Studies on Early Modern Aristotelianism History of Science and Medicine Library

Home , Karl Werner (theologian), Rodrigo de Arriaga

VOLUME 30 Scientific and Learned Cultures and Their Institutions

Editor M. Feingold California Institute of Technology

VOLUME 7

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/hsml Studies on Early Modern Aristotelianism

By Paul Richard Blum

Leiden • boston 2012 Cover Illustration: Andreas Jaszlinsky, S.J.: Institutiones Logicae (Trnava, 1754). See Chapter 15 and Plate 1 (p. 281). This is a late, hybrid, rendering of the Porphyrian Tree. At the foot it is embellished with religious symbols: at the root is Adam’s skull branching into his descendents; to the left John the Baptist (with the Cross/Staff of Asclepius), accompanied by the Lamb of God; to the right Saint Peter with the cock; man, cock, and lamb are named as examples for species.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Blum, Paul Richard. Studies on early modern aristotelianism / by Paul Richard Blum. p. cm. — (History of science and medicine library ; v. 30) (Scientific and learned cultures and their institutions ; v. 7) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-90-04-23218-1 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-23219-8 (e-book) 1. Catholic Church and philosophy—History. 2. Jesuits—Intellectual life—History. 3. Catholic learning and scholarship—History. 4. Aristotle. 5. Philosophy, Renaissance. 6. Philosophy, Medieval. 7. Philosophy, Modern. I. Title. BX1795.P47B58 2012 149’.91—dc23

2012015718

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This book is printed on acid-free paper. CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ...... ix Preface ...... xi

PHILOSOPHY AT EARLY MODERN SCHOOLS

Chapter One Philosophers’ Philosophy and School Philosophy .... 3 1.1 Philosophy is as Philosophers Do ...... 3 1.2 Individual and Universal in Italian National Philosophy ..... 7 1.3 neo-Scholasticism and Transcendental Truth ...... 13 1.4 Jesuit School Philosophy ...... 15 1.5 School Philosophy vs. Philosophers’ Philosophy ...... 19

Chapter Two Apostolato dei Collegi: On the Integration of Humanism in the Educational Program of the Jesuits ...... 21 2.1 Jacobus Pontanus on the Usefulness of the Humanities ...... 21 2.2 Organizing Public Education ...... 23 2.3 Studia humanitatis ...... 25 2.4 Scholastic Humanism ...... 31

Chapter Three Philosophy at Early Modern Universities ...... 35 3.1 Structure and Heritage of Catholic Universities ...... 35 3.2 Teaching Metaphysics at the Jesuit Colleges in Germany in the Seventeenth Century ...... 40 3.3 The Ratio studiorum on Philosophy ...... 43

Chapter Four Péter Pázmány: The Cardinal’s Philosophy ...... 51 4.1 Pázmány as Professor of Philosophy ...... 52 4.2 Manuscripts ...... 54 4.3 Some Philosophical Themes ...... 59 4.4 The Plan of a Philosophical Textbook ...... 63 vi contents

Chapter Five Philosophy in Hungarian: Pál Bertalanffi SJ, Bernard Sartori OFM, and the Scholastic Philosophy of the Eighteenth Century ...... 67 5.1 János Apáczai Csere ...... 67 5.2 Pál Bertalanffi SJ ...... 70 5.3 Bernard Sartori OFM ...... 74

SCIENCE FROM THE RENAISSANCE THROUGH THE ENLIGHTENMENT

Chapter Six Jesuits between Religion and Science ...... 85 6.1 God in Natural Philosophy ...... 87 6.2 natural Theology ...... 90 6.3 Piety and Science ...... 93

Chapter Seven Principles and Powers: How to Interpret Renaissance Philosophy of Nature Philosophically? ...... 101 7.1 Cusanus and Ficino: Reasonable Questions behind Obscure Answers ...... 102 7.2 Telesio: Is there any Order in Nature? ...... 103 7.3 Cardano: The Unity of Nature and of its Explanation ...... 107 7.4 Strategical Uniformity in Creating Theories ...... 109 7.5 From Universality to Specialization ...... 110

Chapter Eight The Jesuits and the Janus-Faced History of Natural Sciences ...... 113 8.1 Father Clavius’s Complaints: Mathematics in the Jesuit Curriculum ...... 115 8.2 The Unity of Human Episteme ...... 123 8.3 Experiments with the Philosophy Course: Melchior Cornaeus S.J...... 126 8.4 The Story of Science ...... 135

Chapter Nine Benedictus Pererius: Renaissance Culture at the Origins of Jesuit Science ...... 139 9.1 Pererius and Averroes ...... 141 9.2 Pererius and Renaissance Philosophy ...... 147 9.3 The Role of Metaphysics within Philosophy ...... 151 9.4 Concessions to Platonism ...... 157 contents vii

9.5 History of Philosophy against the Myth of Ancient Wisdom ...... 159 9.6 Against Alchemy and Kabbalah ...... 163 9.7 dreams and Clairvoyance ...... 176 9.8 Astrology ...... 179

Chapter Ten “Ubi natura facit circulos in essendo, nos facimus in cognoscendo.” The Demonstrative Regressus and the Beginning of Modern Science in Catholic Scholastics ...... 183 10.1 Scholastic and Cartesian Logic ...... 183 10.2 Franciscus Toletus ...... 185 10.3 French Contexts ...... 190 10.4 Franciscans ...... 194

Chapter Eleven Aristotelianism More Geometrico: Honoré Fabri ...... 199 11.1 A Key to Aristotelianism ...... 200 11.2 Space: A Universal Concept ...... 203 11.3 Excursus on Natural Theology ...... 204 11.4 Hypothesis—Founded or Fictitious? ...... 206

METAPHYSICS AND THEOLOGY

Chapter Twelve Rodrigo de Arriaga on Immortality as a Response to Platonism ...... 217 12.1 Ontology ...... 219 12.2 Epistemology ...... 223

Chapter Thirteen Bartolomeo Mastri: From Metaphysics to Natural Theology ...... 227 13.1 Kinds of Abstraction ...... 229 13.2 The Competence of Metaphysics ...... 232 13.3 Indifference ...... 234 13.4 The Agenda of Modern Metaphysics ...... 239 13.5 The Transcendence of Metaphysics ...... 242 13.6 Subordination of Physics and Metaphysics ...... 246 13.7 Philosophical Theology ...... 254 viii contents

Chapter Fourteen Natural Theology and Philosophy of Religion in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Théophile Raynaud, Luis de Molina, Joseph Falck, Sigismund von Storchenau ...... 257 14.1 Preamble: Raymundus Sabundus ...... 258 14.2 Théophile Raynaud ...... 260 14.3 Luis de Molina ...... 263 14.4 Joseph Falck ...... 266 14.5 Sigismund von Storchenau ...... 269 14.6 Summary ...... 274

Chapter Fifteen God and Individuals: The Porphyrian Tree in Seventeenth/Eighteenth-Century Philosophy ...... 275 15.1 The Contemporary Problem ...... 275 15.2 The Aquinas’ Approach in De ente et essentia ...... 278 15.3 The Tree in Seventeenth-Century Scholasticism ...... 293 15.4 descartes and Cartesianism ...... 305 15.5 Conclusion ...... 311

APPENDICES

Chapter Sixteen Siger and Saint Thomas in the Paradiso ...... 315

Chapter Seventeen Cultivating Talents and Social Responsibility: Aims and Means of Early Jesuit Education ...... 325

References ...... 335 Index ...... 359 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Plate 1. Andreas Jaszlinsky, S.J.: Institutiones Logicae (Trnava, 1754) ...... 281 Plate 2. Melchior Cornaeus, S.J.: Curriculum philosophiae Peripateticae (Würzburg, 1657) ...... 282 Plate 3. Melchior Cornaeus, S.J.: Curriculum philosophiae Peripateticae (Würzburg, 1657) ...... 283 Plate 4. Melchior Cornaeus, S.J.: Curriculum philosophiae Peripateticae (Würzburg, 1657) ...... 284 Plate 5. Johann Heinrich Alsted: Encyclopaedia (Herborn, 1630) .... 285 Plate 6. Eustachius a S. Paulo, OCist, Summa Philosophiae (Cologne, 1616) ...... 286 Plate 7. Edmundus Purchotius: Institutio philosophica ad faciliorem ac recentiorem philosophorum lectionem comparata, vol. 1 (Padua, 1737) ...... 287 Plate 8. Karl Werner: Der heilige Thomas von Aquino, vol. 3 (Regensburg, 1859) ...... 288 Plate 9. Donatus a Transfiguratione Domini, OPiar: Introductio in universam philosophiam, vol. 1 (Kempten, 1754) ...... 289 Plate 10. Bertholdus Hauser, S.J.: Elementa philosophiae ad rationis et experientiae ductum conscripta (Augsburg and Innsbruck, 1755) ...... 290 Plate 11. Bertholdus Hauser, S.J.: Elementa philosophiae ad rationis et experientiae ductum conscripta (Augsburg and Innsbruck, 1755) ...... 291

PREFACE

Aristotelianism is the touchstone of modern philosophy. There is no philosopher who does not measure his or her thought against the standards set by Aristotle and the tradition that follows him. In modernity this is the philosophy taught at schools, colleges, or universities. The benchmark of philosophical quality is what philosophers learnt on school benches. In 1981 Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann asked me to write the chapter on “Catholic School Philosophy” for the new “Ueberweg” history of philosophy, more precisely, the volume on 17th-century Germany.1 The fact that I did not know much about it was not a problem, since barely anyone did; rather, “school philosophy” (Schulphilosophie) seemed to be a contradiction in terms, not much different from “Catholic philosophy,” which was equated with the Neothomism or Neoscholasticism of the 19th century. What qualified me was my familiarity with early modern and specifically Renaissance philosophy (and the ability to read Latin, that is: scholastic, classical, and Neolatin versions of it). Therefore, I started by investigating traces of humanism in the Jesuit educational program.2 With the exception of Paul Oskar Kristeller, Miguel Batllori (1983), and some years later John O’Malley (1993), few historians of Jesuit thought had cared to locate the early Jesuit movement within Renaissance Humanism. This approach made it possible to see Jesuit schools in the contexts of the anthropocentric turn achieved by the humanists, to notice the transformation of professional philosophy (i.e., medieval scholasticism) thanks to renewed readings of the classical sources, and to interpret the Jesuit mission as the Catholic version of that reformation movement that engulfed theology,

1 Blum, “Die Schulphilosophie in den katholischen Territorien,” published 20 years later. A summary was presented as „L‘enseignement de la métaphysique dans les collèges jésuites d‘Allemagne au XVIIe siècle,“ in Les Jésuites à la Renaissance, ed. Luce Giard (Paris, 1995), 93–105; in this book section 3.2–3, preceded by a dictionary entry: « Philosophie, ins- titutionelle Formen, Renaissance, » in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie vol. 7 (Basel, 1989), 819–823; here section 3.1. — In the footnotes of this preface I cite the original publications of the papers presented in this book. I thank all holders of copyright for granting permission to republish them. 2 “Apostolato dei Collegi: On the Integration of Humanism in the Educational Programme of the Jesuits,” History of Universities 5 (1985), 101–115; in this volume section 2, and “Die geschmückte Judith: Die Finalisierung der Wissenschaften bei Antonio Possevino S.J.” xii preface ecclesiology, and piety from the 15th through the 17th centuries. What it did not answer was the elementary question: What did philosophy mean to Catholic universities? Reading books helps understanding them, but before reading I had to find them. So I travelled to many libraries: Wolfenbüttel, Munich (University, Staatsbibliothek, Hochschule S.J.), Rome (Biblioteca Nazionale, Gregoriana, Vaticana, Angelica, Angelicum, Sapienza, St. Isidoro, and many others), Paris, Trier, Fulda, Berlin East and West, Eichstätt and many others. “I’m interested in 16th-century philosophy textbooks.” When I said that to a librarian, the response was, inevitably: “What is the name of the author?” That was, exactly, what I did not know. Therefore, in order to build up a canon of what counts as philosophy, and who were the leading authors, I studied old library catalogs that displayed the books by topic. There I found that most libraries shelved their books according to the divisions of philosophy and theology in the Jesuits’ Ratio studiorum. After a while I was able to identify the most frequently used text-books. Alphabetical finding lists, then, helped me to locate other works of some important authors. Such lists can be deceiving: in the handwritten index to the books of the Roman College, Descartes or Cartesius is to be found under letter “S”: de Schartes. My summary of these investigations3 had an apologetic ring that responded to the bad reputation of scholasticism, and even Aristote lianism. It was delivered at a conference that—almost defiantly—put Aristotelianism front and center in Renaissance philosophy. In the tradition of Ernst Cassirer, Ernesto Grassi, and Paul Oskar Kristeller, philosophy proper in the Renaissance was almost exclusively identified with Platonism or with certain humanist strains, whereas Aristotelianism was perceived as a dying medievalism and perhaps a necessary evil. Charles Schmitt had called for this conference because he discovered the variet- ies of “Aristotelianisms” in the Renaissance.4 Sadly, the meeting turned into a memorial conference, because Charles had died on April 15, 1986. At the conference Charles Lohr and I discovered that we were the first to use computer databases to quantify the literary output of scholastic writers. The lasting importance of the conference lay in the turn of perspective: rather than looking for early modern efforts of ‘overcoming ‘Aristotle and Aristotelian scholasticism or of ‘transforming’ it towards Platonism or

3 Blum, “Der Standardkursus.” 4 Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance. preface xiii rationalism or empiricism, I felt encouraged to ask for the very concept of philosophy that carried the so-called Second Scholasticism. When I presented my research on school philosophy at a faculty colloquium in 1988 at Freie Universität Berlin, Ernst Tugendhat opened (and closed) the debate by stating: “So, this is then no philosophy.” Sven Knebel, who was also present, tried to persuade me to focus more on the achievements of the forgotten thinkers, particularly Jesuits, of the 17th–18th centuries and their impact on more famous thinkers. We share the understanding that “our notion of systematic philosophy is due to the Aristotelian heritage” and we should not neglect investigating this heritage in modernity.5 However, I insisted on understanding the difference between, say, Tugendhat’s and the Jesuits’ notion of philosophy. Philosophenphilosophie (philosophers’ philosophy) was the term I coined in response; it is in German almost as awkward as in English. Compared to that, Schulphilosophie flows smoothly. It was for the festschrift of my Doktorvater Stephan Otto (1931–2010) that I penned the programmatic essay on “philosophers’ philosophy vs. school philosophy”.6 The tandem terms also became the title of my 1998 book in which I enlarged my research into the rival modern concepts of philosophy. Over the past three decades, the climate has changed, and Aristotelianism, school philosophy, philosophy curricula, and textbooks of the 16th through 18th centuries have been the object of fruitful studies. The bibliography at the end of this book could be sorted by date and checked for items published since 1990 to make that visible. I should mention John Doyle’s tireless research on Suárez and his environs; Ugo Baldini’s research in the history of sciences among the Jesuits; the co-authors of the “Ueberweg” not only concerning Germany in the 17th century but also France, Spain, and Italy; Stanislav Sousedík’s research, during Communist times, on the context of Jan Amos Comenius, which allowed him to publish on Valerian Magni, O.F.M.Cap., and other Bohemian thinkers;7 his pupils in the Czech Republic: Petr Dvořák, Daniel Novotný, Daniel Heider and others who publish in their periodical Studia Neoaristotelica; and I may truncate this

5 Knebel, Suarezismus, p. VII. 6 “Philosophenphilosophie und Schulphilosophie,” in Verum et factum: Beiträge zur Geistesgeschichte und Philosophie der Renaissance zum 60. Geburtstag von Stephan Otto, ed. Tamara Albertini (Frankfurt, 1993,) 37–50; in this book section 1. 7 Cf. Sousedík, Philosophie der frühen Neuzeit in den böhmischen Ländern.—It was thanks to Ernst Tugendhat that I first met Sousedík. xiv preface list with mentioning the web site Scholasticon,8 initiated and edited by Jacob Schmutz.9 The vicissitudes of academic life brought me to Hungary, and during my first semester at Péter Pázmány University, the Dean Miklós Maróth, a specialist in Arabic Aristotelianism, told me I would present a paper on Pázmány’s philosophy.10 For decades, no scholar had cared about the Cardinal’s philosophy, simply because his towering fame was due to his Church politics and his contributions to Hungarian as a literary and popular language. He was also the 17th-century founder of what became Pázmány University, now Eötvös University in Budapest, of which Catholic Péter Pázmány University in Budapest/Piliscsaba was a post-communist offspring. What I discovered was that the Cardinal had planned to edit his own lectures as a young Jesuit at Graz and to turn them into the philosophy text-book for his new university. (Due to the Turkish occupation of large parts of Hungary, the university was started in Nagyszombat/ Trnava, now Slovakia.) This circumstance caused the manuscripts of his lectures to be conserved, and this allowed me to study in detail the way those lectures were crafted and delivered—which is a very rare case in the history of philosophy lectures and text-books. Pázmány is therefore a case study on what was going on in philosophy classes at Jesuit universities. Since the professor-cardinal kept revising his scripts I could also see how he integrated item by item the philosophy of Francisco Suárez, whose Disputationes metaphysicae had appeared almost at the same time Pázmány had been lecturing in Graz. The references in the margins show that Suárezian metaphysics would be normally spread over the course of three years covering logic, physics, and metaphysics. The manuscript therefore proves that Suárez’s notion of all-encompassing metaphysics was technically not standard, but an exception.

8 http://www.scholasticon.fr: Scholasticon. Online Resources for the study of early- modern scholasticism (1500–1800) : authors, sources, institutions, last visited August 2, 2011. 9 The bibliography at the end of this book contains over 670 references—I hope readers will not be disappointed that I made no effort at updating it exhaustively. 10 “Péter Pázmány als Philosophieprofessor,” in Pázmány Péter és kora [P. P. and his times], ed. Emil Hargittay (Piliscsaba, 2001,) 35–49.—Previous versions: “Die Philosophie des Kardinals—Scholastik und Humanismus bei Péter Pázmány SJ,” in Sapientiam ame- mus, Humanismus und Aristotelismus in der Renaissance. Festschrift für Eckhard Keßler (Munich, 1999), 191–202; „Péter Pázmány SJ als Grazer Philosophieprofessor,“ Semiotische Berichte (1998), 57–74; in this book section 4. preface xv

The same experience allowed me later to read and evaluate the lecture notes of Benedictus Pererius (Pereira): his book on “the general principles of things” (De communibus rerum principiis) proved not to be a standard book on physics, but a programmatic discussion of the branches of philosophy, including metaphysics, aimed at the non-scholastic audience of the later Renaissance.11 The Hungarian environment made me curious about the school philosophy at universities and colleges in that country. Again, barely anyone cared about the topic, with the exception of András Mészáros, because— not much different from the case of the “Latin Renaissance” analyzed by Christopher Celenza,12—scholars were more interested in the evolution of national culture than in the European philosophical context of their schools. This time I was qualified to do the research because I knew Hungarian well enough and was familiar with the Aristotelian scholastic tradition, including its competitors in the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. I visited libraries, not only in Budapest (the National Library: Országos Széchényi Könyvtár [OSZK], the University Library, and others), but also in Debrecen, Szeged, Pannonhalma, Kalocsa (the mother diocese of Zagreb), Eger, Szatmár/Satu Mare, Kolozsvár/Cluj, Nagyvárad/ Oradea (the latter three in today’s Romania), Pozsony/Bratislava, Martin (both in Slovakia), and others. At times, the library consisted of nothing more than some dedicated space in the attic of a bishop’s residence. The most interesting finding, which I present in this book, was the effort made by the Franciscan friar Bernardus Sartori to forge a technical philosophical terminology in Hungarian. The research allowed me to locate this apparently ephemeral event in the tradition of early modern intellectual history, namely between Protestant Ramism, Jesuit natural philosophy and Catholic Enlightenment. On a smaller scale and rather slowly, Apáczai, Bertalanffi, and Sartori enacted what Italians, French, Germans and others had done before: they transformed Latin scholasticism into a new philosophy that was catering to the nation and at the same time joining the European intellectual family. As a side effect I learned that in Hungary disputations were typically bound within existing prints of substantial works after the title page. Without the librarians of the OSZK I would not

11 “Benedictus Pererius: Renaissance Culture at the Origins of Jesuit Science,” Science & Education 15 (2006) 279–304; in this book section 9.1–5. 12 Christopher S. Celenza: The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin’s Legacy (Baltimore, 2004). xvi preface have found that out. I presented my findings at a Debrecen conference in 2002, in Andrea Molnár’s translation.13 Science and religion and their relationship became a topic that naturally returned in all the readings of early modern scholastics. The obvious reason was that Jesuits and other Catholic thinkers were not at all oblivious of the advancements of the sciences; rather, they tried to stay within and ahead of the discourse of the times. In two papers I addressed their concerns and their responses in the context of piety, theology, and methodological and empirical research.14 I subsequently added a methodological study on writing the history of Jesuit science15 and a case study of a mid-17th-century text-book that elegantly skirted and thus exposed the challenges provided by Cartesianism, Copernicanism, and other potential dangers to unified knowledge.16 The insight gained from these studies can be captured in the formula that doing history of philosophy means to think with the heads of the past thinkers: to read their books not only helps to understand them; it even brings to light problems that not only troubled them ‘back then’ but that are serious problems of human understanding. If empirical research is not ‘good’ per se, but a threat to the unified human episteme, and if this is equally true with faithful reliance on the mathematical truth of thought and creation, then something serious must have been on the agenda of those thinkers who opposed Descartes, Galileo, Bacon, and their rhetoric. “Mathematics is regarded as a demonstrative science. . . . Yet mathematics in the making resembles any other human knowledge in the making. You have to guess a mathematical theorem before you prove it . . .”17 It appeared to me that Benedictus Pererius in opposing universalism of both metaphysics and mathematics was troubled not so much by the messiness

13 “Filozófia Magyar nyelven: Bertalanffi Pál, Sartori Bernát és a XVIII. század Egyetemi filozófiája” [Philosophy in Hungarian: Bertalanffi, Sartori, and 18th century university philosophy], in István Bitskey and Szabolcs Oláh (eds.), Religió, retorika, nemzettudat régi iro- dalomunkban (Debrecen, 2004), 513–529; in this volume section 5. 14 “Jesuiten zwischen Religion und Wissenschaft,” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 18 (1995), 205–216; in this book section 6. „Principles and Powers: How to Interpret Renaissance Philosophy of Nature Philosophically?’ Minerva—An Internet Journal of Philosophy 5 (2001), 166–181 (http://www.minerva.mic.ul.ie//vol5/principles.pdf); section 7. 15 “The Jesuits and the Janus-Faced History of Natural Sciences,” in J. Helm and A. Winkelmann (eds.), Religious Confessions and the Sciences in the Sixteenth Century (Leiden, 2001), 19–34; here section 8.1–2, 4. 16 “Science and Scholasticism in Melchior Cornaeus SJ,” in Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Guelpherbytani, ed. Stella P. Revard et al. (Binghamton, New York, 1988), 573–580; section 8.3 (cf. the extended version: “Sentiendum cum paucis” in the bibliography). 17 G. Polya: Induction and Analogy in Mathematics, vol. 1 (Princeton, 1954), vi. preface xvii of human thinking but by the tendency toward blurring over it with strong but philosophically unwarranted claims. At his time those could be claims with the help of Platonist metaphysics and psychology, of ontology, philosophical theology, Biblical revelation, and—yes—with the help of mathematics. This is what made him the outstanding theoretician of the Jesuits on their way to becoming the leading comprehensive institution of teaching and science.18 Two essays on methodological questions conclude the part on early modern science in this book. Instead of sifting through countless unknown textbooks with the purpose of establishing the pattern and model of philosophical education, this time I pursued the very detailed question of the demonstrative regressus among the major philosophy textbooks.19 Unsurprisingly the Catholic thinkers appeared to have been sensitive to the issue, inherited from Aristotle’s Organon. However, they also had acquired a mastery of the subject, so that many of them did not run into the paradoxes of circular argument: they had learned their lessons from the Paduan Aristotelians, secular or not. Yet another case of Jesuit disobedience (besides the cases of Cornaeus and Pererius) disquieted me: By now it was clear that the unity of knowledge, which was the back-bone and necessary condition of school teaching in philosophy, was an ideal type to be sought in reading scholastic text- books and a goal as binding and as lofty as the Greater Glory of God. From Pererius via Pázmány, Clavius, Cornaeus, and many others into the 17th century, strict Aristotelian scholasticism had been advocated and tried but also circumvented. The most blatant case seems to have been Honoré Fabri, the Jesuit who sincerely and successfully integrated Cartesianism into Aristotelianism.20 It seems he achieved a similar feat as the early Jesuits when they bent Ignatius’ missionary piety into a school system that attracted friends and converted foes of the Roman Church. Whether

18 “Benedictus Pererius: Renaissance Culture at the Origins of Jesuit Science,” Science & Education 15 (2006), 279–304. “‘Cognitio falsitatis vera est’. Benedictus Pererius critico della magia e la cabala,” in Fabrizio Meroi and Elisabetta Scapparone (eds.), La magia nell’Europa moderna: tra antica sapienza e filosofia naturale (Florence, 2007), 345–362; here section 9.1–5 and 6–8. 19 “‘Ubi natura facit circulos in essendo, nos facimus in cognoscendo’. Der demonstrative Regreß und der Beginn der modernen Wissenschaft bei katholischen Scholastikern,” in La presenza dell’aristotelismo padovano nella filosofia della prima modernità, ed. Gregorio Piaia (Padova-Roma, 2002), 371–392; here section 10. 20 “Aristotelianism more geometrico: Honoré Fabri,” in Philosophy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries—Conversations with Aristotle, ed. C.W.T. Blackwell and Sachiko Kusukawa (Aldershot, 1999), 234–247; here section 11. xviii preface his superiors liked it or not, Fabri managed to reconcile Epicureanism and rationalism with Jesuit Aristotelianism. To find this out, it takes a microscopic reading of the sources, for a theory is practical only if it explains details from which it has started, as the regressus theorists would have it. If early modern scholasticism was poised to keep philosophy teachable it would require two opposing moves: knowledge had to remain impersonal science of reality, and it had to become accessible, even to non-specialists. (Everything else would be philosophers’ philosophy.) This is why ‘school philosophy’ appears to be an oxymoron. However, such impersonal objectivity and such communicability can also be achieved by connecting or re-connecting doctrine to what is known otherwise. Connectivity was the hallmark of humanist education. Consequently, I started experimenting with the exploratory question: is it possible that the Aristotelians deliberately learned from Renaissance Platonism? There was no doubt—since my experiences with Pázmány, Pontanus, and Pererius—that Jesuits tacti- cally absorbed Platonist theorems. But did they also Platonize scholastic doctrines? In the case of Suárez’s epistemology, I think the answer is yes.21 He reactivated the implicit Platonism in Aquinas’ creation theology in order to explain the epistemology of human ideas. Now what about the vexed question of the immortality of the soul that allowed for two sets of possible solutions: the Aristotelian materialist one and the Platonizing spiritualist one. With Rodrigo de Arriaga I could show that he splits the problem into the epistemological vs. the ontological approach.22 This has interesting implications for the philosophy of mind: any reductionist approach (plainly speaking, the materialist concept of mind) is heir to Aristotelianism in terms of epistemology. Mind is what it does. Dualist or spiritual concepts of mind, those that cling to the existence of a thinking thing, have to answer the metaphysical question concerning the ontology of the intellect, a question that is typical of the Platonic tradition. Fabri and Arriaga do not at all afford some whiggism (see chapter 8); they help painting the modern philosophy with refined nuances. Philosophical theology was the elephant in the room in all my conversations with Aristotelians. And the immortality question was a case

21 See Philosophy of Religion in the Renaissance, chapter 10. 22 “Rodrigo de Arriaga on Immortality as a Response to Platonism,” in Petronilla Cemus (ed.), Bohemia Jesuitica 1556–2006 (Prague/Würzburg, 2010), 535–542; section 12. preface xix in point. After all, Enlightenment philosophy and most philosophy since, insofar as it takes the actually thinking thing, namely the philosopher, to be the only guarantor of philosophical truth and quality, had to do without the God of Revelation and without any authoritative god. Bartholomaeus Mastrius was a first-rate choice to pursue this question for the very mun- dane reason that his Metaphysics is at any rate an encyclopedia of what modern scholastics had to say, so far. Therefore I gave his work two com- plementary readings: the first concerning his equating metaphysics and natural theology, and the second regarding his notion of abstraction.23 In this book I reversed the order, for it became clear that his understanding of abstraction was the methodical condition for his understanding of natural theology. Philosophical theology becomes the ontology of that distinguished being which is, independently of material contingency and consequently indifferent to petty questions of existence. Hence followed the problem of philosophy of religion, which—as I argued in my book on Renaissance philosophy of religion—originated in late medieval and humanist attempts to address the rationality and universality of belief in revelation. Since it was an (ex-)Jesuit, Sigismund von Storchenau, who coined the term Philosophie der Religion, that is, who thematically applied philosophy on the phenomenon of religion, it was worth looking into some of his confrères for support.24 Indeed, going back to Augustine, of course, and to Raymundus Sabundus, they all worked on the anthropocentric project that shed light on religion from two angles: the necessity of trans-human sources of knowledge and the anthropological condition to honor them. In 1998–99 I was a fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame, thanks to a generous invitation from Alvin Plantinga. During the fellows’ colloquia it occurred to me that some of the current issues of philosophy of religion, including that of divine foreknowledge and of incarnation, appear to be contingent on a non-hierarchical understanding of metaphysics. Divinity, so I thought, requires a hierarchy

23 “La métaphysique comme théologie naturelle: Bartolomeo Mastri,” Les études philosophiques (2002/1), 31–47, and “Astrazione per indifferenza: Bartolomeo Mastri all’inizio della metafisica moderna,” in Marco Forlivesi (ed.): Rem in seipsa cernere. Saggi sul pensiero filosofico di Bartolomeo Mastri (1602–1673) (Padua, 2006), 223–236; in this book sections 13.4–7 and 1–3. 24 “Natürliche Theologie und Religionsphilosophie im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert: Théophile Raynaud, Luis de Molina, Joseph Falck, Sigismund von Storchenau,” Orvostörténeti közle- mények—Communicationes de historia artis medicinae (Budapest) vol. 49, no. 1–2, issue 186–187 (2004), 5–16; here section 14. xx preface of beings, although the antinomy of analogy vs. univocity of the concept of being needs to be addressed. The best tool to make that plausible to my colleagues seemed to be the Porphyrian Tree.25 Taking recourse to the scholastic material, I discovered that the evolution of that tree perfectly reflects the paradoxes of classical and modern metaphysics: if God is included in the hierarchical scheme, He is no God; if He is beyond the Tree, the tree becomes barren. There is no solution; the Porphyrian Tree is the emblem of modern Aristotelianism. Two appendices conclude this volume of case studies in early modern Aristotelian school philosophy: a brief study on Dante and a contemporary exhortation. Since the acceptability of Catholic philosophy or the paradox of teaching philosophy shows itself frequently in the garb of secularism vs. Christian dogmatics, Dante’s praise of Aquinas along with Siger of Brabant seemed to afford some pathway to reconciliation.26 Dante’s image of interrelating the alleged secularist of the Middle Ages with the (not yet, but soon to be) highest authority of Christian philosophy encapsulates the problem. Siger taught “invidiosi veri”: controversial truths. Truth, specifically when it shows its multiple faces, is controversial. Otherwise it would not be worth recording. Since my academic career brought me meanwhile to a Jesuit university, I felt obliged to contribute what I happen to know about the early Jesuit educational project.27 At a conference of American Jesuit universities on social justice, I contributed a talk in which I showed that cura personalis and commitment to justice are no new developments in the Jesuit pedagogical profile. They have their origin in the very reason why the Jesuits decided to save souls by way of teaching. To conclude this preface, I am happy to acknowledge the help of many persons: first of all those whom I mentioned above. Mordechai Feingold invited me to collect my papers on Aristotelianism and make them accessible to an English-reading audience. Brian McNeil translated from the German, the French, and the Italian the sections 1, 3–6, 9.6–8, 10, 13–14, and 16. The other sections existed in some version of English;

25 “Dio e gli individui: L’’Arbor Porphyriana’ nei secoli XVII e XVIII,” Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica 91 (1999), 18–49; here section 15. 26 “Sigieri e San Tommaso nel ‘Paradiso’,” Verbum—Analecta Neolatina 3 (2001), 101– 109; here section 16. 27 “Cultivating Talents and Social Responsibility: Aims and Means of Early Jesuit Education,” paper at Commitment to Justice Conference, Cleveland , Ohio, October 13–16, 2005 (http://www.loyola.edu/Justice/commitment/commitment2005/presenters.html); here section 17. preface xxi

Megan Trainer read and corrected these.28 What remains awkward or hard to follow is owed to my insistence or negligence. Finally, over three decades, numerous institutions supported my research through grants and in other ways: Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Stiftung Volkswagenwerk, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, The Warburg Institute, The Newberry Library, The Andrew Mellon Foundation, The Center for the Humanities of Loyola University Maryland; and all the libraries and archives I visited and their helpful personnel gave wonderful support. To them all I express my sincere gratitude.

Baltimore, 27th July, 2011 Paul Richard Blum

28 All translations from sources are ours, unless cited otherwise. Andrew Olesh, Jr., revised this preface.

PHILOSOPHY AT EARLY MODERN SCHOOLS

chapter one

PHILOSOPHERS’ PHILOSOPHY AND SCHOOL PHILOSOPHY

1.1 Philosophy is as Philosophers Do

Philosophy in the modern period is philosophers’ philosophy. Its readers identify it with the thinker who thought it. Above all, philosophers claim to be philosophers in what they think. The epochal expression of this is René Descartes’ cogito.1 It is true that he is not referring to himself personally when he argues consistently in the form of a first-person narrative, but is referring to “the human being as a thinking substance.” Nevertheless, Descartes can think of this human being only as the philosopher who himself thinks the cogito of radical doubt—for otherwise, Descartes’ philosophy would lose its enlightening impetus. The philosopher Descartes can think of “the human being” only as a “philosopher on the analogy of Descartes.” Although Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel leaves this reductionist approach far behind him, his “spirit” too is the philosophers’ spirit. His Phenomenology of Spirit intends “to lead the individual from his unedu- cated standpoint to knowledge” by reflecting “on the universal individual, the self-conscious spirit, in his education.”2 “The special individual” here is “the incomplete spirit.” Consequently, Hegel transposes the traditional distinction between formal logic (which every student can learn) and science (for the sake of whose contents logic is taught) onto “the logical, not merely as an abstract universal, but as the wealth of the universal that encompasses the special in itself” and presents itself “for the subjective spirit” as “the universal truth.”3 The mediation of the special and the universal in the subjective spirit is manifested in the representation of the human being in the philosopher. The thinking of the human being is Hegelianism in an undeveloped form; this thinking comes into its own only as Hegel.

1 Descartes, Discours de la méthode IV. 2 Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Vorrede, 31f. 3 Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, Einleitung, 54f. 4 chapter one

The fundamental coalescence of thinking and thinker, of vouching in one’s own person for the thinking both of the thinkable and of the inconceivable, has found its highest expression up to now in Martin Heidegger, who applies Hegel to his own self in such a way “that every true philosopher is the contemporary of every other true philosopher, precisely because he is in his innermost being the word of his own time.”4 To be “the word of his own time” meant more than merely being the philosopher for others: it was conceivable only as a coalescing with the object of philosophy. In his celebrated Davos Disputation, he replies without any reservation to “Cassirer’s question about universally valid eternal truths.” He explicates the thesis from Sein und Zeit that truth is “relative to existence (Dasein)” as follows: “This does not mean that it would be impossible to reveal Being, as it is, to all and sundry. But I would say that this super-subjectivity of the truth, this erupting of the truth beyond the individual himself as being- in-the-truth, already means being handed over to Being. It means being transposed into the possibility of personally shaping it.”5 As is well known, and as the polemic about Heidegger’s attitude to National Socialism has made clear, he thereby made himself both extremely vulnerable in political terms and sacrosanct. This Heidegger opened the door to a great number of nuances that are not necessarily connected to his philosophy, but are certainly connected to his personal existence as a philosopher, and thus to his own person too. Jean-Paul Sartre, Heidegger’s pupil, wrote with great zeal about “the naught” (le néant) and became the philosopher of political righteousness through his own personal subsistence. Edith Stein, Heidegger’s fellow student under the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, is a counterexample that allows us to test this hypothesis. In the Festschrift for her teacher, she presents her oscillation between the status of the philosopher and the supra-personal truth by means of a comparison between the philosophy of the modern period and what she understands as philosophia perennis: “I mean the spirit of genuine philosophizing, which lives in every true philosopher (. . .). The one who is born a philosopher brings this spirit with him to the world—as what Thomist language calls a potency. The potency is brought to an act when

4 Heidegger, Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes, 45. 5 “Davoser Disputation zwischen Ernst Cassirer und Martin Heidegger,” in Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, 281f. (my italics). This is followed by the paradoxical formulation of the “transcendentally ontological temporal determination” in the truth. philosophers’ philosophy and school philosophy 5 it encounters a mature philosopher, a ‘teacher’.”6 Husserl rejoiced when Edith Stein became a Thomist and a contemplative nun.7 She renounced the status of the philosopher, and then renounced the world. After his ethical-analytical turning away from existentialism, Ernst Tugendhat spoke of a thinking “in the first person singular.” He himself sees this in connection with his turning towards language-analytical philosophy. For example, the Kantian question: “‘What ought I to do?’ amounts to: ‘what is best for you,’ and then ‘that which is the best’ (and this clearly means: ‘that which is the best for everyone’).”8 Analytical philosophy repeats (on a much lower level of abstraction) the Hegelian identification of thinking with the “I” as spirit, and it follows the paradigm that not-thinking is a hidden state of philosophizing as the philosopher does. For example, Arthur C. Danto sets out the presupposition of his philosophy of history: “It sometimes is said that the task of philosophy is not to think or talk about the world, but rather to analyse the ways in which the world is thought and talked of. But since we plainly have no access to the world apart from our ways of thinking and talking about it, we scarcely, even in restricting ourselves to thought and talk, can avoid saying things about the world. The philosophical analysis of our ways of thinking and talking about the world becomes, in the end, a general description of the world as we are obliged to conceive of it, given that we think and talk as we do. Analysis, in short, yields a descriptive meta- physic when systematically executed.”9 Analytical philosophy regards ordinary speaking as undeveloped philosophy. This is why Tugendhat and Wolf, in a manual of logic that claims to impart “initial knowledge of the

6 Stein, “Husserls Phänomenologie,” 316. 7 Husserl is said to have remarked, when Edith Stein was clothed as a Carmelite: “And I ought to have been allowed to be the father of the bride.” On their spiritual relatedness: “Every genuine scholastic will become a mystic, and every genuine mystic will become a scholastic”; quotation from Teresia Renata de Spiritu Sancto, Edith Stein, 127. Hagiogra- phers emphasize the coincidence that Edith Stein took her perpetual vows on April 21, 1938, the date of Husserl’s death (although this actually occurred on April 26 that year): ibid., 153f. 8 Tugendhat, Probleme der Ethik, 5. It is indeed possible in ethics for questions about obligation to be related to the best “for me” and also “for everyone,” but Tugendhat also holds that the genesis of moral questions is “the insistence on shared convictions in questions of science, of religion, of taste, or of the private conduct of one’s life” (58). 9 Danto, Analytical Philosophy of History, Preface, vii. For more examples it suffices to refer to the summary in Warnock, English Philosophy since 1900, 13, who quotes for example G.E. Moore’s “A Defence of Common Sense” and his dictum that his interest in philosophical problems had been kindled by what other philosophers had affirmed about the world or the sciences. 6 chapter one instruments (. . .) that exist,” regard “the de facto use in pre-philosophical language” of the word “truth” as “the ultimate authority.”10 The difference between the philosopher and the non-philosopher is a higher degree of vigilance.11 The philosopher is the one who does it himself or herself, and this means that only philosophers philosophize. This reminds us that Stephan Otto once compared the contemporary philosophy of history to a stage on which some representatives play roles in the foreground.12 In this instance, the philosophy of history is the touchstone for a hypertrophy of what it is to be a philosopher—a hypertrophy that is the result of neglecting trans-subjective structures. Even a man like Paul Feyerabend, who looks coquettishly over the rim of his spectacles13 and wants to bid farewell to reason, does not avoid the cult of personalization (or what we might well call the vanity of the self- thinker) when he takes up the pose of the anti-philosopher. He says that objectivity is in a crisis because of cultural confrontations. Relativism is a reaction to this, but although it makes use of argumentation, arguments may not claim any greater or lesser validity than art or ritual. “Thus the ancient idea of tradition-independent truths (the material notion of objectivity) which had run into the problem of cultural variety was replaced by the somewhat less ancient idea of tradition-independent ways of finding truths (the formal notion of objectivity).”14 Accordingly, he presents the supposition of “universally valid and binding standards of knowledge” as “a special case of belief” that is without contents and can be sustained only by an authority or an institution such as “a king or a jealous god.”15 He attacks this kind of reason and at the same time accuses his colleagues of having dismissed reason in the sense of an optimism with regard to contents. Feyerabend bids farewell to reason as a strategy for avoiding complexity: “‘my’ philosophy (. . .) is not mine but a condensation of reasonable ideas from all over the world (. . .) my concern is neither rational-

10 Tugendhat and Wolf, Logisch-semantische Propädeutik, 5 and 219 (their italics). See on the other hand Tugendhat, Tí kata tinós, §1. 11 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg noted: “It is impossible to recommend too highly the following adage to every philosopher: ‘Be sober and vigilant!’” (Schriften und Briefe, vol. 2, K 62). Lichtenberg quotes 1 Peter 5.8, where the vigilance concerns the devil. He is aware that these words are preceded by the admonition: Humiliamini sub potenti manu Dei . . . The consequence he draws from 1 Peter 5:8 is clearly the opposite of what the admonition appears to be saying. 12 Otto, “Faktizität”. 13 See photograph 4 on the cover of Feyerabend, Farewell to Reason, 1987. 14 Ibid., 7f. 15 Ibid., 10f. philosophers’ philosophy and school philosophy 7 ity, nor science, nor freedom—abstractions such as these have done more harm than good—but the quality of the lives of individuals.”16 Socrates redivivus? If Feyerabend wants to attack the philosophy of reasonability in the modern age, he ought to begin with its systemic cult of the philosopher. But his ability to indulge in irony does not go that far.

1.2 Individual and Universal in Italian National Philosophy

Giambattista Vico, whose axiom verum et factum convertuntur set the stage for recent philosophy of history and whose philosophy of spirit I am not competent to interpret, utters the following aside: sapiens est qui vera cogitat et iusta vult.17 This sounds as if “those of old” regarded the true and the right as that which is to be thought. At first glance, this definition favors a naïve objectivism; but it is precisely the conditions of certain knowledge and thinking that are the theme of this work by Vico, which is entitled Liber metaphysicus. In his Autobiography, he ascribes his inclination to philosophy to an accident: a fall on a staircase made him melancholy rather than (as was expected) half-witted. Vico knows very well that the philosopher is characterized by “una natura maliconica ed acre, qual dee essere degli uomini ingegnosi e profondi.” And we know from Ficino and others that this is an allusion to the influence of Saturn, under which the philosophical nature literally stands. The “influence” of the stars ensures that what the philosopher thinks is not a product of the imagination, but that which is true:18 “the soul with an instrument or incitement of this kind—which is congruent in a way with the center of the cosmos, and, as I might say, collects the soul into its own center— always seeks the center of all subjects and penetrates to their innermost core. It is congruent, moreover, with Mercury and Saturn, of whom the second, the highest of planets, carries the investigator to the highest subjects. From this come original philosophers, especially when their soul, hereby called away from external movements and from its own body, is made in the highest degree both a neighbor to the divine and an instrument of the divine.”19 This astromagical and Neo-Platonic interlacing of

16 Ibid., 16f. 17 Vico, Liber metaphysicus, 110. 18 “Vita di Giambattista Vico scritta da se medesimo (1725–28),” in Vico, Opere filosofiche, 5. 19 Ficino, Three Books on Life, liber I, cap. 6, 121–123. 8 chapter one the various aspects of the philosophical profession, to which Vico alludes, is indeed aware of the existence of the philosopher (and even of the solitary philosopher), but he is lost to sight under Saturn, as the instrument of that which he contemplates. It is true that these are metaphors; but Vico is familiar with them. He must have fallen very far “down the staircase,” if this is merely a reminiscence from the beginning of philosophy that has somehow remained with him. Vico too stylizes himself as the philosopher who guarantees his philosophy with his own person, fragile and anyway contingent as it is. In the intoxication of the Italian Hegelianism of the early nineteenth century, Bertrando Spaventa (1817–1883) has no appreciation of the irony of self-stylization. He understands Vico’s verum quod facimus20 as the dis- solving of Bruno’s “one” in the Idealistic philosophy, as the identity of being and thinking, not in an “ancient metaphysics of being,” but in an ontologism that is a “transcendent psychologism.”21 He regards Vico as the incarnated return of Italy to philosophy (or of philosophy to Italy) and thus as the personal guarantee of his national pantheism: without Vico’s new science of the unity of the peoples in the image of God, there would be no Italian national state.22 Spaventa may not be the most brilliant interpreter of Vico, but he offers support for the thesis that for the modern period and for those whom it chooses as its leading philosophers, philosophers make philosophy, since it seems almost impossible to think of metaphysics as anything other than “transcendental psychologism.” Vincenzo Gioberti (1801–1852), to whom Spaventa appeals here, and who wrote a treatise Del primato morale e civile degli Italiani, sees ontologism as consisting in the “costruzione della formola ideale,” which in turn depends on a “Primo filosofico.” Behind this lies an idea of ‘being’ that oscillates between “Primo psicologico la prima idea” and “Primo ontologico la prima cosa,” and thus ultimately between God and the world.23

20 Vico, Liber metaphysicus, 138. 21 Spaventa, La filosofia italiana, 64: “This ‘unity of spirit’ is the true negation and the true fulfillment of the ‘unity’ of Bruno and of Spinoza; it is the basis and the principle of all the new concepts of the ‘New science’ and demands a new metaphysics, the metaphysics of the human mind that proceeds from the history of human ideas. Descartes laid the foundations of this metaphysics when he wrote that ‘to think is to be’: this metaphysics is not pure ontologism (the old metaphysics of being), but is a ‘transcendental psychologism,’ the metaphysics of the mind that is the true ontologism, according to Gioberti.” 22 Ibid., 62–64 and passim. On the figure of Vico in the Risorgimento, see the overview by Oldrini, “La questione del vichismo meridionale.” 23 Gioberti, Introduzione allo studio della filosofia, vol. 2, 143–145 (beginning of ch. 4). philosophers’ philosophy and school philosophy 9

Ontologism is the attempt to remain a realist after Kant and Hegel. As is well known, its preparatory work was carried out in the attempt by Nicolas Malebranche and others to employ an intuitionism to stabi- lize the scholastic certainty of truth, which had been made insecure both by nominalism and by the critique of knowledge à la Descartes.24 Anto- nio Rosmini (1797–1855), the representative of the “ideologia,” begins the “Sistema filosofico” with two definitions: Philosophy is the science of the ultimate reasons. The ultimate reasons are the satisfactory answers that the human being gives to the ultimate “why”s with which his mind interrogates its own self.25 In order to be able to define the subject of thinking, of the “mente,” Ros- mini draws a distinction between the “reasoning of this human being, considered as reasoning” and the “persuasion and tranquility of the mind,”26 between “philosophical knowledge” and “popular knowledge.”27 This means that not even this path to a solution can escape from the dilemma of the personalization of the philosopher: “The speculative vein awoke to new life in Italy with Vico, who had the stupendous idea of re-establishing the Platonic and Christian realism by going back to its first origins, which were not Greek but Italian (. . .). However, Vico was not understood in his own day (. . .).”28 In order to demonstrate the speculative primacy of Italy, Gioberti was not only obliged to stylize Vico to a solitary genius. He was in fact obliged to let Vico’s originality (“he had the stupendous idea”) consist in his locating the manifestation of the truth in classical antiquity: Vico’s Liber metaphysicus is the beginning of the “most ancient wisdom of the Italians.”29 On the one hand, speculation depends on a philosopher who was celebrated in history; on the other hand, however, Vico aids the

24 Klimke, Institutiones historiae philosophiae, vol. 2, 277–281. One less well known example is presented by Blum, “Valerian Magnis philosophisches Programm”. On “ontologismus” see also Werner, Der Ontologismus; and Werner, Die kritische Zersetzung. 25 Rosmini, Introduzione alla filosofia, 103: “La filosofia è la scienza delle ragioni ultime. Le ragioni ultime sono le risposte soddisfacenti che l’uomo dà agli ultimi ‘perché’, coi quali la sua mente interroga se stessa.” The system presented here consists of “Scienze d’intuizione,” “Scienze di percezione,” and “Scienze di ragionamento.” 26 This is a secularization of the Augustinian spiritual search: Augustine, Confessions I 1: quia fecisti [Deus] nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te. 27 Rosmini, §7f., ibid., 104f. 28 Gioberti, Del primato morale, vol. 2, 173. 29 Gioberti’s interpretation of Vico is incorrect, but that is unimportant in the present context. Similarly, the Renaissance Platonic concept of the “prisca philosophia” surely plays no role here. 10 chapter one escape from the contingency of the temporal by the discovery of the earlier history. These brief sidelong glances30 at aspects of the recent history of philosophy that are not investigated very often—precisely because the great philosophers block our view of them—demonstrate the inherent systematic link between pantheism and the realism of ideas and that concept of philosophy that necessarily depends on the philosopher who “does” this concept. This leads us to a further consequence, namely, the historicization of philosophy. An examination of the history of philosophy shows that after the first wave of historicization in the seventeenth century, in which the philosophical “sects” were identified (a process that reaches its culmination in J.J. Brucker’s Historia critica philosophiae), the emphasis very quickly came to lie on personalities.31 Philosophy, as the utterances of “concrete” philosophers, could only be described as philosophers’ philosophy. The transition can be seen most clearly in Johannes de Launoy, who writes a history of Aristotelianism with the intention of blackening the reputation of the Aristotelian school and mostly presents excerpts from the authors, since, as he states, what matters is “to appraise not from the person the philosophy, but from the philosophy the person, and correctly so. For it befits a prudent man to take all philosophers to be wisdom peddlers.”32 Philosophers are regarded as brokers of wisdom. In order to escape from the solipsism of those who merely present themselves as representatives of opinions, Hegel wanted to teach philosophy as the history of philosophy, and this history as the systematic self-unfolding of philosophy, as one single “system in development.” In order to close the circle, Hegel had to present the systems that succeeded each other, and that were the product of the thought of concrete persons, on the analogy of a logical derivation.33 No sooner said than done: Hegel’s Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie follow the strict chronology of mono-

30 A presentation of the development of the Italian national philosophy with all its currents and polemics would expose all the contradictoriness of the modern consciousness. I refer here to the valuable exhibition catalog (with the relevant secondary literature): Gli hegeliani di Napoli e la costruzione dello Stato unitario, 1987. 31 Garin, “La storia ‘critica’ della filosofia del settecento;” Santinello, Storia delle storie generali della filosofia, and Santinello and Blackwell, Models of the History of Philosophy. 32 Launoy, De varia Aristotelis fortuna in Academia Parisiensi [1st ed. Paris 1653], 1: ” non (. . .) ex hominibus philosophiam; sed ex philosophia homines aestimare: nec immerito. Id enim apposite quadrat in prudentissimum virum, qui philosophos omnes habet pro sapientiae institoribus.” 33 Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, Einleitung, 49 and passim. philosophers’ philosophy and school philosophy 11 graphs about philosophers. It is precisely in the context of the history of philosophy that Hegel mocks the “reasoning . . . of the sober thinking” that holds that only one truth can exist. He pokes fun at the “sobriety” of this postulate, although naturally without seeing a product of inebriation in his own “belief in the world-spirit.”34 And that would not have been pre- posterous, if we recall the Platonic madness that (in Ficino) drove the above-mentioned philosopher to abandon himself to the truth.35 Nostalgia for the Middle Ages plays the same role for Spaventa as does the naivety of the simple truth for the advocate of the world-spirit. In the midst of his construction of the Italian national state that is discovering itself—and let us for the moment discard our knowledge of what actually became of Spaventa’s Naples—and in his enthusiasm for the progress of the modern age, Spaventa looks back to the Middle Ages, which were based on the external character of philosophic justification; the mediaeval truth was external to the world, that is to say, transcendent. The verum of the Middle Ages (to which the Italian-Hegelian national state formed a contrast) was convertible into the creatum; it was not yet convertible into the factum. In order to attain the true and concrete unity of the peoples by means of their national formation on a common foundation that is the Christian idea itself, it was therefore necessary to deny the immediate unity of the Middle Ages, and hence the very principle that confirmed this unity. This principle was the external character of the eternal and the divine, that is to say, their existence external to the things of this world, and hence also external to the very nationality of the peoples. (. . .) The mediaeval system had its root in an ideal principle, namely, the external character of the eternal and the divine. This meant that it could be overcome only in an ideal manner; and this victory was the work of science and of the literature of the Renaissance (. . .).”36 This suggests that the price paid for national unity, and indeed for the progress of humanity as a whole, consisted in the inversion of transcendence into immanence, and that the price of national unity and of national pantheism consists in the universalization of the person of Vico (“the mind of a solitary thinker of our race”):37 “The eternal ideality of Vico was not the indeterminate and equivocal Providence of the Middle

34 Ibid., 36 and 38. 35 It suffices to mention Plato’s Symposium and Ficino’s commentary on it. 36 Spaventa, Unificazione nazionale ed egemonia culturale, 196f., from the so-called Pro- lusione modenese (1859); see the catalogue Gli hegeliani, Nr. 137. 37 Spaventa, Unificazione, 203. 12 chapter one

Ages, nor the divine arm of the Gallican prelate; it was not an abstract, transcendent, and inert entity, but the very rational essence of the human being, which is active and immanent in the human race.”38 We should note the precision with which Spaventa describes the difference: the “mediaeval” principles are thought of as ideal and “external.” The epistemological problem of truth is described as a relationship between outer and inner. But Spaventa seems to believe that the problem he has described in this manner is solved once it is described as an internal relationship, as immanent, as pantheism. Others prefer the relationship between identity and non-identity, between principle and principiatum— or else the analysis of linguistic modes of expressing our relationship to the world. In each case, the point is that the principles of knowledge, like the principles of being, are out of our “grasp”: if this were not the case, either we would be God, or we would be only the things. When they discussed this problem, the philosophers of the Renaissance favored the metaphor of the human being as mundi copula, as a soul that hovers between the absolute and the transient and must take a decision. Giovanni Pico sees this intermediary position of the human being as the special human dignity. In view of all we have said up to this point, we need not labor the point that he too promotes a person-centered, historicizing, eclectic philosophy.39 Ficino, on the other hand, makes the wandering of the soul between God and the world (that is to say, the freedom of the human person) a problem of theodicy. As we have mentioned, he sees the return to God as the goal of the soul.40 For Ficino, the fall begins with the urge to think in a self-satisfied way, at one’s own risk: Cecidit autem animus noster in corpus, cum, praetermisso divino, solo suo usus est lumine ac se ipso cepit esse contentus.41 The problem of philosophy is captured very precisely in this image—as a problem. The triumphal procession of an idealized Vico, organized by the Festive Committee of the World-Spirit, presents the problem as a solution.

38 Ibid. 39 Pico, De hominis dignitate/Über die Würde des Menschen, esp. 2ff. and 40ff. As is well known, this discourse was written as an introduction to the disputation of nine hundred theses drawn from every field of philosophy. 40 Marsilio Ficino, De amore IV 4–5, Opera 2, p. 1332. 41 Ibid.; no comparison to Vico’s fall on the staircase. philosophers’ philosophy and school philosophy 13

1.3 Neo-Scholasticism and Transcendental Truth

One of the most important Neo-Scholastics was the Benedictine Joseph Gredt (1863–1940); more than one generation of Catholic theologians used his manual in their philosophical studies. In his treatment of the origin of ideas, he notes that both ontologism and the doctrine of innate ideas lead to Idealism.42 He gives the following counterargument to Idealism: “The very fact that we acquire ideas from sense-knowledge, and always depend on sense-knowledge in the use of ideas that we have already acquired, means that our intellect knows the visible world as something distinct from ourselves, and our ideas are manifested as modes of being that have a trans-subjective validity.”43 Paolo Dezza (1901–1999), rector of the Jesuit Gregorian University in Rome and for a time acting General of the Society of Jesus, was probably one of the last Neo-Scholastics. He ties the knot in this way: “The principle of immanence, which is the foundation of all Idealism, is unacceptable. (. . .) It is formulated thus: ‘It is impossible to emerge from thought by means of thought.’ This means that thinking does not reach anything outside itself (. . .).”44 Dezza argues, against every form of Idealism, that it is also meaningless to adduce the distinction between transcendental and empirical knowledge: “because either the distinction is real, and in this case the principle of immanence collapses; or else the distinction is not real, and in that case it does not explain anything.”45 We need not dispute with Dezza and Gredt about the meaning of the term “transcendental.” We can certainly call these men “minor” philosophers, but they reveal more clearly than any of the “original” philosophers the fundamental distinction between a philosophy that is oriented to the thinking subject and a philosophy that is oriented to the transcendental truth.

42 Gredt, Elementa philosophiae Aristotelico-Thomisticae, 1958, n. 573, 455: “tum ontologismus, tum ideae innatae ducunt ad idealismum.”—Unfortunately, Riccardo Quinto, Scholastica, does not include Neo-scholasticism, except for its contribution to the historiography of medieval scholasticism, which is the objective of his book. 43 Ibid., 456: “Eo tantum, quod acquirimus ideas ex cognitione sensitiva et etiam in usu idearum iam acquisitarum iugiter dependemus a cognitione sensitiva, intellectus noster cognoscit mundum aspectabilem a nobis distinctum, et ideae nostrae tamquam modi essendi, qui habent valorem transsubiectivum.” 44 Dezza, Filosofia. Sintesi scholastica, n. 29,4, 37. 45 Ibid., 39. 14 chapter one

It is the fact that these two authors are teachers of scholasticism and that their writings are manuals that makes them natural opponents of every subjectivistic or Idealistic philosophy: for scholasticism (or school philosophy) is the antithesis of philosophers’ philosophy. The latter regards the former as an oxymoron, for if it is the thinking activity of the philosopher that constitutes philosophy, it follows that philosophy is both possible and comprehensible—but it is not something that can be taught. As soon as one attempts to teach contents, there arises the danger of reproducing words devoid of content, that is to say, devoid of the act of thinking. (Everyone who is obliged to read the papers produced for semi- nars in philosophy has already encountered this phenomenon.) On the other hand, the contents of school philosophy can be demonstrated—as a teaching manual which, of course, can be more or less precise, complete, or correct. This would mean that philosophy is dogmatics; and this is how these manuals present it. Dogmatics, however, has a naturally objective and an historical side, with the paradox that various paths of discussion must be opened up in the interpretation of individual supra-historical doctrines. This obviously prompts the question whether what is produced is the history of literature or the study of language, or whether the truth is being presented in such a way that it is constituted or exists exclusively in the dimension of time. Historicization and de-historicization are the two aspects of school philosophy that remain irreconcilable. For if the author of a manual wishes to present the contents of philosophy in a purely dogmatic manner, he must attempt to present—without any indications of time—questions that were de facto generated in the course of history; he must make these questions his own, and must thereby present for a solution philosophical disputes that have long been recognized as insoluble (for example, the doctrine of the double truth). This can then be understood as the philosophia perennis: the eternity of the truth as a dilemma that has been made perennial. School philosophy, however, has yet another aspect, that of the school as institution. And just as the Grego- rian University goes back to the Collegium Romanum of the Jesuits, which was founded by Gregory XIII in 1584, so too the philosophical manuals of the Neo-Scholasticism of a Gredt or a Dezza go back to the school philosophy of the Jesuits in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as Dezza himself has shown.46

46 Dezza, Alle origini del neotomismo. This filiation cannot be demonstrated here. It includes the recourse by Joseph Kleutgens, S.J., from 1853 onwards to the theology and philosophers’ philosophy and school philosophy 15

1.4 Jesuit School Philosophy

School philosophy is institutionalized philosophy. There is no school without school regulations: school philosophy reveals its spirit in its regulations, especially when these are composed from the outset to realize a specific goal. This is the case with the Jesuit order of studies, which served as a model for all the school and university regulations in Coun- ter-Reformation Europe. Above all, it guided the academic policies of the Jesuits, who held a monopoly on education in some periods and regions. The Jesuit educational canon came into being in the course of the sixteenth century. It acquired legally binding status with the publication of the Ratio atque institutio studiorum in 1599, and was obligatory at least until the dissolution of the Order in 1773.47 The antecedents of the order of studies include the Constitutiones of the Order and a lengthy internal discussion, most of which has been documented in academic studies.48 These regulations allow us to present the concept of philosophy, which is antithetical to that of philosophers’ philosophy and has continued to make an impact up to the present day, alongside or despite the modern era. The Regulae professoris philosophiae in the 1599 Ratio studiorum begin with the goal (finis): the artes prepare the students’ heads for theology, which in turn leads to the knowledge of the Creator.49 This outlines the theological-teleological framework. The second proposition of the regulations returns to the sources: on every important point, it is not permissible to deviate from Aristotle, unless something else is taught at every other university, or what Aris- totle says contradicts the orthodox faith.50 At first sight, this looks like a toning down of the commitment to Aristotle, but it at once turns out to be a sharpening of the Peripatetic sword against the heretics, since these

philosophy of the Middle Ages, which was understood as a distant “past”; the linkage between Catholic Christian philosophy and Thomism that was established by Leo XIII in 1879, and the flourishing of mediaeval studies to which this led. See Ehrle, Zur Enzyklika “Aeterni Patris.” Brezik, One Hundred Years of Thomism, contains essays on the genesis of the encyclical and compares it with modern philosophy. 47 Pachtler, Ratio Studiorum 4 vols. Berlin 1887–1894. For secondary literature, see Pol- gár, Bibliographie sur l’histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus. I refer also to my own studies: Blum, “Die geschmückte Judith,” and “Der Standardkursus.” 48 Lukács, ed. Monumenta Paedagogica Societatis Iesu, cited as MPSI. 49 MPSI 5, 397; this is already affirmed in Constitutiones 4, cap. 12 n. 3 (MPSI 1, Mon. 14, 283). 50 MPSI 5, 397, n. 2: In rebus alicuius momenti ab Aristotele non recedat (sc. professor), nisi quid incidat a doctrina, quam academiae ubique probant, alienum; multo magis si orthodoxae fidei repugnet (. . .). 16 chapter one words are followed by four paragraphs against non-Christian Aristotelians and by the presentation of the correct interpreter, namely, Thomas Aqui- nas. Deviations from Thomas need to be justified: Contra vero de Sancto Thoma nunquam non loquatur honorifice, libentius illum animis, quoties oporteat, sequendo; aut reverenter et gravate, si quando minus placeat, deserendo.51 Although as yet not one single philosophical proposition has been affirmed, we have already learned something about this philosophy: it can be taught, since it depends on authorities, and it is possible to make a choice among the authorities. In this introduction to the institution of philosophy, which clearly determines its possible contents, we find direc- tives that lay down the didactic elements, the schedule of teaching: Uni- versam philosophiam non minus triennio praelegat (sc. professor), idque binis quotidie horis (. . .): this is the cursus of philosophy.52 One could regard the details of this schedule as merely an organizational measure taken by a well-organized institution; and this is correct. However, we should note that after nearly fifty years of discussing the order of studies, this regulation remained in force. In other words, it was regarded as essential. The universa philosophia can no longer be separated from the organizational measures that direct it. The course means that the student makes his way through a syllabus that is structured by perspec- tives that are not necessarily connected to “philosophy,” for the regulations that now follow prescribe one year of logic, one year of physics, and one year of physics with metaphysics: this is philosophy. Anyone who has studied philosophy under the influence of this order of studies—and as we have seen, this was possible until well into the twentieth century— understands philosophy as the systematic nexus of logic, physics, and metaphysics. The order of studies prescribes further details for the individual disciplines. For example, logic begins with training in disputation, studying the rules of syllogistics in the Summulae. Next, the basic questions of logic and science are to be discussed, e.g.: “Is logic a science?” However, the question of the universals should be deferred to the section on metaphysics.53 The full meaning of the theory of concepts is declared to be metaphysical and is postponed to the end of the studies. The dissociation between truth and doctrine, which had become feasible since the dispositional logic of

51 Ibid., n. 6. 52 Ibid., n. 7 and 8. 53 Ibid., 398, n. 9 §2. philosophers’ philosophy and school philosophy 17 the humanists, is institutionalized here. This does not mean a depotentia- tion of truth. Rather, the theory is deferred to a later point in the course, in the interests precisely of the potency of truth. Something very similar happens in physics.54 We are told beforehand: In octo libris Physicorum compendio tradatur textus libri sexti et septimi. There is of course a double reason for forgoing the discussion of the matters raised in these Books. On the one hand, topics such as the change of qualities will also come up in De coelo III and De generatione I. On the other hand, it is precisely these undervalued books that contain the theories that will allow Early Modern physics to breach the walls of Aristotelianism through the reversal of the paradoxes of movement and through the materialized interpretation of continuum and change.55 The Jesuits probably did not yet realize that the Peripatetic bulwark needed to be strengthened at this point. A harsh daylight falls upon all the fine commemorative speeches about Athanasius Kircher or Galileo, as soon as one reads this regulation: “Meteorology should be taught during summer months at the last hour of afternoon.”56 This order of studies was written by Spaniards, Catalans, and Italians. Is modern physics possible, if both students and teachers are fighting a losing battle against sleep on summer afternoons—and when we read that the professor of philosophy should be freed from this burden as much as possible? The answer, of course, lies in the “plurality of activities” of the Order outside the school.57 In this field, however, a precedent is established. This means that the emphasis in the course lies on the speculative physics of the first books, at the expense of the physics of that which is perceptible by the senses. When disputations are held on the basis of the writings specifically devoted to the natural sciences, topics are chosen that can be linked to the theoretical foundations of the lectures on physics and that remain on the level of theory; everything else can be disregarded. The special physics is thus eliminated; at the same time, just as in logic, all that is metaphysical is moved to the end of the course.58 In the second year, all that remains of natural philosophy (once it has been disburdened of the philosophy of science, the special natural sciences,

54 Ibid., 398, n. 10. 55 I refer the reader here to my study Aristoteles bei Giordano Bruno. 56 Regulae 398, n. 10 §3: “Meteorologica vero percurrantur aestivis mensibus ultima pomeridiana scholae hora.” 57 Miquel Batllori has emphasized this on numerous occasions, most recently in: “Der Beitrag der Ratio studiorum für die Bildung.” 58 Regulae 398, n. 10 §1. 18 chapter one and metaphysics) is what constitutes Jesuit school physics. We should also note that the eighth Book of the Physics is superfluous, because the theological-metaphysical implications of the Unmoved Mover (namely, the number of the intelligences, freedom, and infinity) are likewise transposed to metaphysics. The First Mover becomes the speculative conclusion of physics, behind which metaphysics begins. But God and the angels are to be omitted in metaphysics, since they depend to a great extent on truths of the faith.59 When Aristotle was established as the authority in philosophy, the intention was to ward off non-Christian Aristotelianisms. Accordingly, attention was also paid to the subsidiary relationship between philosophy and theology. Here, however, it seems that philosophy—in particular, metaphysics as the theological section of the philosophical course—is to be kept free of the theology that is linked to revelation. A clear division of tasks and competences is established between theology and philosophy; this is certainly not a servile subordination, still less an intentional elimination of theological matters from philosophy. An administrative measure made transcendence a legitimate object of speculation. For as long as such a philosophy was taught, it thought of metaphysics as a theology that was independent of revelation (and thus “natural”), and of theology as revelation conceived in philosophical terms.60 After setting out the sequence of the matters to be taught, the order of studies prescribes the instruments of teaching: text, quaestiones, repetition, and disputations.61 Textual exposition and disputation are the standard methods of teaching. Particular emphasis is laid on aristotelicum textum bene interpretari.62 This bene interpretari is the opposite of what counts as philosophy in the modern period—namely, to think for oneself. The preliminary version of the order of studies, drawn up in 1586, goes on to utter a warning: quod Aristotelis contextu posthabito in cogitationibus et inventis nostris evanescimus.63

59 Ibid., n. 11 §2. 60 I have not employed other primary texts in the present study, since my argument would risk being lost to view under the extensive quotations. Let me however refer to the relevant treatise by Theophilus Raynaudus: Theologia naturalis sive entis increati et creati intra supremam abstractionem ex naturae lumine investigatio, 1622, on which see chapter 14.2. 61 Regulae, 399f. n. 12–20. 62 Ibid., n. 12. 63 MPSI 5, 98, n. 5. philosophers’ philosophy and school philosophy 19

This commitment to the context in Aristotle could be understood as a purely humanistic aid to interpretation, were it not for the mention of “our own thoughts and ideas.” This is an allusion to Roman 1:20–21, where Paul attacks those who have dismissed God’s self-revelation and have neglected the praise of God: evanuerunt in cogitationibus suis. Their folly consists in the fact that they regard themselves as wise: dicentes se esse sapientes, stulti facti sunt. This is no longer Socratic irony: it is Christian seriousness. The truth is no longer open, so that one would have to be skeptical and place all knowledge under a reservation about ignorance. Rather, the truth is given and revealed, and every endeavor to know that prescinds from the truth is per se folly. The analogy that is constituted by the allusion to Paul in the order of studies is an analogy between the link between the knowledge of nature and revelation on the one hand, and science and Aristotle on the other. One who underestimates God/Aristotle overestimates his own human possibilities.

1.5 School Philosophy vs. Philosophers’ Philosophy

The relationship between the philosophy of the modern period and school philosophy is problematic and perhaps indeed dialectical. The concept of philosophy came to rest long ago on one of the two sides, namely that of the victors. This however is detrimental to philosophy, since as I have attempted to show, the weaknesses that have been indicated here—which can be described historically as “subjectivism,” and morally as “hubris”— are the result of the one-sidedness of the victorious party. School philosophy is usually aware that it can “degenerate into scholasticism.” If it forgets this reality, it does degenerate in this way. But a self-aware scholasticism knows that what is at stake is the truth, and that there is no point in thinking the truth, unless the truth is independent of being thought. From this perspective, truth has the ineffable quality of the holy.64 Truth must be thought in such a way that it does not need philosophy—at any rate, not the philosophy of the “philosophers.” Nevertheless, philosophy is the humane side of the truth, with all the weaknesses of this side.

64 See Otto, “Langage dialectique et silence hiérophantique.”

chapter two

APOSTOLATO DEI COLLEGI: ON THE INTEGRATION OF HUMANISM IN THE EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM OF THE JESUITS

2.1 Jacobus Pontanus on the Usefulness of the Humanities

One of the most important testimonies for the integration of humanism into the curriculum of the Jesuits is a report written by Jacobus Ponta- nus, a member of the Society of Jesus, during the preparatory phase of the famous Ratio studiorum: “De studiis et scholis Societatis Jesu, Causae quinque ob quas Societas merito maximi facit haec studia, et facere debet”:1 The causes enumerated by him are the following: Five reasons why the Jesuits properly value, and should value, these studies I. They are the gateway for entry into the most powerful principalities.2 Through them we acquire the friendship of great princes. They recommend us highly to every class, the highest and the lowest, seeing that everyone desires to see his children distinguished and honored for their learning and religious devotion. Without this service people will be insufficiently appre- ciative of the rest of the things we do. Take away the schools—who then will look us straight in the eye? II. Even if these studies cannot compete with others in dignity, they surpass them through enriching and passing on utility. Other disciplines are for a few; these are for the masses. Even among the well-educated you will find barely one in thirty who has arrived at a deep understanding of literature, since these are generally ranked with the priests and monks. Our humanism ranges far and wide among the whole human race3 and nurtures its seed- lings throughout towns and principalities; it sows its seed, and we see and will see its rich and extensive harvest.

1 P. Ladislaus Lukács S.J. kindly allowed me to use a copy of the manuscript that is kept in the Archive of the Ordinariate in Augsburg. Quotations below follow this copy. Meanwhile the document has been edited in MPSI (see note 12) vol. 7, Mon. 12 III, pp. 93–94, and translated into English in Pontanus, Soldier or Scholar: Stratocles or War, 2009, 165–166. (The following quotation is from this edition; which offers also the most recent bibliography on Pontanus.) Previously an account of the text has been given by Bremer, “Das Gutachten des Jakob Pontan”. Cf. B. Bauer, “Jacob Pontanus.” On Jesuit humanism, Brizzi, “Studia humanitatis,” and O’Malley, The First Jesuits. 2 “Quia haec est ostium . . . in amplissimas civitates. Per haec amicitiam magnorum Principum adipiscitur . . .” 3 “Humanitas nostra per genus humanum latissime vagatur . . .” 22 chapter two

III. These studies are essentially ethical: whether you read an historian, poets, or an orator—in Greek or Latin—almost every single page presents an opportunity to promote virtue or to warn against vice—a thing that does not happen in physics, metaphysics, logic, and not even everywhere in theology. Although we strive for both ends we prefer making students good to making them learned.4 In a single one of your sermons from time to time you might succeed in bringing a usurer to give up usury, a whore-monger to stop whoring, and likewise with the remaining sins. However, a good teacher, if he accepts a boy still untainted by any vices, will, with constant encouragement and a kind of fatherly care, lead him away from those vices completely, like a judge, and will raise him toward a Christian life. The result is that the boy does not so much need to become good from bad; rather, he has no idea how to turn out bad from good and fears the bad vehemently. In this matter (i.e., moral progress)—just as in teaching letters—the second instructor follows the first, the third follows the second, the fourth follows the third, etc. IV. From the spirit our studies learn respect, modesty and circumspection. In turn, from our studies the spirit learns attractiveness, wisdom and effi- ciency.5 All three are certainly important and necessary for skillful human interaction, but certainly seem to be expected rather more from the humanities than from other disciplines. The others are more strict, but the humanities are gentler and by far more suitable for general human affairs: hence their name. V. Without the humanities the other studies grow cold and are in some way mute and dead. The humanities are their life, spirit, motion, blood and bone, without which all their splendor and dignity fades away.6 It is this same report, on which even the article “Humanismus” in the Jesuitenlexikon of Koch7 relies, which states quite justly: “Thus the whole educational work of the Society of Jesus actually took on the character of humanism and made a great contribution to its domination in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” In the following essay I shall try to demonstrate how the concept of humanism was modified through its adaptation to the Ratio studiorum to make it efficacious for such a long period. For even Pontanus’s theses con-

4 “Studia haec moralissima sunt . . . Nos autem, etsi utrumque volumus, bonos tamen efficere quam doctos maluimus.” 5 “A spiritu litterae nostrae accipunt verecundiam, modestiam, cautionem, a litteris vicissim spiritus amabilitatem, prudentiam, efficacitatem.” 6 “Haec illorum vita, spiritus, motus, sanguis atque os est: sine qua eorundem splendor et dignitas omnis obsolescit.” 7 Koch, Jesuiten-Lexikon, col. 831. For all Jesuits mentioned see generally de Backer and Sommervogel, Bibliotheque de la Compagnie de Jesus. apostolato dei collegi: on the integration of humanism 23 tain three noteworthy emphases: the political purpose, external to science (point 1), the perspective that is to be interpreted anthropologically and that seems to point to a concept of ‘humanism as integral culture’ (2–4), and its function as scientific propaedeutic, which is described by organic rather than model-type metaphors (5). To interpret this adequately it will be helpful to consider the development of Jesuit studies before, as well as after, the Ratio studiorum took effect in 1599.

2.2 Organizing Public Education

One can start by stating that in the sixteenth century an organisation of teaching and learning was founded by the Jesuits, which was apparently meant to fill a gap. Where this gap may have been is difficult to determine; one may be tempted to bring up names and concepts like Roman Empire and territories, Paracelsus and Petrus Ramus, Church and State, Augsburg and Trent, Melanchthon and Descartes, for the educational program relates to all this somehow, even though in a discriminating way, and mostly indirectly through the general program of the Jesuit movement. But rather, it might be possible to describe the diffusion of Jesuit schools as a process of displacement. For not just in Protestant surround- ings but everywhere there was a great resistance to the rise of the Jesu- its, sometimes from other members of the universities, especially of the faculty of law, as in Ingolstadt, sometimes from the chapter of the cathe- dral, for instance in Würzburg, sometimes even from the population, as in Northern Italy, and even in Rome the Jesuits asserted themselves against various obstacles.8 Generally, this reluctance is caused by the Society’s not being actually a school order, and by its perpetually aiming at several goals, at least one of which was political, when taking over or founding schools or universities. Therefore it may be supposed that the gap which the Jesuit schools were eager to fill is not to be found in the given educational system of a particular locality (even though it may be interpreted so in any given case), but, from quite a different point of view, the educational system

8 Concerning the taking over of faculties or universities in what is now the Federal Republic of Germany see Hengst, Jesuiten an Universitäten; further the older handbook Duhr, Geschichte der Jesuiten in den Ländern deulscher Zunge. For Northern Italy see Brizzi et al., Università, principe, gesuiti and Brizzi, La “Ratio studiorum”. For Austria Engelbrecht, Geschichte des Österreichischen Bildungswesens. vol. II, ch. 5. 24 chapter two was to fill a gap in the political and religious program of the order itself, and thus to complete it. A clear indication of this is the fact that Ignatius of Loyola did not at first provide special training through the order for the order, but later observed the founding of the Collegio Romano with great interest.9 It was the demand for Catholic teachers on missionary outposts, e.g. in the Por- tuguese colony of Goa, and in Germany, torn and shaken by heresies, that roused in Ignatius the idea of opening the houses of the society to non- Jesuits and thus of extending the mission to an “Apostolato dei Collegi.”10 At this point it was also clear that education in a Jesuit college would be helpful for the enlistment of new members, but in no way was to be identified with it. In Rome the pupils were chosen personalities or future personalities from all countries within reach; this means that, upon returning home and attaining leading positions, they became excellent propagators not only of the culture, but also of the religious and political program of their teachers.11 These points make it clear that the educational program of the Jesuits was subsumed under the general program, which consisted basically in carrying through the Counter Reformation in its religious and political aspects. Looking from this point of view, at the Constitutions of the Society and the Ratio studiorum,12 where details of the political and substantial educational program are most likely to be found, one is rather disappointed, for in their dispositions both demonstrate a discrepancy between the general and the concrete that is difficult to understand: between the Glory of God on the one hand, and the regulation of the timetable on the other. This wide gulf between a high aspiration and the petty prescription of detail can be made the key to understanding the educational program by filling

9 Leturia, “Perché la Compagnia di Gesù divenne un ordine insegnante”. Villoslada, Storia del Collegio Romano, especially “Introduzione”. 10 Leturia, 370 and 375. Cfr. Batllori, “La ratio studiorum nella formazione,” 177. 11 Villoslada, Storia, 24–26, concerning the Collegium Germanicum, tells us about 7,000 priests educated there, among these one Pope, 24 cardinals, 57 archbishops, 330 bishops, “un bel gruppo di martiri,” and countless personalities in the field of culture. Further details are in Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum. 12 Both are available most easily in Pachtler, Ratio studiorum; the Constitutiones, (pars IV) in vol. I, the Ratio in vol. II; or see Institutum Societatis Iesu, vol. II: Constitutiones, vol. III: Regulae. Selected parts from the 4th part of Constitutiones, which deals with the studies, are published in a critical edition in Lukács, Monumenta Paedogagica Societatis Iesu (further quoted as MPSI), in vol. I Mon. 14. A German translation of the Ratio studiorum is in Duhr, Die Studienordnung, with an introduction of about 170 pages. Cf. Polgár, Bibliographie, nos. 4890–5117. apostolato dei collegi: on the integration of humanism 25 it from other records. For one thing, the question of sources and models presents itself, for another, the literature that was published in the Jesuit order within this wide compass. It is well known that Ignatius took his model for the organization of the colleges from the modus Parisiensis, that is, precisely from that university, which, in contrast to the Italian universities, was organized into colleges and structured in classes with a clear domination of the professors.13 Whatever the humanism of the University of Paris may have been at the time, Ignatius for his part was interested in the organization: great importance is given to the lessons of grammar; the structure is a hierarchical arrangement of classes according to the level of performance; learning is supervised through a system of exercises.14 But as the structure of the modus Parisiensis is medieval,15 and, moreover, grew out of a monastic, theology-centered tradition, it does not seem very favorable for humanistic influences.

