphazard.32

This central figure, the central idea, of the picture, then, is not Icarus but the ploughman; he is the „hero‟ while the „anti-hero‟, as we shall see, is the nearby shepherd leaning on his crook (fig. 5).

31 The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Bollingen Series LXXI, Princeton, 1961. Republic: IV, p. 686 32 Plotinus, Enneads, p.99

335 Fig. 5

336

The ploughman‟s posture, with delicate step and attentive attitude, has a curious fragility in keeping with the picture‟s elusive and dream-like atmosphere celebrated by Auden and others.33 Bearing in mind Bruegel‟s famed realism, this young man‟s look is incongruously refined and thoughtful. One might have expected a blunter, more rustic look such as we see on the face of the shepherd nearby (figs. 6, 7).

Fig. 6 Fig. 7

If Bruegel‟s commentary is based on an inner, psycho-spiritual vision of reality – a vision consonant with the teachings of the Perennial Philosophy – then it is possible to see in this imagery a study of conscious attention, the „awakened state‟ on the one hand and the sleep of (spiritual) ignorance on the other. The ploughman is an accurate and attentive worker. The act of ploughing the land in preparation for receiving the seed are images that call to mind an ancient and universal symbolism of the active inner life such as we

33 Cf. W. H. Auden, „In Brueghel‟s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.‟ From „Musée des Beaux Arts‟ Another Time (London, 1946), p.47. Altogether the painting has been the inspiration of at least 48 poems; see http://rechten.uvt.nl/koops/biblicar.htm

337 find in the Mystery Religions of late antiquity and in the gospel of St John where „seed‟, like „water‟ or „wine‟, may be understood as representatives of divine or cosmic energies acting in the material world according to the laws of spiritual evolution. „Spirit endows matter to produce form‟ in the formulation of Plotinus.34

To emphasise the quality of the ploughman Bruegel shows us the contrasting figure of the shepherd. Traditionally the idea of the shepherd symbolises care and attention while its esoteric meaning refers to a state of awareness associated with contemplation; we read, for example, in St John of Damascus (676-754): „Joachim kept a strict watch over his thoughts as a shepherd over his flock, having them entirely under his control‟.35 The symbolism is subtle and refers to the psychology of spiritual work, but Bruegel, typically for his originality of mind, buries the thought more deeply by switching the meaning: the shepherd has no control over his thoughts. He is a dreamer; leaning on his staff, with his ignorant snout turned up to the sky, he fails in his task; his sheep stray on the mountainside and are in danger of falling into the sea like Icarus, the greatest dreamer of all.

Further below him, to the right, is a fisherman. Our eye is carried down to the water on which is a great ship and, between it and the land, the ineffectual splash where Icarus‟ legs are seen disappearing below the surface (fig. 8).

34 Plotinus, Enneads, „Matter has been entered by Idea, the union constitutes a body‟, p. 106 35 From the Three Sermons on the Dormition (Sermon I) of John of Damascus http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/johndamascus-komesis.html

338 Fig. 8

The juxtaposition of this last glimpse of Icarus and the nearby stately ship sailing from an area of darkness towards the light provides a similar idea to the contrast between the ploughman and the shepherd (fig. 8). Both pairs of juxtaposed ideas show the contrast between attentive intelligent care directed towards the right ordering of natural forces and the consequences of inattention through carelessness or impractical dreams.

Ovid's influence on Western art and literature cannot be exaggerated. The

Metamorphoses is regarded as the best classical source of some 250 myths. „The poem is the most comprehensive, creative mythological work that has come down to us from

339 antiquity‟.36 Based on its influence, „European literature and art would be poorer for the loss of the Metamorphoses than for the loss of Homer‟.37 Ovid was a major inspiration for Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton. „If Virgil is Rome's greatest poet, Ovid is the most popular (even in his own time; Ovidian graffiti has been found on the walls of

Pompeii)‟.38

Charles Boer, the author of a recent translation, summarises Ovid‟s work as „a poem of grotesque injustices, of fierce emotion and frightening political inuendo … all besetting the darker aspects of human personality. Ovid pathologizes these aspects through the mythical images of metamorphosis. Many [of which] are terrifyingly downward to a sub- human state in plant's and animals, not upward into stars or Gods … Yet it all comes wrapped in a deceptively smooth and polished Latin verse, and narrated by a remarkably cool mythographer who keeps intruding himself coyly into the narrative, constantly qualifying, reminding us that he is writing all this with ancient myth handbooks open before him as if he were only some edit-as-you-go scholar or, at best, a detached and gentle onlooker like ourselves.‟ Boer goes on to warn us that „The posture is, as so much with Ovid, treacherous, and the reader should beware of falling into the conventional literary trap of thinking this “high comedy”. It is most certainly sprightly, but ever so deadly. The radiant humour, the endless irony, Ovid's famous charm, all sit gracefully on

36 GK Galinsky, Ovid‟s Metamorphoses. An Introduction to the Basic Aspects (Oxford 1975)

37 Hadas, Moses. A History of Latin Literature. Columbia, 1952.

38 Brown, Larry A. Ovid’s Metamorphoses. http://larryavisbrown.homestead.com/files/xeno.ovid1.htm (today‟s date)

340 a stage of murders, rapes, tortures, plagues, starvations, and universal heartache, with the horror of metamorphosis itself only a welcome (or unwelcome) denouement.‟

The warning that we should avoid the trap of regarding Ovid‟s work as no more than

„high comedy‟ parallels the situation with Bruegel who, until recent times was considered merely a painter of „drolleries‟. Ovid‟s influence on the greatest poets and artists of

European civilisation suggests a power in his work that comes from the highest possible source. Ovid‟s English Renaissance translator, discussing in his „Epistle‟ or prologue, three levels of soul, refers to Pythagoras, regarded by students of the Perennial

Philosophy as the father of the esoteric tradition in the West:

He bringeth in Pythagoras disswading men from feare

Of death, and preaching abstinence from flesh of living things.

But as for that opinion which Pythagoras there brings

Of soules removing out of beasts to men, and out of men

Too birdes and beasts both wyld and tame, both to and fro agen:

It is not to be understand (sic) of that same soule whereby

Wee are endewd with reason and discretion from on hie: ...39

If Bruegel is an artist in the tradition of the Perennial Philosophy then we may look beyond moral, psychological and allegoric meanings; all of these are in his painting but these are not all, for beyond them is the anagogic, the highest note that symbolism can

39 Translation into English, 1567, by Arthur Golding. Transcribed and Edited by B.F. copyright © 2002; additional editing by R. Brazil. http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/ovid00.htm

341 sound.40 What Bruegel has depicted is mystical vision – insight or gnosis. This is what

Ortelius means when he says that Bruegel „painted … things that cannot be painted‟.41

This does not mean that the moral or allegorical meaning is excluded; the image of the ploughman representing religion was well known in the 16th century. For example, we find the great Hugh Latimer, martyred in 1555, telling us „the preaching of the gospel is one of God‟s plough-works, and the preacher is God‟s ploughmen‟.42

Bruegel‟s paintings are universal in their appeal. The gnostic element does not reserve them exclusively for specialists. They are for all humanity because, as the Tradition maintains, everyone contains a spark of the divine within himself or herself. There are many ways to access this part of ourselves, all of them demanding the long and difficult work of developing interior attention or mindfulness. Tradition uses many words for this practice: „watch‟, „pray‟, meditate, „awaken‟, „labour‟ and so on. Meditation as a spiritual discipline – maintaining attention on one‟s thoughts and inner energies – is a concept almost lost in our present culture whereas Bruegel, following Tradition and acknowledging its central importance uses events in the world as analogies for this inner spiritual activity. The ordered, expert work of maintaining the ship‟s trim – as it progresses from darkness to light – is an image of humanity‟s possibility for attentive and intelligent transformation of natural forces (fig. 9). The possibility of inner transformation, according to traditional mystical ideas, is equally a matter of active,

40 See above, p. 104. 41 See above, p. 263. 42 Englander et al. eds. „Latimer‟s Sermon on thje Ploughers, 1548‟ in Culture and Belief in Europe 1450- 1600, An Antholgy of Sources Oxford UK & Cammbridge USA: Blackwell, 1990

342 contemplative regulation of subtle energies. It is worth noting that from a tradition at least as old as the Catacombs in Rome, a ship sailing signified the human soul.43

Fig. 9

43 See for example, Burckhardt, T. op. cit. p.14

343 Chapter 11. Man’s Redemption: Spiritual Transformation The Marriage at Cana

Fig. 1. Peasant Wedding Feast, c. 1568, oil on wood, 114 x 164 cm (45 x 64 ½ in.), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

This is one of Bruegel‟s most widely known paintings, adorning classrooms around the world, lending itself to use on Christmas cards, jigsaw puzzles, calendars and table-mats.

Art historians suppose it to be a celebration of peasant festivity and greed and have seized on it as an example of the mention by van Mander, of Bruegel, together with his friend

Frans Frankert, going into the country disguised as peasants and passing themselves off as invités at such events. Van Mander implies that this was done for amusement and fitted

344 in with what was assumed to be Bruegel‟s love for „drollery.‟1 It is typically said of

Bruegel that „His paintings, including his landscapes and scenes of peasant life, stress the absurd and vulgar, yet are full of zest and fine detail. They also expose human weaknesses and follies. He was sometimes called the “peasant Bruegel” from such works as Peasant Wedding Feast‟.2 It has been suggested that the figure at the extreme right of the picture conversing with a monk may be the artist himself. All the details in the picture, as is typical of Bruegel, are minutely and accurately observed.

Analysis of this painting will propose that Bruegel saw human beings from the point of view of a student of the human condition viewed according to the blend of influences from mysticism, Gnosticism, philosophy and esoteric Christianity that we have called the

Perennial Philosophy. This interpretation aims to show that Bruegel studied humanity, not just because it was interesting and amusing, but because he believed that the highest philosophical and religious truths are found within the world of man and human behaviour.

In this wedding picture the bride is identifiable seated against a black wall-hanging on which a paper crown is suspended. Her identity is the only certain one in the picture. If it is no more than just a wedding feast the groom has not been convincingly identified.3 The absence of both Christ and his mother has precluded any historian from considering that the picture may be the Marriage at Cana though some commentators note the similarity of

1 See Introduction , p. 2. 2 Web Museum, Paris, http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/bruegel/ 3 Suggested candidates are the seated man at the end of the table passing plates from the two servers. Another is the prominent figure in the centre foreground who wears a blue shirt, red cap and white apron; yet another is the seated I figure in black next to him.

345 certain elements to the Cana theme but make no further investigation.4 Bruegel took gospel events that, for him, had significant hidden meaning and depicted them in a contemporary „realistic‟ setting and, as we have seen in his treatment of The Adoration of the Kings, he could use such a scene, changing it very little, to express an entirely unconventional interpretation. At the same time this new interpretation focuses on questions of spirituality at the heart of the human condition.