2.3 Studia humanitatis

Nevertheless it is a fact that the studia humanitatis were accepted by the Jesuit schools into the courses of instruction and already figure under this term in the Constitutions (IV 12, Declaratio A).16 As it is, the specifically humanist disciplines—poetics, rhetoric, and history—are integrated into the quite traditional canon of disciplines and structure of faculties. Throughout, the Jesuit universities rely on the well known hierarchy of arts, medicine, law, theology, with the chairs of medicine and law being left to non-Jesuits, except in the cases when a two-faculty-university was aimed at from the beginning.17 In the faculty of arts the same disciplines are taught which had always been included, that is, grammar, logic, mathematics and physics;18 ethics is treated rather in passing, because it has its place in the theology course as moral theology, or else casus conscientiae

13 Hengst, Jesuiten, 61, note 38. 14 Farrell, The Jesuit Code, 32f; Villoslada, Storia, 11. 15 Codina Mir, Aux sources de la pédagogie, 54 and 148ff. Cfr. also Villoslada, La universidad de Paris, 39–47, concerntng organisation and colleges; ch. 13 about humanism at the university, which must have been, in spite of all the great names (like Guillaume Budé, Jacobus Faber Stapulensis, etc.), so superficial (p. 322) that the author is not willing to give a definite judgement about humanistic influences on Vitoria (p. 350). 16 Kristeller, “Humanismus und Scholastik,” 237, note 60. Codina Mir, Aux sources, 83. 17 On this subject see Hengst passim. 18 Cf. Kristeller, p. 17 and 35. 26 chapter two

(that is, theory of sin). The genuinely humanistic discipline of history is reduced to collections for exempla for the lessons of ethics, to chronology, and to the reading of ancient classics. The humanistic character of education at Jesuit schools consists, therefore, in taking up the transmission of ancient languages (Latin, Greek, sometimes Hebrew, which are at the same time the languages of the Bible) and of ancient literature into the propaedeutics of the arts; this is a trait common to Jesuit schools and modern classical grammar schools, which also call themselves humanistic.19 In a much quoted letter about the litterae humaniores written on Igna- tius’s request by the future secretary of the Society, Johannes Polanco, to Jacobus Lainez (later to be the first general of the Jesuits after the founder) on the 21st of May 1547,20 the entirely propaedeutic value of studies of classical languages and literature is repeatedly stressed: just as the body becomes accustomed “poco a poco” to hard work, so too one has to ‘pro- ceder del fundamento bueno de letras a los demás studios’,21 to let the spirit of the student acquaint itself gradually to the more difficult themes, “como son artes y theología scholástica.”22 If it is true that Polanco, with this reasoning, reached “the apex of the humanistic understanding of Ignatius,”23 it will then be possible to define clearly the role of humanism in the educational system of the Jesuits:

(1) Integration of the humanistic ideals of culture in a curriculum that, as a whole, proceeds from the alphabet to speculative theology. (2) reduction of the contents of humanistic education to philological propaedeutics. (3) an additional advantage of humanistic formation beyond its scholarly ends is the fact that especially the Latin language, but the contents of classical culture as well, were helpful to the linguistic and conceptual communication necessary to the international range of the society and its mission.24

19 Cf. plate C in Hengst, 70f. 20 MPSI, I Mon. 19, 366–373; also in Ignatius de Loyola, Epistolae et Instructiones I, 519– 526; French translation in Herman, La Pédagogie des Jésuites, 315–319. 21 Ibid., p. 369. 22 Ibid., p. 369 f. 23 “Nel colmo della concezione umanistica del Loyola”, Leturia, “Perché,” 367. 24 MPSI, I Mon. 19, 370. apostolato dei collegi: on the integration of humanism 27

A genuinely new trait in this concept is a view of the studia humanitatis that stresses the individual, psychological approach to learning, “una concezione profonda e matura di formazione umana che si basa sulla naturalezza e sul funzionamento spontaneo delle nostre facoltà,”25 that is worthy of the mind which created the Exercitia spiritualia. But, on the other hand, it is here we have to look for the source of possible misunderstandings about the humanistic character of Jesuit education. The studia humanitatis are in no way the leading disciplines, as they were in the humanistic movement that had, by now, become a part of history. They have lost the anthropocentric claim to fill the capacity of intellectual demands of a cultured person, the humanist. Rather, they exhibit the traits of an integral formation of the personality that will be typical for neo-humanism and that seems to be anticipated by Pontanus’s report quoted at the beginning. This double reduction, that is, to philology and to the reading of classics on the one hand, and to pedagogy on the other, makes it possible to call Jesuit pedagogy humanistic, but, at the same time, it discloses its differences and its new elements.26 The epoch- making achievement of Ignatius of Loyola and his Jesuit Society is not simply that they strove for a connection with the humanistic ideals and methods, but rather that they integrated them into the program of the Catholic Reform and rendered them fruitful by assigning them a precise educational function. The whole education was finalized and, with it, in their proper place, the studia humanitatis. Thus the gaps between the timetable and the Greater Glory of the Lord are filled, as well as those in the mandate of the Jesuit mission. When Ignatius had realized this chance, “gli applico con forza sovrumana il sigillo di tutta la sua personalità e di tutta sua opera: il totalitarismo coerente dell’ A. M. D. G.”27 Several examples can demonstrate the manifestations of humanist heritage to be found in the literary activities of Jesuits. In the immense Jesuit literature, much of which consists of apologetical and polemical works, as

25 Leturia, “Perché,” 367. cf. Reinhard, “Zwang zur Konfessionalisierung?”, 261. 26 Villoslada, Storia del Collegio Romano, 111; Lundberg, Jesuitische Anthropologie, passim and p. 76. The thesis of Rosenthal, Die ‘Erudition’ in den Jesuitenschulen, was written with a polemical intention, and therefore it demonstrates the misunderstandings that were possible. Cf. Trossarelli, “Principi pedagogici della Compagnia di Gesu.”—On the development of the concept of humanism see now: Blum, Philosophieren in der Renaissance, chapter 2; Toussaint, Humanismes Antihumanismes; on the anthropology of Italian Humanism see Keßler, Die Philosophie der Renaissance. 27 Leturia; “Perché,” 381, emphasis as in the text. The wording is to be explained by the year of publication (1940). 28 chapter two well as ascetic, theological and philosophical literature—that is, in a way, handbooks—there are also writings that show humanistic influences. Of course in education there was need for appropriate manuals (the same Jacobus Pontanus mentioned above took an active part in this field), and the grammar and rhetoric manuals (Emanuel Alvarez and Cyprian Soarez)28 are up to the standards of the times, that is, inconceivable without the preparatory efforts of the humanists. But Johannes Bonifacius, another grammarian, claims that the advantage of the Jesuit teaching of Latin lies in its always using Christian examples in the grammar:29 the peril of late humanistic pedantry is avoided by linking the grammatical training to the teaching of catechism, that is, by not allowing it to become an end in itself by providing it with an external meaning and rendering it, principally, a mere instrument. In the same way special editions of classics were issued, of which the quality is acknowledged by modern philologists; but the humanistic diligence often collides with the necessity to expunge indecent passages in authors like Martial.30 The great number of poetical works with truly humanistic imitation of classical models is mentioned here only to complete the record.31 The Jesuits’ attitude towards history was, at times, a point of polemic. But one should at least distinguish here between three different aspects. As has been mentioned before, history as a discipline had but a modest part in education; there was a manual by Horatius Tursellinus (from 1598 onwards),32 but it was not before the eighteenth century that chairs for

28 These are the two handbooks that had asserted themselves. Before that Andreas Fru- sius, Hanibal Cordet, and Jacobus Ledesma had composed grammar-books. The handbook of rhetoric by Soarez was even recommended by Anoine Arnauld for Port Royal: Barbera, “L’ideale della formazione umanistica secondo la Ratio studio rum” (part of a series of articles). 29 Bonifacius, De sapiente fructuoso (from 1589 onwards frequently reprinted), and Institutio christiani pueri (from 1575 frequently reprinted); in the German translation “Die christliche Knabenerziehung”, at pp. 53, 80, 170ff., 200. Cf. Battistini, “I manuali di retorica dei Gesuiti.” Protestant examples of the same attitude are to be found in the volume Rein- hard, Humanismus im Bildungswesen. 30 Kristeller and Cranz, Catalogus translationum et commentariorum, III, 155–157, concerning the edition of Claudianus by Martin Delrio; IV, pp. 284–287 concerning the edition of Martial by Matthaeus Rader. As to expurgating cf. MPSI, I. Mon. 27, 389–391 (Ignatius’s letter to Lippomani from 1549) and passim. Bonifacius passim; Possevinus, Bibliotheca selecta de ratione studiorum, 1603, II, 468 and 539ff. (cf. Blum, “Die geschmückte Judith”, p. 119f.; Barbera, “L’idelae”, 367; Codina Mir, Aux sources, 305–309. 31 Most of the examples in Ludwig, “Neulateinische Lehrdichtung” were composed by Jesuits. 32 Scherer, Geschichte und Kirchengeschichte, 88 and 102. Brader, “Die Entwicklung des Geschichtsunterrichts.” apostolato dei collegi: on the integration of humanism 29 history were finally instituted in German Catholic universities (Freiburg i. Br. in 1716, Ingolstadt in 1748).33 The conflict centering on chairs for history was soon to coincide with the expulsion of the Jesuits from the universities.34 Secondly, it is clear beyond all doubt that there were Jesuit historiographical achievements comparable to other ones.35 Whether or not they were only to be considered “just, so to say, humanistic dummies”36 ought to be discovered through a precise examination of methods and concept of history, in order to avoid a merely apologetical reaction.37 But the third aspect is eminently important, being the use made of historical studies and arguments for the ends of the Counter Reformation.38 The conclusive refutation of the Magdeburgian Centuries had not been written by a Jesuit, but by the Oratorian Caesar Baronius. Nevertheless, it is possible to consider another momentous weapon in the battle against the Reformation, the Controversiae of Cardinal Bellarmine, as an important historiographical work, an historical record on heresies.39 Here, too, we find methods of modern scholarship that do not remain ends in themselves. A very instructive example for the transformation of the humanist method in historiography is a work composed by the confessor of Emperor Maximilian, the Mainz controversialist Adam Contzen,40 which bears the title: Methodus doctrinae civilis, seu Abissini regis historia (Cologne, 1628). This work claims to describe the life of the Ethiopian king with a politico- pedagogical purpose, and, to ensure us that we are on a humanistic trail, we find all the well-known topoi from the humanist theory of history in the preface. Above all the historia-magistra-vitae theme is applied; the problem of historical truth is represented with the well-known antinomy of metaphysics and experience, whereas the conflict between utilitas and

33 Concerning Freiburg see Scherer, 289f.; Sager, Die Vertretung der Kirchengeschichte. Concerning Ingolstadt see Mederer, Annales Ingolstadiensis Academiae, III, 235f.; cf. Dickerhoff, “Universitätsreform,” with further literature on this theme. 34 Lesch, Neuorientierung der Theologie, 68ff. 35 A list mainly of annalists is to be found in Duhr, “Die alten deutschen Jesuiten als His- toriker;” they are evaluated by Fueter, Geschichte der neueren Historiographie, 278–288. 36 Fueter, 280: “humanistische Attrapen (sic).” 37 Leturia, “Contributo della Compagnia di Gesù alla formazione delle scienze storiche.” A short apology is found in Ryan, “Jesuit Historical Scholarship.” 38 An institution for positive theology was also supposed to serve the same end: Duhr, “Ein kirchenhistorisches Seminar”. 39 Bellarminus, Disputationes (. . .) de controversiis. Cf. Polman, L’élément historique dans la controverse religieuse, 512–526 and 527–538 (on Baronius). Ryan, The Historical Scholarship of Saint Bellarmine, stresses Bellarmine’s independence of humanistic models (34 and 204). 40 On him see especially Seils, Die Staatslehre des Jesuiten Adam Contzen. 30 chapter two veritas historiae is also brought to a head. And, after all this, we read that it is not the facta, but the facienda et vitanda, that are told here, not the historical facts, but the doctrine extracted out of them.41 The complex, well-reflected humanistic theory of historiography turns into moral doctrine, the problem of truth in history fades away, and edification fills the vacancy. A similar ‘translation’ of an established science into admon- ishment is the distribution of virtues on the globe in a little booklet by the Jesuit historian Daniele Bartoli, Della geografia trasportata al morale (Venice, 1664),42 There was a link to humanism through the so-called Christian humanism.43 One example is the booklet Il soldato christiano by Antonio Possevino.44 Possevino was the ablest diplomat of his time and his Society, and because of this and thanks to his Bibliotheca selecta,45 an immense survey on literature, he can truly be considered a Renaissance man. However, Possevino’s Christian Soldier has nothing in common with Erasmus’s Enchiridon militis christiani (except the title), because the Jesuit takes the metaphor literally: his book is an edifying manual for Catholic mercenaries (the author had to do with them professionally) against the moral challenges of military life. One aspect of the Renaissance, which was linked to Christian humanism, and at the same time constitutive to Renaissance philosophy, is Neopla- tonic literature (Ficino, Hermetism), which was, essentially, an attempt to restore Plato for Christian philosophy. This literature was partly taken up in the works of authors like Athanasius Kircher, who were experimenting in the fields of philosophy of nature and the encyclopedia. A noteworthy effort to utilize Christian Neoplatonism for school philosophy appeared in 1617 at Ingolstadt: a dispute by the Jesuit Johannes Siegersreitter defended by a Cistercian friar, Investigatio vitae primae et immortalis a quo omnes res creatae suum ortum vitamque ducunt (Ingolstadt, 1617). With the aid of sources from Hermes Trismegistus to Jamblichus, who, among others, had been revised by Ficino, the well-known Neoplatonist model is

41 P. 2: “non quae facta sunt, sed facienda, vitanda scribam.” 42 Concerning geography see Dainville, Les Jésuites et l’éducation; the first volume has the subtitle « La naissance de l’humanisme moderne. » Cf. the collection of essays Dain- ville, L’éducation des Jésuites, and the review by D. ·Bigalli in Rivista critica di storia della filosofia 38 (1983), 496–498, which criticises the concept of humanism. 43 Giuseppe Toffanin also confines himself to this general parallel: “Umanesimo e Ratio Studiorum,” also available in Toffanin, Ultimi saggi, 179–194. 44 Possevino, Il soldato christiano. Cf. Pontanus, Soldier or Scholar, Introduction, 27–33: “Just war and the Morality of Military Service.” 45 Blum, “Die geschmückte Judith,” revised in Blum, Philosophenphilosophie. apostolato dei collegi: on the integration of humanism 31 carried through in a Christian way. Still in the same year Siegersreitter held a dispute which, by its contents, refers to the former: Theoremata et problemata philosophica de vita mortali. Yet, even though Pythagoras and Plato are, once more, appealed to in the preface, the execution, according to usual standards, holds on to the scholastic authorities (Thomas Aquinas, the Conimbricenses, etc.). Appeals to humanistic expectation and experience sometimes bordered on counterfeiting, as, for example, in two writings of the baroque preacher Jeremias Drexel that bear the titles of Zodiacus christianus and Trismegistus christianus, and are both purely ascetical in their contents. Another example is Andreas Capit- tel’s Clava Peripatetica Herculis Philosophi (1617), a dispute from Dillingen dealing with logic (metaphors are a question of tact and taste), where neither Hercules nor ancient mythology is mentioned further. Or there is purely scholastic disputation of 1702 (at Dillingen, as well) by Ludwig Simonzin: Ilias Philosophica, where Homer is never mentioned, nor even the Trojan horse. Neither was Lullism (which, owing to its combinatory art, was attractive both to humanists with inclinations towards rhetoric and to theologians of Neoplatonic inspiration) really able to assert itself among the Jesuits. Encyclopedists like Athanasius Kircher and Sebastián Izquierdo remain exceptional. Lull was one of the mystics, who from 1575 on, could only be read with explicit permission and in selection because “instituti nostri rationi minus videntur congruere,”46 even though experiments were, evidently, possible.

2.4 Scholastic Humanism

How humanistic thought can even be turned into its contrary can be seen in the controversy against Descartes’ philosophy, which was in its consequences heretical. One of the standard arguments against him, which was also taken up by the Jesuits, was that he wished to install a new, original philosophy which, in reality, was nothing but a resuscitation of Epicurus

46 MPSI (see note 12) IV Mon. 107, p. 577. Batllori, “Los Jesuites y la combinatoria luliana;” cf. Batllori, “Entorn de l’antilul’lisme de Sant Robert Bellarmin.” Concerning Sebas- tian Izquierdo see Ceñal, La Combinatoria de Sebastián Izquierdo, with an edition and translation into Spanish of the Disp. 19 of Pharus Scientiarum, 1659. Another instructive example has been studied recently by Barbara Bauer “Pontaus”, 100–110; The Philokalia of Jacob Pontanus (Augsburg, 1626) is a humanistic compilation of Neoplatonic authorities, including those from the Renaissance, without any connection either to the other writings of Pontanus (except its philological accuracy) or to philosophy studies. 32 chapter two

(who was, for all the pains Gassendi had taken, considered to be an athe- ist, and Gassendi along with him).47 This argument is inconceivable without the revival of ancient thought, but it turns humanism into its contrary, into denunciation. The end of Jesuit influence in schooling and education is informative too. Even before the society was suppressed in 1773, its monopoly was restrained in Germany. Under the outward pressure of the Enlightenment in the Protestant countries the Benedictines took the lead in the movement against the Jesuits, which arose amongst scholars. And their wording (already to be found in Jean Mabillon in 169148 and later on prominently in Andreas Gordon)49 does not conceal its parallel to the old humanists, if not its derivation from them: polemics against the scholastic content of the philosophical courses, stress on the importance of historical studies— even though the Enlightenment meant something different by it than the humanists did—the postulation of civil usefulness of education, the aboli- tion of the (Counter-Reformation) controversial theology and its substitu- tion by historical theology as the positive source of Catholic dogmatics. Mabillon and the Maurist Benedictines had retired from the violent confessional battle to the study of the Church Fathers and in their editions (the most famous being that of Augustine) had continued by their historical studies and philology to cultivate at least parts of Renaissance humanism. This might be a coincidence, but their use of the same arguments which Renaissance theoreticians used against scholastics makes us sup-

47 The first to demonstrate this seems to be a non-Jesuit, Pierre Daniel Huet, Censura philosophiae Cartesianae, pp. 201–221. This demonstration was accepted for instance by Johannes Baptista Ptolemaeus (Tolomei) S.J., Philosophia mentis et sensuum, pp. 354–359. A history of criticism of Descartes is to he found in Saur, Relatio historica judiciorum et censurarum adversus philosophiam anti-Peripateticam (1708), Appendix. The Carmelite friar Elisaeus Garcia fashioned the motto “contra Renatum Des-cartes, aut potius contra Renatum Parmenidem”: Cursus Philosophiae, I, p. 444, n. 598. 48 Mabillon, Traité des études monastiques, especially part II, chs. 9 and 10 about philosophy studies. 49 Gordon, Oratio philosophiam novam (. . .) suadens; the latinitas barbara is not left out amongst the incriminations (p. 6). The same is found also in Gordon, Varia philosophiae mutationem spectantia, together with other orations and letters with the same tendency. In contrast: the Jesuit Opffermann, Philosophia scholastica defensa contra oratorem academicum Erfordensem; this apology opposes Gordon’s rhetoric by a syllogistically styled refutation full of quotations. On Gordon see Hammermayer, “Aufklärung im katholischen Deutschland.” Cf. also for this context the numerous publications of Hammermayer about Bavarian Benedictines and the academy movement; also Lesch, Neuorientierung, and van Dülmen, “Antijesuitismus.” On Gordon also Blum, Philosophenphilosophie, 212–216. apostolato dei collegi: on the integration of humanism 33 pose that there was a clear difference between the educational system of the Jesuits and humanism.50 It is, thus, to be considered scholastic? Beyond all doubt Jesuits were propagators, though not inventors of the Second Scholastic that had come from Spain and dominated philosophical and theological studies at the universities.51 And, as in medieval scholasticism, philosophy was subordinated to theology. But with medieval scholasticism this seems to have been a purely scientific hierarchy. For the Jesuits all sciences were, principally, purpose-bound, apologetical, and subordinated to the previously described intentions. Just as the education of a single person increased his usefulness either in the Society or outside it in politics, the promotion of the sciences was, in the same way, part of the politics of the order and a transitional aim as well. As late as 1736 Franz Xaver Kropff writes that the main task of Jesuit education is to teach the sciences in such a way so as to make them lead to the veneration and love of the Savior, and that the schooling of youth was the most appropriate means for improving the world.52 Education as a means to promoting influence, and science as the veneration of God (an idea which even appears repeatedly in book titles)53 is certainly no scholastic method. But if absolutely everything is done for the greater glory of God and therefore every activity, including science, is directed towards this end, then human activity becomes a wide field for free development, where everything, grammar along with astronomy, has equal rights. Therefore it is only a small step from the idea of science as divine service to the idea that there are sciences indifferent and neutral in their value. The philosophy of nature which is, as is well known, theologically explosive, can thus be justified by Ecclesiastes 3,11 and defined as theologically disengaged: “Mundum tradidit disputationi eorum.” This is a further variation of the medieval solution of double truth: if the orthodox faith is not touched, that is, if it is reckoned with on a large scale, the sciences may pursue their

50 On the shape and structural diversity of Catholic Enlightenment see Lehner, “Intro- duction: The Many Faces of Catholic Enlightenment.” 51 Concerning the utilisation of humanist dialectic for dogmatic theology, especially by the Dominican Melchor Cano: Kohut, “Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Humanismus.” 52 Kropff, Ratio et via recte atque ordine procedendi, Prooemium; German translation, 330. 53 Visler, Philosophia sacro-prophana; Mourat, Quaestiones philosophicae de animae humanae praestantia; Schwarz, Peripateticus nostri temporis seu philosophus discursivus (. . .) juxta sanctorum philosophorum exempla, pie curiosum instructus (Freiburg, 1724). This last is at the same time a contribution to the survival of emblemata. 34 chapter two immanent questions unhampered. And here we may see the fruitfulness of the structure of Jesuit education that leaves such a large and free field or gap between the political and religious goal and the severe discipline of the Society. Room for experimenting is given to all possible influences; education becomes policy of education as the finalizing of schooling and science. Humanism is just one example of this, and, at the same time, a considerable step forward. The immense variety of themes, genres, and methods in the Jesuit publications also contains a significant part of the humanist tradition. At the same time the label ‘humanistic’ can be used in a purely mannerist or advertising sense, just because two essential aspects of the humanist movement, philology and pedagogy, were integrated into the course of education. There they can have the same influence as all other elementary knowledge: having grown out of the elementary course one can either forget them by turning to ‘higher’ subjects, or continue to cultivate them, according to personal inclination or higher command. chapter three

PHILOSOPHY AT EARLY MODERN UNIVERSITIES

3.1 Structure and Heritage of Catholic Universities

In the history of higher education, the Renaissance is a transitional period with both continuities and ruptures. Philosophy is practiced or taught at institutions inherited from the Middle Ages (the universities, the city and monastery schools), in private circles, at courts, and in academies. Inno- vations come from new intellectual influences (humanism), from politics and theology (the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation), and from the migration of students and scholars from place to place. The forms of institutionalized philosophy that developed from these structures were to determine philosophy until the age of Kant.1 In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (and indeed at a later date too), the authors who are known in the modern period as philosophers (Cusanus, Ficino, Machiavelli, Bruno, etc.) usually did not teach at universities. But these mediaeval institutions served to form and hand on knowledge to virtually all those who received a higher education; in this context, they were the object of mockery by Erasmus and others.2 Here, philosophy retained the double meaning of a propaedeutic in the septem artes liberales and of the rational preparation for theology. Both types of university structures, the Bolognese and the Parisian models,3 underwent further developments, though initially with no significant alterations. The Bolognese model, which was dominant in Italy and to the north of the Alps, was oriented more strongly to jurisprudence and to the quadrivium; this led to the genesis of the so-called Paduan or Italian Aristotelianism.4 The Parisian model, which was dominant in France, England, and Spain, was more strongly oriented to theology and was organized in colleges, leading to a stronger social bond between the teachers and their students. A substantial change came about through the penetration of the trivium

1 Hammerstein, “Bildungsgeschichtliche Traditionszusammenhänge”. 2 Erasmus of Rotterdam, Colloquia, 531; Vivés, In pseudodialecticos, 85ff. 3 Kristeller, “Die italienischen Universitäten der Renaissance;” Villoslada, La universidad de Paris; Schurhammer, Franz Xaver 1, passim; Codina Mir, Aux sources. 4 Olivieri, Aristotelismo e scienza moderna. 36 chapter three by humanistic education,5 with a better textual basis for the study of Greek and Latin authors, or the introduction of new authors. This affected the study of Aristotle too, even if the outcome was little more than “scholasticism with a humanistic polish.”6 Numerous new universities were founded in Germany in the sixteenth century, thanks to the increased need of education, the growth in pres- tige of such establishments, and the territorial situation after the Refor- mation in Germany: Strasbourg (1538), Dillingen (1549), Würzburg (1567), Altdorf (1575), Helmstedt (1576), Herborn (1584), Bamberg (1586/1647), and others.7 In principle, they enjoyed the same legal status as the mediaeval foundations. They aimed to consolidate the new spirit of the Refor- mation or the Counter-Reformation. For the Protestant universities, this meant a humanistic preparation (that is, oriented to the study of classical authors) for the study of a biblicistic theology, in accordance with Melanchthon’s programmatic demand (1517/18).8 In the seventeenth century, however, Protestant orthodoxy promoted a return to a kind of school metaphysics.9 The Catholic universities practiced a reduction of the studia humanitatis to cultural techniques that were prefixed to speculative philosophy (logic, physics, metaphysics). Both groups shared the educational ideal of “learned and eloquent piety” (sapiens et eloquens pietas: J. Sturm).10 This means that the structures, while remaining formally and legally identical, were filled with changing religious and academic contents. The increased political interest of the local ruler had momentous consequences for the institutions. In Protestant regions, the universities were instruments of national church politics, after the former monastery schools had come under state control.11 This meant that the professors of theology gained influence both on personnel politics and on the contents

5 Joachimsen Gesammelte Aufsätze; Grafton and Jardine, From humanism to humanities. 6 Seifert, “Der Humanismus an den Artistenfakultäten des katholischen Deutschland,” esp. 144. 7 Baumgart and Hammerstein, Beiträge zu Problemen deutscher Universitätsgründun- gen; Schubert, “Zur Typologie gegenreformatorischer Universitätsgründungen.” 8 Melanchthon, De artibus liberalibus; De corrigendis studiis; Hartfelder, Melanchthon als Praeceptor Germaniae; Maurer, Der junge Melanchthon 2, 428–434. 9 Dibon, La philosophie néerlandaise; Sparn, Wiederkehr der Metaphysik; Leinsle, Das Ding und die Methode. 10 Duhr, Geschichte der Jesuiten 1, 291. 11 Vormbaum, ed. Evangelische Schulordnungen; Hettwer, Herkunft und Zusammen- hang der Schulordnungen. philosophy at early modern universities 37 of philosophy.12 In Catholic regions, especially after the Council of Trent, the goal was a thoroughgoing stabilization of the confession by means of pastoral work ranging from elementary schools via seminaries for the education of priests to the universities. Institutes run by religious orders (e.g., the Carmelite schools in Salamanca and Alcalà in Spain) played an increasingly significant role in theological education; and the Jesuit order became more important from the mid-sixteenth century onwards. In its Ratio atque institutio studiorum (in force from 1599 to 1773),13 it defined the role of philosophy by locating it between humaniora and theology. In addition to the foundation of its own colleges and universities, including the influential Collegium Romanum in Rome and the Collegium Germani- cum (for students from the German Empire),14 the Jesuit order came to dominate the faculties of philosophy and theology, which were of decisive confessional importance, at numerous universities.15 Nevertheless, separate developments remained a possibility. In France, there was already a rivalry between the colleges that were born of the devotio moderna— with their specific combination of classical studies and piety16—and the University of Paris;17 the Jesuit colleges had to find their own relationship to this rivalry. In 1617, the Benedictines founded a university of their own in Salzburg, where a stricter Thomism was taught. The Sapienza in Rome, which benefited from the patronage of Pope Alexander VII, was free of influences from the religious orders and was more quickly receptive to newer philosophical currents.18 Similarly, the singular professorship for Platonic philosophy in Ferrara (and Rome) that was held by Francesco Patrizi adds a nuance to the picture of the school philosophy in the early modern period.19 In Calvinist regions (Duisburg, Herborn), there was an openness to the Ramist encyclopedic science, and to Cartesianism at an early date.20

12 See Schindling, Humanistische Hochschule und freie Reichsstadt; Schindling, “Die humanistische Bildungsreform in den Reichsstädten;” for a detailed study of Helmstedt, see Henke, Georg Calixtus und seine Zeit. 13 Lukács, Monumenta paedagogica Societatis Iesu, cit. as MPSI. 14 Villoslada, Storia del Collegio Romano; Schmidt, Das Collegium Germanicum in Rom. 15 Hengst, Jesuiten an Universitäten; Brizzi, La “Ratio studio rum”; Brizzi, Università, Principe, Gesuiti.—Cf. chapters 3.2–3.3 in this volume. 16 Renaudet, Préréforme et humanisme. 17 Lacoarret and Ter-Menassian, “Les universités;” Chartier, L’éducation en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle, chs. 5 and 9; Brockliss, French higher education. 18 Renazzi, Storia dell’Università degli Studi di Roma. 19 Schmitt, “L’introduction de la philosophie platonicienne.” 20 Menk, Die Hohe Schule Herborn, 197ff.—The history of Ramism is beyond the scope of this research. See pp. 303 and 311. Cf. Feingold et al., The Influence of P. Ramus. 38 chapter three

The general form of teaching in philosophy was the lecture in the form of dictation on the problems that had developed from commentaries on the Corpus Aristotelicum into a standard catalogue of topics. This gave rise to the cursus philosophicus both as a subject and as a textbook.21 The commonest written documentation of the university philosophy is the disputation, in which propositions drawn from the praxis of teaching were defended and justified.22 Despite all the quantitative and local changes in the context of the Thirty Years’ War, the structures of the university philosophy remained stable from the end of the sixteenth century until well into the Enlighten- ment period, when the disciplines of law, statistics, and history, which were politically and economically useful, displaced theology and philosophy as the leading academic disciplines.23 Beyond the influence of the Enlightenment, houses of study modeled on the Jesuit order of studies experienced a revival in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, also as bearers of the Neo-Thomistic movement. Examples are the Gregorian University in Rome (from 1824, as the continuation of the Collegium Romanum) and the other colleges of the religious orders in Rome, such as Sant’Anselmo (founded by the Benedictines in 1887) where Joseph Gredt wrote the standard Thomistic-Aristotelian textbook;24 the Philosophical Academy in Valckenburg in the Netherlands (1894–1942); the Catholic University of Louvain (from 1834); in America, Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (from 1880) and the Cath- olic University of America in Washington, DC (approved by Leo XIII in 1889). The Parisian college system, which was the dominant form at the Anglo-Saxon universities too (e.g., at Oxford and Cambridge), was trans- planted to the USA in the mid-seventeenth century via the model of Har- vard College in Cambridge, Mass.25 In competition to the universities, philosophy was also practiced in circles that were more or less closed and tightly organized. The humanists in Germany founded sodalities to promote classical education, on

21 Schmitt, “The rise of the philosophical textbook.” Cf. Darge, “Einleitung,” in Darge, Der Aristotelismus an den europäischen Universitäten. 22 Marti, Philosophische Dissertationen deutscher Universitäten 1660–1750; Mundt, Bio- bibliographisches Verzeichnis von Universitäts- und Hochschuldrucken. 23 See the research by Hammerstein, “Bildungsgeschichtliche Traditionszusammen- hänge”; Jus und Historie; Aufklärung; “Universitäten”; “Schule, Hochschule.” 24 Gredt, Elementa philosophiae Aristotelico-Thomisticae. 25 Morison, The founding of Harvard College and Harvard College in the seventeenth century; Menk, Herborn, 315ff. philosophy at early modern universities 39 the model of Italian literary societies;26 and the exchange of news about philosophy, science, and literature was a part of social life at the aristo- cratic courts. This led to the foundation of private academies that later became public or even national (e.g., the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome, which still exists today).27 One special form was the so-called Platonic Academy that was supported by the House of Medici in Flor- ence in the fifteenth century. This was largely focused on the person of Marsilio Ficino and aimed to revive the academies of classical antiquity in keeping with a Christian Platonism.28 Similarly, Giordano Bruno in England29 and Patrizi in Venice and Cyprus30 worked for a time in private circles close to the political power, in which unorthodox teachings were tolerated or even promoted. The sciences—from magic to empirical physics—were cultivated in many court establishments in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Examples are the court of Emperor Rudolph II in Prague31 and the circle around Federico Cesi in Rome,32 to which Galileo Galilei belonged. Even the Collegium Romanum had a department of this kind, separate from the university philosophy, in which scholars such as Athanasius Kircher could carry out their research.33 For a time, the Minim Marin Mersenne in Paris transmitted news from these non-institutional centers of philosophical and general scholarship.34 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the academies and the salons assumed the task of institutionalizing and continuing activities of this kind.35

26 Lutz, “Die Sodalitäten im oberdeutschen Humanismus;” Maylender, Storia delle accademie d’Italia, 4, 303. 27 Olmi, “‘In essercito universale di contemplatione, e prattica’.” 28 Della Torre, Storia dell’Accademia Platonica di Firenze. Hankins, Humanism and Pla- tonism II, 187–395. 29 Aquilecchia, Bruno. 30 Arcari, Il pensiero politico di Francesco Patrizi. 31 Evans, Rudolf II; see also Trunz, “Pansophie und Manierismus.” 32 Olmi, “‘In essercito.” 33 Baldini, “L’attività scientifica” and Baldini and Besana, “Organizzazione e funzione delle accademie.” 34 Lenoble, Mersenne. 35 For further readings on early modern universities see: J. Middendorp, Academiarum celebrium universi terrarum orbis libri VIII (1602).—A. Tholuck, Das akademische Leben des 17. Jahrhunderts (1853/54).—W. Ermann and E. Horn, Bibliographie der deutschen Universitäten (1904/05).—F. Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts (1919).— S. D’Irsay, Histoire des universités françaises et étrangères des origines à nos jours (Paris 1933–1935).—F.C. Sainz de Robles, Esquema de una historia de las universidades españo- las (Madrid 1944).—C.M. Ajo and G. Sainz de Zuniga, Historia de las universidades his- pánicas (Madrid 1957–79).—H. Schnepfen, Niederländische Universitäten und deutsches Geistesleben (1960).—Bibliographie internationale de l’histoire des universités (Geneva 1973/74).—A.L. Gabriel, Summary bibliography of the history of universities of Great 40 chapter three

3.2 Teaching Metaphysics at the Jesuit Colleges in Germany in the Seventeenth Century

The critical edition of the Monumenta Paedagogica Societatis Iesu36 gives detailed information about how the Jesuits dominated higher education in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Besides this, numerous historians of education and specialists in local history have worked on the abundant documentation to study how the Jesuit colleges operated. In my own field, the history of philosophy, one of the most fascinating questions about the Jesuits is the fact of their apparent remoteness from every modern conception of philosophy, especially as regards subjectivism, originality, or the freedom of opinions. The majority of historians of philosophy37—those who think that one must employ history in the defense of philosophy—find this scandalous. They are willing to take an interest in the history of Jesuit philosophy only on condition that this is regarded as the continuation of mediaeval scholasticism, a preparation for “modern philosophy” (however this term is defined), or a simple series of facts and opinions (in other words, a doxography). I take a different view. I wish to show that this philosophy had a physiognomy and an existence of its own and that it was in reality based on metaphysics, a discipline that acquired a clearly defined meaning in this context. Let us begin by recalling the specific attitude taken by the German Catholic universities with regard to knowledge. It is well known that Ger- many was divided into three zones of influence: those of the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Catholic churches. In the first two cases, a kind of unity was established between the political authority and the church. This was indeed one of the essential results of the Reformation, born of the personal and societal concern for the supervision of the church and of the tendency to diminish or even abolish the doctrinal authority of the pastors. This generated a Protestant conception of the university as an institution that had explicitly been given the important role of educating all the catego-

Britain and Ireland to 1800 (Notre Dame 1974).—E. Hassinger, ed. Bibliographie zur Uni- versitätsgeschichte (1974).—R. Chartier et al. (see n. 17 above).—History of Universities 1ff. (1981ff.).—H. Engelbrecht, Geschichte des österreichischen Bildungswesens (Vienna 1982–1986).—L. Boehm and R.A. Müller, Universitäten und Hochschulen in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz (1983).—L. Jilek, ed. Historical compendium of European universities (Geneva 1984). 36 Lukács, Monumenta Paedagogica (MPSI). 37 Jansen, “Die Pflege der Philosophie im Jesuitenorden.” A more recent example is Wallace, “Traditional natural philosophy.” philosophy at early modern universities 41 ries of intellectuals in a Protestant country, including the theologians. The local territorial ruler was almost automatically the rector of the university, and the professor who held the first chair of theology was responsible for Lutheran orthodoxy; sometimes, his task was that of an inquisitor (to use Catholic terminology). The situation in the Catholic universities was completely different.38 The Catholic Reform, which attained its apogee with the Council of Trent, both stimulated and sent shockwaves through every sphere, including the world of the universities. In Catholic Germany, most of the universities had passed into the hands of the Jesuits. It is true that in institutional terms, they did not all become “Jesuit universities” in the strict sense of the term, but the basis of higher education in the Catholic territories was well and truly “Jesuit,” in spirit and in most cases also de jure, at least until the end of the seventeenth century.39 I shall explain below what is meant by the “spirit” of Jesuit education. I do not intend to discuss the contribution made by the Jesuit authors in individual fields of knowledge, such as poetry and literature (where the Germans Jacobus Balde, Jacobus Biderman, Jeremias Drexel, and numerous authors of plays for the theater won distinction), the occult or exact sciences (with Atha- nasius Kircher and Christoph Scheiner), mathematics (with Christoph Clavius), and so on. In order to grasp the relationship between the Jesuit institution and the sciences and philosophy, it is certainly not necessary to find out (without asking their consent) whether Galileo or Leibniz learned something from the Jesuits, and to identify what this was. It suffices to establish what the Jesuits wanted to say, and what they explicitly affirmed about the way in which knowledge is gained and about the subject I shall discuss here, since the program of the Jesuits also determined the program of the universities in Catholic Germany. When we say that higher education in Catholic Germany depended on the religious orders, and especially on the Jesuits, this also implies that a centralized form of knowledge was involved. While the Catholics did not have a Jacob Andreae, who only just succeeded in uniting the Protestant camp around a formula of accord in 1580, they had had the Council of Trent and the Jesuits who gave life to the reforms that had been requested by this Council. I do not deny the existence of controversies among the Catholics, but they saw unity not as a task with which they were confronted, but rather as an all-encompassing, overarching principle. It is

38 Hammerstein, “Universitäten des Heiligen Römischen Reiches.” 39 Hengst, Jesuiten an Universitäten. 42 chapter three thus unsurprising that all the programs of higher education in the wake of this Reform endeavored to establish a doctrinal unity within the individual religious order.40 Doctrinal unity is a principle of the program of studies. It took nearly half a century for the Jesuits to define a unified plan of teaching, the Ratio studiorum of 1599, but the ideal of unified knowledge provided the orientation for all their endeavors from the very beginning. We find an explicit expression of the unity of the Jesuit model of life (vitae exem- plum), of doctrine, and of teaching (doctrina et modus eam proponendi), as early as the first work on the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus (1540).41 This allows us to draw conclusions about the nature of the knowledge at which the Catholic universities aimed, namely, the eternal truth. Only an unchangeable truth can unify the whole of doctrine; only such a truth can avoid dependence on the perception that one has of it or on the assent that one gives to it. Seventeenth-century scholastics did indeed discuss at length assent (assensus) as a condition of the truth in its relationship to the human being, but this discussion was conducted not in the context of philosophy, but in the framework of moral theology, where it was necessary to establish this assent and consent to misconduct in order for culpability to exist in the case of moral aberrations (that is to say, sins).42 The perennial nature of the truth posed no problem to those who shaped Catholic higher education, since they regarded this as unquestionably true. At a later date, after the Age of Enlightenment, the neo-scholastics would be its warmest defenders.43 This poses a genuine challenge to modern philosophy and to its historians: they expect that this period will display a preparation for the progress of the sciences and for the coming of the Enlightenment, but instead they discover a concept of knowledge that is guided by an unchangeable truth. And this position claims its own place in modern philosophy, between historicism and relativism. This description of unity and immutability could lead us back onto Platonic paths, but that would be a mistake in the present context. We must therefore establish how doctrine was understood in the Jesuit teaching. An examination of the debates in the manuals

40 Blum, “Der Standardkursus.” 41 Constitutiones IV, prooemium, 99–101. See also the Indexes in MPSI, s.v. “doctrina.” On “the unity of view” and “the unity of hearts,” see Const. III, 1, 18, 86, and VIII, 1, 216–226. 42 Liguori, Theologia moralis, Book 2, De peccatis, cap. 1, dub. 1, pp. 234f. See Thomas Aquinas, S.Th. Ia IIae, qu. 15, art. 1, ad 3m. 43 Schneider, “Philosophie, immerwährende.” philosophy at early modern universities 43 of philosophy about the truth itself or about the soul will not help us here; it seems more promising to go back to the Ratio studiorum, where we find a statement of the principles that provide orientation for the program of teaching. And this leads directly to the question of the place of metaphysics in this program.

3.3 The Ratio studiorum on Philosophy

The first impression one receives on reading the Ratio studiorum is that everything in these regulations is organized hierarchically.44 The text begins with the rules about the provincial superior, who must supervise all the studies in his province. He must follow a series of preconceived ideas: the first paragraph is a variation on the motto ADMG (ad majorem Dei gloriam),45 and the following paragraphs sketch the framework of studies for each level and function. The text underlines the importance of the choice of the prefect of studies, of the professors, and of the students. The Ratio thus proceeds according to a descending movement from the provincial to the rector, then to the prefect of studies, to the various faculties and disciplines, and finally to the students. An appendix also speaks of the creation of “academies,” selective circles for advanced students and professors in a given discipline. Their separate activities have a precise goal.46 The presentation of the faculties is also hierarchical. First comes theology (where one moves on from sacred scripture and Hebrew to scholastic theology, then to cases of conscience), and then philosophy. These two are called “superior faculties.” The inferior cycle of studies is likewise described in a descending manner: rhetoric, the humanities, and grammar, on three levels (superior, median, inferior). Obviously, this description reverses the reality of the course of studies followed by the pupils and students. This formal structure of university teaching according to the norma- tive texts of the Jesuits was also put into operation in Germany. The most revealing of these regulations concerns precisely the spirit of this type of education with its formal organization. The rules about the professor of philosophy begin by affirming the ultimate goal of all study, that is to say,

44 MPSI vol. 5, 369ff. (1599 version). 45 Ibid.: . . . “omnes disciplinas instituto nostro congruentes ita proximis tradere, ut inde ad Conditoris nostri ac Redemptoris nostri cognitionem atque amorem excitentur.” 46 Ibid., 448ff. 44 chapter three the knowledge of the Creator. This knowledge is mediated by theology; philosophy is its necessary condition and its instrument.47 Let me at once add that this certainly does not lead to a simple mixture of theology and philosophy. What is involved here is not the mediaeval scholastic methodology. In the seventeenth-century Catholic universities, there was a complex relationship between the two disciplines that permitted both a clear separation between theology and philosophy and the acknowledgment of the directive function attributed to theology with regard to knowledge as a whole. In the rules about the professor of philosophy, we see a kind of transfer to metaphysics of the questions concerning logic and physics, while all the questions with a theological resonance were transferred to theology itself. For example, we read that there will be no discussion of the First Mover in physics or in metaphysics.48 Those who drew up these rules were concerned above all with the authority to be followed in every matter. They specify that in almost every doctrinal matter, it will be appropriate to follow Aristotle. The significant point is not the choice of Aristotle (since this is not in any way surprising), but the fact that all the rules concerning philosophy begin with the same presupposition. This suggests that the unity of doctrine is based in the confidence shown in Aristotle. His texts are to provide guidance in all the specific doctrines that are mentioned in the course, and all the questions and disputationes are to refer back to his texts. This means that the Jesuits must reaffirm the principle that determines their general program of studies: Textus Aristotelis maximi faciendus.49 However, the Jesuits were also aware that there was a plurality of Aristotelianisms. This meant that one must choose an appropriate variety of Aristotelianism, and that one must give preference to (seligatur) a reliable commentary. Thomas Aqui- nas was regarded as indubitably the foremost of the Aristotelians, and it was only with respect and regret (reverenter et gravate) that one decided not to follow his interpretation.50 It is clear that the authors of these rules believe that authority has the power to give structure to a program of teaching. Not only is it convenient and easy to refer to the authority in order to give a description of the con-

47 Ibid., 397: “praeceptor (. . .) ad theologiam praeparet, maximeque ad cognitionem sui Creatoris.” 48 Ibid., 398: “In Metaphysica quaestiones de Deo et intelligentiis, quae omnino aut magnopere pendent ex veritatibus divina fide traditis (revelatis), praetereantur.” 49 MPSI, vol. 5, 397. See also my essay “Philosophers’ philosophy and school philosophy” in the present book. 50 MPSI, vol. 5, 5, 399. philosophy at early modern universities 45 tent of the studies; the authority, or the authorized truth, is the principle on which every program is based. It is possible to lay down a program for a unified doctrine only to the extent that this program deals with a doctrine, not with a methodology. This may seem obvious, since a variety of opinions, of thoughts, and of facts are to be found in this field; and modern didactics seeks to prepare the students for such discoveries. However, all of this can be taught only as variety. But the subject of teaching can also be that which is common to all the students, and possibly to all the professors. This is the theme of the Ratio studiorum. And this constitutes a transcendent or metaphysical principle. As is well known, numerous philosophers in the seventeenth century replaced Aristotle’s authority by other sources of confirmation of academic knowledge such as nature, experience, experimental work, or new authors who had written about methodology, such as Descartes. We must therefore ask: In which fields did Aristotle retain his place of authority, and in which fields was it necessary to jettison him? It is extremely important to note that Aristotle’s authority still held good, not in the details of his natural philosophy, but in the principle that gave access to knowledge and to truth. Let me illustrate this point by means of one very specific precept in the Ratio. Those who drew up this text, mostly Spaniards who were living in Italy, knew what they were doing when they decided to relegate meteorology aestivis mensibus ultima pomeridiana scholae hora.51 All the subjects that concern the sciences in the proper meaning of the word, experience and theory in physics, including motion and the contents of physics, are put to one side and taught only in an abbreviated form.52 This means that Aristotle’s authority now consists only of his general theory about the physical being—what we would call his metaphysical physics. His authority as philosopher is thus located in his theoretical way of approaching the question of nature (principles of nature, causes, act and potency, etc.) and in his metaphysics; his philosophical theology is excluded. Space prevents me from examining the other chapters of the philosophical program, namely, logic, physics, special natural theology, and ethics (if one is entitled to consider this one of the subjects of the course).53 I wish to point out here the fact that at the heart of the education that was

51 Ibid., 398. 52 Ibid., 397: “conferantur in compendium.” 53 Ibid., 401: the rules for the professor of philosophy stipulate that one half-hour is to be devoted to the teaching of ethics “progrediendo in textu breviter.” 46 chapter three given in the universities of Catholic Germany lay a confidence in the truth and in authority. And this confidence is not merely an accidental fact, but is rather the very principle of this education. If this is correct, what are we to say about the metaphysical content in the Jesuit teaching? The first surprise is that very frequently, the manuals of philosophy do not contain a chapter on metaphysics, since this matter had been absorbed into the other parts of philosophy. This is reflected in the treatise of Raphael Aversa, who declares that physics and metaphysics are one.54 And this is quite simply the consequence that was drawn from the postulate that philosophy must be general, and that the same applies to metaphysics. However, it is the opposite tendency, which appears to liberate metaphysics from everything that is excessively material, that helps us to discover what metaphysics is really about. Scholasticism defined each discipline on the basis of the question: “What is its object?” This is invariably the first question in the manuals. In the case of metaphysics, the answer is that it deals with ens reale abstractum a materia. I do not believe that anyone will object to this definition; but we are left with a fundamental problem that must be resolved, namely, the meaning of abstractum. Since what is involved is the method of abstraction in logic, this must mean “abstraction” in the realistic sense. “Abstract” would then be the equivalent of ens ut ens, ens ut sic, and ens commune.55 “Common,” “not material,” yet nevertheless “real”: this is the principal characteristic of being in the Jesuit scholastic ontology. Barto- lomeo Mastri, an Italian Franciscan, speaks in this context of an abstractum per indifferentiam: that which is abstract is indifferent to everything.56 This means that being, as the object of metaphysics, is of no interest to the objects of the other disciplines. At the same time, Mastri holds that to speak of being is to look at things in a particular way. Finally, this “being” is real and really includes everything, including the Creator and the spiritual beings, that is to say, God and the angels. It follows that all speculation about being is identical to natural theology.57 There is, however, a great difference between God and the

54 Aversa, Philosophia metaphysicam physicamque complectens, vol. 1, qu. 1, sect. 6, p. 26: “per modum unius totalis scientiae . . .” 55 See especially Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae, and Courtine, “Nominalisme et pensée classique; Courtine, Suárez et le système de la métaphysique, 458ff. 56 Mastrius, Philosophiae ad mentem Scoti cursus integer, tomus quartus, 1672, disp. 1, n. 1 (preface); disp. 1, n. 10. Cf. in this book chapter 13. 57 Ibid. philosophy at early modern universities 47 things he has created. The way in which human beings speak of God as a “being” employs a concept that is necessarily drawn from the material being. One can say (with the Thomists) that there is only an analogy between things and God, or else (with the Scotists) that “being” is real in the sense of a “real way of seeing things” that is identical both with regard to things and with regard to their Creator. Irrespective of the solution that is offered for this particular problem, it is taken for granted that metaphysics must fill this ontological gap. And in fact, both ways of approaching the problem regard the sphere of inquiry and speculation and the specific methodology as identical in metaphysics. In the philosophy of the Jesuits, all the specific disciplines are guided by metaphysics, which is the ultimate goal of all secular knowledge. Sec- ular knowledge finds its crowning in a theology of revelation. There is an aporetic problem in metaphysics, rooted in the potential opposition between the “common being” and the “abstract being,” between a comprehensive object called “being” and a particular methodology for looking at this object by means of abstraction. Since this methodology was applied both to created things and to their Creator, God, the latter must be only one part of metaphysics. “Being” was something “common,” but it was thought of only in abstract terms. Consequently, metaphysics was no longer the final stage of philosophical speculation, but now constituted a kind of preparation for the study of the particular questions concerning God, the angels, and the other “things,” considered one after the other.58 Ultimately, the lively opposition inherent in the object of metaphysics created a new role for metaphysics as a preliminary discipline: preliminary to physics, which was transformed at the same time into something close to “modern science.” This occurred above all thanks to the progressive acceptance by German philosophical professors of the philosophy of a Protestant, Christian Wolff. This was the beginning of the separation between metaphysics and the rest of the philosophical disciplines, and it led finally to the separation between philosophy and the sciences.59 I hope that the reader will pardon the brevity of this summary of the problem. It should be obvious that a conception of teaching that is based on unity and authority goes hand in hand with a metaphysics of this type. The differentiation of the disciplines is the fruit of the differentiation of

58 Suárez, Disputationes, prooemium. 59 Honnefelder, Scientia transcendens (Parts 2 and 3, on Suárez and Wolff); Leinsle, Das Ding und die Methode, and Reformversuche protestantischer Metaphysik. 48 chapter three methodologies under the cover of the methodological unity in metaphysics. The variety of the aspects of the treatment of things is unified by metaphysics, in which the things converge upon the methodology. At the beginning of this essay, I emphasized that the Jesuit teaching of philosophy in Germany is clearly rooted in the Jesuit educational system. I should like to finish by showing that an analogy can also be found in the spirituality of this teaching. To do this, I shall quote the rules of good conduct that were written for the students of philosophy by Giulio Clemente Scotti. His text was reprinted without the author’s name (in the meantime, Scotti had left the Society of Jesus) as an appendix to an authoritative work, the Distinctiones of the Jesuit Georg Reeb of Ingolstadt.60 Here is a summary of Scotti’s advice to his pupils: 1. Philosophy is a gift of God. Hence, prayer is recommended, especially to Saint Ignatius (philosophiam enim divinum esse donum . . .). 2. The principal enemy of philosophy is the human will, which is besieged by desire (intellectus autem, dum voluntas pravis obsidetur cupiditatibus, cogitatione in prava fertur . . .). 3. Authority is recognized by reason and by faith in one sole and identical truth (. . . ut auctoritati ita fidat, ut semper rationi magis innitatur, et ante caetera Fidei . . .). 4. Do not trust that which is easy in philosophy (. . . si aliquis vero est inge- niosus caveat ne sibi nimis fidat . . .). 5. Perseverance is required, and one must pay attention to what the professors say (Ut sit assiduus in audiendis praelectionibus . . .). 6. One must train oneself in disputatio, but one must avoid conjecturing a solution. Instead, one must ask the professor (. . . disputet saepissime cum aliis . . . solutionem petat a praeceptore). 7. This is why the booklets that offer series of arguments are important (. . . in libello . . . describat exempla, rationes alias, etc. quae saepe affert praeceptor . . .). 8. To believe or not to believe? There is not only the light of the truth: one must examine everything, including authority (Ut addiscens credat et non credat . . . nimis superbus est, qui sibi soli veritatis lumen affulsisse existimaret . . . sunt enim examinandae rationes, quae offeruntur . . .). 9. There are rules governing the right use of knowledge (. . . intellectui mod- eratum stadium ad scientias percipiendas maxime conducit . . .). 10. Repetition clarifies problems (Ut identidem recognoscat praeterita . . . agnoscet autem tunc inter caetera rerum connexionem).

60 Reeb, Dialectica (. . .) conscripta a Philippo Du Trieu (. . .). Accedunt seorsim Distinc- tiones et axiomata Philosophica a Georgio Reeb (. . .) Item accessere Monita philosophiae tyronibus opportune (. . .), Cologne 1650. I refer to the first Part of Scotti’s text, pp. 3–9. philosophy at early modern universities 49

11. Do not read books of philosophy! (Ut caveat Lectionem librorum etiam Philosophicorum . . .). 12. Learn how you in your turn ought to teach (. . . ita percipere lectiones ac si eas aliis tradere vellet . . .). These recommendations are based on a conception of philosophy as something that can be taught. The progress of philosophy is situated here only in the spirit of the student, who necessarily learns through the person of the philosopher what philosophy says—for there is no philosopher without philosophy. This knowledge of what philosophy says will be realized to varying degrees of perfection. In other words, philosophy is indeed a search for the truth. But this source takes the form of a search for authority and for the unity of knowledge.

chapter four

PÉTER PÁZMÁNY: THE CARDINAL’S PHILOSOPHY

Péter Pázmány SJ (1570–1637) gained fame as archbishop of Esztergom, as cardinal, and theologian and preacher, and as a writer in Hungarian.1 In comparison, his activity as professor of philosophy in Graz remained an episode of his youth. Nevertheless, he seems to have planned shortly before his death to publish his philosophical lecture course, thereby giving it a late approbation and the highest authority. His is an exemplary case of the shaping of the Catholic scholastic philosophy course around 1600 and a fortunate one because, as will be shown, we have archival material that reveals the technique of teaching and writing. Pázmány taught the philosophy course at Graz from October, 1597, to September, 1600. This activity produced six brief Disputations, which have not been the object of much scholarly investigation.2 The Logic and Physics published in the Collected Works are based on manuscripts in the Univer- sity Library in Budapest. Most importantly, there is an autograph manuscript of his lecture course on Physics, including De coelo, De generatione et corruptione, and the Meteorology (cod. F 6,1). It is obvious that Pázmány dealt with the special physics in an extremely detailed manner. He covers the topics in natural sciences as they were modern at that period. The special physics was of decisive importance for the scientific discussion of cosmology and astronomy. The notes taken during these lectures by one of his students have also survived (cod. F 6,2). Another student, the Jesuit Johannes Ostorp, used this book, and this example suggests that we should look more closely at members of this circle for other notes taken during the lectures, in order to close the lacunae in the transmission of Pázmány’s philosophical œuvre.

1 Works: Péter Pázmány Összes munkai, Magyar sorozat [Collected Works, Hungarian Series]; Petri Cardinalis Pázmány Opera omnia, Series Latina, including: vol. 1: Dialectica; vol. 2: Physica; vol. 3: Tractatus in libros de coelo, de generatione et corruptione atque in libros meteorum.—Comprehensive bibliography: Polgár, “Pázmány-Bibliográfia.”—The most recent comprehensive biographical study is: Bitskey, Pázmány Péter. See also Har- gittay, Pázmány Péter és kora [Péter Pázmány and his age].—NB: The special Hungarian letters for long ö and ü are not reproduced here. 2 These have been reprinted: Pázmány, Grazer philosophische Disputationen von Péter Pázmány, 2003. 52 chapter four

Some examples from his philosophy show how innovative he was in drawing on non-scholastic sources and transmitting these to his pupils. The lecture course on logic survives in a copy with a note declaring that it was commissioned by the Cardinal himself in preparation for printing. Until the close of his life, he regarded his early works as worth preserving, and wanted to publish these as a manual for the new University of Nagyszombat (Trnava in today’s Slovakia). Although Pázmány’s activity as archbishop and cardinal lay primarily in the political and pastoral spheres, he never lost his interest in philosophy. This led him to take part even in his old age in disputations at the university he had founded in Trnava. The rare occurrence that we are able to follow the academic and political career of a Jesuit philosopher, from his studies via his teaching and his ideas of a university, make Pázmány a living example of 16th/17th-century praxis and an ideal case study.

4.1 Pázmány as Professor of Philosophy

Péter Pázmány was born in Nagyvárad in Transylvania (Oradea Mare in today’s Romania). He belonged to the Hungarian aristocracy; his father was a Calvinist, his mother a Catholic. After attending the Jesuit school in Kolozsvár (Klausenburg in German; today Cluj-Napoca in Romania), he was a Jesuit novice in Cracow and Jaroslawl. He then studied philosophy in Vienna and theology in Rome.3 The theologians Muzio de Angelis, Pierantonio Spinelli, Miguel Vázquez, and Juan Azor were teaching at the Collegium Romanum at that period, and the student had the opportunity to meet the most important scholars of the order, such as Benedic- tus Pererius, Clavius, and others. Here, he clearly had access to the most significant currents in philosophy, including the humanist Aristotelians such as Jacopo Zabarella, whose teaching on methodology he often cites at a later date, and the most modern anti-Aristotelians such as Bernardino Telesio and Francesco Patrizi.4 This was the period of the definitive redaction of the teaching program of the Jesuits, the Ratio studiorum, which was published in 1599. Pererius was one of the advocates of a thorough training in physics; Francisco Suárez pleaded for a comprehensive metaphysics of the kind that he him-

3 Őry, Pázmány Péter tanulmányi évei [Pázmány’s years as a student]; Őry, “Suarez and Pázmány, Berührungspunkte in der Ekklesiologie.” 4 Gerencsér, A filozófus Pázmány, 21. péter pázmány: the cardinal’s philosophy 53 self presented in 1597 in the Disputationes Metaphysicae. The influence of individual philosophers in the Society of Jesus on the young Pázmány and on the philosophy course he taught5 remains to be studied in detail; this has already been done for his theology.6 Pázmány left Rome and went to Graz, where he worked in the Austrian province of his order, which had been set up in 1563 and stretched at that date from Vilnius (in today’s Lithuania) to Ljubljana (in today’s Slovenia) and Alba Julia (in today’s Romania). He took the degrees of Bachelor and Licentiate (“simul sub eadem forma et eadem actione”) on October 26, 1597, in Graz, where he also became Master of Arts and Doctor of Philoso- phy, and was appointed professor of philosophy.7 He taught the course in philosophy from October, 1597, to September, 1600.8 This course led to the composition of six short Disputations, all of which were published by Widmanstetter in Graz: Theses philosophicae [defendens: Joannes Ludeckius], August 1598; Theses philosophicae de vario ac multiplici ente philosophico [defendens: Antonius Zara], August 1598; Theses philosophicae, de ente eiusque passionibus ac speciebus [defendens: Romedius Bendetto], August 1600; Philosophicae assertiones de speciebus corporis naturalis [defendentes: Marti- nus Havenzweig and Franciscus Scholtz], August 1600; Assertiones Philosophicae, de corpore naturali eiusque principiis et passionibus [defendens: Henricus Scultetus], September 1600. In addition to these five Disputations or thesis texts that were known up to 1993,9 there is one further text:

5 There is an incomplete list of the authors cited in: Félegyházy, Pázmány bölcselete [Pázmány’s philosophy], 219–222, and Gerencsér, A filozófus Pázmány, 60–68. 6 Oery, “Suárez und Pázmány;” also Szábo, “Pázmány théologien” and, “La teologia del Cardinal Pázmány.” 7 Andritsch, Studenten und Lehrer aus Ungarn und Siebenbürgen an der Universität Graz, 27; idem, Die Matrikeln der Universität Graz, vol. 1: 1586–1630, 101, Nr. 193. 8 From October, 1600, Pázmány was involved in missionary work in Vágsellye (Šaľa nad Vakom) and Kassa (Košice) in today’s Slovakia. From 1603 to 1697, he taught theology at Graz. He became archbishop of Esztergom in 1616 and was created cardinal in 1629 (Bitskey, Pázmány, 219–221). 9 Copies of the title pages and documentation of the copies in Graff, Bibliotheca Wid- manstadiana, 36, 41, Nr. 129, 130, 149–151. These have been collated by Borsa, “Pázmány Péter nyomtatásban megjelent korai vizsgatételei [Pázmány’s early examination theses that appeared in print] (Graz 1598–1600).”—None of these dissertations is included in the 54 chapter four

Theoremata philosophica de mundo et eius partibus [defendens: Ioannes Kymbar], September 1600.10 Normally, such disputations were written by the teacher as praeses (“pre- sider”) and reproduce his most important theses, which we might consider as the outcomes of the detailed discussions in his lectures; the one who was taking his doctoral degree had to defend these. The theses on the concept of being are particularly important, because Pázmány’s lectures on metaphysics have not survived. A thorough examination of the theses must await a further occasion.

4.2 Manuscripts

The edition of the Logic and the Physics in the Collected Works is based on manuscripts in the University Library in Budapest. The most important of these is an autograph of his lecture on Physics which includes De coelo, De generatione et corruptione, and the Meteorology (cod. F 6,1). Pázmány makes regular marginal notes of when he wrote the lectures and when he held them. Thus, he began writing down the Physics on June 22, 1598, and the lecture course began on January 13, 1599.11 The third tractate on De generatione et corruptione ends with the note: “Finij in scholis An. 1599 die 20 Septemb., quo finem lectionibus imposui: lectionibus in scholis lectis 243. philosophiae naturalis.”12 On the following page, at the beginning of the Disputatio de mistione (i.e., Meteorology IV), the professor notes: “In scholis coepi 4 Novemb. 1599 quo die post vacationem studiorum.” These

bibliography Polgár, “Pázmány-Bibliográfia”, not even in Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentar- ies, 2, s.v. 10 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek 4 Diss. 1206.22. The date is expanded by hand to: September 20, 1600, “horis antemeridianis.”—The theses are subdivided as follows: De parte mundi suprema quoad eius essentiam, . . . quo ad accidentia, de parte mundi sublunari quo ad essentiam in communi, de accentibus communibus Sublunarium, de essentiis particularibus Mundi sublunaris, de mundo parvo.—Romanas Plečkaitis has kindly informed me that there is another copy in the National Library in Vilnius; see Plečkaitis, Feodalizmo laikotarpio filosofia Lietuvoje, Filosofia Lietuvos mokyklose XVI–XVIII amziais [The feudal period of philosophy in Lithuania: Lithuanian Philosophy in 16th–18th century schools], 19, 101–102, 132, 178–179, 184–185.—It is clear that Kymbar had come to Pázmány only in the preceding year; on April 13, 1598, he had taken his Bachelor’s degree under Guglielmus Wright: Andritsch, Matrikeln, 102, Nr. 204, 104, Nr. 250. 11 Fol. 1r; further entries giving dates are: foll. 24r, 24v, 35r, 44v, 62r, 74v, 76r, 77r, 87r, 87v, 99v, 113r, 141v, 155r, 156r, 181r, 183r, 200r, 209r, 236r, 254r, 257r, 301r, 363r, 395v, 420r. A later hand has numbered the pages sporadically in pencil. 12 Fol. 395r. 254r, ended on June 28, 1599, states that there were 170 further lessons. péter pázmány: the cardinal’s philosophy 55 dates allow us to follow the praxis of teaching in philosophy: for example, each disputation occupied roughly one week of dictation by the professor. There is however a discrepancy: the final part of the lecture,13 De rebus meteorologicis Disputationes, which immediately follows, is dated: “18. Novemb. 1598 Graecii in scholis coepi 11 Decemb. 1598 cum propter pestem14 in scholis pergere in physica non possem” (fol. 420r). On the one hand, this lecture course follows the previous lectures both in terms of its content and chronologically, so that it could have started in December, 1599; on the other hand, however, Pázmány seems to have lectured on meteorology already in the winter of 1598/99. We have no further information that could shed light on this question. The manuscript ends after thirty more pages with scattered notes about the Danube and the Nile (foll. 455v–456r). The precise dating of the lectures is of philosophical interest because it is clear that Pázmány treated the special physics in great detail. This included the themes of empirical natural science that were modern at that date; the special physics was decisively important for the academic discussion of cosmology and astronomy. The triumph of the experimental and empirical sciences meant that the battles against the enemies of the Jesuits, of the Catholics, or of Christians in general, were fought on the field of the special physics. This applied above all to eucharistic doctrine. Pázmány probably began his lectures on the De anima and the Meta- physics in January or February, 1600. They continued until August or Sep- tember of that year. We can at most draw inferences about their contents from the printed theses mentioned above. We should however note that the theses of 1598 do not necessarily derive from Pázmány himself, since the defendentes, Joannes Ludeckius and Antonius Zara, did not attend his course, but that given by Hieronymus Laelius in the previous year.15 Father Laelius was professor of philosophy at Graz from 1595 to 1599. In

13 The Collected Works (Opera III, 454) gives it the title: “Tractatus in reliquos libros meteorum.” But Pázmány emphasizes (with an appeal to Zabarella) that the fourth Book of Aristotle’s Meteorology belongs in terms of its contents to De generatione (Opera III, 454f.), and states that this is why he has brought it forward to this point. 14 Univ.-Doz. Mag. Dr. Alois Kernbauer of the University Archive in the Karl-Franzens- Universität has kindly informed me in an e-mail sent on September 15, 1997, that the University of Graz was in fact closed from October, 1598, to January, 1599, because of an epidemic of the plague. 15 Andritsch, Matrikeln (n. 10 above), 101, Nr. 197, 199: Bachelor’s degree under L[a]elius, April 13, 1598. 56 chapter four

1599, he went to Rome for studies in theology,16 and it is possible that Pázmány was required to take his place for the defense of the doctoral theses in August, 1598. Antonius Zara, a priest of the diocese of Aquileia, was bishop of Pedena (Piben) in Istria from 1601 until his death in 1621.17 In 1615, he published his Anatomia ingeniorum et scientiarum, an encyclopedia of the sciences18 which begins with a tractate De hominis dignitate et praestantia that is addressed throughout to the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand, and in which the merits of the Zara family in the struggle against the Turks are the object of especial praise. The principal part of this work is devoted to the power of the intellect and the memoria in the sciences. The scholastic terminology of the chapter on metaphysics stands out against the background of the humanistic Baroque rhetoric and the many quotations in the work. Irrespective of whether the theses presented by Zara came from Pázmány or from Laelius, they can be found in the Anatomia, for example when we read: Ac cum Philosophia in id incumbat, ut rerum varietate mentem perficiat, fit, ut quidquid sub Reale Ens, cuius proprie est Veritatis, cadit, id ipsius obiectum sit.19 This is in accord with the first thesis defended in 1598: Metaphysicae obiectum praestantissimum Ens quatenus ens nostra sententia veras habet, realesque Passiones, quae nihil aliud sunt formaliter quam rationes quaedam ex ipso ente originem ducentes (. . .).20 Let us return to the manuscript. The fact that the manuscript of Pázmány’s Physics has survived at all is a relatively rare instance. Further, the Uni-

16 Lukács, Catalogus personarum et officiorum Provinciae Austriae S.I., I (1551–1600), 714. 17 Eubel and Gauchat, Hierarchia Catholica, 277. Gatz, Die Bischöfe des Heiligen Römis- chen Reichs 1446 bis 1648, 770. 18 Zara, Anatomia ingeniorum et scientiarum sectionibus quattuor comprehensa, 592 pages. See Blum, “Sinkretizam teorija u Antonija Zara (1574–1621) Istranina,” (in German: “Theoriensynkretismus bei Antonius Zara (1574–1621) aus Istrien”). 19 Sect. 3, membrum 3, p. 419. NB: This definition applies to philosophy, and the obiectum of metaphysics is thereby declared to be in conformity with this, p. 420: “Ens, ut Ens est Reale, quo suo amplexu finitum, et infinitum, substantiam, et accidens, creaturas, Deum, et angelos contineat, ut lumine naturali, et philosophico ratiocinio cognosci possunt.” This is followed by a detailed angelology. 20 Pázmány, Theses philosophicae de vario ac multiplici ente philosophico, Graz 1598, A3. The theses are subdivided into: De ente metaphysico, de ente physico, de ente mathematico, de ente morali, de ente logico. We should note that this sequence reverses the order in the course taught by the Jesuits. péter pázmány: the cardinal’s philosophy 57 versity Library in Budapest contains the notes taken by a student during the same lectures (cod. F 6,2). It is much commoner to find lectures based on notes taken by the students and then reworked; these were typically approved by the professor and were printed when the students took their doctoral degree. The parallel manuscripts thus permit us to look into the “workshop” of Professor Pázmány and to see what he actually taught—for as is well known, the professors taught by word-for-word dictation. One special feature of the autograph is the numerous marginal notes by the author. The ink shows that these were made at various times.21 The student’s notes indicate that these marginal comments were sometimes dictated along with the body of the text, but sometimes not. Some formu- lations deviate from the autograph. This means that at least some of the marginal notes were made during the period of the course itself. Unfor- tunately, the editor of the 1895–1897 Collected Works of Pázmány printed only some of the marginal notes, and he did not identify them as such. (We must nevertheless be grateful to him for deciphering Pázmány’s tiny and unconventional handwriting.) At any rate, the student’s manuscript is certainly not an apographon (the term employed by the editor),22 but a parallel transmission. References to the Disputationes metaphysicae of Francisco Suárez are added at regular intervals in the autograph. Since the student too occasionally has such references in the body of his text,23 we may assume that Pázmány worked through this book, which was published in 1597, in the course of his lectures in 1598/99 and drew on it for his lectures on physics. Most of the marginal notes about Suárez contain only brief references to passages in his work, without any discussion of its contents. Neverthe- less, a comparison between Pázmány’s teaching and that of the Spaniard would throw an interesting light on the genesis of the Jesuit philosophy of the seventeenth century.24 Pázmány thereby denies indirectly the need for a comprehensive metaphysics, since—as was customary in the Jesuit school philosophy—he had already discussed most of the metaphysical topics in the preceding parts of the course. It is clear that he regards Suárez’ book as a quarry for good philosophical arguments.

21 Fol. 139r is a subsequent addition made later than 1605, which refers to a “libellus de monstro (. . .) 1605 authore Joann. Riolano.” 22 Stephanus Bognár (editor of this volume) in Pázmány, Opera II, p. vii. 23 E.g., cod. F 6,2, fol. 411v, though with less detail than the corresponding passage in cod. F 6,1. 24 For references, see Gerencsér A filozófus Pázmány, 103, and Félegyházy Pázmány bölcselete, 176–178. 58 chapter four

Unfortunately, the copy used by Pázmány when he worked on Suárez’ book is unknown. My researches show that it is not in the University Library in Graz, nor in the National Library in Vienna, the University Library in Bratislava, the National Matica Slovenská Library in Martin (Slovakia), the State Library in Olomouc, nor in any of the libraries in Budapest. Nor have I found there any notes taken by students during the lectures that could potentially go back to Pázmány himself.25 The University Library in Brat- islava has a number of printed works from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that come from the College in Vágsellye (Šaľa in today’s Slova- kia) and were later (mostly from 1632 onwards) in Pázmány’s University of Trnava, including the Disputationes metaphysicae of Francisco Suárez in an edition published by Baretius in Venice in 1599 (17 AB 281), as well as works by Franciscus Toletus (17 E 22m 17 E 364), Petrus Fonseca (17 F 641), and Benedictus Pererius (17 G 2423); all of them made the same journey and could have been used by Pázmány. Since researches up to now have not unearthed this part of Pázmány’s own reference library, we must hope for chance discoveries by industrious scholars. The student’s notes are bound in a case with a stamp and gilt edging. Obviously, he intended to use them for future reference. The stamp bears the date 1599 (the year of the lectures) and the initials M.H.S.N.S. The only student of the physics class in Graz in 1599 whose name fits these initials was Henricus Scultetus,26 and it is highly probable that it was he who wrote the manuscript. Scultetus also defended the Assertiones Philosophi- cae, de corpore naturali eiusque principiis et passionibus, which agree with the contents of the manuscript, in September, 1600 (see above). Another user, the Jesuit Johannes Ostorp, asked his superiors for permission to use the book, as is noted on the inside of the front cover.27 Ostorp (Ostorphius, 1573–1620), came from Recklinghausen in Westpha- lia. He entered the order in Vienna and studied philosophy and theology in Graz. In 1599, he joined the class in metaphysics while Pázmány was teaching physics. Subsequently, he became professor of philosophy in Graz and Vienna. Since we know nothing further about Scultetus’ life, we

25 I should like here to express my profound gratitude to the librarians of these institutions, especially Dr. Klára Mészárosová and Lic. iur. István Németh. 26 Andritsch, Matrikeln, 18 Nr. 46: 1597 matriculated as logicus: Henricus Scultetus, Sile- sius, Nissenus. The abbreviation on the cover thus means: Magister Henricus Scultetus Nissenus Silesius. Cf. p. 172: on November 4, 1597, he is registered in the Ferdinandeum, and in the seminary from January 20, 1598. Since Scultetus did not become a Jesuit, he is not mentioned by Lukács, Catalogus personarum. 27 “Cum facultate superiorum utitur Joann. Ostorp. Societatis Jesu.” péter pázmány: the cardinal’s philosophy 59 have no indication of how Ostorp came to be in possession of his manuscript. In 1606–1607, Ostorp taught physics and metaphysics in Graz; the lecture notes of one of his students, Henricus Stadtfeldt (who later entered the Benedictine monastery of St. Lamprecht), have survived.28 Ostorp too quotes many sources, but my perusal of the manuscript has not noted any mention of Pázmány. With regard to the use of this manuscript in Graz, it is worth bearing in mind that the part on the De anima consists of seven Disputations, including one on sense-perception (disp. 5), while it is only the concluding Disputation that treats of the rational soul: “De anima rationali eiusque potentiis tum ut est forma unita materiae, tum ut est materia separata.”29 We should also note that Ostorp too presents a broad discussion of the themes of natural sciences and devotes only a relatively minor space to metaphysics. This example shows that an accurate examination of the milieu has the potential to discover other lecture notes that could close the gaps in the transmission of Pázmány’s philosophical work.30

4.3 Some Philosophical Themes

The endpapers of the autograph contain brief excerpts in various inks from Hippocrates, Julius Caesar Scaliger’s treatise against Girolamo Car- dano, Pliny, and Seneca. This illustrates the breadth of Pázmány’s interests.

28 University Library in Graz, cod. 1390: [Johannes Ostorpius,] “Disputationes XII In octo Aristotelis libros physicorum duae item in quatuor de coelo traditae a R.P. Ioanne Ostorpio (. . .). Exceptae a Ioanne Henrico Stadtfeldt Trevirensi A. MDCVI” (209 leaves numbered in pencil). From fol. 181v onwards: “In quatuor libros de Coelo.”—Cod. 1329: [Johannes Ostorpius,] In Duobus libros Aristotelis De Generatione et Corruptione” (273 leaves numbered in pencil). From fol. 83r onwards: “In meteorum Aristotelis 1. 4”; from fol. 107r, “De anima disputationes septem”; from fol. 240, “In Quatuordecim libros metaphysicorum Aristotelis”; dated on fol. 273r: 4. Maii MDCVII.—See Kern, Die Handschriften der Universitätsbibliothek; Mairold, Die Handschriften der Universitätsbibliothek, Nachträge und Register. (I should like to thank Hofrat Mairold here for her advice and help.) 29 Cod. 1329, fol. 213r. 30 With this in view, I mention the names of those who are known to have attended the course from 1597 to 1600 at least for part of the time. Jesuits (according to Lukács [n. 19 above], 576, 587, 602): Hermannus Volmari, Abraham Köberle, Fridericus Hunecken, Stephanus Nagy, Adam Prionius, Albertus Capedines (Capenides); from 1599: Ioannes Trescherus; from 1600: Franciscus Öllerus. Other students (according to Andritsch, Matrikeln, 103 Nr. 223–228, 104, Nr. 246–251): Henricus Scultetus, Silesius, Romedius Ben- detto, Tyrolensis, Martinus Chronitius, Austriacus, Martinus Hawenzweigk, Prutenus, Nicolaus Kaldi, Ungarus, Franciscus Scholtz, Ungarus, Valentinus Coronius SJ, Koannes Kymbar, Lithwanus. 60 chapter four

Seneca is frequently cited in his lectures.31 The quotation from Scaliger was not included in the edition of the Opera. It runs as follows: Scaliger Exercit. 324 / Aristoteli (ait Cardano) fabrum antetulisti, et Joanni Duns Scoto qui fuit lima veritatis, et Joanni Suisset Calculatori, qui pene modum excessit ingenii humani. qui ocham praeteriisti, cuius ingenium ingenia omnia vetera subvertit, nova ad invictas insanias, ob incomprehensibilibus subtilitates fabricavit atque conformavit.32 Scaliger’s accusation against Cardano (whom Pázmány also quotes elsewhere) concerns the question of the originality and the empirical praxis of the sciences. We know that Pázmány’s lectures included a detailed account of the theory of Nicolaus Copernicus, according to which the earth is not the center of everything, but revolves around the sun as the center.33 At the end of the sixteenth century, the Copernican position was not yet the object of a formal prohibition: it was regarded as an interesting hypothesis,34 and this is how Pázmány treats it.35 With reference to Copernicus, he mentions the following intellectual game: the eye that is on the surface of the earth contains in itself the midpoint of the sky, so that on the level of the senses, the eye sees from the surface of the earth as much of the sky as though the eye itself were its center.36 Pázmány highlights an idea here from which Giordano Bruno had recently deduced the argument that the world has an infinite number of centers, since the center of the world is always located at the place where the observer stands.37 The topic in natural science under discussion here is the claim that physical theories are

31 See also Lakatos, “L. Aeneas Seneca Pázmány prédikációiban” [Seneca in Pázmány’s sermons]. 32 The brackets indicate words omitted from the original text: Scaliger, Exotericarum exercitationum lib. XV. De Subtilitate, ad Hieronymum Cardanum, 1028. 33 No evidence has yet been uncovered of any meeting between the Jesuit Pázmány and the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who was working in Graz at that time: Andritsch, “Gelehrtenkreise um Johannes Kepler,” 180. 34 Ca. 1600, a manuscript was made for the Jesuit College in Graz: “Nicolai Copernici Von den revolutionibus das erste Buch.” See Kern, Die Handschriften, vol. 1, cod. 560. 35 Opera III, 65–70, de coelo, disp. 2, qu. 1, as Quarta sententia. 36 Opera III, 80, de coelo, disp. 3, qu. 3: “Nunc autem oculus in superficie terrae existens medietatem coeli continetur, ita ut quoad sensum tantam coeli partem ex superficie terrae videt, quantam si in centro esset oculus constitutus.” 37 Cf. Opera III, 2–3, De coelo, against the plurality of worlds: Although it is true that “de facto extra hoc universum non dari portionem materiae, demonstrari non potest,” nevertheless—because of the Aristotelian theory of natural gravity—the idea “centrum terrae alterius mundi fore centrum huius mundi” is “ridiculum.” péter pázmány: the cardinal’s philosophy 61 valid for reality. Classical physics always found it difficult, even as late as Isaac Newton, to deal with mere hypotheses: a good theory treats of reality, not of the coherence of possible suppositions. This is why Pázmány speaks polemically against the assertion that the spherical form of the sky can be demonstrated from the fact that those astronomical instruments that assume the existence of a spherical sky do in fact function. Coper- nicus serves as an example that one can call the current astronomical hypotheses into question.38 Pázmány devoted intensive study to the question of the central position of the earth. He proposes the following intellectual experiment: Let us imagine an ant that moves forward all on its own; nothing else is in motion. The center of the earth, towards which the ant is going, will now become heavier, and the center from which the ant is moving will become lighter. The consequence is that the question of the center must be seen as something relative.39 The Copernican theory also shows through in Pázmány’s Disputation about bodies, where he understands the concept of “body” in the first paragraph in such a way that it comprises both the earthly bodies that are composed of matter and form as well as the heavenly body, although this has neither matter nor form.40 This also means that the heavenly body is inanimate.41 Above all, however, the substantial similarity of the sky and the sublunary world was a basic presupposition of Galileo’s astronomy. For Pázmány, it is only authority that makes it probable that the sky is moved by an intelligence (as was taught primarily by the Arabic philosophy). He sees the question whether the stars move freely—which is the substantial implication of the Copernican theory— or move in various orbits as the object of current discussion. If however they are moved by intelligences, their movement is neither natural nor forcible, but supernatural (and is thus no longer an object of physics).42

38 Opera III, 76, De coelo, disp. 2, qu. 2: “maxime si quis vulgatas astronomorum hypotheses quas ipsi efficaciter probare non possunt in dubium revocet, et dicat v.gr. stella per se moveri et non infixas simul cum orbibus etc.” The marginal note in the manuscript at this point reads: “Copernici sententia.” 39 Opera III, 371, de gen. et corr. disp. 3, qu. 4, dub. 2. 40 Philosophicae assertiones de speciebus corporis naturalis, 1600, § I: “tota naturalium corporum universitas (. . .), Coeli nimirum, Elementa, et quae ex Elementorum mistione sunt generata (. . .).” 41 Ibid. § II: “Caelos, ut (. . .) nullam enim materiae et formae compositionem admittunt, sed simplices sunt, ex quo nec animatos esse facile colliges.” Cf. Opera III 4–23, De coelo, disp. 1, qui 1. 42 Philosophicae assertiones, § V: “Stellaene autem per sese ac solutae, an orbes ipsi varijs ac multiplicibus motionibus in orbem resolvantur, magna iam pridem contentione, 62 chapter four

Pázmány taught logic under the humanistic title Dialectica. In the introductory Disputation (qu. 1, art. 1), he compares the substantial advantages of the terms “logic,” “dialectic,” and “organon.” “Logic” is so called “ut significat sermonem etiam internum rationis, seu intellectus operationes.”43 “Dialectic” bears its name because it demonstrates “dari locos, qui ex se non magis determinati sunt ad unam partem contradictionis, quam ad aliam concludendam.”44 Finally, it is called “instrumentum seu Orga- num” because it teaches everyone who wishes to study science “quales in ea scientia probationes expectare debeat.”45 In a separate article (disp. prooem., qu. 1, art. 4), he discusses logical invention—the most important theme of the humanistic theory of science—and brings together the two meanings “discovery of logical arguments” and “invention of logic”: logic was invented as a result of the experience of successful considerations in which the correct intellectual operations were investigated with regard to their modus operandi, leading to the discovery that it is the operations that generated correct conclusions in every sphere of research.46 In this way, in the form of a genetic explanation, Pázmány poses an epistemological question about the material or formal claims to truth on the part of logic; and this too is a modern approach in the context of the school philosophy, as we see from the positive reception Pázmány gives to the regressus theory of Jacopo Zabarella. At first sight, this regress looks like a vicious circle, but it derives its cogency from the fact that before the return to the effects, the causes (which are initially assumed) are analyzed in terms of their meanings and implications. This is why, on the return into the empirical sphere, we know more than we knew beforehand. And this means that we have proven scientifically the causes of the effects.47 Pázmány emphasizes that in both cases an inference is drawn from prem-

non sine probabilibus utriusque partis rationibus disputatur. Ab Intelligentia autum cir- cumagi, tantorum virorum, qui id asserunt, autoritas probabile facit. Quod si ita sit, eius motum nec naturalem nunc esse, nec violentum, sed praeternaturalem censemus, qui- etem illius postmodum fore naturalem.”—Cf. the substantially similar statement in Theses de vario ac multiplici ente, 1660, § XXII: “Caelum (. . .) secundum se absolute spectatum a propria forma cieri repugnantiam nullam importare videtur”; 43 Opera I, 3. 44 Opera I, 5. 45 Opera I, 7. 46 Opera I, 13, disp. prooem., qu. 1, art. 4: “in huiusmodi rectis operationibus advertisse modum homines, qui in operando observaretur (. . .). (. . .) deprehenderunt tandem velut a priori causam, cur hi modi essent necessarii quoad consequentiam (. . .).” 47 See Mikkeli, An Aristotelian Response. See the chapter on regressus in the present book. péter pázmány: the cardinal’s philosophy 63 ises to consequences. The first move is induction (that is, through the registration of facts that one encounters); then, the conclusions themselves become premises when the causes that have been extrapolated are dissected by the act of definition.48 This explanation allows Pázmány to adopt the humanistic scientific method, as had already been done by his teachers in Rome. These few examples show that Pázmány’s philosophy is innovative precisely by incorporating many non-scholastic sources and transmitting these to the students. And this is what makes him a good scholastic. This is why Félegyházy calls him a great “eclecticist” in the good sense of this term.49

4.4 The Plan of a Philosophical Textbook

The lecture course on logic survives in a copy that is beautiful, but has mistakes and is incomplete; unfortunately, the autograph is lost. A note on the title page of the manuscript records that it was commissioned by the Cardinal in person, in preparation for printing: “Haec Logica, sumptibus D. Cardinalis Petri Pazmany ex Autographo ipsius Cardinalis descripta est in ordinem ad typum, sed imprimi non potuit, morte Autho- ris interveniente.”50 This entry was made by the same hand as the entry in the lecture course on physics: “Hic tractatus Philosophicus in libros Physicos Aristotelis, et alios, ab ipso Fundatore Academiae, qui Graecij eos composuit et dictavit, Collegio Tyrnaviensi donatus est A. 1635. Vivat memoria Cardinalis Pazmany.”51 Both these entries were made after Pázmány’s death by the first rector of the University of Nagyszombat (today’s Trnava), Georgius Dobronoky, as can be seen from a comparison with the manuscript of the diary of the University written by Dobronoky: Actuum Academicorum collegij Societ. Jesu Tyrnaviae, Tomus Decimus

48 Opera I, 558, In lib. post. anal., disp. 3, qu. 2: “si enim praemissae demonstrationis sunt cognitae inductione etc. potest ex illis inferri conclusio, quae vicissim conclusio, si aliunde cognita sit, per inductionem scilicet vel iis modis quibus partes definitionis indagari diximus, assumi potest ad probandum aliquam praemissam, et etiam si aliunde non esset cognita quam per praemissas, si tamen praemissae ante assensum conclusionis aliunde cognoscantur, poterunt inferri ex conclusione probata.” 49 Félegyházy, A teológiai tudományok egyetemes és hazai története [Universal and local history of the theological sciences], 145. 50 University Library, Budapest, cod. F 7. 51 Cod. F 6, 1, endpaper. 64 chapter four

Septimus (1636–1733), which is likewise in the University Library in Buda- pest (cod. Collectio Prayana 30). Even in his old age, the philosopher-cardinal considered his early work worth preserving, and indeed intended to publish it as a manual for the new university. This too is unusual, since most of the philosophy courses of that period were published immediately after they were written. There was in fact a shortage of “in-house” manuals of philosophy in that region; neither the University of Vienna nor that of Graz was productive in this field until well into the seventeenth century. As far as I know, the first course was published as late as 1656 by Andreas Makar in Trnava, followed by Gabriel Ivul in Košice in 1661. It seems that it was only in 1690 that Gabriel Hevenesius published a successful textbook, the Philosophia sacra, in Vienna; this was reprinted as late as 1748, 1749, and 1755 in Cluj.52 Most of the philosophical publications in the early seventeenth century in Vienna were not in the least serious disputations, but rather rhetorical exercises in the duodecimo format. Pázmány’s textbook would have been the second large-scale philosophical textbook to be published in the Jesuit provinces north of the Alps; Rodrigo de Arriaga’s great Cursus philosophicus had appeared very recently, in 1632.—Accordingly, when a Jesuit university is founded in Hungary and Pázmány has recourse to the philosophical course that he himself had taught thirty-five years earlier, this indicates not only the unsatisfactory quality of the existing academic literature, but also his conviction that he had achieved something of independent value with this work, something that could benefit the study of philosophy at his university. In his capacity as archbishop and cardinal, under threat from both Turks and Calvinists, Pázmány’s activity was primarily political and pastoral. Nevertheless, he never lost his interest in philosophy, and he took part in disputations at the university he set up in Trnava.53 To the honor and the delight of all the participants,54 we are told, he opposed the theses of the praeses,

52 Andreas Makar, In universam Aristotelis (. . .) philosophiam, Trnava 1656, 288 pp., sextodecimo.—Gabriel Ivul, Philosophia novella, Košice 1665, 585 pp., octavo.—Gabriel Hevenesius, Philosophia sacra, Vienna 1690, 294 pp., sextodecimo. 53 Dobronoky, Actuum Academicorum collegij Societ. Iesu Tyrnaviae, fol. 8r: At the first disputation, the Cardinal himself declined to dispute. This university was transferred to Buda in 1777 and finally to Pest. It was given the name of Péter Pázmány, which in turn was inherited by the Catholic University of Hungary in 1992. 54 Csernovics, Ortus et progressus almae archi-episcopalis Societatis Jesu Universitatis, 112f. A manuscript version of this account is in the Matica Slovenská Library in Martin péter pázmány: the cardinal’s philosophy 65

tam nervose (. . .), tamque propriis logicae terminis, ut recentissimas adhuc scholasticarum subtilitatum species habere videretur. [And more than once] non solum adesse spectator et auditor, sed et acerrimi antagonistae vices obire dignatus est.

(Slovakia): cod. RHKS 1425a: Acta Jesuitarum in Hungaria ab Anno 1599 usque 1647, Pars I. The passage quoted is on p. 230 of this manuscript.

chapter five

PHILOSOPHY IN HUNGARIAN: PÁL BERTALANFFI SJ, BERNARD SARTORI OFM, AND THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

5.1 János Apáczai Csere

“The science that makes people wise is based on the knowledge of things and of several languages.” With these words, János Apáczai Csere begins his Magyar Logikácska (“Short Hungarian Logic”), published in 1654.1 Sci- ence consists in the mastery of things and of languages. The reformer of education in Hungary thus follows in the footsteps of the humanists, who had recognized that language is a “second creation of the world,” since the “things” disclose themselves to us only through language. This posed three problems for the humanists: What happens when the same thing has different names in different languages? What is the interest of the society of educated men in the scholarly knowledge? How is it possible to communicate the investigation and the teaching of “things”? The first problem generated the philology of the vernacular languages and the modern theory of language as a fundamental anthropological fact: the human person is first and foremost a being endowed with language. This then led to the transformation of metaphysics from a theory of abstraction (as in Aristotelian scholasticism) to a theory of the properties of things that can be experienced linguistically: the unity of res et verba is brought

1 Apáczai, Magyar Logikácska, 95: “A tudomány, mely az embert bölcssé tészi, áll a dol- goknak és némely nyelveknek (. . .) tudásában.” On the authors discussed in this chapter, see especially A. Mészáros, A filozófia Magyarországon, (Philosophy in Hungary); Zemplén, A magyarországi fizika története 1711–ig, (History of Hungarian Physics until 1711; cited as Zemplén I), and Zemplén, A magyarországi fizika története a XVIII században, Budapest 1964 (History of Hungarian Physics in the 18th century; cited as Zemplén II). In the text names are given in the sequence forename-family.—I am grateful to Andrea Molnár and Gergely Mohay for their help. 68 chapter five about by the human spirit. As pioneers of this reshaping of metaphysics, we may mention Rudolph Agricola, Lorenzo Valla, and Petrus Ramus. The sentence quoted above suffices to demonstrate something that is generally known in biographical terms, namely, that Apáczai was influenced by the Ramist Johannes Alsted. The second problem, the societal significance of scientific scholarship, led to a growing awareness of the need to communicate knowledge and to promote this in scholarly collaboration. At the same time, the political importance of science increased. This led to an increasing support of universities and academies by local rulers and by churches or religious orders (especially the Jesuits in the Catholic church). Apáczai actively campaigned for the foundation of an “academy,” a scientific university, in Kolozsvár (Klausenburg, Cluj). He specifies two reasons for this: the “increase of knowledge” (what Bacon called the “advancement of learning”) and “the promotion of the obedience of the subjects to God and the authorities.”2 Apáczai employs a reference to Emperor Frederick II (died 1250),3 who founded the university of Naples, to link the increase in the sciences with the political and religious function (expressed in reverence for God and the prince). Under the humanists, the third problem, that of the communication of knowledge, had taken the form of a study of methodology, with Agricola and Ramus as the leading thinkers. The presupposition here (to oversim- plify greatly) was that the teaching corresponded to the objective order of things, especially since this order—thanks to the linguistic constitution of knowledge—corresponded to the structure of human understanding. This prior assumption gave birth to the idea of the encyclopedia, since this encompassed everything that was knowable in a system—that is, in a sustêma, an “assembly” of things. This was why teaching in schools consisted in the development of linguistic ability and the ability to think (logic), before making the transition to the systems of the sciences. Apác- zai sets this out in detail in his Oratio de studio sapientiae.4 It is thus only natural that he himself should have written such an encyclopedia in order to promote studies in his native land. The only novelty is that it

2 “Apáczai terve az akadémia felállításáról,” in Apáczai, Logikácska, 179. Developments of philosophy in Transylvania after Apáczai in Hajós, “17–18. századi Kolozsvári Descartes- vonatkozások avagy Descartes első százada” (References to Descartes in 17/18th century Cluj/Koloszvár, or Descartes’ first Koloszvárian century). 3 Ibid.; he refers erroneously to the emperor as “Barbarossa” (died 1190). 4 In Hungarian: ibid., esp. 28.—On the systematic thinking of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, see Schmidt-Biggemann, Topica universalis. philosophy in hungarian 69 is written in Hungarian—especially since he is aware that he is translating “into the Hungarian language, which is utterly foreign to science.”5 He justifies this by pointing to the fundamental problem posed by the fact that human beings speak many languages, when contrasted with the unity in the order of nature. He appeals to the Greek humanist Theodore Gaza, who observed with regard to his translation into Latin of Aristotle’s writings about animals and Theophrastus’ book about plants: “The name of the thing [res] is such that those who bestowed the names were free to determine them. The bestowal of names is always equally free.”6 Adam’s bestowal of names was an act of freedom, and this is why the words in the various languages are a matter of indifference with regard to the concepts. Nevertheless, the concepts mirror the structure of the world.7 As is well known, it took a long time before the reformer of studies had any successor in the elaboration of philosophical texts in the Hungarian vernacular. In general, this was true of Europe as a whole: Latin remained the language of the sciences and the universities, independently of the fact that the vernacular languages naturally underwent development in literature and in the churches (of all confessions). Even the writings by Giordano Bruno and Galileo in Italian remained exceptions. Vernacular works, such as Bernard Fontenelle’s Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes or Leibniz’s writings in French, were addressed not to the academic public, but to a general readership. Similarly, when the Jesuit Francesco Lana- Terzi (de Lanis) published his Prodromo dell’Arte Maestra—which became famous because of its model of a flying machine—in 1670, he addressed a public outside the universities. One exception was the philosophical literature in England and Ireland, where it is obvious that the vernacular was acknowledged at an early date as a professional philosophical language. The first purely philosophical work in German for a university readership was probably the textbook by Christian Wolff. Publication began in 1713 with the treatise on logic under the title Vernünftige Gedanken von den Kräften des menschlichen Verstandes und ihrem richtigen Gebrauche in Erkenntniß der Wahrheit. But it is striking that when Wolff’s philosophy

5 Apáczai, Magyar Encyclopaedia, Elöszó as olvasóhoz, 79: “átültethessem . . . a tudomány számára teljesen idegen magyar nyelvre.” 6 Ibid., 78: “Mert a dolog neve olyan, amilyent a névadók tetszére szabott rájuk. Nevet adni pedig minden időben egyformán szabad.”—On Apáczai’s theoretical and terminological contribution to semiotics, see Voigt: “A Hungarian Encyclopedia.” 7 On the metaphor of “mirror,” see Kremmer, Apáczai Ceri [!] János élete és munkássága, (A.s life and works), 34, with a detailed discussion of Apáczai’s dependence on Ramus and Descartes. 70 chapter five met with increasing success in Europe, he began to publish translations into Latin.

5.2 Pál Bertalanffi SJ

The first philosophical book in Hungarian after Apáczai’s endeavors was a cosmography by the Jesuit Pál Bertalanffi: Brief study of the twofold world: first as founded by God, second as it is . . . divided into parts by men . . . Világnak Két rend-béli reovid ismerete. Eleoszer A’ mint az Istenteol ter- emtetett, másodszor A’ mint az Istennek, és a’ természetnek Verzérlé- sébeol az emberekteol keuleomb-keuleombb-féle részekre Országokra, Tartományokra, és keosségekre osztatott. Minden-féle Irókbeol ki-szedé, és Prédikátori hivatallyának piheneo órái alatt illendeo renddel eoszve irá azt Bertalanffi Pál, a’ Jesus Társaságából-való Pap: Most pedig Isten jó voltábol, ’s az Eleol-Járóinak kegyes engedelmébeol Magyar Nemzetének egy multatsá- gos, és tudós olvasására nyomtatásban ki-adá. The book was published by the printing house of the Jesuit University of Nagyszombat (Tyrnau, Trnava) in 1757.8 Fortunately, the detailed, typically baroque title already tells us almost everything we need to know about this work: It consists of two Parts: the first is shorter and deals with the world as God’s creation, while the second looks at the world as a human division into political units. Cosmology and geography are thus the two principal Parts of the book. We also learn that it was compiled from a variety of sources. The intention behind the book is particularly important: it is published for the Hungarian people “for conversation and for scholarly reading.” The author tells us what kind of conversation he means, by referring to a specific situation: his principal occupation is as a preacher, and he has devoted his leisure hours to this work. The reader should follow his example and find edification in what God and human beings have created. Bertalanffi, who was born on January 26, 1706, in the county of Öden- burg, was a novice in Nagyszombat and then taught grammar in Gyöngyös (1728) and Ungvár (Uzshorod) in 1732. He studied philosophy in Kassa (Kaschau, Košice) from 1729 to 1731 and was then preacher in Pécs, Eger, Gyulafehérvár (Karlsburg, Alba Julia), and Komárom, where he died on

8 Since no distinction is made in old printed works between the short ö/ü and the longer ő/ű, and the umlaut is reproduced there by a superscript e, I follow Hungarian praxis and transcribe with eo/eu. philosophy in hungarian 71

January 15, 1763.9 He wrote other works of edification, including meditations in verse.10 Naturally, the author is aware of the challenge posed by speaking about scientific facts in Hungarian, as his Foreword makes clear: “There- fore, revered Hungarian reader, receive this work of mine in such a way that you acquire for yourself not only decorated Hungarian speech (or eloquence)—for up to now, the slightness of the effort involved compelled the writings to take the form of a summa that is so small that no lovely and chosen blooms of the Hungarian language could germinate from my pen—but also transient science and eternal goodness.”11 Here, he employs the topos of the antithesis between decoration and knowledge, and a weak form of the topos of modesty. The two Parts of the work are unequal in weight: only the first 228 pages concern nature as creation, while the rest of the 1,028 pages are devoted to geography. This geographical Part is modest in its scope. It tells the reader things worth knowing about cities and regions. For example, we are told that priests of the Pauline order reside in Pilis (between Budapest and Esztergom), and that a Piarist school and a Reformed university are located in the town of Debrecen.12 The first Part, which is the more interesting from a philosophical perspective, is divided into 37 orations (beszéd), which begin with the creation of the sky, that is, astronomy. At beszéd 13, the book makes the transition to meteorology and then via the elements of fire and water to the seas and rivers. It then studies the earth (from beszéd 24 onwards), and finally gives

9 De Backer and Sommervogel, vol. 1, col. 1371, and vol. 8, col. 1825; Lukács, Catalo- gus generalis seu Nomenclator biographicus personarum Provinciae Austriae Societatis Iesu, 92. Tüll, Bertalanffi. Bikfalvi, “300 esztendenje születt P. Bertalanffi Pál SJ,” [300 years ago, Bertalanffi was born] online at http://regi.jezsuita.hu/adattar/bertalanffipal.htm (written ca. 2006, read on March 14, 2010). 10 A’ nagyra vágyódó világ fiának Az embernek változó Sorsárol siralmas Panaszsza (“The lamentation of a son of the world, who yearns for great things, at the changed fate of the human being,” Kassa 1761). 11 Bertalanffi, Világnak Két rend-béli reovid ismerete, Nagyszombat (Academiai Beteok- kel) 1757, 1028 pp. + Foreword and indices, octavo; here: fol. *[7]r–v: “Azokáért, kegyes Magyar olvasó, úgy vedd ezen munkámot, hogy magadnak nem mondom ékes Magyar szólást (mert mideon a’ keoltségnek tsekélysége éppen reovid sommában való irásra kén- szeritett, arra a’ Magyar nyelvnek válogatott szép virági sem tsirázhattak ki a’ pennámból) hanem mind ideig való tudományt hanem mind ideig való tudományt, mind örökké való jókat-is szerezz (. . .).” 12 Ibid., 701 and 709. Piliscsaba in Pilis is the location of Péter Pázmány Catholic Uni- versity where this paper was originally written. 72 chapter five an account of the plants and the animals. The concluding sections (34–37) are devoted to the human being. What works did the preacher use for this compilation of his knowledge? Since he himself does not mention any sources, we must compare his book with the standard works on cosmology or physics; the geographical Part must be compared with the relevant popular and academic literature. All the contemporary Jesuit authors are potential sources: perhaps Márton Szentiványi SJ (1635–1705), who introduced new authors such as Francis Bacon into the philosophy course13 and abandoned the scholastic style of presentation. Another potential source is the Pauline priest Johannes Kéri, who characteristically presented his philosophy both in scholastic treatises and in “Orationes.”14 Another possible source that I would mention alongside these two authors is Christophorus Akai SJ, who published a Cosmographia in six Books in Kassa in 1734. Its various sections describe the earth and the water, the subterranean world, the living creatures on the earth (Book 3), the elements, meteorology, and finally the heavenly spheres (Book 6).15 There is one curious feature of Bertalanffi’s astronomy. In the first beszéd (pp. 8–9), he explains and rejects the theory of Copernicus. He erroneously gives the dates of Copernicus’ death as 1600. In the next section, however, he gives the correct date of birth of Tycho Brahe, when he says that he was born three years after Copernicus’ death (“Copernicus- nak hólta-után három estendeovel utólb [sic] szeuletett”), for as a matter of fact, Copernicus died in 1543 and Brahe was born in 1546. The incor-

13 See Oravcová, “Philosophie an den Universitäten Tyrnau und Kaschau.” Szentiványi, Curiosiora et selectiora variarum scientiarum miscellanea, Tyrnau (Acad.) 1689–1709, is a potential source. See Zemplén, “The Reception of Copernicanism in Hungary,” 317–319. 14 Kéry [sic] Johannes O.S.Paul., Universa philosophia scholastic tomis tribus comprehensa (RMK II 1325 sz). According to the title page, the author is Prior General of the Order of Hermits of Saint Paul the First Hermit and formerly Professor of theology and philosophy in the monastery of Lepoglava (Schönhaupt) in Croatia. See also Kéri Johannes O.S.Paul., Panegyres et orationes (. . .), 1675, including: Aristoteles magnus orbis philosophus, Oratio Charactere descriptus. Sive Oratio Habita in Celeberrimo Conventu Tallensi Ordinis S. Pauli Primi Eremitae (. . .) Cum plures ejusdem Instituti Fratres supra Philosophiae laurea coronaret. In other words, this was a doctoral dissertation. 15 Akai, Cosmographia seu Philosophica mundi descriptio nuper ex diversis authoribus Collecta, Nunc Denuo publicae luci data, Cassoviae [Kassa] (Akad. S.I.) 1734, 148 + 536 pages, sextodecimo (Hungarian National Library OSZK 136.126). The book was published in individual parts (without naming its author) on the occasion of the award of doctoral degrees, by Feoldes[s]i Johannes SJ and others in 1736 and 1737: OSZK 240.172, OSZK 240.157. On Akai, see Zemplén II, 147f. and Zemplén, “Copernicanism,” 321.—Unfortunately, when these potential connections occurred to me, I no longer had access to Bertalanffi’s book. I must therefore postpone the investigation of this surmise to a later occasion. philosophy in hungarian 73 rect date of Copernicus’ death takes on a special significance when one reads the concluding words of the section about him: “I would be more inclined to believe that Copernicus’ brain revolved around itself, than that the earth circled like a planet around the sun” (“készebb leszek inkább azt hinni, hogy Copernicusnak agya veleje megfordúlt, mint-sem azt, hogy a’ Feold Plánéta gyanánt a’ nap keoreul forgojon”). The only other person at whom this insult is directed in a literary work is Giordano Bruno, the zealous philosophical defender of Copernicus. After Bruno’s unsuccessful attempt to establish himself at the University of Oxford as philosopher and astronomer, George Abbot related: “stripping up his sleeves like some Iugler, and telling us much of chentrum and chirculus and circumferenchia (after the pronunciation of his Country language) he undertooke among very many other matters to set on foote the opinion of Copernicus, that the earth did goe round, and the heavens did stand still; wheras in truth it was his owne head which rather did run round, and his braines did not stand still.”16 The source from which Bertalanffi knew this joke has not yet been identified,17 but it is highly likely that he replaced the name of Bruno in the source with that of Copernicus, but forgot to change the date of his death: for it was Bruno who died in 1600. Whatever one might wish to say about the academic rank of this work, it can be regarded as the beginning of modern Hungarian scholarly literature and as one of the endeavors to make scholarly topics accessible in Hungarian to an educated readership. Zemplén rightly calls it a work of popularization.18 In this way, the Jesuit responded to a wish by Maria Theresia, who had ordered the reform of the Piarist grammar schools in 1752, with particular emphasis on the promotion of the mother tongue.19 For this purpose, the Piarist Gergely Tapolcsányi drew up a “Projectum pro systemate studiorum modernorum apud Scholas Pias in Hungaria” in 1762, proposing that the appropriate mother tongue (that is, Hungarian or German) should be taught alongside Latin.20 This is of interest to us, because the copy of Bertalanffi’s cosmography in the University Library in Budapest (Egyetemi Könyvtár nr. 107.095) has the following note by its

16 Abbot, The Reasons which Doctour Hill hath brought, 88. 17 On the wide discussion of Copernicanism in Hungary, see Zemplén, “Copernican- ism.” He does indeed quote the joke (349; likewise, Zemplén II, 428), but he does not comment on it. 18 Zemplén II, 426: “ismeretterjesztö.” 19 I. Mészáros, A katolikus iskola ezeréves története Magyarországon (The history of thousand years of Catholic schools in Hungary), 149. 20 Ibid., 150. 74 chapter five owner: “Gregorii Tapolcsánnyi 1767” and “Post facta Bibliothecae Szeged. Scholarum Piarum 1774.”21 Clearly, the school reformer was interested in the literature produced by his Jesuit rivals.

5.3 Bernard Sartori OFM

Bertalanffi’s cosmography has attracted the interest of scholars up to now primarily for one reason, namely, that István Batta22 discovered in 1918 that this book was the source of another work that had usually been regarded as the first philosophical book in Hungarian after Apáczai, the Magyar nyelven filosofia [sic] of Bernard Sartori.23 Before I discuss Bat- ta’s accusation of plágium, let me say something about the author and his book. Bernát (Bernardus) Sartori was born on September 4, 1735, in Nagyvárad (Großwardein, Oradea) and died on April 21, 1801, in Miscolc.24 Since there is no detailed biography, I am obliged to compile information about him from various sources. The biographical notice by his Franciscan order states that he taught the fine arts, the doctrine of the faith, and philosophy in Arad. He held various positions, including secretary, teacher of canon law, and royal counselor (kir. Tanácsos). His most important office was that of Provincial (tartomány-főnök) from 1780 to 1783.25 Accord- ing to the page of theses of a disputation that is bound together with a work by Martin Becanus, Sartori finished his study of philosophy under Professor Christianus Tribauer in his order’s house of studies “in Ecclesia

21 On Gregorius a S. Ladislao Tapolcsányi (baptismal name: Paul), 1713–1773, see Léh and Koltai, Catalogus religiosorum, 383. 22 Batta, “Egy XVIII. sz.-beli plágium,” (A plagiarism in the 18th cent.). 23 Sartori Bernard, Magyar nyelven filosofia. Az az: A’ beoltseseég’ szeretésének tudomán- nyából némelly jelesebb kérdések. Mellyeket sok hiteles beoltseség’ szeretése’ tudománnyát tanitóknák irásiból, ’s keonyveibol, egybe szedegetett, és tanitott: mostanába pedig a’ magyar nemzetnek kedvéert az eleo-jarók’ engedelmébeol nyomtatásban ki-botsátott, Egerben (Peuspeoki Oskola’ Beteoiv) 1772. The copy in OSZK, nr. 801.911, has disputation theses bound into its front cover with the title: Philosophia ungarico idiomate conscripta per R. P. Bernard: Sartori (. . .) Dum Assertiones philosophicas (. . .) Ex praelectionibus R. P. Ludovici Pall De Somlyo A.A. L.L. et Philosophiae Professoris, Ordinis Minorum S. P. Francisci Conven- tualium Defenderet V. ac R. Frater Mathias Világi, de Agria Philosophiae Auditor absolutus ejusdem Ordinis. Nagy Banyae Die 7 Mensis Junij Anno 1774. Magno-Karolini [Nagykároly] (Stephanus Pap) 1774. Clearly, these are pages from a thesis; they were bound into the book that had been printed in 1772. 24 Szinnyei, Magyar írók élete és munkai, (Life and works of Hungarian writers) vol. 12, col. 233. Satrori is not featured in the book that celebrates early Hungarian publications: Róth, Született Nyelvünkön (In our native language). 25 A magyarországi Minorita-rend Névtára 1882/3-ik évre, (Directory of the Hungrian Minorite Order until 1882/83), 112, nr. 107; 147f.; 199, nr. 853. philosophy in hungarian 75 ad Sanct. Joannem Nepomucenum” in Bistercium (Beszterce, Bistriţa) in Transylvania on July 21, 1757.26 Only one year later, on May 15, 1758, Sar- tori defended his theological theses, obviously at the close of his studies, in his order’s house of studies in Kolozsvár at the Franciscan Conventual church of Saint Peter under Professor Hyacinthus Reiter.27 Ten years later, in 1767/1768, two further disputations mention Sartori himself as professor of philosophy in Arad, in his order’s house of studies under the patronage of Saint Anthony of Padua.28 Finally, Sartori appears as censor in a book of sermons by his confrere Seraphinus Bossányi, which was published in Vác in 1783.29 At this period, Sartori was “Minister Provincialis” of the Francis- can Conventuals, and resided in Arad. It seems, however, that a manuscript copy of this report was written in Lőcse in 1783.30

26 Compendium manuale controversiarum (. . .) a R. P. Martino Becano (. . .), Claudiopoli [Kolozsvár] (Acad. S. J.) 1754. The following text is bound into the book after the title page: Theses ex universa Philosophia Non difformes Menti Doctoris Subtili Joannis Duns Scoti (. . .) Quas (. . .) publice propugnandas susceperunt (. . .) Edmundus Bossanyi, Bernardus Sar- tori, Simon Geonder. Ordinis S. P. Francisci Conventualium Philosophiae studentes emeriti. Bisztercii in Ecclesia ad Sanct. Joannem Nepomucenum. Ann 1757 Die 21. Junii. Praeside R. P. Christiano Tribauer (. . .) Professore Ejusdem Ordinis et instituti. 27 Pauman, Coelestis occupatio animae in terris. The following text is bound into the book after the title page: Dum assertiones theologicas in 1. sent. libr. De Deo uno, In se Sub- sistente, Intelligente, et Volente, juxta Mentem Doctoris subtilis Joannis Duns-Scoti publice tuerentur Anno MDCCLVIII. Mense Majo, die 15. Claudiopoli in Ecclesia Fratrum Minorum Conventualium ad Divinum Petrum (. . .) Anselmus Szabo, Petrus Fekete, et Bernardus Sar- tori, Assistente r. P. Hyacintho Re[i?]ter [illegible because of a wormhole], Provinciae Sanc- tae Elisabeth praefati Ordinis SS-tae Theologiae Doctore, Ejusdem Professore ordinario, ac Studii Generalis Regente. 28 Assertiones ex universa philosophia, quas ex praelectionibus Reverendi Patris Bacca- laurei Bernardi Sartori, AA. LL. Et Philosophiae Professoris actualis Ord. Min. S. P. Francisci Conventualium. Vetero-Aradini propugnandas suscepit: (. . .) Johannes Nepomucenus Bohus (. . .) Anno MDCC,LXVII Mense Septembri Die [vacat]. This is bound in after the title page of the following work: Gusztini János, Eudveozség Mannaja az a: az Úr Jésus [sic] tulajdon Szent Testének, és vérének Sacramentuma (. . .). Egerben (Bauer) MDCCLIX [sic: 1759], folio.—Assertiones ex universa philosophia juxta sensum Doctoris Subtilis Joannis Duns- Scoti Minoritae Conventualis Quas (. . .) Palam Subivere In Ecclesia V. Aradiensi Fratrum Minorum conventualium ad S. Antonium Paduanum Die [vacat] Mense Majo Anno 1768 (. . .) V. F. Cajetanus Lang et V. F. Andreas Boda (. . .) Assistente R. P. Bacal. Bernardo Sartori de Arad AA. LL. et Philosophiae Professore actuali ejusdem Ordinis, et Instituti, Buda (Leopold Franciscus Landerer).—These and the preceding theses are in the OSZK. 29 Seraphinus [Bossányi], Sermones catechetico-doctrinales pro dominicis per annum applicati (. . .), Vacii (Ignatius Ambro) 1783. The facultas of the Minister Provincial is dated: “in Conventu Agriensi (. . .) 1783.” The permission to publish the second volume of this work, Continuatio sermonum catecheticorum (. . .), ibid. 1786, was given by Provincial Adal- bertus Szóbek, dated in Lőcse 1784.—On Seraphinus Bossányi (1713–1785), see A magyaror- szági Minorita-rend Névtára, 142 and 187, nr. 667. 30 Tóth, A Váci Egyházmegyei Könyvtar kéziratkatalogusa, (Catalogue of the Vác church library manuscripts), 34, nr. 171/219.171: “Autogr. cenzúrapéldány (. . .) Sartorius Bernát Lőcsén kelt véleményével 1783–ból.” 76 chapter five

As was customary among the Franciscans, all the academic theses appeal to the teaching of John Duns Scotus; but when one looks at the details of these theses, they certainly reveal knowledge of the contemporary debate. It is interesting to see whether there are significant differences between the theses that Sartori defended as a student and those that were discussed under his direction as professor.31 Both texts begin with almost identical definitions of philosophy: Philosophia res humanas, Divinasque per causas, et principia naturalia spectat (Theses 1757). Philosophia est rerum Divinarum, et humanarum per causas et principia naturalia cognitio (Assertiones 1768). It is typical of Enlightenment philosophy that natural theology is already included in the concept of “philosophy.” Its basis is the knowledge derived from causes and principles, the knowledge that applies to all human sciences. What Bertalanffi offers as a mere edificatory exercise—the knowledge of nature with a view to giving glory to God—has its philosophical root in the tendency to identify the objective laws of nature with the divinity, a tendency that became ever more common in Catholic circles too.32 In the seventeenth century, it was still worth holding a disputation on the question whether natural theology was at all possible, and whether this belonged to the realm of philosophy (that is to say, to metaphysics), or ought rather to be treated in the framework of the study of theology. This is why the textbooks of the Jesuits reduced metaphysics to nothing more than the doctrine of Being qua Being. Similarly, the theses that belong to physics in the framework of philosophy are characteristic. Both lists of theses reject Cartesianism and everything that smacks of atomism, including the physics of the Jesuit Honoratus Fabri33 (mentioned by name) and the monads of Leibniz (which however are first mentioned in 1768). It is obvious to every reader who knows the mechanisms governing the prohibition of teaching and the freedom to teach that through the rejection of these theories, which were incompatible or difficult to reconcile with Catholic scholasticism,

31 We can assume that the theses were composed by the professor in question, or that the students made excerpts from the script of the lectures. On this, see Zemplén, “Coper- nicanism,” 321 n. 17. This means that Tribauer was the author of the theses that Sartori defended in 1757, while Sartori was the author of the theses of 1767 and 1768. 32 Thus Zemplén II, 427, on Bertalanffi. 33 On this, see the chapter “Aristotelianism more geometrico: Honoré Fabri,” in this book. philosophy in hungarian 77 the very same theories were spread very effectively: for there has never yet existed a professor of philosophy who could permit himself simply to ignore the teachings of his contemporaries, even when he rejected these. Sartori is au fait with the latest researches in the field of cosmology too. In 1757, he defends the following thesis: “42. Systema Copernicanum videtur Divinarum literarum sententiis contrarium, et ad caelestium Phaenom- enorum expositionem minime aptum esse: hinc, 43. Tychonicum eligitur.” Under his own direction in 1768, the thesis is somewhat milder: “XXVII. Quamvis Copernicanum Mundi Systema et experientiae, et S. Scripturae consentaneum haud videatur, tamen saltem ut Hypothesis tuto defendi potest, XXVIII. Pro Thesi Tychonicum statuimus.” Thesis VI on physics in 1767 sounds an even more generous note: “Inter systemata Coperni- canum, velut Hypothesim Coelestibus Phaenomenis apprime consonam, nec physicae repugnantem defendimus.” We have already seen that Bertalanffi roundly dismissed the Coper- nican astronomy in 1757. This passage, which we quoted because of the incorrect date of Copernicus’ death and the hidden reference to Giordano Bruno, was also copied literally by Sartori, including the incorrect date,34 in the Magyar nyelven filosofia (1772). The fact that he defended in his own book a weaker doctrine than the one he taught as professor tells us that he was not concerned about individual details when he published his Magyar nyelven filosofia. Sartori’s book is divided into quaestiones (kérdés) in the scholastic manner. It begins with a brief historical introduction; then comes logic. This begins in k. 3 with a clarification of concepts, but what follows is not a formal logic (that is, the theory of syllogisms), but a discussion of the sciences. In scholastic textbooks, this can be dealt with in accordance with the Analytica posteriora of Aristotle, but Sartori goes into greatest detail about the naturalness of knowledge in Adam (k. 6) and about the relationship between science and sacred scripture and divine providence (k. 7–8). The second Part ought to deal with metaphysics as the theory of the soul (psychology: “az az, a’ Lelkereol-való Tudomány[ban]”), but it not only covers the question of the existence of God, of the angels, and of souls and their qualities, but also goes on immediately to discuss the

34 Zemplén II, 430. Because of his anti-Copernican position, Sartori is also mentioned in the writings of Erdély: Filozófiai és esztétikai írások [Essays on philosophy and aesthetics], 75, 98, 196. 78 chapter five animals and plants (k. 7–9). Normally, the scholastic metaphysics (especially after Christian Wolff) contains ontology and the so-called psychology (that is, the theory of the immaterial things, which include God, angels, and the soul). Sartori, however, follows the hierarchy of things down to all animate beings. The third Part deals with physics, beginning with the bodies and the elements and then turning to the human body (k. 3). This Book then deals with the nature of the earth, of water, ores, stones, winds, water, fire, and cold. The fourth Part contains the questions of special physics (“a’ keuleo- neos Fizikában”—traditionally, the sky, meteorology, etc.), as if the preceding Part had contained the “physica generalis.” This, at any rate, was the structure of the scholastic textbooks: the general physics dealt with the concept and the principles of nature, while the “physica specialis” dealt with the syllabus dictated by Aristotle’s writings on natural science. However, Sartori has already dealt with some topics, such as meteorology, in the preceding chapter. Now he investigates the possibility of a world- soul and the spherical form of the earth, before turning to astronomy, which takes up most of the text of this Part. Strangely enough, towards the end he returns once more to the winds and to the shape of the earth in mountains, rivers, and seas. This is how the book closes. Nevertheless, Sartori’s Hungarian Philosophy follows a clear systemati- zation, as a comparison with the disputation theses shows. In the theses that he himself defended in 1757 under the direction of his teacher Trib- auer, the structure still follows the pattern of the seventeenth-century text- books: logic, including the questions thrown up by Cartesianism about the “criterium veritatis”; then physics, beginning with the theory of the human body and continuing to astronomy; and finally, metaphysics, beginning with the concept of God, then discussing the theory of universals, before dealing with souls, down to the animate beings. This conclusion demonstrates the new interest in metaphysics as a theory that is not essentially different from physics, thanks to the naturalness of knowledge. The theses composed by Sartori himself in 1767 already have the same structure as his Hungarian philosophy—logic, ontology, psychology, physics—with the exception that ontology is not given a chapter of its own in the Hungarian Philosophy. Nevertheless, ontology is present in the Hungarian Philosophy, in the theory of the distinction between concepts (pp. 11–14) in the “Third Question: On the origin, classification, and explanation of some philosophical names, concepts, and expressions” (“Harmadik kérdés. Némelly Filosofia-béli nevenek, terminusoknak és philosophy in hungarian 79 szóllasok módgyának eredetéreol, osztállyáról, és magyárázattyáról”). Here, concepts such as ens (való, állat, valóság, vagy vagyonság), substantia (magán meg-álló), and accidens (nem magán meg-állo) are explained. The reason for this presentation is to be sought in the influence of logic after Descartes and the Logique de Port Royal, where things and concepts are equated with ideas, so that a clear definition of concepts is the same as an assured ontology.35 I am not competent to express a judgment on Sartori’s linguistic achievement in translating these concepts from Latin scholastic philosophy into Hungarian.36 It is however striking that he explains ens by means of “valóság, vagy vagyonság,” through which truth and possibility (the Latin possibilitas) appear mutually dependent. Typical Scotist concepts also occur: haecceitas, which he translates as “eggység,” and numerous meanings of relatio. It is only at the close of this chapter (p. 14) that he speaks of specifically logical terminology, namely, syllogismus and sophisma. The comparison with the theses that were defended under Professor Sartori thus permits us to conclude that the Magyar nyelven filosofia reflects what he taught in Arad. And the author himself writes in his Foreword to the reader: “I wanted to make the young Hungarians, in whom the Hungarian blood has not yet turned cold, familiar with philosophy, translated into their own language.”37 Naturally, as the title indicates, this book is a compilation from a great variety of sources. Nor is this surprising. On the one hand, it corresponded to the spirit of scholastic philosophy, which of its nature was not interested in “scientific progress,” and attached no value whatever to originality. On the other hand, Sartori, like Bertalanffi, aims at a popular presentation of science, and the appropriate material here is not the research being carried out at the moment, but the assured knowledge. Here too, in other words, the maxim holds true: Something that is true does not become false in virtue of the fact it is quoted (just as e contra, errors do not become true in virtue of the fact that they are repeated). This explains why Sartori takes over entire sections from Bertalanffi, who in turn had drawn on many different sources, since he too intended only to spread standard knowledge.

35 On this, see e.g. in the present book the chapter on the Porphyrian Tree. 36 See Kornis, “A magyar bölcseleti műnyelv fejlődése,” (The development of Hunarian philosophical terminology): 97–104, 193–201, 143–153, 241–250, 301–307, 348–356; at 103f. 37 Magyar filosofia, fol. §§2 r: “Kívántam azon Magyar Ifiúságnak tulajdon nyelvére fordított Filosófiával kedveskedni, kiben meg nem hült a’ Magyar vér.” 80 chapter five

In addition to the passages that Batta discovered as “plágium,” many other borrowings from Bertanlanffi can be demonstrated. Some examples: Bertalanffi 1st beszéd (pp. 6–10) corresponds to Sartori pp. 184–186 (this is the passage about Copernicus). Bertalanffi 30th beszéd (pp. 178–179) corresponds to Sartori p. 113 (text altered). Bertalanffi 32nd beszéd (pp. 191–199) corresponds to Sartori pp. 83–91 (slightly altered). Bertalanffi 33rd beszéd (pp. 200–201) corresponds to Sartori p. 106 (with considerable alterations). Bertalanffi 34th beszéd (pp. 206–209) corresponds to Sartori pp. 133–140. Bertalanffi 35th beszéd (pp. 210–211, 212–215) corresponds to Sartori pp. 140, 141–143. Naturally, the kind of choice that is made here is much more interesting. In other words, what type of philosophy did Sartori teach in the seminary, and what did he want to disseminate among the Hungarian people? As a test, I have compared this work with the textbook by Edmundus Purcho- tius (Pourchot).38 Sartori begins his philosophy with a definition of the origin of philosophy that he paraphrases freely from Pourchot, including a quotation from the Epistle of James.39 Pourchot’s Preface (p. a2r) refers to Adam; on pp. a3r ff. we find a genealogy of philosophy, which is traced back to the Jews, the Babylonians, etc. Sartori translates, or at any rate paraphrases, this genealogy in his first kérdés (pp. 2ff.). Pourchot’s textbook was extremely popular, as we see from the numerous reprints and the large number of copies in many libraries. Its success was due to its

38 Purchotius, Institutio philosophica ad faciliorem ac recentiorem philosophorum lectionem comparata. Editio secunda locupletior, Paris (J. B. Coignard) 1700, 5 vols. This is the oldest edition known to me. The copy I have used was published at Padua: Patavii (Manfré/ Typ. Seminarii) 1751. The copy in the University Library in Budapest (nr. Fa 6098) comes from the library of the Pauline Order in Pest. On Pourchot, see Blum, “Pourchot, Edmund;” see also the essay on the Arbor Porphyriana in the present volume. On the reception of Pourchot in Greece see Demetracopoulos, “Purchotius Græcus I.” 39 Sartori, p. 1: “A Nemes Beoltseség’ szeretése Tudománnyának eredete, és szerzeoje a’ Felséges Úr Isten vólt; kiteol; omne datum optimum, et omne donum perfectum Jacob. 1. minden j´adomány, és minden tekélletes ajándek vagyon: ezen nemes Tudomány minden eo részeivel alkotásának sengéében belé eontetett az elseo emberbe Adámba (a mint alább meg-mutattyuk) de az erendeo véteknek dagálos (. . .).” Pourchot writes (Prooemium ch. 3, p. 26): “Philosophiae origo coelestis est, scilicet a Deo Opt. Max. omnis boni auctore et largitore iuxta illud Epistolae Divi Jacobi cap. 1. v. 17. Omne datum optimum, et omne donum perfectum desursum est, descendens a Patre luminum.” philosophy in hungarian 81 presentation of the Logique de Port Royal, that is, the Cartesian epistemology and sciences as these had developed by the end of the eighteenth century, in a manner that was compatible with Catholic theology, and in a scholastic form. Indeed, its fifth volume contains Exercitationes scholasticae, so that it could also be used as a textbook for the final examinations at the end of the study of philosophy. It was probably also used for private study by the students. As is well known, it was not until the eighteenth century that they learned from books; before that period, they wrote down the lectures of the professors, which were in a literal sense a lectura, a “reading aloud.” It is not impossible that Sartori envisaged a similar success in the field of publishing and academic politics when he brought out his Hungarian philosophy. It is clear that there was a high print run; there are many copies in the National Library in Budapest (OSZK), and I have found copies in the University Library in Budapest, in the Library of the Lyceum in Eger, and in the episcopal library in Nagyvárad. Naturally, we must not forget the background of this publication in linguistic politics, even although this has been known for a long time. All I wish to mention is the fact that one year after the publication of Sartori’s work, a Hungarian translation of Boethius’ Consolatio philosophiae by the Jesuit János Illei appeared, and that this too was added to a philosophical disputation.40 But I need not speak here about the rebirth of the Hungar- ian language at the close of the eighteenth century. It is enough to have observed that the Jesuit Bertalanffi and the Franciscan Sartori had their share in this rebirth by introducing their philosophical knowledge into Hungarian literature.

40 Anitzius Manlius Torkvátus Szeverínus Boetziusnak V. keonvei A’ Filosofiának, vagy is Beoltseségnek Vigasztalásáról, Mellyeket Forditott Jésus Társágnának Papja Illei János, Kassán (Akad. Kollegium) 1773. The following text has been bound in after the title page in the copy in the OSZK (nr. 279.420): Assertiones ex universa philosophia, quas in Alma, ac celeberrima Universitate Tirnaviensi pro laurea philosophica consequenda Anno Salutis M.DCC.LXXV [sic 1775] Mense Augusto Die 27. publice propugnandas suscepit (. . .) Mathias Nitray (. . .) Coram (. . .) Michaele Shoretics AA. LL. Philosophiae, ac medicinae doctore, pathologiae, et praxeos Professore Regio (. . .). As Shoretics’ title suggests, the disputation is strongly oriented to natural science and mathematics. I have found a copy without the addition of the theses, with a different title page, and with a dedication to Báró Orczy Lörintz, in a secondhand bookshop.

SCIENCE FROM THE RENAISSANCE THROUGH THE ENLIGHTENMENT

CHAPTER SIX

Jesuits between Religion and Science

As most people understand it, the Jesuits are the Order that made the greatest contribution to the development of the sciences in the early modern period, precisely as a Catholic institution, as a product of the confessionalization of politics and science in the course of the sixteenth century, and as a strike force of the Counter-Reformation. In a quite exceptional manner, therefore, the Jesuit Order must have narrowed down religion and science in a way that put a heavy strain on the concepts of “religion” and “science.” I should like to indicate this narrowing down by means of some examples chosen from the history of science; I refer here to the “hard core” sciences. I will then present natural theology as a science in the narrowed sense of the term, in order to display the specific religiosity of the Order at the interface between academic theology and piety—for one can understand the Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, as a scientification of piety, a rationalization of religious experience, and this constitutes one of the bases on which the Order was founded.1 It also made its mark on the external image of the Order; the notion of Jesuit morality conjures up associations such as “the end justifies the means” and similar misrepresentations. An image of this kind puts a question mark against the academic achievements (we may recall Blaise Pascal’s polemic against the Jesuits). This means that when the Jesuits are involved, the history of science has wavered from the very outset between a secular neglect of the religious motives and an apologetic dictated entirely by religious politics. This is because of the unique position of the Jesuits between religion and science; for basically, they want both. Let me begin with a quotation from a Jesuit:2 If someone notes that God does not appear in the sphere of natural science and in the world that is manipulated by this science; if someone says that for this reason, natural science is a priori methodologically a-theistic, since

1 As should be evident at this point, the term “science” is used here in the sense of the Latin scientia, meaning any discipline that generates human knowledge. 2 Rahner, “Gott ist keine naturwissenschaftliche Formel,” 19. 86 chapter six

it is concerned in principle only with the functional link between individual phenomena, [and] a “phenomenon” must serve again and again to bring about these links—then the one who believes in God does not contradict these assertions. These are the words of the Jesuit Karl Rahner (d. 1984), who continues: God must not be used as a “God of the gaps” or as an explanatory mecha- nism. [. . .] God is not “something” alongside something else, “something” that can be comprehended together with this something else in a shared homogeneous “system.” We say “God” and mean the totality, but not as the a posteriori sum total of the phenomena that we are investigating. Rather, we mean the totality in its origin and ground, over which we have no control [. . .]. God means the silent mystery, absolute, unconditional, and incomprehensible. Since the mystery is so beautifully silent, the believer (as Rahner says) can let natural science be science, without either being disturbed by it or feeling obliged to tell science what it ought to do. Accordingly, a scientist can either believe or not believe, and he can let everyone believe in whatever he or she wants. For the same reason, the reader of the present essay does not expect a sermon; and the history of science is not a religious confession. This clear distinction is not however something that can be taken for granted. The autonomy of science vis-à-vis faith is the result of a process in the history of science which can be described and understood as an emancipation, since it is broadly identical with what was at stake in the Enlightenment. Every “enlightenment,” including that of the atomists in classical antiquity, has the task of expelling the fear of the gods, and the instrument it employs for this goal is the negation of the gods. But the denial of God’s influence in the world is the last thing that a man like Rah- ner would wish to propagate. Rather, he defends—though taking his stand on post-Enlightenment science—the presence of God in the being, thinking, and acting of the human person. God’s inaccessibility to the grasp of the natural sciences is the condition of His presence: this is His “mystery.” And this is the position of a Jesuit between religion and science. Let me specify here that this is not an apologia for the Christian religion. Nor does it involve physicotheology as a special method of apologetics, parallel to the Enlightenment. These are related themes that crop up in the encounter between the secular scientific cast of mind and religion,3

3 An overview gives Vassányi, “Religious Awe at the Origin of Eighteenth-Century Physico-Theology.” For aparadigmatic case, see Waschkies, Physik und Physikotheologie jesuits between religion and science 87 but they already presuppose a problematic relationship. I assume that what we find in Rahner is what I shall attempt to demonstrate for the Jesuits of the early modern period, namely, a subjectively unproblematic, positive relationship to religion and to the sciences. And this relationship leaves its mark on both religion and science.

6.1 God in Natural Philosophy

The natural philosophy of the Jesuits was marked from the outset by a current version of Aristotelianism that was continually elaborated further. Aristotelian concepts such as substance, accident, quality, and other predicaments occupied an undisputed place in the framework of an ontological realism that was sharply differentiated from late mediaeval Nominalism and had basic assumptions that were predominantly drawn from Thomism. Innovations in this framework were possible, and they were in fact made between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries.4 But every physical theory presupposed a condition that could not be called into question, namely, the reality of a free creator God who could suspend all the “natural laws” or who inaugurated these laws (to put it positively).5 It was completely natural for a Jesuit to integrate this “reality” into his argumentation. This had nothing to do with apologetics or with coercion by the ecclesiastical authorities. A free God was the touchstone of every theory about nature, and at the same time the coping stone that rounded it off to a metaphysical whole. For example, it is only in the final paragraphs of his Theoria philosophiae naturalis (1758–1763) that Rudjer Josip Bošcović (Rogerius Josephus Boscovich) speaks of God, after he has elaborated his corpuscularism. He now asks who it was that invented the complex geometrical rules of nature, and this is a mechanistic problem. Physics is the science of nature; the question about the author of nature concludes the investigation and guarantees its theoretical basis in a realistic sense. This “author” must have devised nature by a free decision, since only so can nature be thought of as a rational object of human knowledge:

des jungen Kant, especially §4. Cf. below the chapter on Natural Theology and Philosophy of Religion. Cf. Feingold, Jesuit Science. 4 Lohr, “Metaphysics,” 600–608; Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance. 5 Baldini, “Boscovich e la tradizione gesuita” (1992), 24.—This is the theological meaning of many of the metaphysical presuppositions of which Baldini often speaks here and in other studies. 88 chapter six

In the wisdom of the Highest Creator, which decides such great things and plans everything, and in the power of the one who carries this out [. . .] we must above all reflect on the great benefit that has flowed to us too, whom he who sees all things already bore in mind.6 Boscovich emphasizes freedom against the Leibnizian “optimism” that would amount to an integration of God into determination, since he would then be obligated to perfection. The Croatian Jesuit obligates God to human rationality. The proof of God’s existence drawn from contingency—everything could also be different, and God alone is free to determine what is true—rounds off physics metaphysically, theologically, and also religiously: in his pursuit of the goals that he has freely posited, the Creator must always employ the means appropriate to these goals, which also benefit humankind. But it is precisely in this way, and only in this way, that God makes himself an object of human veneration.7 Dyed-in-the-wool rationalists may regard such confessions of faith as perfunctory pious exercises, like the reverential nods in the direction of Marx and Engels (of unhappy memory) in more recent times. But the Almighty serves the construction of theory even in points of detail too. Honoré Fabri is another example whom we can cite. Fabri was a French Jesuit who was removed from teaching because of his compromises with René Descartes and was transferred to Rome, to work in religious politics. In his treatise on the human being (1664), he elaborates the concept of life as actus essentialiter immanens, as an activity that is essentially immanent. Not every immanent movement, such as the falling of a stone, is life; rather, it must be essentially immanent. He employs the example of seeing to demonstrate a way out of the paradox: if God were only to give the eye the ability to see, the eye would simultaneously see and not see. It would see something, but it would not itself be active. Life is thus essentially defined on the basis of the inherent automatic or spontaneous movement. God stands in the background as the guarantor (the technical

6 Boscovich, Theoria philosophiae naturalis: “Sed in hac tanta eligentis, ac omnia providentis Supremi Conditoris sapientia, atque exequentis potentia [. . .] illud adhuc magis cogitandum est nobis, quantum inde in nostros etiam usus promanarit, quos utique respexit ille, qui videt omnia.” 7 Boscovich, §557, p. 262: “Cum ea infinita libertate Divina componitur tamen illud, quod ad sapientiam pertinent, ut ad eos fines, quos sibi pro liberrimo suo arbitrio praefixit Deus, media semper apta debeat seligere, quae ad finem propositum frustrari non sinant. Porro haec media etiam in nostrum bonum selegit plurima, dum totam naturam conderet, quod quem a nobis exigat beneficiorum memorem, et gratum animum . . .” jesuits between religion and science 89 term is concursus),8 since the potency of what is natural is explained on the basis of His potency; nevertheless, God himself is not integrated in a pantheistic manner.9 My intention in presenting this example (and innumerable similar cases could be found) is to show that in the pre-Enlightenment science of nature the theological argument did not have the “stopgap” function that Rahner feared. Rather, it belonged constitutively to the scientific argumentation. Even an avowedly eclectic Jesuit like Francesco Lana-Terzi, who followed Bacon, Fabri, and other contemporaries by proceeding in a strictly empirical manner, still justifies the plurality of the results and of the related theories by means of a theological concept of truth that allows for “many different colors.”10 If one takes seriously the claim to absoluteness—which takes priority over the human claim—what could be better than a theological argument? Naturally, the individual science does not itself substantiate the theological authority that guarantees it; this is the competence of others. But the internal and external substantial link remains undisputed, and censorship was responsible for maintaining this link.11 Ugo Baldini’s researches into the natural sciences of the Jesuits have unearthed numerous interesting facts. It is worth quoting one small example,12 because it shows us by means of a concept that is important in the history of the natural sciences, namely spiritus, the interactions that can be generated by the theological competence with regard to theories of natural science, and that can become mere semantic noise for non-theological readers. Before the Philosophia magnetica of the Jesuit Nicolaus Cabeus was allowed to be published in 1629, the Order’s own censor had demanded the correction of thesis that a spiritual quality (spiritualis qualitas) did not have the power to attract iron: “videtur docere spiritualem qualitatem vim tantam habere non posse, ut ferrum attollat.” What is so wrong about this assertion? Cabeus’ reply in the printed text to the censor is the reply of

8 See the article “concursus” in Gilson, Index scholastico-cartésien (1989), 399. 9 Fabri, Tractatus duo: Quorum prior est de plantis, et de generatione animalium; posterior de homine: De homine, liber 2, propositio 45, n. 13. 10 Lanis, Magisterium naturae et artis. Opus physico-mathematicum, Auctor lectori, Sp. [3]: “Equidem veritas unica est; sed quemadmodum unica statua, a diversis vel etiam ab eodem Pictore coloribus exprimitur, modo sub una, modo sub alia forma [. . .], eadem prorsus ratione Philosophi unicam Veritatem diversis sententiarum coloribus delineatam vario modo menti contemplandam proponent . . .” 11 Naturally, one thinks in this instance especially of the case of Galileo; but all I shall do here is to satisfy the obligation of mentioning his name. 12 Baldini, Legem impone subactis, 97 and 114. 90 chapter six one who has been caught out and defends himself by means of polemic. He writes that the “spiritual quality” of which a scholar like Fracastoro writes is not genuinely “spiritalis” like the virtues and graces that belong to the soul, but is rather “spiritosa,” that is to say, fine, subtle, or vaporous;13 he does not in the least intend to dispute the ability of a “facultas spiritualis” to attract iron. (There was a voluntaristic discussion about where God was able to create a stone so heavy that He, as the Almighty, could not lift it.) Cabeus writes that all he had affirmed was that a vaporous (“spiritosa”) quality of this kind could not possess magnetic power, just as “spiritual arms” (spiritualis) could not be of iron. Concrete science clashes with the institutionalized theology that had established in the Jesuit Order (and not only there) an authoritative censorship with the task of watching over the correctness and uniformity of teaching.14 Space does not permit me to speak here about the philosophical implications of truth and the unity of doctrine, but it is obvious that for the Jesuits, it was theology that set the rules of science.15 This is expressed in a much-used emblem16 that depicts two ladies who are subordinate to a first lady: “Legem impone subactis”: theology prescribes the law for the subordinate disciplines. We should note the political-martial diction of this motto. The theological truths were integrated into the sciences as something that really existed, as scientific facts; and even when difficulties might arise, they did not call the truth into question.

6.2 Natural Theology

Now that we have seen the institutional locus of theology in the Jesuit natural sciences, let us look at its scientific locus, namely, natural theology. In 1622, the French scholar Théophile Raynaud (1583–1663), who taught in Lyon, published his Theologia naturalis,17 which he integrated precisely into the historical and systematic structure of contemporary philosophy. He begins by drawing distinctions between three elementary types of theology in classical antiquity, namely, mythology, the Pre-Socratic teaching

13 On this, see Walker, Il concetto di spirito o anima in Henry Moore e Ralph Cudworth. 14 Baldini, Legem impone subactis, 85. 15 See Blum, “Der Standardkursus.” 16 Baldini, Legem impone subactis, 19f. 17 Raynaudus, Theologia naturalis Sive entis increati et creati intra supremam abstractionem ex naturae lumine investigatio. jesuits between religion and science 91 about nature, and the classical legal system and morality.18 Plato and Aris- totle, each with his own school, then form the foundation of contemporary natural theology. In terms of their substance, the Neo-Platonic teaching about the spirit and Aristotelian metaphysics are the correct theme, but they lack ultimate authority.19 Raynaud is thus in the paradoxical situation that he can philosophize only on the basis of the natural reason, without in any way having recourse to revelation (which is the real source of theological knowledge).20 He has the impression that he must intentionally act stupid (“obscurare intellectum”), and this is a moral rather than a scientific lapse.21 The consequence for science would be the restriction of philosophy to the material realm;22 morally speaking, this would be an intellectual self-mutilation that could be repaired only by recourse to authorities that have integrity. Raynaud recommends the church fathers, because they combined moral propriety with intelligence and scholarship. It was their openness to the divine grace that liberated their natural reason.23 These non-biblical, but Christian sources give the Jesuit the support he needs to carry out his program, namely, the theory of the bodiless natures (the angels and God). This is a hermeneutical circle that (as in the conclusion to his Prologue)24 tacitly sweeps up everything into its whirlwind: the archaic forms of theology that he has already mentioned, the use of images to speak of God, the objectification of God as a part of nature, and science as a moral institution. The recourse to Plato and Aristotle has long since been justified. Natural theology, ostensibly nothing more than a rational

18 Raynaudus, Theologia naturalis, Prologus, §V n. 60: “In tria genera Theologiam parti- untur. Nempe in fabulosum, quod etiam historicum appellant, Poetis maxime attributum: in naturale atque mysticum quod Philosophi approbarunt, et in civile, quod in singulis civitatibus, consuetudine et legibus defensatur” (here, he follows Eusebius, Praeparatio evangelica IV, prooemium). 19 Raynaudus, Theologia naturalis, Prologus §V n. 79 and 84. 20 Ibid., Prologus §V n. 86: “Ex naturali lumine, ac veluti is qui de Christiana Fide nihil inaudiverit, philosophari debeo, praetermittam quaecumque revelatione aliquo tandem modo nituntur.” 21 Ibid., Prologus §V n. 86. 22 Ibid., Prologus §V n. 86: “Philosophi ad corpus omnia referunt, nihil prorsus ad mentem, nec vident amplius quam quod sub oculos venit” (following Lactantius, Divinae institutiones 3.9). 23 Ibid., Prologus §V n. 86: “In Sanctis autem Patribus, vitae integritas cum exellenti ingenio et singulari studio coniuncta, et quod caput est, gratiae et Divini praesidii naturam dirigentis afflatus, effecit ut naturale lumen libere fulgeret, et penitus ad haec detegenda et collustranda pervaderet.” 24 Ibid., Prologus §V n. 87. This concludes with pagan prayers, the last of which is taken from Plato’s Timaeus. 92 chapter six speaking about God, becomes the rational instrument for the integration of religion into academic research. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, Raimundus Sabundus (†1436) wrote the first natural theology that was given this name.25 Natural theology is already structured here as a universal science:26 haec scientia [. . .] per omnes creaturas et per naturam ipsius hominis et per ipsummet hominem omnia probat. It is absolutely impossible to do more than to demonstrate everything by means of everything. But Sabundus states plainly something that Raynaud bashfully conceals, namely, that this universal science is a science of the human being, since it demonstrates its object “through what the human being knows of himself through experience, and most particularly through the inner experience of each one.”27 Human self-experience is the ground of the knowledge of the universe, of its Creator, and of the creation. As is well known, introspection as a methodology inspired Michel de Montaigne, who translated this text into French. It was suspected of heresy,28 because it can only operate univocally: the connection between everything and everything, mediated by the human spirit, tends in principle towards a cosmology that denies the existence of substantial differences in its component parts and that locates its “switch point” in the human being. This can be seen already in the celebrated stepladder of nature, on which it is none other than the human being (or the human spirit) that ascends and descends.29 This can lead to hubris and pantheism. Nature, and above all the nature of the human being, covers over revelation, or at least outstrips it (one can also call this “humanism”):30

25 Raimundus Sabundus, Theologia naturalis. I cite from the Nuremberg edition (Koberger) of 1502. 26 Ibid., Prologus. Stegmüller has a different punctuation, so that one must read: “haec scientia arguit [. . .] per omnes creaturas et per naturam ipsius hominis. Et per ipsummet hominem omnia probat . . .” The substance remains the same. 27 Ibid., Prologus: “per illa quae homo certissime cognoscit de seipso per experientiam et maxime per experientiam cuiuslibet intra seipsum.” 28 The Prologus was put on the Index. 29 Ibid., Titulus 1: “oportet comparare hominem qui est supremus inter omnes res mundi ad omnes alias res. [. . .] Postea ex ista convenientia et differentia manifestabuntur omnia quae scire debemus de homine et de deo.” 30 Ibid., Prologus; see the conclusion: “Ista autem scientia non est aliud nisi cogitare et videre sapientiam scriptam in creaturis. Et extrahere ipsam ab illis et ponere in anima.” jesuits between religion and science 93

haec scientia nihil allegat, neque sacram scripturam neque alios doctores, immo ista confirmat sacram scripturam [. . .] liber scripturae datum est homini secundo. Raimundus Sabundus thus goes so far as to assert that the book of nature possesses logical and temporal priority over against the book of revelation; and unlike the Bible, the book of nature cannot be falsified.31 The wisdom of revelation can be learnt from nature. Nature becomes the touchstone of revelation theology and may indeed make it superfluous. This is why the foreword to this late mediaeval philosophy was put on the Index. Nevertheless, its pious intention always found adherents, even among the Jesuits, including Ignatius Loyola himself.

6.3 Piety and Science

We have spoken up to now of science in the sense of natural science, and of academic theology in relation to natural science. Although this is not the same thing as religion, the so-called natural theology nevertheless displayed the interfaces, that is to say, the sphere in which systematic speaking about God makes the transition into piety, since the theological argument in natural theology is not merely a rationally demonstrable thesis, but is a maxim for conduct. The elementary basic assumption of natural theology—which Raynaud too reflects—is that the world was created for the human being and as a challenge to his cognitive faculty. This means that natural theology transfers its theme from the sphere of that which is morally and anthropologically indifferent into the sphere of the religious. Even atheists can have splendid disputes about theological theories; it is moral and political obligation that constitutes religion. This can be seen in our own days on the political level, in the political importance of so-called fundamentalist movements that are experienced as a threat. Thus, we are told that Islamic fundamentalism is a danger because its religious prescriptions and teachings lay claim, not to be academic theology, but to be the exclusive rule that governs societal and individual life, including international politics. This may not only lead to the eclipse of the individual rights to freedom that have been gained in the European culture, such as women’s equality and religious freedom; it is possible that

31 Ibid., Prologus: “Item primus liber sive naturae non potest falsificari nec deleri, neque false interpretari.” 94 chapter six the standards of the questions that a theology purified by philosophy and by the critique of religion32 must be able to answer would lose their binding character. It is well known that fundamentalisms of this kind exist in the Christian culture too. They tend to take the meaning of religio to be ‘binding’. They all agree in prizing the obligatory quality of the rules of life higher than the theoretical justification of these rules that is accessible to the reason. In this way, piety can flourish at the expense of doctrine. Piety, religious praxis, takes on the outward appearance of mere lip service; the believer is already justified by the observance of the behavioral codex, by pious works.33 Natural theology takes direct aim at this attitude, since it intends to communicate the reasonableness of Christianity by means of rational arguments. This is why it explicitly dispenses with revelation theology, although this ultimately remains the goal of its intellectual endeavor. Rational theological thinking is thus not antithetical to Christian theology and piety, but rather safeguards these in the interests of the Catholic Church. This is why the Jesuit Raynaud makes his contribution here. However, this form of thought goes back to the beginnings of the Jesuit Order. It was inherited from the early reformers of spirituality. The chef d’œuvre of the founder of the Society of Jesus, Ignatius Loyola, and the most influential handbook for all its members and for many Catholics outside the Order, was the Spiritual Exercises, which he began writing at the age of thirty, in 1521.34 This book contains the spiritual foundations of his thinking and of his religious politics. It is composed on the lines of a drama in which the will of the Creator and the psychology of the individual are the acting persons.35 Once the roles have been assigned in this way, the “script” prescribes or predicts what is to happen in the process. The drama is called: “Spiritual exercises, in order that the human being may overcome himself and order his life, without allowing himself to be

32 A critique of religion exists in Islam: see for example Averroes, Philosophie und Theologie. 33 For extensive evidence, see Marty and Appleby. The relationships between reductionist doctrine and reactionary politics are described, e.g., vol. 1, 98f.; vol. 2, 558; vol. 3, 621. 34 Loyola, Exercitia spiritualia; title: Exercitia quaedam spiritualia, per quae homo dirigitur, ut vincere seipsum possit, et vitae suae rationem, determinatione a noxiis affectibus libera, instituere. 35 García Mateo, “Ignatius von Loyola—Mystik und Dramatik,” 351, speaks of a “staging” (Inszenierung). jesuits between religion and science 95 determined by any disordered inclination.”36 This work is important for the relationship between science and religion because it generates a piety that has been turned into a science and has been mechanized. This succeeds with such a surprising perfection that it possesses in many respects the artistry of a work of literature, and indeed even the aesthetic of such a work. The concentration and rigor of the product that interests us here have led to numerous attempts at interpretation and structural compari- sons, and not only by Christians. Roland Barthes’ comparison with the pornographic obsession of de Sade is certainly not flattering, and yet it is plausible, since the comparability lies in the rationalization of feelings.37 As in every drama, and indeed in every detective story (for this too is about sinners), the course of events bears the imprint of the end: and this is explicitly the case in the Exercises.38 The vista of the goal, a kind of puri- fication of the human sphere and an ordering of life (as announced in the title), is at the same time the point of departure that launches the process. In a four-week course, the one who undertakes the exercises is to do this and to let it happen.39 It is sin that prevents one from attaining the goal that has been announced, and it is the task of the first week to remove this sin. The second week is concerned with the exemplary life of Christ: when one follows him, the goal appears attainable. The third and fourth weeks train one in this new life by means of meditation. The goal for which the human being ought to overcome himself is the widest-reaching identification with Christ, the spiritual uniting with God. Accordingly, the Spiritual Exercises are40

36 Ignatius, Exercitia, title, p. 164: Exercitia quaedam spiritualia, per quae homo dirigitur, ut vincere seipsum possit, et vitae suae rationem, determinatione a noxiis affectibus libera, instituere. 37 Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola. 38 This is a fundamental trait of Jesuit intellectuality: see Blum, “Die geschmückte Judith”. Cf. Blum, “Atonement before guilt” (reprinted in idem, Das Wagnis, 247–256). 39 On the duration (usually thirty days), see Ignatius, Exercitia, annotatio 4, pp. 114f. 40 Ignatius, Exercitia, annotatio 1, pp. 140f. (I quote always from the versio vulgata): “ipso nomine spiritualium exercitiorum intelligitur modus quilibet examinandi propriam conscientiam; item meditandi, contemplandi, orandi secundum mentem et vocem; ac postremo alias quascunque spirituales operationes tractandi, ut dicetur deinceps. Sicut enim deambulare, iter facere et currere exercitia sunt corporalia; ita quoque praeparare et disponere animam ad tollendas affectiones omnes male ordinatas, et iis sublatis ad quae rendam ac inveniendam voluntatem Dei circa vitae suae institutionem et salutem animae, exercitia vocantur spiritualia.” 96 chapter six

a kind of examination of one’s conscience, of meditation, of contemplation, of both vocal and interior prayer, and ultimately of every other kind of spiritual activity [. . .]. For just as walking, going, and running are bodily exercises, so too the endeavors to prepare the soul and make it willing to remove from itself all disordered movements of the emotions and, as soon as these are removed, to seek and to find the will of God with respect to the ordering of one’s life and the salvation of the soul are called “spiritual exercises.” In the preliminary notes to the Exercises, Ignatius affirms that the inner satisfaction of the soul derives from the “interior feeling and tasting,” not so much from knowledge.41 This, however, does not entail any antithesis between rational thinking and psychological sensibility; it indicates only that the dramaturgical calculation is being implemented by means of the aesthetic quality. The one who undertakes the Exercises need not know all the rules of the game; it suffices that he implement these in practice,42 since the instructions in Ignatius’ Exercises are completely rational and theological. Suggestions for prayer and meditation alternate with direc- tives and explanations. The text and the meta-language alternate as in a libretto. The “principle and foundation” (to quote literally) is the following proposition:43 The human being has been created in order that he may praise and revere God our Lord and serve him, and thereby be saved at the last. The other things on earth were created for the sake of the human being, so that they may assist him in attaining the goal for which he was created. It follows that the human being should use these or refrain from using them, to the extent that they help him to attain this goal or are an obstacle to this goal. Both Raimundus Sabundus and Thomas a Kempis (or the author of the celebrated Imitation of Christ) agree with Ignatius—since they are all Catholic reformers—that all human action and thinking must be related to God as its final goal, and thus as its first goal too.44 In Ignatius, how-

41 Ignatius, Exercitia, annotatio 2, p. 142: “non enim abundantia scientiae, sed sensus et gustus rerum interior desiderium animae explere solet.” 42 Ignatius, Exercitia, annotation 11, p. 150. 43 Ignatius, Exercitia 1, p. 164: “Creatus est homo ad hunc finem, ut Dominum Deum suum laudet ac revereatur, eique serviens tandem salvus fiat. Reliqua vero supra terram sita, creata sunt hominis ipsius causa, ut eum ad finem creationis suae prosequendum iuvent; unde sequitur utendum illis vel abstinendum eatenus esse, quatenus ad prosecu- tionem finis vel conferunt vel obsunt.” 44 Thomas a Kempis, De imitatione Christi, III, 9: “Quod omnia ad Deum sicut ad finem ultimum sunt referenda.” Ignatius of Loyola had this work at hand during the composition of his Exercises: see Ignatius, Exercitia, Introductio, pp. 46f. jesuits between religion and science 97 ever, this does not lead to contempt for the world, but to a rehabilitation of conduct in the world. The theocentric pole of piety receives an anthropocentric antipole that makes the following of Christ an undertaking in this world. This is because the goal that binds God and the human being is threefold: the human being is created for the worship of God, and everything else is created for the human being, who in turn makes use of everything to the glory of God. God is both the author of the first goal and at the same time the goal itself: everything is ordered to him, and he is likewise the author of the second goal, namely, that everything is created for the human being. In a kind of reversion, the human being now subjectively posits the third goal, namely, the goal of creation in the glory of God, so that the goal returns to itself. Since this is a circular movement, rather than simply an identification or congruency of two poles (God and the human being), deviations such as a preferential emphasis on one of the phases of the circle are always possible. One example is the anthropocentric over-emphasis that would make the human being completely free to define his goals and to instrumentalize the world in order to attain them.45 To withdraw from history into mysticism and to despise the world is another possibility. It is the aim of the Exercises to exclude precisely such one-sidednesses, which brought the suspicion of heresy upon the natural theology of Raimundus Sabundus. The dramaturgy of the Spiritual Exercises is meant to train the one who undergoes them to devote his freedom and all his energy to the glory of God: Ad majorem Dei Gloriam, “to the greater glory of God,” was the Jesuits’ motto.46 This also applies to the faculties of the soul. It is natural that the Chris- tology should be verbalized in the meditations that are an important part of the Exercises, and the representation of God’s properties in imaginary dialogues belongs to the dramatic style. The special feature of the Exercises is the demand—a practical demand, not something theoretical, when the Exercises are conducted—that one employ the human senses to visual- ize the suffering and the glory of Christ. One should imagine vividly the places and the persons in the story of Jesus’ passion (the term used is visio imaginaria).47 The one undertaking the Exercises should imagine the situation (for example, the annunciation by the archangel Gabriel) with all the imagination of the five senses. He should imagine optically the place

45 It is the overall thesis of Cornelio Fabro that this anthropocentric emphasis is equivalent with modern atheism. See his God in Exile. 46 See Lécrivain, Pour une plus grande Gloire de Dieu. 47 Ignatius, Exercitia 2, p. 224. 98 chapter six and the persons of the event; acoustically, he should image what they say; he should smell and taste the sweetness (suavitas et dulcedo)48 of the virtuous soul; and finally, with the sense of touch, he should embrace and kiss (always in one’s imagination) the places that the saints have touched or where they have walked.49 At this point, the idea seems to become totally Baroque. These precepts train one in a profound mystical contemplation of the events of salvation, but in such a way that one finds the path back into life, for one is not meant to relinquish this life in an anticipation of death (as contemplative Orders do in certain circumstances), but rather to put this life at the service of God. What is at stake here is nothing other than the freedom of the Christian, and this is why the Exercises close with a prayer for the love of God. “Love” here means “mutua facultatum, rerum et operum communicatio,” the free (though of course not equal) exchange between autonomous (though not equal-ranking) persons.50 Reflection on the position of the “ego” in salvation history and in the creation leads one finally to pray:51 Receive, o Lord, all my liberty. Receive my memory, my intellect, and all my will. Whatever I have or possess, you have given it to me: I restore it entire to you, and I hand it over to your will entirely, to be governed by it. Give me only the love of you with your grace, and I am rich enough, nor do I ask for anything else beyond that. Freedom and love are the happy ending, for freedom is not of course denied, but is only given back into the hands of God. In this way, it receives its definitive rank in the rest of one’s life.52 Such a schooling is doubtless open to being used in ways that do not always manifest its divine finality. This is why Ignatian spirituality has always been exposed to criticism and suspicions; these are the inevitable

48 Ignatius, Exercitia 2, p. 234. 49 One example illustrating the practical application of this principle is Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld, “Liebreiches Gebet zu IESU dem gecreutzigten, mit dem mund und hertzen zu sprechen. ‘Sey gegrüst / o süsser Jesu’,” etc., quoted from Schöne, Das Zeitalter des Barock, 149. See Sievernich, “‘En todo amar y servir’.” The secondary literature is extensive; see e.g. Sudbrack, “Die ‘Anwendung der Sinne’”. 50 Ignatius, Exercitia 4, p. 306: “consistit amor in mutua facultatum, rerum et operum communicatione, puta scientiae, divitiarum, honoris et boni cuiusque.” 51 Ignatius, Exercitia 4, p. 308: “Suscipe, Domine, universam meam libertatem. Accipe memoriam, intellectum atque voluntatem omnem. Quidquid habeo vel possideo, mihi lar- gitus es: id tibi totum restituo, ac tuae prorsus voluntati trado gubernandum. Amorem tui solum cum gratia tua mihi dones, et dives sum satis, nec aliud quicquam ultra posco.” 52 Kunz calls this the “appropriation of salvation”: “‘Bewegt von Gottes Liebe’,” 81f. jesuits between religion and science 99 consequence of the demand that the human being make a total gift of himself and constitute himself. Rules such as the following made their contribution to the criticism:53 If something appears to our eyes to be white, and the church defines that it is black, we too must declare it to be black. One must however pay heed to the conditions and to the inherent logic of this rule: it applies only when failure to observe it would put the unity of the church’s teaching at risk, and under the logical presupposition that the Spirit of Christ and of the church is one and the same Spirit, who has given his church the ten commandments. And these are revealed wis- doms, exempt from the scientists’ control. The position of the Jesuits between religion and science is delicate and problematic, but not in any way critical. The Order created and cultivated in the Spiritual Exercises an instrument that integrated rationality and calculability into edification, thereby locating scientific research under the primacy of theology without needing to pretend to be stupid. The risk of fundamentalism is banished by a high level of reasonable justification; indeed, if there is a risk here, it is the risk of the super-rationality that finds expression in “Jesuitical cleverness.” Several examples have demonstrated the positive scientific contribution made by theological arguments in discussions of scientific matters, for this approach cannot entail a total induction. The basis is an affirmative relationship to revelation and to piety. Since a curious application often illustrates principles better than the mass of the normal applications, let me conclude by mentioning a special case. The rationality of the Jesuit understanding of religion generated the temptation to integrate the results of academic theology directly into the life of faith and prayer. For example, Saint Francis Borgia, a relative of the Renaissance Pope Alexander VI, and the third General of the Order, cast the theses of the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas in the form of a litany, in order that the understanding and the will might be supplied with doctrine and spirit.54 The act of praying fosters insight into the truth of the authoritative theologian, and the love of God is kindled through

53 Ignatius, Exercitia, Regula aliquot servandae, ut cum orthodoxa ecclesia vere sen- tiamus, 13, p. 412: “si quid, quod oculis nostris apparet album, nigrum illa esse definierit, debemus itidem quod nigrum sit pronuntiare.” 54 Borgia, Praecipuae Divi Thomae Aquinatis materiae in litaniarum rationem redactae, 22: “intellectum, ac voluntatem cum litteris, et spiritu coniungere.” 100 chapter six the understanding. We should therefore pray the relevant articles selected from the Summa:55 O highest God, whom no one can know perfectly without yourself: Have mercy on us. O you who are the theme of theology: Have mercy on us, etc. We even find requests such as the following: From those who deny that God is the formal principle of all things: Save us, o Lord. From David of Dinant, who calls God materia prima: Save us, o Lord. This may sound comical. But that should be an invitation to reflect further on the qualitative difference between science and religion.

55 Ibid., 25 and 28. CHAPTER SEVEN

PRINCIPLES AND POWERS: HOW TO INTERPRET RENAISSANCE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE PHILOSOPHICALLY?

The title of this chapter was inspired by a book by Jorge E. Gracia in which he demands that history of philosophy should be studied philosophically.1 Underlying this demand is a polemical tone: it seems that at least some people deal with topics in the history of philosophy in a non-philosophical way—and I may add frankly, most of the philosophers who consider themselves such, think that this is right. What I want to show is that early modern philosophy can be read in a ‘presentist’ way, that is, as relevant to present day philosophical questions. This claim entails a burden of proof theory, which amounts to demanding serious alternatives from those who deny the validity of past philosophies, calling thus upon the historian to philosophize about them. However, then we presuppose that there was such a thing as a philosophy of nature in Early Modern times. But if we dare to ask: ‘Is there such a thing as Nature, is there Philosophy in the Renaissance?’ we start philosophizing—philosophizing, however, in the form of history. Doing history of philosophy, consequently, is philosophizing under severe conditions. For the subject matter is not only to be debated remaining within its questions and terminology but also it has to be established at the same time. R.G. Collingwood once gave the following advice: If a philosophical doctrine doesn’t seem to make sense, it is probably a good answer to a question we don’t know.2 I have argued elsewhere3 that philosophy of the past is the ‘philosophy of the other’, in the sense that the strangeness

1 Gracia, Philosophy and Its History, p. xvi. However, it will be evident in what follows that I disagree on major points with Gracia, because his view of history of philosophy is contaminated by the positivistic approach in that he regards philosophical historiography as a bastard of history and philosophy (see esp. his Chapter One III). 2 Collingwood, An Autobiography, p. 31: “In order to find out his meaning you must also know what the question was (a question in his own mind, and presumed by him to be in yours) to which the thing he has said or written was meant as an answer.” Idem, The Idea of History, p. 283: The historian of philosophy “must see what the philosophical problem was, of which his author is here stating his solution. (. . .) This means re-thinking for himself the thought of his author”. 3 Blum, Philosophenphilosophie and “‘Istoriar la figura’: Syncretism of Theories.” 102 chapter seven of someone’s thought builds up and confirms one’s self-perception as a philosopher, and that this very attitude towards alien philosophy creates the ideal of the modern philosopher. But when dealing with Renaissance thought the philosopher has to detect the problems, which the other philosopher was trying to solve. Philosophy may not be taken as a set of ideas—in Gracia’s terms—which are treated like entities that happen to make interpretation obscure because they are nastily “nonobservable”.4

7.1 Cusanus and Ficino: Reasonable Questions behind Obscure Answers

Nicholas Cusanus is perhaps the most difficult example, because on the surface he seems to give answers to modern questions if we present his Learned Ignorance as a critique of pure reason and as a dialectic of reasoning and reality. But then the effect is that we meet this pattern throughout in his writings. What we can find in Cusanus is coherence in putting questions, expounding problems. Is it, however, possible that all his writings are various answers to one and the same question? This is hard to tell, but if it is the case, then it is only on a level which is genuinely theological, which does not exclude biblical theology but is also not identical with it. If I may adapt the simile of De visione Dei (an image of Christ is watching the worshipper wherever he stands): a divine entity watches the reader from all of Cusanus’s writings, and now it is up to the philosopher to tell what it means to be watched by the Divine. This is certainly a philosophical and not ‘just a theological’ problem since this being watched is a source of the modern self, and it might be sufficient to mention Jean- Paul Sartre and Emmanuel Lévinas in this context. Those philosophers less historic than Cusanus proved that his idea was an answer to a quite understandable question. To take the next example: Marsilio Ficino is constantly striving to leave the earthly realm. Unification with the One, ascent to the divine, and deification of the human, are themes that make up the bulk of his writings. There is nothing more beautiful than his philosophy of love, which despises carnal lust and ascends to the fruition of the divine. Well done, but why did he write a book on prolonging the philosopher’s life? Why a theory of astrology? Why did he still talk of human love? And of course, we all know that there are no bonds between stones and stars.

4 Gracia, Philosophy, 65. principles and powers 103

Don’t we all know that love is controlled by hormones and sense perceptions? Ficinian ‘love’ is a burden of proof theory: whoever attacks it has to explain phenomena, which according to Ficino are of a spiritual nature. This does not necessarily entail that Ficino is right in his spiritualism. But it means that he is struggling with a problem beyond or in the background of this: with the bond as such. Suppose there is more than one entity, how are they related? The famous Renaissance idea of man as nodus mundi, then, is not just a holiday decoration of the everyday misery of human life, but the burden of proof that there is such a thing as a world and a linkage within the world. The question of linkage is a philosophical problem because it is a question, which has not yet been answered adequately. Ficino gives an answer to it, and—given that his answers do not match present day philosophical answers—it is up to the philosopher who considers himself such to understand the question.

7.2 Telesio: Is there any Order in Nature?

A further example is the importance of humanist and Renaissance scholarship for the development of modern science, an allegation mostly infected by “whiggishness”.5 But this suspicion holds for any interpretation of Renaissance philosophy when it aims at being philosophical. For obvious reasons—which one could probably again define as “whiggish”— the humanists’ and Renaissance philosophers’ attitude towards natural sciences and natural phenomena has been studied carefully, and we enjoy a large discussion concerning the differences between them and contrasting them with later stages of science. But in terms of philosophy, including philosophy of nature, we have not gone very far. Most studies on Renais- sance philosophy either appropriate it into a Neoplatonist interpretation of philosophy, or wrestle with the concepts, methods, and terminologies that are not always consistent even within the same philosopher and not in comparison with his contemporaries. Cusanus and Ficino, in the example mentioned above, even though in part contemporaries and Platonists in some way, have less in common than the label indicates, unless we try and look at their way of thinking and their basic questions. Part of the seeming inconsistencies between all these thinkers is that there is no clear

5 Pyle, “Renaissance Humanism and Science”. On the problem of ‘whig interpretation of history’ see the following chapter. 104 chapter seven dividing line between philosophy of nature and philosophy in general, in the same way as there is no dividing line between philosophy and theology. Thus it is in no way clear where one has to draw the dividing line between natural philosophy and natural history in the Renaissance. So let me study two cases of Renaissance philosophy of nature, Bernardino Telesio and Girolamo Cardano. If we look at the Renaissance from the history of scientific progress perspective there is no doubt that Bernardino Telesio merits an honorable mention because Francis Bacon referred to him, calling him “the first of the moderns”6 Bacon understood that Telesio had split Aristotle’s teaching into purely metaphysical and more experiential sciences, opting for a mere physics of natural experience. But neither assumption stands up to investigation, they rather describe Bacon’s project than that of Telesio: When Telesio conceives something similar to the later Newtonian absolute space and likewise a totality of time which does not depend on motion, he proceeds in a merely speculative way, as Aristotle had done, and strives for a philosophy which encompasses the whole of nature. Telesio did not give priority to sense perception over general principles. Thus he introduces the first edition of his De rerum natura juxta propria principia7 with the statement: Those who examined before us the construction of this world and the nature of things seem to have researched daily and with much labor but in no way gained insight into it . . . This happened to them because they had too much trust in themselves and they did not—as they should have done—look at the things themselves and their powers [vires], and consequently attribute an intellect to things and such faculties, as they apparently are endowed with: rather as though they were competing and fighting with God in terms of wisdom they dared to inquire into the principles and causes of the world itself by reasoning, and while they believed themselves and wished to have found what they didn’t find, they feigned the world quasi at their will and attributed to the bodies, which constitute it, not that magnitude and that nobility [dignitas] and those powers which they actually have, but only that, which their own reasoning inspired them with.8

6 Bacon, Works, vol. 3, 114; vol. 5, 495. 7 Telesio, De rerum natura iuxta propria principia, (1989), fol. 2r. 8 Telesio, De rerum natura / Intorno alla natura, vol. 1, lib. 1, proem., p. 26: “Qui ante nos mundi huius constructionem rerumque in eo contentarum naturam perscrutati sunt, (. . .) illam (. . .) nequaquam inspexisse videntur. (. . .) nimis forte sibi ipsis confisi, nequaquam, quod oportebat, res ipsas earumque vires intuiti, eam rebus magnitudinem ingeniumque et facultates quibus donatae videntur, indidere; sed veluti cum Deo de sapientia conten- principles and powers 105

Looking at things themselves must yield ‘nobility’ and power within the world instead of logical principles and causes. If this is an empiricist’s program, something must be wrong with the concept of empiricism. Actually Bacon’s praise goes along with Giordano Bruno’s criticism: Telesio made “onorata guerra” against Aristotle but his principles of nature, and specifically his connection of humidity and fire lacks any warrant, they are only derived from the general setting of Aristotle’s theory.9 Let me follow up this thread. Telesio’s approach to nature must have something to do with Aristo- telian science. Indeed, Telesio not only studied in Padua, the stronghold of humanist Aristotelianism, he even submitted the first draft of his book on the principles of nature to his Paduan friend Vincenzo Maggi for critical revision. Hence his attack on contemporary philosophers and his theory of heat and cold, of a quasi material spirit which controls all beings, including humans, must be meant and even must have been perceived as a due response to Aristotelian problems. One of the best known debates in Paduan Aristotelianism was, of course, that on scientific knowledge in general and in nature specifically, the other important bone of contention being the nature of the soul. It was Jacopo Zabarella who insisted against Francesco Piccolomini on the independent order of nature, while his opponent demanded that scientific order and natural order should convene in the order of divine causation. Thus we have three structures, each of them conceived of as orders: the logical, the natural, and the spiritual.10 And we have to make up our minds as philosophers, as believers, as rational beings whether there is or is not or should be any concordance among them. But why bother at all? Because it is a philosophical question: is there any order at all, and if so, which? And if there is more than one option, should we choose one, or two, and which couple, or all three of them? This is an easy logical calculus. Zabarella distinguished between the object of a science and the way of studying it (res considerata and modus considerationis), a genuine

dentes decertantesque, mundi ipsius principia et caussas ratione inquirere ausi, et, quae non invenerant (. . .) effinxere.” Cf. Francesco Patrizi’s objections: Bernardino Telesio: Varii de naturalibus rebus libelli, ed. Luigi De Franco (Firenze 1981), p. 453–495, here: p. 453, 463, 475f. 9 Bruno, Opera latine conscripta, vol. I 1, p. 289: “Nullis rationibus usus, Naturam humentem asseruitque Thelesius ignem.” Similarly vol. I 2, p. 395. 10 The number of orders is a question of interpretation; the debate is expounded in the context of Padua university by Jardine, “Keeping Order in the School of Padua,” 191–196. 106 chapter seven peripatetic distinction. The basis for this distinction is the existence in extramental reality of the object considered. Method, the modus considerationis, however, isolates mentally the properties from the object studied; consequently the object has a larger extension in reality than the science of it.11 Nevertheless, the modus considerationis matches reality— otherwise it would not be science at all. The effect is that the following proposition: “Natural science studies nature” is turned around to become: “Nature is what natural science deals with,” or more exactly: “Nature is to be defined as that which is studied by natural science.” A host of problems arises from this reversal which we don’t find expressly in Zabarella, but which explain the inspiring role of Paduan Aristotelianism for modern science. Nature becomes a ‘Ding an sich’, a Kantian virtual nature as the condition of the possibility of talking about nature: the main feature being that a deep gap has opened between Nature and Theory of Nature. In attempting to unite only the logical and the natural order, of which his famous ‘regressus method’ is the perfect expression, Zabarella prepares the moment when both orders fall apart. When Eckhard Keßler pointed out that even Telesio’s theory of soul has its origin in a passage in Aristotle where the ancient empiricist claims “that the soul is not entirely natural and therefore not entirely the subject matter of natural science”,12 this means that Telesio’s effort in distancing himself from Aristotle does not head in the direction of a naturalist acceptance of natural science: he rather takes that doctrine as a license to call a super-empirical essence the governing force of natural beings. Furthermore Keßler draws our attention to a passage in which the Renais- sance philosopher demands not to study how the world is constructed but rather why (Rer. Nat. I 9, vol. I, 88–103, 88, 94; Keßler 141). The difference between Aristotle and Telesio, however, is that Aristotle refers to the four causes, controlled by the final cause, while Telesio seeks for something like a ‘real cause’. And that is what makes Renaissance philosophy of nature important: the modern antagonism between sciences that ask the How? question and religion that endeavors to ask Why? appears to be a return to a kind of Aristotelianism that limited itself to a study of nature with-

11 Cf. Zabarella, De Methodis, lib. 1, cap. 10, p. 103: “quum enim dicimus rerum naturam, duo possumus intelligere, aut ipsam rerum naturam prout extra animam, et extra omnem nostram cognitionem sunt, . . . aut intelligimus rerum naturam ut a nobis cognoscendarum . . . Hic autem ordo non semper est illemet ordo, quem res secundum se habent . . .” etc. 12 Keßler, “Method in the Aristotelian Tradition,” 142. Cf. Aristotle, De partibus animalium I 1, 640a10–641a14. principles and powers 107 out claims about metaphysical reality. Telesio constantly calls the world ‘a construction’, a construction that merits a constructor and a means of construction. The job of the philosopher is to rebuild this construction.13 In terms of the debate over the orders, the best option can only be to combine all three, the logical, the natural and the spiritual order, and— believe it or not—the best way of doing so is to identify divine creation with the order of nature and of knowledge, or at least some basic features of divine creation, such as spiritual nature, dynamism, constancy: attributes to be spelled out with respect to logic, to material features and to pantheism.