References have been made elsewhere in this work to a school of thought going back to

Origen at the dawn of the Christian era where an allegorical interpretation existed that saw in the events of the life of Christ, as described by the gospel writers, a meaning directly related to man‟s spiritual life: his struggle with inner forces encountered on the journey from human existence to eternal life. The method of allegorical interpretation of scripture passed from Hellenised Jewish philosophers and Neoplatonists in Alexandria in the first and second centuries to Christian theologians, such as Clement, Origen and

Augustine. The „allegorical method‟ was widely accepted as a means of interpretation from the earliest times and only disappeared after the Reformation, giving way to the literalism and fundamentalism of modern times.

This work will show that the account in Chapter 2 of St John‟s gospel – the story of water being turned into wine at a wedding in Cana where Jesus and his mother were present – has a long tradition in theological literature of being interpreted as an allegory; that the higher meaning of this story concerns the process by which human beings, through the

4 Hagen, R-M. and R. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1525-1569, Peasants, Fools and Demons. Taschen, 2000, p. 72ff. Also Wilfried Seipel ed., Pieter Bruegel the Elder at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Milan, 1998. p. 129.

346 agency of Christ and his mother, pass from temporal existence into Eternal Life. It has been shown in earlier parts of this thesis that Bruegel, through his connection with the

House of Love, was in contact with a tradition that can be linked back through the

Brethren of the Common Life and the New Devotion to Eckhart and the Perennial

Philosophy. Among the ancient writers both pagan and Christian in Eckhart‟s writings one of the most frequently cited is Augustine. Augustine himself said: „That which is called the Christian religion existed among the ancients and never did not exist from the beginning of the human race‟.5

Augustine says in his own commentary on the Marriage at Cana, in a passage that discusses the mystery of Jesus being both God and a man, that „he did it [changed water into wine] in our midst‟.6 He stresses the humanity of Christ and tells us to search for the deep hidden meaning of such events; „beyond all doubt … there is some mystery lurking here‟.7 It will be suggested in what follows that the occurrence of the mystery in our midst, as Augustine says, (i.e. among human beings,) is the key to Bruegel‟s pictorial study of the human condition, that for him humanity is the forum in which divine and earthly energies interact. We have seen in the painting of The Numbering at Bethlehem that the as yet unborn Jesus is present in the midst of humanity but unrecognized. The

Marriage at Cana, as theologians remind us, is the first miracle recounted in the Gospel and the point from which Christ‟s ministry to humanity begins. It is from this point that

5 Augustine Epistolae, Lib. 1. xiii

6 St. Augustine of Hippo, Lectures on the Gospel of John, Tractate 8, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1701.htm

7 ibid.

347 he begins to be known, though not by everyone. The gospel text tells us that „the servants knew‟ and implies that some knew and understood what was happening while others did not. From now on there are two types of human beings: those who „know Christ‟ in a mystical or esoteric sense, that is, who are capable of recognizing the higher or divine level in themselves, and those who do not. This distinction between human beings at different levels of spiritual awareness can be seen in images of the Cana miracle from the

Byzantine and Italian Gothic traditions.

Fig. 2. Mosaic from the Kariye Djami, Istanbul, c. 1340

In the 14th-century Constantinopolitan mosaic in the Church of the Chora (today known in Istanbul as the Kariye Djami) we see the prototype for subsequent medieval images that will be discussed here (fig. 2). The composition is made up of two separate groups, one with Christ, his mother and two apostles standing a little apart with restrained gestures and attitudes while the other group consists of two servants and the master of the feast busily occupied with fetching, pouring and serving the water turned into wine. We note the prominence in the foreground of the six stone water jars. There is neither bride

348 nor groom; there is no table or feasting and there are no guests. By stripping out all the narrative elements the artist gives only what is essential and relevant to the mystical meaning. This is emphasized by the building in the background whose symbolic function is to denote the enclosure of space and can be understood as a reference to an inner or psycho-spiritual location rather than a literal rendering of John‟s text; the event is taking place in what the Philokalia calls „the House of Spiritual Architecture‟.8

In Duccio‟s image (fig, 3), painted at about the same time the mosaic made by the

Constantinople master, there is a similar lack of concession to literalism and, though we are clearly witnessing a feast, the picture‟s rhythm is laconic and pervaded with an atmosphere of ritual and mystery. There is a contrast between the seven seated figures all of whom look or gesture towards Mary, and the livelier more informal movements of the servants and others (also seven in number) in the foreground. There are no obvious references to a wedding.

8 See R. Temple, Icons and the Mystical Origins of Christianity, Luzac, 2000, pp 135-143, for a discussion on „the house of spiritual architecture‟.

349 Fig. 3, Duccio (Siena, circa. 1255-1319)

Fig. 4, Giotto, 1267-1337)

In the fresco attributed to Giotto, the isolated contemplative figure at the centre of the composition next to Mary can be identified as the bride while the young man between

Christ and the bearded apostle is not necessarily identifiable as the groom, nor is the young man in green with his back to us. The person standing directly before Christ is probably a servant receiving instruction from Christ. The older man on the right may be

350 the master of the feast. Again, there is a contrast between the impassivity of those seated and the more animated figures in the foreground.

Fig. 5, Giusto de Menabuoi (1320-1391)

In Giusto de Menaubuoi‟s Florentine wall-painting Christ, together with apostles and apostle-like figures, and Mary, together with four women, all, as can be seen from their dress, from the highest order of society, have become „guests‟ (fig. 5). By their gestures and body language they express surprise while the servants, receiving instructions from

Christ, are active and busy. If the bride and groom are present it is not possible to identify who they are with any certainty.

The next painting (fig. 6), attributed to Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) or to his school, while clearly an image of the Cana miracle, breaks some of the established conventions and introduces new elements into the composition whose idea is not easy to fathom.

351 Fig. 6, Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516)

Again, there is a clear distinction between two different worlds. The six figures, who sit on the right hand and far side of the table, by their bearing, body-language and looks, belong to a different world to that inhabited by the others. But the artist has introduced unprecedented and odd features into the picture which, following Lynda Harris‟ analysis that will be considered below, suggest mystical or esoteric ideas that Bosch wanted to convey. We will return to this after briefly noting three paintings of the Renaissance era.

352 The roles of the participants in the Netherlandish painter Gerard David‟s idealised vision are differentiated in another way (fig. 7). Ten women, including Jesus‟ mother Mary and the bride, dominate the composition. David seems to show that everyone in the picture was a participant in the mystery and the sense of hidden meaning is present even if not all the figures can be clearly identified according to the gospel narrative. As in several of the preceding images the bride – modest, contemplative and contained – is the least doubtful after Christ and Mary. We cannot be sure of the two young servers in front of the table but their prominence at the centre of the circle suggests the same tradition that Bruegel drew on when he painted the two young men carrying a door laden with plates.

Fig. 7, Gerard David (1460-1523)

353 Fig. 8, Garofalo (Italian, 1481-1559)

Fig. 9, Tintorreto

Finally, we see in both Garofalo (Ferrara and Rome, 1481-1559, fig. 8), and the great

Tintorreto, (Venice; 1518-1594, fig. 9), both contemporaries of Bruegel, a new approach.

354 Here the tendency is for art to become a vehicle for the expression of the artist‟s individuality and skill. The subject of the picture is still religious but the sense of a mysterious allegory is giving way to a different emotional content, appealing to human sentiments and sensibilities. The painting is no longer an object of contemplation and spirituality. This trend is typical of the Renaissance, but this writer will endeavour to show that Bruegel was an exception, that he continued to express allegorical mysteries that are, at the same time, universal truths, but he concealed his grasp of the inner meaning by appearing to be no more than an observer of human behaviour and a master of realism. Schuon seems to have intuited this when he speaks of the „valid experiment of naturalism [which,] combined with the principles of normal and normalizing art, [and which] is in fact done by some artists‟. He points out that Renaissance art „does include some more or less isolated works which, though they fit into the style of the period, are in a deeper sense opposed to it and neutralize its errors by their own qualities‟. To give a specific example he further says: „of famous well-known painters the elder Brueghel‟s snow scenes may be quoted‟.9

***

The text for The Marriage at Cana is found only in the Fourth Gospel. There is a tradition in theology showing that deep meaning can be discovered in the symbolism of the story and its imagery. It was written later than the preceding three synoptic gospels

9 Schuon, F. Castes and Races, translated by Marco Pallis and Macleod Matheson, Bedfont Middlesex: Perennial Books, 1982, p. 87.

355 and has been universally acknowledged as belonging to a different category of spirituality. Clement of Alexandria (ca. 155-220) wrote that, “last of all, John, perceiving that the external facts had been made plain in the Gospel … and inspired by the Spirit, composed a spiritual Gospel”.10 John Chrysostom, the great Cappadocian bishop of the

4th century tells us that „We need much care, much watchfulness, to be able to look into the depth of the Divine Scriptures. For it is not possible to discover their meaning in a careless way or while we are asleep‟.11 When Augustine writes in his tractate on the

Marriage at Cana of „uncover[ing] the hidden meanings of the mysteries‟ he acknowledges the esoteric dimension of the story.12 He refers to the „garniture of heaven, the abounding riches of the earth … things which lie within the reach of our eyes‟ and compares them with another world: „these things indeed we see; they lie before our eyes.

But what of those we do not see, as angels, virtues, powers, dominions, and every inhabitant of this fabric which is above the heavens, and beyond the reach of our eyes‟.

Augustine is using the terminology of both Pagan and Christian Neoplatonists, in their elaborations the „Divine Ray‟ or the „Great Chain of Being‟.13

In the Authorised Version of the Bible the text is as follows:

[1] And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of

Jesus was there: [2] And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.

10 Cited by Steve Ray in http://www.envoymagazine.com/backissues/4.1/bible.htm 11 Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of John, HOMILY XXI). 12 St. Augustine of Hippo, Lectures on the Gospel of John, Tractate 8, http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1701.htm 13 Ibid. The reference to „angels, virtues, powers, dominions‟ is part of the specific language, later to be classified by Dionysius the Areopagite in the 6th century, for describing intermediate cosmic stages between man and God.

356 [3] And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no

wine. [4] Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is

not yet come. [5] His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto

you, do it. [6] And there were set there six waterpots of stone, after the manner of

the purifying of the Jews, containing two or three firkins apiece. [7] Jesus saith

unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim.

[8] And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast.

And they bare it. [9] When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made

wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;)

the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, [10] And saith unto him, Every

man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk,

then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.