7.3 Cardano: The Unity of Nature and of its Explanation

Let me take Girolamo Cardano as a further example. He opens his master work De subtilitate with the following definition: “Subtlety is some feature [ratio] through which one hardly perceives sensible things by the senses and intellectual things by the intellect.”14 So the main tool of physical explanation is defined as the subtlety of them, taken literally as thinness and metaphorically as ontologically/epistemologically distinct, that is to say—to put it polemically—”natural science is why things are so difficult to understand”. In the body of his book Cardano again puts forward a group of principles and powers, which bundle together the “Variety of Things”—such is the title of another of his books—into a unity of science. Narration—even though his works are full of stories which resemble much more Baconian induction than any mere theoretical disputation— narration is, for him, an insufficient form of theory: “Narrating the difference between privation and matter is like telling the difference between a sphinx and a chimera: the former is outright nothing the latter is fiction.” (De natura 285 b). Consequently heat and humidity are again principles of nature, and the soul takes the place of Aristotle’s general principle of motion, which of course works according to final causes and necessarily with intellect. If we—anachronistically—bear in mind Heidegger’s

13 Telesio, De rerum natura / Intorno alla natura I 9, vol. 1, p. 90: “Dei porro opus caelum cum sit, utique, si quis modum, quo constructum sit humanis inquirere audeat rationibus (. . .)”; I 10, p. 96: “Deo caelum terramque constituenti (. . .): Id vero (. . .) constructio motusque manifestat.” 14 Schütze, Die Naturphilosophie in Girolamo Cardanos ‘De subtilitate’, 29: “Die Defini- tion des Subtilen als schwer Faßbares ist also nur die Angabe einer notwendigen Bedin- gung des Subtilen (. . .) aber keine hinreichende Bedingung (. . .).” 108 chapter seven polemics against narrative metaphysics which tells ontological stories instead of inquiring into “the meaning of being as a whole as such”, and suppose Cardano is not making up stories about occult forces, his ‘heat and moist and soul’ must denote something philosophical. They answer a philosophical question, and it is not so very hard to find out which one. In close connection with Aristotle’s first book on Physics, where all these substantialist theories, the whole set of cosmological stories of the Presocratics, aimed at recovering unity and multiplicity in the sensible world, were refuted and reduced to the principles of form, matter, privation and motion, which both Telesio and Cardano take again for ‘narratives’, Cardano states that “everything is one, such as man and horse, because they all underlie one order; while the single parts are in appropriate movement, all aspire at one.” Probably Cardano has never been at the same time closer to and farther away from a mathematical structure of the world. Descartes wrote in his Discourse on Method: “The power of nature is so ample and so vast, and these [Descartes’] principles so simple and so general, that I almost never notice any particular effect such that I do not see right away that it can be derived from these principles in many different ways.”15 Descartes clearly notices the problem that no theory of nature can ever hope to give an account of all forces active in nature, as long as this is taken as an entity of its own. There always remains a gap between theory and nature, between explanation of phenomena and real causation, or in terms of Aristotelianism between the demonstratio quia and the demonstratio propter quid. If we wish to avoid taking Renaissance philosophers’ theories of nature as naïve narratives about spirits and ghosts, about occult qualities and insufficient mathematical skills, we have to read them as struggling with a problem they had themselves, which, I think, is an honorable philosophical one: the unity of explanation and what it explains through a reality, which is able to produce what it looks like, and even to communicate itself to human understanding. Just as Renaissance philosophy of love, which might seem ridiculous to empirical psychology, and at best an inex- haustible source for art historians, casts the blame on those who deny it, Renaissance philosophy of nature is a burden of proof theory: whoever

15 Descartes, Discours de la méthode, 64–65: “que la nature est si ample et si vaste, et que les Principes sont si simples et si generaux, que ie ne remarque quasi plus auacun effect particulier, que d’abord ie ne connoisse que il peut en estre deduit en plusieurs façons.” English quotation from McMullin, “The Goals of Natural Science,” 49. principles and powers 109 denies the unity of nature and natural science has to prove its insufficiency and to provide a valid replacement, which is more than a surrogate.

7.4 Strategical Uniformity in Creating Theories

Trying to prove the insufficiency of a theory includes a number of strategical steps. One has to understand why this theory has arisen and what it was intended to explain; then one must prove that another theory offers the same or even more than the old one. One cannot be content with waving away the old problem; one has to take the old problem as a serious one, and hence to find out what Renaissance philosophy of nature is talking about, and how it came to be a much debated field in intellectual history. Having achieved this, it may be hard to return to modern theory, since, as I said, doing philosophy historically is harder than simply philosophizing. The task in question also implies not taking Renaissance philosophy as a set of propositions which can be falsified one by one, but as a set of propositions which form a corpus of theory in connection with one another. The ratio of plausibility has to be discovered: Plausibility lies in uniformity of usage and argumentative strategy. As for uniformity of usage: when Ficino is teaching about the soul, he has to be, and actually is, consistent in what he refers to. His whole effort in refuting Averroism aims at excluding an acceptance of ‚soul‘, which is incompatible with his metaphysics. We are not philosophers if we either say that there is no such thing as soul, or if we seem to discover a flaw in one of his proofs of the immortality of the human soul, and leave it at that. As for argumentative strategy, it is still not sufficient to take a philosophy as a theory which, admittedly, is consistent in its own reasoning. This would be similar to relativism, which is rather acceptable in present day culture: One is a materialist, others are realists or analytics etc. In the same way as tolerance is only possible if we know what we tolerate, an understanding of historical philosophy demands an understanding of its driving powers and virtues. I have mentioned some of the basic philosophical questions of Renaissance philosophers of nature: The constitution of the self, the presence of transcendence in the finite, the unity of science and its object. The argumentative strategy aims at strengthening the answers to the basic questions and achieving a satisfying answer. This is the basic reason for the burden of proof character of Renaissance philosophy of nature: It is never content with a partial answer but wants 110 chapter seven it all. The theory is by nature recurrent to the problem of which it is a theory. Philosophy is an answer, then, which includes its own question. All Renaissance philosophies of nature tend to give universal, all encompassing theories of the world. They never put up with regional ontologies (even though Cardano sometimes looks like that), with partial explanations and, of course, never with working hypotheses. This marks the difference with modern science and philosophy.

7.5 From Universality to Specialization

A standard example is Renaissance magic, which has aroused scholars‘ curiosity since Frances Yates’ rehabilitation of Hermeticism.16 Yates was right in searching for the one unifying pattern of thought in the Renais- sance. And this can be proven by the highest authority of Renaissance and modern science, namely Francis Bacon. The latter wrote: “By the time philosophers have given up the Aristotelian doctrine of substance which accounted for a rather small empirical base, they drew premature and hasty conclusions and came up with universal and general principles— instead of relying on experience.”17 Bacon’s conclusion is the program of organized empiricism, but his analysis is valid: Renaissance philosophers sought for general principles. Hence, what makes early modern science problematic to modern philosophy, for Renaissance thinkers was an advantage: while departing from scholastic Aristotelianism, they abolished the distinction of the ‘orders’, the divisions between logic and ontology, theology and natural philosophy for the sake of a theory which really explains what it is said to explain. Theoretical radical realism, however, is not so very remote from medieval Aristotelianism. First, medieval Christian philosophy had no specific concept of nature, because all being was God’s creation and the powers that shaped finite being were identical with God’s interference in his world. From this point of view, Renaissance nature was but a substitute for God as thought in the framework of scholasticism, which was bound to yield as much as this and still allow for Christian worship. Second: it

16 Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. 17 Bacon, Neues Organon, I aphor. 64, p. 132: “si quando homines, nostris monitis exci- tati, ad experientiam se serio contulerint (valere jussis doctrinis sophisticis), tum demum propter praematuram et praeproperam intellectus festinationem, et saltum sive volatum ad generalia et rerum principia, fore ut magnum ad hujusmodi philosophiis periculum immineat.” principles and powers 111 was only by the end of Renaissance philosophy and at the outset of post- renaissance scholasticism that the idea of a unified ontology was weak- ened by scholastics themselves. As an example from the revival of scholasticism in the 16th century, I may just mention Benedictus Pererius who opposed Christophorus Clavius’ claim for mathematics with the argument that mathematical entities are lacking the status of causes, because they do not fit into the scheme of causa finalis and causa efficiens.18 He says: since these basic premises have no ontological and no causal ground, the whole building of mathematical science must collapse.19 In accounting for the common, universal principles of everything within nature which are causal to their properties Pererius responded to Renaissance thinkers and tried to show the effectiveness of Aristotelian theory of physical reality. He does not oppose substantial forms to mathematical science, as a progressivist view might guess, but realist quiddities to quantitative chimeras. The ‘causal’ power of mathematical demonstrations cannot reach the ontological causation of things, to which quantity is but an accidens. It was Pererius who—to the benefit of an independent philosophy of nature— distinguished a general ontology from the special ontology, which later was to split into the science of spirits (pneumatologia) and the science of finite corporal beings, i.e. physics. Prior to this, metaphysics was Janus-faced: It dealt with being as such and hence included the abstract concept of being and the Supreme Being. Philosophy was natural theology and not separate from it. Being as such (the realm of epistemology and ontology) and the Supreme Being formed one unified discipline. Renaissance philosophers tried to spell this out in the role of nature. One answer to the metaphysical question of late scholasticism was the separation of labor between epistemology, natural theology, ontology and physics. This is the basic outlook of modern philosophy. The other answer was

18 Pererius, De communibus omnium rerum naturalius principiis et affectionibus, 1576, lib. 3, cap. 3, p. 69: “Res mathematicae ea ratione ut sunt mathematicae et in doctrina mathematica tractantur, (si de causis proprie loqui volumus) nullum habent genus caussae. Nam eas carere fine ac efficiente, auctor est Arist. in 3. Metaphys. tex. 3. (. . .) quantitas quae tractatur a Mathematico, non est forma quidditativa rei (. . .) nec mathematicus speculatur essentiam quantitatis (. . .).” More on the conflict Clavius Pererius see chapter 8.1 in this book. 19 Ibid. p. 70: “(. . .) in rebus mathematicis, vere ac proprie non inveniri causas vel principia, sed tantum ratione quadam et similitudine; quia sicut ex causa manat effectus, et remota causa necessario tollitur effectus, sic apud Mathematicos, initio scientiae ponuntur quaedam generales propositiones, ex quibus postea deducuntur demonstrationes, et illis sublatis necesse est omnes demonstrationes convelli et penitus everti.” 112 chapter seven that of Renaissance philosophy of nature. And so in the end they converge in the question and consequently are not so hostile to one another as one might think. In conclusion: By means of the examples I have given (and which could be indefinitely extended) I hope to have shown that there is a genuine philosophy of nature in the Renaissance. It searched for principles, which were understood to be real powers, in a unified theory that virtually mirrors a unified nature. It does not seem to me outrageous to try and understand this theory as philosophical. If philosophy has anything to do with coherent theories about beings and understandings, then an understanding of these theories is not impossible, now. And that is what I should like to call ‘presentist’. For it is not about any hypothetical ‘contribution’ by an early thinker to modern science, but rather about a modern philosopher’s understanding of past thought. This includes acknowledgement of the strangeness of historical thought as a challenge to present theory. The strangeness taken seriously relativizes modern theory, but not in the sense of plain relativism (“Well, they believed that, we prefer this”), but rather in a way of looking at our own theories as plausibilities that might not be without an alternative. CHAPTER EIGHT

THE JESUITS AND THE JANUS-FACED HISTORY OF NATURAL SCIENCES

As I have always done I refrain from praising the achievements of the Jesuits in natural sciences and mathematics for two reasons: (1) There are other scholars1 who know much more about this specific topic than I do; (2) every instance in history is Janus-faced.2 Most of the histories of sciences take particular moments in history as starting points into the future; understanding of this very strain of history and thus as evidence for the progress of sciences,3 without being aware of the circularity of this approach. To give an example: Galileo’s mathematization of astronomy is the point of departure of modern astrophysics, which explains why astronomy is based on mathematics (admitting changes within mathematics) and hence the evolution of astronomy is to be described as a story of progress. Or, in other terms again: Science in the 17th century is what 20th-century scientists can acknowledge. Seeing only this one of the two faces of Janus is known as “The Whig Interpretation of History”.4 Instead, I tend to look back since I am more interested in what it was that brought ideas about and what is the specific content of a moment in the history of ideas. At present I should like to see if there is anything specifically Catholic or at least Christian in Jesuit natural science. This question by itself stirs

1 I should mention at least Baldini, Legem impone subactis. 2 This expression alludes to the book by Dobbs, The Janus Faces of a Genius; however the ambiguity in Newton’s attitude to occult and mathematical science is but one case of the ambiguity of history as such. 3 As a standard text in this sense see Wallace, “Traditional natural philosophy”: The Jesuits’ attitude towards sciences is presented here as a growing conflict with the religious premises; Aristotelian philosophy of nature is named “traditional” in contrast to modern challenges and described by means of a check list which contains the common features of science: “mathematical, observational, technological, and disputational” (206). See the comparison of Wallace’s with Baldini’s approach by Biagioli, “Jesuit Science between Texts and Contexts.” 4 Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (1931). The circularity of progressist historiography has been mentioned in passing by Hall, “On Whiggism,” 47; I will not confront the possibility and legitimacy of ‘presentist’ historiography now, cf. the two articles by Wil- son and Ashplant, “Whig History and Present-Centered History,” and “Present-Centered History and the Problem of Historical Knowledge.” 114 chapter eight up the problem of understanding the history of sciences with the Jesuits and their point of view. It is the interference of religion that seems to make their contribution to science hard to understand. As a reference to present philosophical problems, let me mention the debate on evolutionism versus creationism in 20th-century America, where the borderlines seem to be very clear. Some Christian scholars defend—in various degrees—(1) that the naturalist interpretation of the world makes any reference to God as creator superfluous (if it does not refute it right away), (2) that this interpretation is one-sided in overstat- ing the achievements and competence of natural sciences, and (3) that it still leaves space for God’s creating activity, if it does not even make God as voluntary agent necessary, be it for the actualization of natural laws, be it for particular events in nature such as the phenomenon of life.5 On the one hand defenders of ‘special creation’ try to comply with the standards of epistemology of sciences and thus enter into debates about natural laws, scientific explanation and so on. On the other hand the whole debate is fuelled by a mutual Daltonism: Scientists are laymen in theology and theologians are laymen in sciences. And this is the natural state of science and theology since the 18th century, as Márta Fehér has shown.6 It seems that before the victory of the new science the lay public shared a set of commonly accepted rationality and reasoning, truth (such as theological), and factual knowledge (together with face value understanding of metaphors, such as occult qualities or certain statements in the Bible about the stars).7 In principle, all this could be proven not only by experts, but also by the generally competent lay persons themselves. Even though this seems still to be the ideal, the victory of the instrumental interpretation of nature and the prerogative of theories and models over observation in the classical modern sciences created a new gap between lay persons and scholars. This gap—by the way—goes parallel with that between sense evidence and theory, for even though the theory claims to be based on experiment, it distances itself gradually from sense experience and commonsense intuition. Science creates its lay public, which by

5 See e.g. Alvin Plantinga, “When Faith and Reason Clash,” and the responses by How- ard J. Van Till (33–45) and Ernan McMullin (55–79) and the reply by Plantinga (80–109) in the same volume. 6 Fehér, Changing tools; cf. my review in: Budapest Review of Books, vol. 8, n. 2 (1998) 82–83. 7 The debate about the “two books” marks the crisis of this commonly accepted pattern; cf. among the vast amount of literature, e.g., Kelter, “A Catholic Theologian Responds to Copernicanism: The Theological ‘Judicium’ of Paolo Foscarini’s ‘Lettera’.” jesuits and janus-faced history of natural sciences 115 definition is not expert, and plays only a passive role in the sense of political and financial supporters of almost arcane scholarship. But not only that—science now constitutes itself by demarcating borders to the public. The paradox of science in the 20th century, however, is that the roles of experts and public have invaded sciences themselves due to teamwork and specialization: every expert becomes a solipsist in his task and a lay person to the other members of one co-operate research. To talk about the Jesuits and natural sciences can therefore have the meaning either to point out their specialization or to find the common ground of culturally agreed assumptions. It can also mean to show the moment of separation between specialists on either side (Christian versus scientific). It is not without irony that the contemporary Jesuit Michael Buckley traces the “Origins of modern Atheism” back to the 17th century Jesuit Leonardus Lessius, whom he presents as the theologian who started defending Catholicism by means of purely secular philosophical arguments drawn from ancient stoicism.8 The same criticism had been brought forward by the humanist Lorenzo Valla against Boethius.9 The argument is the same as ever: science and faith conflict, and faith cannot win by trying to call science for support: When faith and reason clash, let reason go to smash.10 A verse by the Scottish bard William E. McGonagall, which I interpret to mean that the Christian supporter runs out of reasonable arguments when he tries to defend faith with the methods of scientific research and vice versa. This conflict opens at the very beginning of modern science.

8.1 Father Clavius’s Complaints: Mathematics in the Jesuit Curriculum

One example is the famous Jesuit mathematician Christophorus Clavius who commented on the Sphaera of Sacrobosco and on the Elements of Euclid and thus—from the above mentioned point of view—merits the status of one forefather of modern science. His commentary on Astronomy starts with the humanist account for the venerable age of this discipline:

8 Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism, ch. 1, esp. 55. For a recent account on the topic see Schröder, Ursprünge des Atheismus: Evidently it took some time to identify the rationalist/naturalist option with open atheism. 9 Cf. Blum, “Lorenzo Valla”. 10 Quoted from Plantinga, “When Faith,” 12. 116 chapter eight

It not only survived the deluge, thanks to columns set up by Adam’s sons, it even rewarded men with a life of six hundred years, the time span of the Great Year, granted by God to the ancients in order to accomplish the whole of it.11 The high value of astronomy is also due to its object. (Clavius refers to the standard classification according to which the dignity of a scholarly discipline is judged both by the dignity of its subject matter and by the certainty of its conclusions.) The two main features guaranteeing highest dignity are: “First, the heavenly bodies are without coming to be and without coming to an end (. . .), secondly, because the heavenly bodies are the causes of all what is here below”.12 Two blatant heresies—at least if not surrounded with distinctions—, because the physical heaven is not eternal, according to Christian doctrine, and the stars are not in any unrestricted sense causes of events in the sublunar world and certainly not of everything. The first assumption had been at the center of a heated debate among Christian theologians and the Averroists since the Middle Ages; the latter engaged Christian defenders of astrology and human freedom. Of course in Clavius, this is all rhetoric—but why? Does Clavius rely on his Jesuit audience that it either just does not take his introduction literally, or is he sure his fellow theologians won’t read his astronomy? Both possibilities have to play down the role of Christian faith in that context. In his Prolegomena to Euclid Clavius is more cautious, but at the same time more ambiguous as far as the scientific role of mathematics is concerned. He states: Pythagorei enim, atque Platonici existimantes, animas rationales certo quodam ac determinato numero contineri, easque de corpore in corpus migrare, (quod tamen Christiana fides falsum esse perspicue docet) testantur (. . .). (. . .) Aliis autem placet, ideo has artes prae caeteris nomen scientiae, et doctrinae sibi vendicare, quod solae modum rationemque scientiae retineant. Procedunt enim semper ex praecognitis quibusdam principiis ad conclusiones demonstrandas, quod proprium est munus, atque officium doctrinae, sive disciplinae, ut et Aristoteles 1. Posteriorum testatur (. . .).13

11 Clavius, In Sphaeram Ioannis de Sacro Bosco Commentarius, 3: “Deinde propter virtutes, et gloriosas utilitates, quas iugiter perscrutabantur, id est Astrologiam, et Geome- triam, Deus eis ampliora vivendi spacia condonavit, quae non ediscere potuissent, nisi sexcentis viverent annis. Per tot enim annorum curricula magnus annus impletur.” While writing this chapter I had no access to Romano, La contre-réforme mathématique. Cf. Giard, “Le débat sur la certitude des mathématiques.” 12 Ibid.: “Primo quidem, quoniam [corpora caelestia] sint ingenerabilia, ac incorruptibilia (. . .). Secundo, quia corpora caelestia sunt causa omnium horum inferiorum.” 13 Euclid, Elementorum (1591), Prolegomena, fol. ):(4v. jesuits and janus-faced history of natural sciences 117

We may gather from this statement that—according to the first argument— the scientific value (what makes science) of mathematics depends on a conception of the soul in terms of numbers, which constitute both the structure of the world and the soul. The problem is that this idea is only to be described in terms of Pythagorean or Platonic metempsychosis (at least for Clavius), which is contrary to Christian doctrine. The other model of justifying mathematics draws upon Aristotle’s logic, as could be expected; but what is surprising is the fact that Clavius does not make any effort to reconcile both views. Could he possibly believe that the Pythagorean concept of numbers is a fair expression of Aristotelian method? There are, indeed, alternatives to an epistemological justification of mathematical studies. Philipp Melanchthon, for instance, in addition to a general recommendation of geometry for the study of nature that enables knowledge of God through a thorough observation of method, discloses the structuring quality of mathematics which he applies to politics and morals: “With regards to the Church, what could be more blessing than if she were constituted with geometrical proportion which forbids tyr- anny and general license?”14 In accordance with the Aristotelian concept of distributive justice, geometry is not just a metaphor but is taken as a structure in general, such that it may be found in or applied to human conduct. For this reason, the protestant reformer suggests that “geometrical equality” should reign in behavior, and teaching geometry should be added to the other disciplines.15 In Melanchthon’s view, geometry is useful not alone because it makes difficult concepts intuitively clear16 but mainly because the geometrical structure of the human mind (the common notions) equals in same way the “order of nature”.17 This way, Melanchthon avoids reference to metempsychosis as the factual basis for the existence of numbers in the soul. So, he agrees with the later Jesuits in acknowledging the political importance of liberal studies, but unlike

14 Euclid, Elementorum, Basileae (Hervagius) 1546; Melanchthon’s preface “Studiosis adolescentibus”: “Non enim tantum releganda est haec ars ad mechanicos (. . .): sed Philos- opho, propter alias multas causas, opus Geometriae scientia. Inde enim oriuntur initia physices. (. . .) Deinde quum demonstrationes geometricae maxime sunt illustres, nemo sine aliqua cognitione huius artis satis perspicit, quae sit vis demonstrationum: nemo sine ea, erit artifex methodi. (. . .) Denique exulantes animos (. . .) ad agnitionem Dei traduxit. (. . .) Quid Ecclesia beatius esset, si hac geometrica proportione constituta esset, quae et tyrannidem prohibet, et popularem licentiam?” 15 Ibid.: “geometricam aequalitatem in moribus praestare debere, et ad caeteras adiun- gere Geometriae studium.” 16 Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy, 139. 17 Frank, Die theologische Philosophie Philipp Melanchthons, 281. 118 chapter eight these later Jesuits, he derives the necessity of mathematical studies from the higher level of cognitive and psychological structure and not solely from the scientific value, which—as we have seen in Clavius—is not easily reconciled with Aristotelian logic. It is this conflict of methodological approaches to scientific knowledge, which lurks behind the establishment of Jesuit studies. The same Father Clavius openly complained in 1581 that his fellow professors lacked mathematical knowledge and suggested that the professors of mathematics should be present at public disputations and from time to time propose topics for them—an indication for the fact that this was not the rule.18 His arguments in favor of mathematical studies refer—as it always happens within the rhetoric of promoting scholarly activities—to the public reputation of the Society of Jesus and to the need of knowing mathematics for the study of philosophy and specifically physics. But he is rather shy in giving precise information in what the significance of mathematics for the other sciences might consist. If one looks at the Ratio studiorum and the further practice at Jesuit universities, we can state that Clavius’s rhetoric was not very successful. The professor of mathematics stands at the low end of the hierarchy of philosophical positions, after the professor of morals and before the professor of grammar. Mathematics was commanded to be taught in the second year of philosophy for three quarters of an hour, thus running parallel to the course of physics. The topics were to be Euclid’s “Elementa” and after two months alternatively “some geometry or astronomy [Spha- era], or whatever the students like to hear”.19 This is what remained from the much more elaborated draft of the rules of studies of 1586, when the “ornament” of mathematical studies and their practical impact on poets, historians etc. was praised.20 There had been a plan to establish an extraordinary school of mathematics (privata academia), led by professor

18 Lukács, Monumenta, MPSI 7, 115 sq. According to Wallace, Galileo and His Sources, 137, the attack on Jesuit professors refers to Benedictus Pererius and Paulus Valla; cf. Wal- lace, “Galileo’s Jesuit Connections.”—The definite version of the Ratio studiorum 1599 recommends that the professor of mathematics may organize a defense of some famous problem monthly or bimonthly during the general convent of philosophers and theologians (MPSI 5, 402). 19 MPSI 5, 402: “Physicae auditoribus explicet in schola tribus circiter horae quadranti- bus Euclidis elementa; in quibus, postquam per duos menses aliquantisper versati fuerint, aliquid Geographiae vel Sphaerae, vel eorum, quae libenter audiri solent, adiungat; idque cum Euclide vel eodem die, vel alternis diebus.” 20 Ibid. 109. jesuits and janus-faced history of natural sciences 119

Clavius, but this plan, which still appears in the 1591 draft,21 was finally dropped. Teaching mathematics depended much on the initiative of the individual professor. Otto Cattenius, for example, gave a quite extensive lecture on mathematics and astronomy, also including the new developments after the new star of 1572 and the comet of 1577; however the only reason for his extended lecture was his personal commitment thanks to his own teacher Johann Reinhard Ziegler, a correspondent of Clavius and Johannes Kepler. Cattenius, however, ended his career as a professor of morals.22 If there was any effect at all gained by Clavius, it was in 20th -century studies of Jesuit scholarship, which continues to affirm the importance of mathematics in it. I may just mention William A. Wallace who, in his basic study on “Galileo and His Sources” gives an account of Clavius’s Pro- legomena to Euclid without even mentioning the passage quoted above, which is the only one in this text that considers gnoseological arguments in favor of mathematics.23 And in a more recent summary of the Jesuit attitude towards mathematics by Rivka Feldhay, we are confronted with Clavius’s attempt to reconcile the Pythagorico-Platonist praise of mathematics with Aristotelian logic of science (based on the text quoted above), but we remain helpless when the author reduces Clavius’s defense of mathematics to a problem of “different vocabularies” and his authorities to “symbolic capital”.24 As a matter of fact, the two basic assumptions which determined the place of mathematics in the whole of sciences, namely the dignity of its objectum (subject matter) and the certitude of knowledge produced, led to quite different results among Clavius, Benedictus Pererius, and others. I may just mention Pererius who opposed Clavius’s claim for mathematics with the argument that mathematical entities are lacking the status of causes, because they do not fit into the scheme of causa finalis and causa

21 Ibid. 177, 285. 22 Krayer, Mathematik im Studienplan der Jesuiten; cf. my review in: History of Universi- ties 12 (1993) 421–422. Romano, La contre-réforme mathématique, chapt. 1. 23 Wallace, Galileo, 138 sq. As for Jesuit studies Wallace relies here only on secondary sources. Bio-bibliographical data on Jesuit mathematicians have been collected by Karl A.F. Fischer (see “References”). The contradiction in Clavius’s argument is also absent in Dear, “Jesuit Mathematical Science,” 136 sqq. Dear starts his treatment with emphasizing the “importance of the mathematical disciplines in the Jesuit college curriculum,” which is alleged to be “well known” (in reality, nothing more than a common place among Jesuit apologetics quoted in the footnote), but he does in no way wonder how and why there always has been “an insufficient number of competent teachers to go around” (135). 24 Feldhay, “The use and abuse of mathematical entities,” 94 sq. 120 chapter eight efficiens.25 Mathematical quantities are no formal cause in the first place, because quantity is an accidental property. Furthermore Pererius destroys the most powerful Aristotelian argument of Clavius’s deductionism when he admits that, indeed, the mathematical propositions depend on primary assumptions, from which all further propositions are derived; he says: since these basic premises have no ontological and no causal ground, the whole building of mathematical science must collapse.26 In this very statement Pererius also says that the causality of mathematical principles is but a fictitious or metaphorical one (ratione quadam et similitudine). Instead, Pererius promises a naturalist theory and assessment of observable reality; and his criticism to mathematics is not exclusively concerned with Aristo- telian scientific methodology, as the passage quoted is mostly presented,27 but is naturalist in the sense that such principles ought to mirror the ‘real’ causes whereas the intellectual objects of mathematics by definition are mentally construed. He dismisses the Pythagorean interpretation of numbers because that would equally confound quantity and substance. Since no one can deny that real beings have quantitative properties, he introduces his verdict by insisting that mathematical objects have no causality inasmuch they are purely mathematical and treated professionally by mathematicians. If it is true that effects depend on causes and that quantities depend on quantitative things, then mathematical proofs are firm but about dependent properties, and consequently the very nature of things collapses if it is presented as depending on mathematical reason- ings. Mathematical demonstrations may be as powerful as one wishes, but only within the realm of mathematical objects, and they do not extend over the boundaries which separate ontologically attributes from substances. The ‘causal’ power of mathematical demonstrations cannot reach the ontological causation of things to which quantity is but an accidens.

25 Pererius, De communibus omnium rerum naturalius principiis et affectionibus, 1576, lib. 3, cap. 3, p. 69: “Res mathematicae ea ratione ut sunt mathematicae et in doctrina mathematica tractantur, (si de causis proprie loqui volumus) nullum habent genus caussae. Nam eas carere fine ac efficiente, auctor est Arist. in 3. Metaphys. tex. 3. (. . .) quantitas quae tractatur a Mathematico, non est forma quidditativa rei (. . .) nec mathematicus speculatur essentiam quantitatis (. . .).” 26 Ibid. p. 70: “(. . .) in rebus mathematicis, vere ac proprie non inveniri causas vel principia, sed tantum ratione quadam et similitudine; quia sicut ex causa manat effectus, et remota causa necessario tollitur effectus, sic apud Mathematicos, initio scientiae ponuntur quaedam generales propositiones, ex quibus postea deducuntur demonstrationes, et illis sublatis necesse est omnes demonstrationes convelli et penitus everti.” 27 Dear, “Jesuit Mathematical Science,” 138, with further references. jesuits and janus-faced history of natural sciences 121

The laws of quantity are not the laws of things, which accidentally happen to have measure whatsoever. Therefore the collapse predicted by Pererius to Clavian mathematics is that of the gap between the rhetorical praise of mathematical studies and the need for an account for causes in nature, which actually do cause rather than being overstated properties. A student of Clavius’, Joseph Blancanus (Biancani), tried to support mathematical argumentation in transforming the Aristotelian model of form and matter into Platonic ideas. Since Aristotle admits that the form of material beings is in a way modified (necessitated) by matter (e.g. a wooden saw doesn’t work), Biancani puts mathematical figures (NB: geometrical shapes, not arithmetical numbers) in the place of forms, like ideas which are “frustrated” by the imperfections of matter. Thus the object of mathematics is the archetypes, which exist accidentally in material beings. Eventually these ideas or archetypes exist identically in God’s and the humans’ minds.28 This latter conclusion comes close to Melanchthon’s reasoning as quoted previously. The causation of mathematical entities is gained by reconnecting them to God’s creative thinking. For my argument here perhaps the most important point is that—ironically—Blancanus’ defense of mathematics was of very little influence.29 The “capital” hedged by Jesuit mathematicians is, indeed, “symbolic” and subordinated to the general ‘ideology’ of the Society which—no wonder—aimed at spreading the truth. What controls the activity of Jesuit scholars is the ideal of an undisputed unity of knowledge, but this could not be achieved totally, because the strategy of the Order was based on theology, scholastic philosophy and humanities, which included endless debates on the prescriptions of teaching and the method of “selecting opinions” (delectus opinionum) and the avoidance of conflicting doctrines.30 Philosophy was supposed to support theology in the same way as the whole school system of the Jesu- its was designed to support evangelization. Now the problem was how to streamline all these efforts, and in my view science could never play an

28 Blancanus, De natura mathematicarum scientiarum tractatio, in: Idem, Aristotelis loca mathematica, 6–7; quoted from: Galluzzi, “Il ‘Platonismo’ del tardo Cinquecento e la filosofia di Galileo,” 58. 29 Galluzzi, 57. A summary account with no sense for the philosophical tensions in Hellyer, Catholic Physics, 114–122. 30 See as an example the lengthy treatise of Stephanus Tutius (Tucci), “Tractatus ‘De opinionum delectu’ revisus,” commenting on the document with this title: MPSI 7, 1–29, resp. MPSI 5, 6–17, 18–33; cf. Blum, Philosophenphilosophie, chap. 4.4. 122 chapter eight important role in this. The example of Clavius has shown clearly that a metaphysical, if not theological interpretation of mathematics necessarily leads to Platonist heresy—unless those Platonic arguments are presented light-headedly and rhetorically and hence are methodologically insignifi- cant. This is true up to and including Galileo, because if there was anything like Platonism in Galileo, it was certainly that which conflicted with scholastic metaphysics, which in itself served as the ‘natural’ background to theology.31 So against all the evidence in favor of Jesuit interest in mathematics and natural sciences I cannot tell why they could have dealt with it at all, if not for strategic reasons to defend the competence of Catholics in this field. And this is an oblique approach, the core of the activities remaining scholastic philosophy and theology. At this stage one could enter the debate about the “Merton Thesis” which in a specific application of Max Weber’s sociological approach tried to identify the religious environment as more or less favorable to scientific research.32 Steven Harris, attempting at “transforming” the Merton Thesis, presented statistics concerning Jesuit scientific productivity and held that the Jesuit ideology (he emphasizes: “universality, rationality, individuality, and adaptability”) was no less favorable to scientific studies.33 However, the sociological approach is only indirect inasmuch as it touches upon features that are by definition environmental instead of central. In the case of the Jesuits the social group under review presents a feedback or a short-circuit itself, because they did not just happen to favor scientific studies but rather they did so deliberately, i.e., they themselves did not put sciences and mathematics in the core of their attention but rather the circumstances which were designed to foster them. If it comes to statistics, Harris couldn’t perhaps know Charles Lohr’s catalogue of commentaries on Aristotle in the Renaissance up to 1650, in which the texts most frequently commented by members of various religious orders were: Rhetoric, De generatione, Meta- physics, De caelo, De anima, Meteorology, Categories, the whole Organon, and Physics, (in this order of frequency).34 This sounds encouraging, but

31 See Galluzzi, “Il ‘Platonismo’ del tardo Cinquecento” for the Platonism debate re. Galileo. 32 Merton, Science, Technology and Society (originally 1938). 33 Harris, “Transposing the Merton Thesis,” 32. 34 Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries II; cf. my statistical research based on this catalogue: Blum, “Der Standardkursus”, 127–148: out of the 6,653 commentaries on Aristotle written by members of religious orders, Jesuits contributed 1,327 (ca. 20%), while 62% of jesuits and janus-faced history of natural sciences 123 a close look at the commentaries reveals that in most cases metaphysical and generally philosophical controversies are dealt with rather than anything that looks like science in the modern sense. The typical approach to mathematics and nature has been perfectly described by Ugo Baldini, and this holds true not only for the early Jesuits, but goes on far into the 17th century when still the rule was in force as follows: La descrizione della matematica come analisi di enti prelinguistici, richiesta dalla nozione aristotelica di ‘scientia’, ne escludeva una interpretazione for- malistica. Quegli enti, e in genere la materia intelligibilis, erano però oggetti non sensibili: ciò lasciava a una fisica non matematica ogni giurisdizione circa la base materiale, l’origine e il mutamento delle relazioni metriche (. . .). Perciò l’applicazione della matematica allo studio di oggetti o fenom- eni era giustificata solo come l’uso d’una sorta di grammatica, che forniva le regole di traduzione di certi enunciati ‘fisici’ in altri, ma non ne stabiliva la vertià né ne forniva spiegazioni. La ‘pura mathesis’ descriveva tale grammatica, ma non la costruiva, perché la sua origine era ontologica; le sue applicazioni, variamente ripartite in discipline autonome, erano la ‘mathesis mixta’, le cui dimostrazioni erano analizzabili in sillogismi, con premesse che erano in parte enunciati ‘fisici’, in parte ‘matematici’.35

8.2 The Unity of Human Episteme

As historians of the past, we have to draw our attention—apart from the result that may contradict or confirm ‘modern science’—to the debate about certainty and superiority of scientific discipline—as a debate. What is the rationale in ranking disciplines? What is the ruling concept? The Jesuits were obsessed by the quest for unity of sciences, or, more generally, of scholarship. The unity of doctrine among the teachers of the colleges all over the world was a political aim subordinated to the quest for political power. But this political unity has its theoretical equivalent in the unity of human knowledge, because above all, this hovered the task of spreading the one and only true religion. Rodrigo de Arriaga, in discussing the unity of science starts from the ideal that the subject matter of knowledge and knowledge itself are identical, because „praedicatum et subjectum, ut propositio sit vera, debet esse all works were written by non members of any order (i.e. either other Catholics or Protes- tants); 283 individual Jesuit authors make up 51% of all religious authors. 35 Baldini, “Boscovich e la tradizione gesuitica” (1993), 81–132. 124 chapter eight idem realiter.“ On the other hand: „Etsi non sit omnino improbabile, habitus eiusdem scientiae totalis uniri inter se, absolute tamen omnis physica unio inter illos reiicienda est.“36 Given the premises of nominalist epistemology, Arriaga transforms the simple postulate for the truth of any proposition, that of the identity of subject and predicate, into the multiplicity of scientific propositions which, as a whole, do not form any real or essential unity. Pererius’s and the Renaissance philosophers’ ideal of a unified true super-science dissolves into separate knowledges, and the only reason Arriaga wants to put forward is the horror of a super-term of knowledge understood as a separate entity.37 “Habitus cuiuscumque scientiae habent inter se ab ipsa natura ordinem aliquem et connexionem, ratione cuius unam scientiam dicuntur constituere.”38 What unifies the realms of knowledge is a kind of natural coordination; this coordination is given both in the totality of physical objects that are studied in various disciplines and in the scientific impulse to exact and complete knowledge of the physical objects: Philosophiam esse unam scientiam non unitate rigorosa, (constat enim pluribus habitibus, etiam specie diversis, (. . .)) sed unitate ordinis, quatenus omnes illius habitus ordinantur per se ad exactam cognitionem corporis substantialis completi, quod est objectum attributionis totius philosophiae, quae, dum agit de motu, de actione et passione, de quantitate, etc. intendit exactam cognitionem corporis substantialis completi, quod est principium et subiectum illarum rerum.39 Arriaga aims at a dialectical unity of knowledge in sciences which gives way to parallel approaches to objects, the identity or variety of which still has to be sorted out by the disciplines. This permits him to avoid the inevitable clash of epistemic approaches of seemingly opposite cognitive faculties, namely faith and science, and grants the unity of knowledge, so desperately desired. In his treatise on the soul in the same work he discusses the question: “Utrum possint dari simul scientia, fides, et opinio de eodem obiecto.” His answer states that “evidentia et probabilitas ut opponantur, debent esse respectu eiusdem potentiae, et obiecti eiusdem actus, et ob idem medium”, and if evidence and probability do not clash

36 Arriaga, Cursus Philosophicus, 1669, Logica, lib.1, disp. 1, sect. 1 n. 2, p. 44 and sect. 3, subsect. 6, n. 40, p. 51. On Arriaga’s concept of science see Saxlová, “Das Seiende,” 143. 37 Arriaga, Cursus Philosophicus, 1669: “non esse aliam rationem pro hac conclusione, nisi quia non sunt multiplicandae entitates sine necessitate.” 38 Ibid. n. 42, p. 52. 39 Ibid. Physica, Prooemium, p. 279. jesuits and janus-faced history of natural sciences 125 as long as they are generated by independent faculties, subject matters, and media, non solum non repugnare inter se duos actus fidei, alterum scientiae, alterum opinionis circa idem obiectum, sed etiam posse eumdem numero actum esse, et scientiae et fidei, et opinionis. (. . .) quia non repugnat per unicum actum assentiri eidem obiecto ob duo motiva, sicut non repugnat, velle ailquod medium ob duos fines, deambulationem veri gratia ob sani- tatem et ob recreationem (. . .).40 The variety of epistemic approaches, such as faith, opinion, and reason, find their final unity in the act of assent. Ontological unity is being transposed into epistemic assent. From his observations far distant from one another within the same book, it is evident that his rejecting philosophy as an encyclopedic science of everything that is real is motivated by his concern to save—at least—the possibility of the unity of faith and reason, given that the ‘methods’ of both don’t go with equal pace. So we may say that authors like Clavius and Blancanus are paying lip service to an overall mathematical science just because the unity of human episteme is at stake. If there is anything like science involved it is the intriguing question what science might mean at all, what the features of an all-pervasive structure of scientific knowledge could or should be. We may conclude that Clavian and generally Jesuit rhetoric of mathematical or other key disciplines (even more if it doesn’t care much about methodological consistency) witnesses the anxiety about a world of knowledge that is in danger to fall apart. Christoph Scheiner in his 1619 book on Optics makes the convenient statement: “Dei providentia naturam ita finxit, ut ea [sc. oculi] muscu- lorum intervalla adipe inserserit, (. . .) ut oculus (. . .) circumferetur len- iter (. . .),”41 and generally: “Oculus animali ad videndum a Deo attributus munere suo perfungitur rerum videndarum praesentia potitus (. . .).”42 What does God stand for? It is evident that God has nothing really to do in optics because it functions well, once it is made as it is, and one may wonder why Scheiner preferred to say “finxit” instead of “fecit”—I am inclined to think that fiction is here on the part of Scheiner. Apart from his diligent anatomy of the eye, this book is important for its clear separation of the realms of theology and metaphysics from experience and

40 Ibid. De Anima, disp. 8, sect. 6, subsect. 2, n. 113 and subsect 3, p. 868. 41 Scheiner, Oculus, 3. 42 Ibid., 2. 126 chapter eight experiment. In fact in his preface Scheiner tries to establish optics as an independent science, justifying this by describing its proper way between physics and geometry: Optice vera et proprie dicta scientia, multa seiuncta, multa cum Physica communia habet. Communia sunt objectum et praecognita. (. . .) Geometria enim (. . .) de Physica linea considerat, sed non quatenus est Physici: Per- spectiva autem mathematicam quidem lineam, sed non quatenus Physica est. Veritatem ergo eiusdem rei ambo, sed viis diversis investigant: quod ut rectius praestent, in eorum, quae sensibus incurrunt, indaginem, plurimam impendunt utrique operam; quorum alia quae ita contingunt ut natura fĳiant omnibusque obvia sint, solamque seduli speculatoris aniadversionem requirant, Phaenomena, sive apparitiones: alia quae absque speculiari Empy- rici industria aut non fĳiunt aut non patescunt; Experientiae vocantur: hinc e utrisque plena extant auctorum volumina: quae tantum subi vendicant authoritatis, quantum veritatis usu ipso, experientiaque depromunt.43 Science depends on the use of truth and on experience. Scheiner not only claims scientifĳic dignity for an apparently narrow fĳield, he separates the dignity of science from the dignity of its object. He not even alludes to its certainty in logical deduction, and yet fĳirmly holds that the independence of its reasoning makes it a science. In doing so he assigns to the other disciplines their own right. We could rejoice now and celebrate Scheiner as one of the founding fathers of scientifĳic method, if not as one of the heroes of free scientifĳic research. But, if so, does he do that as a Jesuit, a Catholic, a defender of Counter Reformation? I don’t think so. Is his God- of-eye-muscles identical with the Crucifĳied who made Saint Ignatius weep daily? And is Saint Ignatius’s tearful eye the object of Scheiner’s optics? I don’t think so. “When I think of the eye, I shudder”, said Charles Darwin.44

8.3 Experiments with the Philosophy Course: Melchior Cornaeus S.J.

A philosophy textbook written by Melchior Cornaeus45 and published in 1657 by Zinck in Würzburg carries the title Curriculum philosophiae

43 Ibid. Praefatio. 44 I quote from Plantinga, “Clash”, 25. 45 Melchior Cornaeus S.J. (Brilon 1598–Mainz 1665) was a Professor of Philosophy in Toulouse during the Thirty Years War and later taught theology in Würzburg and Mainz. In Mainz he was First Professor for Scholastic Theology from 1643 to 1649 and became Rector of the College in 1664: Kraffft, “Jesuiten als Lehrer an Gymnasium und Universität Mainz,” 330. Most of his writings are anti-Lutheran polemics, especially against the Straßburg theologian Johann Georg Dorsch(e, -aeus) (1597–1659); this also holds for Cornaeus’ treatise, jesuits and janus-faced history of natural sciences 127

Peripateticae, uti hoc tempore in scholis decurri solet, multis figuris et curi- ositatibus e mathesi petitis, et ad physin reductis, illustratum.46 Like all Baroque book titles, this one is also no hybrid of rhetorical amplification, but rather gives precise information on the contents of the book. It is a Curriculum, that is, an abridged and simplified Cursus Philosophicus, in which the entire material of the philosophy course is to be dealt with: brevi compendio in a manner comprehensible to every student.47 The metaphor of running (Curriculum) is illustrated on the title copperplate: we see a racetrack and a goddess of victory under the motto “Sic currite ut comprehendatis” (1 Cor. 9:24—“So run, that ye may obtain.”) as well as two sages, one with a book, the other with an astrolabe. This second sage, incidentally, signifies the subject matter that is not contained in the usual study course but that Cornaeus promises to offer in this book, namely, doctrines from experimental physics and applied mathematics. The expression “curiositates” designates just that area of the natural sciences that usually did not appear in the philosophy course.48 The current level of experimental research in the natural sciences is thus to be attached onto the Cursus Philosophicus. However, since modern natural sciences have developed independently of and even in opposition to the scholastic instruction of philosophy, we can well expect a complex form of argumentation from the author. In the dedication to the Mainz Elector and Bishop of Würzburg, Johann Philipp von Schönborn (d. 1673), Cor- naeus maintains that in our time the highest decoration of philosophy is not only accessible to the rulers but to the subordinates as well. The Cursus Philosophiae no longer serves only the rulers; rather, it is also in the service of the general dissemination of philosophic knowledge—but only if theoretical philosophy and applied natural sciences are connected in it. In basic outline, this textbook is composed entirely of those elements that are indispensable to any Jesuit philosophy course: 1. Summula dialecticae and Logic, 2. Physics, 3. de coelo,

Aristoteles redivivus Romano-Catholicus, 1652 (and other edd.); see de Backer S.J./Sommer- vogel S.J., Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus, s.v. Seibertz, Westfälische Beiträge, s.v.— This section was translated with the help of L.A. Grega, Berlin. 46 628 and 427 pages 4°; in the following cited with 1 or 2 and page. The edition Herbi- poli (Joh. Hertz) 1675 is probably a title-page edition/unrevised edition. 47 “. . . ad captum omnium, etiam imbecillium.” 48 For example, Arriaga, Cursus philosophicus, 1632, Disp. Coel., sect. 6, §71, p. 508. 128 chapter eight

4. Meteorology and de generatione et corruptione, 5. de anima, and 6. Metaphysics. It would, of course, be very instructive to present and explain the doctrines of the course in detail and in the sequence in which they are to be treated. Such a presentation, however, would overtax the public’s patience since it could take about three years to do so-that is, namely, the length of the philosophy course. Instead, I would like to comment on several points that are systematically connected and give the course its own particular character: the scientific and theoretical viewpoints on the one hand and the “curiosities” on the other. The logic section—Cornaeus also calls it scientia rationalis—begins with our author’s defining it as purely practical science (1:57), in which judgment concerning the correctness of a syllogism can occur only per accidens. The main task of logic is to prescribe infallible rules for infallible discussions and conclusions.49 The question of the object of logic is first explicitly raised in the next quaestio, and this itself signifies the weakening of the role of the object question in the determination of the science. For in Scholasticism, the object always determines the method of a science and its distinction from other sciences. Cornaeus determines the operationes intellectus as the object of logic (1:59) by devaluating the ens rationis to a mere chimera (following Suarez and Hurtado).50 He can only conceive it to be an objectively false proposition, and therefore it is not suited to be the object of logic (1:61). The traditionally so-called second intentions cannot be the object of logic because they are treated in logic only for the purposes of the syllogism (1:66). The syllogisms are a part of the actual object of logic: the material object of logic is discourse or argumentation, while the formal object is the latter’s technical correctness. In other words, logic is no longer determined according to its external object. The use of the doctrine of universal concepts also implies a distancing from Thomism. A universal concept can only be formed by the intellect’s activity, in particular by means of abstraction (per actum abstractivum praecisivum—1:81f.). By referring explicitly to Aristotle, Cornaeus casts

49 1, 57: “regulas infallibiles praescribit, juxta quas discursus et Syllogismus infallibiliter ex arte fiat.” 50 Suarez, Disputationes Metaphysicae, Salamanca 1597, and more editions; reprint in Suarez, Opera omnia 25/26, Paris (Vives) 1866; disp. 54 De entibus rationis, sect. 2 n. 15, p. 1022a.—Hurtadus de Mendoza, Disputationes de universa Philosophia. jesuits and janus-faced history of natural sciences 129 his vote against Thomists and for the univocal concept of being, thus following the Scotists and the Nominalists (1:121–25). He even entertains doubts about there being precisely ten Aristotelian categories, but in the end acknowledges the usefulness of their number by referring to the same Aristotle and to the use of his categories in the schools for centuries: Sen- tiendum ita equidem cum paucis, sed loquendum cum multis.51 The logic is brought to a traditional, as well as a systematically conse- quential conclusion with a treatise de scientia. Science does not only mean knowledge through causes but also knowing why and to what extent a cause is a cause. With this addendum, the evidence of a clearly perceived and recognized cause (evidentia in causa clare cognita et perspecta, 1:216) is made constitutive of science, and it permits the distinction between certainty and evidence, since certainty is also valid for articles of faith but can be derived from evidence as well. Evidence itself can arise from sen- sationes, from other immediate knowledge, from the connection of one object with another, immediately known object, and finally from axioms known to the natural light (1:217). Those explanations sound very Carte- sian, and it seems as if the author wants to sway us from this track when he presents the visio beatifica as the concluding example of the last type of evidence (1:217). The importance that Cornaeus assigns evidence in scientific activity lies entirely beyond scholastic Aristotelianism. In the latter, being adequate to the object was always the highest guarantee of being scientific, and there was no need to view the evidence of scientific statements as being problematic and requiring further investigation; rather, ever since Aristotle, evidence had been regarded as a means of topical argumentation. Consequently, it is no longer surprising that Cornaeus, at the end, considers the division of the sciences according to their objects to be artificial (1:224); nor is it surprising that he cannot derive the unity of each science—logic, physics, metaphysics—from their respective level of abstraction from the material. He can only consider this traditional division to be valid for the main objects of the different sciences (1:225f.). Even in metaphysics, Cornaeus does not regard abstraction to be constitutive with respect to its object.52 Consequently, metaphysics also does

51 This adage was attributed to Aristotle’s Topics (Albertus Magnus, Liber II Topico- rum, tr. 1, cap 4, Opera ed. Borgnet, vol. 2, p. 299) and seems to be Pythagorean wisdom, reported by Aristotle: The Works of Aristotle, ed. David Ross, vol. 12, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952, frag. 7, p. 139 f. (from Porphyry). 52 2, 330: “cave tamen ideo dicas objectum ejus formale consistere in nescio qua abstractione et reali et rationis, a materia et sensibili et intelligibili.” 130 chapter eight not constitute its own object. Of course, the object of metaphysics is the ens reale in quantum ens. This Being is not to be seen in its formal distinc- tiveness (prout omnino formaliter praecisum, 2:330), but rather according to its given concept in each case, inclusive of all levels. Immaterial substance, God, and angels can thus be found in Cornaeus’s metaphysics— something which cannot be taken for granted since many of his colleagues, in looking towards theology, forego the treatment of abstract substances. Thus our author does not want to present metaphysics as a pure science of Being, but as the science that encompasses everything, and the latter not simply as Being but also as particular Being, as Being of a specific kind in each case. The theoretical advantages of this view can especially be seen in Cor- naeus’s doctrine of substance and accidence in which he follows the doctrine of “the modes of being” as conceived by Duns Scotus and Suarez. He defines modalitas as actualis determinatio alicujus rei in aliquo genere (2:381): for example, the “where” is the actual determination of an individual object to exist in a particular space. He regards modality as an instrument that enables the description of extramental reality as extramental.53 He understands modus to be a metaphysical concept that enables him to tack on ontologically concrete nature and empirical physics to the substance/accidence doctrine. Precisely by means of the nominalistically conceived doctrine of abstraction, he succeeds in presenting metaphysics in such a manner that it does not make the empirically given nature theoretically unattainable; or conversely, he succeeds in attaching empirical investigations of nature onto metaphysics.54 The doctrine of the soul cannot be limited to the distinctions and potencies of the soul, but rather, it must also investigate the possible disturbances that may arise during the operation of the thinking soul.55

53 2, 376: “quia nemine cogitante res ibi est, ubi ante non erat.” 54 Cornaeus’s contemporary and fellow Jesuit, Thomas Compton Carleton, used the same doctrines in order to defend the scholastic philosophy against Cartesianism: Carle- ton, Philosophia universa, 255. 55 In accordance with this is the fact that Cornaeus, following the Scotists and Nomi- nalists, does not allow, as he himself states, that a distinction be made between the soul and its potencies (Omnes illas potentias ab anima ejusque entitate distingui tantum ratione ratiocinata, 2, 152); this is because all operations of the soul can be performed by its own substance (cum omnes operationes abunde possint praestari ab ipsa animae substantia, ibid.). With that, of course, the meanings of potency and act, of faculty and activity, of potentiality and actuality slide into each other, and by this means, the substance of the soul possibly obtains an entirely new dignity (perhaps as res cogitans) against the corporeal substance. At any rate, this cannot be further shown using Cornaeus’ text. jesuits and janus-faced history of natural sciences 131

Since this especially concerns the faculty of sight, the doctrine of the soul switches into optics, which is treated by Cornaeus in terms of physics of light (2:173–85), in physiology of vision (2:185–200), and in anatomy of the eye according to Vesalius (2:200–208). He concludes the entire discussion with a series of axiomata optica (2:208–35) with many diagrams and sketches of perspective and perspective distortions (2:211–21). Cornaeus thereby definitively oversteps the boundaries of the philosophy course, since optics obviously belongs to mathematics. The scientific and theoretical ambivalence manifests itself in the physics in a double game with Aristotle between loyalty and infiltration, immediately beginning with the category of quantity. Cornaeus gives an account of that definition of quantity which is based on divisibility but then criticizes it as a mere description, that is, a quality which first ensues from the essence of quantity, namely from impenetrability (1:140).56 Quan- tity defined as impenetrability has far-reaching consequences for physics because it implies the Averroistic doctrine of the dimensionality of matter (which was combated by Thomas Aquinas)57 as well as the precedence of quantity and dimensionality over the body; perhaps it even initiates the concept of dimensional space. One can see in Cornaeus’s doctrine of elements that he was well aware of this danger: he presents a long series of arguments for the thesis that lightness (levitas) is not a quality independent from heaviness but is only the privation of the latter and that heaviness is perhaps not even a quality distinguishable from the materia prima, that is, quantity (2: 100–107). After reaching the proof’s conclusion, however, he adds that this had actually been his own opinion and doctrine, too, but now majorum auctoritas58 has directed him to teach that both are positive qualities, which he duti- fully does, following Riccioli.59 Thus, he now understands gravitas to be facultas quaedam tendendi ad centrum, eaque omnia pene elementa et

56 Cf. Pererius, De communibus rerum principiis (1588; 1st ed. Rom 1576), lib. 10, chap. 2, p. 551. 57 De natura materiae et dimensionibus interminatis, in Thomas de Aquino, Opuscula philosophica, esp. chap. 4–6. Also Alamanni, Summa totius Philosophiae, here: Logic, q. 9, resp., p. 137. 58 This refers to the Ordinatio pro Studiis Superioribus, which was decreed by the 9th General Congregation (1649/50) and published by the General of the Order, Franciscus Pic- colomini, in 1651; the Ordinatio is in Pachtler, Ratio Studiorum, 93, §41: “Gravitas et levitas non differunt specie, sed tantum secundum magis et minus” (as one of the propositiones non docendae). 59 2, 107. Cf. Riccioli, Almagestum, lib. 9, see 4, chap. 16, n. 3.4.5, p. 383 f.; cf.: chap. 25, n. 4. 132 chapter eight pleraque mixta praedita sunt, et de facto ad centrum deorsum tendunt, nisi aliunde impediantur (2:110). One may not overlook the fact that this is also not a pure Aristotelian doctrine since natural place is not being discussed here; instead, “almost all of the elements” are striving towards the center of the world. Like a number of his predecessors, Cornaeus solves the problem of the Aristotelian concept of place with the help of the concept of spatium imaginarium, imagined space.60 Although this is a pure mental product, it is nevertheless well-suited for solving several aporias of the Aristote- lian concept of place, without deviating from the latter’s doctrine as the Schoolmen do. The concrete ubi is transferred into this imaginary space, and, similar to the Aristotelian place, it is a physical and real something whose essence can only be explained and understood, and can actually only exist, through the aid of the same spatium imaginarium conceived as being firm and immovable (1:366). The concept of the intellectual “where,” enables one to conceive corporeal substance as being indifferent in relation to pure imaginary space. The fixation that exists between the body and its container according to Aristotle is now transferred onto the relation between the “where” and space that is pure nothingness. By this he means, one can freely speak of the dimensionality of space and the dimensional localization of the body in space without the danger of falling into materialism—a danger existing when one exclusively fastens dimension to material that would then have to be eternal. On the very same grounds, the aforementioned definition of quantity as impenetrability is no longer in danger of being materialistically interpreted (1:367–68). The fruits of this subtlety can be harvested immediately in the quaestio concerning vacuum. Of course a vacuum, according to Aristotle, is not possible in a natural way. But the “imaginary space” does make thought experiments (1:379–80) possible: what would occur if there were a real vacuum? Cornaeus discusses instruments for the production and application of vacuums and thermometers (1:380–83), the Torricelli/Berti experiment with the vacuum, as well as the one carried out by Otto von Guericke, both well-known at the time.61 Cornaeus reports that he him-

60 Grant, Much Ado about Nothing, chap. 6 and 7. 61 From De vacuo narratio Ae. P. de Roberval ad nobilissimum virum D. de Noyers, pp. 21–35. Maignan, Cursus philosophicus; Caspar Schott, S.J., reports on this (see following note). Concerning Maignan see Whitmore, The Order of Minims, chap. 4, esp. 173 f. Cf. de Waard, L’experience barometrique. jesuits and janus-faced history of natural sciences 133 self had seen such experiments (1:396, 398, 402).62 He promptly expresses the quintessence of his presentations in the first sentence of his description of the instruments: Libet hoc loco curiosa quaedam Theoremata pro- ponere, quae vacui sive naturam sive impossibilitatem comprobant. He is undoubtedly dealing with curiosa, that is, with things that do not belong in theoretical physics. Above all, however, he leaves it open as to whether or not these instruments prove the essence of the vacuum or rather its impossibility. Cornaeus believes that they prove the old doctrine of the metus vacui (1:393), which, however, only means the reversal of the argumentation and not a contesting of the physical value of the experiments sketched. Characteristic for the entire section on the vacuum is the comment (1:399): Omnis novitas jucunda esse solet, sed veritas antiqua melior; for Cornaeus, too, traditional truth and the attractiveness of the new clash with each other. In the treatment of divisibility, we find the culmination of the author’s philosophic dissimulation. Page after page, he reports proves for the traditional doctrine that the continuum is not in any respect assembled out of individualistic units, but he distinguishes between indivisible physicum and indivisible mathematicum (1:454, 438). That is why the entire line of reasoning is only valid for the mathematically indivisible units. The continuum, on the other hand, can very well be assembled out of physically indivisible units, namely, that which is indeed theoretically (a Deo) divis- ible, but which in reality can be neither perceived nor divided because of its smallness. With the help of this distinction and this sequence of arguments, the real grounds are withdrawn from all atomistic theses without completely excluding their use for practical application in physics.63 The mathematical indivisibility speculation was preceded by an extensive treatise concerning infinity (1:348–55). Referring to Clavius,64 but not alluding to Galileo,65 Cornaeus insists that all infinite quantities are the

62 Schottus, Mechanica hydraulico-pneumatica, reports in 1657 that, at the Würzburg court of Johann Philipp von Schönborn (to whom this book is also dedicated), these experiments were re-examined and discussed and that Cornaeus also had participated in this (451f.); he makes reference to the latter’s Cursus (309) and reprints from this the presentation of the second experiment, the Experimentum Magdeburgicum (466–84). 63 One of the doctrines that was prohibited by F. Piccolomini (Pachtler, Ratio Studiorum, 92 §25) was: Continuum successivum et intensio qualitatum solis indivisibilibus constant. 64 Euclid, Elementorum libri XV, ed. Clavius, 4th ed., 1603, lib. 1, axioma 10, vol. 1, p. 68f. 65 Discorsi e dimostrazioni mathematiche, (Leiden 1638), in Galilei, Le Opere, vol. 8, here: Giorn. 1, 68ff. 134 chapter eight same although they seem to be different.66 As in the other examples, we find in the structures of argumentation here the attempt to hold together on the theoretical level the conceptual character and the experimental data. The difficulties of this manner of argumentation are always revealed when—as with gravitation—the conceptual character is officially documented. That is why Cornaeus, in writing about the astronomical research of his time, using Christoph Scheiner as reference,67 helps himself out by quoting for the length of four pages theses and philosophical arguments from the first book of Nicolaus Copernicus’s De revolutionibus (so that every reader can dispense with reading of the original text for the time being without misgivings), only to refute them in the scholastic manner. He then adds an admonishing report on the ban of Copernicanism, including the case of Galileo,68 from which it follows that the Copernican viewpoint cannot be represented or defended by Catholics—not in public in any case, but as far as possible not internally either.69 All this nor reason for ‘denunciation history’ since we have to assume that the Jesuit acted in good conscience and according to the best of his knowledge when he tried to comply with the needs of modern research into nature, without deviating from the text of Aristotle and from his Order’s superiors. One can see this in a final example, in his solution of the antinomies of time and eternity that result from the collision of the timeli- ness of the world (the finiteness of things following one after the other, for example, the generations of mankind) with the totality of temporal eternity (the species of man)(1:472f.). These contradictions remain unsolv- able if the infinite regress is not ended in God, following the Aristotelian scheme. Precisely for Aristotle, the infinite chain of succession is the most secure proof of God (1:483). The world, however, is created “de facto” in time (1:484), as the Bible teaches. But by having shown in his speculation

66 The same trope of argumentation: distinction between actual infinity and the absolute divine infinity, was used by Cornaeus in his Apologeticon for Athanasius Kircher, and with this he deactivated the mystical potency in the latter’s treatise, which was his intention: Kircherus, Iter exstaticum coeleste, ed. Gaspar Schottus S.J., f. 509–12, esp. prop. 1 and 2; in addition: Fletcher, “Astronomy,” 59. 67 Scheiner, Rosa Ursina. Cf. Schreiber, “P. Christoph Scheiner.” 68 According to the most important representative of the anti-Galileo campaign, Johannes Baptista Riccioli, Almagestum novum astronomiam veterem novamque complectens, (1651), 1.9 sect. 4, chap. 40. 69 1, 537 “Ex quo apparet, eam opinionem, inforo extemo nullo modo, in intemo autem vix vix a quoquam Catholico teneri et dejendi posse.” jesuits and janus-faced history of natural sciences 135 concerning the aporias of infinity in time that the eternity of the world is theoretically possible and by deducing the necessity of a Creator-God from this at the same time, Cornaeus shows that the biblical solution— namely that the world had come into being and is transitory—is actually the better Aristotelian solution than the one which Aristotle himself could find, without revelation. The analysis of the concept of infinity, as it is presented by Cornaeus, thus helps him to overcome the old problem of the double truth. He is not dependent upon setting quotations from Thomas Aquinas and from the Bible up against the pertinent text passages from Aristotle and explicating the philosophical implications of the theological thesis, as was traditionally done; instead, he now can actually put Aristotle to rights.70 Thus we see how Cornaeus endeavors to extend and uphold as far as possible the achievements in theoretical explanation accomplished in the Aristotelian philosophy of nature and that he does this because he is unwilling to resist the enticements of modern natural science. In this way, he “Aristotelicizes” experimental physics and makes experiments in the philosophy course.

8.4 The Story of Science

In our age, cultural events and achievements are to be interpreted as narratives, and this includes sciences, hence it makes sense to talk about the achievements of natural sciences only in terms of a story in which scientific discoveries and theories are facts told. R.G. Collingwood has argued that all Physics ends up to be history because the physicist cannot help to explain in language (which is historically, culturally, and communica- tively restricted).71 And John Polkinghorne declares, for instance, the scientific concept of emergence (according to which the complex structures are brought about by simple ones) a story that from time to time has to be told the other way round.72 In the same way the story of the discovery of the mathematical structure of the universe, as propagated by the

70 Goudin, for example, proceeds much more naively in his Philosophia juxta inconcussa, tutissimaque Divi Thomae dogmata, (1736), vol. 3, Phys. 2, 9.1, art. 3. 71 Collingwood, The Idea of Nature, 176 sq.: “The scientist who wishes to know that such an event has taken place in the world of nature can know this only by consulting the record left by the observer and interpreting it (. . .). This consultation and interpretation of records is the characteristic feature of historical work. (. . .) A scientific theory (. . .) is itself an historical fact (. . .).” 72 Polkinghorne, “The Nature of Physical Reality.” 136 chapter eight

Galileanists, has to be told in a contrary sense, e.g. as the forgetfulness of substance. All these stories are made up of facts, but facts within a story— like Sherlock Holmes’s pipe. One organizing structure of the narrative of the history of sciences is that of the progress of discoveries. Now, the problem for Jesuit science is that in this kind of story it doesn’t have much voice. For the microphone is in the hands of Protestants and their derivative, named Enlightenment, or Butterfield’s Whigs. So, one strain of that story is the Jesuits’ and their historians’ efforts to get access to the micro. But they were hindered by the Catholic doctrine, that is: they tried to talk in two different languages, namely that of scholastic philosophy and theology, based on the Aristotelian metaphysics and ontology, and in that of science, based on alternative attempts at organizing knowledge, among others through experience and mathematics—and all this in search for a unifying theory. Christoph Clavius repeated from ancient sources the story that mathematics is the most exact science because it derives all conclusions from known principles. Following the criticism to which Pererius gave voice, let us for a moment question this argument: Supposed science is about discovery, even more: about discovering the true principles that are causes of what is—isn’t a series of conclusions from known premises to implicitly known propositions simply dull?73 Certainly not so, as long as these conclusions are embellished with the colors of discovery. That’s why John Locke soon would compare the reality with a dark room which is scarcely enlightened with the candle of our understanding; in this light everything that is drawn from intellectual conclusions is a new world. This simile is only possible in the environment of metaphysical skepticism and sensualism. If one is optimistic in describing reality by pointing to the principles that make the world to be as it is in itself (as Pererius postulated) mathematical science is no good candidate. Let us imagine the mathematico-scientific discourse as parallel to the metaphysico-theological discourse or narrative. This is not a new assumption, since it has been made by ethnologists before, and one could look at strange behaviors of early modern scholars with the eyes of an ethnolo- gist or folklorist who tries to make sense of what is told to him. Bronis- law Malinowski reported that in certain tribes “garden magic does not by any means ‘obscure’ the natives’ causal knowledge of the nexus between

73 In Kantian terms: What is it that makes analytical judgements not tautological? jesuits and janus-faced history of natural sciences 137 proper clearing the scrub” and good harvesting.74 So he states that many so called beliefs, or the stories that generate them, do not conflict unless they are explicitly confronted. To give an example: according to Mal- inowski a tribe in New Guinea believes that babies are brought to women by a ghost, so that there is no knowledge about the genetic contribution of the father. However ‘someone’ has to open the birth channel at least once for all times. For this reason sexual live and marriage on the one hand and procreation on the other hand are two non-related events and consequently non-conflicting narratives in the life of that tribe.75 Now, if we transfer this example to the attitude of Jesuits towards nature in terms of substantialist ontology and of mathematics we have two stories that may not conflict—unless one tends to “overshadow” (Mal- inowski’s term) the other. At the origin of this conflict was the impulse to unify all narratives into one alone. One way of unifying the narratives was to dismiss simply the concurring one. The other way was to admit the plurality of scientific disciplines so that the narratives were consciously sorted out. ‘Narrativity’ is, of course, a narrative itself. It implies on the surface that there is, still, an opposition between telling stories and scientific rationality. It also entails that parallel narratives are to be avoided if narrativity strives for scientificality. But at this point we should raise three questions: (1) What is the origin of the postulate of mono-narrative? (2) Why do not all wise people avoid parallel narratives? (3) How do we know that parallel stories converge, and to what effect? (1) As we have seen in the example of early Jesuits the postulate of a unified science has at least a parallel in the politics of power in Reformation debate (and evidently Melanchthon’s geometry of morals acted on both parallels). As soon as parallels are perceived as contradictory to unity they have to be streamlined into a unified concept of human knowledge (e.g. the way Arriaga reacted). It might help to remember that epical narrative in the proper sense has no horror of parallel actions, but tying them together is the essence of a novel. (2) Arriaga suggests taking the competing narratives as identical stories about the same subject matter in different languages. He avoids the conflict of narratives without apologetics, which would defend the one or

74 Malinowski, Magic, 234. 75 Ibid. 220 sqq. 138 chapter eight the other. Parallel narratives can be listened to as mutually enforcing two tales about one city. The scientific and the faithful approach to nature converge somewhere somehow. (3) Stories are structured in chapters. I doubt that the parallel narratives of the metaphysical and the scientific account on nature have both come to a conclusion. But I am sure that, as in any novel, we will be able to tell about that book after having read its final chapter.76 The debate about faith and reason and that about scientific knowledge versus artistic, moral, religious etc. cognition continues. But some chapters are closed meanwhile. So we know, for instance, that the scientific claim has led to an extremely unilateral causality in which the cause-effect-connection promised to be the ideal of a streamline account on nature. Looking back, and only with this half of our Janus-face, we know that a competing effort of unifying knowledge has driven more than one Church or religious movement to close eyes and ears to successful scientific explanations. The other part of the Janus-face looks less reproachingly because it watches some of the success stories already as chapters closed by following chapters. The methodical problem in dealing with Jesuit science is the need to take changing view points, which I expressed with metaphors like Janus face and narrativity: The ‘whiggishness’ is inherent to history of science because mono-narrative is the natural aim of scientific research. Rela- tivism and pluralism are defeats of the scientific approach. The paradox of the Jesuit contribution to that very mono-narrative is that they fos- tered scientific research by promoting the unity of explanatory strategies, which—once it was achieved in the form of ‘modern science’—eclipsed their voice in the story.

76 Blum, “Atonement before guilt.” chapter nine

BENEDICTUS PERERIUS: RENAISSANCE CULTURE AT THE ORIGINS OF JESUIT SCIENCE

Sometimes one can tell a book from its cover: On the principles and properties common to all natural things (De Communibus omnium rerum naturalium Principiis et Affectionibus). The title of the best known book by the Jesuit Benedictus Pererius (1535–1610)1 tells the reader of the late 16th century that the author was determined to compete with Renaissance natural philosophers, because the title echoes recent books in natural philosophy, such as Bernardino Telesio’s anti-Aristotelian De rerum natura iuxta propria principia (started to be published in 1565) or that of Pietro Pom- ponazzi: De naturalium effectuum causis sive de incantationibus (written in 1520, printed a.o. in 1567) or that of his follower Simon Portius (Porzio, Porta): De rerum naturalium principiis (1553). Those books claimed to account for universal principles of everything within nature, maintaining that such principles were causal to their properties. Pererius thus promises a naturalist theory and report about observable reality. His book is commonly perceived as an important step towards modern—or, rather, enlightenment—metaphysics, as he redesigns the role of physics in the whole of philosophy and expressly states, for the first time, that there is a metaphysics that precedes all particular regions of philosophy. This overarching, ‘general’ metaphysics, later termed ‘ontology’, would lay the foundations for the ontological discussions of any particular being, starting with the intelligences (later including natural theology) down to physics.2 However, Pererius’ book can also be read in the context of the Jesuits’ strife for a unified philosophy teaching and as a response to the philosophy of the Renaissance, including non-Aristotelian philosophy of nature.

1 Also known as Benedetto Pererio; the original name might have been the Catalan version: Benet Perera; in this paper that discusses his works published in Latin the name as it appears in his printed books seems to be appropriate. The edition used in this paper is Pererius 1588. I am indebted to the Vatican Film Library of St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, for a Mellon Fellowship that allowed me to do research on Pererius manuscripts. 2 Vollrath, “Die Gliederung der Metaphysik, 267 sq.; Feiereis, Die Umprägung der natür- lichen Theologie, 15–16; Leinsle, Das Ding und die Methode, 87–97; Blum Philosophenphilo- sophie, 157–158. 140 chapter nine

The De principiis came out first in 1576.3 And it seems that the author’s teaching had provoked controversies in connection with Averroism, as transpires from the document of approval for printing. The censors made special reference to the unity of learning: “idem dicamus, idem sapiamus”, according to the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. However, it was also stated that in some treatments of philosophy there is no danger of presenting varying opinions, given that “one cannot force the human mind with strict laws in matters that allow for dispute, being only probable matters, anyway”. So, expecting the addition of a “pious preface”, printing was permitted.4 Pererius gave philosophy lectures at the Collegium Romanum, where he taught Physics in 1558/1559, Metaphysics in 1559/1560 and 1560/1561, and two times the entire circle of three years, namely, Logic in 1561/1562, Physics in 1562/1563, Metaphysics in 1563/1564; again Logic in 1564/1565, Physics in 1565/1566, Metaphysics in 1566/1567.5 His De principiis draws in large part on these lectures as one can see by comparing it with extant manuscripts of these lectures.6 Many chapters of book 7 through 15 are to

3 De Backer and Sommervogel, Bibliothèque, vol. 6, cols. 409–507, and vol. 12, cols. 644, 1184; Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries II, 313–320. Ever since de Backer/Sommervogel’s bibliography of the Jesuits, other bibliographies and studies have mentioned a 1562 edition of this book; however, so far no scholar has been able to trace and see it; even Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries II, n. 23, refers only to Sommervogel. Risse, Bibliographia Philo- sophica Vetus, part 6, who records 14 printings from 1576 through 1618, mentions the 1562 edition (111), but leaves the field blank that would indicate existing copies. Ribadeneira, Bibliotheca Scriptorum S.I., 112 sq., indicates: Physicorum seu de Principiis rerum naturalium libros 15. Romae 1572. 4 MPSI 4, no. 150, p. 664: Among the censors was the philosopher Petrus Fonseca; p. 665: “Primum, quod Averroes, quem ille Pater [Pererius] aliquando nimis sequi videbatur, non ita bene audiret. (. . .) 2° Si qua in re videbatur aut Averroi aut Arystoteli vel sententiae aliquorum esse nimis addictus, eundem Patrem Benedictum ex censura exami- natorum omnia emendasse. 3° Nihil esse timendum ab eo quod Constitutiones monerent, cum philosophica haec multis in rebus sine periculo tractari diversis rationibus et sententiis possint; nec vero queat omnino arctioribus legibus astringi mens humana in iis quae probabilia sunt et in disceptationem cadunt.” 5 Baldini, Legem impone subactis, 569 sq.; Villoslada, Storia del Collegio Romano, 327, 329, 331. After teaching philosophy Pererius taught various fields of theology. 6 Manuscripts of his lectures are reported in Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries, s.v.; Baldini, Legem impone subactis, 580, mentions three more in the Marciana, Venice, and in Biblioteca Nazionale, Rome. I saw microfilms of manuscripts from the Vatican library and from the Ambrosiana library, Milan. The codices Vat. Urb. Lat. 1295–1301 are written by one hand and usually spell the professor’s name “Perrerius”. They contain probably a complete set of Pererius’ three year course: 1295: Logic; 1298: Physics; 1297: Propositons taken from Aristotle’s Physics; 1299: De coelo and De generatione et corruptione; 1301: De anima book I–II; 1300: De anima book III; 1296: Metaphysics. Probably the same scribe wrote cod. Vat. Urb. Lat. 569–570: In Primam partem summae sancti Thomae R. P. Benedicti Perrerrii (sic). benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 141 be found verbatim in cod. Vat. Urb. Lat. 1298. But most surprisingly, Pere- rius’ treatment of the division of sciences and the relationship between metaphysics, physics, and mathematics were originally formulated in his lectures on metaphysics.7 Even his discussions on alchemy (De principiis VIII, 19–21) and on generation from putrid matter (VIII, 16–18) were originally part of his commentary on Metaphysics VII,8 and for the same systematic reason, since they dealt with special cases of causation. But in 1576, Pererius has come to the conclusion that causation is not a matter of metaphysics but rather of physics.9 Nevertheless, it can be excluded that the book represents Pererius’ lectures on a whole, since it deliberately departs from the style of commenting on Aristotle’s Physics that was customary far into the 17th century.10 This book is evidently written as a general program of teaching philosophy and scientific matters addressed to his peers.