At the literal level the episode is full of ambiguities. We are told nothing concerning the bride and the groom is only mentioned once. The exchange between Jesus and his mother is enigmatic. What is the meaning of the six-water pots and the excessive amount of wine

– more than 150 gallons – that appeared?14 From the vast amount written by theologians, a tradition can be identified that pertains to our proposal that Bruegel‟s treatment of the story is allegorical.

Earlier parts of this thesis aimed to establish the allegorical method at the foundations of the Perennial Philosophy. Summarising briefly it can be said that the method of

14 The Revised Standard Version (1952) gives „each holding twenty or thirty gallons‟. A firkin corresponds to the attic amphora that held approximately 9 gallons. See http://christiananswers.net/dictionary/dict- f.html.

357 allegorical interpretation of Scripture can be traced to the Jews in Alexandria who sought to accommodate the Old Testament Scriptures to Greek philosophy. Aristobulus and

Philo are the two great thinkers who worked in this way. Aristobulus, who lived around

160 B.C., held that Greek philosophy borrowed from the Old Testament, and that those teachings could be uncovered only by allegorizing. Philo (c. 20 B.C. - c. 54 A.D.) aimed to defend the Old Testament to the Greeks and, even more so, to fellow Jews. The

Christian Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 155-220) was influenced by Philo and proposed a system of interpretation where any passage of the Bible might have up to five meanings.

Thereafter, Origen, who studied Platonic philosophy and is thought to have been a pupil of Clement, as well as of the mysterious Ammonius Saccas, went so far as to say that

Scripture itself demands that the interpreter employ the allegorical method. Origen's interpretive approach had great influence on those who would follow in the Middle Ages, as did Augustine (354-430) who, like Philo, saw allegorization as a solution to Old

Testament problems.

The allegorical system of interpretation prevailed throughout most of the Middle Ages. It was in the 16th century that it was mostly rejected by the Protestant Reformers who forced the more literal interpretation of the Bible that has dominated Christian thought for the last four hundred years. Bruegel, living in the eye of the storm of the Reformation, with his knowledge of both Renaissance mystical philosophy and the Northern Schools of German and Flemish mysticism, appears to have worked to place the higher truths to which he had access into his paintings in the form of hidden allegories.

358 ***

Bearing in mind John Chrysostom‟s injunction to use „much care, much watchfulness, to be able to look into the depth of the Divine Scriptures‟ this writer offers the following material investigating the allegorical meaning of the Cana Miracle story.

The renowned German scholar Rudolf Schnackenburg, in his three-volume commentary on John‟s Gospel, comments concerning the Cana Miracle:

The first impression given by the narrative is that of a simple miracle-story. But

the mysterious words about the „hour‟ of Jesus, the lavish quantity of wine, the

final remark of the evangelist and indeed the whole purport of the story make it

clear that there is a deeper meaning behind the words of the narrative; and this

level of thought forms the real problem.15

The work of Matthew Estrada makes a significant contribution. He has written comprehensively on the Cana Miracle story where, according to him „almost every word and every phrase within the Cana miracle has a deeper level of meaning other than the literal‟.16 He explains: „Many of the insights that I offer in the interpretation of the Cana

Miracle have been suggested before by the scholars here and there, but no one … has attempted and succeeded at taking all of these “pieces”… and put them together to form a coherent whole so as to support an allegorical reading of the Cana Miracle.‟ His method of exposition depends on a close reading of the Greek to „show how almost every word and/or phrase has its origin from another source, and therefore has symbolic

15 Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel according to St John, vol. 2 (New York: Seabury, 1980), p. 323. 16 Matthew Estrada in his An Allegorical Interpretation of The Cana Miracle, unpublished pending revision and editing but available from the author: [email protected]

359 significance‟.17 His method is based on the discovery of John‟s sources in the language and imagery of the Old Testament. He systematically traces the Evangelist‟s use of key words – words whose allegorical meaning is sometimes openly given in the Old

Testament – which occur again in the gospel where people familiar with the Old

Testament would recognise them. Readers steeped in the imagery and language of the

Old Testament would recognise, at both conscious and unconscious levels, the implications of certain familiar or well-known words and phrases, or even whole set- piece scenes, whose significance is lost today.

An example of Estrada‟s word-parallelism, where he compares the first words of Genesis with the Prologue to John‟s gospel, gives an indication of his method:

“In the beginning  was the Word (

), and the Word ( ) was with

God ( ), and the Word was God

(). He was with God ( ) in the

beginning (). Through him all things

were made (); without him nothing

was made () that has been made (

). In him was life, and that life was

the light ( ) of men. The light (

17 Ibid. p. 10. „ John borrows words (“glory”, “stone”, “servants”) and themes (Old vs New, letter vs Spirit, Moses vs Christ, etc) from this source material (as well as other words and themes from other source materials), knowing that these words and themes would recall in the minds of his audience the familiar sources that he himself had turned to in order to compose his story‟. p. 52

360 ) shines in the darkness ( ),

but the darkness ( ) has not

understood it” (Jn 1:1-5).

He says:

It does not take a bible (sic) scholar to recognize that when John penned these

first few verses he was thinking about and alluding to the first chapters of Genesis

where we read about the First Creation story. Genesis 1:1-3 states:

“In the beginning () God ( )

created the heavens and the earth. Now the

earth was formless and empty, darkness

() was over the surface of the deep,

and the Spirit of God () was hovering

over the waters ( ). And God (

) said, „Let there be () light

(),‟ and there was () light ().

God ( ) saw that the light ( )

was good, and he separated the light (

) from the darkness (

).”18

18 Ibid, p. 13

361 And later he tells his readers:

By beginning his gospel with these allusions to the creation story in Genesis 1,

and in mimicking this first creation story by way of rhetorical imitation, John was

also telling his readers that a New Creation has begun in and through Jesus Christ.

It is this story of the New Creation that John is calling to the attention of his

readers. Again, he does so by alluding to the First Creation story. What John

hopes to accomplish by alluding to the First Creation story is to draw out parallels

between the First and Second Creation stories.19

Thus Estrada suggests that the Cana Miracle story, which begins the next chapter after the Prologue is actually part of the New Creation idea.20 If, as commentators since the third century have asserted, the fourth gospel is „a spiritual gospel‟, i.e. esoteric, the idea of New Creation has to be understood more as „an event in the soul‟ rather than an event in history. This essay contends that Bruegel expressed his vision of the Marriage at Cana through the understanding that all the events and the people involved in it represent psycho-spiritual energies interacting between the higher world and the plane of human existence. What Estrada has discovered supports this view.

On the identities of the bride and groom and on the symbolism of the wedding idea

Estrada provides arguments that „Mary … is being presented not only as the New Eve but

19 Ibid, p. 14 20 ibid, p. 14

362 also as the bride of Christ, and as such, is a symbolic figure for the collective people of

God‟.21

We should, then, understand Mary, first of all, as representing the New Eve who

is the mother of a New Creation, and secondly, as God‟s people of both the Old

and New Testaments ... For this reason John has her coming to Jesus with the

knowledge that He is the One who is able to supply the wine. An abundance of

wine was one of the characteristics of the messianic age that the Old Testament

prophets used to describe that age.22 Mary, in recognizing Jesus as the One who

could supply that wine, was, in effect, recognizing Jesus as the Messiah – the one

who would inaugurate that messianic age.

Chapter I of John‟s Gospel begins with the famous prologue; chapter II begins with the

Marriage at Cana. It is worth noting that the passage connecting the Prologue with the

Cana story23 is precisely about the recognition of Jesus. John the Baptist, who twice explains that he baptises only with water, says „but among you stands one whom you do not know‟, further he says „I myself did not know him‟.24

Here Estrada introduces ideas that relate to the „problem‟ in Bruegel‟s picture of the absence of an identifiable groom:

21 ibid, p. 20 22 cf. Joel 2: 19, 24; 3: 18; Amos 9: 13 23 ch. I; 19-51 24 Jn I, 31

363 A first piece of evidence among many that adds weight to the argument that Mary

is the bride and that Jesus is the groom in our Cana miracle is the fact that John

does not name in this story who the bride and bridegroom are. John has

purposefully left the identification of the bride and bridegroom ambiguous so that

his readers could wonder who they were, and in their wonderment, consider the

possibility of Jesus as the bridegroom and the Church as the bride.

A second piece of evidence [suggesting that] Mary is the bride and Jesus the

bridegroom is found in the very first two verses of our Cana miracle – what I call

a “miniature inclusio”. There we read:

“On the third day there was a wedding

() at Cana in Galilee. Jesus‟ mother

was there, and Jesus and His disciples had

also been invited to the wedding ().”

Between the twice-repeated word “wedding” we find sandwiched together the

mother of Jesus, Jesus and His disciples. These are the participants in the

wedding.25 Mary is the bride and Old Testament Church, Jesus is the groom, and

the disciples, as we shall see, are the New Testament Church and future

“children” (results) of this marriage.

25 My emphasis

364 On the symbolism of famine imagery and Jesus‟ remark to his mother „Woman

what have I to do with thee?‟ Estrada argues:

What then does John … wish to communicate … when he emphasizes, by stating

… that there is no wine? ... what John is alluding to is a “famine situation”... not a

lack of any physical need. It is rather a lack of a spiritual need.26

He further suggests that „we can first look at a third source material that he used as found in Jn. 2:4a: “Woman, what between me and you?” (   , )”. This phrase is taken from I Kings 17. This is a story in which God sends a drought, and as a consequence of the drought, a famine. Elijah miraculously provides for a widow and her son until the drought has ended. Later on, the woman‟s son becomes sick, and dies. The woman then says to Elijah: “What between me and you (   ), man of God

(  )? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?”27 Elijah then takes the son to the upper room, stretches himself out on top of him three times, and the boy‟s life returns to him.

John, chose to borrow [from I Kings 17] … the phrase “What between me and

you?” (   ) and employ it in his own story … Even as Elijah

supplied for this woman‟s need in time of drought, so too will Jesus supply for the

“woman‟s” need in time of famine (the wine that is lacking).

26 Ibid. p. 32 ff 27 I Kings 17:18

365 But the symbolic implications go further. „Even as Elijah brought back the son‟s life, after she was reminded of her sin … so, too, shall the Son give his life for the sins of the people and yet live again after being dead for three days.‟

In Genesis 41:55 we have a famine situation.28 The people are in need, and … cry

out to Pharaoh [who] directs them to Joseph with these words: “Go to Joseph and

do what he tells you”. John, in wanting to present his readers with a “spiritual”

famine … recalled this … story, and thus found this phrase useful … “Do

whatever he tells you”. By indirectly quoting Genesis 41:55, John alludes to this

story and thereby conveys the famine theme … to his own readers … So, too, are

we presented with a famine situation in our Cana miracle (there is a shortage of

wine twice repeated in Jn. 2:3).

Estrada continues, in further support of his argument that John was intentionally alluding to Genesis 41:55 in his use of the phrase “Do whatever he tells you”, saying that we have two other source materials used by John in the Cana miracle that also contain within them a famine situation.

In Amos 8:11-12, we read:

„The days are coming,‟ declares the Sovereign Lord, „when I will send a

famine () through the land- not a famine () of food or a thirst

28 “The seven years of abundance in Egypt came to an end, and the seven years of famine () began, just as Joseph had said. There was a famine () in all the other lands, but in the whole land of Egypt there was food. When all Egypt began to feel the famine…” Genesis 41:55

366 for water, but a famine () of hearing the words of the Lord

( ). Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching () for the word of the

Lord (), but they will not find () it‟.

In Amos 9:13-14 we read:

„The days are coming,‟ declares the Lord, „when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes.

New wine () will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills. I will bring back my exiled people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine (); they will make gardens and eat their fruit.‟

Amos speaks of a famine that would come upon the people of Israel, but not a famine of food or water but rather a famine of the words of the Lord.

The nature of the famine that John is presenting to his readers is a famine of

“hearing the words ( ) of the Lord”. Amos prophecies that the people are “searching for the word ( ) of the Lord, but they will not find it …

In opening his gospel in this way, John is presenting his readers with what the people of his time were “starving for” – the Word of God.

367 Estrada finds arguments to demonstrate that the Cana Miracle is a symbolic story of Jesus „marrying the people of God via his death and resurrection … [It] is a symbolic story of Jesus both uniting and transforming the dispensation of the Law and the Prophets into the dispensation of the Holy Spirit‟.29 He goes on to tell us that the word „water‟ (referred to by John on 15 occasions) symbolizes „the Law and the Prophets‟ in other words the earlier or preparatory stage (the Old

Testament), „the Father's means of revelation‟ to be completed by the recognition of Christ as the fulfilment (the New Testament). Further symbolic meaning is suggested when we learn that Moses‟ name means „drawn from the water‟.30 In the Synoptic gospels John the Baptist proclaims that he came baptizing with water.31

29 p. 11 30 „And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water‟. Ex 2: 10 (AV) 31 Mt 3: 11; Mk 1: 8; and Lk 3: 16

368

The same author shows that the word ‘wine’ in John 2 symbolizes ‘the dispensation of the Holy Spirit’, and that it alludes to specific Old Testament texts.31 Performing such function, it further alludes to the prophecy in Joel,32 which speaks of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It is from Joel that John draws the symbolic meaning ‘spirit’ for the word ‘wine’. ‘An abundance of wine was one of the characteristics of the messianic age that the Old Testament prophets used to describe that age’. A further hint is given by Luke in Acts 2, where he reveals his knowledge of John's Cana Miracle allegory. There Luke plays on the word ‘wine’ as symbolizing ‘the Holy Spirit’ when he quotes the multitude mockingly saying of the apostles ‘they are filled with new wine’. He immediately recounts how Peter, quoting Joel to refute this, says ‘God declares, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh’.33

The mysterious bride in Bruegel’s painting may be accounted for by the idea offered by Estrada that the ‘mother of Jesus’, also referred to as ‘woman’ in the

Cana story, symbolizes both the New Eve who gives birth to the New Adam, and the Old Testament people of God who, as Mary, give birth to Jesus and believe in him. ‘Mary, therefore, is being presented not only as the New Eve but also as the

31 Amos 9: 13-14, Joel 1: 5, 10; 2: 19, 24; and 3: 18 32 Joel 2: 28-32 33 Acts 2; 13-17

369 bride of Christ, and as such, is a symbolic figure for the collective people of

God’34.

Summarizing, we can say that the case is built on the idea that the dispensation of

Law and the Prophets – the Old Testament – is signified by water and that the dispensation of the Holy Spirit – the New Testament – is signified by wine. The miracle whereby Jesus marries Mary, (the New Eve, the people of God) unites and transforms the old with the new and this is signified by the changing of water into wine.

We now come to the idea of the necessity for the ‘water’ to be changed into ‘wine’ because both John the Baptist and Moses, who are identified with ‘water’, are personifications of the old order – ‘the Law and the Prophets’. The Cana ‘marriage’, where ‘water’ is changed in to ‘wine’, brings into being the ‘new’ which replaces the

‘old’. It is the metaphor for an inner process, a mystical transformation of being.

Augustine is saying something similar when he states that ‘For the bridegroom … to whom it was said, ‘Thou hast kept the good wine until now’, represented the person of the Lord. For the good wine – namely, the gospel – Christ has kept until now’.35 If the

Byzantine mosaicist and his Late Gothic contemporaries were following this tradition, it would account for the absence in their pictures of an obvious groom figure. In Bruegel’s picture the absence of an obvious Christ figure does not necessarily mean that the painting does not represent the events of Jn 2, nor even that Christ is absent; he can be

34 Estrada, p. 20

35 Augustine, op. cit, p. 9

370 mysteriously present ‘represented in the person’ of someone else, perhaps one of the figures at the centre of the painting. Bruegel’s method corresponds with what we have already seen in other paintings: by slightly adapting the standard imagery he invites his viewers to contemplate the story’s mystical meaning rather than what had by then become conventional and superficial.

Bruegel seems to be following St Augustine who advises his readers:

to uncover the hidden meanings of the mysteries … In the ancient times there was

prophecy … But the prophecy, since Christ was not understood therein, was water

… Prophecy … was not silent concerning Christ; but the import of the prophecy

was concealed therein, for as yet it was water … And how did He make of the

water wine? ... He opened their understanding … we are now permitted to seek

Christ everywhere, and to drink wine from all the water-pots.36

There is then a tradition, traceable to John Chrysostom, Jerome, and Augustine in the fourth century, but probably older, uncovered by Matthew Estrada, symbolized in the

Cana Marriage as an allegorical mystery. This view has been touched on by theologians and commentators within the mainstream churches. But in the 16th century, to have gone further, as Estrada does, would have amounted to declaring in favour of Gnosticism. The allegorical writings of Hendrick Niclaes were just this as has been shown earlier in this thesis. And this was the position in the 15th and 16th centuries of the non-orthodox traditions with which Hieronymus Bosch and Peter Bruegel were almost certainly

36 Augustine, op. cit., pp. 11-14

371 associated. One would expect that a Gnostic view, whether in the third century or in the forms Gnosticism took in the 16th century, would be regarded by the church as heretical and, according to Lynda Harris it is into this category that Hieronymus Bosch’s Marriage at Cana, painted circa 1500, falls.37

Fig. 10. Bosch (1450-1516)

37 Lynda Harris, The Secret Heresy of Hieronymus Bosch, Floris Books, Edinburgh, 1985

372 Harris analyses Bosch’s painting of the Marriage at Cana in Rotterdam calling it ‘The

Union of Soul and Spirit’ with the subtitle of the ‘Spiritual Marriage’.38 The six figures at the table ‘are participating at a solemn ceremony, and pay no attention to the worldly feast that surrounds them’. They are enacting a ‘genuine religious ritual’ in contradistinction to ‘the heresy and corruption of Satan’s realm’ to which the other figures belong. She continues:

The six celebrants of this private rite all sit more or less facing a seventh figure.

This seventh figure is small, youthful and unidentified in gender. Nevertheless it

is clearly very important. It faces the bride, with its back to the viewer. It holds a

chalice in its right hand, and raises its left in some sort of ceremonial greeting. It

wears a garland and a brocaded robe and stands next to an empty throne.

This small but richly dressed child is extremely difficult to explain in terms of

traditional Christian theology. What is its significance and why is it so little and

so young? Looked at from the point of view of Catharism, its meaning becomes

more clear. The Cathar and Manichean records tell us repeatedly that the fallen

angels left their attributes of garland (or crown), robe and throne behind in the

Lord of Light when they descended to Earth. These attributes would only be

regained by the souls after they had reunited once again with their spirits. The

way to achieve this reunion was through spiritual baptism or marriage. It therefore

follows that, while Bosch’s bride represents the initiate, the small and youthful

figure which has recovered its attributes of robe, garland and throne represents her

newly baptized soul. In medieval depictions of death and dying, the soul is often

38 Spiritual marriage refers to a Cathar tenet of belief and practice. See Harris, op. cit.

373 shown as a child which is separated from the adult body. In Bosch’s painting the

bride is not on her deathbed, but her newly saved soul is a key player in the

events, and is therefore depicted as a separate figure.

Comparing the two paintings – Bosch’s Marriage at Cana, which we can assume Bruegel knew, and his so-called Peasant Wedding, which, we are arguing, is in fact a Marriage at

Cana – we see in the latter painting a diminutive figure (fig. 12), also opposite the bride, that in some ways reminds us of the ‘soul’ figure in Bosch’s work (fig. 11). We have seen in The Numbering at Bethlehem, and in The Road to Calvary how Bruegel characteristically hides or understates what is, for him, the important idea. In his picture the child wears no regalia, makes no gesture and there is no throne. Yet we feel that

Bruegel, in placing the figure near the centre of the composition, opposite the bride, and in emphasising the silhouette of the face against the white tablecloth, invites us to consider its meaning.

Fig. 11 Fig. 12

374 If this child has the hidden significance we are suggesting he may throw light on the second child seated in the foreground whose meaning has not been satisfactorily explained. Although Bruegel hid or disguised his ideas, he often also drew attention to them by repetition (the closed window, the two magpies etc., for example in The

Numbering at Bethlehem). The repetition of the child in a different guise and placed directly below the first invites us to see a connection. Both figures are on the same vertical line that divides the picture by the proportion of (approx) 6:15. It can be mentioned that in Western tradition the peacock signifies the Resurrection and eternal life.

Fig. 13

The figure of the bride has been described as expressing ‘stupid peasant bliss’ but this idea could only work if the picture was no more than a realistically observed bucolic feast

(fig. 13). But if there is a mystery here and this ‘bride’ is at its mystical centre, then we may try to understand the figure in the light of its obvious characteristics. This is a woman inwardly concentrated and deeply contained within herself; she has the appearance of someone in a state of meditation. She is one of the personages in the picture who, like the figures in Giotto’s or Bosch’s works, belongs to ‘another world’.

375 In the other paintings examined, it can be seen that Bruegel treats separately certain individuals who appear to exist on a different level from those who belong to the general run of humanity and who are wholly caught up in the carnal world. These are often the holy personages of the story: Christ, his mother and the apostles in for, example, The

Road to Calvary. In the painting under discussion a similar distinction exists but since

Christ, his mother and the apostles are not present (or not obviously present), the distinguishing „presence‟ of a higher level of being had to be transferred to others.