9.1 Pererius and Averroes

Before discussing Pererius’ view of philosophy, and specifically of physics, a few observations on the controversy about his alleged lack of orthodoxy might be in order. Petrus Canisius, then Provincial of the German Prov- ince, reported in 1567 that some students coming back from their studies in Rome praised Averroes as ‘divine’ and spread the Averroistic heresy.11

Cod. Ambros. D427 inf. (not mentioned in Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries) contains the same text (Physics) as Vat. Urb. Lat. 1298 (Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries, no. 18), including ommission of Physics book 7, and addition, following book 8, of a treatise De Uno; the Ambrosiana ms. is written by at least two different hands, one of which also wrote Ambros. D426 inf. (De anima, dated on fol. 1r: 26 November 1566, and on fol. 383r: 12 May 1567) and part of Ambros. D428 inf. (In primam parten D. Thomae), which might contain the beginning of Pererius’ theology lectures in 1567. From the date on Ambros. D426 inf. one may perhaps infer that the series of Urbinates manuscripts 1295–1301 contains Pererius course from 1564 through 1567. References to further manuscripts will follow in this paper. For codicological descriptions see Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries; Stornajolo, Codices Vrbinates Latini, Ceruti, Inventario, Gabriel, A Summary Catalogue. 7 For instance, cf. De principiis I, 5–8, with Vat. Urb. Lat. 1308, fols. 18v–21r, Vat. Urb. Lat. 1296, fols. 19r–23r, Vat. Urb. Lat. 1311, Ambros. D496 inf., fols. 100v sqq., and Ambros. D448 inf., fols. 208r sqq. For our purpose, a complete concordance would be exaggerated. 8 Cf. Vat. Urb. Lat. 1296, fols. 193 sqq. and Ambros. D448 inf., fols. 238r sqq. 9 The Jesuits’ debate over the question, which topics should be treated in which section of the philosophical course is explained in Blum, Philosophenphilosophie, ch. 4.4. 10 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, Praefatio, fol. a 2 r: “(. . .) nobis (. . .) visum non fuerit, Commentarios in Aristotelem scribere (. . .).” 11 MPSI 3, no. 256, p. 415, in a letter by Petrus Canisius, then Superior of the German Province, to Francesco Borgia, General of the Jesuits, dated 26 September 1567: “Sextum, 142 chapter nine

Now, it is important to observe what Canisius perceives as the “unfruit- ful darnel12 of the Averroistic philosophy”: His concern is that it makes the students not only heretics but even outright atheists, in as much as it fosters the “spirit of contradiction,” and makes them lose the “simplicity of spirit and judgment,” because they are being accustomed to trust only the leadership of reason and deny reverence for any authority. It is of high importance that Canisius’ complaint does not deal with any particular doctrine but rather with a spirit of philosophizing, which today one might call rationalistic and enlightened. There is no doubt that Jesuit schooling was based on authority, and the whole debate on the system of studies revolved around regaining and establishing authoritative teaching in contents and in sources. This presupposed unity of doctrine and ‘simplicity’ of mentality,13 but it did not exclude some liberty in discussing controversial matters of science, as we have seen in the statement of the censors. Liberty of philosophizing and eclecticism seem to have been, indeed, what separated Canisius and Pererius. In a short treatise on the method of studies,14 written in 1564 while he was teaching logic at the Roman

radicitus extirpetur infoelix lolium Averroycae philosophiae, quae non tam haereticos quam atheos e nostris quosdam fecisse putatur, ut hinc etiam nostri apostatae, qui cum Averroystis nimium vixere familiariter, non parum depravati esse credantur. Et qui ex Urbe hoc anno venerunt, ingratos nobis fructus nunciant, quos attulerit plaerisque Averroyca philosophia, dum sola illi duce ratione niti volunt, et nullius fere hominis vel doctoris authoritatem reverentur. (. . .) Utinam nulli unquam concedantur ut suam vel alterius pri- vatam opinionem contra communem scholarum sententiam privatim vel publice aliquis tueatur. Nunc divinum Averroem nominare quidam e nostris audent, et ex illo confirman- tur in spiritu contradictionis (. . .) et in contemptum scholasticae theologiae (. . .).” And p. 416: “(. . .) dum huic Averroycae, ut dixi, philosophiae sunt vehementer addicti, et omnem ingenii iudiciique simplicitatem, nostris paecipue necessariam, exuunt.” The same letter also in Canisius, Epistulae, 6, pp. 62–68. 12 Cf. Vergil, Georgica, I 154: “infelix lolium”. 13 Blum, Philosophenphilosophie,chapters 4.3 and 4.4. Lohr, “Jesuit Aristotelianism;” in this book chapter 3. 14 MPSI 2, no. 85, pp. 670–685: Brevis ratio studendi. Cod. Ambros. D448 inf. contains, in addition to this and other texts of Pererius’, also an interesting study by Stefano Tucci (Tutius), S.J. (1541–1597): Declaratio tabulae de divisione scientiarum (fols. 48r–70r). He argues (fols. 56v–61r) that religion is a fourth discipline of ethics. According to Tucci (fol. 64r), mathematics deals with quantities “non ut sunt in quantitate sensibili, et mobili, sed in quantitate ut quantitate, magis enim potest abstrahi quantitas quam absolutum quodvis accidens (. . .). at quantitas sub quavis mistione, et in quovis subiecto potest produci, unde magis libere a quovis alio potest abiungi.” He concludes that calculations of qualities can be separated from physics and metaphysics (fol. 64r) but nevertheless belong to their area of competence, whereas pure mathematics forms a discipline in itself: “ea quae quantitati ut quantitati sunt propria, innumerabiliter fere variabilia sunt, ideo distinctam postulat disciplinam” (fol. 64v). As ‘subalternate’ disciplines of physics he counts (fol. 65r): “Medicina, magia naturalis, coniectrix facultas”, because “Medicina benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 143

College, Pererius is very concerned with the natural inhibitions to studies as they tend to occur in young students. He therefore gives advice as to the ‘dietetics’ of student life. Then he recommends reading the ancient authorities, because they render the young mind both multi-versed and mature.15 Pererius concludes his treatise by presenting a list of loci communes, which should enable every scholar to write about any topic “prompte ac copiose.” The list starts with ‘meaning of words’, ‘action or passion’ of the subject etc., and it culminates in the locus communis of Man as the Lesser World. The Jesuit not only describes man as “mikroko- smos” (sic) but also places him in the center of the Universe, stating that he is: “Greater than anything under the Moon, lesser than the angels.”16 He closes with reference to excellent men who due to their virtue were revered with divine honors. No doubt, the Jesuit has Renaissance Platonists and troublemakers in mind, like Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico. This becomes even more evident when Pererius introduces his recommendations for studies by quoting Aristotle: “Amicus Socrates, amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas.” His interpretation of this adage is: For the sake of truth one has to disagree with these authorities, and even to rethink one’s own previous assumptions.17 In 1561, the prefect of studies at the Collegium Romanum, Jacobus Ledesma, had started an inquiry among his colleagues about what the philosophy course should include and the order in which it should be taught.18 Among many others Pererius answered by listing the individual books of the Corpus Aristotelicum that he thought to be necessary to read and teach. It is noteworthy in this note of 1561 or 1562 that—on the one hand—he recommended to give more room to Metaphysics and even to extend the course from three to three and a half years, for that

enim et magia in alternationibus et mixtionibus primum usurpant passienes et principia physica”. Tucci also refers to Cabala as a legitimate branch of theology (fol. 67r; see below section 9.6). Furthermore, the codex has “P. Augustini Justiniani quoddam fragmentum de divisione scientiarum” (fols. 72r–94r) and by the same Agostino Giustiniani, S.J. (1550– 1597) De ratione distinguendi scientias (fols. 122r sqq.). 15 Ibid. p. 677. 16 Ibid. p. 685: “Homo est similis parvo mundo. Maior iis quaecunque sub Luna sunt. Angelis minor.” Reference to microcosmus is also made in the preface to Pererius’ lecture Annotationes in lib. Poster. Aristotelis (Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries, no. 2), Cod. Vat. Urb. Lat. 1462, p. 197, the scribe uses Greek letters, in this case. 17 Ibid. p. 671: “Amicus Socrates, amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas. Cuius gratia oportet non solum ab aliis dissentire, verum etiam (si veritas id postulat) suas sententias et decreta mutare atque rescindere.” 18 MPSI 2, pp. 435 sq. 144 chapter nine purpose.19 On the other hand, he oriented the topics to be touched upon on the authorities of Chrysostomus Javelli, Johannes de Janduno, and Marsilius de Inghen.20 Ledesma in his summary about this survey (1564– 1565), addressed to Franciscus Borgia, then Vicar General of the Jesuits, observed that professor Achilles Gagliardi had warned against the teachings of Pererius in matters of logic. However, Averroism is not mentioned explicitly, and even Pererius’ name is erased in the final version of that report.21 One might wonder how Averroism was associated with logic, or vice versa. As a matter of fact, Pererius had added an excursus Explanatio Prologi Averrois at the beginning of his lecture on the Posterior Analyt- ics, which began with the evidently aggressive statement: “I disagree with those who for petty reasons deny these commentaries by Averroes to be great, who is named ‘the great’ not just for the prolificacy of words but for the enormous amount of doctrines and erudition.”22 Pererius seems to be aware that teaching Averroes was to be avoided, even though it remains unclear what might have been dogmatically dangerous in the Arab’s logic. And logic was a strength of Pererius’ at that time, because, in 1561, Johannes Polanco had recommended to Canisius to send the best students to Rome, because he had to offer an “exellent professor” of logic, namely Pererius.23 However, in 1564, Ledesma had made a list of some ambiguous teachings, mainly concerned with the doctrine of the soul.24 This negative list followed another, positive list of theses that could be

19 MPSI 2, no. 67, p. 459: “Mi pare che il corso deva durare tre anni et mezzo, acciochè le materie si trattino meglio, si legga più di metaphysica, et si possa leggere l’ethica.” This document disproves Scaduto, L’epoca di Giacomo Lainez, 284, who insinuates that Pererius was not involved (“non fu interpellato”) in the reform of Jesuit studies. Lines, Aristotle’s Ethics in the Italian Renaissance, 354–356, 360 sq. shows Pererius’ role in the debate over establishing courses on ethics. 20 MPSI 2, no. 67, 458. 21 MPSI 2, no. 69, pp. 476 and 479 with notes 47/48. Achille Gagliardi (1537–1607) had himself studied under Averroist professors in Padua: Lohr, “Jesuit Aristotelianism,” 213. 22 Cod. Vat. Urb. Lat. 1295, fol. 197r/v: “(. . .) non assentior iis qui levissimis ratiunculis adducti negant haec commentaria magna esse Averrois, qui non tam ob prolixitatem verborum quam ob maximam sententiarum et eruditionis copiam magnus inscribitur.” The same passage in Cod. Vat. Urb. Lat. 1462, p. 199. 23 Canisius 1896–1913, 3, p. 172: “(. . .) mandar a Roma li piu selecti ingegni che si potranno mandare perché cominciarà il corso maestro Benedetto Valentiano che adesso finisce vn’altro; et è tenuto vniuersalmente per excellente lettore (. . .).” Pererius was born near Valencia. Also in November 1564 Pererius cannot have been discredited as a professor: it was then that the same Polanco proudly reported to Canisius about a public disputation in philosophy, several Cardinals attending, delivered by a Roman noble man and Jesuit who studied with Pererius; Canisius, Epistulae, 4, 715. 24 MPSI 2, no. 73, pp. 496–503. benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 145 defended. In the general mindset of the fathers of the Jesuit Ratio studiorum it appeared to be reasonable to compile such lists, because they believed in the objective truth and communicability of true propositions, even though eventually they only managed to promulgate negative lists of deviant or just controversial teachings that had to be kept away from class rooms.25 Ledesma’s negative list was allegedly taken from some student of Pererius’. I must confess that in this point I depend on the edition of this document prepared by László Lukács, who gives no evidence for his attribution of these teachings to Pererius.26 According to this black list, the accused teacher basically defended the skeptical position, otherwise known as double truth theory, according to which the immortality of the soul cannot be known philosophically. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that Pererius shows himself in two documents as somehow interested in Averroism. In a guidance on teaching the philosophy course (ca. 1564) he recommends Themistius and the recent Franciscus Vicomercatus instead of the Greek commentators, and adds that: “To read Averroes is very useful, both for his teaching and because of the fame he has in Italy; and in order to understand him one should read his followers, such as Jandunus, Barleus, Paulus Venetus, Zimara, and Niphus.”27 The title of the document (Breve istrutione del modo di leggere il corso) and the extended list of Averroists make it evident that he does, by no means, require that his students read all this, but he rather suggests that the teacher, in order to prepare himself, should be acquainted with Averroism. Thus, to label Pererius an Averroist on the basis of this document is at least premature, also because Franciscus Toletus, not sus- pect of the same heresy, had given basically the same list of authorities in Aristotelianism as Pererius.28 In another document he asserts that: “Aver- roes was a special honor, glory, and head of the Lyceum, to whom alone (except Alexander of Aphrodisias and Simplicius) peripatetic philosophy owes more than to all other commentators taken together.”29 This

25 Cf. Blum, Philosophenphilosophie, chapter 4.4. 26 MPSI 2, no. 73 C, p. 502 sq. Things become not much clearer in the way Scaduto, L’epoca di Giacomo Lainez, 284, presents this affair. 27 MPSI 2, no. 84, p. 665 sq.: “Leggere Averroe è molto utile, sì per la sua dottrina, come per la fama che ha in Italia; et per poterlo intendere, leggerà li suoi seguaci, come Janduno, Barleo, Paolo veneto, Zimarra, Nipho.” 28 MPSI 2, no. 62, p. 437 sq. 29 MPSI 2, no. 84, Introductio, p. 664: “Averroes fuit singulare decus, gloria et prae- sidium Lyceion, cui uni (Alexandrum et Simplicium excipio), ausim dicere, plus debere disciplinam peripateticam quam omnibus aliis simul expositoribus.” 146 chapter nine statement, which served László Lukács as evidence for Pererius’ Aver- roistic sympathies, is taken from a text with guidelines for students of philosophy.30 The text contains eight guidelines or exhortations (documenta), of which the first four elaborate the relationship of Aristotelian philosophy and Christian faith. Exhortation no. 7 gives rules of reading and interpreting Aristotle, linguistically, doctrinally, and contextually. No. 8 gives an account of the major commentators of Aristotle; here he makes the statement on Averroes, as quoted. He also mentions the “obscuritas and perplexitas” of Averroes’ doctrines and ascribes it to the poor translations from Arab into Latin.31 However, the report on Aristotle commentaries concludes with a list of errors, including Averroes’ doctrine of the oneness of the intellective soul for all men.32 It is no surprise, then, that in his lectures on De anima Pererius extensively and unequivocally criticizes the Averroist theory of the soul.33 At one point he even exclaims: “Averroes suggests in a book De beatitudine animae (a passage I never can read without laughing) that the intellectus agens is that which the Christians call the Holy Spirit.”34 Given this evidence I am inclined to believe that the whole story about Pererius’ Averroism was the expression of an enmity between Father Pere- rius and Father Gagliardi. What is strange in this context is the fact that one of the students who—according to the protest by Petrus Canisius, as mentioned above—returned from Rome corrupted by Averroism had not

30 Ibid. Only this quotation is given. The source is Cod. Ambros. D496 inf., fols. 25r–31v: Documenta quaedam perutilia iis qui in studiis philosophiae cum fructu et sine ullo errore versari student. Incipit: Meminerint philosophiam subiectam esse debere fidei; explicit: Sed revertamur ad institutam tractationem. As the explicit indicates this is an excerpt from some lecture. (The quotation on fol. 29v.) The manuscript also contains lecture notes from logic and metaphysics: Lohr, Latin Aristotle commentaries, s.v., no. 1 (to which belongs also Divisio logicae Pererii, fols. 121r–125r, not noted in Lohr) and nos. 7 and 16. It further contains, fols. 93r–117, Principia librorum suae Philosophiae, which is an incomplete early version of book 1 of De principiis. The lecture notes on metaphysics (Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries, no. 16) are dated 1567 (fol. 33r), but given the miscellaneous contents of the codex this date cannot be extended to the other items it contains. 31 Documenta quaedam, Cod. Ambros. D496 inf., fol. 30r. For a list of Aristotle commentaries compiled by Pererius see Pererius Commentariorum in Omnes Libros Aristotelis Catalogus. 32 Documenta quaedam, fol. 31v. 33 Annotationes in Aristotelis libros de anima ex scriptis P. Benedicti Pererii (Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries, no. 30), Cod. Ambros. D497 inf., fols. 3r sqq. 34 Cod. Vat. Urb. Lat. 1300 (lectures on De anima III; Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries, no. 31), fol. 94v–95r: “Unde Averroes in quodam libello de beatitudine animae (quem ego locum numquam potui sine risu leggere) intellectum agentem dicit esse quem christiani vocant spiritum sanctum.” benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 147 studied with Pererius, but rather with Gagliardi.35 The latter continued his fight after the De communibus rerum principiis had been published; even unsuccessfully involving Pope Gregory XIII who personally had given his Imprimatur to the book.36 Putting, thus, the in-house debate aside, we can read Pererius’ two recommendations for what they expressly intended to state: the standards of philosophy training of the mid 16th century. This fits perfectly with the remark that follows in the document of ca. 1564: after having accounted for the main authorities among the Greek, Arab, and Latin Aristotelians (which include, of course, Albert the Great and Aquinas) he warns against becoming “sectario” and mostly favoring the Latins, as these deviate from the Greeks.37 That is to say: teaching philosophy means eclecticism with regard to the vast history of Aristotelianism, and the Latin medieval version of it is not always the best. This is still quite germane to the development of the Ratio studiorum that kept the Society of Jesus engaged in worldwide debates for almost forty years until eventually, in 1599, the final version was promulgated. All the discussions within the order and involving all provinces of that time focused on the two main goals: unity of doctrine and modernity in the sense of acceptability by the large scientific community.38

9.2 Pererius and Renaissance Philosophy

Given this context of Pererius’ activities as a teacher at the Collegium Romanum, I will examine his De communibus rerum principiis and also his De magia, which resumes parts of his commentaries on Genesis, as a response to certain strains of Renaissance philosophy. I hope to show that he strives to satisfy the expectations of learned laymen of the 16th century

35 Canisius 1896–1913, 6, pp. 59–62: Letters of September 1567 by Theodorus Canisius, Rector of Dillingen university and brother of Petrus, to Petrus Canisius. These letters prompted Petrus Canisius to write to Borgia about the Averroist danger. One student was Antonius Kleesl, who—“relicto cursu, quem sub P. Achille (Gagliardi) biennium audierat”—showed heretic and contemptuous attitudes. Pererius and Gagliardi alternated at that time in teaching philosophy, cf. Villoslada, Storia del Collegio Romano, 329 and 331. Hence, it is not true what Scaduto, L’epoca, p. 284, maintains, namely that all suspected German students were pupils of Pererius. 36 Villoslada, Storia del Collegio Romano, pp. 78–80. 37 MPSI 2, no. 84, p. 666: “nondimeno non deve [sc. the teacher] esser sectario, massime di authori latini, che discordano dalli antichi”. 38 As to the Jesuits’ positive response to humanism see Blum, Philosophenphilosophie, chapters 2.2 and 2.3. 148 chapter nine by offering a philosophy textbook that incorporates current philosophical approaches, as far as the scholastic setting and the aims of the Jesuit colleges allow. Pererius’ preface to his De principiis makes some clear statements about this mission. He first makes a cursory remark that he refrains from commenting on Aristotle’s text in the traditional sentence-by-sentence style. Then he repeats that he mostly follows the Greek commentators, namely Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, and Simplicius, even though he also admires the Scholastics, first of all Aquinas.39 Moving on to Avicenna, he praises him above all for being a “medicus”, but in metaphysics, despite some merits, he seems to have neither studied well nor understood Aristotle.40 This brings him to make a quite ambiguous statement about Averroes: Instead of plainly telling his judgment he refers to those who condemn him as a plague of the minds and those who praise him. There are even some who “eum laudibus in coelum efferant, et quasi Deum quendam Philosophiae, colant”.41 Well, Pererius says, “I think both attitudes are mistaken; however, the former [the condemnation] can be excused by ignorance and by some appearance of piety and religion, while the latter (the exaggerated praise) is stupid and for a Christian philosopher disreputable.”42 The first part of his comment blames the detractors of Averroes of ignorance; the second appears to be the statement that Cani- sius might have required. For, we should note that Pererius here echoes the words of the German’s complaint about extolling the Arab to divine honors. Surprisingly, the text goes on in a different vein: it is nonsensical, Pererius adds, to defend at any cost the opinion of just one human, who is subject to error, as Averroes actually was in important tenets,43 and whatever one might put forward in defense of the Arab Commentator, he simply didn’t know Greek, worked on corrupt manuscripts, and lacked

39 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, Praefatio, fol. a 2 v. In Documenta quaedam, Cod. Ambros. D496 inf., fol. 29r, Pererius says about Aquinas: “Commentarii eius in librum periherm. et libros de caelo (. . .) in quibus sequtus est graecos interpretes (. . .).” 40 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, Praefatio, fol. a 3 r. In Documenta quaedam, Cod. Ambros. D496 inf., fol. 29r, Pererius argues: “quae spectant at philosophiam legere non magnopere curaverim, nisi ea de causa forte legenda sint quod is saepe reprehendatur ab Averroe, et a quibusdam Latinis philosophis in pretio habeatur (. . .).” 41 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, Praefatio, fol. a 3 r. 42 Ibid.: “utrunque profecto in vitio est, sed illud minus, habet enim vel excusationem ignorantiae, vel etiam speciem quandam et umbram pietatis atque religionis: hoc autem cuivis Philosopho, turpe est, et Christiano autem Philosopho etiam infame.” 43 Ibid. fol. a 3 r: “qui labi potuit (et vero in rebus magni momenti non semel lapsus est).” benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 149 reliable translators, so that he “hallucinated a lot.”44 So, again, there is no point in sheepishly following this one authority. Let us make this argu- mentum e silentio: no word about the immortality and plurality of the soul, which was the bone of contention with Averroism, ever since the times of Aquinas. Averroes was to be respected as an authority, among others, and had to be studied with due diligence. What comes next, seems to reflect Pererius’ main objective in publishing this book. He points to two common errors that should be avoided for the sake of fruitful and pious philosophizing: there are people who refuse and condemn all philosophy, just for the fact that a few statements in philosophy books are contrary to Christian teaching, and, on the other hand, there are those who believe that everything can be proven by philosophy, and what cannot, is not probable at all.45 The first group, those who despise all philosophy, have little knowledge of philosophy and no training in the liberal arts, and therefore try to cover their ignorance by making everyone else similar to themselves. The historic example is Julian the Apostate, who out of hatred against the Christians forbade the study of the arts. The contemporary target, however, are the heretics of his days, who in a similar way, for the sake of capturing the ordinary people, fight against philosophy and all other disciplines.46 The argument that, indeed, Philosophers may err is countered by: “Of course they err, but these are the errors of the Philosophers, not of Philosophy, of the people, not of

44 Ibid. fol. a 3 r/v; fol. a 3 v: “(. . .) Averroem, interpretando Aristotelem, ob ignoratio- nem linguae Graecae, mendososque codices, et bonorum interpretum penuriam, multifa- riam hallucinatum esse.” Marsilio Ficino refers in his Theologia Platonica, XV 1, to Averroes’ lack of Greek as a commonplace: Ficino, Théologie platonicienne, 3, 8. 45 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, Praefatio, fol. a 3 v–a 4 r: “Illud autem studiosos Philo- sophiae diligenter volumus, si magno cum fructu, nulloque veritatis atque pietatis detri- mento, Philosophari cupiunt, duos ipsis, hominumque de Philosophia male sentientium errores (. . .) esse fugiendos. Sunt enim nonnulli, qui propter pauca, quae in libris Philo- sophorum reperiunt, a decretis sanctitateque nostrae religionis aliena, (. . .) omnem etiam Philosophiae cognitionem damnant (. . .).” Fol. a 5 r: “Sunt contra, nonnulli, qui divina ut vocant, Platonis et Aristotelis ingenia, uberrimamque cunctarum rerum scientiam cum excellenti eloquentia coniunctam, usque adeo sunt admirati et amplexati ut eos, veluti numina Deosque Philosophiae colerent, eorumque decreta Philosophica, tanta animi assensione complecterentur, vix ut crederent quicquam esse posse probabile quo impro- baretur ab illis; aut quod ab illis probaretur, improbabile.” 46 Ibid. fol. a 4 r: “Huc quoque spectat Haereticorum nostri temporis artificiosa cal- liditas, Philosophiam, reconditioresque disciplinas, Christianis hominibus repudiandas, et execrandas esse clamantium, quo nimirum facilius, hominesque indocti ac simplices, argumentis quibusdam ipsorum in speciem modo probabilibus, captiosisque circumventi atque irretiti in eorum errores pertrahantur.” 150 chapter nine science.”47 Pererius’ main counterargument is that in the Holy Scripture, and even more so in the Church Fathers, there is plenty of philosophy, not understood by the unlearned readers, but appreciated by the learned ones. He now presents a list of the main authorities: “clarissima illa Chris- tianae Theologiae luna” Basilius, the two Gregorys of Nazianzus and of Nissa, Augustine, Hieronymus, and most of all Aquinas, and a number of other Doctors of the Church. Pererius does not give names of those against whom he is arguing. But it is obvious that he refers to Luther’s and the Protestants’ anti-philosophical attitude.48 However, his mentioning the Church Fathers as counter-examples induces to think of an author like Lorenzo Valla, who continuously attacked Boethius (who is missing in Pererius’ list) for having been too philosophical in matters of faith. And in his curious speech in honor of Thomas Aquinas of 1457, Valla gave almost the same list of reliable Church Fathers but regretted that Aquinas— deviating from Patristic tradition—had introduced philosophical arguments in theological discourse.49 Even though we are not used to looking at intellectual history this way there was evidently an anti-philosophical strain in early modern thought, and it was this that worried the Jesuit. To the other group of enemies of sound philosophy belong those who extol it too much. They admire the alleged divine minds of Plato and Aristotle for their learning and eloquence. And this tells us that we have to think of certain exaggerations of Renaissance Humanism. Indeed, according to the Jesuit, this syndrome is typical of the Pythagoreans who, due to their vanity and superstition, believe too much in authority. One should note that Angelo Poliziano, while polemicizing against the dogmatic Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, made similar mocking remarks against Pythagoreanism, in his “Lamia” (bogey), an oration that introduced his lectures on Aristotle.50 Reference to Pythagoras certainly involves not this author alone, but is—from an historiographical point of view— equivalent to the whole ideology of prisca theologia, because it was in this strain that Pythagoras was celebrated as harboring ancient wisdom, along with the Chaldeans, Egyptians, etc.—a wisdom that, as we know,

47 Ibid. fol. a 4 r/v: “Sed aiunt isti errasse Philosophos, errarunt sane, sed sunt illi quidem errores Philosophorum, non Philosophia[e]; hoc est, hominum non scientiae.” 48 Cf. Frank, Die theologische Philosophie Philipp Melanchthons, 52–58, and Frank, Die Vernunft des Gottesgedankens, chapter I. 49 Valla, Encomium Sancti Thomae; cf. Blum, “Truth thrives,” and Blum, Philosophy of Religion, chapter 5. 50 Poliziano, Lamia. benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 151 coincided with the Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato.51 Thus, the pretext of overstressing the competence of Philosophy converges, paradoxically, with an undue dependence on authority. If we consider that the Jesuits were doing precisely this, especially Ledesma, namely searching for the definite authorities in theology and philosophy, Pererius’ criticism of the platonico–pythagoreans is quite irritating. It is at this point that Pererius repeats his quasi rationalistic credo in saying: “I give much credit to Plato, even more to Aristotle, but most to reason. (. . .) Whatever I see in Aristotle as convenient and consistent, I take as probable. But what appears as coherent with reason I judge as true and certain.”52 Of course, reference to reason above tradition and authority is a commonplace in philosophy, but it marked specifically Renaissance authors, e.g., Pietro Pomponazzi, who in his treatise on the immortality of the soul claims to put aside the teachings of the authorities and to explain only what he himself thinks.53 Pererius concludes: “In Physics senses, long-term experience, and scrutinized and proven observation play the first role, reason the second, the philosophers’ authority the least.”54

9.3 The Role of Metaphysics within Philosophy

As he was presenting his treatise on natural philosophy as his contribution to the ongoing development of a standard textbook for Jesuit universities,55 Pererius could not refrain from giving an outline of what he deemed philosophy is and should do. It is in this first book that he proposes his new division of metaphysics. After having reviewed the main versions of the understanding of speculative sciences, i.e., Physics, Metaphysics, and Mathematics, he presents

51 Cf. Celenza, Piety and Pythagoras. 52 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, fol. a 5 v: “Ego multum Platoni tribuo, plus Aristoteli, sed rationi plurimum. (. . .) Si quid Aristotelis doctrinae congruens et conveniens esse intelligo, probabile duco. si quid autem rationi consentaneum esse video, verum certu- mque iudico.” 53 Pomponazzi, Abhandlung über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, Prooemium, p. 4: “non nisi rem, quam possum, quid scilicet existimem”. Pomponazzi and his follower Simon Por- tius are extensively refuted in the lectures on De anima III, cod. Vat. Urb. Lat. 1300, fols. 23r sqq. and cod. Ambros. D426 inf., fols. 80r sqq. 54 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, fol. a 5 v: “Itaque in Physiologia, primas iudicio sensuum, longam experientia et diligenti observatione explorato atque confirmato, secundas rationi, auctoritate Philosophorum postremas defero.” 55 Ibid. fol. a 6 r: “de Philosophiae, Philosophorumque lectione”. 152 chapter nine the standard definition of metaphysics. It deals evidently with three different topics: (1) God and angels, (2) the transcendentals (being, one, true, good, action, and passion), (3) the ten categories. In this understanding, Pererius observes, God and Angels are taken as the causes of everything, the transcendentals as passions of being, while the categories are the first species of being. There is an inner inconsistency of this assessment of metaphysics, because all three topics are quite diverse, and have neither epistemologically nor ontologically anything in common. The only commonality would be their unity of attribution, as they all, in different ways, contribute to substance.56 In this description of metaphysics (which, by the way will continue to be accepted far into the 17th century), the primary object, God and the intelligences, are distinguished from the others as being “abstract from matter both in reason and factually.” This feature seems to make metaphysics equivalent to natural Theology and at any rate the most noble of all disciplines.57 The other two fields of metaphysical research depend on rational abstraction. The methodological contradiction, however, is blatant, as the difference of abstraction makes an ontological difference. Intelligences are transcendent, but not transcendentals.58 The only solution is, indeed, the unity of attribution. Logically speaking, the elements of metaphysics revolve around the same subject matter, being as such or substance.59 Theologically speaking, they are all one in their depending on one creator, God. Pererius does not mention

56 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 1, c. 6, p. 22 sq.: “quamvis haec tria usque adeo diversa sint inter se, videatur nihil esse commune intelligentiis transcedentibus et decem Prae- dicamentis, nihilominus tamen possunt recte comprehendi una scientia, quatenus in ea tractantur prout habent ordinem et attributionem ad unum, quod praecipue in ea scientia spectatur, hoc autem in Metaphysica, est doctrina intelligentiarum, sicut ens est unum quidpiam, quia licet immediate significet multas res, tamen significat eas per attributionem ad unum, nimirum ad substantiam.”—On Pererius’s role in redefining metaphysics see Lamanna, “Un confronto tra Pererius e Goclenius,” with the appropriate bibliography. Pererius is not even mentioned in Kobau, “Ontologia.” On the term ‘ontologia’ see Devaux and Lamanna, “The Rise.” 57 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 1, c. 6, p. 22: “Una [pars/consideratio Metaphysicae] est principalis et quasi finis caeterarum (propter quam talis scientia dicitur Metaphysica. Theologia, et omnium nobilissima) in qua tractantur res seiunctae a materia secundum rem et rationem, cuiusmodi sunt intelligentiae et Deus.” 58 On the transition from “transcendent” to “transcendental” between school philosophy and Kant see Tommasi, “Ein Missing Link.” 59 Leinsle, Das Ding, 93, suggests that Pererius follows here nominalist patterns; similarly Solana, Historia de la Filosofía Española, 388. It should be noted that modern interpretations of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and by implication modern metaphysics, have not been able to solve this inherent paradox; see e.g. Patzig, “Theologie und Ontologie,” 191: “Die erste Philosophie ist (. . .) eine Theologie von so besonderer Art, daß sie als solche zugleich allgemeine Ontologie sein kann.” benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 153 this second meaning of unity at this point, but he must have these theological implications in mind.60 Pererius was unhappy with this doctrine,61 and so he presented a solution that in the long run proved to be revolutionary. He postulated metaphysics to be “a universal science, different from all the others, that deals with the transcendentals, the categories, and the divisions of being (which pervade all other disciplines). This has as its subject matter ‘being as being’, its principles are the most general propositions (such as: everything either is or is not), and its first species are the categories.”62 Consequently, this science would not deal with the intelligences, unless indirectly in terms of being principles and causes of all beings.63 This entails that we actually deal with two distinct sciences: one (that of transcendentals and univer- salities) would be First Philosophy or Universal Science. The other science, then, would be metaphysics as equivalent with Theology, Wisdom, or Divine Science.64 If we compare Pererius’ solution with the previous definition of metaphysics, we see that he takes the second and the third realms (transcendentals and categories) together to construe a Universal Science. He also clearly subordinates natural theology under what we now call ontology, insofar as he establishes the science of spiritual beings as second to First Philosophy. In order to do so he has to make two concessions, which are explained in his supporting remarks: first he has to state that

60 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 1, c. 6, p. 22: “ens ut ens, cuius primae causae sunt intelligentiae”. 61 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 1, c. 7, p. 23: “non enim in praedicta responsione plane conquiescabamus”. 62 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 1, c. 7, p. 23: “Prima conclusio oportet esse aliquam scientiam universalem diversam a scientiis particularibus, quae agat de transcendentibus, et iis quae sparsa sunt per omnes disciplinas (eiusmodi sunt decem Praedicamenta, et generales divisiones entis) ita ut subiectum eiusmodi scientiae sit ens ut ens, principia entis sint dignitates quaedam generales (quarum princeps est illa. Quodlibet est vel non est) species proxime sint decem Praedicamenta.” I could not find this new solution in the manuscript versions of Pererius’ lectures on metaphysics: cf. codd. Vat. Urb. Lat. 1296, fols. 20r–23r; Vat. Urb. Lat. 1308, fols. 18v–19r; Ambros. D496 inf., fols. 99r–102r (Principia librorum suae Philosophiae). 63 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 1, c. 7, p. 23: “Secunda conclusio praedicta scientia universalis non debet agere de intelligentiis per se, et ut sunt species entis, sed tantum fortasse in ordinem ad suum subiectum, nimirum ut sunt generalia principia et universales caussae omnium entium.” 64 Ibid.: “Tertia conclusio. Necesse est esse duas scientias distinctas inter se; Unam, quae agat de transcendentibus et universalissimis rebus: Alteram, quae de intelligentiis. Illa dicitur prima Philosophia et scientia universalis; haec vocabitur proprie Metaphysica, Theologia, Sapientia, Divina scientia.” 154 chapter nine this universal science is “indifferent” to all real beings, whether they be material or immaterial.65 As far as I know, he borrows this notion from Scotist metaphysics,66 which maintained that the difference between the abstraction of spiritual beings (God, Angels, and also the intellective soul) and that of transcendentals and categories, which never occur without instantiations in matter, is bridged by a third kind of abstraction, named “abstractio per indifferentiam.”67 This indifferent abstraction, then, would make the difference of metaphysics versus other disciplines, and it would prevent ontology from interfering both with physics and with theology. But this is only half of the truth. For, secondly, natural theology, or rather that science that deals with immaterial beings, has its own realm, but it has become a particular discipline, in as much as it studies one species of being.68 The problem that Pererius does not tackle directly is that this way God and Angels become species of being, and this—at least to scholastics—is anathema: God is no being. His way out of this quandary is to admit a host of speculative disciplines: Physics, Mathematics, Intelligences, Ontology, and—why not?—a

65 Ibid. lib. 1, c. 7, p. 24: “Secunda conclusio ita probatur: cum subiectum praedictae scientiae universalis sit indifferens ad omnes species entis particulares sive materiales sive immateriales, non debet scientia considerans ens universaliter sumptum descendere ad tractationem et considerationem omnium specierum eius particularium.” 66 Other Scotist influences on Pererius are mentioned by Leinsle, Das Ding, 91. 67 Cf. Scotus, Ordinatio, n. 124, ed. Vat. III 76 sq., “ens ut ‘hoc intelligibile’ intelligitur a nobis, sed si esset primum obiectum, hoc esset secundum totam indifferentiam ad omnia in quibus salvatur, non ut aliquod unum intelligibile in se—et quidlibet illius indifferentiae posset intelligi. (. . .) Ens inquantum ens, communis est quocumque alio conceptu nulla contractione omnino cointellecta—nec habitudine ad sensibile, nec quacumque.” Quoted from: Honnefelder 1979, p. 69 n. 39. A more elaborate theory of abstraction by indifference can be found in the Metaphysics of the Scotist Bartholomaeus Mastrius (first published 1646): Mastrius 1708, d. 1, q. 1, n. 10, p. 4: ” Demum, ut apud omnes est in confesso, eas rationes tenetur Metaph. considerare, quae a materia, et sedundum se, et considerationem abstrahunt; haec autem in duplici sunt differentia, quaedam enim sunt secundum esse abstracta a materia per indifferentiam, ut sunt rationes generales communes entibus materialibus, et immaterialibus; quaedam vero sunt abstracta a materia secundem esse per essentiam, et sunt illae, quae sunt rebus immaterialibus prorsus addictae, adeo ut nunquam in materia inveniri possint, et istae sunt omnes rationes propriae possibiles haberi ab intellectu creato naturali lumine ducto de intelligentiis separatis etiam primam includendo.” See below, chapter 13, sections 1–3. In lib. 1, c. 6, pp. 20 sq., Pererius stresses that “abstractio per indifferentiam” does not entail real immateriality (in the same way as ‘animal’ does not exist apart from man or beast) and that this kind of abstraction makes it possible that the categories are included in the realm of metaphysical research. 68 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 1, c. 7, p. 24: “Tertia conclusio facile probatur ex dictis, nam si quae conveniunt intelligentiis per se, et ut sunt species entis, sunt scibilia in aliqua scientia et non in illa universali (. . .).” benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 155 science of God as far as He can be known and as He is different from other spiritual beings.69 We observe that establishing a universal science is prolific in bearing subordinate sciences. However, Pererius here reserves the right of error and claims to have made this proposition only “probabiliter”,70 which I think just indicates how much he was aware of the novelty of his proposal. Now if all scholastics up to Pererius’ time and later were happy with the traditional confusion of immaterial beings and abstract reasons in metaphysics, why did the Jesuit make this effort? It is, as already said, the levels and methods of abstraction and the meaning of speculative science that prompt him. And it is precisely the attention to kinds of abstraction that makes it possible to allow for fields of scientific research that are both subordinate and—as such—dignified to pursue their relative competence.71 Of course, some problems remained to be solved. For instance, the doctrine of the human soul, so eagerly debated in Renaissance Aristotelian- ism, is hard to locate in this system. Therefore Pererius has to admit that psychology is mixed of three disciplines: metaphysics for the separability of the intellective soul, physics for its action in the body, and revealed theology.72 Why the soul is partly treated by theology is obvious. Pererius gives three theological aspects of the rational soul: the ultimate goal of the soul and the means of achieving it, i.e., beatitude; the question of the state of the soul after death (including the possibility that it might migrate back into the body or into another body!); and the immortality of the soul. Especially the third point “cannot be known in a natural way,” Pererius asserts here.73 It is quite surprising that the Jesuit not only ponders the possibility of metempsychosis, he even seems to side with Pomponazzi on the ‘double truth theory’. This passage has passed the censure. Later, in book VI, he claims that Aristotle himself maintained the immortality

69 Ibid. and p. 26. 70 Ibid. p. 26. 71 Cf. chapters 1.4 and 3.2–3.3 in this book. 72 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 1, c. 9, p. 35: “ut perfecta scientia eorum omnium quae conveniunt animae,sit mixta ex tribus doctrinis; nam partim est Physica, partim Metaphysica, partim est doctrina revelata.” 73 Ibid. pp. 34 sq.; p. 35: Immortality “licet, inquam, hoc vere possit responderi, tamen hoc naturaliter cognosci nequit, sed ex sacris literis acceptum, fide tenemus.” 156 chapter nine of the soul, and attributes the position that this is a matter exclusively of faith to Scotus and Cajetan.74 Another problem is the meaning of speculation in Metaphysics, Phys- ics, and Mathematics. Here Pererius also makes his famous statement, that mathematics is not a science in the proper sense of the word, because, as he says, “science demonstrates effects, and demonstration (in the most perfect sense) consists of what is an essential property and not accidental;” as mathematics deals with accidental properties and does not consider the essence of quantity; consequently it is no science.75 Two peculiarities of this statement should be noted: first, that in order to make his case the Jesuit refers to Plato and Proclus; second, that Bernardino Telesio uses the same argument when he says that natural science reveals actual causes, while mathematics, as he puts it, works only on signs.76 Both observations prove that Pererius addresses his argument to those contemporary readers who are familiar with Renaissance Platonism and anti-Aristotelian strains in philosophy. He endorses the notion that principles of nature ought to be real causes and not mere interpretive concepts and shows that for this very reason—taking Aristotelian ontology for granted—mathematics does not qualify for a foundation of natural science.

74 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 6, c. 19 and 20. Lohr, “Metaphysics,” 606, maintains that Pererius “was willing to concede some of Pomponazzi’s points” in this matter. This may be true for the passage quoted in the previous note, but is not consistent with Pererius’ explicit treatment in book 6. On the subject in the Renaissance see Blum, “The immortality of the soul.” 75 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 1, c.12, p. 40: “Scire est rem per causam cognoscere propter quam res est; et scientia est demonstrationis effectus: demonstratio autem (loquor de perfectissimo demonstrationis genere) constare debet ex his quae sunt per se, et propria eius quod demonstratur; quae vero sunt per accidens, et communia excluduntur a perfectis demonstrationibus: sed Mathematicus neque considerat essentiam quantitatis, neque affectiones eius tractat prout manant ex tali essentia, neque declarat eas per proprias caussas, propter quas insunt quantitati, neque conficit demonstrationes suas ex praedicatis propriis, et per se; sed ex communibus, et per accidens, ergo Mathematica non est proprie scientia.” Cf. lib. 3, cap. 3, pp. 114 sq.: “Res Mathematicae ea ratione ut sunt Mathematicae et in doctrina Mathematica tractantur, (si de causis proprie loqui volumus) nullum habent genus causae. Nam eas carere fine ac efficiente, auctor est Arist. in 3. Meta. tex. 3. (. . .) quantitas quae tractatur a Mathematico, non est forma quidditativa rei (. . .) nec Mathematicus speculatur essentiam quantitatis (. . .).” Cf. Giacobbe, ” Un Gesuita progressista;” Maierù, “Metafisica ed enti geometrici,” 63, after discussing Pererius’ approach to geometric quantities, observes that the Jesuit is not addressing mathematicians, but rather philosophers and theologians as his audience. On mathematics in the Jesuit curriculum see Cosentino “L’insegnamento delle matematiche” and “Le matematiche nella Ratio Stu- diorum” (Pererius not mentioned). On Jesuit mathematics and philosophy of nature cf. Baldini, Legem, chapter I i, and chapters 7 and 8 in this book. 76 Telesio, De rerum natura, 1976, vol. 3, lib. 8, c. 5. benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 157

9.4 Concessions to Platonism

What is of more interest for the author, is his statement about metaphysics as a speculative science. Our problem of understanding Pererius’ point is the fact that he now uses the term metaphysics indiscriminately for natural theology and for his newly established First Philosophy as universal science. And he does so on purpose. In the first place he refers to Alexander of Aphrodisias, who gave the etymology of theoria as ‘intuition of the Divine’.77 Then he refers to the leading role of metaphysics to keep away sophists and to supply the other disciplines with the universal concepts, i.e. the transcendentals. Obviously the author is juggling the two meanings of metaphysics. But all this serves only to introduce a lengthy passage from Plato’s Republic, book 7, which deserves to be quoted in this place: But all the other arts have for their object the opinions and desires of men or are wholly concerned with generation and composition or with the service and tendance of the things that grow and are put together, while the remnant which we said did in some sort lay hold on reality—geometry and the studies that accompany it—are, as we see, dreaming about being, but the clear waking vision of it is impossible for them as long as they leave the assumptions which they employ undisturbed and cannot give any account of them. For where the starting- point is something that the reasoner does not know, and the conclusion and all that intervenes is a tissue of things not really known, what possibility is there that assent in such cases can ever be converted into true knowledge or science?” “None,” said he. “Then,” said I, “is not dialectics the only process of inquiry that advances in this manner, doing away with hypotheses, up to the first principle itself in order to find confirmation there? And it is literally true that when the eye of the soul is sunk in the barbaric slough of the Orphic myth, dialectic gently draws it forth and leads it up, employing as helpers and co-operators in this conversion the studies and sciences which we enumerated, which we called sciences often from habit, though they really need some other designation, connoting more clearness than opinion and more obscurity than science. ‘Understanding,’ I believe, was the term we employed. But I presume we shall not dispute about the name when things of such moment lie before us for consideration.” “No, indeed,” he said. “Are you satisfied, then,” said I, “as before, to call the first division science, the second understanding, the third belief, and the fourth conjecture or picture-thought–and the last two collectively opinion, and the first two intellection, opinion dealing with generation and intellection with essence, and this relation being expressed in

77 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 1, c. 12, p. 42, cross referring to c. 11, p. 39. 158 chapter nine

the proportion: as essence is to generation, so is intellection to opinion; and as intellection is to opinion, so is science to belief, and understanding to image-thinking or surmise? (. . .) “Do you agree, then,” said I, “that we have set dialectics above all other studies to be as it were the coping-stone—and that no other higher kind of study could rightly be placed above it (. . .)?”78 Pererius quotes Marsilio Ficino’s translation.79 In the last phrase, which served to state the superiority of dialectics, the Jesuit adds: “intelligit autem primam Philosophiam.”. To understand Platonic dialectics as metaphysics is supported by Ficino’s introduction to this book, as he states: “You may well name the business of disputing dialectics by its form, logic by its beginning, and metaphysics or theology by its end.”80 The fact that Pererius quotes Ficinian Platonism at such a strategic point of his treatise can either mean that he is influenced by Platonism, or that he wants to convince his audience that his philosophy complies with the expectations of Renaissance culture. Philosophically speaking, he presents his Universal Science or First Philosophy as the universal method of science, as it deals with being and is not just “dreaming” of it, as mathematics does. At the same time he reestablishes the inner link between universal method (dialectics in the epistemological sense) and knowledge of the first essence that would be granted by that same Universal Science. Indeed, Pererius repeats his reference to this passage from Plato when explaining that Physics cannot deal with the quiddities of things without borrowing from metaphysics and that ultimately everything has to be related to the actual first cause, God.81 The dependency of the subordinate sciences from metaphysics is here asserted in the Neoplatonic terms of

78 Plato, Resp. 533b–534a; 534e (Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA/London 1969. http://perseus.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/cgi-bin/ ptext?lookup=Plat.+ Rep.+533b). 79 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 1, c. 12, p. 42 sq. Plato 1539, p. 627 sq. Apart from leav- ing aside some dialogical elements, Pererius has two misprints: “Plato” instead of “Placet”, and “imaginationem” instead of “imaginem”. These errors do not occur in the manuscript version of this chapter 12 (in ms. chapter 11): Cod. Ambros. D 496 inf., fol. 109r. 80 Plato: Opera tralatione Marsilii Ficini, 1539, 619: “Tu vero disserendi industriam a forma quidem sua Dialecticam nomina, ab exordio Logicam, a fine metaphysicam, atque Theologiam.” 81 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 3, c. 5, p. 124: “(. . .) si Physicus in definienda re naturali, exposuerit omnia praedicata essentialia eius quae sunt Physica, (. . .) talisque definitio censenda erit perfecta, non quidem simpliciter, sed Physice; nam absolute et omni ex parte esse non poterit, nisi cognita et explicata fuerint quaecunque insunt in quidditate, quod fieri non potest sine scientia Metaphysicae (. . .), quamobrem vocatur regina scientiarum et omnes disciplinae pendent ab ipsa, tum quia docet primas caussas, hoc est intelligentias et Deum, a quibus manant et pendent res omnes, tum etiam quia declarat attributa (. . .).” benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 159 emanation from God and the intelligences. In presenting the scholastic union of rational abstraction and supreme being in Platonic terms, Pere- rius outplatonizes the Platonists. The same strategy can be found in Pere- rius’ lectures on metaphysics and on theology: In both cases he offers an extended treatment on Plato’s “Ideas” (Forms). By summarizing Aristotle’s Metaphysics I 6 and drawing upon Augustine, Alcinous, and Dionysius the Areopagite he suggests that Plato’s ideae—if correctly interpreted—were an appropriate tool to describe the essence of things in relation to God’s creation.82 In his De principiis, then, he proves that the Platonic concept of the idea exemplaris is unnecessary, because implied in (but not contrary to) Aristotle’s doctrine of the form in the mind of the architect.83 The message to his audience, inside and outside the Jesuit college, is: Look, we have what the Neoplatonists are longing for.

9.5 History of Philosophy against the Myth of Ancient Wisdom

My argument throughout this paper is, that Pererius is writing with Renais- sance philosophy in view, trying to get the best out of it, to replace it by a reformed scholasticism, and to set things straight that are in conflict with religion. And there is a lot to do. How else should we explain that in book four of his natural philosophy (i.e., as a further preliminary before enter- ing into the details of Physics) he gives an account of the ancient philosophers? It is very unusual at that time that scholastics would include in their philosophy a chapter on the history of philosophy. So he rightly observes that “this hard work has been begun only by few and finished by none, but hoped for by many”.84 Pererius wants to follow the lead of Aristotle, who frequently started his own doctrine by examining his predecessors.85 His overview on the ‘sects’ in ancient philosophy evidently

82 In primam partem S. Thomae, cod. Ambros D428 inf., fols. 107r–110v: “Disputatio de Ideis”; cod. Vat. Urb. Lat. 1296, fols. 173v–183r (end of commentary on book 4 of Metaphys- ics). Pererius used some of his reasons when he refuted Proclus’ argument to prove the eternity of the world from the eternity of the Idea: Pererius, De principiis, 1588, l. 15, c. 4, pp. 783 sq. 83 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, l. 8, c. 1 pp. 449 sq.; cf. cod. Ambros D428 inf., fol. 110v, and cod. Vat. Urb. Lat. 1296, fol. 177v. 84 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 4, c. 1, p. 187: “. . . opus sane arduum, a paucis suscep- tum, a nullo elaboratum, desideratum a plurimis.” 85 Ibid., lib. 4, c. 1, p. 186. A different, still extraordinarily lengthy Explanatio opinionum de principiis rerum naturalium quae olim fuerunt apud philosophos was given in the lectures on physics cod. Vat. Urb. Lat. 1298, fols. 37r–50v. 160 chapter nine draws upon the sources common to all Renaissance thinkers, that is, Eusebius’ Praeparatio evangelica, Augustine, Cicero etc. Among the recent sources he mentions Theodorus Gaza.86 He also knows the ancient, non- Greek wise men, giving credit to Plato and Aristotle. Indeed, he mentions that Plato, Democritus, and Pythagoras are supposed to have studied in barbaric nations, and mentions Orpheus, Thales, Mercurius, Zoroastres, Athlas, Anacharsis, Pherecydes, as well as the sages or priests: the Druids, the Chaldeans, Magi, Gymnosophists, and Prophets, every time locating them in their proper nation and insisting they all were Barbarians. The main effort that transpires from this treatment is that of historical precision. Therefore Pererius gives a precise account of the Greek calendar according to the Olympics.87 He does so in order to give precise chrono- logical data for every single philosopher, specifically of Thales, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Democritus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Socrates, Plato, Aristoteles, Epicurus, and Zeno of Citium. These, in Pererius’s view, represent the main strains of ancient thought.88 In these chronologies there is scarce mentioning of their individual philosophy, reliable chronology is the only intention. At the end of the paragraph on Pythagoras we read the advice that “when in Greece philosophy and wisdom were quasi in their childhood, they were already very ancient among the Hebrews and in decline, while—on the other hand—the youngest Hebrew wise prophets were contemporary with the oldest Greek sages.”89 In the paragraph on Aristotle, Pererius not only quotes Strabo in order to explain the fact that many of the original writings were corrupted or altered by unlearned followers,90 he also mentions some of the best known Peripatetic authors. Here he quotes the Miscellanea of Angelo Poliziano for the chronology of Alexander of Aphrodisias.91 But most interestingly, he shuns Porphyry as not being worthy to be called a philosopher, because “he is committed to

86 Ibid., lib. 4, c. 3, p. 195. 87 Ibid., lib. 4, c. 3, pp. 192 sqq. Pererius was, indeed, one of the first Humanists to understand the value of historical chronology. He was worth being criticized for his chro- nographic studies in his Commentary on the biblical book Daniel by the most outstanding authority in these matters, Joseph Scaliger: Grafton, Scaliger, 2, pp. 395 and 424–426. 88 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 4, c. 4, p. 198. 89 Ibid., lib. 4, c. 4, p. 203: “(. . .) quo tempore apud Graecos prope infans erat philosophia, et sapientia, eo tempore fuisse eam apud Hebraeos vetustissimam, et (si fas est ita loqui) pene decrepitam: novissimos enim sapientium, et prophetarum qui fuerunt apud Hebraeos, constat fuisse synchronus antiquissimis, ade primis Graecorum sapientibus.” 90 Ibid., lib. 4, c. 4, p. 214. 91 Ibid., lib. 4, c. 4, p. 216. benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 161 superstitions and magic tricks” and a fanatic enemy of the Christians.92 It is certainly not without reproach toward the Renaissance Platonists that Pererius adds that Porphyry’s teacher was Plotinus and his student was Iamblichus. The usefulness of this chronology is never stated expressly, but it seems to be obvious that Pererius is fighting the main ideology of non- Aristotelian Renaissance thinkers, namely that of ancient wisdom. Even though he does not have the philological instruments and skills to demy- thologize the prisca sapientia, as Casaubon later did, the method is correct and promising, because it places thinkers like Pythagoras or Porphyry on a timeline, takes the veil of wisdom from them, and makes them just what they are: representatives of specific and debatable schools of philosophy with individual merits and mistakes. With this move he implicitly opposes the preferences of Neoplatonic authors like Ficino, but even more of Augustinus Steuchus. They advocated a kind of theoretical syncretism, in which whatever the ancients had said, and the more remote the better, converged in a general unified wisdom, a philosophia perennis, that in some vague concept of divine worship would enhance and support Christian religion.93 Pererius insists on the differences among the ancients themselves and on their divergence from true philosophy. Therefore he treats in a systematic way the various approaches to nature in these authors, and he specifically attacks Simplicius for having blurred over those differences.94 In his commentary on Genesis he will continue his work on dismantling the alleged ancient wisdom by sorting out the timelines. Among others he proved that there is no document whatsoever of human wisdom extant before the deluge.95 An important case in appropriating ancient philosophy was the interpretation of Parmenides.96 It had been a controversial issue between Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, as it was a touchstone of the

92 Ibid.: “Ego ne Philosophum [Porphyrium] quidem appellandum censeo, hominem usque adeo impiis superstitionibus, et magicis fallaciis deditum: fuit certe Christianae religionis nequissimus Apostata, et hostis acerrimus.” 93 Steuchus De perenni philosophia. On Steuchus see Muccillo, Platonismo, chapter 1, and Schmidt-Biggemann, Philosophia Perennis, 1998, pp. 677–689 (neither refers to Pererius’ critique). 94 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 4, c. 10, pp. 238–243. 95 Pererius, Commentariorum et Disputationum in Genesim, vol. 1, lib. 1, c. 1, vers. 1, nn. 28–31, pp. 10–11. Extensively on chronology lib. 11, pp. 652 sqq. 96 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 4, c. 14–16. 162 chapter nine compatibility of Platonic thought and Christian theology.97 Pererius seems to take sides for Ficino in as much as he claims that Parmenides presented not just a dialectical exercise but positively maintained that being is and excludes nothingness. But he seems also to support Pico’s interpretation that the One is in some way, and consequently he denies the strict separation of the One and Being, advocated in Ficino’s commentary on Plato’s Parmenides. In his extended discussion of this problem, Pererius emphasizes that the antinomy consists in referring the Parmenidean One and Being either to the Supreme Being or to finite beings. And in this he, again, would support Pico, rather than Ficino. His interpretation mostly draws upon the ancient testimonies, but he also mentions Cardinal Bessa- rion in support of his interpretation.98 Having thus reviewed most of the ancient approaches to nature and metaphysics Pererius concludes by excusing himself for not having treated Plato at length. As the problem of Plato consists in the debate over his concordance or contrast with Aristotle (as had been discussed in Renaissance Italy ever since Gemistos Pletho’s attack on Aristotle) he promises a separate book on this topic.99 This, however, does not prevent him from giving an account of ten arguments in favor of the immortality of the soul, when treating the existence of forms that are separable from matter.100 Even if he does not follow Ficino’s great book on that topic, he seems to have taken his inspiration from it. He terms the argument from the transmigration of the souls as absurd, and the argument from the self-movement as the soul as compelling and truly demonstrative. As I mentioned before, he then maintains that the immortality of the human soul can be defended both with Aristotle and with purely philosophical reasons. He also complies, here, with the complaints of Ledesma, suppos- ing these were actually directed against his teaching. The remainder of Pererius’ De principiis develops the major topics of science teaching in a systematic way without depending on the structure of Aristotle’s book. On the one hand, one can recognize the sequence of his Physics: Matter and privation, Form, Nature, Causes, Chance, Quantity, Place, Time, Eternity. But Pererius gives no thorough comment, but finds

97 Allen, “The second Ficino-Pico Controversy;” Pico Über das Seiende und das Eine— De ente et uno, introduction. 98 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 4, c. 16, p. 257, refers to Bessarion’s In calumniatorem Platonis, lib. 2, c. 12. 99 Pererius, De principiis, 1588, lib. 4, c. 20, p. 272. 100 Ibid., lib. 6, c. 18, pp. 386–388. benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 163 his way through the philosophical schools. Specifically his treatment of the intellectual soul within the chapter on Form shows that he has the metaphysical, speculative foundation of science in mind.

9.6 Against Alchemy and Kabbalah

Further evidence for the fact that Pererius has contemporary scientific culture in mind is his treatment of alchemy in book VIII, which is an appendix to the chapter on causality. Quite traditionally Pererius states that while it cannot be excluded that making gold is possible supposed that the natural means are being employed, it nevertheless appears to be impossible, as so far no alchemist has ever succeeded in such attempts.101 Here we find extensive quotations both from Julius Caesar Scaliger and from Girolamo Cardano. As Charles H. Lohr observed, this chapter was to be incorporated in Pererius’ work “Against Superstitions” of 1591.102 This second of Pererius’ philosophical books enjoyed popularity, because it offered a succinct and entirely non-occult summary on the value of magical arts.103 Superstition is the common denominator for the three parts, as the title reveals: De magia, de observatione somniorum et de divinatione astrologica Libri Tres. Adversus fallaces, et superstitiosas artes. In his dedication letter, Pererius underscores the public damage caused by superstition. He therefore decided to write the first book, on magic, anew and to republish the books on dreams and on astrology from his commentaries on the book Daniel and on the book Genesis,104 because he thought they deserved a broader audience. This book against superstitions was explicitly written for a learned but non-specialist public, with the intention of spreading basic information and the most powerful arguments for the eradication of the superstition

101 Ibid., lib. 8, c. 21, p. 504 sq. This chapter is reprinted in Matton, “Les théologiens . . . et l’alchemie,” 432–438; on Pererius 391–396. 102 Benedicti Pererii Adversus fallaces et superstitiosas artes, id est de magia, de observatione somniorum, de divinatione astrologica, libri tres, Ingolstadii 1591.—I quote from the Cologne edition of 1612, abbreviated to De magia.—Chapters 19–20 of De principiis are lib. 1, c. 12, pp. 101–122, of De magia. 103 Risse, Bibliographia philosophica vetus, pars 5/6, lists six editions from 1591 to 1612, as well as two translations into English (The Astrologer anatomiz’d) in 1661 and 1674. The book was the source of a short story by the Hungarian poet Ferenc Faludi SJ (1704–1779): see Szauder, “Faludi Ferenc és B. Pererius.” 104 Pererius, Commentariorum et Disputationum in Genesim and Pererius Commentari- orum in Danielem. 164 chapter nine connected with the various kinds of magic. This explains the publishing success of the book. Its intention also makes it a model instance of the attitude taken by a Counter-Reformation author to the occult sciences. The De magia allows us to study the intellectual milieu in which magic was widespread towards the end of the sixteenth century, and the scientific methods that a Jesuit believed he could employ to locate this kind of knowledge correctly within the general framework of sound Catholic doctrine. The dedicatory epistle to Camillo Caietano, Patriarch of Alexan- dria, begins with a resolute formulation: superstition is the fruit of insane curiosity about things that lie in the future.105 The first chapter affirms that this curiosity gives birth to credulity. Ironically, this is confirmed by a reference to Aristotle, although not to the famous passage about wonder as the beginning of science, but rather to the delight that human beings take in fables.106 From the outset, magic appears as a human psychological weakness, or rather as a plague that now afflicts not only individuals, but even rulers and entire nations. In other words, it is a danger to society.107 When we look at the work as a whole, we see that the author employs two methods of presentation: the recourse to authorities and the logical- academic argumentation of scholasticism. The first method allows him to take his starting point in the expectations of his readers, who are probably familiar with the commonplaces of the literature on magic; the second sketches the boundaries of legitimacy of the occult sciences. Accordingly, this book on magic begins with the customary distinction between the true natural magic and the popular magic that makes use of demons, enchant- ments, and sorcerers.108 After quoting the classic texts on magic (Exodus 7, Justin Martyr, Philostratus, and finally Saint Thomas), he draws a scholastic distinction, stating that natural magic must be classified according to three levels of knowledge: alia enim dici potest humana, quia humano studio et diligentia comparator; altera Divina, quae per revelationem vel a Deo, vel ab Angelis bonis percipitur;

105 De magia, p. 3: “Tria sunt genera rerum [. . .] in quarum studio et observatione mor- talium animi vesana quadam libidine vel potius rabie noscendi quae future sunt, foedis noxiis illuduntur fallaciis, atque impiis erroribus illigantur: Somnia, et natalitia Astrologo- rum Praedicta, atque Artes Magicae.” 106 Ibid., p. 11. 107 Ibid., pp. 3f. 108 Pererius, De magia, I, p. 7: “Alteram vero (quae vulgo iactatur et celebratur) ab omni ratione ac veritate vacuam, fallacem item et noxiam, daemonumque fraudibus et maleficiis implicatam [. . .].” Cf. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic, 76f. benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 165

Tertia, Daemonica quam daemones tradunt iis hominibus, qui se illis impia societate et foedere devinxerunt.109 The author thus takes a gnoseological approach to the problem. Almost as if he wants to confirm the readers’ expectations, Pererius recounts a vast spectrum of well-known magical facts. Here too, he quotes many authors, including the De sympathia of Girolamo Fracastoro, Marsilio Fici- no’s Theologica Platonica, and the De subtilitate and De varietate rerum of Giroloamo Cardano,110 in order to begin his investigation of the question of miracles. These are interpreted in the etymological sense of “stupendous things.” From the divine perspective, there are no miracles, because nothing is “miraculous” when compared to the power and wisdom of God. This means that the term “miracle” can be applied only to something that surpasses the intellectual capacity of the observer. From the human perspective, miracles are those things that evoke wonder because they are unusual and inexplicable. This definition, however, applies not only to the things that the demons and the magicians can produce, but to all new and surprising events.111 It is thus the “excess” that defines the miracle: “Sed vere ac proprius miraculum dicitur opus, quod ideo vere ac merito mirandum est, quia omnis naturae creatae vim atque potestatem excedit.”112 Some- thing that is stupendous exceeds and transcends the horizon of the spectator; and it is the manner of exceeding the natural course of things that defines the miracle. Three levels of miracles are determined by means of this criterion of excessus. The first occurs when something obtains properties that contradict the essence of the created nature, for example, if a human body becomes immortal. The second presupposes an impossibility on the part of the source of its existence, that is to say, if something is generated by a source from which it cannot naturally come, for example, production ex nihilo. The third and last level consists in the modus operandi, for example, if a doctor heals an illness instantaneously and without

109 pererius, De magia, I 3, p. 25. 110 ibid., p. 26. 111 ibid., I 8, pp. 67f.: “[. . .] nullum plane est miraculum: nihil enim est, quod divinae potentiae et sapientiae comparatione, miraculum dici queat. Nam miraculum alicui dicitur, quod eius et facultatem et intelligentiam excedit. [. . .] Deinde potest appellari miraculum respectu hominum, qui, quae sunt ipsis inusitata, et quorum causas ignorant, quonam ea maxime admirantur, dicunt miracula, qua ratione non modo Daemonum et Magorum, sed etiam sapientum hominum inventum quaedam nova, et artificiosa opera [. . .] miracula nominantur.” 112 Ibid., I 8, p. 68: “excessus” is the key word for the ensuing definitions. The Jesuit Martin Delrio draws a different distinction, where only “the prodigious” is defined by means of “excess”: Delrio, Disquisitionum magicarum libri sex, l. 1, c. 4, q. 3, p. 52. 166 chapter nine medicine, or if a sorcerer or a demon transforms a wooden staff into a serpent (a thing that is intrinsically possible) instantaneously (as Moses did).113 These distinctions transpose the gnoseological approach (“What does the operation of magic look like?”) into ontological and teleological definitions that determine the level of reality. This allows Pererius to classify the various types of magic: magic (where it does not refer typically to the divine power) is either natural or at the service of the demons. This, however, is the not the problem that the Jesuit is tackling, since there is another distinction that applies to both kinds of magic, namely, truth and simulation. The object of his book is to unmask the “conjuring” magic.114 The deception that is an objective element in people’s credulity places the demonic intervention and the manipulation on one and the same level of falsehood. The first instance of a deceitful magic of this kind in Pererius’ book is the Kabbalah, and we shall look at this chapter in some detail both because of the novelty of this science at the time of Pererius and because of the exemplary quality of the methodology he employs to refute it. In chapter 10 of the first Book on magic, Pererius presents a formally correct description of the intentions of the Kabbalah, while however assigning it to the sphere of vanity and curiosity. Sed venio ad Cabalisticam, quam philosophi quidam Iudeorum, et de nostris nonnulli vanitatis magis quam veritatis studiosi, et res curiosas atque inau- ditas quam veras et solidas discendi avidiores, affirmant esse Mosi primum a Deo in monte Syna traditam [. . .]115 The reader who is familiar with scholastic science is informed here that the Kabbalah belongs to the “res curiosae” and the novelties. In scholastic terminology, “curious things” are objects that one can indeed study, such as minerals and fish, but also the monsters that dwell in the regions on the borders of civilized territories. None of these, however, belongs to the systematic sciences in the strict sense of the term, since they are not covered by the ontological and methodological hierarchy of science in the Aristotelian sense. They constitute the naturally disordered field of purely

113 Ibid., pp. 68f. 114 Ibid., pp. 74f.: “Rursus Magia tam naturalis, quam non naturalis, bipartito dividitur: altera enim habet veros et naturales effectus, altera simulatos tantum, nec tales revera quales videntur: hanc uno vocabulo Praestigiatricem appellamus, suis enim praestigiis adeo praestringit et eludit sensus humanus, ut faciat videre quae non sunt, et non videre quae sunt; idque vel interventu et adminiculo Daemonum, vel operatione naturalium agentium, vel incredibili tractu atque agitatione manuum.” 115 De magia I 10, p. 78. benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 167 collectionistic and inductive researches—just as Francis Bacon will later describe his projects of inducting “instances” for a research into natural properties, projects that prescind from any kind of ontological-metaphysical option. The antitheses with which Pererius introduces Kabbalistic magic are: vanitas/veritas and curiosa-inaudita/vera-solida. We recall here that according to the Ratio studiorum and the whole structure of the Jesuit formation, no one is permitted to bring novelties.116 Having thus confirmed the expectations of his readers, Pererius presents the Kabbalistic magic as an exclusively oral tradition, comparing it to Pythagorism and presuppos- ing that his readers are familiar with this type of reasoning.117 After this formal description of Kabbalistic magic, he goes on to its contents and states that it claims to be a universal philosophy that includes both divine and human philosophy as well as natural philosophy, containing within itself the knowledge of everything, but in a mystical and symbolic way. Complectitur autem haec Magia Cabalistica universam Philosophiam, divinam et humanam, nec non et naturalem: omniumque rerum doctrinam mystice ac symbolice continet, non eam more aliarum humanarum disci- plinarum, rationibus et argumentis disputationibusque tractans, sed num- eris, figuris, ac Symbolis.118 This means that the Kabbalistic magic contains a complex of diverse claims, each one of which is contrary to the scholastic concept of a solid

116 MPSI, 5, Ratio studiorum 1586, Commentariolus, p. 21: “Fundator [sc. Ignatius], qui Constitutionum 3 Par. Cap. 1 disertis verbis cavet, ne ‘novae opiniones admittantur’ ”; Ratio studiorum 1599, Regulae Communes omnibus professoribus studiorum facultatum, p. 380: “Novitas opinionum fugienda.” Cf. in this book the section on Cornaeus 8.3. 117 It was above all Johannes Reuchlin who spread the idea of the affinity between Pythagoras and the Kabbalah. He maintained that Pythagoras had transmitted (“received”) not the wisdom of the Greeks but that of the Kabbalah, the first characteristic of which was the ipse dixit: Reuchlin, De arte cabalistica, fol. xxii v–xxiii r: “Pythagoras ille meus, philosophiae pater, tamen qui non a graecis eam doctrinae praestantiam quin potius ab illis ipsis Iudeis receperit, itaque receptor optimo iure ipse quoque id est Cabalista nomi- nandus erat [. . .] ipse nomen illud Cabalae suis incognitum primus in nomen philosophiae graecum mutaverit. Quod eo argumento recte coniicimus, quia nullam discipulis suis reli- quit aliqua ratione perquirendi facultatem, quin id primum sui dogmatis principium esse voluit, ut quaerentibus causam responderent [. . .] ipse dixit, more Cabalistarum, qui ferme haud aliter rerum cognoscendarum rationes citant quam quod aiunt [. . .] Dixerunt sapientes.” See Zika, Reuchlin. 118 Pererius, De magia I 10, p. 78. This definition looks like a paraphrase of Agrippa of Nettesheim: De incertitudine et vanitate scientiarum, c. 47, in Agrippa, Operum pars posterior, p. 99: “Alteram vero eius [sc. Cabalae] scientiam vocant de Marcana, quae est [. . .] quasi symbolica Theologia, in quae literae, figurae, res, et nomina, et elementorum apices, ac lineae, puncta et accentus, nomina sunt profundissimarum rerum et magnorum arca- norum significativa.” 168 chapter nine philosophy. The first such claim is to be a universal science. The same thesis had been formulated by Giovanni Pico in one of his Kabbalistic Conclusions.119 The Jesuit insists that this comprehensive character is not equivalent to the human sciences of the kind that he himself supports. This is because the Kabbalah, as a mystical wisdom, does not discuss its themes by means of rational arguments in the form of a disputation, but only in numbers, figures, and symbols. When he goes on to speak of its contents, the Jesuit feels obliged to return to the question of methodology, since this kind of teaching is based on—and indeed consists exclusively of—very minute letters, names, syllables, accents, punctuation, etc., from which it claims to bring forth the utterly profound meanings of a “significant” doctrine.120 Obviously, the ideal reader is by now dumbfounded by this ragbag of grammar and wisdom, since he has learned to distinguish between words and things, between techniques of writing and a science that is structured logically. But things only get worse, for Pererius goes on to mention another claim: according to the Kabbalists, with this magic one can do everything, know everything, and predict everything. One can even issue commands to nature, and everything will obey. This was the magic with which Moses worked his miracles in Egypt and in the desert; the same is true of the prophets.121 The basis of this theory—as Pererius correctly notes—is the passage in Genesis 2:19–20 where God gives names to

119 Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses, Conclusiones cabalisticae secundum opinionem propriam 2, p. 520: “Quicquid dicant alii cabalistae, ego partem speculativam Cabale quadruplicem dividerem, correspondenter quadruplici particioni philosophie, quam ego solitus sum affere. Prima est scientia, quam ego voco alphabetarie revolucionis, conrespondentem parti philosophie quam ego philosophiam catholicam voco. Secunda, tertia, et quarta pars est triplex merchiava, conrespondentes triplici philosophie particularis, de divinis, de mediis, et sensibilibus naturis.” 120 Pererius, De magia I 10, p. 79: “profundissimam quandam et abditissimam ingen- tium rerum significatricem doctrinam.” The Jesuit probably does not accept the distinction between the true and the false Kabbalah that is described by Giovanni Pico in his Apologia (Pico, Opera Omnia, Apologia, q. 5, pp. 180f.) when he speaks of a second kind of Kabba- lah: “Verum quia iste modus tradendi per successionem, qui dicitur cabalisticus, videtur convenire unicuique rei secrete et mistice, hinc est quod usurparunt Hebrei ut unamqua- mque scientiam quae apud eos habeatur pro secreta et abscondita, cabalam vocent, et unumquodque scibile quod per viam occultam alicunde habeatur, dicatur haberi per viam cabale. (. . .) dixerunt se habere secreta Dei nomina et virtutes quibus demones ligarent et miracula facerent, et Christum non alia via fecisse miracula.” Agrippa of Nettesheim (op. cit.) and Johannes Reuchlin (op. cit. fol. lxxviii r/v) likewise mention a kind of unau- thorized Kabbalah. 121 De magia I 10, p. 79; cf. Agrippa, op. cit., p. 99, who however does not present the objections to the Kabbalah that we find in Pererius. benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 169 everything through Adam. These names express the substances, qualities, and properties of things. When we recall that this Jesuit had already published a programmatic treatise on the study of nature, entitled: “On the principles and the properties common to all natural things,”122 we see his polemical intention, since it appears irrational to assume the existence of substances and properties that are derived simply from names—to say nothing of the impossibility that the knowledge of names of this kind would permit one to exercise dominion over such objects. Most importantly, the Jesuit had drawn clear distinctions in this scholastic book between the practical sciences, technologies, and the speculative sciences, and he had fiercely argued against the logical possibility of a universal science that would include the whole of metaphysics, natural theology, and physics.123 The reader is encouraged to be skeptical by the presentation of all these facts as a basic deviation from the correct way of doing science. After being prepared by the objective account given up to this point, the reader will now be happy to read that all this Kabbalah is sheer “madness.” And he will be confirmed in this view when he learns that what we have here is the heresy of Wycliffe (which has already been sufficiently condemned by Thomas Netter, known as Waldensis).124 Pererius’ strategy is obvious. Although he is well aware of Johannes Reuchlin, Agrippa, Agostino Steu- cho, and so many others who have discussed the Kabbalah, the Jesuit (in keeping with his customary practice) does not mention the recent sources, but is content to identify the theological locus of a theory of this kind—in this case, the Wycliffite heresy which is characterized by a theology with a tendency towards Platonization, where the properties of things and their accessibility to human knowledge are in competition with the divine ideas as a unifying spiritual basis; this makes it seem convincing and logical that God should have given the human being access to this basis from the moment of creation onwards. In his treatise De statu innocentiae, Wycliffe had affirmed that Adam was endowed with the power to exercise dominion over things by giving them names.125 Pererius’s

122 Pererius, De principiis, 1588. 123 Ibid., 1. 1 passim. 124 Pererius, De magia I 10, pp. 79f.: “Huius amentiae expers non fuit Wiclef, qui ut memorat Thomas Waldensis in opere suo de Sacramentalibus, dixit, in statu innocentiae Adam imposuisse nomina animalibus secundum naturales eorum proprietates [. . .]. Cuius sententiae doctam copiosamque refutationem lege apud ipsum Waldensem.” 125 Wyclif, Tractatus de statu innocencie, c. 4, 496: “Nec legitur quod Adam artificialiter didicit plus loqui sed habuit noticiam et instruccionem naturaliter a Deo ad nominandum 170 chapter nine source might have been the by the Carmelite friar Thomas Netter of Walden. Steuco, however, maintained the same position as Wycliffe in his Cosmopoeia.126 Pererius does not directly quote Wycliffe or Steuco, but he refers to the book by the Carmelite friar Thomas Netter of Walden Doctrinale (recently reprinted), a systematic refutation of current and ancient heresies, which denounces the proto-Reformer as the arch-heretic of his age.127 He also creates a link between the occultist interpretation of the language of Adam and the Kabbalah, a link that does not exist in his sources. François Secret suggested that Pererius learned about that connection from Miguel de Medina (Christianae paraenesis libri septem, 1564), but he does not offer any documentary evidence to support this claim.128 We may interpret this as an indication that the Jesuit intends to address the Counter-Reformation public, demonstrating the implications of the Kabbalah in the field of controversial theology against the Protestant Reformation, and emphasizing

propriissime secundum proprietates naturales naturas sibi subditas, sub quibus nominibus homini naturaliter obedirent. Et hinc reservantur reliquie potestatis innocencie in vocibus exorciste et naturaliter incantantis; et ad hoc credo voces Hebreas habere maiorem efficaciam quam alias variatas.”—On the power of the names bestowed by Adam, according to Agrippa, see Lehrich, The Language of Demons and Angels, 132–134. 126 Steuchus, Opera, vol. 1, Cosmopoeia, In cap. 2 Genesis, fol. 68 C/D: “Primae igitur rerum nuncupationes, partim divinae sunt, partim humanae. Divinae rerum ante hominem natarum, caelum et terra, dies et nox, quibus vocibus audivit homo Deum res ipsas appellantem. Humanae nuncupationes, particularium rerum fuerunt. Nec vero difficile primo homini fuit notare nomina animalium, qui omnium eorum audivit a Deo proprietates, et sapientia ab eo largita cognovit. (. . .) Hanc et simile philosophiam, fecisse Adam credendum est, videntem et agnoscentem omnium animalium proprietates, et colores, habitusque corporum.” 127 Waldensis, Doctrinale antiquitatum vol. III, De Sacramentalibus, titulus 23, cap. 168, n. 1, fol. 297r a: “Nam Witcleff de statu innocentiae, ca. 4 dicit exorcismos editos a statu naturae, dicens, quod Adam habuit notitiam a Deo naturaliter ad nominandum propriissime secundum proprietates naturales naturas sibi subditas: sub quibus nominibus homini naturaliter obedirent. Et hinc reservantur reliquiae potestates innocentiae in vocibus exor- cistae, et naturaliter incantantis, et ad hoc credo voces Hebraeas habere maiorem efficaciam, quam alias variatas. Haec Witcleff.” We should note that the context here is the question of exorcisms; Netter does not mention the Kabbalah. An electronic file of the Venice 1759 edition is attached to Bergström-Allen and Copsey, Thomas Netter of Walden. 128 Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chrétiens, 221; see also Secret, “Les Jésuites et le kabbalisme chrétien.” It appears that Pererius knew Medina’s book, but only indirectly, since he mentions him alongside Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in a treatise on fate: “existit etiam nostra memoria quidam Monacus Franciscanus, Hispanus, cui nomen est Michael Medina, qui in quadam opera, quod scripsit de recta ad Deum fide multa scripsit de Fato”: Cod. Vat. Urb. Lat. 1308, fol. 173r/v. The chapter De Fato is in the appendix to the third Book of Pererius’ Opus Metaphysicum, which is preserved in this codex (Lohr, Latin Aristotle Com- mentaries, nr. 16). Naturally, we cannot exclude the possibility that he had read Medina’s book in the meantime. benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 171 the systematic links between the Reformation and the Neo-Platonism and Neo-Pythagorism which flourished at that time. However, Medina’s Christianae paraenesis libri septem, published at Venice by Ziletti in 1564, would deserve a study of its own. In the second Book, where he develops a thematic program for the confirmation of the Christian faith, beginning with the truth of the prophets, Medina has a lengthy discussion of the criteria of a true or false prediction, including the various forms of magical divination. The very lengthy ch. 7, discussing miracles, also speaks of the Kabbalah (fols. 60r/v, 62r/v) as a form of magic, offering a definition of the Kabbalah that may have been taken over by Pererius (unless they both drew on a common source). The Franciscan also criticizes the power over words that was bestowed on Adam and refers (although without any link to this theme) to Thomas Waldensis, who had discussed the “cabalistica insania.” Book VII, ch. 14, fol. 248r/v, returns to the Kabbalah with a vig- orous polemic, claiming that the Kabbalists learned their “computation” from Pythagoras, not the pagans from Moses. Pererius’ refutation of the Kabbalah consists of arguments drawn from probability, from esotericism, from history, from linguistics, and from polemic. The first and second arguments question whether all created things can obey the will of the human being; and granted that this would be the case, Pererius asks whether the created things must necessarily be kept under constant control by means of the names.129 These arguments, which have an obvious reference to the continuous creation by God, emphasize that the position Pererius attacks amounts to the reversal of the order of creation, since the human being would have dominion over all things (including the supralunary things), and would be placed in the position that belongs to God. And this means that the human being would have to exercise control over such creatures; furthermore, like God the Creator, the human being would be charged with a continuous creation. Not only would such an activity presuppose the universal anima- tion of the world; a further problem is that if the human will possessed the means necessary for the universal governance of nature, it would not be able to use these means at will, and to cease doing so when the human being felt like it—on the contrary, the human being would possess the language of Adam and would therefore be obliged to act in the place of

129 De magia I 10, p. 80: “Principio, nonne incredibile est, Solem et Lunam et caetera astra, elementa, item et stirpes cum ratione careant, divinam illam vim quae latet in vocibus hebraeis sentire [. . .]? Sed esto, noverint illam vim, [. . .] num ideo eiusmodi nominum appellatione eas continuo moveri necesse est?” 172 chapter nine

God. Wycliffe himself shows that it was in fact possible to believe that the names of things symbolize the divine creation, or indeed are essentially this divine creation: “Nomina autem significant substantiam meram cum qualitate, hoc est supra divinam essentiam, vel esse intelligibile creaturae addunt qualitatem, in qua res talis producitur in esse existere [. . .].”130 In this way, the Kabbalah is given a place among those heretical currents of the Renaissance which explicitly or implicitly turn upside down the order of nature and the divine order, making the divinized human being the lord of creation. The attempt to justify the use of Sacred Scripture and to overcome the difference between the ontological structure and the epistemological methodology with regard to nature may be motivated by a religious piety or by a gnoseological approach, but no positive value attaches to such motives here. The following argument about improbability131 is directed against the typical rhetoric of Renaissance esotericism, which—in the footsteps of the Platonism of late antiquity and Pythagorism—always sought to explain the unusual sapiential and hermeneutical methodology with which it discovered doctrines hidden in the text of Plato and in the mystical books, by declaring that this was in fact the method used by the wise men of old in order to cast a veil over their basic teaching, so that this would be accessible only to initiates. Pererius employs a common-sense argument: if even the common people remain excluded from such teachings, how is it that animals and inanimate beings can grasp the secret power of such words? The reader is then informed that the Kabbalah overturns the epistemological system of the Peripatetic philosophy, which was indeed the intention of a man like Giordano Bruno, who was Pererius’ contemporary. Turning to arguments of a philological-historical character, Pererius observes, with a reference to Saint Jerome, that once the premises are accepted, it is also true that the letters of the Hebrew scripture before that Babylonian captivity were different from those that are in use today.132 The Jesuit also denies explicitly that the Hebrew language contains words that express the essence of all things, including the properties, down to the very last species; secondly, that the Hebrew language is in any way

130 Wyclif, Dialogorum libri quatuor, l. 1, c. 8, fol. XIII r/v. 131 De magia I 10, p. 80: “Si reconditissimam illam vim et efficaciam vocum hebraearum quam iactant Cabalistae, paucissimi hominum intelligunt, nec nisi qui illa eadem ante sunt initiati, quomodo eam agnoscent et sentient bruta, caeteraque non ratione modo sed etiam sensu carentia?” 132 Ibid., p. 81: “cum certe constet alios esse characteres hebraeos qui nunc extant, quam olim fuerant ante captivitatem Babylonicam.” benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 173 more suited and semantically better able to express things, in comparison to the Greek or Latin languages; and thirdly, that there exists any word in any language that would reveal at one and the same time the substance, the specific difference, and the individual properties. In short, the Hebrew words do not contain more or greater mysteries than the Greek or Latin words.133 This series of arguments shows once more that Pererius employs the instruments of Aristotelian gnoseology to attack the Kabbalah. As a semantic system, language aims at the first and second intentions. Conse- quently, it cannot extend itself in one single word to everything—either horizontally by covering everything, or hierarchically by aiming at all the levels of the differences between the substance and the individual (that is to say, in accordance with Porphyry’s Tree). Pererius rejects the ascrip- tion of a symbolic value to language; at the same time, he respects the structure of language that transcends the dialects. As a semantic system, language functions identically in all the historical languages. It is therefore impossible, both linguistically and logically, that one word should be able to signify the second and the first intentions, the accidents and the substances, etc. If such a word existed, it would be a miracle and a mystery— but that outstrips the capacity of any language. By explicitly tackling the linguistic philosophy of the Kabbalah, this line of argument marginalizes it with regard to the world of the discursive and communicable sciences to which the Jesuit scholasticism belongs. In negative terms, the reader can learn that the Kabbalah claims to approach natural and supernatural realities via a linguistic philosophy in which a link is re-established between the divine creation and the knowledge of God’s creature, in a language that is both oral and written, and that is of its nature veracious. Apart from the fact that according to the presentation in this passage, this Kabbalah seems to be a non-discursive discourse, the text does not inform the reader about how such a wisdom, which is valued so highly by some humanists and syncretists such as Reuchlin and Pico, can be compatible or reconcilable with rational argumentative forms—but this, of course, is not in the least Pererius’ intention. He concludes his critique by pointing out that the Bible does not mention such a

133 Ibid.: “Nec verum est, in lingua hebraea reperiri voces quae omnium rerum naturas, infimasque differentias et proprietates exprimant; nec in declarandis rebus uberior est aut significantior hebraea lingua quam graeca vel latina; ne ullum est nomen in ulla lingua, quod simul alicuius rei et substantiam et differentias atque proprietates tam genericas quam specificas atque individuales aperiat: nec in vocibus hebraeis per se sumptis, plura maiorave latent mysteria, quam vel in Graecis vel Latinis.” 174 chapter nine

Kabbalah, and that obviously the Kabbalists have not been able to transmit and to maintain the miraculous abilities of which the Bible speaks in some instances. His invective finishes by saying that if they had indeed succeeded in doing so, they would have freed the Hebrew people from the slavery from which they have been suffering for the last fifteen hundred years.134 With all his polemic, Pererius fails to mention the fact that from Pico onwards, the Kabbalah had been read using the same allegorical/ anagogical interpretative key that was already traditional in the hermeneutic of sacred scripture.135 We should note that these are the words of a specialist in biblical exegesis: Pererius had already published his commentary on the Book of Daniel,136 and he was publishing his commentary on Genesis at the same time as his criticism of magic.137 In this commentary, he severely criticizes those who are led by their love of classical studies to believe that they find oracles and obscure meanings in the Bible where no such meanings exist.138 The objects of this criticism are Agostino Steuco139 and Giovanni Pico. He calls Pico’s book Heptaplus, which (as was well known) was meant to demonstrate the fruitfulness of the Kabbalistic method, a “specimen prodigiosi ingenii” which, however, “ad doctrinam autem Mosis inter- pretandum, parum conducit.”140 Pererius is happy to report that Aloisio Lippomani had neglected this work, pointing out that Pico “in eo uno laborasse, ut Pythagorae, Platonis, Aristotelis, aliorumque philosophorum

134 Ibid., p. 82. This remark may permit us to date this passage rather precisely, to around 1570. 135 Cf. for example the defense by Paolo Ricci: Ricius, In cabalistarum seu allegorizantium eruditionem isagoge, conclusio octava, fol. 12v: “Hoc quum non literali intellectu constet, solo cabalistico/allegoricove sensu id fieri contingit. [. . .] Allegoricum voco intellectum qui in ipso universi ordine quippiam typice designat.” See Roling, “Prinzip, Intellekt und Allegorese.” 136 Pererius, Commentariorum in Danielem Prophetam libri sexdecim, Rome 1587. I quote from the Lyons edition of 1602. 137 B. Pererius, Commentariorum et disputationum in Genesim tomi quatuor, Rome 1591– 1598. I quote from the Cologne edition of 1601. 138 Pererius, In Genesim, op. cit., Vol. 1, l. 1, c. 1, n. 23, p. 8: “sunt alii usque adeo insani amatores, et stupidi admiratores antiquorum poetarum et philosophorum, ut omnia dicta existiment oracula: et quaecumque Moses in hoc libro Geneseos brevissim.e docuit, ea contendant ab illis fuisse non obscure cognita, uberius etiam explicata, ornatiusque trac- tata. [. . .] Ego quidem (dicam libere quod sentio) numquam probavi nimis curiosum studium, et diligentiam eorum, qui sententias Mosis quoquomodo tradunt, et detroquent ad philosophorum et poetarum, vel decreta, vel etiam fabulas, ut Orphei, Homeri, Mercurii Trismegisti, Pythagorae, Platonis, quinetiam Aristotelis.” 139 Ibid., p. 9: “Atque hanc ob causam a multis minus probatur Augustinus Eugubinus in sua Cosmopoeia, et in libris de Perenni philosophia.” 140 Ibid. benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 175 inventa et dogmata, vel suas potius cogitationes, dictis et sententiis Mosa- ici exprimeret et ornaret.”141 The development from humanism in the direction of the ideology of the prisca sapienza is unequivocally rejected, and is replaced by the rigor of scholastic philosophy. The criterion for an interpretation of the sacred scriptures is that it “nihil tradit alienum et dissentaneum sapientiae Dei, et pietati nostrae fidei: quae nihil habet repugnans manifestis experimentis et rationibus, quae in philosophia, cet- erisque doctrinis humanis traduntur.”142 It is not impossible that Pererius took this position as the result of a dispute in the Collegio Romano, where he taught. Although none of the documents published in the series Monumenta Paedagogica Societatis Iesu speaks of the Kabbalah, I have discovered one instance where this is not excluded from the system of the sciences. In a treatise on the classification of the academic disciplines, Father Stefano Tucci (1540–1597), the author inter alia of a lengthy manuscript against various atheisms,143 discusses without reservations the Kabbalah as an oral part equivalent to scriptural theology.144 In this treatise, he accepts magic and the “coniectrix facultas” as disciplines subordinate to physics.145 Although he does not say anything in detail about this “facultas,” Tucci puts magic on the same level as medicine, since both are concerned with the passions of the body. To employ magic of this kind would be completely natural. Since Pererius contested the confusion between mathematic and speculation, he completely abated Kabbalah. Naming it ‘cabalistic magic’ he counts it among the ‘curiosities’, that is, scientifically unwarranted experiences,

141 Ibid. 142 Ibid. 143 Stefanus Tutius, De Deo Opt. Max. ex Philosophiae principiis adversus haereticorum ac gentium Atheismos, cod. Archivium Pontificiae Universitatis Gregorianae (APUG), Fondo Curia, n. 547. This work employs the methods of scholastic theology against not only Zwingli, Calvin, and other Reformers, but also Machiavelli. 144 Stefanus Tutius, Declaratio tabulae de divisione scientiarum, cod. Ambrosianus D448 inf., fols. 48r–70r; fol. 67r: “Theologiam et Cabalam non aliter distinguunt qui Cabalam induxerunt, nisi quod theologia maxime ex scripturis quas Deus tradidit publicandas, Cabala vero utpote secretioris doctrinae arcana continentem nolunt vulgari.” This codex also contains Pererius’ lectures on physics and metaphysics, as well as a treatise on the method of studying (see Lohr, Commentaries, and MPSI, II, nr. 85, 670–685). Cf. above note 14. 145 Tutius, Declaratio tabulae, fol. 65r: “Medicina enim et magia in alterationibus et mixtionibus [underlined in the manuscript] primum usurpant passiones et principia physica. etsi in alterationibus et mixtionibus positae sunt, quae per se primo sunt passiones corporis mobilis, et huius ratione competunt his et iis corporibus, quare principia per quae probantur hae passiones saltem prima principia sunt physicae.” 176 chapter nine and likens it with Pythagoreanism for being mainly an oral tradition.146 Drawing upon the symbolic and mystical meaning of numbers and letters, Kabbalah promises more than it can yield.