Fig. 14

A special role in the story is played by „the servants‟ who „knew‟ („but the servants which drew the water knew‟). One of these is the figure, given prominence in the foreground on the left, who is engaged in pouring from a large jug into a smaller one (fig.14). This has

376 been described to as „almost certainly beer‟ but its appearance and colours could also be interpreted as water becoming wine. What is striking is the attitude of the water/wine pourer and the special atmosphere around him which is in contrast to the movement and energy everywhere else in the picture. From the look on his face, from the absence of agitation in his movement, from the prominence in the picture that the artist gives him and from his careful, attentive stance, the onlooker can sense that this man knows what he is doing and why he does it. A recurring theme in Bruegel‟s later paintings is one that appears to refer to different levels of awareness, to the different states of consciousness of the participants. The idea that some are spiritually awake while the majority sleep is perhaps most evident in Bruegel‟s painting of The Road to Calvary where Mary and her entourage are shown in an entirely different light from all the others. In the Cana painting the water/wine pourer is placed away from the main action almost as if he belonged to another picture much as Mary and her group are placed outside the wheel of life in The

Road to Calvary.

What then of the group given such prominence by Bruegel in the foreground on the right?

(fig. 15)

377 Fig. 15

There are two diagonal thrusts in the picture and at the point at which they intersect the movement of the delivery of food changes direction. The seated man handing plates of food from the improvised tray provides the axis for this new direction. Bruegel has gone to considerable lengths to show him in a pivotal position: his arms form a right angle through which the movement passes and this abrupt change of direction through ninety

378 degrees is energised not only by the thrust of his arms but also by the stance of his legs.

His left foot, which appears beneath the improvised tray next to the right foot of the red- coated carrier, shows that he has placed his legs wide apart so as to give extra stability to the twist of his movement.

Fig. 16

Yet his face (fig. 16) shows that he too is composed and attentive. Of all the faces in the picture only this man and the water/wine pourer express such a lack of inner agitation. It is not the same as the look of the bride which seems to be that of concentrated prayer or meditation. These men are involved in external activity while maintaining an interior regard on themselves.

The same may be true of the young man in a blue coat and a white apron that is the dominant figure of the composition (figs. 17, 17a).

379 Fig. 17 Fig. 18

Here we do not see his face but we see that his attention is focused and not distracted by random thoughts. The stance of his body, leaning slightly forward with knees bent, his sure grip on the pole, together with his alert look, betoken a state of self-composed awareness and confidence that most others do not have. All three in this group have an air of assurance as they go about their business. It can be seen that they are reliable and trustworthy in a way that the bagpiper obviously is not. The bagpiper (figs. 18, 18a), by contrast, dreams about something he cannot have, he is placed in the composition so as to represent the opposite state of the server. With sagging knees and slack jaw, his face expressing that his inner attention is lost to dreams, he is a victim figure who cannot participate in the event taking place that could bring about a change in his level of being

380 – the inner transformation signifying the passage from spiritual sleep to active attention and consciousness, a transition as miraculous as the changing of water into wine.

Fig. 17a Fig. 18a

We have seen in The Fall of Icarus how Bruegel plays on the contrasting states of consciousness of two figures – the good ploughman and the bad shepherd – by placing them in a significant relationship to each other in the composition. An echo of this device can be seen The Peasant Wedding/Marriage at Cana in the figures of the blue-coated, white-aproned server and the bagpiper.

381 It may be that Bruegel took the bagpiper from the figure on the platform above the servants in Bosch‟s Marriage at Cana. The bagpipes, in Bosch‟s world, according to one scholar, represent the „vacant gut, stuffed full of fear and hope‟ around which the „jigging masquerade‟ turns on the „disc of the world‟ … „For the vacant, spectre-like existence of

Goethe‟s “Philistine” is inflated now by fear and now by hope, so too these bagpipes are idle nothingness, blowing and squeaking only as long as living breath inflates the bag, and wretchedly collapsing as soon as the breath fails.‟39

If the first food-bearer represents man awake and the bagpiper represents man asleep,

Bruegel introduces between these two the figure of a man at the moment of awakening.

At the very centre of the picture is a man in a black coat who Bruegel, by placing him in a central position, may intend us to see as the master of the feast. He has just tasted the wine and he reacts with astonishment. Something extraordinary has happened that jerks

39 Fränger, op. cit. p. 69

382 his body back and his head up in amazement while in his eyes appears a look of recognition.

He seems to see, with melting face and softening eyes, the answer to a great longing. It is as though a never-dared-for hope could at last be fulfilled.

In this work there is a distinction between the world of self-realized, enlightened beings and the world of those entirely caught on the „wheel of life‟. A similar distinction is indicated, as has been discussed, in Bruegel‟s Road to Calvary and it is a feature of early representations of the Marriage at Cana. The language of sacred scripture speaks of those who are awake and those who are asleep; those who see and those who are blind. Basing his thought on the allegorical sense of the miracle of the changing of water into wine,

Bruegel is telling us via his painting about the process of transition from the one state to the other. Here is the real miracle whose meaning hides within the symbolic miracle: the

„awakening‟ from spiritual sleep, or „resurrection‟ from spiritual death. The traditional symbolism and allegory of religious myth and legend refers to this. It is a central theme of the Perennial Philosophy and the ultimate challenge for Man – the transition from existence in time and in the body to existence in eternity. Conventional religion, when it becomes pseudo religion, helps us avoid confronting this idea by encouraging us to believe that heaven and hell belong to the afterlife. The view of Tradition holds that these

383 places are here and now; they are „states of being‟ as Coomaraswamy puts in „within ourselves‟.40 The mystical meaning of the Marriage at Cana then is about the meeting between the two opposed aspects of Man‟s nature: an alchemical mystery concerning the joining of otherwise irreconcilable forces; the joining, in man, of the human and the divine.

The uniting of these two opposites needs the intervention of a third, or „reconciling‟ force symbolised in the action of Jesus. The idea of three and the idea of (mystical) union are inferred in the first sentence of the gospel text: „And the third day there was a marriage.‟

Synthesis overcomes duality to give birth to manifestation. Three, according to ancient

Pythagorean and Hermetic ideas and again at the heart of Renaissance mysticism, „is the first number to which the meaning “all” was given. It is the Triad, being the number of the whole as it contains the beginning, middle and end. In the Pythagorean tradition three means harmony, completion, the world of matter.41 In Christianity it represents the

Trinity. The opening line of the Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean (Tablet 11)

„Three is the mystery, come from the great one‟.42

40 A. Coomaraswamy, The Bugbear of Literacy. Sophia Perennis; Revised edition (June 1979) 41 See Peter Gorman, Pythagoras; A Life. London; Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979. p.143 42 http://www.crystalinks.com/numerology2.html

384

Conclusion

The aim of this thesis has been to show Bruegel was among a group of mystics and humanist philosophers in the 16th-century who believed in and actively sought the universal philosophical truth common to both ‘pagans’ and Christians and not exclusively the preserve of the churches. Belief, however, was not the means whereby what they sought – transformation in the soul – might take place; rather, knowledge and practice were required.

Although I have used the modern term Perennial Philosophy to refer to this truth, I have shown that the concept existed since Plato – though Plato himself acknowledged that it was older – and was central to Renaissance humanist thinking. The verities of the

Perennial Philosophy have no formal doctrine or practical structure. They are partly hidden from the rational mind and from the sense faculties and require a special initiation from those who seek them. That initiation is through self-knowledge – the insight gained through the daily practice of contemplative prayer and the inner journey from ‘Ignorance’ to ‘Spiritual Peace’.

385 The Antwerp truth-seekers, whether they were followers of Hendrik Niclaes, Sebastian

Franck or others, were not an isolated phenomenon; they were not a misguided aberration, ‘religious libertines’, as historians have sometimes seen them. Their teachers had not sprung from nowhere as is demonstrated by the influence on them of the Imitatio

Christi and the Theologica Germanica and, beyond those, by Meister Eckhart. And, antecedent to Eckhart, as this thesis has shown, several lines of transmission concerning knowledge of the laws of the universe (the macrocosm) and their counterpart in man (the microcosm) can be traced from antiquity to the Reformation.

The principal method for the transmission of wisdom is oral since by words alone – that is, words in books – a writer cannot take into account the state of being or the level of knowledge of his reader. In sacred tradition both the one who transmits and the one who receives need to be aware each other’s psychological, emotional and intellectual state and the teacher needs to be aware of the degree of the disciple’s preparedness. Compatibility has to be established before spiritual exchange can take place – hence the symbolism of marriage.

The great works of art, architecture and music produced according to the principles of perennial wisdom are sacred art in the true sense. Works of sacred literature too, belong to this category for, according to the tradition, sacred knowledge cannot be transmitted in books other than symbolically which is why the books of the Bible or, for example, Terra

Pacis, should be treated as esoteric and not as history. The research done by Titus

Burckhardt on gothic cathedrals or Schwaller de Lubitch on Egyptian temples, to give

386 examples from many such workers in this field, shows how elaborate programmes of universal knowledge are conveyed in allegorical ways. If Bruegel’s paintings belong to this tradition – as this thesis has demonstrated – then Bruegel himself was an initiate of a philosophical school that vouchsafed hidden knowledge which he, in an unknown way, succeeded in expressing in his art. We can see the uniqueness of this achievement when we compare his pictures with those of Peter Brueghel the Younger whose copies skillfully reproduce the style and the compositions of the father. They reproduce the form but they are empty of content.

Behind Bruegel the painter is Bruegel the spiritual master tracing out the journey of the seeker through three stages of endeavour. The first, illustrated by The Numbering at

Bethlehem, The Adoration of the Kings and The Massacre of the Innocents, reveals what the practitioner of spiritual life experiences at first hand through practices that lead to self-knowledge: that our human condition is one of spiritual darkness, the title of Chapter

9. This stage corresponds to what the Greek fathers called Praktikos: ‘mastering the knowledge of the inner self’.

Chapter 10, looking at The Road to Calvary, The Harvesters and The Fall of Icarus, shows how Bruegel introduces us to the means for man’s possible escape from darkness.

He must engage in spiritual work; the labour of planting seed and growing corn enable man to eat bread – all this being an allegory for spiritual work, the title of Chapter 10.

This stage corresponds to what the Greek fathers called Theoretikos: the beginning of vision or ‘seeing’.

387

Chapter 11 deals with the incomprehensible mystery of transformation, the ‘marriage’ or the perfect union of God and man, the goal of mystical ascent. This stage corresponds to what the Greek fathers called Gnostikos: ‘knowing’.1

Finally, it is not a question of whether Bruegel was a member of the Hendrick Niclaes’

Family of Love or of Barrefeld’s Hiël group, or whether he was a pupil of Sebastian

Franck or of Agostino Steuco’s school in Rome. Neither is it a question whether he practiced Christianity as a Catholic or a Protestant. We have seen that the Familist association is the likely main influence on his spiritual life and that the present state of knowledge does not permit us to be categorically certain due to lack of documents. But that is not the important question. All these groups – including even, in its inner essence, the Church – express aspects of primordial truth and it is from this universal and timeless primordial tradition – the Perennial Philosophy – that Bruegel speaks to us.

1 These terms: praktikos, theoretikos, gnostikos, are from John McGuckin, The Book of Mystical Chapters: Meditations of the Soul's Ascent from the Desert Fathers and Other Early Christian Contemplatives, Boston and London, 2002.

388 Appendix

Text of TERRA PACIS and commentary relating to ideas of the Perennial Philosophy and to paintings by Peter Bruegel.

N.B. This writer has kept the 17th century spelling.

The Spiritual Land of Peace

Look and behold: there is in the world a very unpeaceable Land and it is the

wildernessed land wherein the most part of all uncircumcised, impenitent and

ignorant people do dwell and in which is, the first of all needful for the man; to

the end that he may come to the Land of Peace and the City of Life and Rest.

The same unpeaceable land hath also a City, the name of which they that dwell

therein do not know, but only those who are come out of it, and it is named

Ignorance.

The people that dwell therein know not their original or first beginning; also they

keep not any Genealogy or Pedigree; neither do they know from whence, or how,

they came into the same. And moreover then, that they are altogether blinde, and

blinde-born.

389

The forementioned city, named Ignorance, hath two Gates. The one standeth in

the North, or Midnight, through the which men go into the city of darkness or

ignorance.

This gate now, that standeth to the North, is very large and great, and hath also a

great door, because there is much passage through the same; and it hath likewise

his name, according to the nature of the same city.

Foreasmuch as that men do come into Ignorance through the same gate, therefore

it is named Men Do Not Know How to Do. And the great door, wherethrough the

multitude do run is named Unknown Error; and there is else no coming into the

City named Ignorance.

The other gate standeth on the one side of the City, towards the East or Spring of

the Day, and the same is the Narrow Gate, through the which, men travel out of

the city and do enter into the Straight Way which leadeth to Righteousness.

Now when one travelleth out through the same Gate, then doth he immediately

espie some Light, and that same reacheth to the Rising of the Sun.

Here the symbolism, taking up the theme of the ‘bread of life’, i.e. spiritual nourishment, employs the images of ‘corn’ and ‘seed’ whose esoteric meaning was discussed earlier

390 and which will be met again in the paintings by Bruegel of the Harvest and the

Ploughman (Fall of Icarus).1 The importance of spiritual nourishment – or rather the lack of it – is discussed in the section dealing with the Peasant Wedding Feast (Marriage at

Cana) where the lack of wine is shown to correspond, by rhetorical imitation, with famine imagery in the Old Testament where the sense is that of ‘famine for the word of

God’.

In this land of Ignorance, for the food of men, there groweth neither corn nor

grass. The people of this land live in confusion or disorder and are very diligent in

their unprofitable work and labor. And although their work be vain or

unprofitable yet hath everyone notwithstanding a delightful liking to the same.

Forasmuch as they all have such a delight to such unprofitable work, so forget

they to prepare the Ground for Corn and Seed to live thereby. And so they live not

on the manly food but by their own dung, for they have no other food to live by,

for their stomach and nature is accustomed and naturally inclined thereto.

They make there diverse sorts of Puppet works for Babies for to bring up the

children to vanity. There are made likewise many kinds of Balls, Tut-staves, or

Kricket-staves, Rackets and Dice; for the foolish people should waste or spend

their time therewith in foolishness.

1 See above p. 106 ff and pp. 317 and 332.

391 There be made also Playing Tables, Draft-boards, Chess-boards, Cards and

Mummery or Masks, for to delight the idle people with such foolish vanity. There are made likewise many Rings, Chains, and Gold and Silver Tablets and etc … all unprofitable and unneedful merchandise.

They build there likewise divers houses for common assembly, which they call

Gods houses; and there use many manner of foolishness of taken on Services which they call religious or godservices whereby to wave or hold forth something in shew before the ignorant people.

In this manner are the vain people bewitched with these things, wherethrough they think or perswade themselves that their godservices, and knowledges, which they themselves do make, or take on in their hypocrisie, that must needs be some holy or singular thing, and so honor the works of their own hands.

They make there also many Swords, Halberds, Spears, Bows and Arrows,

Ordinance or Guns, Pellets, Gunpouder, Armor or Harness, and Gorgets and etc., for that the tyrannical oppressors, and those that have a pleasure in destroying, should use war and battel, therewithal, one against the other.

392 This could be a description of part of Bruegel’s Adoration of the Kings (1564) in the

National Gallery.2 There the imagery of swords, halberds and etc., conveys the corrupt state of the world in contrast to the purity of the innocent naked Christ child.

The people of this strange land have strange names, according to their nature. As

their nature is such are their names written upon them. Whosoever can read the

writing let him consider thereon. They are gross letters; whoso hath but a little

sight and understanding, he may read them, whose names are there.

Highmindedness, Lust of the Eyes, Stoutness, Pride, Covetousness, Lust or Desire

to Contrariness, Vanity or Unprofitableness, Unnaturalness, Undecentness,

Masterfulness, Mocking, Scorning, Dallying, Adultery or Fornication,

Contemning, Lying, Deceiving, Variance, Strife and Contention, Vexing, Self-

seeking, Oppression, Indiscreetness, etc.

Identically named people are to be seen populating any of Bruegel’s ‘crowd scenes’, in particular the Numbering at Bethlehem (1566) in Brussels which has already been discussed and the Road to Calvary (1564) in Vienna.3

Their dealings or manner of life is also variable; for now they take on something,

then they leave somewhat else; now they be thus led, then they be so driven; now

they praise this, then they dispraise that. So, to be short, they are always

inconstant.

2 Seep. 277 for a discussion of this painting.. 3 See above pp. 30 and 302.

393

Their Religions or godservice is called the Pleasure of Men. Their doctrine and

ministration is called Good Thinking. Their King is called the Scum of Ignorance.

Which could well describe the kings in Bruegel’s Adoration.4

Whosoever findeth himself in this dark land full of ignorance and desireth to go

out of it, and forsake the same, and hath a good liking towards the good land of

Rest and Peace; he must go through the other gate that lieth towards the East, that

is named Fear of God.

But in travelling forward upon the Way for to come to the good land of Peace, so

do the perils first make manifest themselves. Therefore must the Traveller keep a

diligent watch in the said grace of the Lord; otherwise he becometh hindered and

deceived upon the Way. So we will mark out both the perils of seduction, and also

the means unto preservation for that no man should err upon the Way, nor be

seduced or deceived by any false ends.

Here the text describes how the traveler has to pass the first three stages of his journey: 1.

Fear of God; 2. Beginning of Wisdom; 3. Grace of the Lord in the Confession of Sins.

But he is still ‘young’ and needs instruction form the wise Elders of the Family of Love.

There are two instructors. One is described as outwardly having a form that is

4 See above, p. 273.

394

… not very amiable or pleasant (according to the minds of the flesh) to behold,

nor yet his sayings and counsels to be obeyed, because that he is contrary to all

minds and knowledge of the flesh (notwithstanding, if the traveller have no regard

for him, neither daily receive any counsel of him unto obedience, nor yet follow

his counsel, then shall he not come to the Rest). And he is named the Law or

Ordinance of the Lord.

The other wise one cometh before him out of the thoughts of mans good thinking,

to draw him away from the Way that directeth to the Land of the Living. And his

form is sweet and friendly (according to the minds flesh) to behold, and his

sayings and counsels delightful. And he is named the Wisdom of the Flesh.

These two wise ones do give the traveller several counsels.

The traveller who abjures the Wisdom of the Flesh and who accepts the discipline of the

Law or Ordinance of the Lord receives ‘two instruments’: a compass called the

Forsaking of Himself for the Good Lifes Sake. The other instrument overcomes temptation and hindrance and it is called Patience or Suffrance.

Now the text gives instructions about ‘meate and drink’ which are the body and blood of

Jesus Christ. The traveler accepts to find himself on the Cross from whence comes

395 … the death and burial of all the lusts and desires of the sinful flesh and all the flesh’s

wisdom or good thinking.

Again, this should not be understood literally but seen as the transition from the material to the spiritual, the soul’s liberation from its entanglement in the world.5

Now the ‘traveller’, following the counsel of the Law of the Lord, finds himself

…in an unpathed land where many manner of temptations and deceits do meet

with him, and coming into the same there appeareth unto him immediately a star

out of the East, named Belief and Hope. This great unpathed land is named Many

manner of Wanderings. And there is not one plain paved way.

The names of the Travellers are:

Stricken in Heart, Cumbered in Minde, Wofulness, Sorrowfulness, Anguish, Fear,

Dismaidness, Perplexitie, Uncomfortablness, Undelightfulness, Heavy-

mindedness, Many Manner of Thoughts, Dead Courage.

This is reminiscent of the group consisting of Jesus’ mother and her entourage in the foreground of Bruegel’s Road to Calvary (1566) in Vienna. There we see the expressing just these emotions while the vast crowd constituting the main descriptive parts of the picture are oblivious and display all the characteristics, described by H. N., of those who

5 See especially À Kempis, ‘On the Royal Road of the Holy Cross’, op. cit. pp. 84-89.

396 live in the Land of Ignorance or, as he says elsewhere, the ‘Land of Abomination and

Desolation’.6

This land is an open and weak, or unwalled land; and is like unto a barren

wilderness, wherein there is little joy to be found; but it is full of perils and

deceits, because of the sundry sorts of temptations that do come to Travellers

through perplexitie.

For if they (according to the Law of the Lord) have not a sharp watch unto the

compass, nor hold them fast on the Cross, and also do not still mark the leading

star, then they may soon be led into a by-way. For the wisdom of the flesh doth

also come forth there oftentimes very subtilly, with her self-seeking, to point the

traveller aside. But the traveller that passeth through the land of Mortyfying and,

abstaining from all things, in patience, and seeketh not his own selfness; but

(under the obedience of the Love) hath a much more desire to do the Lords will,

he obtaineth a good salvation of the peaceable life. He shall be saved and rejoyce

in the Everlasting Life.

Moreover, in this land, there is no perfect satisfying of hunger and thirst to be

found, nor come by. For the herb wherewith they be sustained, and the fountain

wherewith they be refreshed, do make them still the longer and more hungry and

thirsty: as long as they are travelling towards the good Land of Peace.

6 See above, p. 302.

397

Here the writer openly reveals the meaning of the available food.

The Herb wherewith the travellers be sustained is named the Serviceable Word of

the Lord, and the fountain waters wherewith they be refreshed are named the

Promise of Salvation in the New Testament of the Blood of Jesus Christ.