9.7 Dreams and Clairvoyance

When we return to Pererius, we note that there are two general interests that motivate him to define the meaning of the magical sciences, namely, the Catholic faith and the concept of science and philosophy. His discussion of alchemy is a typical example of How he sees the function of philosophy. The chapter in De magia (I, 12: “An per artem Magicum verum fieri possit ab Alchimistis”) repeats what he has already said in De principiis (VIII, 19–21, where however the title does not mention the magic arts). In the book about natural philosophy, alchemy was given a place in the treatise on causes. It is interesting to note that originally, this passage formed part of the lectures on metaphysics at the Collegio Romano, as we see from the surviving manuscript notes.147 Here, this topic is linked to the discussion of the seventh Book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. With regard to the theological motivation behind Pererius’ criticism, it suffices to recall that in his books on dreams and astrology, he explicitly republishes some quaestiones from his biblical commentaries. In the case of dreams, this is an appendix to the first Book of his commentary on Daniel;148 in the case of astrology, he republishes an appendix against astromancy from the second Book, on the creation of the sky.149 It seems rather unlikely that the theologian Pererius would have added passages that were only tangentially connected to the text he sought to interpret, and that he would later have republished some material that he found useful. On the contrary, I believe that the philosopher Pererius chose precisely these two biblical books because they were the favorite objects of occultist speculations, and that he employed the form of a commentary in order to combat the plague of superstition. In a programmatic commentary

146 Pererius, De magia 1612, lib. 1, c. 10, p. 78: “De Magia Cabalistica”. 147 Codd. Vat. Urb. Lat. 1296, fols. 193r ff., and Ambros. D448 inf., fols. 238r ff.—As mentioned earlier, this treatise is discussed and edited byMatton, “Les théologiens . . . et l’alchimie.” 148 Pererius, Commentariorum in Danielem, In Danielem lib. 1 (towards the end), Dispu- tatio de varietate et veritate somniorum, pp. 53–80. 149 Pererius, Commentariorum et disputationum in Genesim. Qu. 10 is followed by nr. 47–108: Disputatio adversus astrologos de astromantia, hoc est, de divination quae fit ex astris, pp. 103–123. benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 177 on the verse “Pueris autem his dedit Deus scientiam in omni libro, et sapientia” (Daniel 1:17), he discusses the question whether Daniel and his companions had to learn magic, and more precisely “quae ad magiae, auguriorum, incantationum, et astrologicorum praedictionum vanitatem, et falsitatem, atque impiam superstitionem pertinebant.” His reply sums up what the Jesuit aims to do throughout his entire work: certainly, they were obliged to do so, because it is a good thing to learn about magic as something false: “the knowledge of falsehood is true.”150 Pererius taught scripture at the Collegio Romano for many years.151 A document entitled De ratione interpretandi Sacram Scripturam in gym- nasiis nostrae Societatis,152 which is very probably the work of Pererius, recommends that scripture be taught in accordance with the literal meaning.153 This interpretation is to be reinforced through what we would call humanistic methods, that is, the study of Greek and Hebrew (without lessening the authority of the Vulgate) and respect for both philological questions and the historical milieu. Only after this would it be appropriate to investigate “alios sensus, quos generali vocabulo mysticos, specialiter autem et proprie allegoricos, tropologicos et anagogicos appellamus.”154 The mystical interpretation is clearly secondary and is at the service of piety. Nevertheless, it must be applied “modice tamen et cum delectu” and only to the extent that it is useful and is guided by the church fathers or other learned writers. In keeping with the spirit of the Catholic Reform, every speculative interpretation is excluded, thereby eliminating every suspicion of superstition or of wandering away from dogmatic correctness. Accordingly, speculations about foretelling the future by means of dreams are not, strictly speaking, an aspect of biblical studies. Book II of De magia takes up this subject and offers a kind of physiology or epistemology of dreams, discussing what causes them and whether their veracity is possible or improbable. Dreams are caused by the effect of food and drink on the images (“quas in scholis appellamus species”) that remain in

150 Pererius, Commentariorum in Danielem, 45f.: “nosse istiusmodi rerum falsitatem, per se quidem, et vt scholastici doctores loqui solent, speculative, non esse malum, quinetiam bonum esse, siquidem cognitio falsitatis vera est.” 151 According to Villoslada, Storia del Collegio Romano, 323, he taught from 1576 to 1590 and in 1596/97. 152 MPSI, VII, mon. 15 I, pp. 122–126; for the attribution, see p. 122; quotations from pp. 123f. 153 Ibid., p. 123: “insistendum est senui litterali tanquam firmissimo totius scripturalis tractionis fundamento.” 154 Ibid., pp. 123f. 178 chapter nine the imagination as the residue of perceptions; this explains why dreams are confused, and hence devoid of epistemological significance.155 But how then is it possible to have dreams that appear true? Pererius replies that such dreams can mirror the bodily or psychological impressions that are their immediate cause.156 In other words, there is nothing miraculous here. There are also dreams that are provoked by demons (or by the devil); in this case, it suffices to examine their meaning. If they lead to useless things such as making a show of “curious” sciences, or to something evil, the diagnosis is obvious.157 But while diabolical inspirations exist, there are also divine revelations by means of dreams, and the method of discernment is in practice identical, since it is the contents of the dream that are the sole criterion of its origin and veracity. The first criterion for ascertaining the divine origin of the dream is the importance of its meaning— for example, intuitions about theological truth that would be impossible by natural intellectual means. The second criterion is the moral certainty that the origin lies in God. The task of the person who receives enlightenment in this way will therefore be to ponder and reflect seriously on whether one has received a vision or an illusion.158 If one wishes to admit the existence of any kind of truth in dreams, a very careful introspection on one’s physiological, psychological, moral, and theological state is indispensable. Everyone who is familiar with the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola will at once recall the “Rules for the First and Second Days” which invite one to recognize “the movements of the soul” and the “discernment of the spirit.” This discernment of spirits is obtained from

155 De magia, II 1, 165f.: “Nam quae alia est istiusmodi somniorum causa nisi quia spiritus, sentiendi animae, presertim autem phantasiae, cuius est fingere somnia, deservientes, in quibus insident atque inhaerent, rerum vestigia, quas in scholis appellamus species, eiusmodi inquam spiritus, in somno vaporibus cibi potusque caput subeuntibus agitati et huc illius iactati, varia reddunt visa et somnia, sed propter inordinatam eorum spirituum iactationem, valde incomposita, saepe enim turbulenta et distorta, denique talia, ut nullam vim significandi aliquid habere queant.” 156 Ibid., II 2, 176f. 157 Ibid., 181: “si frequenter accidant somnia significantia res futuras, aut occultas, quarum cognitio non ad utilitatem, vel ipsius, vel aliorum, sed ad inanem curiosae scientiae ostentationem, vel etiam ad aliquid mali faciendum conferat: eorum somniorum auctorem esse daemonem, non temere credetur.” 158 Ibid., II 3, 183: “Primo quidem ex praestantia rerum que per somnium significantur: nimirum, si ea [. . .] solius Dei concessu ac munere potest homini contingere [. . .]. Deinde, hoc ipsum maxime declaratur interior quadam animorum illuminatione, atque commo- tione qua Deus sic mentem illustrat et auctoritate eius somni certiorem facit, ut Deus esse ipsius auctorem [. . .] agnoscat [. . .].” This is followed by a quotation from Saint Gregory about discernment “inter illusiones, atque revelationes.” benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 179 the fruits of inspiration; and it is certain that the evil spirit “in occultas fallaciarum suarum pedicas paulatim tractum illaqueat.”159 The curious reader might ask for psychagogical instructions, but the Jesuit teaches that there are four classes of dreams that can be legitimately taken into consideration: those that may indicate disturbances or illnesses of the body or the mind; dreams that can indicate speculative intuitions or actions; and finally dreams that occur with a frequency that may indicate diabolical or divine promptings. He excludes every kind of dream that claims or suggests any prediction of future events.160 But who is capable of assessing the value and meaning of such dreams? Once again, the Jesuit points to their origin. If they are caused by disturbances of a bodily nature, they are a matter for the physician. If they are so-called human dreams, they need a prudent man who can interpret their moral or intellectual meaning. If however they are dreams of divine inspiration, they are to be assessed and evaluated only by a wise person who is inspired and instructed in theological and spiritual matters.161 In this way, the Jesuit refers the reader to the Counter-Reformation program that excluded for theological reasons the possibility of private revelations and confirmed the necessity of an objective authority—the Church—for every interpretation of revelation. On the positive side, we see how Pererius locates the phenomenon of dreams within the limits of nature and psychology in order to free it, as far as possible, from occultist implications.

9.8 Astrology

This attitude, which we could call both Catholic and disillusioning, dominates his treatment of astrology too. He admits that there already exists a compendious work against astrology by Giovanni Pico (“sed multos ab eius lectione deterret prolixitas operis”). The very first paragraph that presents the major authorities follows exactly Pico’s Adversus astrologiam.162 With regard to the plethora of arguments there the Jesuit promises that he will concentrate on the most important topics: that astrology is contrary to the doctrine of the Church, that the astrologers are ignorant

159 Ignatius of Loyola, Exercitia spiritualia, §§ 313–336; quotation from the versio vulgata of § 332, p. 390. 160 De magia, II 7, 197–199. 161 Ibid., II 8, pp. 201f. 162 Ibid., III 1, § 1, p. 216 sq. cf. Pico, Disputationes adversus astrologiam, lib. 1, p. 80. 180 chapter nine of astronomy, that astrological prognostication is philosophically erroneous, that the stars are neither causes nor indicators of future events, and finally, how it is possible that some predictions appear true.163 One of the arguments—it would be pointless to present them all—is based on freedom, not in the sense of a rejection of determination, but because many future actions depend on free will. Not even the angels can predict such future actions—how much less can the astrologers and the demons do so!164 Besides this, it is inherently impossible for the astrologer to know things that are future, because they do not yet exist, and that which does not exist cannot be known. Accordingly, the future can be known only in keeping with its modality of being caused by an agent, in other words, by means of its causes.165 And these causes cannot be known, because they are only three in number: God, the sky, and the human will. It is obvious that the plans of God are unknowable. The sky is a causa universalis that contributes only in a general manner to future actions: its contribution is limited to preparing the conditions of these actions in physical and material terms, and it has no influence on the deliberations of the human soul. By definition, the will is “indeterminata et indifferens,” and therefore cannot be predicted in advance.166 These objections may or may not be convincing, but it is clear that the author employs logical and gnoseological argumentations on the basis of the definition and the nature of objects, in order to demonstrate the incoherence of the astrological argumentation. As can be expected Pererius refuted astrology and reduced it to either theological or physical explanations. He shared with Pico the concern that belief in superstitions jeopardizes Christian faith, and he shared with his fellow Renaissance thinkers an enormous amount of learning and reliance on ancient knowledge, but he looked into a future of organized and rationally argumented science. For this reason, in his Commentary on Genesis the Jesuit maintains explicitly that the to establish the number of heavens belongs to the philosophers and mathematicians and that it would be outright insane if a theologian would contend about it on the basis of the Bible, which does not determine anything in this regard.167

163 Ibid., p. 211. 164 Ibid., III 1, § 3, p. 223. 165 Ibid., III 3, § 14, p. 260: “quae futura sunt, nondum per se actu sunt, quod autem non est, prout non est, non intelligitur, sed prout aliquo modo est, nimirum potestate suis causis.” 166 Ibid., pp. 260f. 167 Pererius, Commentariorum et Disputationum in Genesim: Liber Secundus. Qui est de Coelis et astris secundum sacram Scripturam, et de Divinatione astrologica. qu. 4: De benedictus pererius: renaissance culture 181

Towards the close of his treatise, Pererius asks how, despite the improbability, it is possible for some astrological predictions to turn out to be correct. His first reply is similar to his interpretation of prophesying by means of dreams: it is the devil who helps certain wicked people to know things, thanks to the superiority that the evil spirit possesses.168 And although this argument appears to accept the existence of the demons of whom the classical literature speaks, we should note that the Jesuit always replaces the plural with the singular, reinterpreting the superstitious demonology in favor of the theology of Satan. He adds two other types of “divination” of the future. The first is based on the experience and the practical knowledge of the prudent man, which allow him to guess what will happen under specific circumstances.169 The second describes the self-fulfilling prophecy. Thanks to human credulity, desire or fear condition the mind to such an extent that the human person unconsciously works in keeping with the goal that he desires or abhors.170 Although Pererius’ little book is far from exhaustive, it gives the Catho- lic reader a useful instrument to ward off the temptations of the occult sciences. The Jesuit professor offers a magisterial explanation of the physical, metaphysical, theological, and especially psychological principles of the functioning of what appear to be the miracles worked by magicians and prophets. Humanist erudition and the rigor of scholastic philosophy and theology are employed in order to confute the pseudo-scientific and pious fallacies, in the conviction that sober information will immunize the reader against falsehood. But with his insistence on the reality of the prod- igies and prophecies (whether those recorded in the canonical scriptures or those worked by God or by the demon), the author not only disquali- fies fatuous superstitions. He also probably launches and consolidates the

numero coelorum, n. 19, p. 94: “Haec omnia eo commemoravimus, ut palam esst nusquam in sacris litteris certum numerum caelorum esse proditum:nec eos qui caelos plures tribus ponunt, videlicet vel novem vel decem vel undecim, sacris litteris contradicere. Quapropter cum Philosophi et Mathematici manifestis et necessariis rationibus concludant esse octo aut novem, aut etiam plures caelos: inscienter admodum profecto, ne dicam stulte, nunc faceret Theologus et sacrarum litterarum Interpres, si eorum opinionem tanquam divinae Scripturae contrariam, vel alienam rejiceret atque damnaret.” 168 De magia, III 5, §§ 33–39. 169 Ibid., § 40, pp. 321f. 170 Ibid., § 41, p. 323: “Solet enim eiusmodi credulitas instillare animis consulentium magnam spem rei bonae a divinis promissae, vel ingentem metum iniicere tristium et acerborum casuum calamitatisque ab illis praenunciatae. Hi autem duo affectus animi, cum potentissimi sint ad afficiendum et commovendum hominemn, crebro efficiunt, ac certe multum proficiunt, ut humana negotia ad praedictos fines perducantur.” 182 chapter nine myth of magic as a knowledge that is an alternative to empiricist, rationalistic, and dogmatic science. To sum up: Pererius’ influential De principiis were based on his lectures as a teacher at the Collegium Romanum, which earned him suspicion of being an advocate of Averroism. In reality, Pererius complied with the humanist and Renaissance requirements for scientific philosophical treatment: broad historic knowledge expressed in a pluralistic view on the matters in question. By way of integrating ancient Greek, Arab, and neo-Platonic syncretistic knowledge into his program of Jesuit science, he tried to meet the expectations of the broad academic public, while advocating a new ontology. Therefore, it was justified that Pererius was mostly recognized for his innovation in metaphysics, because intentionally his metaphysics shaped the treatment of science. chapter ten

“UBI NATURA FACIT CIRCULOS IN ESSENDO, NOS FACIMUS IN COGNOSCENDO.” THE DEMONSTRATIVE REGRESSUS AND THE BEGINNING OF MODERN SCIENCE IN CATHOLIC SCHOLASTICS

10.1 Scholastic and Cartesian Logic

There can be no doubt that the regressus in proof-theory was one of the most important achievements of Venetian Aristotelianism. The classic definition was given by Jacopo Zabarella: Regressus vero est inter causam, et effectum, quando reciprocantur, et effectus est nobis notior, quam causa, quum enim semper a notioribus nobis progrediendum sit, prius ex effectu noto causam ignotam demonstramus, deinde causa cognita ab ea ad effectum demonstrandum regredimur, ut sciamus propterquid est.1 The regressus is particularly important when historians of philosophy and science seek to emphasize the progressive significance of the Aristotelian logic of the Renaissance, which is closer to our own period. It is thus surprising that there is no clear presentation of the regressus proof in the relevant handbooks of the twentieth century.2 Obviously, this is connected both to logic and to the philosophy of science. But it is surprising3 only when one underestimates the significance for the philosophy of science and the intention of Aristotle’s Analytics, especially the Posterior Analyt- ics, and when one overlooks the double function of that logic, namely, as utens and as docens, since it both sets out how thinking functions in keeping with its own nature, and teaches how thinking ought to function. Presumably under the influence of Descartes (whose Regulae see the understanding as in need of guidance), but certainly on the model of the

1 Zabarella, Liber de regress, 324. Cf. Mikkeli, An Aristotelian Response, 92–101. 2 The best presentation is Jardine, “Epistemology of the sciences;” he describes his presentation as “tentative.” See also Prins, “Zabarella,” and Ganthaler, “Weiterbildung.” Regres- sus is not mentioned in the discussion of Zabarella in Kneale, The Development of Logic, 306f. 3 R. Pozzo seems to be surprised by this: see his article “Regressus/progressus.” 184 chapter ten

Port-Royal Logic,4 which translates the Regulae into the genre of a handbook, the philosophy of science—the art of thinking (L’art de penser)— was clearly regarded above all as an artificial thinking. Knowledge became the business of emending thinking that was naturally defective. Paradoxi- cally, this was done on the basis of a naïve ontology of ideas that regarded everything as real that is thought clearly and lucidly.5 Accordingly, the syllogisms become less important, since it is not they that generate knowledge, but rather the clear and distinct ideas and the scientific methodology in the sense of regulated induction and teaching praxis. If one looks at the scholastic treatises of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it is at once obvious, as the present study will endeavor to show that the significance of the theory of demonstratio in the Renaissance Aris- totelians lies precisely in the link between the philosophy of science and logic. I shall show, by means of a number of examples that I have selected almost exclusively according to the criterion of easy accessibility, that the school philosophers were concerned with the substantiality of logical argumentations and with the formal comprehensibility of that which is known with certainty. The adaptation, with varying degrees of intensity, of the Renaissance-Aristotelian theory sets out some of its implications, which are of fundamental interest for logic. As we would expect from the way in which the scholastics were aware of the problem, they struggle to save their doctrine from the Scylla of being irrelevant to academic research, but without succumbing to Charybdis of the methodology of the Cartesian enlightenment. From a scholastic perspective, the ontological status of that which has been gained epistemologically is the decisive problem of philosophy. Early modern scholastics are interested not only in clear ideas, but also in objectively true ideas. Naturally, every manual of philosophy contains a section on demonstratio, unless it is already influenced by the Port-Royal Logic. By way of explanation, let me recall that the manuals of Catholic scholasticism from the end of the sixteenth century onwards are constructed in accordance with a strongly topical principle, so that it is easy to find out in a schematic manner what they have to say about any particular theme. Calculability (that is to say, the stability of the horizon of expectation) was the precise goal of this genre of manuals. The proof-theory is found towards the end

4 Arnauld and Nicole, La logique. 5 See the chapter on the Pophyrian Tree in this book and the chapter on Suárez in Blum, Philosophy of Religion in the Renaissance. demonstrative regressus & beginning of modern science 185 of the logic book or of the Logica maior.6 Since these manuals are constructed more or less recognizably on the model of Aristotle’s Organon, the quaestio about the demonstratio usually takes the line of the Posterior Analytics. This is followed by the final section, a chapter on scientia. This means that one cannot find the proof-theory in the psychology of commentaries on the De anima, even when it is occasionally assigned to the third mentis operatio, which is rationality. If one recalls roughly the relevant sections of the Organon, one will immediately see that some of the formulae are repeated literally from one manual to another. These include the examples of logical conclusions, such as the conclusion from the rationality of the human being to his ability to laugh, or from the half-moon to the spherical form of the moon, or vice versa. Naturally, the uniformity of the presentation of the various topics always prompts the suspicion that the author has not sufficiently thought things through. However, this cannot be the case, since there are so many variants that one could establish a taxonomy of the treatments of each topic, distinguishing the various schools of thought. Two of the results of the investigation of such manuals seem at first sight disappointing. First of all, not many Jesuits speak of regressus; and secondly, only two of the manuals I have examined cite Jacopo Zabarella, namely the outsider Raphael Aversa, a Regular Cleric (1623), and the Pad- uan Franciscans Bartolomeo Mastri and Bonaventura Belluto in the Logic that they coauthored. Regressus does not occur as a theme in the Jesuits Petrus Fonseca (1605), Petrus Hurtado de Mendoza (1615), Franciscus de Oviedo (1640–1645), or Rodericus de Arriaga (1632).7

10.2 Franciscus Toletus

We do find remarks about the demonstrative regressus in Franciscus Tol- etus (1583), Thomas Compton Carleton (1649), and Melchior Cornaeus (1654), although for reasons that vary. Toletus writes a commentary on the text, and this obliges him to speak about Aristotle’s discussion of circular

6 Logic is usually split into syllogistics (Logica minor) and the theory of knowledge (Logica major). 7 Fonseca, Institutionum dialecticarum libri octo. Oviedo, Integer cursus philosophicus. P. Hurtado de Mendoza, Disputationes de universa philosophia Arriaga, Cursus philosophicus, 1632. See Sousedík, “Arriagas Universalienlehre.”—William Wallace explains some Gali- leo’s scientific method with the regressus method as he learned from Jesuits: Wallace, “Galileo’s Jesuit Connections,” 112–118. 186 chapter ten reasoning; he appends a quaestio De regressu demonstrativo.8 He identifies the difficulty of the regressus in the question whether this does in fact involve a syllogism, and whether it proves anything.9 He then mentions a distinction that is drawn by recent authors (iuniores), following Averroes, namely, between proofs propter quid, which prove the existence and at the same time the cause (the well-known demonstratio potissima), and other proofs that prove only the cause, but not the existence: those recent philosophers “admit that the ‘regress’ is made from the cause to the effect insofar as it was known to exist; however, the regress shows the cause insofar as its effect was unknown.”10 Toletus regards the special achievement of the regressus—which is not simply a demonstratio potissima—as the establishing of a causal explanation. This, however, does not resolve the question of the ontological status of the effect, which retains the uncertainty that empirical observations de facto possess. The progressus usually takes its starting point in an observed state of affairs, deduces a cause of this state of affairs, and demonstrates that this is indeed the cause by means of a kind of countercheck with regard to the observed state of affairs—which thereby appears as the effect of the cause. Let us take as our example the ability of the human being to laugh. The demonstrative regressus shows that this is an aspect of the general rationality with which the human being is equipped. According to the authors whom Toletus cites, the causal connection would be displayed, but not ensured, by the fact that laughter exists or that what was observed is laughter. Tol- etus’ own solution appeals to Thomas Aquinas and Themistius: the prior

8 It is also possible to write a commentary on Aristotle without explicitly discussing the problem of regressus. One example is Sylvester Maurus of the Collegium Romanum, who taught the philosophy course from 1653 to 1656: Aristotelis Opera omnia quae extant brevi paraphrasi et litterae perpetuo inhaerente expositio. Unfortunately, I have not been able to consult his Quaestiones philosophicae, Rome 1658–1670 (reprint, Rome 1876). These nineteenth-century editions were made by Franz Ehrle or M. Liberatore, who thereby coopt Maurus to one of the precursors of Neo-Thomism. On proof-theory: in relation to Anal. Post. 13, Maurus has no reflections on the proof via regressus (see Vol. 1, p. 277); in relation to ch. I 13, on the distinction between demonstratio quia and demonstratio propter quid, the commentator distils three rules: (1) both forms of proof are convertibiles, although they are cause and effect; (2) the demonstratio quia cannot be converted into a propter quid, if the effect is wider than (excedit) the cause (a horse moves, but not every animal does so); (3) under the same condition, however, a demonstratio propter quid is possible, which in turn cannot be converted into a quia (pp. 302f.). 9 In Lib. Post., ch. III, p. 311: “Sed difficultas est: an cum talis regressus sit syllogisticus, sit aliqua probatio, et per talem regressum probemus, et cognoscamus.” 10 Ibid., p. 312: “et sic admittunt regressum fieri a causa ad effectum cognitum prius quantum ad esse: sed regressus ostendit causam secundum quam ignotus erat effectus.” demonstrative regressus & beginning of modern science 187 knowledge of the existence of the effect was indeterminate and individual, but the regressus makes this knowledge something that is universally known: “Dico igitur omnem Demonstrationem probare effectum esse, et simul illius ostendere causam [. . .]. Postquam Demonstratio accedit, eum (sc. effectum) universaliter cognoscimus, et certius et clarius” (p. 312). The Jesuit next takes up the distinction between the existence and the cause of an empirical datum. He affirms that the existence of that which is caused is also ensured by the universalization and by the distinct and clear knowledge, since (as we are entitled to infer) the causality of the cause entails the existence of the effect. This is of great metaphysical, indeed perhaps theological significance, since there is only one cause with effects that are not contingent in relation to its own self, namely, God. All other causes are indeed causes of de facto effects, but only a posteriori, since it is completely contingent whether one being causes another being. It is only with regard to causality that one can regard a cause as necessary in relation to an effect; considered as being, it is not a necessary cause of anything. This means that the cause—also in the sense of an undifferenti- ated question about “why”—is always a posteriori (with the exception, as we have said, of the eminent being that is necessarily also a cause). Toletus presents the objection that the imperfection of knowledge is transposed from what is regarded as the effect onto the knowledge of the cause: but is not the knowledge of the cause just as uncertain as the knowledge of the effect?11 The Jesuit replies by pointing to the cause that is discovered and to “other speculations of the intellect” that lead to a more precise knowledge of the cause qua cause, and thus to a more universal knowledge of that which is caused.12 In other words, the epistemic status of the empirical datum is improved, not only by the discovery of the cause in the simple sense of the term, but above all by means of the additional speculations—that is to say, through what other authors call the clarification of the definition of the cause per se (Zabarella calls this the negotiatio mentis)—and in general by the sublation of the individual to a known universal. At the same time, the ontological status of the known instance is improved from one single datum to an effect that is capable of being universalized.

11 Ibid.: “Dices, si illa cognitio effectus fuit imperfecta, et particularis, cum per eam per- venimus in causam, etiam cognitio causae erit imperfecta?” 12 Ibid.: “[. . .] tamen ex ipsa causa inventa, et alijs intellectus speculationibus perfectius cognoscimus causam, adeo ut per eam regrediantur ad effectum universaliter cognoscendum, quod ignotum erat ante causam.” 188 chapter ten

In order to grasp the ontological orientation of this proof-theory, it may be helpful to refer to the definition of the universal in the next chapter of the Posterior Analytics (I 4), which Toletus paraphrases as follows: “Tunc autem est universale, cum [. . .] secundum quod ipsum est. [. . .] tale igitur universale est necessarium [. . .]” (p. 317, nr. 9: the universal is a universal insofar as it is what it is, and hence it is necessary). The universal is given here together with the determination of the essence; only then is it suitable for a demonstration, as Toletus further notes: “quia potissima est Demonstratio, in qua passio cum subjecto convertitur.” Accordingly, the question of the existence of that which is caused becomes superfluous, since it is subsumed under the universal aspect of the cause. The necessary relationship between the effect and the causa is thus ontologically given; only on this basis is it epistemologically comprehensible. The contingency and unclearness of that which is caused—also in the sense of that which is de facto ascertained—are eliminated by the clarity with which the cause is understood in its ontological status. Causality is then no longer the question about “Why?”; rather, it is transformed into the question “What?”. The demonstratio propter quid thus draws its potential in terms of causality from the quid est of the cause. What Toletus does when he refutes the objection about the certainty of the cause is substantially the same as the negotiatio mentis that Zabarella sees as the decisive element for the scientific character of the regressus. We must reflect on why this is possible. But first let us see how the two other Jesuits deal with the regressus. Thomas Compton Carleton,13 who was born in England and was active mostly in France and the Low Countries, is regarded as the first professor who explicitly argued against Descartes in his philosophy course. His manual (1649) shows how proof-theory is connected to theology, since he believes that the “syllogismus Theologicus” contains as its second premise a dogma (de fide), so that it is “obscure” from an epistemological perspective and is not an obvious conclusion. In other words, it is not a scientific proof.14 Clearly, this applies to the proof a priori, while several authors hold that the proof a posteriori, that is to say, the proof from the effect to the cause, is the form of proof typically used by metaphysi-

13 Carleton, Philosophia universa, 1664. See Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries, 97f. 14 Log. disp., 48 sect. I, n. 2, p. 187: “syllogismus Theologicus, cuius cum altera semper praemissa sit de fide, et consequenter obscura, conclusio evidens esse non potest, sicque nec est scientia proprie, nec Demonstratio.” demonstrative regressus & beginning of modern science 189 cians to establish the existence of God. This is stated explicitly by Andreas Semery SJ (1682).15 The Dominican Antonius Goudin takes the same position.16 Indeed, Neo-Thomists such as Joseph Gredt classify the proofs of God’s existence as typical forms of the application of the “demonstratio regressiva sive circularis.”17 Carleton, who discusses regressio in the context of the middle term of a syllogism, explicitly recalls the rule: “modus cognoscendi sequatur modum essendi,” i.e., in order to make the power of proof dependent on the definition the way of cognition should con- form the mode of being. He argues that when this is granted, the regressus is not a vicious circle, since the one who argues “melius penetravit” the cause—thus proceeding, as one should, from that which is better known to that which is less known. So far, so good; but then the Englishman adds that ultimately, nature itself sometimes contrives circles, for example in the relationship between vapor and rainfall. This means that “ubi natura facit circulos in essendo, nos facimus in cognoscendo.”18 This is a very remarkable conclusion. On the one hand, it repeats the methodological distinction (mentioned above) between the ordo essendi and the ordo cognoscendi, but on the other hand, it is somewhat ironical that the course of nature is to serve as an epistemological justification. Above all, however, this remark contains a reference to empirical research, but the casualness of this reference makes it inconsequential. The reliability of the mutual transition between vapor and rain serves primarily to permit us to predict the one from the other.19 This is certainly not a scientific demonstratio. It is an affirmation based on experience. In this way, the empirical method of the natural sciences merely flares up for a moment, and is immediately extinguished.

15 Semery, Triennium philosophicum, annus primus, disp. 7 qu. 1, p. 725. Andreas Semery (1630–1717) taught the three-years course in philosophy at the Collegium Romanum from 1671 to 1674; see Villoslada, Storia del Collegio Romano, pp. 235, 328, 330, 332. On the a posteriori structure of proofs of God’s existence, see Blum, “Gottes Plan.” 16 Goudin, Philosophia juxta inconcussa tutissimaque Divi Thomae dogmata, 1736, Log. maj. Pars 3 qu. art. 2, p. 367: “Saepe enim effectus sunt nobis notiores causis: [. . .] Sic existentiam dei cognoscimus ex effectibus naturalibus, ex quibus etiam plerumque attributa ejus demonstramus.” For a sixteenth-century Thomist interpretation, see Di Liso, Domingo de Soto, 268. 17 Gredt, Elementa Philosophiae Aristotelico-Thomisticae, vol. 1, 1899, 141. Salcedo, Logica, sect. 141, p. 153. 18 Carleton, Log. disp., 48 sect. 3 n. 4–5, p. 189 (this quotation is a marginal note). 19 Ibid.: “ut ex abundantia vaporum demonstrare possumus futuram pluviam, et ex plu- via futuram similiter abundantiam, non eorundem vaporum, sed aliorum.” 190 chapter ten

10.3 French Contexts

We see the same thing in Melchior Cornaeus’ unenthusiastic treatment of regressus (1657). He unceremoniously ascribes this method to the “antiqui” and does not say explicitly what he himself thinks about it. It is however clear that he mentions it only because he feels obliged to do so. In the light of the Aristotelian criticism and the relative acceptance of the circular conclusion, he draws a distinction between a material and a formal circle. He presents the demonstrative regressus as a material circle, because the same thing becomes a premise “not as a conclusion” but “because the proposition is known from somewhere else.”20 It is impossible to overlook the fact that Cornaeus is tackling here the challenge of the nascent rationalistic science. This is why he quashes the objection (originally Aristotelian) that every demonstration is circular, by arguing that the respect (respectus) changes in every instance, since that which is to be proved is less known beforehand and better known afterwards. He then answers the objection that the demonstratio quia is no proof at all, by employing the distinction between causa in essendo and in cognoscendo: the demonstratio quia also has its starting point in a cause, since the knowledge of the effect is the cause of the demonstration. He seems to want to bring the demonstration a posteriori back into the pattern that scientific knowledge is only knowledge of causes: with regard to the scientific procedure, unsecured empiricism has the status of a cause (since it launches the scientific procedure), although the thing that is known is an effect. Cornaeus too worked for a time in France, and we have good reasons to assume that he came under the influence of the Cistercian Eustachius a S. Paulo, who in turn was a Crypto-Ramist.21 Eustachius’ manual22 affirms that the demonstratio quia supplies “certam quidem et indubitatam rei notitiam, non tamen scientiam nisi impropriam.” This seems to mean that although a proof based on empirical facts does not satisfy the conditions of science in the strict sense of the term, it is nevertheless reliable.

20 Cornaeus, Curriculum philosophiae Peripateticae, logica, tract. 6, disp.3, p. 214: “ut enuntiatio est aliunde cognita”. On Cornaeus Hellyer, “‘Because the Authority of My Supe- riors Commands’,” esp. 343–346. 21 See in this book section 8.3 and section 15.3. 22 Eustachius a S. Paulo, Summa Philosophiae, Paris: Chastellain 1609 (I have used the edition 1616). See also Armour, “Descartes and Eustachius a Sancto Paulo;” Ferrier, “Eustache de Saint-Paul;” Ariew, “Eustache de Saint-Paul” and Descartes and the Last Scho- lastics, pp. 26–29. demonstrative regressus & beginning of modern science 191

Only the demonstratio potissima is sure and certain, because it is based on the precise definition of the matter (subjectum) that is presented in the proof. According to Eustachius, however—and here comes the disap- pointment for science—such definitions are extremely rare, since “for the most part there are no accurate and reliable definitions of things.”23 The scientific quality of the proof thus depends on the precision of the definition, which is however hard to achieve. In Eustachius, a definitio accurata is either metaphysical (that is, based on genus and difference) or physical (that is, in accordance with matter and form, as the essential natural components).24 The naïve reader might think that this surely cannot be so very difficult; but we soon learn that precisely because of the universality on which Toletus constructed the whole of his ontology, a definition is unattainable—since it ought to indicate the nature of the thing as something universal. “The nature of a thing cannot possibly be observed and contemplated, naked and at it is, unless one undresses it of every particular circumstance.”25 Eustachius makes it implicitly clear that the ontological status of that which is defined increases the distance between res and intellectus, since the thing that is known by means of speculation is not known in its concrete being. The goal of the humanistic-rhetorical philosophy of science was precisely to grasp things as what they concretely are, both linguistically and speculatively. This observation thus shows us the non-scholastic perspective of Eustachius’ manual, since what matters to him is not the ontological, but the gnoseological status of the objects of knowledge, and he devotes a special quaestio to listing eight conditions for the premises in a proof. The eighth condition runs as follows: Octavo debent esse sempiterna, hoc est, perpetuae veritatis. Ista autem complexae veritatis perpetuitas in propositionibus oritur ex necessaria con- nexione attributi cum subiecto, licet non sit necessaria attributi aut subjecti existentia.26 This means, for example, that the proposition: “homo est animal” is true even if no human being exists. This is the reversal of what Toletus had assumed, namely, certainty of the existence on the basis of the certainty of the cause. Evidence replaces existence.

23 Dialect., 3 tr. 3 disp. 1 q. 1, pp. 146f: “accuratae rerum definitiones ut plurimum nos latent.” 24 Dialect., 1 tr. 4 q. 1, p. 99. 25 Ibid., q. 3, p. 102: “Non potest autem rei natura nude et sicuti est, speculari, nisi omnibus particularibus circumstantiis expolietur.” 26 Dialect., 3 tr. 3 disp. 1q. 3, p. 151. 192 chapter ten

Evidential quality is already given a special role in the regressus in the manual of Carolus Franciscus d’Abra de Raconis, which was one source of Descartes’ knowledge of scholastic philosophy.27 Raconis, who taught at the Collège de Navarre and was not a member of a religious order, but was probably a convert from Calvinism to Catholicism, maintains that a completely circular proof (circulus uniformis) does not exist. Rather, the apparent circularity of the proof in the demonstrative regressus is based on the difference between the priority of knowledge of a thing in itself and for us: “notius et prius natura” vs. “posterius autem et ignotius nobis.” This is why one can perfectly well include the effect, as soon as it has been made “evidentior,” as the middle term in a proof, since it no longer functions as something unknown, but as something known, “no matter how this state of affairs may have come about.”28 This makes it clear why so many seventeenth-century scholastics are not interested in the negotiatio mentis as a part of the demonstrative regressus: it is in any case the problem of definition and the necessity of the subject and the predicate that determine the scientific character of a conclusion, whether this is a posteriori, a priori, or circular. Accordingly, the fourth condition in Eustachius is that the premises must be notior. This higher level of being known does not mean that the premises must also be more true, but only that their evidential character must be stronger: “idest, veritatem habent magis perspectam, proindeque certiora sunt, ac illis firmius assentitur intellectus.”29 This means that it is not the thing mentioned in the premise that gives the proof its scientific quality, but only the assent on the basis of insight and certainty—wherever these may come from. Scholastic philosophers of science believe in the ontological background of logical argumentation, but their modern or post-scholastic successors replace ontology by the philosophy of science. The passages quoted from Eustachius are of course also to be found in Étienne Gilson’s famous Index scholastico-cartésien.30 Descartes himself

27 Raconis, Summa totius philosophiae, 1629 (earlier versions appeared from 1617 onwards). See Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries, 3f. (under “Abra”); Ariew, Descartes, 27 and frequently. 28 Raconis, Summa, Logica, p. 147: “[. . .] postea talem effectum evidentiorem factum adhiberi tanquam medium in secunda demonstratione, ad probationem causae, et consequenter tunc reddi notiorem ipsa causa, qua tamen ignotior erat in prima demonstratione. Unde patet nunquam ignotus, ut ignotus est, poni tanquam medium in demonstration, sed postquam ex ignotiori factum est notius, quacumque ratione id contigerit.” 29 Eustachius, Dialect., 3 tr. 3 disp. 1 q. 3, p. 149. 30 Gilson, Index scholastico-cartésien, 1966, 66. See Ariew, Descartes, 39–41. On Gilson and on Descartes’ relationship to Humanism, see also Blum, Philosophenphilosophie, ch. 2.1. demonstrative regressus & beginning of modern science 193 has little to say about demonstratio, because a mental clarification takes place on a much higher level. We find the following line of argument in the Principia: the first attribute of God is that he is veracious (verax). The consequence (in Descartes’ words) is that the cognitive faculty cannot pertain to any object that is not true, provided that it is perceived clare et distincte.31 For all that we in fact need are rules for clarification and differentiation, in order to ensure the substantiality of knowledge. The proof-theory cultivated by the scholastics is consequently reduced in the Port-Royal Logic to two short rules: To prove all the propositions that are somewhat obscure, employing for their proof only the definitions that have preceded or the axioms that will have been accepted, or the propositions that will already have been demonstrated. Never to exploit the ambiguity of terms by failing to substitute mentally the definitions that restrict them and that explain them.32 If one recalls the Aristotelian proof-theory, as this was discussed by the authors presented above, one will recognize some of its elements, such as the unclarity of knowledge, the importance of the definition, and the mental operation. But everything is based purely on knowledge; ontology makes no appearance. Certainty is acquired by recourse to preceding certainties and analyses of concepts. It was however not Descartes himself who formulated these two rules. They are taken over almost literally from Blaise Pascal’s De l’art de persuader.33 Pascal had explicitly eliminated ontology from the “art of persuasion,” since his “art” is addressed exclusively to the soul’s ability to perceive truths, as distinct from the will and from faith in divine truths. Unlike Descartes, therefore, Pascal does not blend logic and theology. In this treatise, he sets out the principles for bringing conviction, and it is against this background that we should read the second proposition in Arnauld and Nicole: Pascal’s concern is “always to substitute mentally the definitions in the place of the things that are defined [. . .].”34 Instead of a simple designation of a thing, one should employ its definition. This is in reality a remnant of the negotiatio mentis, since its task too was to transpose the empirically discovered fact into

31 Descartes, Principia Philosophiae, I 51, p. 16. 32 Arnaud and Nicole, Logique, IV XII, p. 334. 33 Schobinger, Blaise Pascals Reflexionen. 34 Pascal, De l’art de persuader, 87. 194 chapter ten a (universalizing) definition. Unlike the scholastic interpreters, however, Pascal does not expect any substantial certainty from the definition. The reason for this elegant and radical solution to the epistemological problem is precisely the uncertainty with regard to the link between predicates, subjects, causes, and things in the scientific proof. This uncertainty obscures the mental operation of the ontological clarification of the cause within the regressus proof, as we see in Scotist treatments of the demonstratio. Like Cornaeus, Sebastian Dupasquier, a Conventual Franciscan, taught in 1693 that one should not object to the circular conclusion if it is “materialis sive difformis,” that is to say, if the conclusion and the premises that are repeated are known in different manners.35 We then learn that the two conclusions differ precisely in their scientific character: the regressus establishes a priori, scientific, and intellectual knowledge. Dupasquier then observes that this is why the regressus usually proceeds from the demonstratio quia to the demonstratio propter quid, rather than vice versa. Other- wise, if one knew the cause, one would already know the effect too—but other instances also exist. He now presents the example of vapor and rain, not in order to illustrate the naturalness of circular processes, but as an instance of the application of the interchange between cause and effect.36

10.4 Franciscans

The most important Franciscan Scotists in the seventeenth century are Poncius and Belluto with Mastri. In 1642, Johannes Poncius, an Irish Fran- ciscan who taught at the Collegio S. Isidoro in Rome (also known as John Punch/Ponce), affirmed that the applicability and validity of the regressus do not necessarily require that a clarification takes place before the return to the demonstratio propter quid. What is required is that a sufficient knowledge exists on the basis of the premises of the first syllogism, and that this knowledge is independent of the second syllogism.37 This seems

35 Dupasquier, Summa philosophiae scholasticae et scotisticae, Log. disp., 12 q. 6, pp. 398f. 36 Ibid., p. 400. 37 Poncius, Integer philosophiae cursus ad mentem Scoti, Logica, disp., 21 q. 5, p. 720: “Huiusmodi regressus valet et utilis est scientiis, quoties habetur sufficiens cognitio de praemissis primae demonstrationis, independenter a secunda demonstratione [. . .].” On Poncius (1599–1661), see Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries, 362, and Heider, “Mastrius and Punch.” demonstrative regressus & beginning of modern science 195 to open the door to empiricism, since the empirical premises of the demonstratio quia are given the gnoseological status of guarantees of certainty. In this instance, however, Poncius finds it difficult to understand how the premises can be known confuse and yet per se.38 Here, we must mention that in addition to the characteristics of a proof that are based on the Aristotelian definition—the premises must be true, primary, immediate, earlier and better known than the conclusion—Poncius also affirms that premises must possess evidential character.39 Why is this? The Francis- can summarizes Aristotle as stating the principle that the premises must be priores et notiores based on the essential definition, because this “is of its nature earlier and better known” than properties that can be inferred from it, or than empirical findings “for us.” However, he turns this unmis- takably ontological condition into epistemology and says Aristotle meant thereby that the property because of which something is (“propter quod [. . .] tale”) is also known; it is all the more known, the more it is “such” a thing (tale), and in this sense it is also the most true. He now emphasizes to the earlier/later distinction in any knowledge and the epistemological dependency (dependentia). It follows that “being such” or “being that particular thing” makes a thing an object of knowledge: it makes it true and epistemologically primary. Poncius, however, leaps from here to the evidential character, since “being such” or “being that particular thing” is already equivalent to being known. Accordingly, he notes: “that is more evident which is more appearing; and more appearing is what requires fewer [conditions] to appear; that requires fewer to appear which is less dependent [on conditions] to appear.”40 The transposition of the emphasis from ontology to epistemology, with the gradual elimination of substantiality from the philosophy of science, is thus born of distrust with regard to the scientific status of the ontological definition, and also of interest in the facticity of the data. The problem of regressus is discussed twice by the adversaries of Poncius, Bartolomeo Mastri and Bonaventura Belluto, two Conventual Franciscans who taught philosophy in Padua and were in many ways more important philosophers. They discuss it both in the Institutiones

38 Poncius, Integer philosophiae cursus, 721: “Rursus valde difficulter declarari potest, quomodo praemissae demonstrationis possunt confuse cognosci, quandoquidem debeant esse propositiones per se notae.” 39 Ibid., q. 2, p. 712: “praemissa sint etiam evidentiores conclusione.” 40 Ibid.: “illud est magis evidens, quod magis apparet; illud autem magis apparet, quod minus requirit, ut appareat, et illud minus requirit ut appareat, quod minus dependet ut appareat [. . .].” 196 chapter ten

Dialecticae, a work that corresponds to the customary Summulae or the Logica minor, in which formal logic is taught, and in their great theoretical work on logic.41 In the propaedeutics to logic, the students learn above all, on the basis of the well-known passages in the Posterior Analytics, that the knowledge of empirical things is possible with the help of the abstractive activity of the human intellect, so that one who arrives at a “therefore” will also arrive at a firm assent (“certum [. . .] assensum”). The Paduan scholars also teach that the regressus is not circular, for the simple reason that it is made up of two different forms of proof, namely, the demonstratio quia and the propter quid. The detailed quaestio on this topic repeats this observation (n. 67) and then emphasizes, with references to the school of Coimbra, Raphael Aversa, John of Saint Thomas,42 and others that this kind of circular conclusion (regressus difformis, materialis) takes its starting point the second time round in an improved knowledge of the premises.43 The text then informs the reader, with reference to Bartholo- maeus Amicus SJ, that Agostino Nifo rejected every circular conclusion, but that their Franciscan confrère and predecessor in the house of studies in Padua, Philippus Fabri, affirmed the usefulness of the demonstrative regressus.44 As Charles Schmitt has pointed out, Fabri attempted during his professorship in the house of studies in Padua not only to make Duns Scotus, his own order’s teacher, acceptable among contemporary philosophers (which obliged him to attack the crypto-Nominalist and superfi- cially Thomist philosophy of the Jesuits and the Dominican Thomism), but also to raise the Scotism of his own faculty to the level of the Vene- tian Aristotelianism. Mastri and Belluto reap the harvest of these labors and provide the historian of philosophy with the most important source

41 Mastrius and Bellutus, Philosophiae ad mentem Scoti cursus integer, vol. 1, 1708, Inst. Pars 2, tr. 1 ch. 4, and Log. disp., 13 q. 4. On Mastrius and Bellutus, see Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries, 249f. 42 See Johannes a Sancto Thoma, OP, Cursus philosophicus thomisticus, Log. q. 25 art. 3, p. 338. John is one of the few who affirm that every demonstratio propter quid is an a priori proof and that every demonstratio a posteriori is a quia proof—but not vice versa. Cf. Johannes a Sancto Thoma, Tractatus De Signis: The Semiotic of John Poinsot. 43 Johannes, Log. disp., 13 q. 4 n. 67, p. 363. 44 Ibid., nr. 70. See Philipppus Fabri, Philosophia naturalis Io. Duns Scoti. The reference is to theorem 9. Contrary to what the title suggests, this book contains a complete course in philosophy; logic is discussed in theor. 1–19. Unfortunately, I was not able to check this reference. On Fabri, see Lohr, Latin Commentaries, 137; on regressus in Fabri, see Schmitt, “Filippo Fabri’s ‘Philosophia naturalis Io. Duns Scoti’,” esp. 301f. Cf. Poppi, “La scientificità del discorso teologico,” 349–355. demonstrative regressus & beginning of modern science 197 for the rival currents and the philosophical topics of seventeenth-century scholasticism. In Scotist logic too, therefore, the regressus is a “difformis et materialis” circle. Its main problem is the growth in knowledge or certainty (n. 71, pp. 363f.). The Franciscans appeal to Scotus in their attempt to clarify this in two moves that they believe “in unum coincidunt.” They begin by setting out the steps of a demonstrative regressus of this kind: First, one knows confuse about the effect, that is to say, through the empirical finding that it exists. Then one finds the cause resolutorie, by abstracting what in the given object is a cause and what is not a cause. Thirdly, it is proved by means of the demonstratio quia that this cause exists in such an object. (The processus, which remains confusus with regard both to the effect and to the cause, goes up to this point.) Finally, the effect is proved through the cause a priori and distincte, “ut habeatur certissima cognitio, et scientia de rebus.”45 The second way is said to be suggested by Scotus (quol. 7A)—namely, that “propter quid non habetur a sensu nisi mediante ulteriori cognitione”— and is said to be discussed extensively by Zabarella. The manual refers here to his work De regressu, emphasizing in great detail the negotiatio mentis, which is missing from most treatises on this subject. The compulsion not to omit anything preserved Mastri and Bellutus from something that we can see in the other Scotists, namely, that the investigation of the conditions under which premises are obligatory ends up in the deontologization of the philosophy of science. If one consults the other authorities whom the Franciscans adduce, one will observe that although Raphael Aversa presents the regressus step by step and even quotes Zabarella, he nevertheless leaves out the negotiatio, since he is interested only in the position of the premises, not in the matter that is to be proved or the substantiality of such forms of proof.46 As I promised at the beginning of this essay, the commentaries and expositions of the school philosophers of the seventeenth century allow one to recognize the importance of Zabarella’s theory of regressus for the

45 Log. disp., 72, p. 364. 46 Aversa, Logica, q. 28 sect. 14, p. 686. 198 chapter ten philosophy of science and to observe the change of course taken by the Cartesian philosophy of science. It becomes clear that the demonstrative regressus displays the ontological implications of the theory of scientific knowledge and challenges us to draw a distinction between the mental operation of logic and the substantiality of its objects. One possible option, as a consequence of this, was the purely epistemological understanding of knowledge; another option was to reflect on the metaphysical presuppositions of knowledge. chapter eleven

ARISTOTELIANISM MORE GEOMETRICO: HONORÉ FABRI

When reading a philosopher who is supposed to have been an Aristote- lian, we have the choice between two different approaches: (1) we may look for the framework into which the author tends to fit, or (2) we may find the peculiarities that make him outstanding among the Peripatetic philosophers of his time. In some previous studies on scholasticism in the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, I mostly tried to establish the framework itself, which helps to identify an Aristotelian author. For Catholic schools, the cursus philosophicus of the Jesuits was this framework, and Honoré Fabri, too, taught the standard course at a Jesuit college in Lyon twice between 1640 and 1646.1 The aim of this chapter is to show how Fabri distanced himself from the institutional framework by transforming his personal Aristotelianism into a claim for rational method. Born on 8 April 1608 near Lyon in France, Honoré Fabri was trained in Jesuit colleges—among them the Roman College, where he studied for one year. After his studies he first taught in Arles, and then became a master of studies (praefectus) in Aix-en-Provence. In 1647 he had to leave France, probably because his Order was not pleased with his way of teaching philosophy.2 He was then appointed as Poenitentiarius (literally: confessor) at St. Peter’s in Rome, a position which at that time implied juridical and political power. There he got more involved in the general debates amongst European intellectuals, which included the exchange of letters with Mersenne and Leibniz; and he was also possibly involved in the proscription of Descartes’s writings.3 Lack of diplomacy in a book of Fabri’s in defence of Jesuit moral theology forced his superiors to remove him from this position in 1680.4 He died in Rome in 1688.

1 On Fabri’s life and works see Lukens, An Aristotelian Response, and Caruso, “Fabri.” 2 Baillet, La vie, ii, p. 300. 3 Baillet, La vie, ii, p. 529. 4 Hurter, Nomenclator, 4, cols. 613–15. 200 chapter eleven

11.1 A Key to Aristotelianism

Fabri was kind enough to provide a key to how to read his philosophical works as one variant of Aristotelianism in the seventeenth century: complaints received by his superiors had forced him to present three apologetic letters to his fellow Jesuit, Ignatius Gaston Pardiès.5 Pardiès, who died shortly after the letters had been written in 1673, was a well-known scholar of natural philosophy and mathematics and he too had problems with censorship.6 (Incidentally, however, from the preface added by the printer, we can gather that this kind of controversy was fashionable and promising for a publisher.) In the three letters to Pardiès, Fabri had to defend himself on three fronts: Cartesianism, corpuscularianism and deviation from the standard teaching of the Jesuits. He thus demarcated the extent of his adaptation of Aristotle. Since the third letter offers an insight into Jesuit Aristotelianism, we will start there. We will see how the author pretends to comply with the requirements of the school by shifting the emphasis of teaching from ‘positive doctrine’ to method. This allowed Fabri to incorporate elements of corpuscular physics in his philosophical teaching without falling into Democritean atheism—this was the argument of the second letter. The first letter endeavoured to point out his distance from Descartes in the light of the similarity of their method, especially in using geometry and its evidence and certitude as the model for philosophy. Fabri tried to convince the reader that Aristotelianism had to be pursued more geometrico.7 Jesuit philosophy appears in the third letter with reference to an offi- cial document, the Ratio atque institutio studiorum of 1599: the General Congregations of the Jesuits repeatedly discussed complaints that many teachers of philosophy and theology did not follow the rules set out in the Ratio.8 The authors of this regulation of studies believed in the power of authority to structure a curriculum. Authority was not alone helpful and handy for prescribing the contents of some studies; authority—or authorized truth—was also the principle of any curriculum, and a curriculum for a unified doctrine was only possible if it dealt with a doctrine

5 Fabri, Epistolae tres. 6 Costabel, “Pardiès.” Note that Fabri was not honoured with even a paragraph in this extensive history of philosophy. Leibniz had words of praise for Pardiès in his letter to Fabri, see Leibniz, Briefwechsel, 286–7. 7 Fabri, Epistolae, 14: “iuxta methodum geometricam . . . ad novae scientiae cumulum”; p. 15: “ad novam, eamque apodicticam et geometricam forrnam inducendam”. 8 MPSI, 5, contains the final versions of the Ratio studiorum. aristotelianism more geometrico: honoré fabri 201 at all, and not with method—as Descartes was advocating. This is evident because opinions, thoughts and facts may well be discovered in a variety of ways (and modern didactics tries to prepare students for such discoveries), but truth cannot be taught as a variety. What can be taught is what can be common to all students, and possibly to all professors: that was the whole idea of the Ratio studiorum. The complaints were that some teachers changed the sequence of topics, mixing theological and philosophical items because these were always interrelated, and that others touched on topics in their lessons which, while not offending against the Catholic belief, were nevertheless useless for both knowledge and the benefit of the Church. A general instruction on teaching, including lists of topics which ought to be excluded from university teaching, was issued after the Ninth Congregation of 1649/50 by the then General, Franciscus Piccolomini, a philosopher himself.9 These sentences were compiled without explaining what was so dangerous about them, and those were certainly not the last in a long series of ‘forbidden teachings’ in intellectual history, the most famous predecessors being the condemnations of 1277 in Paris. It was always up to the reader to detect the context in which the statements acquired falsity, danger or any sense at all. Even though Piccolomini’s list did not even qualify the sentences as being erroneous, it considered these topics as hampering unity in teaching and the common spirit of the Jesuit policy: non quod doctrinam us contentam qualificare ullo modo animus sit . . . sed quia judicamus ad uniformitatem et soliditatem doctrinae . . . et ad fructum optatum ut nostri Professores ab us abstineant, quamvis neque omnes sint aequaliter nostris rationibus inopportunae.10 Fabri seems to have had no problems with the general setting of his teaching, and so he defended every single doctrine following Piccolomini’s list. First of all, he claimed to be in conformity with Aristotle depending on the appropriate reading of his words: “si nativum, naturalem, proprium, literalem, et vulgarem verborum sensum amplexus (sum)”.11 Throughout his writings, Fabri continued to protest against the Arabic and scholastic interpretation of Aristotle’s teachings: evidently one of his polemic measures in order to prevent serious criticism against his own philosophy.

9 Piccolomineus (†1651), “Ordinatio pro Studiis Superioribus”, in Pachtler, Ratio studiorum, 3, 78. 10 Ibid., 90. 11 Fabri, Epistolae, 160. 202 chapter eleven

Once the backing of Aristotle is secured, it would be difficult to question his philosophy—the Stagirite still being the authority for Jesuit teaching. Therefore Fabri claimed to be a real supporter of Aristotle, basing his “own philosophical hypothesis” exclusively on Aristotle’s principles according to the “original and literal meaning of his writings”.12 Further- more, the literal reading of the ancient text was the best weapon against school discussions and disunity in the universities, which was the concern of Piccolomini and his advisers.13 He dares to claim that his philosophy, being in total accordance with his natural theology, merits the name of Christian Philosophy.14 From the historian’s point of view, Fabri and the superiors of the Jesuits were playing a game about the source of truth. Both of them supposed that truth in philosophy and science was within human reach. The Jesuits, as an organization committed to the mission of Christian truth, needed to present themselves as a homogeneous body since they believe that otherwise the truth would be questionable. Therefore, the organization itself assumes to guarantee reliability. ‘Authority’, then, is a feature not of truth or of the contents of teaching, but rather of the teaching body itself (what we could call a scientific community). Of course, Fabri would not object to this by claiming his own insight as superior to the commandment of the congregation. He accepted the notion of authority linked to truth, but his sources of truth and authority are the authors of philosophical doctrine. Therefore, in opposing the generally accepted teachings, he does not appeal to the community, but to Aristotle as the author and authority of true teaching. At the same time, Fabri blames individual philosophers and schools (the Arabic and medieval tradition) for distorting true philosophy, a move he could expect to be applauded for among his fellow Jesuits. Nevertheless his attitude separates him from the community, or at least gives him some free space for intellectual argument. His three apologetic letters thus reveal two different Aristotelianisms, the one of a school authority and the other, Fabri’s, of the intentionally interpreted authority.

12 Ibid., p. 70: “totus sum in commendando, laudando et praedicando Aristotelem iuxta nativum et proprium literae, textus, et verborum sensum.” Cf. Fabri’s letter to Leibniz, 14 November 1671, Leibniz Briefwechsel, no. 90, p. 187: “omnes etfectusnaturales explicare conatus sum, ex simplicissimis principiis, ijsque peripatetic is ad literam.” 13 Fabri, Epistolae, p. 164. 14 Fabri, Epistolae, p. 166. aristotelianism more geometrico: honoré fabri 203

11.2 Space: A Universal Concept

Now let us look at one example of a doctrine which ought not be discussed, according to the instructions of 1651. Thesis no. 24 reads as follows: “Quantitas identificatur realiter cum ubi, quo substantia materialis constituitur in loco impenetrabiliter.”15 The quantity of a material body is identified with its containing place, and by that same place the impenetrability of a material substance (that is, the impossibility of having two bodies in one place) is given at the same time. Fabri’s answer is thus: In motu mutatur ubi, non vero quantitas, nec impenetrabilitas, nec exten- sio; quod vero pertinet ad quantitatem internam, ab ubi distingui, necesse est; illa enim a substantia corporis realiter non distinguitur, prout in d. prop. 14. a qua tamen ubi distinguitur, per prop. 20. lib. 8. Metaph. (1).16 When moved, a body changes its place, but neither its quantity, nor its opacity nor its dimension is changed. Furthermore the (inner) dimensions of a material body are something different from the place containing it; actually the extension is nothing other than the substance of the body. For details he cross-refers to his Metaphysica demonstrativa, published in l648,17 in which he clearly states that a body is not essentially in any place (Aristotelian style), because changing places does not change any essence.18 This is not the occasion to locate this interpretation in the history of the seventeenth-century concept of space,19 but what is interesting here is Fabri’s strategy of argumentation. What seem to be obvious logical statements have two different philosophical dimensions, which were well known at his time: some theological implications and some doubts about Fabri’s adherence to Aristotle. When explaining the different ways of “esse in loco” (being placed somewhere), Fabri uses the scholastic distinction of a descriptive meaning and a defining meaning. He considers the Aristotelian locus as the

15 Pachtler, Ratio studiorum, 3, 92; Fabri, Epistolae, 132. 16 Fabri, Epistolae, 132. 17 Fabri, Metaphysica demonstrativa. The text is—as is told by its title—taken from Fabri’s Lyons lectures; the references in the three Epistolae confirm Fabri’s authorship. The publication by Petrus Mo(u)snerius was encouraged by Petrus Gassendi: cf. Boehm, “Deux essais.” 18 Fabri, Metaphysica demonstrativa: Metaphysica, lib. 8, prop. 4, p. 318: “quando lapis movetur, dicitur, mutat locum, et non mutat entitatem, igitur locus non est idem cum entitate . . .” 19 Cf. Grant, “Medieval and Seventeenth Century Conceptions;” Garin, “Polemiche”; Sander, Raumtheorien. 204 chapter eleven circumscription of a natural body, while in non-corporeal substances the place is a problem of definition: in angels the location is somehow wide and indivisible, while in God the way of being ‘somewhere’ is the most immense possible space. Place conceived as circumscription seems to apply to bodies, while place as given by definition seems to be indifferent to both bodies and non-bodies.20 Talking of divisibility of place, Fabri states that “corpus naturaliter loquendo, tot habet ubicationes, quot puncta Physica; et suam quodlibet punctum habet distinctam.”21 In terms of nature there are as many ‘somewheres’ as there are inner real points, so that every point has its own place.

11.3 Excursus on Natural Theology

It can never be over-emphasized that this kind of argument is neither naïve, nor the result of the art of writing under any persecution by the Church. All scientists of the seventeenth century made use of theological instances. Because all theories of physics had an inevitable condition, namely the reality of a free divine Creator who was able to do away with all categories of reality, all natural laws, or, to put it positively, a Creator who was capable of installing them,22 it was quite natural for any Jesuit to incorporate this factor in his argument, and this was not forced by the religious authorities as a teaching institution. God as a free Creator was the touchstone of any theory of nature as well as the crowning stone of its vault that completed it metaphysically. Rudjer Josip Bošcović (Rogerius Josephus Boscovich), for example, mentioned God, but in the last paragraphs of his Theoria philosophiae naturalis of 1758–63, after having explicated his corpuscularian theory. He then asked the mechanistic question: who invented the complex geometrical laws of nature? By asking for the author of nature, the science of which was physical science, Bošcović closed the inquiry and endowed it with a theoretically realist guaranty. The ‘author’ must have invented the world out of his free decision, for only in that case is it conceivable as a rational

20 The contemporary fellow Jesuit Thomas Compton Carleton (1591–1666), in his Philos- ophia universa, gives a much more extended treatment, holding: “esse rem in loco circumscrip- tive solum dicere ita esse in loco, ut non sit tota in toto, et tota in qualibet eius parte, in quo distinguitur ab existentia definitiva”: Carleton, Philosophia (1664), Phys. Disp. 35, sect. 4, n. 2, p. 349. 21 Fabri, Metaphysica demonstrativa: Metaphysica, lib. 8, prop. 18, p. 340. 22 Baldini, “Boscovich e la tradizione Gesuitica” (1992), 24. aristotelianism more geometrico: honoré fabri 205 subject for human knowledge.23 Bošcović stressed this freedom against the optimism of Leibniz that resulted in binding God to determinism by compelling Him to perfection. The Croat Jesuit, in his turn, compelled God to human rationality. The proof of God’s existence through contingency (everything might have been different from what it is, only God is free to determine what is real) gives the finishing touch to the physics, both in terms of metaphysics and in terms of natural theology, and also according to faith. While following the aims He freely sets, the Creator is always bound to using the adequate means from which humanity profits in its turn. Therefore, and only for this reason, God becomes the subject of human reverence.24 The assistance of the Almighty was even requested in details of theories. God is present in such a way in Fabri’s treatise, the De homine of 1664. There he elaborated the concept of life as an essentially immanent act. Not every immanent movement, like the falling of a stone, was life, but only the ones immanent by essence. For a paradoxical demonstration, Fabri used sight as an example: if it were God alone who could evoke the capacity of seeing in the eye, the eye would and would not see at the same time—it would see a thing, but without an activity on its own part. Therefore, life was defined essentially by the inherent, ‘automatic’ movement. God remained in the background, while ensuring (the exact term is concursus) life—for the potency of natural phenomena is explained by His power, without forcing Him into a pantheistic system.25 These examples—and there are lots of similar ones to be found—serve to demonstrate that in natural philosophy, before the Enlightenment, the theological argument was not an evasive, but rather a constitutive part of scientific explanation. Even such a resolute eclectic like Francesco Lana- Terzi, who followed Bacon, Fabri, and other contemporaries in using a strictly empirical method, still justified the variety of results and corresponding theories with a theological concept of truth that admitted of

23 Boscovich, Theoria philosophiae naturalis, nr. 554, p. 261: “Sed in hac tanta eligentis, ac omnia providentis Supremi Conditoris sapientia, atque exequentis potentia illud adhuc magis cogitandum est nobis, quantum inde in nostros etiam usus promanarit, quos utique respexit ille, qui videt omnia . . .” 24 Ibid., nr. 557, p. 262: “Cum ea infinita libertate Divina componitur tatrien illud, quod ad sapientiam pertinet, ut ad eos tines, quos sibi pro liberrimo suo arbitrio praefixit Deus, media semper apta debeat seligere, quae ad finem propositum frustrari non sinant. Porro haec media etiam in nostrum bonum selegit plurima, dum totam naturam conderet, quod quem a nobis exigat beneticiorum memorem, et gratum animum.” 25 Fabri, Tractatus duo, De homine, lib. 2, propos. 45, n. 13. 206 chapter eleven

“many various colours”.26 If the claim to absolute validity is taken seriously—that is, if the Absolute ranges higher than human scrutiny, could there be anything equal to a theological argument? The extremes of God and angels make clear that ‘being somewhere’ is a human concept that cannot be analysed properly if it is too closely linked to the natural empirical body and our way of perceiving it. Very roughly speaking, angels and God are instances of mental experiments that help distinguish scientific concepts. The Eucharist and the two ‘natures’ of Christ serve as touchstones of empirical theory. And Fabri is one of the best artisans of his kind. In the quoted passage, he used the concept of location of two kinds of ‘non-body’ (infinite and finite) as a background against which the dimensions of a body became related to its internal structure: the Aristotelian concept of space changed under the conditions of non-bodies. Taking this theoretical possibility into account, location was now as limited and divided as that which was located. Arguments of natural theology thus generate natural science. All this had been said by Fabri in defence of his orthodoxy—of course he did not teach what was forbidden, but he could not help talking about a much debated problem. Obviously it has to be questioned whether this was still Aristotelian, as Fabri claimed. It certainly was not, and consequently we must look at how he treated his source and in doing so, we shall find Fabri’s defence against corpuscularianism.

11.4 Hypothesis—Founded or Fictitious?

First of all, locus is a metaphysical concept, and this is a rather exceptional statement peculiar to Fabri. “Being in a place” is one of the universal concepts (ratio universalis) which, as we have already seen, transcends the difference of body and spirit.27 Fabri starts with four definitions. 1. Ubicatio est ratio existendi in loco. (This implies that locatio is a ratio formalis of whatever that is somewhere.) 2. Locus Aristotelicus est superficies prima, immobilis, corporis ambientis.

26 Lanis Magisterium, Auctor lectori, col. [3]: “Equidem veritas unica est; sed que- madrnodum unica statua, a diversis vel etiam ab eodem Pictore coloribus exprimitur, modo sub una, modo sub alia forma . . ., eadem prorsus ratione Philosophi unicam Veri- tatem diversis sententiarum coloribus delineatam vario modo menti contemplandam proponunt . . .” 27 Fabri, Metaphysica demonstrativa: Metaphysica, lib. 8, p. 313. aristotelianism more geometrico: honoré fabri 207

3. Praesentia est relatio, qua umun alteri dicitur praesens. 4. Distantia est relatio, qua unum ab alio distare dicitur.28 Starting with these definitions, it is evident that Aristotle’s ‘container place’ is opposed by concepts and relationships that jeopardize the whole idea, but Fabri’s presentation of the problem is far from polemical, because in his procedure there is room even for the traditional concept. In a number of pages he justifies and analyses the advantages of the old concept of locus.29 Thus, he not only lays the grounds of natural theology by considering the Eucharist, Creation and spiritual beings in his philosophy of space— that is what all scholastics of his time did—he also, and most importantly, interpreted the problem of space as a metaphysical problem by transforming it into a problem of analysing a universal concept. Under the pretext of interpreting Aristotle closely and coherently, Fabri stressed the ontology of space (ratio formalis, relatio). The answer to the question of space was consequently provided by the meanings of the universals. As will be shown, metaphysics for Fabri was nothing other than the analysis of universal concepts. According to Fabri, there was one common denominator in Descartes, Gassendi, Galileo, Leibniz and many others, that is, they followed Epicu- rus in making up their own theories in the natural sciences: “iuxta Epicuri principia, nova Hypotheses excogitarunt.”30 The matter theory of Epicu- rean atomism and the tendency to feign explanations for physical data were interrelated for Fabri. Leibniz hastened to defend himself against being alien to Aristotle as soon as he learned about these accusations. In his letter to Fabri, written by the end of 1676 with some regretted delay, Leibniz assures Fabri that both agree on the fundamental role of metaphysics for all sciences (a peripatetic statement, of course, if taken at face value), and reject “fictitious hypotheses” “which are avoided in material things by demonstrations; this is done when the probable is separated from the certain, and when the reasons of unknown phenomena are found starting from well-known phenomena in a way that it is least necessary to feign reasons.”31 Leibniz, too, was afraid of being excluded from conversing

28 Ibid., Metaphysica, lib. 8, pp. 313–14. 29 Ibid., Metaphysica, lib. 8, pp. 317f. 30 Ibid., p. 114—said about Leibniz: “quamquam Cartesium imitates.” 31 Leibniz, Philosophischer Briefwechsel, 287 and 297: “in re materiali demonstrationibus, quod fit dum probabilia a certis sejunguntur, et ex compertis phaenomenis inveniuntur 208 chapter eleven with Aristotle. The methodical question to be raised was this: what shall we do with all the discarded “probables”—will they all disappear or will they return in any irrational form? And indeed the further experimental science developed through the seventeenth century, the greater grew its distance to any integral philosophy; eighteenth-century physico-theology was one of the last strains to integrate empirical research into a universal system. But for the present discourse, the letter of Leibniz to Fabri shows that holding a certain theory of nature needed to be labelled as Aristotelian in order to avoid suspicion of belonging to any unacceptable philosophical sect. Since their adherence to Epicurean corpuscularianism was evident, they had to swear by the ever-authoritative Aristotle and attribute corpuscularianism to sense-experience and reason. Therefore, when defending himself against the suspicion of being a Democritean, on the one hand Fabri had to reject corpuscular theories one by one: the theories of vacuum, time, elements, etc. On the other hand, he had to declare the philosophical meaning of his own “hypotheses”, given that he himself admittedly introduced the minima physica of elements with particular shapes, namely the spherical for earth, the cylin- drical for fire, the cubic for water and air.32 What, then, was the difference between Descartes and Gassendi? Well, “my assumption is based on causes and reasons,”33 Fabri declared. And the fact that in his writings we read plenty of theories which have no source in Aristotle, should in no way be considered suspicious since—amazingly (mirabiliter)—they all agree with Aristotelian principles and are scientifically proved from these Aristotelian principles alone.34 Fabri even admits some eclecticism35—and his supposed adherence to that strain saved him

aliorum phaenomenorum rationes incompertae, ut fingere causas minime opus esse videtur.” On Leibniz and Fabri, see Caruso, “Fabri,” 117–25. 32 Fabri, Epistulae tres, 65f. On Fabri’s theory of minima in comparison with Galileo’s theory of motion see Drake, “Impetus theory,” where it is held that Fabri is influenced by Albert of Saxony and still defends a medieval approach of “physical causes” instead of experimental science. On Fabri’s contribution to a mathematical theory of the indivisible and motion see Fellmann, “Die mathematischen Werke;” on experimental interests see Heilbron, “Fabri.” 33 Fabri, Epistulae tres, 65f.: “sedcausam et rationem adduco huiusmodi figurarum.” 34 Ibid., p. 72: “multa, quae apud Aristotelem nullus inveniat; ita est, fateor altruo: immo quamplurima, ea tamen cum principiis Aristotelis mirabiliter consentiunt, et ex eis facile demonstrantur.” 35 Cf. Fabri, Summula theologica, Auctor Lectori, p. a4v: “liberas esse hominum cogitationes, libera iudicia.” aristotelianism more geometrico: honoré fabri 209 a place in the history of philosophy, as Constance Blackwell has pointed out.36 So he dares to say: me liberum esse profiteor, et veritatem ubique diligo; sive illam in Aristo- tele, sive in Epicuro explorem; et nullo factionis studio ducor.37 But only in the eternal light of Aristotle himself: totus sum in commendando, laudando et praedicando Aristotelem . . ., namque Hypothesim Philosophicam universam illius principio, quasi fiin- damento inaedificavi . . . iuxta nativum et proprium literae, textus, et verborum sensum . . .38 The problem here is: does Aristotle really back Fabri’s theories, or in other words, how was Fabri dealing with his master? Looking at his effort at distancing himself from Descartes—as he did in his first letter to Pardiès—we perceive that Cartesianism was an even greater challenge to the Jesuit, so that we may call his kind of Aristotelianism one of Cartesian imprint.39 Everyone knows that Descartes criticized the scholastic forma sub- stantialis40 because to him, it did not explain what it was supposed to explain, namely reality. This was one reason why he invented his sceptical method as presented in his Meditationes,41 Descartes objected to substantial forms because they seemed to fill the material world with ‘souls’, a concept which was “downright nonsense” to any strict Aristotelian42 and which probably stemmed from a Neoplatonic interpretation of form as derived from the world soul (one should compare Descartes’s arguments

36 Blackwell, “The case of Fabri.” This is true for Johann Christoph Sturm, who thought all good philosophers should be eclectic, which in this case means oriented towards experiment and experience (55). On the other hand, being classified as “scholastic” (justly or not) by Jacob Brucker, set an end to Fabri’s renown as a philosopher (64–5). I am indebted to Constance Blackwell for having suggested the present study. 37 Fabri, Epistulae tres, 71. 38 Ibid., p. 70. 39 On Fabri’s Cartesianism see: Sortais, Le cartésianisme, 299–304. 40 Gilson, Index (1979), 126–128; the quotations given there from the commentaries of the Conimbricenses, Toletus, and from Suarez mark clearly the difference to Fabri. 41 Descartes, Discours (1939), 3 (cf. Gilson’s comment.). Gilson, Études, 162 sq. For the standard meaning of “substantial form” here the definition as given by the afore-mentioned Thomas Compton Carleton, Philosophia universa (with explicit contradiction to part iv of Descartes’ Principia): Disp. phys. XI, sect. 1, n. IX, p. 239: “definitur forma ab Aristotele sae- pius, quod sit, quod quid est rei, seu ratio rei, nempe quae ultimo constituit et distinguit communiter rem ab omni alio composito, ut forma artificialis seu figura in artefactis. Quae definitio clarius explicatur his verbis, forma est ultimus actus in informatione materiae, faciens per se unum cum illa, et prima radix potentiarum activarum in composito.” This is an unrestricted realist definition. 42 Grene, Descartes among the Scholastics, 30. Cf. Garber, “Descartes’ physics,” 301–303. 210 chapter eleven with Marsilio Ficino or Giordano Bruno). Fabri marks his disagreement with Descartes by presenting his own interpretation: he admits but one “substantial form”, that of man, to be precise, his rational soul. But he restores it to its Aristotelian meaning by reinterpreting all other forms which are material forms: “eo prorsus modo, quo eas Philosophus admit- tit, secundum quem forma dat esse rei.” Accordingly, there is a difference, for instance, between the material wood and the ratio of wood which generates all properties of it:43 ita et forma substantialis est merus respectus, ratio, species, actus, logos, resultans ex tali compositione elementorum, aliorumque misciblium.44 Once again, Fabri saves Aristotle by giving up Peripatetic principles. In order to defend the existence of substantial forms, he degrades them ontologically to a kind of “viewpoint” and a consequence of composition. The latter interpretation would be close to the Epicurean composition of material forms. As for the former, one is induced to take Fabri’s interpretation as a very modern, post-Kantian one, where concepts like nature and substance are held to be concepts of mere reflection, tools of interpretation of the world, or Reflexionsbegriffe. Given the importance of being Aristotelian and defending his concepts with rational arguments, the many points of disagreement with Descartes always look like a competition in the same race. A further example is the concept of God. Since we have already come across Fabri’s idea of space, which includes the unlimited space of spiritual beings, we can understand why he disapproves of Descartes’s distinction of res extensa and res cogitans as the primary disjunction in being. Bodies cannot, therefore, be defined by extension.45 So far the competition, but the Jesuit explicitly welcomes the definition of God as developed by Descartes in his Medita- tiones (3–4):

43 Fabri, Epistulae tres, 53. Cf. Fabri, Tractatus duo, De homine, lib. 2, propos. XVI, pp. 249 sq: “forma inquam, id est ratio, qua sensus afficitur . . . id est ratio qua res talis est; est autem forma sine materia ; non . . . incorporea, . . . sed cuius accessio nullam materiae, seu corporis accessionem dicit.” 44 Fabri, Epistulae tres, 54; cf. Fabri, Metaphysica demonstrativa: Metaphysica, lib. 7, p. 261: “forma substantialis aliquando est principium simul et causa compositi, aliquando principium . . . utrum vero sit causa generationis nova forma, dubitari potest.” 45 Fabri, Epistulae tres, 15. On Cartesianism and scholasticism see: Bohatec, Die cartesianische Scholastik, on Fabri 67, 128f. aristotelianism more geometrico: honoré fabri 211

Quod Dei conceptus, seu definitio existentiam necessario importet, ac proinde Deum existere, per se notum sit, saltem quoad me.46 The demonstration of the existence of God by the very concept of God, the so-called ontological demonstration of God’s existence, is a fundamental assumption both in Fabri’s Summula Theologica (1669) and in his “Treatise on Faith” of 1657. God as Being that exists essentially, whose existence is included in the very concept, because any dependence from another being is excluded only if essence includes existence—this is the point of departure for him.47 But in addition, Fabri is proud of his invention of a new demonstration of God’s existence, the “geometrical demonstration” as he delighted in calling it: quod ego existam, mihi evidens est; dum enim aliquod principium Geomet- ricum cum mente complector, mihi evidens est, illud a me cognosci; igitur, quod idem est, me cognoscere: igitur est existere; igitur est mihi evidens, quod existam nunc, idque contingenter; quia nec semper, nec ubique existo; igitur possum non existere; igitur contingenter existo; igitur, quod idem est, ab alio; igitur mihi evidens est, esse illud aliud, a quo existo; voco Deum.48 Fabri’s indebtedness to Descartes is evident. Here he is combining the famous cogito ergo sum with the traditional “cosmological demonstration”. Evidence and certitude were common factors in Fabri’s theory of nature, and he applied these criteria to reasoning itself so that in this case the existence of the foundation of being was inferred from the evidence of existence of the one who is reasoning. So we may call the Jesuit a Carte- sian in the broad sense of the word, because he was using self-evidence as an instance of philosophical argument; he does not hesitate to involve the very concepts of Aristotelian philosophy into the process of cognition. In his letters to Pardiès, Fabri stated that “thinking belongs to the intellect, not to sensation”, but the soul could not grasp anything if this was not conceived by the inner sense, which conceives it not properly by thinking but rather by sensation (of course not by the so-called proper species but by an alien one). This sensation directs the intellect sufficiently to think what the sense feels, and to develop it by reasoning. In this way, I think of the concept of being, of

46 Fabri, Epistulae tres, 20. 47 Fabri, Una fides, 8: “Datum primum. Deus est.” This book is an example that philosophy and religious apologetics are still intertwined in seventeenth-century philosophers. 48 Fabri, Una fides, 9f.; cf. Fabri, Summula theologica, tract. 1, cap. 1, p. 10 sqq. Already present in his Philosophia (1646), 97 (the Metaphysica demonstrativa was the continuation to this textbook). 212 chapter eleven

substance (be it penetrable or not), of living, of intelligent beings, and I even grasp what is sensation and understanding: for while thinking, something that I think as myself thinking, and what thinking is, I also know that I am living, knowing, willing and feeling.49 In his famous treatise De homine,50 published after the apologetic letters to Pardiès in 1677, Fabri declares man’s capacity to find evidence as a formal requirement (hypothesis) which has to precede all debates on human rational soul. And self-evidence in thought follows right after that.51 Hence human reasoning is explained in terms of drawing conclusions or consequences from what is previously known: igitur quisquis cognoscit antecedens, cognoscit, vel attingit confuse consequens; quo sane confuse cognito, mens ea virtute pollet, qua idem distincte cognoscere queat, deducto scilicet consequente.52 The process of thinking and knowing is now described as the analysis of complex terms, and any scientific understanding is bound to a kind of analytical theory. This of course applies also to the so-called ontological demonstration of God’s existence in the Cartesian fashion, this being an extreme case of analysis of a concept. In this case at least it transcends from mere nominal implications to reality (and this has always been the weakness of this ‘demonstration’). In his early lectures on philosophy, all logic started with: “artificium consequentiae, i.e. Consequentia est habi- tudo unius ad aliud vi cuius, unum infertur ex alio”.53 Therefore, when asking whether, or in which sense Fabri was rightfully claiming to be an Aristotelian, we may conclude that he was following the one branch of

49 Fabri, Epistulae tres, 93 sq: “fateor ipsum cognoscere solius intellectus esse, non sensus: in hoc tamen unionis statu, anima nihil prorsus cognoscendo attingit, nisi hoc ipsum sensus internus, non cognoscendo quidem proprie, sed tantum sentiendo attin- gat: quamquam non in specie, ut vocant propria, sed aliena: quae tamen sensatio satis superque intellectum determinat, ad illud cognoscendum, quod sensus sentit, et deinde ratiocinio quasi evolvendum: sic cognosco rationem entis, substantiae penetrabilis, vel impenetrabilis, viventis, intelligentis, ipsum sentire et intelligere in se ipso attingo: dum enim cognosco aliquid, cognosco me cognoscere, et quid sit cognoscere: cognosco etiam me vivere, me scire, me velle, me sentire.” 50 Fabri, Tractatus duo: De plantis and de homine; The two treatises were the comple- tion of his Physica, (1669–71); this information emerges from the “Synopsis tractatuum physicae” in vol. I. The De homine is famous because in lib. 1, prop. 2, p. 204, Fabri claims to have taught the circular movement of blood since 1638, before having read William Harvey’s publication of 1628; cf. Fabri, Epistulae tres, 103. 51 Fabri, Tractatus duo, 505, hyp. 1. and 2. 52 Ibid., 509. 53 Fabri, Philosophia, 140. aristotelianism more geometrico: honoré fabri 213

Aristotelianism, which directed the attention from the analytical method to the geometrical method as used and successfully promoted by Euclid- ean geometry.54 For the time being it may be clear enough to refer to the “Introduction” to Euclid’s Elements by the Jesuit Christophorus Clavius (1589), where he praised geometry for having earned the name of science first of all, because it “proceeds always from certain principles known beforehand to what is to be shown” and in doing so it generates “real knowledge”.55 As to the political point of view, I may remind the reader that the Instructions of 1651 were issued with the intention to avoid useless discussions in Jesuit schools. Of course, sectarianism was one of the phenomena in European culture which the Jesuits hated most. Clavius recommended mathematical method precisely for that reason, too.56 Fabri even suspected that scepticism arose from the scholastic method of disputation: “litigiosus ille disserendi methodus”.57 That is why he proclaims a Meta- physica demonstrativa; he even planned a kind of analytical ethics in which first “moral terms are to be defined and some basic assumptions declared, such as ‘no one can like and dislike the same thing at the same time,’ and so on.”58 Most of his writings were structured in that geometrical way, starting from definitions, axioms and proceeding to propositions and corollaries. As we had seen in his treatment of locus Aristotelicus, Fabri always took the teaching of Aristotle as a starting point. In his psychology of reasoning, he taught that in any cognition the human mind knows the logical consequences of what it knows; analysing that which is vaguely known through logical inference, one achieves more distinct knowledge.59 Obvi- ously, Fabri analysed Aristotelian concepts as vaguely known terms, sup- posing that they had become more and more complex during the history of commenting on them, including the scholastics of his century. Clavius’s

54 Schüling, Geschicchte der axiomatischen Methode, on method among Jesuits, but not mentioning Fabri: 39, 49–51, 75. 55 Euclid, Elementorum libri, ed. Clavius (1603), 9: “Procedunt enim semper ex praecognitis quibusdam principijs ad conclusiones demonstrandas”; 15: “ita ut vere scientiam in auditoris animo gignant.” 56 Ibid., p. 15. 57 Fabri, Philosophia, 46. 58 Ibid., p. 112. 59 Fabri, Tractatus duo, 509: “Explicatur modus humani ratiocinii. . . . quisquis cognoscit antecendens, cognoscit, vel aningit confuse consequens, quo sane confuse cognito, mens ea virtute pollet, qua idem distincte cognoscere quest, deducto scilicet consequente.” 214 chapter eleven remarks trace the division line not between one school and another (philosophical sect) but, rather, between school-teaching, that is, corpo- rate philosophical identity, and reason. Fabri’s insistence on Aristotle as the true authority, therefore, is not the option in favour of one school leader, nor an attempt at integrating himself into a scientific community, but rather an emblem for his striving for rational, geometrical method in philosophy. Aristotle, thus, became a cipher for method. That is why Fabri persistently refers to the literal wording of Aristotle, which gives him a kind of humanist touch. From this point of view it would not make any more sense to determine whether Fabri was an Aristotelian, or a Democritean eclectic, or even a Cartesian. But if we had to do so, we would face the fact that he was a good friend to all sides. But even if we would like to rely on his insistence on the master himself, we would be puzzled, because he said sincerely: “If someone reads Aristotle in a different way than I do, he may enjoy his understanding, but why shouldn’t I enjoy my way?”60

60 Fabri, Epistulae tres, 57: “Sed inquiunt [scholastici], Aristotelem in alio sensu intelligimus; bene est; gaudeant suo sensu; cur meo aegue gaudere mihi non licet?” METAPHYSICS AND THEOLOGY

chapter twelve

RODRIGO DE ARRIAGA ON IMMORTALITY AS A RESPONSE TO PLATONISM

The problem of the immortality of the soul was crucial to Renaissance and early modern philosophy because it was systematically connected with metaphysics, natural philosophy and theory of cognition, not to mention theology. It was also one point where competing philosophical methods met, namely Platonism and Aristotelianism. This is also the case with Prague’s great Jesuit Rodrigo de Arriaga. He addresses the question of the immortality of the soul in the tenth and last disputatio on the soul, under the heading: De anima separata.1 This location is of itself remarkable because it makes sense only, if the status of the intellective soul after death is the only reason why we should care about immortality. But should one not think of immortality while living a mortal life? The place- ment of the immortality question reveals on first sight that within the naturalist and logical discussion of the nature of the soul, immortality—and connected with it, the metaphysics of eternal substances and species— plays no decisive role. Indeed, we learn, the major source of the doctrine of immortality was Plato, while Aristotle is said to be rather ambiguous (“valde ancipitem”) on this issue.2 As a first aside, I should remark that Arriaga is accepting Cajetan’s and Pomponazzi’s interpretation of Aristo- tle here.3 As is customary, Arriaga bases his evidences first on scriptural references and on the infelicitous decree of the Lateran Council of 1513: this, together with another decree, however, grants only that the soul, together

1 Arriaga, Cursus philosophicus, 1632, disp. 10, pp. 805–822. 2 Ibid., sect. 1, p. 805. 3 Arriaga refers to the Conimbricenses: Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis Societatis Iesu In tres libros de anima Aristotelis, Tractatus de anima separata, disp. 1, art. 1–2; where, p. 444, the doctrine of mortality is attributed to Cajetan, Pomponazzi, and Simon Portius, and it is said that Aristotle did not come to a clear conclusion. Note Pomponazzi’s statement: “That man is of a twofold (ancipitis) nature and a mean between mortal and immortal things.” Pomponazzi, “On the Immortality of the Soul,” chapter 1, heading, 282. The term “anceps” does not appear in the Conimbricenses. Caietanus, Scripta philosophica. Commentaria in De anima Aristotelis I, and Commentaria in libros Aristotelis de anima. Cf. Verga, “L’immortalità dell’anima,” especially p. 31 sq.; and Blum, “The Immortality.” 218 chapter twelve with other intellective and invisible beings, is not perishable thanks to the grace of God; she may even be mortal in the sense that God may destroy her: “non sequitur non posse a Deo naturaliter destrui, ergo ex hoc loco nihil probatur.” That is to say that even if the soul is immortal, she still depends on God’s will to preserve her.4 A second aside: this is to be Des- cartes’ position.5 Among the reasons Arriaga cites that suggest (“suadetur”) immortality are:6 – The soul is a spiritual substance, but that does not entail immortality. – The soul cognizes spiritual objects, but material beings may cognize spiritual objects, hence the soul need not be something spiritual.7 – Immortality is good for morals and government, but this argument is only as good as its intention, yet, not a proof; especially since the threat of afterlife punishment may be limited to a brief, and still horrible time.8 Third aside: the last was the most popular argument for the immortality of the soul, from Thomas Aquinas through Philipp Melanchthon into the 18th century. What remains, according to Arriaga, is only a probable argument, which can be summed up by saying: to tend towards perpetuity, beyond body, is not contradictory to a substantial form: We are not lacking a probable argument, which I phrase like this: Although a substantial form is possible that—independent of a body—persists for some time, but not forever, another [substantial form] is possible that of itself tends to persist forever, because there appears in it no inconsistency or contradiction [. . .] and our soul is of that kind, which I prove thus: the arguments discussed before prove that the soul persists for some time independent of body, she is maintained only by God and has no contrary, hence she will exist forever.9

4 Arriaga, Cursus, 1632, sect. 1, n. 3, 6, p. 805 sq. 5 Descartes, Meditationes. 6 Arriaga, Cursus, 1632, sect. 1, n. 7–13, p. 806 sq. 7 Ibid., n. 8, p. 806. 8 Ibid., n. 10–11, p. 806 sq. 9 Ibid., n. 12–13, p. 807: “Nihilominus non deficit probabilis saltem pro hac sententia ratio, quam sic formo: Licet possibilis sit aliqua forma substantialis, quae independenter a corpore duret aliquamdiu, non vero semper: possibilis est tamen alia quae ex se perpetuo petat durare, quia in ea nulla relucet repugnantia aut contradictio, ut per se patet: sed posita possibilitate talis formae certe rationes supra factae satis ostendunt, nostrum animum esse eiusmodi, ergo Probo Minorem: argumenta enim supra facta probant, animam durare aliquamdiu independenter a corpore, conservari a solo Deo, et non habere contrarium, ergo perpetuo duratura est . . .” rodrigo de arriaga on immortality 219

The argument, said to be “probabilissima”, rests on the soul’s “aspiring beyond bodily limits” and on the assumption that the soul, at least sometimes, exists beyond corporeal conditions. The author also observes that no better proof can be given, “as long as we don’t know the nature of the soul in herself a priori.”10 However, the immortality of the soul is not evinced by some quasi phenomenology of reaching beyond the realm of the material, but equally by her tendency towards self-preservation, which smacks of Stoicism.11 On the other hand, again I need to add an aside: the locus classicus for the soul’s desire to live in perpetuity is in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, taken by Albert the Great as a key example for velleitas: we are able to wish to be immortal and to know of its impossibility.12 This is quite a sobering result to obtain from a major Jesuit thinker of the late Renaissance and Second Scholasticism. The reason he cannot achieve more than that seems to be that Arriaga is torn between two opposing approaches to the question of the existence of the intellective soul—the one being epistemological, the other ontological. The first stems from Aristotelian gnoseology and leads to admitting that the intellect is mortal; the second stems from Platonism. Both are combined in the statement concerning the impossibility of a priori knowledge of the soul. For such a statement entails an a posteriori approach to an independent substance whose essence is supposed to be thinking. Perhaps also the postulate of self-preservation blurs over the epistemological and ontological divide. For how else could a spiritual substance wish to ontologically exist, if not by way of cognition?