***

In this land there lie also fair hills that seem to be somewhat delightful of which

the traveller must beware, for it is nothing but deceit, vanity and seducing. These

hills are garnished with divers trees which do likewise bring forth vain and

deceitful fruits [causing] travellers to leave the forsaking of themselves, taking on

their self-seeking (that is, they take on their own righteousness and made holiness,

or their ease in the flesh.) They do likewise leave the Patience and become

negligent towards the Law of Ordinance of the Lord, wherewith they be drawn

away by the deceit of the wisdom of the flesh.

The hills are named Taken on wit, or Prudence, Riches of the Spirit, Learned

knowledg, Taken on Freedom, Good-thinking Prophesy, Zeal after Chosen

Holiness, Counterfeit Righteousness, New-invented Humility, Pride in Ones Own

Spiritualness, Unmindful of any better, and etc.

398

The trees that grow on the hills are named Colored Love, Literall Wisdom, Greedy towards Ones Own, Flattering-Alluring, Reproving of Naturalness, Promises of

Vanity, Exalting of his Own Private Invention, Pleasing in Chosen Holiness,

Greatly Esteeming his own Working of Private Righteousness.

The name of their fruits is Vain-Comforts [and] the people, having left forsaking of themselves, and the Cross, with the Meate-offering and Drink-offering, make their dwelling among these deceitful hills [and] let themselves be fed. They get some satisfaction from the Vain-Comforts and are also at first somewhat glad therethrough, also singing and crying: We have it, We have it, We are illuminated, Born anew and Come to Rest.

But (alas) when the sun riseth somewhat higher, then do the fruits wither. And when the Winter cometh, then stand the trees barren, and all is deceit and seducing.

***

The whilst then that the traveller doth travel towards this good land by the leading star (named Belief and Hope) so cometh he clean through all the deceit by means

399 of forsaking himself. For that is a good compass unto him which pointeth to the

good land.

And, with Patience, he likewise overcometh all assaults.

For there are many molesters and destroyers to be found, which do grievously vex

the travellers in this land. But they do fear and tremble before the Holy Cross.

[They] are named Trying of the Belief, Doubt or Distrustfulness to Come to the

Good Land, Tempting with a Chosen Appeasement to the Flesh, Proving of the

Belief with a Shew of Comforting with the Worldly Beauties, Proffering of the

Possession of all the Riches of the Earthly Corruptibleness.

Here the traveller is exhorted in various ways not to forsake the holy Cross. It may help him to understand the idea that on the spiritual journey he must not seek to escape from the impossible contradictions he experiences in himself. Indeed he should welcome the pain of seeing all his folly, weakness and inadequacy. In respect of that which he longs for, only an unflinching confrontation with the impossibility of his situation will show him that, in order to understand this lesson, he has to abandon all judgment and opinion of himself. The ‘travellers’ on the journey are told to ‘forsake [them]selves’ as Niclaes so often reminds them. The traditions have special exercises associated with the disciplines of meditation, contemplative prayer and various forms of inner and outer work to help us

400 here. Such labour introduces us to our personal, psychological cross. It is an inner state that, if we wish to continue, we cannot forsake.

Therefore be not afraid of your enemies, for God hath made them all

dismaid through the Holy Cross of Christ.

The Holy Cross shall be unto you an Altar of the true burnt offering, and

the serviceable gracious word of the Lord a safe-keeping gift or offering of

Christ upon the same altar in the holy of the true Tabernacle of God and

Christ, upon which Altar your gift becometh sanctified. [It is] kindled or

set on fire for a burnt offering to the consuming of all the enemies of the

good life, wherethrough then, likewise, your willing Dept-offering, Sin-

offering and Death offering shall be acceptable to the Lord.

***

In this same throughfaring land, men also find a crafty murderer, that both

high and low, wide and far, runneth all over this same land and he is

named Unbelief. Of this wicked villain it behoveth us to be very wary, for

by him there are many murdered. Forsake not the Holy Cross, nor the

serviceable gracious word of the Lord.

401 [Also in this land there runs] a dangerous river where many travellers be

drowned and choaked. It is named Desire and Pleasure in the Flesh.

The traveller is warned not to catch or eat the fishes that swim in the river whose names are:

Meate of the Temporal Delights instead of the Everlasting Good, Ease in

the Flesh instead of Zeal to the Righteous, Honor of the World instead of

Rest in the Spirit and Honor of God.

It seemeth indeed to be a very pleasant water for one to refresh and

recreate himself in, but it is all meer deceit: vain and nothing.

[Also there are] thistles and thorns named Uncertain Consciences.

Likewise divers natures of beasts named Envy, Wrath, Churlishness or

Unfriendliness, Cruelty, Offensiveness, Resistance of Disobedience,

Craftyness, Greedy Desire of Honor, Subtilty of Deceit, and Violence. And

also one of the most detestable beasts (that will worst of all give way) is

named Hypocrisie or Dissimulation, where under all manner of

naughtiness is covered up with a colored vertue, or made holiness, and he

is indeed the subtillest beast who provoketh the other beasts to devour

travellers. Of which wild beasts the travellers must take heed with great

402 foresightfulness, that they run not into the mouth of them and be

swallowed up.

***

[There are] three castles [upon which] are subtile watchers which are very

crafty and wily.

The traveler is advised not to fear the castles though their powers are apparently very terrible. It is necessary to negotiate carefully, but once passed them he will see that they are

Nothing at all but deceit, vanity and bewitching. [They are named] The

Power of Devils Assaulting, The Forsaking of Hope, Fear of Death.

The watchers, who try to capture people, are named ‘according to their natures’:

Appearing like Angels of Light, Indeavoring to Stealing of the Heart,

Appearance of Vertue, Subtil Invention, Confidence in Knowledg, Made

Laws and Imagined Rights, Disguised or Unknown Holiness, Self-framed

Righteousness, and etc.

403 Now one cometh by the Good Land and approacheth neer unto the understanding of God. But many do run past the entrance thereof. For the neerer one cometh the more subtilly the deceits assault him; for beside the entrance there lieth [joyned to it] also a way that leadeth to an abominable or horrible land and the same way is a pleasant way to behold and pleasant likewise to enter into, wherewith many be deceived.

This pleasant way is named Knowledg of Good and Evil.

[Having] come into the pleasant way of the Knowledg of Good and Evil, and which in itself is ful of contention, ful of great and grievous incumbrances, then do appear in them an inward or spiritual pride, and they suppose they are somewhat singular and above other people because they have so much knowledg to talk of the truth, perswading themselves that the riches of knowledg is the very light of salvation.

Therefore this land is called the Abomination of Desolation. Howbeit it is all false and meer deceit.

***

404 In this land there is also a false light. The people do not know the true

light, therefore they be all deceived and corrupted in this wilderness by the

same false light, besides the which they know no other perfect good. [And

so they have] nothing else but destruction and disturbance or dispensing of

mindes and thoughts.

This same land of Desolation is like unto the intangled Babylon, because

the knowledges do there run one against the other and cannot understand

each other.

Here the author gives extended lists of psychological and moral disorders. We are given to understand that all these result from too much attachment to ‘knowledg’ i.e. ‘made knowledg’ (man-made knowledge) as opposed to revealed knowledge.

There follows this insight

Many do chuse a way unto themselves, according to the knowledg of their

own minde, to the intent to live to themselves therein: and thus doth

everyone walk there according as his knowledg imagineth him.

Everyone is resistant against each other with the knowledg. And the false

light shineth upon them all, quite over the whole land. Therefore everyone

supposeth that he must needs have the right, or cannot err, in his

405 knowledg, and that he is illuminated by the Lord. But it is all dust, which

dust scattereth abroad all over the whole land, like unto a drift-sand and is

named Self-Wils Chusing.

***

The following is one of many passages whose psychological, moral and spiritual meaning has universal application. The description of the human condition, where things go ‘wonderfully absurdly’ seems close to Bruegel’s vision of the ‘upside down’ world.

Behold in this land, the Abomination of Desolation, it goeth very strange

and wonderfully absurdly. For every man seeth that another mans

foundation is vain and meer foolishness, but there is no man there, or very

few, that can marke their own vanity or foolishness. Everyone doth very

gladly thrust off another from his foundation to the end to advance his

own. Yet are all their foundations, notwithstanding, Self-Wils Chusing;

and are everyone uncertain and unstable and all their work is very feeble

or weak. They strive and contend, and with high knowledg they caste

down anothers work and turn up the foundations of it.

For whoever hath the highest mounting knowledge, or is the richest in

spirit, or hath the most eloquent utterance of speech, he can there bear the

sway, or get the chief praise, and can overthrow many other firm

406 foundations and works which are also vain. And when any mans foundation or work is overthrown through any manner of knowledg, then is the same a great delight and glory unto the other that getteth the victory and an advancement of himself. So (contending or taking part, one against the other) do they likewise divide themselves into many several religions or God-services.

But although they be partially affected, as also have severall religions, and many manner of God-services, yet do they, notwithstanding, give their

Religions and God-services one manner of name. Everyones Religion or

God-service is named Assured Knowledg that is Right and Good. And everyone liveth in his own God-service, thinking and perswading himself assuredly that his religion or God-service is the best or the holiest above all other.

***

They have a fair-spoken tongue; but commonly they are not loving, nor friendly of heart, but ful of envy and bitterness, soon stumbling and taking offence by reason that they stand captive under the knowledg and not submitted under the Love, nor under the obedience of his service.

They are also generally covetous of the earthly riches.

407 Their inclination is to speak false against others, also to blaspheme,

oppress, persecute, betray and kill, and yet do know how to excuse all the

same with the knowledg that they do right and well therein.

They use not any common brotherhood.

Here Niclaes expands this theme, pointing out how the absence of brotherhood and love extends to their various different religious sects and especially how they are ‘unmerciful’ to anyone who offers them the truth.

The next chapter further analyses man’s spiritual or psychological condition with the imagery of the inner ruler or king and his constitution.

[They] have also a king who reigneth very cruelly over them named

Wormwood or Bitterness. His sceptre is named Great Esteeming of the

Vain and Unprofitable Things. His crown is named Honor and Glory in

Evil Doings. His horses and chariots are named Treaders Down or

Oppressors of the Simple People. His council is named Subtil Invention.

His kingdom is Unfaithfulness, All his nobility, horsemen, soldiers and

guards are named Disorderly Life. His decrees or commandments are Self-

Wil. His dominion or Lordship is Violence.

408 The kings subjects are called Craftiness, Arrogant Stoutness,

Stubbornness, Violence, Harmfulness, Spight, Sudden Anger, Greedy of

Revenge, Gluttony, Cruelty, Bloodthirstyness, Resistance against the Love and her Service, Despising of Naturalness, Disobedience to Equity,

Accusation over the Righteousness, Betrayers of Innocency, Oppressors of

Humility, Killers of Meekness, Enviers of the Lovers of Unity, Exalters of

Chosen Holiness, Usage of Falsehood, Own-selfness, Self-Wils Desire,

Self-seeking etc.

And when one presenteth or profereth any better thing unto them, then rises up, by and by in them, their king of Bitterness, for to defend their causes, and judg him to be naught that loveth them to the best good.

***

A false prophet bewitches them with many longings and so he leadeth their hearts, mindes and thoughts into captivity of the knowledg and not into the truth. This false prophet is named Presumption whereof cometh

Nothing.

Forasmuch as he hath allured the people unto him with such a presumption of boasting that they likewise in their unregenerate state, do boast them of

409 the Light and the Word of Life; so perceive they not that they are

bewitched by him.

It seemeth sometimes indeed, as though it would be somewhat, but it is all

vain and presumption and nothing else but knowledg whereof cometh

nothing.

The false prophet has a horrible beast with him named Unfaithfulness

[who] maketh all the people utterly divided.

Niclaes’ psychological insights are the observations of a specialist. Here, for example, developing themes he has introduced, he describes how ‘the people’ cover their inner nakedness with ‘Garments named Fear of Being Despised’. His analysis of the spiritual condition of humanity – perhaps as relevant today as ever

– brings light to the subconscious and shadowy parts of our inner landscape with the sure hand of a master.

This horrible beast, Unfaithfulness; this false prophet, Presumption; and

the cruel king, Wormwood, have a great dominion in this same desolate

abominable land.

410 ***

[The traveller] perceiving that these abominations of desolation do stand

in the place where Gods Holy Beeing ought to stand [must] immediately

flie out of the same and submit himself under the obedience of Love, and

not have any regard any more to the Knowledg of Good and Evil, nor to

Boasting of the Knowledge, nor to Assured Knowledg, nor to Presumption,

nor yet to Unfaithfulness. [And thus he frees himself from] bondage to

Bitterness, the king of that detestable land.

[The traveller] must at the end of his journey find himself altogether

turned about.

Hendrik Niclaes is making it quite clear that there can be no half measures for seekers on the spiritual path. To be ‘altogether turned about’ is nothing less than the ‘dying to oneself’ in order to be ‘reborn from above’ that is taught in all traditions. He refers here to the necessarily arduous methods of spiritual work, symbolized in the text as ‘the Compass’, ‘the Cross’ and ‘Patience’. With the help of these, having come thus far he now

cometh before the city gate of the Holy Land and stands in submission like

unto a good willing one to the Lords will. [This] is called the Burying of

the Affections and Desires. He findeth, through the same submission, the

411 key for to enter therewithal through the gate into the City where the

Everlasting Life, Peace and Rest is. This key is called Equity.

In the City of Peace he is lovingly received:

Even thus one becometh as they, incorporated to the body of the same true

king, Gods True Beeing, with all the people of the same good land.

The names of the saints [there] are Meekness, Courtesie, Friendliness,

Longsuffrance, Mercifulness, etc.

The city, we are told, has strong fortress-like walls and a watchman who ‘keeps a diligent watch’, who never sleeps and who

Overlooketh all things, namely, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness. His

trumpet, wherethrough he playeth his song is named After this Time no

More.

There follow several chapters consisting almost entirely of quotations from both

Old and New Testaments in the celebratory style reserved for praising God, his creation and all his works. The author then returns to describing details of the

412 city’s layout and structure. We learn, for example, that situated on the walls is an ordinance called the Power of God., and from the city

floweth an unsearchable or infinitely deep river with also a very

tempestuous winde [that] devours all the enemies of the same good City.

[The river and the winde] are called Righteous Judgment of God and the

Spirit of the Almighty God. [Protected by these] the children of the City

learn Understanding and Knowledg, which wisdom (that they learn

thereout) is also an holy wisdom and that Understanding is Godly

knowledg.

The author stresses the entirely different nature and quality of the attributes of the

City and its inhabitants. No enemy can get into the city; and Niclaes is uncompromising in his criticism and warnings regarding the attempts of men, through their own foolish and arrogant ‘manly knowledg’, to gain an entrance.

For without this City there is no understanding, wisdom or knowledg of

God, or of Godly things; no not at all. All else is foolishness and

hypocrisie.

Niclaes emphasizes the absolute newness of everything in this place. He tells us that we have to be ‘new-born in the spirit’ and that this new birth takes place only

413 through ‘Love and the service of Love’. For Niclaes and the Familists the

definition of love is that given in the New Testament: ‘God is Love’.7

His remarks here remind us that what he describes in an entirely inner experience.

The City is a spiritual City of Life

The nature and minde [of the inhabitants] is nothing else but love, like

those that are risen from the death with the Resurrection of the

Righteousness in the Everlasting Life.

The God whom we serve is a secret God. He is the substance of all

substances, the true life of all lives, the true light of all lights, the true

mind of all minds.

Whosoever now forsaketh all the desolate lands and people [and] also hath

his respect diligently bent upon the leading star in the East, and walketh on

rightly according to the compasse, as likewise, forsaketh not the Crosse,

7 cf ‘steady manifestation of love…nobody has ever expressed in equal perfection and beauty the fervor and enthusiasm of the initiated mystic, inspired by union with God, as Paul has expressed them in his two hymns of love ― the hymn on the love of God (Rom. viii. 31 ff), and the hymn on the love of men (1 Cor. xiii) 15. Love is the Kingdom of God.’. See above p. 101.

414 and so cometh to the Submission, by him shall be found the equity, with

the which he entereth into Gods nature. And so he cometh into the good

Citie, full of riches and joy.

The traveler, having reached his goal, is free to go anywhere he wants. He may even wish to return to his previous abode in order to help those still there to make their escape.

He now therefore, that is, in this manner come thereunto, may, as then, in

the love and in the unity of peace, go out and in without any harme, and

may walk through all Lands, Places and Cities; bring unto all lovers of the

good land, that are seeking the same, good tydings, give them good

incouragement, as to respect all enemies like chaffe, and as nothing, show

them the next way into the life, and so lead them with him into the good

land.

Whosoever now is under the obedience of the love doth flow out of and

into the same secret kingdome, even like unto a living breath of God. And

[he] can very well walk in freedome, among all people, and also remaine

still free.

For the knowledg separateth nor hurteth not him

415 The serpents deceit nor her poison cannot kill him

The foolishness allureth not him

The chosen righteousness snareth not him

The deceitfull hills seduceth not him

The ignorance blindeth not him

Nor the leaders of the blind doe not lead him

And even thus is God with him and he with God

We praise thee O Father for thou hast hidden these things from the proud-

boasting wise, and the prudent understanding ones, and revealed them to

the little humble ones. The rich in spirit, nor the great, wise or industrious

scripture-learned ones, have not understood the same; but to the poor in

spirit, and to the simple of understanding, has thou given it.

There follow here several chapters in the form of hymns of praise and rejoicing, very much in the style of – if not actually quoting from – the Psalms and the Old

Testament prophets.

H. N. now lays out his justification for speaking so openly ‘because of the great need of the times’. Yet he regrets that he is so little heard. Again and again he

416 emphasizes the fact that a man cannot come to God through his ordinary mind, however well educated and well developed.

But oh, Alas! We have now in this rebellious time, very speciall cause to

sigh and mourn grievously, over the blindness of many people and to

bewaile the same with great dolour of our hearts. And that chiefly, because

there is now in the same day of love and of the mercy of God, so little

knowledg of the good life of peace and of Love to be found among them.

And also, for that the same knowledg is desired of so few, and yet much

lesse loved. But they do almost everyone delight to walk in strange waies

that stretch to contention and destruction, by which occasion they live in

molestations and deadly afflictions everywhere.

Therefore may we, with wofulness and sighing hearts, very justly say, that

it is now a perilous time to be saved, and to escape or to remain over to

preservation. Oh, what venomous windes do there blow to the desolation

and destruction of men! Yea, it seemeth almost unpossible for the man to

come to his salvation, or preservation in Christ, or the lovely life of peace.

Yet have some, notwithstanding, according to the imagination of their

knowledg, run on, or labored for the spiritual things, for that they would

417 understand them; also many have, according to their understanding of the flesh, testified of them.

But seeing they have not sought their knowledg of spiritual things in the obedience of the Christian doctrine of the service of love, but in their knowledg of the flesh, and so have taken on their understanding of the knowledg of spiritual things out of the imagination of their own knowledge; therefore they have likewise understood those same spiritual things according to the mind of their flesh, and witnessed of them in the same manner also. For that cause likewise the right knowledge of spiritual things and heavenly understanding hath not in the cleernesse of the true light shined unto them.

Wherefore it is in like manner found true, that the fleshly-minded ones, which sow upon the flesh or which build upon the foreskin of their uncircumcised hearts, doe mow the corruption and inherit the destruction.

But those that are circumcised in their hearts, in the laying away of the fore-skin of the sinfull flesh, and in the obeying of the requiring of our most holy service of Love, are become spiritually minded and so then do sow upon the spirit, or build upon the spirituall, which is the true being itselfe.

418 For all flesh, although it does speak of spirituall and heavenly things, through knowledg, yet it is doubtlesse nothing else but like the grasse of the field, and all his garnishing of beauty and holiness is like the unto the flowers of the field; behold the grasse drieth away, and the beauty of the field withereth and decayeth.

But the spirituall good, the power of God and his living being (whereof all what is good standeth firm, and floweth thereout) remaineth stedfast, unchangeable for ever and in the same, or through, the manifestation of the same being, the Kingdome of God of heavens, cometh inwardly in us, and that is the true light of everlasting life.

Whose naked cleernesse, although the same be nothing else but light and life, is hidden, shut and covered from all understandings and wisdomes of the flesh, or that build thereon.

But it is manifest and shineth bright to the circumcised heart, and to the upright spirituall minded ones, in a spirituall heavenly understanding. And the same cleerness is the beeing of God from heaven, the upright righteousness and holinesse, and the life of God in eternity.

419 Wherefore the doore of life is now opened unto us, the Kingdome of the

God of heavens and the Heavenly Jerusalem, or the City of Peace, descended downe to us and come neerby.

But not according to the thinking-good, or imagination, of our own hearts, nor according to the mind of the earthly wisdome, wherethrough many have estranged them from the truth of life.

Therefore can no man see the kingdom of God except that he becometh born anew in the spirit and is become plain, and just, and simple like unto a new-born babe.

***

We have signified or shewed in writing all of what the lover of the kingdom must forsake; if he will come to the good land of Peace, or enter into the rest of all the holy ones of God.

But not that the lover of the good land shall therefore think that he must first come to everyone of the forementioned horrible places, or that must pass through them all, before he can come to the good city of Peace. O no,

420 ye dearly beloved, but the cause why we have marked out all the abominations and desolation is, for to make knowne every place of deceit and all the seducing or leading away from the good land of life.

421

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