12.1 Ontology

Since it is safe to say that the soul is de facto immortal, the ontological question arises whether she is by nature embodied or, rather, disembod- ied. Here Arriaga maintains that the soul is naturally conjoined with body so that the status as a separate substance is to be defined as “violent” and not natural to her. Rather, the state of separation from body—although

10 Ibid., n. 13, p. 807: “quamdiu in se a priori non noscimus animae naturam.” 11 Ibid., n. 20, p. 808: “Dicendum ergo est, non repugnare creaturam aliquam, quae semel producta petat naturaliter non destrui [. . .] licet divinitus annihilari possit . . .” 12 Robiglio, L’impossibilie volere, 61. 220 chapter twelve being more perfect—is “accidental” to her.13 Nevertheless it is her preferred status to be separate, thanks to the ensuing joy: “Imagine a man, miracu- lously by God’s power hovering in the air, and relishing there countless joys. Still, by his own built-in gravity he will tend to leave this place and descend, and would not God hold him back he would fall. However, by his appetitus elicitus [his avidity that comes not naturally but has been induced from outside] he would not want to descend and rather avoid that.”14 Thus goes Arriaga’s mental experiment. It proves that separation of the soul is violent as a process (“in fieri”) but not so de facto.15 To become separated is induced into the soul, we may understand, but the state of separation is enjoyed as though it were natural to her. This is an answer to, and a straight reversal of, Platonist psychology that thought the opposite, namely that the body is the unnatural prison of the soul, who out of herself and naturally strives to separate herself. What Arriaga has in common with that view is that the state of separation is at least desirable. An obvious questions remains: What is the separate soul actually doing? The basic assumption has to be that the soul continues operating her potentials, namely intellection and will. Hence follows that, once separate, she has to operate without material acts.16 But will she retain what she had learned while in body, namely the species spirituales; or will she receive instead, others by infusion from God?17 Arriaga qualifies God’s infusion here as “ut auctor naturalis,” thus defining Him as a natural, rather than supernatural, agent. But why does God infuse supernaturally that which He creates as nature? One solution is this: Since God created those species which the intellect had cognized in life, He might now implant the real ones, after the soul is freed of her material conditions.18 Another answer could be this: Since the cognized species are spiritual as such and

13 Arriaga, Cursus, 1632, sect. 2, n. 24–25, p. 809: “etiamsi in statu separationis anima magis perfecta sit accidentaliter [. . .] quam in statu coniunctionis, non tamen ideo formaliter illam exigere separationem naturaliter, ita ut carentia illius sit violenta [. . .] Ratio est quia non quaecumque maior perfectio eo ipso debetur subiecto.” 14 Ibid., n. 28, p. 810. The mental experiment goes back to Avicenna’s argument for the bodiless nature of the soul; see Avicenna, The Soul I 1, in: McGinnis and Reisman, Classical Arabic Philosophy, 178–179. Thanks to Nadja Germann for this reference. 15 Ibid., n. 30, p. 810. 16 Ibid., sect. 3, n. 31, p. 810: “animam ferre secum potentias spirituales, intellectivam et volitivam [. . .] potentias vero materiales non manere in ipsa anima . . .” 17 Ibid., n. 32, p. 810: “Vel enim conservat species spirituales, quas habuit in corpore [. . .]; vel saltem loco illarum Deus ei alias, ut auctor naturalis, tenetur infundere.” 18 Here I am paraphrasing with great liberty. Arriaga says ibid., n. 32 sq., p. 810: “videtur inferri, non egere tunc speciebus imperfectis, quas prius habuit in corpore.” rodrigo de arriaga on immortality 221 not material, even if they are gained from body and with the help of body, they are not different from those that God could infuse. Hence the soul may well keep them.19 Arriaga suggests that we know from experience that the latter happens to be the case. From experience? Well, from epi- sodes of the Bible, to be more precise.20 Here, Arriaga has no inhibitions to refer to that very experience of the soul that is beyond epistemological competence and that could only be employed if metaphysical statements concerning the intellect were valid—which is not the case within the Aristotelian framework. One more aside is in order here: Giordano Bruno mocked about the paradoxes involved in the soul retaining knowledge after death. For in his Cabala del cavallo pegaseo he reasoned that if metempsychosis is true, the soul will engage in a commerce of species trading.21 The problem discussed here is at the core of scholastic epistemology. How do concepts (species intellectus) come about? The standard explanation given in Arriaga’s treatment of the intellective soul is: “Species intellectus producuntur et ab ipso intellectu, et a sensatione phantasiae.”22 Obviously, the perception of imagination or phantasy originated in sense perception; but this contribution to the formation of concepts is missing in the separate soul. The metaphysical problem connected with it is expressed in a concern: Does the intellect provide the object with such spiritual species, or is this, rather, what God does, being the “author of nature”?23 For our purpose it is sufficient to note that we have three can- didates to produce those concepts that may, or may not, survive the separation of the intellective soul from body: the cognized object, the intellect, and God. How to solve this problem depends, among others, upon the ontological state of concepts. The purpose of these qualifications is to exclude infusion of ideas or innate ideas as the foundation of cognition. Concepts are made by the intellect and the imagination; therefore there is no need “to refer to God as producing them.”24 Arriaga prefers an epistemological approach, which helps him clarify knowledge in separate souls and fend off the notion that whatever the separate soul retains were but divinely infused species. If the

19 Ibid.: “probatur [. . .] ex indepententia earum spcierum a corpore.” 20 Ibid., n. 33, p. 810: “ex experientia, qua recordatur anima separata earum rerum quas in corpore egit, et cognovit, ut constat ex pluribus historiis, et ex Scriptura . . .” 21 Giordano Bruno, Cabala del Cavallo pegaseo, dial. II 2, in idem: Dialoghi italiani, p. 900. 22 Arriaga, Cursus, 1632, De anima, disp. 4, sect. 4, n. 200, p. 703. 23 Ibid., p. 704. 24 Ibid., n. 202, p. 704: “nec necessum esse, recurrere ad Deum, ut tunc eas producat.” 222 chapter twelve soul would cognize, thanks to infused species and not by species gained from body, all separate souls would know everything that happened on earth because that knowledge would have been infused equally to all. Well, what would be wrong with that? All separate souls would not only know the same things, they would even be equal—with obvious consequences for those souls who had sinned in life.25 Arriaga doesn’t elaborate upon it, but that would make punishment difficult. Therefore it sounds plausible that, after the labor of cognizing in dependence from imagination and material species, which is the way of understanding in bodily life, the soul will understand the species only in a slightly modified, but not radically different way: she produces the species immediately together with the objects26 of cognition. Arriaga offers also an alternative, viz., the soul might request the species from God.27 Whether this option is epistemologically or ontologically more convincing, or whether it better fits a pious mind, Arriaga does not declare. Yet, it is evident that he tries to keep post mortem understanding natural. To conclude this section let us admit—together with Arriaga—that we know near to nothing about this state of cognition and should stop divin- ing about the divine.28 This raises a question to which Arriaga’s treatment of the separate soul should give the answer: Whence this skepticism? Let us first summarize what his theory yields positively: The intellect operates in body and through bodily organs to gain cognition, called species. Here it is not excluded that divine inspiration helps. The soul is also a substance that can be separate from body and then continue to work on such species. For the sake of epistemology it is worth noting that cognition—as such—is not material or corporeal. On the downside, we noted that the de facto separateness of the soul is beyond experience and not definitely

25 Ibid., disp. 10, sect. 3, n. 33, p. 810: “Contra Secundo, quia si id cognosceret per species infusas a Deo, et non per retentionem earum quas habuit in corpore, omnes animae deber- ent omnia cognoscere quae in mundo contigerunt, quia omnibus a Deo eaedem debebant species infundi. Contra Tertio, quia damnatis non infundit Deus species perfectiores, id enim esset illos ornare, ergo illi non recordantur per species infusas perfectiores, sed quia reti- nent quas in corpore habuerunt.” 26 Note: “object”, in scholastic tradition, does not mean “a real thing outside of the mind”, but the thing as cognized. 27 Ibid., n. 36, p. 811: “Melius ergo potest haec veritas suaderi, quia anima in corpore intelligit dependenter a phantasmatibus, et a materialibus speciebus per sensus acceptis [. . .] Ceterum, quando est separata, nec coarcta sensibus materialibus, accipit species proprias vel ex ipsis obiectis, sive substantialibus sive accidentalibus (habet enim virtutem eas in se simul cum obiecto producendi, ut in corpore eas producit simul cum phantasmatibus) vel si hoc tibi videtur durum, saltem petit tunc a Deo sibi infundi species.” 28 Ibid., n. 38, p. 811: “Quod si species accipiat a Deo, dubium est, quarum rerum Deus illi species infundat; pro quo nulla potest statui certa regula. Non volo amplius divinare.” rodrigo de arriaga on immortality 223 to be proven, and that the way of thinking of such a separate soul is, by definition, subject to speculation. Therefore, I suggest that we can read Arriaga as giving an indirect response to Platonism in his way of avoiding its implications. For what Arriaga seems to avoid at all cost is granting the separate soul too much of an ontological status which could have reper- cussions on how the philosopher interprets its state in the body. Arriaga downsizes any ontological proof of immortality to just an inherent tendency of self-preservation towards perpetuity, which—if at all—could only be described in terms of epistemology.

12.2 Epistemology

As for epistemology, however, the best Arriaga has to suggest about immortality is that the soul would continue to operate as before. There- fore it is opportune to take a brief look at Marsilio Ficino who provided the early modern world with the model explanation of immortality in Pla- tonic perspective. In his Platonic Theology29 he proffers a peculiar theory of hypostases in which the soul takes a median place, thus mediating between the higher and lower realms and integrating them (Book 3). His psychology is expressed as a cosmology of spiritual substances which is completed (Book 4) with differentiating ‘soul’ into a world-soul, the souls of the celestial spheres, and animal souls. Book 5 argues for the immortality of the soul on the basis of its ontological status, namely being self- moving, a substance, divine, immaterial, life, etc. Conversely, Books 6 and 7 determine the deficient ontological status of the body and the role of the soul in dominating it. Only at this point Ficino is ready to address epistemology and to describe the operation of the intellect (Book 8), which entails that it is the natural aim of the soul do detach herself from body (the very movement that Arriaga rejected continuously). Books 12 through 14 are devoted to showing that the human soul, by its own nature, strives toward union with God, being infused with divine power and naturally directed towards what transcends it. The remaining books contain a critique of Averroism and a Platonic explanation of the conjunction of soul and body, including its weakening effect on the soul (Book 16), some qualifications concerning the Platonic doctrine of the transmigration of souls and a Christian interpretation of the origin and afterlife of the human soul.

29 Ficino, Platonic Theology. 224 chapter twelve

In describing the operation of the human intellect in Book 8, Ficino draws upon the standard hierarchy of abstraction from sense perception via representation to intelligence.30 The operation of data processing, such as recognition and primary judgment, is declared to be a lower level of mental operation which is not yet free from material entanglement: “particular concepts of the phantasy are called [. . .] the bodiless intentions of bodies.”31 True abstract knowledge ascends “to the divine idea”, whereby the universals of Aristotelian terminology are understood as immaterial realities.32 This Platonic turn of the process of abstraction leads to the notion that cognition, even that of particulars, is a process of comparing and referring things to the intellect itself, i.e., a reflexive or transcendental intuition of reality based on absolute ideas, to the effect that the intellect itself is absolute and uncontaminated by the particulars it cognizes.33 Concepts have their proper place exclusively in the intellect, never in the body.34 On this basis Ficino is able to argue that the intellect, by its very act of operation, is to be defined as incorporeal: “Clearly, then, the intellect is not only incorporeal but immortal too, since it always forms and perfects itself through itself by its own activity, forever understanding and willing.”35 Ficino’s method is to appropriate Aristotelian epistemology into a Platonic framework that endows abstract notions with an ontological status of spiritual reality, which reflects degrees of knowledge and concepts in systems of hierarchies and interferences between the various degrees of soul. The same strategy was pursued by Ficino, when he addressed Aver- roism and Epicureanism. As he sees it, Averroes’ major fault was to deny that “the intellect’s substance can be the form perfecting body, can be its life-giving act.”36 Ficino offers a hierarchy of spirits, of which intellect is the interface between the spiritual and corporeal worlds.37 Thus the

30 Ibid., vol. 2, book 8, chapter 1, n. 2, p. 262: “Ascendit enim per sensum, imaginationem, phantasiam, intelligentiam.” Imaginatio, here, takes the place traditionally assigned to memory. Cf. Hardy, “Die unsterbliche, erkenntnisfähige Seele.” 31 Ficino, Platonic theology, vol. 2, book 8, chapter 1, n. 3, p. 265. The terminology alludes at the scholastic “second intentions”. 32 Ibid., n. 6, p. 269. 33 Ibid., n. 8, pp. 270/272: “intellectum [. . .] particularem quoque cognoscere [. . .] quando omnes comparat ad seipsum. [. . .] Quam quidem vim a virtute intellectus in quo et a quo est adipiscitur, quasi intellectus ipse sit absolutus. [. . .] Inde discursu quodam per actum speciemque in simulacrum, quo incitante species concepta fuerat, sese reflectens, particulare iam prospicit.” 34 Ibid., chapter 4, passim. 35 Ibid., chapter 15, n. 2. Cf. Kristeller, Il pensiero filosofico di Marsilio Ficino, chapter II, p. 5. 36 Ficino, Platonic theology, vol. 5, book 15, chapter 1, p. 13. 37 Ibid., chapter 2. rodrigo de arriaga on immortality 225 intellect can be determined as both individual and beyond an individual body. The question to be solved is how this mind can vivify and cognize the material realm. In terms of epistemology, imagination and phantasy explain how the intellect processes sensual data without being entangled with body from which they originate. The human mind is “midway” and of itself inclined toward both the abstract and the corporeal: “if this inclination is via the intellect, then either it begins from bodies and thence straightway transfers itself to things incorporeal, or it arises now and then from things incorporeal and descends in turn to bodies’ images.”38 When we compare Ficino with Arriaga, it is obvious that Ficino mixes cosmological and epistemological claims when he determines the status of the soul through her operation. In stating that the soul is both a spiritual substance and operating as a mediator between the corporeal and the intelligible worlds he takes the inherent movement of the soul as some kind of cognition, and conversely, cognition as an ontological process. We may call that speculative or dialectical. Arriaga, on the other hand, interprets the soul’s intellective operation strictly logically and has great difficulties integrating “infused” knowledge into his system—even though he is compelled to take it into account, because he needs to grant the intellect some cognitive operation after death. At this point it should be noted that Arriaga, in his logic, is a radical nominalist with strong inclinations towards sensualism. Universals for him are a mode of cognition in which the intellect unifies properties that in and of themselves are multiple and individual.39 Hence a hierarchy of cognizing substances that find and elaborate universals (ideas) out of themselves is necessarily alien to his metaphysics and logic. So, it turns out that the very doctrine of immortality forces Arriaga to deal with the ontological state of the soul, which tends to jeopardize his theory of cognition. In Ficino we can observe that a straight transcendental epistemology that has the mind reflecting on itself, with its innate concepts, and with God as their author can advocate immortality with much more coherence. Ultimately, Arriaga’s readers might have come to the conclusion that either Pomponazzi was right in declaring immortality a matter of faith, or Descartes who severed spirit from matter and had the intellect direct itself from the outset.

38 Ibid., chapter 10, p. 111. 39 Sousedík, “Arriagas Universalienlehre,” and Philosophie der frühen Neutzeit, 88–96. 226 chapter twelve

In his Theology, when speaking of the intellect, Arriaga rejects any distinction between the soul as a substance and its potentiae.40 It seems he again makes sure that cognition does not depend on the spiritual nature of the soul. For if he admitted a real distinction he would have to explain the substance of that soul and the ontological meaning of those potentials. Consequently, he denies that spiritualitas entails cognition in a later chapter that approaches the doctrine of God’s knowledge. Aquinas had tried to prove God’s cognitive capacity from His being a spirit. To which Arriaga retorts that “major vis cognoscitiva non provenit ex maiori immaterialitate,” his reason being that God and angels are not different in their immateriality, whereas they are different in knowledge.41 He clearly distances himself from Platonism or Platonist implications in Aquinas’s theology by maintaining that degrees of spiritualitas, i.e., the hierarchy of spiritual beings, do not guarantee intellectual powers. In order to avoid cognition becoming an essential feature of a spiritual being, he even concludes that “a spiritual thing can be defined such that it does not count as an intellect, although it is not limited by quantity.”42 In other words: there are at least some beings that are immaterial (i.e., not determined or individualized by quantity) and yet destitute of cognition; or even more boldly: all spirits are not defined or individualized by quantity nor with reference to cognition. Ergo, cognition is not essential to spirits. Conse- quently, he ascribes God’s wisdom to His being infinite, rather than to his being a spiritual substance. Hence God’s cognition is not to be inferred from His immateriality but from His perfection as ens a se and infinity. For an infinite being has necessarily all perfections, including cognition as “perfectionem simpliciter simplicem.”43 With that he employs a version of the so called ontological argument for the existence of God to His intellectuality. At the same time, cognition in the ordinary sense is deprived of its ontological and cosmological status, although again and again Renais- sance Platonism lurks in the background.

40 Arriaga: Disputationes theologicae, disp. 8, sect. 1, p. 103: “Adverto tamen, me intellectus nomine animae substantiam intelligere, quia ab ea non distinguo potentias.” 41 Ibid., disp. 15, sect. 1, n. 4, p. 163. 42 Ibid., n. 11, 13, p. 164: “Secundo ergo posset probari, spiritualitatem fundare vim cognoscitivam, quia omnis substantia spiritualis est perfectior omni materiali [. . .] Dico ergo, rem spiritualem posse ex proprio conceptu specifico limitari, ne sit intellectiva; licet non limitetur a quantitate.” 43 Ibid., n. 17, p. 165: “Ut ergo probetur Deum esse intellectivum, non spiritualitas, sed ratio entis a se, seu infiniti, assumenda est.” chapter thirteen

Bartolomeo Mastri: FROM METAPHYSICS TO NATURAL THEOLOGY

The fact that Bartolomeo Mastri1 composed a metaphysics of notable pro- fundity gives him an important place in the history of philosophy. His importance, hitherto insufficiently acknowledged, is due to two fundamental aspects of seventeenth-century philosophy. First of all, few comprehensive metaphysical texts were produced in that period; and secondly, the whole of philosophy at the beginning of the modern age centers on the role played by metaphysics as such. For proof of the second affirmation, it suffices to mention Immanuel Kant, who maintained that down to his own days, no metaphysics had presented itself as truly scientific, since no one had taken the trouble to ratiocinate about the intellectual conditions of realistic experience. Obviously, this criticism was aimed at the philosophy of Christian Wolff, who had presented metaphysics as the vestibule of the entire philosophical corpus, thereby attaching an enormous weight to this

1 Edition: Bartholomaei Mastrii de Meldula et Bonaventurae Belluti (. . .), Philosophiae ad mentem Scoti Cursus integer. Tomus Primus: Continens disputationes in Aristotelis Logicam, Venice: Pezzana 1708. Tomus Secundus: Continens disputationes (. . .) in Aristotelis Stagiritae Libros Physi- corum. Tomus Tertius: Continens disputationes (. . .) in Aristotelis Stagiritae Libros De anima, De generatione, et corruptione, De coelo, et metheoris. Tomus Quartus/Quintus: Continens disputationes (. . .) in duodecim Aristotelis Stagiri- tae Libros Metaphysicorum, Pars Prior/Posterior.—This edition is described by Forlivesi, Scotistarum Princeps, 376–380.—Bartholomaeus Mastrius (1602–1673), a Franciscan from Padua, wrote this four-volume philosophy course with his confrere Bonaventura Bellutus; the fourth volume, on metaphysics, was published by Mastri alone. First editions: Dispu- tationes in Aristotelis libros Physicorum, Rome 1637; Disputationes in organum Aristotelis (or Commentarii in Logicam), Venice 1639; Institutiones logicae, Venice 1646; Disputationes in libros de coelo et mundo et metheoris, Venice 1640; Commentarii in libros de anima, Venice 1643; Disputationes in XII libros Metaphysicarum, 2 vols., Venice 1646–47.—On Mastri, see Schmutz, “Bartolomeo Mastri da Meldola;” see also Forlivesi, “Notizie su Bartolomeo Mas- tri da Meldola”: http://www.comune.meldola.fo.it/cultura/convegno-mastri/notizie.htm. Both these articles (last time consulted on July 20, 2011) have detailed bibliographies. For- livesi, Rem in seipsa cernere. The textbook is mentioned only en passant in Schobinger, Die Philosophie des 17. Jahrhunderts, 2nd half-vol., 639. See most recently Medioevo 34 (2009), special fascicle: Marco Forlivesi, ed. The Debate on the Subject of Metaphysics from the Later Middle Ages to the Early Modern Age. The highly technical topic of this chapter makes it superfluous, and would be even misleading, to translate all evidences from scholastic Latin into modern English. 228 chapter thirteen part of philosophy—but at the same time underestimating the problems inherent in the possibility of a metaphysics as such. The apparent importance of metaphysics was in fact balanced by the depth and the value of the other philosophical disciplines, that is, the mathematical and physical sciences that were located much more at the heart of the Enlightenment worldview. My first affirmation, that few works of metaphysics were written before or at the same time as Wolff, requires one qualification. For the philosophers of the early modern period, from Galileo to Kant, there may have been too much metaphysics. Indeed, the whole of philosophy, especially that of the Catholic schools, was saturated in metaphysics; here, it suffices to recall the polemics against the substantial forms and the occult qualities.2 The same prejudice can be seen in the disdain for Mastri and Belluto expressed by Michelangelo Fardella, who regarded them as “philosophers whose goal is the dry abstractions of a windy metaphysics that ever wanders around in the imaginary universe.”3 At any rate, if I am not mistaken, in the whole of the seventeenth century the only books devoted exclusively to metaphysics were the following: the Disputationes metaphysicae of the Jesuit Francisco Suárez, published just before the beginning of that century, in 1597; the Philosophia metaphysicam physicamque complectens of the Regular Cleric Raphael Aversa, published in 1625; and the Disputationes metaphysicae of the Theatine Zacharias Pasqualigo, published in two volumes in 1634 and 1636. Every other study of metaphysics formed part of a complete course of philosophical instruction. This is true also of Mastri’s Disputationes in XII libros Metaphysicorum, which differs from the others only in virtue of the fact that the author wrote them after collaborating with his confrere Bonaventura Belluto in the composition of the other parts of the course. The importance of this book is due to the tension between a scholastic metaphysics that was inclined to metaphysicize (although in fact it produced few autonomous metaphysical systems) and the goal of a truly philosophical metaphysics of a kind that would have satisfied the Kantian scientific criteria. These criteria are generated by Kant’s discovery of the dilemma that although human knowledge is related to the Ding an sich, this remains unattainable. From a scholastic perspective, the peculiar solution to this problem—namely, to transfer the categories

2 See Blum, “Qualitates occultae.” 3 Forlivesi, Bartolomeo Mastri, 13. The passage cited is found in Marangon, “Aristotelismo e cartesianismo,”, 113 n. 126. mastri: from metaphysics to natural theology 229 of space and time from the known object to the intellectual forms (the Anschauungsformen)—separates, or rather, abstracts the categorical manifestations of the being from the material reality. This suggests that it would useful to investigate Mastri’s texts to see how he treated the problem of the manifestation of being in matter. And this means studying his theory of abstraction.

13.1 Kinds of Abstraction

If we ask what characterizes metaphysics as a whole with respect to the other philosophical differences, the answer is: abstraction. In formal terms, abstraction is simply the knowledge of something, prescinding from ulte- rior implications. This is how Toletus defines it in his Logica: Abstractio enim non aliud est quam cognitio unius, non cognitis his, quae ei coniunctae errant, nec oportet existimare, quod ibi fiat aliqua separatio rea- lis. (. . .) sed dicitur Abstractio similitudine quadam ad abstractionem, quae in rebus fit: isto modo etiam intellectu abstrahimus, dum nunc absque alio coniuncto intelligimus, licet multum sit inter Sensum et Intellectum dis- criminis, a nobis modo praetermittendum.4 The concept of abstraction entails the doubt about whether it is justified from the perspective of the object of knowledge, and therefore whether such a separation exists only in the abstracting intellect or also in the object itself. According to Cosma Alamanni, “abstraction” refers to the knowledge of the form separately from the matter, and is the equivalent of the difference between the universal and the particular. The product of an abstraction of this kind would exist solely in the intellect and would be the principle of the knowledge of things, given that each thing is known by means of its form.5 The Complutensians distinguish three levels of abstraction, in accordance with the three levels of mater from which the

4 Toletus, Commentaria . . . in universam Aristotelis logicam, 1583, In Prooem. Porph., q. 2, p. 27. 5 Cosmas Alamanni, Summa philosophiae D. Thomae Aquinatis (. . .) in ordinem cursus accommodata, Paris: Carolus Rouillard 1640 (microfiche: Zug: IDC 1987, The Catholic Ref- ormation CA-1), Prima Secundae Partis totius philosophiae (. . .), Paris: Petrus Billaine 1630, Phys. q. 1, art. 4, resp., p. 5b: “(. . .) singularia includunt in sui ratione materiam signatam, universalia vero materiam communem, ut dicitur 7. met. ideo praedicta abstractio non dicitur formae a material absolutae, sed universalis a particulari. possunt igitur hujusmodi rationes sic abstractae dupliciter considerari, uno modo secundum se, et sic considerantur sine motu, et materia signata, et hoc invenitur in eis, nisi secundum esse, quod habent in intellectu. Alio modo secundum quod comparantur ad res, quarum sunt rationes, quae 230 chapter thirteen abstraction is made: “Est autem triplex gradus huius abstractionis formalis (. . .) iuxta triplicem materiam a qua potest aliqua res abstrahi, scilicet singularem, sensibilem, et intelligibilem.”6 In this way, natural philosophy (physics) attains the lowest level of the sciences, because “habet infimum gradum abstractionis formalis.” It is followed by mathematics, which abstracts from the matter that is perceptible to the senses. Finally, materia intelligibilis est ipsa substantia corporea, seu materia prima, quae dicitur intelligibilis, quia solo intellectu percipi potest. Unde illae scientiae abstrahunt a materia intelligibili, quae tractant de rebus, quae sine materia prima esse possunt, vel quia nunquam sint in materia, ut Deus, et Angeli; vel quia in quibusdam sunt in materia, in quibusdam vero non; et ideo secundum se non dependent ab illa, ut substantia, et qualitas; actus, et potentia, unum, et multa, etc. Et huiusmodi est Metaphysica, quae propterea Theolo- gia naturalis, et prima Philosophia nuncupatur (. . .).7 The Complutensians too see the connection between the abstraction of matter from the form, and the abstraction of the universal from the particular, referring (like Alamanni) to Saint Thomas Aquinas. However, they call the former the abstractio formalis, seu praecisiva, and the latter abstractio totalis. They add that only the formal abstraction permits “actualitas, distinctio, et intelligibilitas,” while the total or universal abstraction creates “in eo quod abstrahitur potentialitas, confusio, et minor intelligibilitas.”8 It is the levels and modes of abstraction that determine the scientific quality of knowledge, and these depend on the type of matter in which they have their origin. This implies the paradox that it is precisely the material state of the object of knowledge that determines the quality of the science, while on the other hand, this same state of intelligibility appears to depend on the abstractive act of the intellect, which refers to its object precisely by prescinding from its materiality. The solution offered by the Complutensians is the distinction drawn between a twofold abstraction, the intellectual and the objective abstraction: huiusmodi abstractionem sumi posse dupliciter. Primo active, et formaliter pro operatione scilicet intellectus, quae obiectum separatur a materia (. . .). Secundo modo sumitur abstractio formalis passive, seu obiective, et radicaliter, pro actualitate, et immaterialitate, quae relinquitur in obiecto

quidem res sunt in materia, et motu, et sic sunt principia cognoscendi res illas quia omnis res cognoscitur per suam formam.” 6 Complutenses, Artium cursus, Frankfurt: Schoenwetter 1628, Log. D. 19, q. 4, § 2 n. 47. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. d. 4, q. 4, § 2, n. 29 and d. 19, q. 4, § 2 n. 46. mastri: from metaphysics to natural theology 231

ex separatione materiae, et per quam fit actu intelligibile. Et abstractio in hoc sensu per se pertinet ad obiectum in esse scibilis, et consequenter ad rationem formalem specificativam scientiae (. . .).9 We encounter here a double abstraction, the one as an active operation of the intellect, the other as the objective separation of the object of knowledge from any kind of matter; and it is the second type of abstraction that justifies knowledge in virtue of the intelligibility of the object. We may wonder whether it is the so-called passive abstraction that generates the knowledge obtained in the operative abstraction, or whether these two are mutually independent. If they are independent, we are left with the problem whether in fact the operative abstraction of the intellect generates knowledge, that is, whether it is scientific in the literal sense. Obvi- ously, metaphysics deals with things (res) that belong to the second type of abstraction, the passive and objective abstraction. This is not the place to ask whether physics and mathematics are fully sciences, but the question remains of the extent to which the abstraction of the metaphysical objects is justified: according to the Complutensians, these are sometimes joined to matter, and at other times not. It is here that Mastri can help us take a step forward, since in his thinking, abstraction as such becomes the criterion of the scientific character of metaphysics. Let us begin with the definitions of abstraction in the Logica: “Terminus abstractus significat aliquid per modum se stantis et non alteri inexisten- tis, ut humanitas est abstractum hominis, et significat naturam humanam veluti a proprio supposito separatum.”10 In another passage, Mastri writes: “homo formaliter significat naturam humanam in suppositis,” in such a way that “humanitas (. . .) solum significat hominis quidditatem; et dicitur terminus ultima abstractione abstractus, et a Recentioribus dicitur abstractum metaphysicum.”11 This definition may mean that abstraction, taken to its conclusion, is the typical operation of metaphysics, since it appears to be a terminological or semiotic act intended to draw attention to the absence of concrete things. The volume dedicated to metaphysics shows that the problem is precisely that although the act of abstraction must indeed draw attention to the essence, this is exclusively a terminological operation. In other words, the “autonomy” of that which is abstracted must possess the quality of a

9 Ibid. d. 19, q. 4, § 2 n. 48. 10 Mastrius, In Org., Institutio Logica, pars 1, tr. 1, c. 3, n. 8. 11 Ibid. 232 chapter thirteen separation based on the being itself. And this means that we must ask how such a separation or abstraction can coincide both in the act of knowing and in its object.

13.2 The Competence of Metaphysics

The Prologue to the Metafisica introduces the two terms that in my opinion are the key words of this question, namely abstractum and commune. Mastri writes that metaphysics moves “in the most common concepts” and deals “de Deo, et intelligentiis, quae sunt abstracta per essentiam, ac de ente, aliisque rationibus transcendentibus, quae sunt abstracta (ut aiunt) per indifferentiam.”12 We should note the terminology that Mastri employs to expound this difference. In the first quaestio, he speaks of the “Sphaera metaphysicae speculationis,”13 of “amplitudo,”14 “intellectus Metaphysicus,”15 and the “genus abstrahendi metaphysicale.”16 These expressions are highly ambiguous, since they can designate both a material field and a methodological competence or a way of proceeding. We shall see that this ambiguity is inherent in the topic itself, and is probably intended by the author. The entire discussion in this first quaestio concerns the object of metaphysics, but Mastri seems to avoid including the word “object” in the title, in order not to preempt the question whether such an object exists in the same way as the objects of the other philosophical investigations. When he speaks of the primary and coexistent object of metaphysics, he calls the discipline a facultas that omits those objects that are dealt with in physics.17 Citing passages from Aristotle’s

12 Mastrius, Disputationes in libros metaphysicorum, pars prior, disp. prooemialis, n. 1, p. 1: “(. . .) ratione vero objecti adaequati dicitur [metaphysica] universalis Philosophia, quia in rationibus communissimis versatur ver. grat. entis, et aliorum transcendentium rebus materialibus, ac immaterialibus communium; et eadem ratione Sapientia vocatur, et prima Philosophia. (. . .); Ratione tandem objecti tum principalis, tum adaequati, communi nomine Metaphysica dicitur (. . .) quasi sit facultas res physicas in superioribus tomis traditas excedens, vel transcendens; quia tractat de Deo, et intelligentiis, quae sunt abstracta per essentiam, ac de ente, alijsque rationibus transcendentibus, quae sunt abstracta (ut ajunt) per indifferentiam, ratione cujus abstractionis haec omnia rerum omnium physica- rum ordinem superant, at in altiori gradu constituuntur.” 13 In Met., Disp. prooem., q. 1, titulus, p. 1: “De Sphaera Metaphysicae speculationis, an versetur circa omnia entia in speciali, vel tantum in universalia.” 14 In Met., d. 1, q. 1, n. 5, p. 2. 15 In Met., d. 1, q. 1, n. 10, p. 4: “obiecta proportionata intellectui Metaphysico.” 16 In Met., d. 1, 1. 1, n. 7, p. 3. 17 See note 11. mastri: from metaphysics to natural theology 233 text, he affirms that in his view, “Metaphysicam considerare ens omne, et ens inquantum ens.”18 We know, however, that “the entire being” (“ens omne”) and “the being qua being” are not the same thing, nor do they suffice to delineate the field of metaphysics. At this point, Mastri sums up the well-known discussion of the object of metaphysics in three theses: First, metaphysics “descends” from the natures and the quiddities of all things to the particular properties. Secondly, metaphysics studies only the essences of things in general (“in universali”). Thirdly, metaphysics studies some things only in general; but it studies other things in particular as well, namely, the immaterial things and the separated substances. Obviously, it is only in the third thesis that the field of competence can include God and angels; but it is equally obvious that we find here the root of the parting of the ways between general metaphysics (ontology) and special metaphysics (pneumatology, psychology). The principal defender of the first thesis (as is well known, thanks to the discussion it has deserv- edly received) was Raphael Aversa. If we ask why Mastri finds it so important to refute this concept of metaphysics, the first answer, clearly enough, is that in such a case there would be no difference between physics and metaphysics—and this is in fact what Aversa maintains in his book. The consequence of the second thesis is that God is excluded from the field of a metaphysics of this kind, or else he is dealt with in the same manner as a physical object. We find the key to the third response in a formulation in the discussion of the solution offered by the Paduan Scotist Antonio Trombetta, who affirmed: “Metaphysicus non contemplatur quidditates speciales sistendo in principiis propriis, sed risolvendo eas in ens, et alia praedicta transcendentia.”19 When we recall the definition of abstraction in the Logica (“humanitas significant hominis quidditatem”), we see that it is not the task of metaphysics to determine the quiddities of things, but to “resolve” them, to transform them into ens and transcendentals. Accordingly, a philosophia universalis à la Aversa would be a “physical philosophy”:

18 In Met., d. 1, q. 1, n. 2, p. 1. 19 In Met., d. 1, q. 1, n. 6, p. 3. 234 chapter thirteen

Dicendum; quod si Metaphysica sumatur pro universali Philosophia Physica, et quam modo dicimus Metaphysicam complectente, considerare tenetur entia omnia non solum secundum gradus universales, sed etiam secundum speciales rationes eorum; si vero sumatur pro scientia a Physica condistincta (prout sumi solet) in quo praesertim sensu quaestio ista agitur, descendere nequaquam potest ad rationes speciales entium quorumcumque, sed tantum aliquorum: eorum nempe, quae sunt a materia penitus abjuncta, quales sunt Intelligentiae separatae, rerum vero materialium gradus universales duntaxat contemplari potest.20 Metaphysics (which one could call “physical”) would then speak of things, but not of the ens; or else it would speak of the essences without descending to a proper science of the physical things, and without making use of the ontological competence of metaphysics. This means that the competence of metaphysics must be distinguished from that of the special sciences, to the benefit of all. Metaphysics does not enter into the field of the species specialissimae, “sed bene inquirit in generali de quidditatibus substantiae, et accidentis.”21

13.3 Indifference

According to Mastri’s thesis, however, metaphysics is also interested in the immaterial things: and in this case, it actually deals with their quiddities in particular.22 In order to explain both the fact that the immaterial things (and especially God) belong to metaphysics, and the difference between metaphysics and the ontology of material things, Mastri employs the distinction between “abstractum a materia, et secundum se, et considerationem,” and the abstraction “a materia per indifferentiam”: Demum, ut apud omnes est in confesso, eas rationes tenetur Metaph. considerare, quae a materia, et secundum se, et considerationem abstrahunt; haec autem in duplici sunt differentia, quaedam enim sunt secundum esse abstracta a materia per indifferentiam, ut sunt rationes generales communes entibus materialibus, et immaterialibus; quaedam vero sunt abstracta a materia secundum esse per essentiam, et sunt illae, quae sunt rebus immaterialibus prorsus addictae, adeo ut nunquam in materia inveniri possint, et

20 In Met., d. 1, q. 1, n. 5, p. 3. 21 In Met., d. 1, q. 1, n. 7, p. 3. 22 In Met., d. 1, 1. 1, n. 10, p. 4: “(. . .) possit Metaphysica, et debeat speculari quidditates in particulari rerum abstractarum a materia per essentiam, quales sunt intelligentiae separatae; quia ejusmodi entia sunt penitus a materia sejuncta, ergo sunt objecta proportionata intellectui Metaphysico (. . .).” mastri: from metaphysics to natural theology 235

istae sunt omnes rationes propriae possibiles haberi ab intellectu creato naturali lumine ducto de intelligentiis separatis etiam primam includendo.23 The second part of this proposition, which describes the beings separated from matter, deals primarily with the possibility of their being known on the finite and human level. This is the main concern of John Duns Scotus in his entire philosophical and theological œuvre. Here, however, we should note that Mastri introduces a distinction among those things that are separated from matter both essentially and rationally, and that he calls the general concepts of being “abstracta per indifferentiam”—a formula that, if I am not mistaken, we do not find in these terms in Duns Scotus, who speaks of indifferentia in one passage, where he says that “ens ut ‘hoc intelligibile’ intelligitur a nobis, sed si esset primum obiectum, hoc esset secundum totam indifferentiam ad omnia in quibus salvatur, non ut aliquod unum intelligibile in se—et quidlibet illius indifferentiae posset intelligi. (. . .) Ens inquantum ens, communis est quocumque alio conceptu nulla contractione omnino cointellecta—nec habitudine ad sensibile, nec quacumque.”24 This quotation—embedded, as is usual, in an intricate catena of extremely subtle arguments—allows us to infer that there is a distinction by means of indifferentia, but we must note that Sco- tus does not speak here of an abstraction from matter. In his metaphysical quaestiones, he defines the mode of abstraction with regard to the immaterial beings, describing a “science superior” to physics and mathematics, which deals with the immaterial beings by “prescinding from movement and quantity.” Its task is to study these immaterial beings qua “abstract with regard to Being.”25 This description of a superior science is rather

23 In Met., d. 1, q. 1, n. 10, p. 4. 24 Scotus, Ordinatio n. 124, ed. Vat. III 76 f., quoted by Honnefelder, Ens inquantum ens, 69 n. 39. Honnefelder writes at length about this indifferentia, following a gnoseological interpretation, but he does not reflect on the problem that Mastri takes up, namely, the problem of the object of metaphysics in an ontological sense. 25 Scotus, “Quaestiones in Metaphysicam,” lib. 1, q. 1, n. [14], § 38, p. 13: “Aliud est notandum quod substantiae immateriales et immobiles non pertinent ad considerationem alicuius scientiae particularis. Non naturalis, quia non sunt mobilia; nec mathematicae, quia non quanta. Sed pertinet earum consideratio ad aliquam scientiam superiorem, cuius consideratio abstrahit a motu et quanto. Unde in ista scientia considerantur non solum tamquam subiecti causae, sed tamquam principales partes subiecti, quae sunt secundum esse abstracta, illa abstractio quae propria est huic scientiae, quae etiam abstractio secundum rationem competit aliis consideratis in hac scientia. Consideratur enim quidquid hic consideratur, non in quantum quantum, nec in quantum mobile; et ita quodlibet conside- ratum abstrahitur, secundum considerationem, et a quanto et a motu. Et per consequens praecise considerantur hic illa quae secundum esse abstrahuntur ab utroque; huiusmodi sunt substantiae separatae.” 236 chapter thirteen close to that of Mastri, but it does not speak of a science constituted by abstraction through indifferentia. Above all, however, it does not delineate a metaphysics that would include both the general concepts of being and the immaterial substances. In fact, it appears to establish a science that is distinct not only from mathematics and physics, but also from the science of being as something abstracted rationally—for Scotus says that in this science of the immaterial things, they would not be treated as causes,26 but as constitutive parts of the field of research. I believe that what Scotus is delineating here is a natural theology. I cannot present an exhaustive account of the development of the concept of metaphysical abstraction from Scotus to Mastri,27 who refers explicitly to Trombetta; but I wish to recall the Jesuit Benedictus Pere- rius, who attempted to resolve the paradoxes of scholastic metaphysics in a work published in 1576. He proposes a redefinition of this metaphysics with the aid of the idea of “abstraction by indifferentia.” He argues that these paradoxes in Duns Scotus are formulated in opposition to Avi- cenna, who had argued that the theme (subiectum) of metaphysics is the “ens in quantum ens,” and to Averroes, who had said that its theme was God and the angels.28 Here, Pererius proposes a distinction from what would later be called general metaphysics, as a “universal science differing from the particular sciences, since it deals with the transcendent sciences” and is called the “first philosophy,” and another science that deals with intelligences.29 This first philosophy, or general metaphysics, should deal with immaterial things only qua the “general principles and universal causes” of every being.30 Pererius specifies what this proposition means by affirming that this universal science does not “descend” from beings in particular (whether these are immaterial or material), because “ens ut

26 It should be remembered that in all the other sciences, including ontology, God and the angels are studied as the efficient or final causes of the objects of these sciences. 27 We should note that this type of abstraction by indifferentia is not mentioned in the manuals of philosophy or in the numerous manuals of Scotist teaching. See, for example, Hieronymus de Ferrariis, Repertorium locupletissimum. 28 Scotus, Qu. in metaph., lib. 1, q. 1, passim. 29 Pererius, De communibus omnium rerum naturalium principiis, 1576, lib. 1, cap. 7, p. 14: “Prima conclusio, oportet esse aliquam scientiam universalem diversam a scientiis particularibus, quae agat de transcendentalibus (. . .). Tertia conclusio: Necesse est esse duas scientias distinctas inter se, Unam, quae agat de transcendentalibus, et universalissimis rebus: Alteram, quae de intelligentiis. Illa dicetur prima Philosophia et scientia universalis (. . .).” See the chapter on Pererius in this book. 30 Ibid. “Secunda conclusio, praedicta scientia universalis, non debet agere de intelligentiis per se, et ut sunt species entis, sed tantum fortasse in ordine ad suum subiectum, nimirum ut sunt generalia principia et universales causae omnium entium.” mastri: from metaphysics to natural theology 237 ens, indifferenter se habet ad ens materiale et immateriale.”31 The Jesuit Pererius—at an intermediate stage between Scotus and Mastri—is noteworthy because he was the first to admit the theoretical impossibility of dealing with natural theology and ontology in one common science. Irrespective of whether or not Mastri knew Pererius, it is obvious that his treatment of the ontological problems of the Scotist tradition takes its place in this debate, which leads from mediaeval scholasticism to the modern concept of metaphysics—a concept that sooner or later will do away with the Scotist chimeras. Let us return to Mastri and see how this Scotist himself presents this solution about the object of metaphysics by means of the distinction drawn between abstractions. He says that: “objectum Metaphysicae a Physicae condistinctae (. . .) esse (. . .) ens abstrahens a materia intelligendo tum praecisive pro ente in communi, tum positive pro ente immateriali.”32 We see at once that the abstraction by means of indifferentia is described as the type of abstraction that prescinds from differences that exist in reality (namely, materiality or immateriality), while the essential abstraction (which applies to the intelligences) is called the “positive” abstraction because it expresses a separation that is ontologically real. The surprising thing is that it is precisely this prescinding from the materiality or immateriality of being that constitutes the ens communis that is the object of metaphysics; but we should note that he says shortly after this that “Meta- physicus considerat quodquidest rerum omnium in communi, idest, quae conveniunt ipsi quodquidest universaliter,”33 unlike the sciences of particular things, which define the “quodquidest” (that is, the “quidditates” or real essences) of things.34 This means that metaphysics thematizes the concept of essence or quiddity as an ontological concept, prescinding from real things. Despite this, the transcendentals—that is, those that are abstracted from matter by means of indifferentia with regard to whether or not they are really connected to matter—are abstracted “secundum esse,” because “not only those that exist de facto without matter, like the separate substances, but also the concepts that can be found in things without matter, because it suffices that they do not include matter in their formal concept and do not imply it per se.” And “thus it is an error to

31 Ibid. “(. . .) non debet scientia considerans ens universaliter sumptum descendere ad tractationem et considerationem ullarum specierum eius particularium (. . .).” 32 Mastri, In Met., d. 1, q. 1, n. 13, p. 5. 33 In Met., d. 1, q. 1, n. 16, p. 5. 34 In Met., d. 1, q. 1, n. 16, p. 6. 238 chapter thirteen think that only the separate substances are abstracted from any kind of matter.”35 This specification is very important, for three reasons. First of all, because Mastri is able to draw a distinction between the transcendentals and the purely intellectual fictions or hypotheses. In other words, he is able to affirm the realistic importance of the metaphysical abstraction. Secondly, because although the abstraction through indifferentia is a quasi-negative separation (praecisiva as opposed to positiva, as we have seen), it constitutes an ontologically coherent field, so that Mastri can rightly speak of a “sphere of metaphysical investigation.” And finally, because the “community” of beings consists in the indifferentia with regard to the de facto inherence of the transcendentals in physical things. It follows that the problem mentioned at the beginning of this essay— namely, that the forms of the knowledge of being would not reach the concretely existing existent—does not exist. On the other hand, it would be absurd to present metaphysics as a prelude to physics (as will be customary at a later period, especially in Christian Wolff), because in a systematic position of this kind metaphysics defends its own competence without encroaching on the sphere of scientific research; nor is it the precondition for scientific research. If the metaphysics of beings is useful, it is useful only for natural theology, in which the general concepts of Being are discussed from the perspective of the divine Being. But the problems of natural theology in the post-scholastic age do not directly concern us here. We may conclude that metaphysics can indeed become problematic if its investigation of the immaterial objects is misunderstood as an activity of research into the species specialissimae, the genus of which would be being in communi. In that case, the property and the divisions of being must be designated in such a way that the separate substances would be one special instance of them.36 If the separate substances (that is, God, the angels, and the human intellect) are presented as “species” of being, it is easy to leave aside the theory about these beings and to proceed directly from ontology to physics—for such beings do not constitute principles of knowledge of natural reality. Or, if we prefer to emphasize

35 In Met., d. 1, q. 2, n. 41, p. 12: “et ideo falsum est, solas substantias separatas abstrahere ab omni materia (. . .). (. . .) intelligendo per entia abstracta secundum esse, non solum quae de facto sine materia existunt, ut substantiae separatae, sed etiam rationes illas, quae in rebus sine materia reperiri possunt, quia hoc satis est, ut in sua ratione formali materiam non includant, neque illam per se requirant; (. . .) unde non solum intelligentiae, sed etiam praedicata transcendentia dicuntur post naturalia, et post Physicam.” 36 See the chapter on the Porphyrian Tree in this book. mastri: from metaphysics to natural theology 239 the positive aspect of the question, we may observe that the presence of beings that are immaterial per se alongside the abstractions in the sphere of metaphysical research obliges us to define the specific methodology of metaphysics.37

13.4 The Agenda of Modern Metaphysics

Contemporary metaphysics studies two groups of topics: the origin of the world and the general order of that which exists.38 These two tasks go hand in hand; indeed, they overlap, and perhaps they are in fact one and the same task, since the most obvious answer to the question: “What is this?” will be found in the account of “how it was made.” This brings the question about “what” back to the presupposition that there is an origin in an act of making, and the precise answer is sought in the “how” of this act of making. This is why Aristotle translated the question about “what” into the question about “why,” in order to present a classification of four types of answer: the “whence” in the narrow sense, the originator, the goal, and the “what” that can be identified on the basis of the last two answers. The traditional vocabulary speaks here of the causa materialis, efficiens, finalis, and formalis. This may work perfectly well with examples from everyday life—not only in Aristotle’s examples of the ship, the house, or a wooden statue, but also when we point to a cake and learn that it was baked according to Grandmother’s recipe (“Take three eggs . . .”). But the world and things are not cakes, and the answer that invokes the origin may remain just as unclear as the question about what the world and the things are. It immediately becomes obvious that the statement about the origin is not an answer, but merely a strategy for answering—the universality of the

37 Let me give only one example. The celebrated discussion of the possibilia presupposes that the ideas of God and the essences of real things are essentially linked, in such a way that without the possibilities conceived by God, the real things would not exist. On the discussion between Mastri and Johannes Poncius, see Sousedík, “Der Streit,” and Heider, “Mastrius and Punch.” Greater detail in Tobias Hoffmann, Creatura intellecta. 38 Van Inwagen, Metaphysics, 4: “Metaphysics attempts to tell the ultimate truth about the World, about everything. (. . .) I suggest that there are three such questions: 1. What are the most general features of the World (. . .)? (. . .) 2. Why (. . .) is there a World having the features and content described in the answer to Question 1? 3. What is our place in the world? (. . .).” See Zalta, “Metaphysics VI,” who writes that the metaphysics of the twentieth century deals with “individuals,” “sets or classes,” “universals,” and “intentional or abstract objects,” as elements of the quantification that is to be understood as imposing order on knowledge and reality. 240 chapter thirteen

“object” in question means that the “components,” the “formula,” and the “maker” can be sought only within the object of the question. This seems unproblematic with regard to the “goal,” but the “goal” would then appear to be identical with the “what,” and the “what-ness” of the world would be identical with its components. If one pictures the world as an aggregate of parts, the result is a kind of atomism. The “formula” would have to be a self-organization, so that the “maker” too could remain immanent. If however the statement about the origin is to be a genuine answer rather than a mere strategy, it must follow this pattern: “A is B,” that is to say, “What is accessible as A, is in its real essence B,” and “B explains why A appears as A.” Here, both A and B must be real. Since however A is universal, B must be contained in A without being a part of A—for otherwise, B/A would have to be self-explanatory, unless A has a B of such a kind that it explains A, without being excluded from A in such a way that the universal A would be incomplete (because it lacked B). In other words, the explanation of the world must not be a part of the world—without however being excluded from it in such a way that the world would be incomplete without it. And the ‘explanation’ must be a ‘something,’ not just an explanatory technique, for otherwise the explanation would be a theory that is either explained within the “theory of the world” (since this is a universal explanation) or not at all explained; yet either alternative would be absurd—or at least as paradoxical as the “explanation as a something” that is not allowed to be a part of the universal “something.” As is well known, structuralism has attempted to grasp the order of that which exists in such a way that this order itself need not be “something that exists.” This means that it does not fall out of the order, since it does not belong to this order; rather, it establishes the order in question.39 Traditionally, the ordering factor that

39 Gilles Deleuze calls this structure the symbolic, the “positing of a symbolic order that is not reducible to the order of the real, nor to the order of the imaginary, and reaches deeper than this. (. . .) since it involves a combinatorics that extends to formal elements that per se have neither form nor meaning, neither representation nor content, neither a given empirical reality nor a hypothetical functional model; nor do they have intelligibility behind the phenomena. No one has defined better than Louis Althusser the status of the structure as identical with the “theory” itself—and the symbolic must be understood as the production of the original and specific theoretical object”: Deleuze, Woran erkennt man den Strukturalismus, 13f.—Echoes of a negative theology are doubtless not a matter of chance. mastri: from metaphysics to natural theology 241 orders universally, without itself being a part of that on which order is bestowed, is given the name “God.”40 One might at this point demand two corrections to what I have said. First of all, it is a realistic antecedent supposition (so to speak) to postulate that the answer to the question “what” should be more than a strategy to answer the question. What is to be given in the answer should be real. Secondly, traditionally, it is not the “order of the world,” but “the being qua being” that is the theme of metaphysics. The answer to the first objection is that one clearly cannot do without such a preliminary decision. Richard Rorty has pointed out that metaphysics—“considered as the description of how the heavens and the earth are put together”—was replaced first by the classical physics of the modern period, and in parallel to this, by the “theory of knowledge.” He affirms that this view links every epistemology to things, since here too, whatever the details of the development of this position from René Descartes via John Locke to Immanuel Kant and later philosophers, knowledge can be thought of only as “the assemblage of accurate representations.”41 For when one follows Kant by holding that the framework of metaphysics is only the “conditions of the possibility of any experience at all,” one rel- egates the original object of metaphysics to a gnoseological black hole from which it can never be retrieved—other than as a virtual reality. But since it is a reality, everything that applies to the reality of the realist must apply to it too, as long as one is engaged in metaphysics. As long as metaphysics is not transposed into the question of the meaning of Being, which exposes Being to nothing, Martin Heidegger is completely correct in his evaluation of metaphysics from classical antiquity up to Thomas Aqui- nas, Hegel, and Nietzsche, namely, that “metaphysics consistently remains ‘physics’,” that is, a theory about reality.42 For the same reason, it is legitimate to formulate the traditional question about being qua being as a question about the order of the world, especially since there are numerous variants of this definition, such as: ens in quantum ens, ens qua ens, ens ut sic, ens reale, ens commune. For in this question, nothing is decided in advance about the type of order, nor

40 Basic here: Burrell, Friendship and Ways to Truth, ch. 5: “Friendship and Discourse about Divinity: Lest God be god,” with special reference to Sokolowski, The God of Faith and Reason. 41 Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 132 and 11. Rorty’s solution is “edification,” that is to say, a moral wisdom that is independent of the problem of the representation of reality. 42 Heidegger, Einführung in die Metaphysik [1935], 20. 242 chapter thirteen about being and what precisely is meant by “qua being”—apart of course from the fact that the answer that is sought still deals with the existent and remains “physics” in this vague sense. If one looks with this prior knowledge at a recent metaphysics textbook, one will not be surprised to find the following topics: universals, substances, individual things, statements, necessity, possibility, and temporal duration.43 Another textbook has the following sections: universals and cosmology; anthropology (epistemology, mind/body, freedom); the existence and origin of the world.44 But the decisive question appears to be about the origin of being, since the answer to this question must necessarily determine the answer to the question of being as such—unless it were possible to define being qua being or the order of the world in such a way that such a definition would not include any statement about the origin. This is in fact what Heidegger seems to have attempted in Sein und Zeit and once again in the Einführung in die Metaphysik through the way in which he thinks of the temporality of existence; however, this meant that he explicitly left the sphere of what appears to be metaphysics.45 Accordingly, metaphysics, as the investigation of the origin and the order of what is—and of what is, taken as a whole—cannot avoid examining what is and how it is, so that it arrives both at statements that indicate more than the individual components (unless the totality of these components were demonstrable as such), and at statements that at the same time communicate their status as a “formula,” “mere theory,” or indeed reality.

13.5 The Transcendence of Metaphysics

We shall now test this agenda by looking at one of the most comprehensive textbooks in metaphysics, that by Bartolomeo Mastri, in order to see whether metaphysics is possible at all, and to see the problems entailed by the task that is incumbent upon metaphysics. If this investigation were carried out with a purely antiquarian interest, the investigator would have misunderstood the very meaning of what he is doing, since—apart from

43 Loux, Metaphysics. The author explicitly excludes topics of epistemology and natural theology from his understanding of metaphysics (12), although these traditionally belonged to this discipline. 44 Van Inwagen and Zimmerman, Metaphysics. See van Inwagen, Metaphysics. 45 Heidegger, Einführung, 21f. mastri: from metaphysics to natural theology 243 the doubt about whether it is at all possible to give a doxographic or narrative account of philosophy—the object of metaphysics means that it is possible only in the enactment of thinking (independently of who wrote this thinking down and thus initiated it). And metaphysics is certainly not an intellectual game of puzzle-solving,46 since the questions it tackles are invariably either problems or misunderstandings that are relevant to the matter in hand. Metaphysics occupies an unusually ample space in this philosophy course, which is divided, according to the well-tried pattern of seventeenth-century scholasticism, into logic, physics, individual treatises in natural philosophy, and metaphysics.47 We can expect that the thorough elaboration of these topics will take into account a great many different aspects and will offer reflection on a high level. One contingent reason for examining the problem of metaphysics here is the fact that the attempt to master the problems, and above all the deficits, of metaphysics in the modern period is usually made in the Thomist tradition; at best, appeal is made to the similarly comprehensive Disputationes metaphysicae of the Jesuit Francisco Suárez (1548–1617), because this book found imitators in Protestant philosophy.48 Mastri belongs to the Scotist tendency. In the present context, however, we cannot dwell thematically on the differences between Scotism and Thomism, Nominalism, and the Jesuit synthesis of these, nor on controversies within Scotism. Mastri begins by noting that “metaphysics” takes its name from its theme: “Because of its primary and appropriate object, it is generally called ‘metaphysics’ (. . .), as if it were a discipline that goes beyond or transcends those natural things that have been presented in the preceding volumes; for it deals with God and the intelligences that are essentially abstract, and with being and the other transcendentals, which—as one says—are abstract through indifferentia. Thanks to this abstraction, all these surpass the order of the natural things and are situated on a higher level of things.”49 Metaphysics has an object that is characterized

46 Wilson, “Revisionary Metaphysics,” 773: “Each [metaphysics] is nevertheless deserv- ing of study, Strawson maintained, on account of (. . .) its utility as a source of philosophical puzzles.” This textbook contains no “metaphysics,” but only the “history of metaphysics” and “metaphysical problems.” 47 On this genre and its philosophical significance, see Blum, Philosophenphilosophie, and “Der Standardkursus.” 48 See, e.g., Siewerth, Das Schicksal der Metaphysik von Thomas zu Heidegger; Honne- felder, Scientia transcendens. On Suárez, see E. J. Bauer, “Francisco Suárez;” Goudriaan, Philosophische Gotteserkenntnis. 49 Met. disp. 1, n. 1: “Ratione tandem objecti tum principalis, tum adaequati, communi nomine Metaphysica dicitur (. . .), quasi sit facultas res physicas in superioribus tomis 244 chapter thirteen by abstractness. More precisely, it deals with the precarious relationship of an act of transcending to that which is transcended—and “that which is transcended” is quite simply everything. Here, there must exist at least two forms of abstractness, an abstractness that is essential, and an abstractness “through indifferentia.” Both of these can be presented as a “higher level.” But this higher level too lays claim to completeness, since apart from God, the intelligences, and all the transcendentals, nothing is left out. In negative terms, metaphysics is not a system or method, but a matter, that is, a matter of abstraction. Accordingly, the first question to be clarified is the position it takes to the things to which it is related by means of abstraction. Mastri offers three possible theses. First, metaphysics deals with the nature and the essence of all things: not just with their shared predicates, but also with what makes them what they are as individuals—in other words, not only what a human being and a horse have in common, but also what a human being or a horse is as such in each instance. In that case, the things are related to the generality of nature in the same way as a species is related to a genus. Horses and human beings are thus cases of the application of “thatnesses” (quidditates), and the correct knowledge of them depends on employing the instruments of metaphysics.50 Secondly, it deals with substances only in a universal manner. In other words, it deals only with general predicates and transcendentals. The metaphysician does indeed know “everything in some manner” (omnia aliquali- ter), but Aristotle remarked long ago that: “sapientem maxime omnia, ut possibile est, scire, non habentem singulariter eorum scientiam.”51 This position, namely to study what is in its possibility to be, is based on a scientific pragmatism: for if metaphysics were to go into the details too, everything would be metaphysics—and that would make all the other philosophical sciences superfluous.52 There is a conflict here: on the one hand, the generality may perhaps not perceive things as what they are, but on the other hand, a philosophy of the individual is nothing more than physics.

traditas excedens, vel transcendens; quia tractat de Deo, et intelligentiis, quae sunt abstracta per essentiam, ac de ente, aliisque rationibus transcendentibus, quae sunt abstracta (ut ajunt) per indifferentiam, ratione cujus abstractionis haec omnia rerum omnium physi- carum ordinem superant, et in altiori gradu constituuntur.” 50 Met. disp. 1, q. 1, n. 2. On the instrument of the Arbor Porphyrii and the position of the Scotists with regard to this, see the relevant chapter in this book. 51 Aristotle, Metaphysics I 2, 982 a 9. This is Bessarion’s translation, quoted by Mastri; cf. Aristoteles latine. 52 Met. disp. 1, q. 1, n. 3. Cf. Log. disp. 12, q. 3, n. 55: “sic omnes aliae scientiae saltem speculativae superfluerent, quia omnia ad considerationem Metaphysicam pertinerent.” mastri: from metaphysics to natural theology 245

Thirdly, the intermediary thesis admits that metaphysics considers material things only in a universal manner, but considers the immaterial and separated substances individually (ibid.). It is obvious that the background to this distinction is the constitution of the objects of the sciences in connection with matter, since the abstraction of metaphysics concerns the already-existing materiality or immateriality of its objects. Spiritual beings do not require abstraction, since they are per se free of matter: they are abstract. But the objects of physics are dealt with in metaphysics prescinding from their matter. Nevertheless, the decisive argument that Mastri adduces favors the third thesis, according to which metaphysics deals with physical objects universally and with immaterial objects individually. Even physics is already detached from the realm of the senses (“recedit a sensu,” ibid.), that is to say, from the natural constitution of its objects. The decisive point for Mastri is the thematic framework of that which is metaphysically knowable. He draws a distinction between “metaphysics per se” and “metaphysics in us,” localizing the object of metaphysics with regard to its appearing: Metaphysics per se is the habitual knowledge of this object that one can have of it because it is capable, thanks to the nature of the potency, of manifesting itself naturally to the created intellect. Metaphysics in us is a habitual knowledge of the same object that one can have of it because it is capable of being perceived by us in this state by means of the senses, since all our knowledge begins from the senses.53 Simplifying somewhat, we may say that the knowability of the metaphysical depends both on its own appearing and on the quasi-empirical receptivity of the human person. Although the object is always one and the same, we must draw a distinction between its own potency and the receptivity of the one who comes to know it. The metaphysical is one thing, and the metaphysician stands over against it. And this is precisely the ultimate reason why, according to this Scotist, metaphysics, since it differs from physics, “cannot descend to the special concepts of every kind of being, but only to some concepts, namely, to those that are completely detached from matter, such as the separated intelligences, whereas it can

53 Met. disp. 1, q. 1, n. 5: “Metaphysica in se est habitualis cognitio hujus objecti perfecta nata haberi de illo secundum quod natum est se manifestare naturaliter intellectui creato ex natura potentiae; Metaph. vero in nobis est habitualis quaedam cognitio ejusdem objecti nata haberi de illo secundum quod potest nobis pro statu isto attingi via sensuum, cum omnis nostra cognitio ortum ducat a sensu.” 246 chapter thirteen consider only the universal degrees of material things.”54 But what does this “reason” actually consist of?

13.6 Subordination of Physics and Metaphysics

Mastri describes a mutually interlocking double condition of the possibility of metaphysics, when he presents the well-known problem of metaphysics as the problem of representation and manifestation. Since they are the traditional field of metaphysics, the transcendentals and general concepts must transcend the real existents (horses, human beings); nevertheless, they must manifest themselves in and by means of these existents. Their “abstractness through indifferentia,” mentioned at the beginning of the book, must prescind from their genuine differentiation in the real things; but it in turn must allow itself to be differentiated at any time. On the other hand, the philosophical reason must be capable of discovering such abstract things. In the case of natural things, therefore, the second thesis applies: metaphysics is concerned with their general qualities, taking account of their appearing in an abstracting act of thought. This, however, gives metaphysics—together with physics—a touch of skepticism: “Fatendum igitur multas nos latere pro statu isto veritates nedum in Metaphysica, sed etiam in Physica” (Met. disp. 1, q. 1, n. 5). Even when the relationship between individual and general as such is clear, the matter retains an element of uncertainty, thanks to the double condition—which can also be a double imprecision. We can shed light on this idea by recalling Alfred N. Whitehead’s use of the concept of “general principle.” He sees this as capable of realization in “instances,” where each “instance” also realizes the general principle. Both of these, the “general principle” and the “instance,” are “eternal objects.” Up to this point, there is an obvious parallel to Mastri’s postulation of the relationship between general and real. However, Whitehead adds that this relationship is asymmetrical, since although each “instance” through its realization also realizes the “general principle,” it is not necessarily determined in what “instance” this “general principle” can be realized.55

54 Met. disp. 1, q. 1, n. 5: “Dicendum; quod [Metaphysica] (. . .) descendere nequaquam potest ad rationes speciales entium quorumcumque, sed tantum aliquorum: eorumque nempe, quae sunt a materia penitus abjuncta, quales sunt Intelligentiae separatae, rerum vero materialium gradus universales duntaxat contemplari potest.” 55 Whitehead, Process and Reality, Part II, ch. 9, sect. 3, pp. 224f. mastri: from metaphysics to natural theology 247

In other words, while the representation is necessarily based on the manifestation of abstract things, the reverse is not true. This is why it remains uncertain whether a metaphysical concept “in us” can be found at all in reality, that is, whether we have succeeded in finding a concept of “metaphysics per se.” Since, however, there are objects possessing an abstractness that does not derive from the processing of knowledge derived from the senses, but are abstract per se, namely, the spiritual beings, one might well think that “metaphysics per se” and “metaphysics in us” would be congruent in their case; on the other hand, our knowledge of such abstract things must also be dependent on their ability to become manifest “in us.” It might at first sight seem plausible that the knowledge of the spiritual beings would be easier, since they are free of the factor of uncertainty that attaches to physical things, matter, and the senses. However the Scotist declares (with a reference to Thomas Aquinas’ Commentary on the Metaphysics) that there is no difference at all between the general concepts (rationes entium omnium generales et transcendentes) and the spiritual beings, as far as their immateriality is concerned (no matter how this immateriality may come about). For: in metaphysics, as Thomas says in the Prologue to the Metaphysics, “not only those entities, that are never in matter” are per se or essentially detached from matter, “but also those that can be in the things without matter,” since it suffices that in their formal concept, they do not imply matter and per se do not require it. Examples are the concept of being and of any transcendental, as well as the concepts of substance and accident, and indeed some subordinate concepts, namely, absolute or respective accident, quality, action, operation, and similar concepts, since these can be abstracted in such a manner that they are without matter in things, since they are united by their indifferentia to the material and immaterial things.56

56 Met. disp. 1, q. 1, n. 9: “apud Metaph. ‘non solum’ dicuntur abstrahere a materia secundum esse, ut notat D. Thom. in prolog. Met. illae rationes entium, ‘quae nunquam sunt in materia , sed etiam illae, quae possunt esse in rebus sine materia,’ quia hoc satis est, ut in sua ratione formali materiam non includant, nec illam per se requirant, talis autem est ratio entis, et cujuscumque transcendentis, item ratio substantiae, et accidentis, ac etiam aliae quaedam rationes inferiores scilicet accidentis absoluti, vel respectivi, qualitatis, actionis, operationis, et similium, ita enim abstrahi possunt, ut sint in rebus sine materia, cum sint communes per indifferentiam ad res materiales, ac immateriales.” Cf. Thomas Aquinas, In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio, 2; I have drawn attention to the citation by means of quotation marks; the words in angle brackets are added from Thomas’ text. 248 chapter thirteen

We should note that not only “being,” “substance,” and the transcendentals appear dematerialized here: the same applies even to “accident” and to some categories. Although in the nature of things they can never appear otherwise than materially, they become the theme of metaphysics when they manifest themselves without this context, or when the metaphysician represents them as detached from matter. In this way, indifferentia becomes a positive concept that not only prescinds from matter, but also brings about the commune, that which is shared by the abstracted and the spiritual. And in fact Thomas says that the genuine object of metaphysics is not ens qua ens, but ens commune, the shared being.57 Mastri’s intention in quoting him is to emphasize the generality (as opposed to the individual characteristic) of the metaphysical theme. At the same time, however, he elevates spiritual beings and concepts onto the same thematic level. We must investigate whether this includes the same ontological degree; but first, we must examine the question of “metaphysics per se/in us” as it applies to these intellectual substances. Here, another distinction comes into play, namely, that between “conceptus proprii ex propriis” and “conceptus proprii ex communibus” (Met. disp. 1, q. 1, n. 11): “Proper concepts from proper qualities” are derived (to use modern language) analytically from the matter whose concept one is investigating, whereas “proper concepts from common qualities” are derived synthetically, from the comparison with other concepts. The example needed here is the concept of God as infinite being: here, two concepts (being, infinite) are brought together to form one concept in such a way that they apply only to one being, namely, to God. This is characteristic of the “metaphysics in us,” which forms its concepts from the created substances. Accordingly, the knowledge of “proprii ex propriis” belongs to “metaphysics per se,” because it is not dependent on the operation of abstracting and comparing composite attributes. The problem is that the formation of proper concepts from the proper qualities of intelligences, even of the created intelligences, is simply impossible, for “with the help of our senses and imagination, we cannot ascend to those concepts and form out of creatures a proper concept of immaterial substances as these are; nor can we attain proper qualities of immaterial substances from their own selves, but only from creatures.”58

57 See the quotation from Thomas in the preceding footnote. 58 Met. disp. 1, q. 1, n. 11: “At vero conceptus prioris ordinis nempe proprii ex propriis non spectant ad Metaph. nostrum, sed ad Metaphysicam in se, quia (. . .) nos pro statu isto sensu, et imaginatione utentes non possumus elevari ad illas rationes formando ex mastri: from metaphysics to natural theology 249

This means that the distinction between “per se” and “in us” applies both to the metaphysics of the natural world and to the world of the spiritual beings; it demarcates the boundaries of the knowledge that metaphysics is capable of achieving. With regard to the intelligences, however, the “metaphysics per se” denotes terra incognita, since we can arrive at statements about the intelligences only via transposition from things that can be experienced by the senses—but we cannot know what they are in themselves (sicut sunt). This is even more strongly true of the concept of God: we cannot have knowledge about God “as God” (sub ratione deitatis) in either of the two metaphysics, since it is naturally impossible for us to know God precisely as he is (sicut est). For Mastri, who refers here to Augustine, God is an object of the will (objectum voluntarium) and belongs to theology.59 We can leave open the question whether the necessary will must be present on the part of the one who acquires knowledge, or on the part of the One who reveals himself (that is, whether God reveals himself in virtue of his own freedom, or the knowledge of God depends on the will to know him). God “as God” is not the object of metaphysics per se, still less the object of the metaphysics that is humanly possible; and while the spiritual beings are indeed the object of metaphysics per se, this metaphysics is humanly impossible. This means that the entire sphere of those things that per se are abstract belongs only to the kind of metaphysics that takes its starting point in the finite, natural things. And this metaphysics arrives at statements about them via the path of abstraction from the natural things. Accordingly, the “metaphysics per se” forms the ideal background to the metaphysics that is naturally and humanly possible. This background is the true level of all metaphysics, and regulates the metaphysics that is meant to be the science of being, by laying down its goals. Nevertheless, its field of labor remains the natural being—but this is considered in such a way that it is possible as a being. As we have seen, this possibility is based in the possibility of appearing, a possibility that exists in the existent itself. With regard to the terminology applied in the preliminary considerations, we could say that metaphysics is a theory of the existent, and creaturis conceptum proprium substantiarum immaterialium sicuti sunt; neque possumus propria aliqua ipsorum attingere ex propriis, sed solum ex creaturis (. . .).” 59 Met. disp. 1, q. 1, n. 11: “Caeterum rationes Dei propriae, et ex propriis habitae sub ratione Deitatis nec ad Metaphysicam in nobis, nec in se possunt attinere (. . .) quia Deus naturaliter nequit distincte cognosci sicut est, et sub ratione Deitatis, ut sic enim est objectum voluntarium, ut Augustinus ajebat, si vult cognoscitur, si non vult non cognoscitur (. . .).” 250 chapter thirteen that the reality of the existent is the necessary presupposition of metaphysics. Reality must be thought of here as a virtual reality, though not as a hypothetical antithesis to the theory, but as a perfection of the theory at which one must aim. At the same time, it is clear that this science does not involve a “formula” of reality, if what is meant by this expression is an explanation of the conceptual (or even empirical) details. To take our earlier example: metaphysics does not say what a horse is, but it declares the ontological degree of “horse” as a species in comparison to “animal” and “human being.” Metaphysics thinks in quotation marks, so to speak. It is the “physics” of physics, by demonstrating the meta-physical principles of empirical concepts and of the concepts that are inferred from these. Contemporary metaphysics usually discusses the question of the origin of the world, but we can conclude from what has been said about Mastri’s book up to now that such a question about origins belongs primarily to cosmology or physics, which are not a part of metaphysics. Nor will metaphysics expend any effort on asking whether a god or a big bang created the world.60 Rather, it will investigate what “origin,” “creation,” “coming into being,” etc. are in general, and leave everything else to natural philosophy. Let us see whether this impression is confirmed by what Mastri actually says. In the book De coelo et metheoris, he takes up the question whether the world has its being from itself or from something else (disp. 1, q. 3). He presupposes that “world” (mundus) here means the sky and the first matter, since only these are regarded as imperishable (incorruptibilia); the metaphysical dependence of the usual finite things on something else is in any case clearly established. The solution to the question (n. 23) is that the world is in fact dependent on God, and the reader is referred to the Meta- physics, which gives a detailed answer that Mastri summarizes here. There are two reasons. First of all, both the sky and the first matter are finite, and everything that is finite postulates a higher agens. Secondly, aseity (esse a se) is the highest degree of perfection; and the theologians ascribe this only to God. Now we must turn to the book on Metaphysics to see what it says about the dependence of the world on God. We are not surprised to find the relevant passage in the last quaestio, in one of the final paragraphs, in the discussion of the question whether it is at all possible for God to create (disp. 13, q. 4, n. 35). The question of the created status of the

60 See Parfit, “The Puzzle of Reality,” in van Inwagen and Zimmerman, Metaphysics, 418–427. mastri: from metaphysics to natural theology 251 world is answered by the application of the appropriate ontological con- ceptuality (finite, agens, aseity), which leads to the borders of theology. And with regard to the created status, this ontology is not a question of the world, but a metaphysics of God, to the extent that such a metaphysics is possible by means of metaphysical concepts that are derived from the world. God does not help to explain the world; but the world helps us to gain knowledge of God. Metaphysics is natural theology. Assuming these presuppositions, two aspects must be clarified, in order to understand what metaphysics can or should achieve. First of all, we must clarify its relationship to the sciences, which obviously deal with things in a different way. Secondly, the function of God in metaphysics must be defined. The answer to these two questions will tells us what metaphysics is able to say about the order of the world and its origin. Mastri speaks of gradations in his introductory definition of metaphysics, where he emphasizes that it derives its concepts from the empirical world. Accordingly, its relationship to the other philosophical disciplines, and above all to physics, will determine the mode of abstraction or the formation of concepts, and hence the unclear relationship of the act of transcending to that which is transcended. The author lists the tasks of metaphysics in a separate quaestio (disp. 1, q. 3): First, metaphysics proves the existence of the objects of the other sciences a priori, because unlike the individual disciplines, it does not demonstrate the givenness of the objects a posteriori (that is to say, on the basis of experience), but on the basis of the classification of that which exists in general and of the commonest species. For the sciences are concerned with such partial areas of that which exists. However, this procedure affects only the existence (si est), not the constitution of that which is (quid est), since that belongs to the sphere of the various sciences (n. 49). Secondly, it supplies the principles of other sciences. In logic, for example, the rule “dici de omni”—“dici de nullo” applies. Here, metaphysics looks at the meaning of “all” or “nothing,” without itself intervening in the business of logic. Here too, the metaphysical principles are concepts that are analyzed prescinding from their application (n. 52). Thirdly, the concepts of metaphysics are more universal and are antecedent to the spheres of investigation of the individual sciences. Metaphysics also possesses a higher degree of certainty. This is not called into question by the restriction (mentioned above) to “metaphysics in us”; e contra, the difficulty of the investigation of scientific principles is a sign of the certainty of the results of this investigation. Naturally, the Aristotelian rejects the idea that mathematics and physics could possess a higher degree of certainty thanks to their vividness (n. 53f.). 252 chapter thirteen

Fourthly, for the same reasons, metaphysics is better suited to teaching.61 Fifthly, in relation to logic—as Mastri has already said in different words— metaphysics defines the essence of “definition,” “classification,” etc., with which logic then operates (n. 60f.). Sixthly, according to Aristotle’s celebrated introductory proposition, metaphysics is born of the human being’s natural urge to acquire knowledge. In other words, it is the ontological counterpart of the human nature (n. 61f.). Seventh, it dominates the other sciences (n. 63). The topical classification in this list of the tasks of metaphysics is entirely permeated by the lack of clarity of metaphysics as a purely theoretical science and by its resources in the other disciplines, so that in the following quaestio, it is above all its function as a “subalternating” science that is important. This involves, not the rhetorical praise of a science, but the objective question of whether and how metaphysics exercises a role of leadership over the other sciences; naturally, methodological or formal arguments are based on common points or differences in the matter in question. Three conditions must be met, if a superordinate science is to be able to subordinate other sciences to itself. First, the sphere of the subordinate science must be contained in the superordinate science; secondly, the subordinate science must differ through an accidental difference; and thirdly, the subordinate science must derive its principles from the superordinate science (Met. disp. 1, q. 4, n. 76). One point is unclear. The sciences are defined on the basis of their object, but it is obvious that it is not as what they are per se that the objects define the sciences. Rather, they do this through their scientific character. This means that the superior science makes a subordinate science thanks to its own scientific character and thereby subordinates it to itself (“illa scientia dicitur alteri subordinari, quae essentialiter in esse scientae ab ea dependet,” n. 77). We can put the question in simpler terms: Does physics derive its scientific character from metaphysics? No, although some of the scientific foundations (for example, the meaning of “being,” “infinite,” etc.) are clarified by metaphysics. The second condition is decisive for Mastri: the difference between

61 Met. disp. 1, q. 3, n. 55. Mastri takes up here a topic that is interesting in the history of scholasticism. He mentions the recommendations by the Jesuit Petrus Hurtado and Raphael Aversa of the Order of Clerics Regular that metaphysics be taught after logic and before physics (n. 57). This proposal found acceptance only thanks to the philosophy of Christian Wolff. mastri: from metaphysics to natural theology 253 metaphysics and physics is not accidental, since the “naturalitas” that is an additional factor in physics (so to speak) is not accidental, but is essential to this science and to its objects. Besides this, the above-mentioned argument that not everything can be metaphysics applies here too: for if there were only an accidental difference between the objects of the subordinate sciences from the objects of metaphysics, everything would indeed be metaphysics. Naturally, the superordination and subordination of the sciences are dealt with in general in logic (Log. disp. 12, q. 4), since this is a methodological question in several sciences (for example, mathematics and music), not a methodological question of Being (although generality, part/whole, and the like are the criteria). The relationship between metaphysics and reality remains precarious, because it asserts its independence here too, without wishing to risk a loss of reality. At this point, we must mention that the scholastic terminology has a concept available to cover this, namely the “objectum formale.” The objects of various sciences, such as physics and metaphysics, can per se be identical, yet distinct through the point of view in which they become thematic in each science. The sciences are distinct from each other by means of the “objectum formale, idest, quae rem aliquam considerat sub proprio modo contemplandi (. . .) quamvis res illa consideretur ab aliis scientiis, sed sub diversi modo considerandi” (Log. disp. 12, q. 3, n. 63). Accordingly, although metaphysics has the same object as the other sciences, and although the sciences are distinct only through the point of view in which they investigate the object, the distinction nevertheless remains essential. This essential distinction must lie in the commonality or in the immateriality of the objects that metaphysics investigates. At the same time, however, this perspective must not be understood as a “mere perspective,” for otherwise metaphysics would investigate its objects, that which exists, “as if ” they were immaterial. E contra, there must be some kind of foundational relationship between the immaterial aspect of the objects that metaphysics shares with the sciences such as physics, and these things. This means that we must not misunderstand the things of metaphysics (which are distinct from the things of the world through the point of view that is involved) as a form of perception, since otherwise it would not be legitimate to maintain—as Thomas and Mastri do—that the objects that are conceptually abstracted from mater and the objects that are per se abstract are essentially equally immaterial. 254 chapter thirteen

13.7 Philosophical Theology

If the questions are radicalized by means of such reflections, metaphysics can seem a hopelessly contradictory undertaking that ought to be abandoned in favor of epistemology and research into nature. However, we would still be left with two questions, about the episteme (“What is knowledge—on the side of the one who knows?”) and about the reality of the research (“What is knowledge—on the side of that which is known?”). We might feel the need to affirm that the subject of the knowledge transcends the objects of his knowledge and that the results of the research are genuinely true. For an epistemology of the formation of scientific concepts does not automatically transcend itself. It can only describe the “mechanisms” of knowledge, but it cannot point to an “apparatus of knowledge.”62 In order to affirm the truth of that which is known, it must be able to indicate something that is true in the sense that it itself is not an epistemic construct. At the same time, the results of research ought to be true in the sense that their validity is not diminished by the fact that they are not obvious. We need not take our examples here from the atomic sphere of modern physics or similar sciences. It suffices to take Aristotle’s four causes: Do they exist? From the point of view of one who desires knowledge, this question is legitimate, even if it seems (already in Aristotle himself ) to be epistemologically obsolete. In other words, the emphasis in Mastri’s type of philosophy on the orientation of science to objects, which does not allow the rationality of the point of view to be absorbed into epistemology, is a kind of realism that must be interpreted from another perspective. Metaphysics is not interested in constituting the empirical, sensuous, “real” object, but rather in discovering the spiritual, immaterial object that is per se free of matter. The perspective thus does not aim at a truth that is hidden and buried (so to speak) in the material object, and that guides the human understanding as a regulative illusion; it aims at truth in the sense of genuine Being. And this genuine Being must be sought apart from matter and the empirical. This is why metaphysics must constitute spheres in which truth of this kind occurs. The first potential sphere is doubtless the human understanding, because, by doing what looks to the empiricist like the pursuit of hypotheses and abstractions, the understanding is the place where abstract things are stored up. Secondly, metaphysics must

62 This is the basis of the book by Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function. mastri: from metaphysics to natural theology 255 demonstrate that immaterial beings exist—or how these are possible. The best thing would be to prove that there is a God. In an imprecise sense, one can call this Idealism. It differs from Platonism (to use this term too in an imprecise manner) in that the givenness of the sensuous and finite world is the starting point, rather than the touchstone. Both Mastri’s Physics and his Metaphysics end with the problem of God. In his Physics, this is the conclusion of the treatise on motion, where he draws a distinction between metaphysical and physical motion. The former refers to every kind of causality and production, the latter to movement in the narrower physical sense. The problem in physics is that the principle “omne quod movetur ab alio movetur” is not in the least certain, since an “other” of this kind need not absolutely be essentially and physically another something.63 Rather, Aristotle has already declared that one can draw a distinction in everything that is moved between that which is moved and that which moves it, especially since the soul too can move itself. One may infer from this that if one remains in the sphere of physical motion, this proposition either proves nothing or else proves the immanence of the mover within nature. The motion in nature is absolutely not dependent on an unmoved mover. In this regard, the “metaphysical motion,” that is to say, causality, is more promising, for in the chain of causes one must reach a “first” (Phys. disp. 15, q. 8, n. 106). However, the fundamental principle here is not causality itself, but the prohibition of infinite regress. This argument is taken up again in the Metaphysics and discussed under the concept of “productio.” In addition to the prohibition of infinite regress, a further principle is adduced: “nihil seipsum produci, sed quicquid producitur, ab alio debere produci” (Met. disp. 13, q. 1, n. 4). In both principles, the supposition of self-production would infringe the principle of contradiction, since production presupposes the substantial difference between the producer and the product, and the infinite regress (viewed with regard to the totality that it encompasses) affirms that something is simultaneously dependent and independent.64 Mastri states clearly that he must work here with an internal and an external perspective.

63 Phys. disp. 15, q. 8, n. 104: “quia illud principium; omne quod movetur, ab alio moveri necesse est, non est ita firmum, si de alietate omnino distincta, et suppositali intelligatur (. . .).” 64 Met. disp. 13, q. 1, n. 4: “Quod si in causis subordinatis talis daretur progressus in infinitum, tunc tota illa causarum collectio (. . .) esset dependens, et independens, quae contradicunt (. . .).” 256 chapter thirteen

If one wished to admit the infinite regress, the chain of causality would be dependent ad intra, but independent ad extra. We may add that this would suffice in order to exclude a God as first producer. The problem is that once one takes the external perspective, it makes precisely this chain of production a “something” to which the question about the cause can once again be posed. This is presumably why Mastri’s argumentation is embedded in an argument of Duns Scotus: that which is operative (effec- tivum) does not necessarily imply imperfection. It is thus possible for an independent operation to exist, and this would be the first being—which exists of necessity. For the significance of metaphysics, the decisive point in these proofs of God’s existence is that they are clearly not introduced in order to save the world and science, but as a crossing over into the sphere that lies beyond nature and thought. Practiced techniques from physics and metaphysics are applied to that which lies outside them, but as a conclusion. The fact that the existence of God cannot be proved a priori, but only a posteriori, recedes wholly from view, and the question is posed: “What is it at all possible to say about God?” (Met. disp. 13, q. 2). God need not serve as proof, in order for the metaphysician to demonstrate the order of the world. Rather, it is the order of the world that helps one to understand God: “creaturae, quae imprimunt proprias species in intellectu, possunt etiam imprimere species transcendentium, quae communiter convenient eis, et Deo” (ibid., n. 14). Let us return to our introductory remarks about contemporary metaphysics. We must note that metaphysics can also be thought of in a different way, namely, as the attempt to transcend (that is to say, to abandon) the “physics” about which Heidegger complained. The question about the order of the world does not postulate any originator. In fact, this question excludes him from the world, although at the same time it makes him thinkable a posteriori. The explanation of the world by means of immaterial concepts retains the paradox “What is accessible as A, is in its essence really B,” but with the addition that metaphysics has no effect upon the world, yet explains why the world must appear as the world. One can call this strategy dialectic, since it is through detachment that things are brought together. Through this strategy, metaphysics prepares that level of Being which is per se genuinely separated from the world, the level of the spiritual or divine—and it does so without being dependent on this level. CHAPTER FOURTEEN

NATURAL THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES: THÉOPHILE RAYNAUD, LUIS DE MOLINA, JOSEPH FALCK, SIGISMUND VON STORCHENAU

When we inquire into the origins of the philosophy of religion in the modern period, we must initially leave open the question what the philosophy of religion is. We must begin by ascertaining what the specific character of natural theology appears to be, since—from a linguistic point of view— “natural theology” is an absurdity. In terms of its explicit object, theology is a universal science, since God ought to be the first object of any science whatever, and not just one region of knowledge among others. To speak of God can scarcely imply that one knows nothing whatever about who and what God is; it appears clear, therefore, that every theology gets to the point at once. If however one speaks of “natural theology,” this restricting adjective already concedes that there are also parallel ways of speaking of God, so that natural theology is an incomplete theology like every other. If, therefore, we embark upon speaking of natural theology, we have already depotentialized the concept of God and the competence of theology. This makes natural theology the theoretical part of a philosophically conceived religion; and philosophy of religion is theology for unbelievers.1 Every theology that really exists will at once concede that it is subject to the reservation that is constituted by the human person’s limited knowledge or fallibility—but by conceding this, it also admits that its own concept of God is infected by this weakness. Accordingly, every theology will either endeavor to make good this defect by employing arguments to reinforce the concept of God as strongly as possible, or else it will console itself with the thought that it nevertheless does achieve something with its Sitz im Leben (life context, as the Protestants said), and that a weak God is at any rate better than no God at all. This weak God is then surprisingly similar to the human being (equipped with the best of qualities, as David Hume observed in his Natural History of Religion). I should like to pursue these

1 See Blum, Philosophy of Religion, Preface. 258 chapter fourteen two strategies in the present essay: the clarification of the concept of God versus the consolation of natural theology.

14.1 Preamble: Raymundus Sabundus

Natural theology is the science of nature as creation, and thus deals primarily with the human being and his nature, and with what he requires for the knowledge of himself and of God, as well as with what the human being owes to God and his neighbor. This definition is a translation of the title of the foundational document of natural theology on the threshold of modernity, the work by Raimundus Sabundus that was subsequently given the title Theologia naturalis: Incipit Liber naturae sive creaturarum. In quo tractatur specialiter de homine et natura eius in quantum homo, et de eis, quae sunt necessaria ad cognoscendum se ipsum et Deum et omne debitum, ad quod homo tenetur et obligatur tam Deo quam proximo.2 The Prolog states more precisely that this is a “Scientia de homine, quae est propria homini, in quantum homo est.” This means that this kind of science of creation is a genuinely anthropomorphic anthropology. As an anthropomorphic science, it also intends to be immediately practical, since it understands the relationship to the Creator and to other human beings as natural law: “Per quam illuminatur (. . .) et omne debitum, ad quod homo tenetur, in quantum homo est, et de iure naturae” (p. 26*). Besides this, it encompasses not only the intellect, but also the will, so that what is “owed” can also be willed, and salvation can be attained. It is well known that the provocation of this book, and especially of the Pro- logue (which was proscribed), is the fact that this science of a humanly contemplated nature is in competition with Sacred Scripture. It claims, not only to be able to do without scripture, but also to be antecedent to it: Haec scientia nihil allegat, nec Scripturam sacram, nec aliquem doctorem. Immo ista confirmat nobis Scripturam sacram; (. . .) et ideo praecedit Scrip- turam sacram quoad nos (p. 35*). The anthropological reduplication is intensified even further when we are told that not only the things of creation are read as letters in the book

2 Sabundus, Theologia naturalis, 1966, p. 25*.—Since I assume that this topic interests only those who are familiar with theology and philosophy, and in order to avoid terminological problems, the sources are consistently quoted in Latin. natural theology and philosophy of religion 259 of nature (“quaelibet creatura non est nisi quaedam littera, digito Dei scripta”), but that the human being is “the first letter of this book” (“In quo libro etiam continetur ipse homo, et est principaliter littera ipsius libri,” p. 36*). This means that natural theology is a hermeneutic of nature and of the human being himself, in which the wisdom of God is extracted from the text of creation as the meaning of this text: the world is read in an innerworldly perspective as a text, and the grammar of God’s wisdom is to be found precisely in the grammar of the world: Ista autem scientia non est aliud, nisi cognoscere et videre sapientiam scriptam in creaturis, et extrahere ipsam ab illis, et ponere in anima, et videre significationem creaturarum. Et hoc fit comparando unam creaturam cum altera et coniungendo sicut dictionem dictioni (p. 39*). We need not be disturbed by the absence of a technically refined vocabulary of epistemology in this description of the task of natural theology, since this very absence makes the intention of this science all the clearer: namely, the reciprocal illumination of the creation and the human being. The theological intention has a guiding role, but does not constitute the body of the investigation. Theology has its Sitz im Leben, its life-context, in the sense that the world is the text that God utters to humanity. In this way, the Theologia naturalis of Raimundus Sabundus reflects the uncertainty about whether theology is at all possible, given the indigence of the human person. The author goes so far as to make the uncertainty of human knowledge an existential statement about being human: “Et quia homo est extra se ipsum, et elongatus et distans a se ipso per maximam distantiam, nec umquam habitavit in domo propria (. . .)” (Titulus I, p. 44*). From this principle follows the possible methodology of such a theology, namely, the celebrated scala naturae, which, however, is understood in such a way that: (1) “The order of things among themselves and their gradations in the universe are observed”; (2) “the human being is compared with the other things in the world”; (3) “the ascent is made from the sameness and difference [of the human being] with regard to that which is below the human being, to the human being, and from thence to God” (pp. 48*f.). This is a program of an anthropocentric theology that can coalesce completely with the humanism of a Francesco Petrarca, Coluccio Salu- tati, Michel de Montaigne, or even Nicholas of Cusa and Giovanni Pico, since it understands the theological problem as one of language and of perspective—a problem in which God does indeed play the role of a 260 chapter fourteen regulative idea, but in which the central position is occupied by the methodology (ordo) of the ways of speaking about God. On the other hand, this program is completely reliant on the objective metaphysical order. All it wants to do is to discover this order, which indubitably culminates in God. The precondition of both aspects of the program is the methodologically intended bracketing-off of the biblical revelation, for as is well known, and as the methodology of the four senses shows, a written revelation need not concern itself with metaphysics and physics, and its perspective cannot be other than divine. The effect of this bracketing-off is that the hermeneutic of the book of books must be transposed onto the book of nature, and that the practical part of theology, which the written revelation contains (“Thou shalt . . .”), must be fulfilled by the praxis of theological philosophy. The intellectual filling-out of the scala naturae is equivalent to the knowledge of one’s obligations to God and to one’s fellow human beings: “Per intelligere enim comprehenduntur discernere et velle libere” (p. 52*).

14.2 Théophile Raynaud

Thomas Aquinas had already observed that the theology of revelation does not require the abstracting ontology of degrees, when he said: “In doctrina quae (. . .) ex [creaturis] ad Dei cognitionem perducit, prima consideratio est de Creaturis, et ultima de Deo: in doctrina vero fidei (. . .) prima est consideratio Dei, et postmodum Creaturarum, quae proinde est perfectior, utpote similior cognitioni Dei, qui seipsum cognoscens, alia intuetur.”3 In the case of God, what the natural theologians see as the scala naturae is at best a metaphysics of the spirit. The Jesuit Théophile Raynaud puts precisely this quotation from Thomas at the beginning of his Theologia naturalis, which is, as far as I know, the first work of its kind in Catholic scholastic philosophy. It was published in Lyon in 1622 and bears the title: Theologia naturalis. Sive entis increati et creati intra supremam abstractionem ex naturae lumine investigatio. We may translate this freely as: “Natural theology within the boundaries of pure reason.” Raynaud does in fact follow the model of ascent, by speaking first of the creation, but he does so in such a way that he investigates only the ontology of the “esse ab alio.” Here, what natural philosophy calls the four

3 Raynaudus, Theologia naturalis, p. 37. Quotation from Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, 2, 4. natural theology and philosophy of religion 261 causes is presented as “dependentia ab alio.” In the ensuing sections, he approaches his theme by an investigation of the intelligences, which ends with a critique of magic. The second main Part then looks at the ens a se, that is, at God. Here, his argumentation concerns questions about the knowability of God and the demonstrability of his existence; and this is where the model of the “Scala a visibili creatura ad Deum” (dist. 5, q. 1, art. 6) must prove its worth. After the conjectural knowability of God and his transcendental attributes (unity, truth, and goodness) have been clarified, the work concludes with Distinctio VIII: “De proprietatibus vitam Dei consequentibus.” In the present context, I cannot discuss aspects that belong to the history of literature; let me only mention that Raynaud usually separates systematic reflections from references to authorities, although these make up the bulk of his text. Here, we find not only the standard scholastics up to the author’s own period, but also authors of classical antiquity and the Renaissance, such as Nicholas of Cusa, Marsilio Ficino, Augustinus Steuchus, and Giovanni and Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, in addition to the Hermetica, which belong to the Renaissance culture, and other pseudo-ancient sapiential books. Each of these sources may be mentioned favorably or unfavorably. Another special characteristic of this genre is the fact that the Jesuit repeatedly quotes extensively from his preferred authors. Perhaps the greatest surprise is that one of the authorities who is cited most often with approval is Plotinus (in Ficino’s translation). The structure of the work already shows that this is no naïve apologia for Christianity under the cloak of a natural religion. Rather, it is aware of the problems, and outlines the conditions under which it is possible to speak of God in the seventeenth century. The ontology of the intelligences is considered a priori with the reservation that (in keeping with the model established by Raymundus Sabundus) they must surpass the human reason, if they are to be located on a higher level than the human soul. In Sabundus, this sounds like the formulation of an optimistic task, namely, to investigate the human being, because he is foreign to his own self, in order to discover his position in the cosmos and thereby the totality of the cosmos. But the Jesuit reduces this to nothing by means of a quotation from Philo of Alexandria: “Mens quae inest nostrûm unicuique, caetera potest comprehendere, seipsam nosse non potest. (. . .) Merito igitur Adam, id est mens, alia nominans et comprehendens, sibi ipsi nomen non imponit, quandoquidem seipsum ignorat, naturamque propriam” (dist. 2, n. 1, p. 76). Raynaud quotes this passage, in which self-knowledge is denied to human understanding, in order to play down the prospects of 262 chapter fourteen knowledge of the angels: for if this is true of the human soul, how much the less can we reasonably know of intelligences higher than those (ibid.)? Accordingly, his thesis is that the existence of purely spiritual substances cannot be demonstrated in a natural manner, and that one must therefore trust the testimonies of the philosophers (dist. 2, q. 1, art. 1, n. 27). The reason for this is logical: it is impossible to demonstrate a priori the existence of the spirits, since they are creatures, and this means that they lack a necessary existence. Nor can they be demonstrated a posteriori, because (astonishingly enough) there are no naturally perceptible effects such that one could infer from them the existence of spirits as their cause; for (the Jesuit continues) all such effects can also be traced back to God as their cause (ibid.). Nevertheless, he presents a detailed teaching about spirits, concentrating primarily on whether these intelligences are capable of activity, and what activities might be involved, since obviously, their cosmological function depends on the answer to this question. Above all, however, they are a kind of prelude to the main question: the existence and activity of God. The treatise on God begins with the ambiguous affirmation that the existence of God is not per se known to the human person. It is known per se only to God. This means that the existence of God is not a priori demonstrable, but only a posteriori. The ambiguity consists in the fact that under the presupposition of the metaphysical construction of an ens a se in opposition to the ens ab alio, it is already possible to say so much analytically that the ens ab alio knows itself. When the usual proofs of God’s existence are classified according to the degree of their validity, and the scala naturae has been set up as far as the human being, one may legitimately speak of the attributes of God. One will then pass to the most important question for the human being, namely, the conditions of possibility for such a God to manifest himself in a world—that is to say, the modes of operation of this God. Raynaud has attributed to the angels an ontological status in which they are not distinct from the lower levels in their creatureliness, and are not potential objects of human science in their intellectuality. This allows him not only to speak of God as the summit of a cosmological hierarchy, but also to reverse the perspective in such a way that it is possible to ask how God is creative in the perfection that we may rationally assume him to possess, and how he affects the creation. The ascent turns into a descent: “Expositis itaque hactenus generalissimis, ut ita dicam, Dei proprietatibus, seu quae rationem entis in eo consequuntur, ad proprietates Deo ut vivens est, competetentes, descendendum est.” (Dist. 8, n. 1, p. 778 f.) In accordance with the words natural theology and philosophy of religion 263 he has quoted from Thomas, the author now turns from the doctrina ex creaturis to the doctrina fidei, though he strictly refrains from referring to revelation. After affirming that God’s self-contemplation does not produce anything, even with regard to the contingent and the temporal, he presents the creation as an act of the will: “Deus est connaturale et proportionatum voluntatis suae obiectum, in quo creaturas vult, tanquam obiecta secun- daria in primario illo volita” (dist. 8, q. 2, art. 1). For it belongs to the life of God as spirit that the intellect gives birth to the will, out of which, under the conditions of the divinity, “potentia aliqua exequens, transe- unter operativa” goes forth (dist. 8, n. 1, p. 779). It is only at this point that the discussions take up topics that are relevant in the perspective of the controversies between the Christian denominations of the time, such as the freedom of the will and the activity of God in human actions. Raynaud attempts to solve these tasks of natural theology. He makes the concept of God as strong as possible, by showing the weakness of a cos- mologically oriented theology and emphasizing the concept of God in its difference from the creation. At the same time, he demonstrates how it is possible to live with such a concept of God. Since the reason fails a priori to attain with its own means something that transcends it, it is ultimately an argument about consensus and convenience that makes natural theology possible within the boundaries of reason alone. The endless throng of authors of all periods and schools strengthens confidence in the faith, and the analysis of a theoretical concept of God exactly fits the needs of the human being.

14.3 Luis de Molina

In order to appreciate the special character of Raynaud’s approach, let us look briefly at a contemporary theology in the Commentary on Thomas’ Summa by the Jesuit Luis de Molina.4 Molina is a well-known figure in the history of ideas thanks to his theory of the scientia media in the debate about freedom, and because of the position he took in the discussion of God’s collaboration in human actions.5 Both of these qualify him for the questions of natural theology, if I am correct in postulating that this deals with God’s possibilities of manifesting himself in this world and with the

4 Molina, Commentaria in primam Divi Thomae partem. 5 Molina, On divine foreknowledge. 264 chapter fourteen role of the human person there. Molina defines five areas where theology is competent: (1) God in himself, and his essential qualities; (2) The emanation of all things from God, and their regimen and administratio; (3) The internal means with which the human being attains his goal (these include the virtues and grace); (4) The external means (above all, Christ as hominum homo); (5) Eternal bliss as the ultimate goal of the human being. The competence of theology thus covers a circle from the concept of God, via the reality of his creation and his active involvement in it, back to God as the final cause of human existence: “Atque ita universa Theologia quasi aureo quodam circulo a Deo incipiens et per creaturas excurrens ad eundem ordinatissime regreditur” (pp. 1f.). This “loop” allows Molina to ensure that all the analytical affirmations about God can be translated into affirmations about nature and the nature of the human being, and that all the rational propositions can be translated into anagogical doctrines. And precisely this circle recurs in a consistent interlocking of the contrary approaches. First of all, a distinction must be drawn between the disciplines of theology, one of which corresponds to the natural reason, while the other corresponds to revelation in the narrower sense of the term. The decisive point is that both of these are revelations and that both lead to the same goal, namely to the knowledge of God. But the second revelation elevates that which is known naturally, so that it ultimately leads to salvation: “necessarium fuit ad salutem, ut praeter disciplinas, quae lumine naturali comparantur, esset alia, qua per divinam revelationem eorum aliqua hominibus innotescerent” (qu. 1, art. 1, disp. 1, p. 2). Since both treat of God, theology and metaphysics are one and the same thing. They differ only as species or in terms of the ratio formalis, or in accordance with the differing “ratio luminis” (ibid., p. 3). Consequently, Molina also asks whether it is possible for the human being to attain his salvation with the light of reason alone. Ultimately, there is a natural striving for happiness that can at least be experienced as a striving; and the human being could know himself—and hence also his happiness—completely, “alioquin non haberet eius natura pro- portionem.” And the human being could very well recognize God as the object of his thinking and indeed as “rationem entis velut in fonte” (in other words, God as the original theme of every metaphysics). His objections alter the dimensions of the optimistic anthropology: the natural inclination is indeed present, but since it is not an “actus elicitus,” it is natural theology and philosophy of religion 265 not per se an object of knowledge. Natural self-knowledge (if it exists) remains within nature and can thus never arrive at a supernatural cause or determination. We may also look at the matter from a different angle, and conclude that this view negates performatively the possibility of a theological anthropology, and thus begs the question. Finally, the third naturalistic argument is likewise true, under the given presuppositions, and it also accords with the philosophical theology of an Aristotle or a Cicero; but it does not prove the exclusiveness of the rational approach. Space does not allow me to look in detail at the sources Molina discusses, especially Thomas and Scotus. In the framework of the task he has set himself, namely, to present the meaning of a scientific theology of revelation, he shows the possible convergence of revelation and reason, so that naturalists can always be certain that rationality stands in the background and provides a guarantee, while believers are allowed to believe that no gifts are made by God to the human needs. This “loop” from God via nature through the human being and back to the original object of theology is also found in the scholastic definition of theology as both a speculative and a practical science. The principle of theology is faith and is always one and the same (q. 1, art. 4, disp. 2, p. 21: habitus principiorum, nimirum fides unus est unitate specifica), yet as faith, it is both practical and speculative, since the consequences are sometimes speculative (for example, the relationship of the divine Per- sons) and sometimes practical (for example, with regard to sins). Molina thus unites both theory and praxis in the concept of faith, or of theology as science and scientia divina. It is as if he wanted to say that nothing is more practical than a good theory.6 I cannot examine here Molina’s discussion of the difference between eminenter and formaliter. His conclusion is that theology governs both knowledge and actions, and therefore both contains and formally defines metaphysics together with ethics (ibid. p. 23). All this presupposes that theology is the presentation and clarification of the faith that exists. And theology presupposes a continuum between metaphysics and nature. Within this continuum, the position held by the human being is so secure that he need not fight for it; at most, he must

6 This aphorism is attributed to the Hungarian engineering scientist Tódor Kármán: Humboldt Nachrichten 20 (November, 2001), http://www.humboldt.hu/HN20/tart.htm. 266 chapter fourteen fight to defend its rationality.7 But what happens when this position is no longer so secure?

14.4 Joseph Falck

The Jesuits of the early eighteenth century were obliged to study Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz in depth. This meant that they philosophized about nature against the background of mathematics, the radical intensification of the universal theology of Renaissance Platonism, and corpuscularism. This is why the Jesuit Joseph Falck gave his natural theology in 1738 the title Mundus aspectabilis philosophice consideratus, and noted at the very beginning: “Deus enim, cum sit liberrimus, potest creaturam minus per- fectam amore efficaci liberalis beneficientiae magis amare, eamque prae reliquis eligere.”8 The world is the best of all possible worlds, since it displays with its imperfections an aspect of God that would not need to be manifested if the world were perfect—namely, his graciously benevolent love. This is not simply a pious utterance; it is a further variant of the strategy of offering people a strong God as consolation. Falck too sees the philosophically accessible God as an ens a se, and he too splits the concept of God strategically into his existence and his operatio. This is why the proofs of God’s existence stand in the foreground for Falck, and it is interesting to see the specific expression that he gives to these proofs. The first proof is derived from the consensus of the peoples. As in Raynaud at an earlier date, what matters here is not the logical con- clusiveness—which does not exist—but rather the general acknowledgement of truth as a whole, and this acknowledgement is understood (with the help of Cicero) as an innate idea. Falck confirms this argument from consensus by means of the natural understanding of good and evil, or of the deficiency of the good in creation, which points to a bonum increatum (p. 384). This line of argument does not appear particularly compelling from a logical perspective; clearly, the important point is Falck’s intention, which is moral. His second argument, “ex admirabili totius mundi fabrica,”

7 On this, see my essay in the present volume on Bartolomeo Mastri. 8 Falck, Mundus aspectabilis philosophice consideratus, p. 5. The title seems to go back to a hymn by Charles Coffin, published in the Paris Breviary of 1736: Rebus creatis nil egens (nr. 57 in Chandler, The Hymns of the Primitive Church, p. 185: “At mundus è sinu tuo / Dum prodit aspectabilis / Augustiorem cogitas, / Mundum, Creator, alterum”). Thanks to Brian McNeil for this reference. natural theology and philosophy of religion 267 enjoys popularity today as the “argument from design.”9 It is noteworthy that this is entitled: “argumento morali-physico”: the wonderful aspect of the order of the world is a moral appeal, something that obligates one to acknowledge God, and those who violate this obligation are “inexcusa- biles” (p. 385). (Today’s analytical philosophers of religion ought to take this to heart.) According to Falck, the argument from design derives its obligatory character only from its moral application. The third argument is “partim physicum partim metaphysicum,” although as we understand these matters today, it deals only with metaphysics. It infers from the self-awareness to be an ens ab alio that the chain of production has a beginning which itself lies outside the chain: “tota productorum series est ab alio non incluso in tali serie” (p. 385). This makes the argument both natural and metaphysical, because it compels one to take the leap from physics onto the level of metaphysics. It reduces all the proofs of God’s existence that are based on the prohibition of infinite regress to the single argument that since every cause is external to that which is caused, there must exist the transition whereby the aliud in the ens ab alio becomes the completely “Other.” This means that a first and transcendent cause is no great surprise. Finally, we should note the parallel to Sabundus: the apparent causal inference from the dependent to the independent is based on the anthropological self-perception, not on any external empirical observation. As we would expect, these three proofs of God’s existence are followed by a detailed discussion of the infinite regress. Falck concludes by looking at Descartes’ version of the ontological proof of God. He anticipates Kant by describing this de facto as an analytical proof and as a regulative idea: it is indeed true that one cannot prove God “a priori prioritate reali,” but perhaps quasi a priori from the concept by way of a predicate that is convertible with that concept: “quasi a priori ex suo conceptu per praedicatum aliquod convertibile” (p. 390). Falck’s version is to say that in finite things the coexistence of predicates is maintained without an ontological claim; in the First Being, however, since it is perfect, existence can only be predicated in an absolute sense: “in rebus aliis essentialis haec praedicatorum connexio affirmetur prae- scindendo ab eorum existentia; in Ente autem primo et perfectissimo existentia non possit non absolute affirmari.” Naturally, existence is never a necessary predicate; but if we think of existence as necessary, the result is God, because existence is already present when we think of the

9 On this, see Blum, “Gottes Plan.” 268 chapter fourteen predicates “first” and “most perfect,” and this existence must be opened up by analysis. This means that the proof of God’s existence relies on a special instance of predication that is generated by other conditions of predication (namely, absoluteness). “Possumus ergo concludere, non hypothetice tantum (. . .) sed etiam absolute, quod exsistat ens perfectissimum; non quasi rerum essentia aut existentia a nostris dependeret ideis; sed quia ideae nostrae naturales et ingenitae determinantur a rerum essentiis, quas supponunt et detegunt” (p. 391). God’s existence does not depend on our ideas about him. Rather, reality and essence are the condition that makes all human ideas possible. The ontological proof of God thus functions by making the ideas dependent on precisely those substances that they presuppose in the same way as they analyze them. In this sense, then, the proof of God is not hypothetical, but transcendental. If God is understood in this way as the eccentrical beginning of chains of causes, as the omnipresent rebuke to the insufficiency of human and worldly existence, and as the presupposition of knowledge, he cannot fail to be operative in the form of an immediate presence in all the things of creation. Falck therefore sees the praise of God through the investigation of nature not as a simple act of piety, but as the praxis of science. He sees God as the creator who already reveals himself in the creature as the implicature of scientific activity. It obviously follows that a ‘natural philosophy’ which presents itself as ‘natural theology’ must end in an ethics in which the end of the world is equivalent to the bliss of the researcher who soars up with his understanding and his will to the immortality of God. In this way, Falck satisfies the demand of Raimundus Sabundus that natural theology must be above all anthropology. In the context of the empiricism and rationalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the anthropological turning point takes on the form of a critique of knowledge. And its God is correspondingly weak. It is thus unsurprising that the Jesuit Rudjer Boscovich added an “Appen- dix ad Metaphysicam pertinens de anima, et de Deo” when he published his natural philosophy in 1763.10 Although, as the title emphasizes, this is a “theory of natural philosophy,” God plays a much smaller role here than mathematics. Accordingly, Boscovich regards the existence of the soul as a matter of internal experience; and the only problem relative to the soul that he must discuss is the question of its location in the body (p. 248). God, who is introduced with the standard formulae “Potentia,

10 Boscovich, Theoria philosophiae naturalis. natural theology and philosophy of religion 269

Sapientia, Providentia, quae venerationem a nobis demissimam, et simul gratum animum, atque amorem exposcant,” emphasizing His power and human devotion, is presented exclusively as a competitor to chance and fate. The appendix endeavors to solve these natural-theoretical questions. This however makes the field of philosophical theology a question alongside or outside philosophy in the scientific sense, and religion becomes the object of a specific regional philosophy that cannot do without borrowings from theology, epistemology, and natural philosophy, but which is also politicized—because it is moralized.

14.5 Sigismund von Storchenau

We conclude with another illustrative example, Sigismund of Storchenau. Although he attached a Theologia naturalis to his Latin metaphysics textbook,11 which is not essentially different from the pneumatology that had been customary from Christian Wolff onward, he also felt the need to publish the first philosophy of religion in German that bore this name.12 He offers at any rate a compendium of the philosophical-theological questions regarding the scientific study of religion and the historical key role played by the Enlightenment, especially in German-speaking Catholicism. Storchenau was a Jesuit. After the dissolution of his order in 1773 and his removal from his professorship in Vienna, he lived for a time as court preacher in Klagenfurt and published his chef d’œuvre in seven volumes, Die Philosophie der Religion (1773–1781), with supplements.13 Storchenau joins in the discussion of theology, philosophy, and religion at a period when this was already highly differentiated and had perhaps passed its zenith. Although the critique of revelation (for example, in Herbert of Cherbury and John Toland) had perhaps begun with apologetic intentions, it had paradoxically both corroded the basic conditions for religion and academic theology and sharpened the contours of the profiles that the confessions presented to each other.14 The fragmentation of the theological discussion into numerous trends that imposed labels on each other

11 Storchenau, Institutiones metaphysicae, Libri 4. I have used the edition: Vol. 3: Pyscho- logia, Vol. 4: Theologia Naturalis, Buda, 1795. 12 Storchenau, Die Philosophie der Religion. 13 For detailed information, see Fritsch, Vernunft-Offenbarung-Religion. 14 This phenomenon is discussed in political historiography under the headings of confessionalization and secularization. On this, see, e.g., Stolleis, “Religion und Politik im Zeitalter des Barock.” 270 chapter fourteen

(with “deism” and “atheism” as the strongest weapons in their armory) takes place in order to acquire a clearer profile on the basis of the problem that all sides have recognized, namely, the tension between reason and revelation. Storchenau too takes part in this debate. He regards the “analysis fidei” as a strength in the position taken by Catholic theology, “since through this, the reason is given a formally and substantially autonomous sphere of competence with regard to justifying faith in revelation, on the one hand, while on the other hand, the unconditional supremacy of revelation as a gift of grace is maintained.”15 The greatest difficulty in the debate with the Reformation Churches lay in demonstrating not only that revelation demands the realization of an internal piety in an external cult (“due veneration”),16 but that this cult is possible in this Catholic Church—and only with this Church. This can succeed because religion, rightly understood, encompasses the totality of the human being. Religion: wishes to purify our concepts of God and his qualities; of the human being, his destiny, and his obligations; of the future life and of the duration of that life. It wishes to smother the wicked inclinations, to put the good inclinations in order, and to improve the heart; it wishes to submit the body to the spirit, the spirit to the reason, and the reason to God. It wishes to bear witness through visible signs to the invisible dispositions; to bear witness to the dependence of the body on the Creator; and thereby to make one’s fellow human being more zealous in the service of God.17 This is why the criticism of the critique of revelation necessarily leads into a discussion of the role of the church. In order to grasp the importance of Storchenau, we must see which of the possible options in the understanding of the church he adopts: the historical-positive, the mediating role of the church between reason and revelation, the reversal of the historical relativization of the church so that this church is anchored in history, or perhaps the anti-Enlightenment question about the “conditions of possibility of religion, revelation, and church.”18 We see thus that Storchenau must fight on the following fronts: the integration of rationalism into theology; holding fast to the supernatural;

15 Fritsch, Vernunft, 56. 16 Theologia Naturalis § 89 draws a completely traditional distinction: “Practica religionis pars vel interna est, quae tota internis animi actibus absolvitur; vel externa, quae ritus externos, signaque sensibilia . . . postulat.” He then argues, against Pierre Bayle and others, that the external cult too is owed to God (§ 91). See Fritsch, Vernunft, 152f. 17 Philosophie der Religion, Vol. 3, ch. 4: “Die Religion des ehrlichen Mannes,” pp. 132f. 18 Fritsch, Vernunft, 56f. natural theology and philosophy of religion 271 resisting the plausibilities of deism while preserving the “naturalness” of religion; demarcation vis-à-vis Protestantism; and the stabilization of the Catholic Church. And all this had to be achieved under the working conditions of a Jesuit at the nadir of the authority of this order. The difference between Storchenau and the Jesuits mentioned above is the openness with which he accepts this challenge. With regard to the concept of reason, Storchenau follows Christian Wolff, since the formal definition of reason as “facultas veritatum universalium nexum distincte perspiciendi”19 makes it possible to cover both a very broad sphere of “truth” (including the truth of revelation) and the discursive perception of this truth (that is, in theology). The boundaries of the reason, which Storchenau takes into account, mark off the sphere of divine communication in such a way that the supernatural truth can be transposed onto superrational truth. This rescues the doctrines of Christi- anity from the suspicion of being “against reason.” At the same time, the truth of revelation includes that which is accessible to natural reason— contrary to the critique of revelation, which had implied the opposite. In view of this, a purely natural religion would be “substantially deficient.”20 Storchenau too sees the limitations of the human being (for example, due to the Fall) and his lack of natural knowledge as an anthropological fact that is eliminated through revelation. Wolff’s optimism with regard to reason is inverted, so to speak, into optimism with regard to revelation. It is in a revealed religion (as opposed to a natural religion) that human reason really becomes operative: “A revealed religion—what advantages would it bring? My reason would be enlightened by a higher light; and my understanding would be raised above myself by a supernatural power. It would be deified, so to speak. I would rise up to the source of the infinite perfections . . .”21 Deification, illumination: once again, we see that Neo- Platonic formulae are very much in demand when it is a question of the moral implications of knowledge. Under these presuppositions, it is easy to present the possibility, the necessity, and the factuality of revelation, since “logically considered, it

19 Psychologia § 67; ibid., p. 58. 20 Fritsch, Vernunft, 67. 21 Philosophie der Religion, Vol. 4, ch. 3, p. 107: “Eine geoffenbarte Religion—welche Vortheile würde sie bringen?—Meine Vernunft würde von einem höhern Lichte beleuch- tet; und mein Verstand von einer übernatürlichen Kraft, über mich selbst erhoben, gleich- sam vergöttert werden. Ich würde mich bis zur Quelle der unendlichen Vollkommenheiten erschwingen . . .” 272 chapter fourteen is inherently free of contradictions,”22 and it is also necessary, since it completes natural religion with cult and rites.23 When the principle of non-repugnance from Wolff’s metaphysics is applied, its factuality is inferred from its freedom from contradictions.24 The necessity is strategically important, since it is justified not only by an appeal to the universal human inaccessibility, but also by the affirmation that the natural reason in the individual requires education and exercise. We can conclude from this that natural religion is reserved to well-educated persons; most people need a “general instruction” that does without philosophical training.25 This makes the role of the Church as an instrument of mediation clear, and allows the Church and the concept of religion to converge. For this purpose, it is of course necessary to ensure the authenticity of the New Testament, and Storchenau does so in a completely ahistori- cal manner by employing philological arguments to defend the literal meaning.26 The same applies to faith in miracles.27 This means that what the Church teaches—and not only the so-called fundamental articles—is the contents of revelation, for otherwise the Church would be dispens- able. As we would expect, the Church functions as the mediator of revelation and the guardian of the biblical writings, and as judge in questions of faith—the consequence is that its governing authority must be instituted by Christ. Revelation can exist only as a unity and a whole, since even the slightest doubt would overturn the whole of authority: “The divine and absolutely infallible character applies in the same way to every single revelation . . . Accordingly, as soon as I deny something (whatever it may be) with regard to one revealed proposition, even if it be only one single proposition, I hold this character in contempt . . .”28 Indifferentism, the well-intentioned reduction of religion to fundamental views that are acceptable to all confessions and worldviews, is the beginning of the end of religion as a whole: “and all that is now lacking is to summon the idols and the atheists in order that the Christian religion in general may be destroyed—and all religion at the same time, both Christian and natural religion.”29

22 Fritsch, Vernunft, 72. 23 Ibid., 75. 24 Ibid., 77f. 25 Ibid., 76. 26 Ibid., 80–87, 101. 27 Ibid., 87–90. 28 Philosophie der Religion, Vol. 6, ch. 2, p. 37. 29 Ibid., 54. natural theology and philosophy of religion 273

It is clear that danger loomed above all from the atheistically inclined branch of deism, to which Storchenau responds with the arsenal of the proofs of God’s existence.30 He also employs the well-known arguments in favor of the necessity of revelation in order to demonstrate the salvific inadequacy of natural religion.31 Unsurprisingly, he is unaffected by the historicization of religion through recourse to a “primal revelation,” as in Lessing and Herder,32 since it is precisely natural religion, interpreted as the first revelation before and outside Christianity that was appropriate to the “natural requirements of humanity,” that needs to be accelerated and perfected by the Christian revelation.33 Here, we must ask about Storchenau’s readership. His German-language Philosophie der Religion is obviously addressed to more than exclusively academic circles, since it is composed in a variety of literary styles (dialogue, exhortation, polemic, etc.), and Storchenau even decorates his argumentation with edifying poems or those of physico-theological contents by Protestants such as Gellert, Haller, and Klopstock. But the former professor does not cease to be a theologian, and more specifically, one who engages in controversial theology. Precisely because he envisages the unification of the Christian confessions on the many lines of battle on which he fights, he must accommodate his Protestant readers: “This at least is certain: that the Protestant scholars are no less unyielding than the Catholics in their fight against free thought.”34 However, since he pursues a “model of conversion and absorption,”35 he does not spare them too much. Thus, for example, he attributes direct responsibility for the genesis of atheistic deism to the Lutheran Reformation (Philosophie der Religion, Vol. 7, ch. 7: “Protestantism, a source of unbelief ”). The former Jesuit also makes compromises in the theory of the state, although his starting point is Wolff, since “for him, the state actually exists for the sake of religion, and this is why it is subordinate to the church.”36

30 Fritsch, Vernunft, 117ff. 31 Ibid., 148ff. 32 Ibid., 159. 33 Ibid., 162–164 (quotation p. 162, from Storchenau, Zugaben zur Philosophie der Reli- gion Vol. 4, 198f.). 34 Philosophie der Religion, Vol. 7, p. 438: “Dieses ist wenigstens gewiß: daß die pro- testantischen Gelehrten in der Bestreitung der Freygeisterei, den katholischen nicht weichen . . .” 35 Fritsch, Vernunft, 211. 36 Ibid., 213. 274 chapter fourteen

14.6 Summary

We have looked at five writers who discussed the relationship between natural knowledge and revealed religion. In Sabundus, we see that it is in fact possible to conceive of natural theology from an anthropological perspective (something that Molina confirms). In Raynaud and Falck, we find strategies to salvage the concept of God for natural science, as an external, transcendental principle of knowledge. All these four authors play their part in the endeavor to establish religion as an anthropological fact: whoever argues against religion destroys human reason. Finally, Storchenau takes the argument so far that it is revelation that makes knowledge possible; at the same time, the political potential of religion becomes clear. This gives human praxis the primacy of a guiding function in the evaluation of the theoretical bases of the sciences. Whether this is good for the sciences is another question. chapter fifteen

GOD AND INDIVIDUALS: THE PORPHYRIAN TREE IN SEVENTEENTH/EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY

15.1 The Contemporary Problem1

One famous problem of so called possible worlds is that of Transworld Iden- tity: Is an individual identical with itself in different possible worlds? I will not discuss the various solutions to this problem2 but just hint at a methodological implication. The question of theodicy, i.e. whether God could have created a world in which there is no (physical or moral) evil, makes only sense ‘all other things being equal’: Hitler and Mother Teresa, natural disasters and any vacation resort should be the same, just without murder and hurricane, ranging from the highest ideals of humanity down to the trifles. Otherwise, knowing or not knowing whether God could or could not have created a world different from the actual world, would tell us nothing about this actual world or about God (e.g. divine and human freedom, evil).3 Making the argument in the framework of possible worlds, thus, makes it necessary to assume that “essential properties and essence” make up the individual and that this and only this individual instantiates its essence.4 On the other hand, metaphysics deals with something general. A statement is a metaphysical one

1. if it has “no restrictions of intended reference (. . .) in force,” 2. if the author takes “responsibility for the strict and literal consequences of the words (. . .) used to make this statement,” and 3. if this statement is “(. . .) ‘sufficiently general’(. . .).”5

1 Versions of this chapter were discussed at the Philosophy of Religion Colloquium at The University of Notre Dame and at the Institute of Philosophy at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, in 1999: I am indebted to the audiences for various corrections and suggestions. 2 Loux, “Introduction,” in Loux, The Possible and the Actual, 36 sqq. Lewis, On the Plural- ity of Worlds, chapt. 4. 3 This seems to me the reason why Plantinga treats philosophical theology with an extensive discussion of the concept and method of possible worlds: Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity. 4 Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity, 88. 5 Van Inwagen, “Introduction: What it Metaphysics?” in van Inwagen and Zimmerman, Metaphysics, p. 5. 276 chapter fifteen

The first requirement is meant to guarantee that such statements extend to real, actual, possible, and mental objects, if they are to be taken as metaphysical, since “metaphysics is an attempt to get at how things really are.”6 The second requirement lays the burden of non-restriction and of awareness about the extension on the speaker or the analyst of that intentionally or supposedly metaphysical statement. But why is, in the third condition, the attribute of being sufficiently general put between quotation marks (scare quotes as they are termed colloquially)? Since “sufficiently general” is no quotation within the text, is it used in an improper, oblique way? In metaphysics? Well, because it is, indeed, about metaphysics, which is nothing but an “attempt” at reality with some claim for generality. Metaphysics is reality wrapped in language. Furthermore, generality has degrees, some of them are “sufficient” for qualifying to be metaphysical. Actually there is (or at least historically was) a way of describing reality in a scale of generalities; I am referring to the differentiation of ‘substances’ and ‘species’. Michael Loux, following Aristotle, presents these differences as the most promising philosophical tool for explaining individuation. But he has to admit by the very end that the “content [claimed for essences] is hidden from us as the consequence that reflection on individual essences will not contribute much to the ontologist’s understanding of substance.”7 Loux also shows that in this terminology, ‘substance’ is the highest ‘substance kind’ which exists never apart but—as a genus and like all intermediary substance kinds or genera—only as infima species and not as individual. The problem of the individual persists, but this approach seems to open a way to attaining sufficient generality in metaphysical statements. The opposite approach, viz. taking substance exclusively as ‘individual essence’, is branded by him “Leibnitian essentialism.” It is true that Leibniz does not accept any species which extends over more than one individual and hence the “specific difference” cannot work. Leibniz rejects the concept that substances are individuated numerically,8 and therefore he has no use for the hierarchy of genera and species, which is

6 Ibid., p. 3. 7 Loux, Substance and Attribute, 178; it is the last paragraph of his final chapter on “Indi- vidual Essences”, which is preceded by the exposition of “Genera and Species”. A summary in Loux, Metaphysics, 117ff. 8 The evidence quoted by Loux is: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphys- ics, Correspondence with Arnauld, Monadology, Lasalle 1901, 14th printing 1994, § IX, p. 14. Cf. Finster, Leibniz Lexicon, 336 sq. for more references. god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 277 traditionally known as Arbor Porphyriana. Leibniz’s opposition to generalization through a hierarchy of universals goes along with his idea that “every individual substance expresses the whole universe in its own manner” such that it entails “all its experiences together with all the atten- dant circumstances and the whole sequence of exterior events.”9 We are evidently at the origins of the ‘possible worlds’ as one can see in parallel writings to that just quoted, where Leibniz states: “We must, therefore, not conceive of a vague Adam (. . .) but we must attribute to him a concept so complete that all which can be attributed to him may be derived from this. Now, there is no ground for doubting that God can form such a concept or, rather, that he finds it already formed in the region of possibilities [dans le pays des possibles], that is to say, in his understanding [entendement].”10 This ‘complete concept of Adam’ in God’s mind is called by Leibniz “conceived sub specie generalitatis,”11 that is to say the whole of the individual as a general concept. This probably meets the requirements for a metaphysical statement, but its meaning nevertheless needs to be spelled out. This, however, is not my aim at present. What is evident from these observations and what I want to show in the rest of the paper is that treating metaphysics as bringing about statements together with the claim of generalization on the one hand, and on the other hand of treating metaphysical problems with the tool of ‘possible worlds’ are conflicting philosophical languages. I will, however, not deal with modal logic because my sources don’t do so. But I will show that the strain between different philosophical languages is an inherent conflict in the hierarchy of substances, which became open in the 17th and 18th centuries. One key problem treated then was whether or not to include God into the hierarchy of genera, and it might be (but I am not competent to develop this idea) that closer consideration of this problem could help in shaping the debate about the role of God in modal logic.12 While tracing the problem of present day metaphysics back to the Porphyrian Tree, I have no intention to make old philosophers appear new or, vice versa, contemporary thinkers look old, nor am I just ‘telling a story’; rather,

9 Leibniz, Discourse on metaphysics, 14 headline of § IX. 10 Leibniz, Remarks upon Mr. Arnauld’s letter (. . .), [May, 1686], in Leibniz, Discourse on metaphysics, Letter VIII, p. 103, cf. the final version of this letter, July 14, 1686, Letter IX, p. 129. Leibniz, Discours de métaphysique et correspondance avec Arnauld, 108, 119 sq. 11 Ibid. Letter IX, p. 129. 12 Some hints concerning free will and values in: Sontag, “Being and God.” 278 chapter fifteen

I hope to show—as I frequently hope—that facts of intellectual history do enlighten the ramifications of a current strain in philosophy.

15.2 The Aquinas’ Approach in De ente et essentia

The history of the Arbor Porphyriana from Thomas Aquinas to scholastic philosophers in the 17th/18th century is an interesting touch-stone for the development of basic philosophical assumptions. It has to do with ontological realism and gnoseology.13 Likewise, it shows the power of schemes in philosophy. Representing philosophical concepts in graphical schemes can seduce to realist or conceptualist interpretations of an ontological problem14—according to apparently slight changes in the presentation. Now, whatever the positions in philosophy might be at stake, realism is always to some extent a matter of decision as to how philosophical correctness can be achieved. If one assumes that ontology is a major field of philosophy, realism is its major challenge, supposed that ontology is truly about’reality’. One can assume the position, however, that ontology is beyond the competence of philosophy, in this case ‘reality’ becomes an indifferent matter, but one has to admit that such a position can be the result of ontological questions. That is what can be shown by the career of the Arbor Porphyriana. I will start from some remarks on Thomas’ De ente et essentia, relating it back to Boethius’ interpretation of Porphyry’s Isagoge. Then I will present a number of interpretations and representations of the Arbor (without any claim for completeness) in philosophy text-books of the centuries around and after Descartes’ metaphysics and gnoseology. It will turn out that the Arbor both underscores and simplifies the antagonism of realism and gnoseology. In chapter 2 of his De ente et essentia, Thomas Aquinas says: “Similarly, the essence of a genus and the essence of a species differ as signate from non-signate, although in the case of genus and species a different mode of designation is used with respect to both. For, the designation of the

13 The terms “gnoseoloy/gnoseological” do not exclude ontology, whereas in modern parlance “epistemology/epistemological” are restricted to problems of conditions of cognition and understanding, while metaphysics focuses on knowledge of reality without cor- relation to sensation. See “Gnoseology” in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich, Oxford 1995, p. 314. 14 Wagner, “Begriff,” esp. 204–206. A more recent study of the Prophyrian Tree is Hacking, “Trees of Logic, Trees of Porphyry.” Hacking is interested in part in the metaphysical, in part in the graphical aspects. god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 279 individual with respect to the species is through matter determined by dimensions, while the designation of the species with respect to the genus is through the constitutive difference, which is taken from the form of the thing.”15 It is worth noting the expression “per differentiam consti- tutivam” (through the constitutive difference), because we will have to ask in which way difference ‘constitutes’ the species. For he continues: “quidquid est in specie est etiam in genere ut non determinatum” (“whatever is in the species is also in the genus as undetermined”). What does ‘being’ (“est”) mean in this case? Thomas’ example is body which has different meanings if taken as part of the animal or if taken as genus. Here, “genus significat indeterminate totum id quod est in specie” (p. 8; “the genus signifies indeterminately the whole that is in the species”). Hence, the meaning of ‘constitution’ or ‘being’ depends on the question, whether genus is ‘something’ or just a concept: does genus signify a reality inherent in individual things, or does it refer to a concept which can be analyzed in a way that it leads to an understanding of things? Taking “indeterminate” (“indeterminately”; in ordinary language: ‘indifferently’) as a key, genus is indifferent to species. But can there be a thing which is indifferent? If genus is taken as identical in various species then it seems that there must be something identical, which stands in itself. These questions may sound naive to specialists of scholastic philosophy. But the problem arises in the concept of Being when applied to God and to spiritual beings, as we will see now. The aim of the De ente et essentia is to clarify the modes of speaking about essence.16 Applying this concept to God, Thomas says that “ipse non sit in genere” (5, p. 14; “he is not in a genus”). The difference of genus and species does not apply to God, because He is not included in

15 Thomas Aquinas, Opuscula philosophica, p. 7: “Sic etiam essentia generis et essentia speciei secundum signatum et non signatum differunt, quamvis alius modus designationis sit utrobique: quia designatio individui respectu speciei est per materiam determinatam dimensionibus; designatio autem speciei respectu generis est per differentiam constituti- vam, quae ex forma rei sumitur.” English translations of this text are taken from: Medieval Sourcebook: Thomas Aquinas: On Being and Essence (De ente et essentia), Translation by Robert T. Miller (1997), http://www.theologywebsite.com/etext/aquinas/beingandessence. shtml (accessed July 25, 2011). Of course, I am not intending an exhaustive interpretation of Aquinas. 16 A rather logical interpretation is given by Werner, Der heilige Thomas von Aquino, vol. 2, 27–29. This is quite an extraordinary and still informative study on Thomas himself and the history Thomism. Concerning the necessary distinction of “il piano logico” and “reale” see for instance Pasquale Porro, Introduzione, in: Thomas Aquinas, L’ente e l’essenza, 20 sq. 280 chapter fifteen the scale of perfections. The difference between esse and essentia does not apply in this special case, while it applies to all other cases of being. In God, Thomas goes on, all perfections are included “modo exellentiori omnibus rebus” (p. 15; “God has these perfections in a more excellent way than all other things have them”). And in created spiritual substances, the difference between essence and being does apply, but without going down from species to individuals, except for the human soul, due to its body. In this way, the scale of individual, species and genus is referring to realities; they do not only signify ways of understanding, but denote differences in real being. Furthermore, the De ente et essentia would be a mere logical treatise if it would not imply its value in determining the understanding of divine and spiritual beings. On the other hand, Thomas states that exactly the difference of esse and essentia is the precondition for any reasoning about things, when he says: “Since in these [created intellectual] substances the quiddity is not the same as existence, these substances can be ordered in a predicament.”17 The other finite beings are composed of matter and form, and therefore their essence can be individualized in individuals, due to matter (p. 16); the form, which is both connected with essence and the higher grades of being, is not involved as itself in the individualization. One consequence of this approach is that both God and individuals are not objects of argumentation because in them, the scale of differences has come to an end. In the background of these arguments is the Arbor Porphyriana, even though Thomas doesn’t mention it literally.18 The Isagoge, that is the introduction into Aristotle’s Categories by the Neoplatonic philosopher Porphyrios, has been commented on by Boethius and then has influenced scholastic teaching. Porphyry insists that the scale of genus, species and individuum is a means that works only on those levels where a genus can

17 Thomas, De ente, in Opuscula, 15: “quia in istis substantiis [sc. creatis intellectualibus] quidditas non est idem quod esse, ideo sunt ordinabiles in praedicamento”. 18 Thomas Aquinas: De natura generis (Opusculua, nr. 42) gives an extended discussion on the logical and ontological, as well as methodological implication of universals. One key passage is in chapt. 4, 180.: “Sciendum est ergo quod, sicut in quarto Metph. [1004 b 20 sq.] ‘Logicus et Metaphysicus circa omnia operantur, differenter tamen’ (. . .). quia Philosophus procedit ex certis et demonstrabilibus, Logicus autem ex probabilibus: et hoc ideo est quod ens dupliciter dicitur, scilicet naturae et rationis. Ens autem rationis proprie dicitur de illis intentionibus, quas ratio in rebus adinvenit, sicut est intentio generis et speciei, quae non inveniuntur in rerum natura sed sequuntur actiones intellectus et rationis: et hujusmodi ens est subjectum Logicae, et illud ens aequiparatur enti naurae quia nihil est in rerum natura, de quo ratio non negocietur.” Even in this treatise, the authenticity of which is being debated, Porphyry with his Tree is not mentioned. god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 281

Plate 1. Andreas Jaszlinsky, S.J.: Institutiones Logicae (Trnava, 1754) 282 chapter fifteen

Plate 2. Melchior Cornaeus, S.J.: Curriculum philosophiae Peripateticae (Würzburg, 1657) god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 283

Plate 3. Melchior Cornaeus, S.J.: Curriculum philosophiae Peripateticae (Würzburg, 1657) 284 chapter fifteen

Plate 4. Melchior Cornaeus, S.J.: Curriculum philosophiae Peripateticae (Würzburg, 1657) god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 285

Plate 5. Johann Heinrich Alsted: Encyclopaedia (Herborn, 1630) 286 chapter fifteen

Plate 6. Eustachius a S. Paulo, OCist, Summa Philosophiae (Cologne, 1616) god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 287

Plate 7. Edmundus Purchotius: Institutio philosophica ad faciliorem ac recentiorem philosophorum lectionem comparata, vol. 1 (Padua, 1737) 288 chapter fifteen

Plate 8. Karl Werner: Der heilige Thomas von Aquino, vol. 3 (Regensburg, 1859) god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 289

Plate 9. Donatus a Transfiguratione Domini, OPiar: Introductio in universam philosophiam, vol. 1 (Kempten, 1754) 290 chapter fifteen

Plate 10. Bertholdus Hauser, S.J.: Elementa philosophiae ad rationis et experientiae ductum conscripta (Augsburg and Innsbruck, 1755) god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 291

Plate 11. Bertholdus Hauser, S.J.: Elementa philosophiae ad rationis et experientiae ductum conscripta (Augsburg and Innsbruck, 1755) 292 chapter fifteen be specified, and Boethius, too, speaks of the intermediary levels when a species can be a genus of a lower level or a genus can be species when referred to the next higher level. Species specialissima, hence, is that species which has only individuals coming after it.19 Boethius continues saying that this series of genus and species has been developed by Porphyry only in the category of substance, and he puts substantia as “genus generalissimum” (103 A). Then he follows the well known divisions. Interestingly he divides animal rationale in immortale and mortale, i.e. “God and man.” He justifies this by reminding that the pagans held God, as well as the heavenly bodies, to be corporeal. (103 B) This seemingly ephemeral occurrence will return in the 17th century in the form that Deus will occupy the same rank as Coelum (s. Plate 7). In the traditional presentation of the Arbor Porphyriana in graphical form, as reproduced in a philosophy text-books (Plate 1),20 we note that the genera and species are put in a sequence which is named “linea directa.” This suggests that there is an order of beings ending in the individuals like Petrus and Paulus. The next observation to be made is: the difference is said “constituit”—and we have to ask if it constitutes in the sense of Thomas Aquinas. But the most striking feature should be that above “Substantia” there has been added “Ens”. No doubt, the division of ens into substance and accidens is much different from that of e.g. cor- poreum and incorporeum: it doesn’t make up a direct line, and the main feature of accidens is exactly that ens cannot be predicated of it in the same way as it can be of substance. This indicates clearly that the Arbor, stemming from a comment on a logical treatise, has developed into an ontological interpretation of the divisions. It now seems to represent realities such as Body, Animal, Man, etc. The fact that Thomas didn’t mention the Tree suggests that he was aware of the shift, the Tree could work in his discussion of differences because the model would fade on the extremes: God and Individual. One of the strictest critics of the Porphyrian Tree was the humanist Lorenzo Valla. In his Dialectica21 he confirms that the Tree as a model for

19 Boethius: In Porphyrium commentariorum, 102 D. 20 The one reproduced is in Jaszlinsky, Institutiones Logicae, of 1754. It features at the root of the tree religious emblematic images, including lamb and cock, Adam’s skull, and the serpent. 21 Valla: Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie; vol. 1: Retractatio totius dialecticae cum fundamentis universe philosophie [this text quoted here]; vol. 2: Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie; Retractatio I 7, pp. 46–50: “Substantie distributio contra Porphyrium et alios” (also in: Valla: Opera omnia, vol. 1, 657–658). god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 293 genus and species comes to a logical end in the supreme being and the individual. But he criticizes the contraries of ‘corporeal’ and ‘non corporeal’ in the first division of substance, postulating that it had to be ‘body’ and ‘spirit or soul’.22 This proposal comes from Valla’s specific analysis of the modes of speaking, in which a concept (such as ‘incorporeal substance’) has to have a referent, i.e. a ‘thing’ (res) to which the concept refers. Consequently he suggests putting on the top of the scale “res” instead of “substantia”. Hence follows that also ‘incorporeal substance’, spirit, has to be divided further, into “creantem” (God) and “creatum” such as angels and devils. He even considers Christ, stating that he—being God and human at the same time—does not fit into the scheme, too.23 This criticism is to a great part due to Valla’s spirit of polemics against scholastic Aristotelianism and his humanist and philological approach to language. Therefore he raises the question of whether the categories have a meaning with regard to reality or but to the ways of speaking. Even though his remarks are valuable, because most of the issues will return in the authors which will be discussed in the following paragraphs, I have no evidence so far that his Dialectics had any impact on them.

15.3 The Tree in Seventeenth-Century Scholasticism

But the Porphyrian Tree had a reappraisal in the 17th century among the Aristotelians,24 even though extensive commentaries on the Isagoge were rarely published,25 and as one can see from Thomas Aquinas and as confirmed by Cardinal Cajetan,26 commenting on Porphyry did not always include appreciation for the Tree as a scheme. The Dominican scholar Johannes a Santo Thoma (John of S. Thomas, also known by his secular name, John Poinsot) included a commentary on the Isagoge in his

22 Ibid., 46 sq.: “ ‘Substantia’ summum genus ponitur, utpote predicamentum; ‘corporea’ et ‘incorporea’ differentie dicuntur, que semper bine constituuntur: que cum rediguntur in substantivum faciunt speciem, ut ex ‘corporea’ fiat ‘corpus’. Verum ‘incorporea’ non est suum substantivum sortita apud hos [sc. Prophyrios and his commentators]: ad meam autem legem erit ‘spiritus’ sive ‘anima’.” 23 Ibid., p. 49 sq. 24 It does not appear in Suarez: Disputationes metaphysicae, even though the categories and especially substance are treated there at length. 25 The last edition of the Isagoge seems to have been published in 1600, and the last commentary on it is recorded in 1606: Risse, Bibliographia logica, I: 1472–1800, 264, 280. 26 Caietanus, Commentaria in Porphyrii Isagogen, see chapt. 9, 61–69. 294 chapter fifteen exposition of Aristotle’s logic,27 but only summarizes the Tree with regard to substance without dignifying it a picture nor a comment.28 However, he bases his treatment of categorial being (“De ente praediamentali”) on the subdivision of genus and species, and he gives five conditions for considering ‘being’ as category: “It has to be (1) in itself and not accidentally; (2) complete, (3) finite; (4) non-complex, and (5) univocal.”29 The third condition excludes God from ‘predicamental being’. Franciscus Toletus, one of the earliest authors of Jesuit commentaries on Aristotle, mentions the habit of putting substances into tables and then enumerates the division of finite substance into corporeal and incorporeal and so on. From his wording: “De divisione seu coordinatione eorum, quae in praedicamento Substantiae continentur”, and: “Pro cognitione harum substantiarum, solent aliquot tabellas assignare”, we can gather that he takes the division of the concept of substance as an ontological and real division into different substances, such as angels, plants, stones etc., and consequently he excuses himself for presenting this in his commentary on logic, because these tables belong properly to “other sciences.”30 This is also why he has to take precautions by excluding the concept of God from substance and from predicaments in general. As S. Thomas had said (e.g. Summa Theologiae I q. 3 a. 5)—and he is quoted duly—God as

27 Johannes a Sancto Thoma: Cursus philosophici Thomistici (. . .) pars prima, 1638, pars. 2, qq. 6–14. 28 Ibid., q. 15, in fine, p. 250. The summary is headed: “Coordinatio praedicamenti substantiae”; similar ‘coordinations’ are given for the remaining categories. There is no graphic scheme in the editions I used: Wolfenbüttel Xb 2613 (1638), and Cursus philosophicus Thomisticus, 1663. 29 Ed. 1663, Logica, qu. 14, art. 1, pp. 205f.: “qinque enumerantur conditiones, quae requiruntur, ut aliquid sit in praedicamento (. . .). Prima, ut sit ens per se seu non per accidens. Secunda, ut sit ens completum. Tertia, ens finitum. Quarta, ens incomplexum. Quinta, ut sit univocum.” In qu. 9, following Thomas Aquinas, Johannes presents a distinction of the individual into “designatum et determinatum” and “in communi seu vagum”. Even though it is beyond the purpose of this paper it is worth mentioning that Johannes refers the concrete individual (‘designatum’) to the first and second intention to the effect that the individual considered in the first intention simply cannot be split up in to further properties (this is the literal meaning of individual), while according to the second intention, the individual is a twofold relationship (“constat duplici relatione rationis”) and thus either it can be related to the superior degrees of substance, such as “hoc animal, hoc corpus”, or it is selfreferential (Ed. 1663, p. 170). The “individuum vagum” refers to the concept of individuality and is as such not “praedicabile”: it does not refer to any specific being and does not belong to any hierarchy of universals (p. 174). The ‘Leibnizian essence’ overrides these distinctions. 30 Toletus: Commentaria . . . in universiam Aristotelis logicam, 1573, cap. 5, qu. 4, p. 113. god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 295 supreme being and source of being is not predicable, and if God is to be called substance then in a different way than all other beings.31 An important step towards a revival of the Porphyrian Tree was made by the Spanish Jesuit Rodericus de Arriaga, who taught in Prague and published his Cursus philosophicus in 1632. He agrees with Toletus that the categories as a part of philosophical teaching do not belong to logic but rather to metaphysics,32 because logic is only concerned with the operations of the mind, while metaphysics deals with the things: “I stated earlier that the categories belong for the most part to metaphysics and in no way to logic, since logic deals only with the operations of the mind and not with things themselves.”33 But Arriaga thinks there is no problem to include God in the category of substance, provided God obtains the top place: “Supposed these categories are so much ecclesiastical [i.e. widely accepted] (. . .) God may well obtain in them a place as supreme head.”34 In order to justify this operation he has to stretch the concept of substance: “The concept of substance is, whatever constitutes a ‘first thing’ internally. By ‘first thing’ I mean, what first and in itself is intended by nature, viz. what exists first and in itself, or that which is the first root of what follows.”35 First, substance is now realistically constituting things in the sense of a ‘first intention’, i.e., what something is as it is. Second, it is conceived as an inner principle. Third, it has its existence in itself—this is an ambiguous definition because in the creational and theological sense of the word, only God is per se existing, while in the logical sense of first intentions only individuals are existing “per se” whereas all other intentions depend gnoseologically from the perceived thing. Fourth, existing beforehand (“primo”) and “per se” is rendered additionally as being the first root of the following. This again has an ambiguous meaning as Albert

31 Ibid., qu. 3, p. 112. 32 “Metaphysics”, in the case of later scholasticism, means a specific body of teaching in the Philosophy course, which has its medieval roots as one can see in the passage quoted from Aquinas, Opusc. 42; it comprises the problem of being as being (later called ontology) and the ‘being’ of spiritual beings. 33 Arriaga: Cursus philosophicus, 1632, Metaph. disp. 3, sect. 2, n. 11: “Praedicamenta maiori ex parte proprie ad Metaphysicum spectare, nullo modo ad Logicam dixi supra, eo quod Logica solum agit de actionibus intellectus, non vero de rebus ipsis.” 34 Ibid.: “Quod si haec praedicamenta sunt tam Ecclesiastica (. . .) bene posset in illis Deus ut supremum caput locum habere.” 35 Ibid., disp. 4, sect. 4 n. 32: “Conceptus substantiae est quidquid intrinsece constituit primam rem. Nomine autem primae rei intelligo id quod primo et per se intenditur a natura, vel primo et per se existit; vel, quia est prima radix ceterorum.” 296 chapter fifteen the Great had pointed out: also the individuals are the ‘roots’ of all higher concepts in terms of species and genus, such as they are placed as ‘roots’ of the “tree”.36 From a medieval point of view Arriaga is two times confounding necessary distinctions: First he is combining the meaning of substance as (1) “ens per se existens” and as (2) “primum commune praedicabile”; in the first sense it belongs to the realm of metaphysics, in the second sense it is the object of logic.37 Second he is confounding “universale in essendo” with “universale in causando.”38 To include God in the categories as the highest substance is justified only by assigning Him the function of creator and of the ontological root of all beings. But Albert had clearly assigned God a role outside the scale of beings, since God is “neither matter, nor form, nor the composite, nor universal, nor particular, nor individual, nor difference (. . .) but before any genus and above any genus.”39 Thomas had even taken causality as the main reason to exclude God from the categories, because, as he says, genus extends only to the species the genus of which it is, while God as the cause of everything ‘extends’ over every being.40 Arriaga’s identifying causation with being has a Neoplatonic ring which, however, cannot be confirmed by his text in the form of clear quotations. Nevertheless he eventually introduces into the hierarchy of being the theological notion of creation that is much akin to the Neoplatonic idea of the order of beings. It is Plotinus who describes the ascending from the species to the One which, as he says, then “spreads [skidnamenon] and extends [phthanein] to all things and comprises everything into one order [syntaxei mia]” (Enn. III 3, 1). But the Jesuit’s strategy is certainly connected with Scotist influences, in as much as he adopts the univocation of the term ‘being’. In his Theology, he defends the inclusion of God in the categories by stating that the concept of being is uniform with respect

36 Albertus Magnus, De praedicabilibus, tr. 4, c. 4, p. 67: “Et ad hunc modum figura per modum arboris scribi consuevit, quae si secundum esset et essentiam consieratur, radices quibus principiatur, superius habet. Si autem secundum esse actuale consideratur, radices quae sunt in individuis, habet inferius.”—References to Albert as a contemporary to Aquinas are of systematic order and cannot claim ‘influences’ or ‘receptions’, also because Albert is never quoted by the philosophers treated here. 37 Albertus Magnus, De praedicamentis, tr. 2, c. 1, p. 166. 38 On this distinction see McArthur, “Universal ‘in praedicando’, universal ‘in causando’.” 39 Albertus Magnus, De praedicamentis, tr. 2, c. 12, p. 189. 40 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I q. 3, a. 5 c: “Quod autem Deus non sit in genere per reductionem ut principium, manifestum est ex eo quod principium quod reducitur in aliquod genus, non se extendit ultra genus illud: (. . .) Deus autem est principium totius esse.” god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 297 to God and creation; therefore, he thinks, God might be considered the genus without eliminating His infinitude in comparison to created beings.41 Arriaga relies on the metaphysics of Francisco Suárez who defended the univocation of ‘being’ and expressly declared universal ‘in essendo’ and universal ‘in causando’ to be identical and even held that every ‘universale in causando’ in as much as it is the cause of more than one effect is “a single thing such as God, heaven etc.”42 Arriaga’s policy in transforming the discussion seems to be, on the one hand, to separate strictly the realm of logic and metaphysics, and in doing so he has to assign the categories to metaphysics while logic is restricted to the operations of mind. As we have seen, traditionally these fields where not methodically separated, but it had to be clarified in every case whether one was speaking in terms of logic or of ontology; this was one of the aims of Thomas’ De ente et essentia. But by separating logic from metaphysics, Arriaga had to assign parts of logic to ontology, thus giving the categories more ontological weight than they traditionally had. On the other hand, Arriaga’s strategy aimed at a full description of reality, taking into account all levels and all details of what was to be said ‘real’. Therefore he could not exclude God from categories, because otherwise they would lack competence for all things about which propositions can be made. In separating the philosophical disciplines Arriaga practically divides the world of philosophy into a realm of mind (logic) and a realm of being (metaphysics). From this point of view it is interesting to note how he deals with the possible divisions of substance. One possibility he offers is the distinction into created and uncreated, and furthermore into complete and incomplete substance; but he is not happy with this because evidently some of the branches would overlap.43 And now he offers the

41 Arriaga, Disputationes Theologicae, vol. 1, Antverpiae (Plantin) 1643, disp. 2, sect. 8, subsect. 3, p. 47: “Admittitur autem communiter unus conceptus obiectivus entis communis Deo et creaturis, in quo proculdubio ut sic concepto non explicatur differentia Dei: ergo est univocus, ergo genus. Neque timeant inde impediendam in Deo differentiam infinite perfectiorem creaturis, aut inducendam aliquam imperfectionem.” 42 Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae, 1866, disp. 6, sect. 8, n. 2, p. 232: “Nam causa quae universalis dicitur, quia varios effectus potest producere, res aliqua singularis est, ut Deus, caelum, etc. (. . .) Tertium autem universale, quod vocatur in essendo, vel nullum est, vel in re coincidit cum quarto [sc. in praedicando], solumque nomine et habitudine rationis differunt.”—Suárez does not discuss the Porphyrian Tree. 43 Arriaga, Cursus, metaph 3, disp. 4, sect. 7, n. 41: “Substantia potest dividi, sicut et ens, in creatam et increatam (. . .). Ulterius substantia creata potest dividi in completam et incompletam. (. . .) Divisio haec non est rigorosa, quia unum membrum includitur in alio (. . .).” 298 chapter fifteen

Porphyrian Tree: “Third, substance is divided into material and spiritual, living and non-living, and so on along all those differences which commonly are given in the ‘predicamental tree’, down to Petrus, for example, a division which is peculiar for ‘being’.”44 The change is really drastic. The Tree is not anymore a line constituting predicable substances according to a conceptual hierarchy, but it is a series of beings, as it had been presented by Toletus, and the dividing side lines are not anymore made up of negative and positive distinctions (e.g. incorporeal vs. corporeal). The basic distinction into material and spiritual mirrors the separation of philosophical disciplines. But the most important reinterpretation is Arriaga’s identifying substance with being: “Substantia potest dividi, sicut et ens”, and “quae divisio etiam est propria entis”. Identifying substance and being is possible only if the strategy of differentiating essence and existence, as proposed by Thomas Aquinas, is abandoned. This becomes clear in Albert the Great’s commentary on the Isagoge, where he states, that substantia and ens are only identifiable if the mode of potentiality is disregarded, thus taking ‘being’ as “ens actu existens.”45 Even though Arriaga does not depict the Tree, we will see how his presentation leads towards the Cartesian interpretation of substance, and he comes very close to what Lorenzo Valla had purported as criticism to the scholastic teaching, namely the division of substance into spirit and body and the abolishment of the concept of substance. It should also be noted, that both Valla and Arriaga are prior in the order of time to any of Des- cartes’ published writings. There were plenty of philosophy textbooks defending the traditional view. The Franciscan Johannes Poncius defends the impossibility of including God in the Categories. He also takes the categories as ‘ordinat- ing’ beings, but God, he says, cannot be “genus generalissimum” because this would include an imperfection, since by definition all degrees of being mark an ability of further perfection.46 He subtly explains the major difficulty which arises if one tries to assign the concept of substance to God and finite beings: Applying the category of substance to God would

44 Ibid., n. 42: “Tertio dividitur substantia in materialem et spiritualem, viventem et non viventem, et sic per omnes illas differentias, quae in arbore Praedicamentali poni solent usque ad Petrum v.g. quae divisio etiam est propria entis.” 45 Albertus Magnus, De praedicabilibus, tr. 4, c. 3, p. 65: “Cum autem didtur ens absolute, non intelligitur nisi ens actu extistens: et ideo non sequitur si substantia est, ens est, quia esse ens accidit omni ei quod est.” 46 Poncius: Integer philosophiae, disp. 10, concl. 2, n. 24, p. 446. god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 299 affirm a difference in God, because grades of substances are made up by differences, which constitute finite beings. The only solution could be to oppose finite being to God by way of “modus”, which, as he admits, is a well known approach with the Scotists, but he is afraid that such subtlety would not hold because then the category of “relatio” would interfere.47 Only as an additional information (“Pro complemento” n. 30, p. 475) Poncius presents the Tree of Categories, insisting that this never can be complete because of the multiplicity of existing substances. His Tree presents only the series going down from “genus generalissimum ad individua humana,” and he describes the lateral series, the differences, as “differ- entiae divisivae superioris, et constitutivae inferioris.” His Tree however marks the differences as abstraction, such as “Incorporeitas/Corporeitas,” and the individual “Petrus” does not stem immediately from “Homo”, as we are used to see, but is mediated by “Petreitas” as distinguished from “Pauleitas” (p. 476).48 A slightly different emphasis is given in the textbook of the Franciscan Scotists Bartholomaeus Mastrius and Bonaventura Bellutus. As is their habit, they discuss the variety of opinions on this matter.49 For our purpose it is relevant that they divide the concept of substance into: “com- munissime” which includes God, “communiter” which refers to every created being including accidents, and “stricte” which excludes accidents and parts (n. 2, p. 215). These three meanings of substance represent also the possible interpretations of the genus generalissimum to the effect that those who take substance in the first sense include God in the categories, and this opinion is attributed to the nominalists (“Nominales omnes”; n. 5, p. 215) naming a.o. Arriaga. This textbook prefers the ‘strict’ interpretation of substance; and in a concluding paragraph of the quaestio on substance, it describes the Tree (n. 13, p. 217; without picture) starting with the finite substance. This is then divided into “spiritualem et corporalem” out of which the spiritual substance branches into the various species of angels,

47 Ibid., p. 446 sq.: “sed quia est valde difficile assignare discrimen inter modum intrinse- cum contrahentem ens ad Deum, ac differentiam, et quia non minus difficile est ostendere quod relatio ut sic, quae est summum genus praedicamenti relationis, non contrahatur per modos ad sua inferiora, si substantia, ut sic, contrahatur per tales modos ad Deum et creaturam.” 48 Poncius’ treatment belongs to the Scotist tradition which seems to avoid the scheme of genus/species; see: Honnefelder, Scientia transcendens, 233 (on Francisco Suárez and Scotus). 49 Mastrius and Bellutus, Disputationes in Organum Aristotelis, Venice 1638; edition quoted: Philosophiae ad mentem Scoti cursus integer, vol. 1, Venice 1708, disp. 7, q. 1. 300 chapter fifteen the corporeal substance (“corpus”) into “corruptibile et incorruptibile.” The non perishable substance denotes the celestial bodies, while the perishable bodies are further split into living and non living etc. Even though these Scotists exclude God from the Tree, they understand it—contrary to Poncius—as a complete division of what there is50 and consequently assign real beings to the negative branch of the incorporeal substance. One of the most successful textbooks of the Thomist school was that of the Dominican Antonius Goudin, which he himself revised in 1692 and which was very frequently reprinted.51 He is well aware that substance has a logical and a physical meaning: “A physical subject is to which inheres any accidens (. . .). A logical subject is about which anything is being asserted, in the way as Petrus is the logical subject of man (. . .).”52 Repeating the loci classici in Thomas Aquinas, Augustine and others, he asserts that God is not included in the predicament of substance (p. 285). Finally, Goudin presents a number of classifications of substances, warning the reader that “those are no physical but only attributive properties, that is, nothing really distinct from the substance but only kinds of second notions which one attributes to substance”.53 He also closes his paragraph with the Porphyrian Tree, the function of which he calls “ordinare”. His first distinction is “created substance in general as divided into spiritual and corporeal” (“substantia creata in communi, quae dividitur in spiritualem et corpoream”). Having excluded God from the category of substance, the division starts from finite created beings as in Poncius. In the 1686 edition Goudin’s Tree ends with the individuals: “Man is divided into various individuals which cannot be divided further and serve in a way as basis of all degrees of predicates.” (“Homo dividitur in varia individua, quae sunt ulterius indivisibilia, et veluti bases omnium graduum prae- dicamentalium.”) The revised edition is more cautious in terms of logic,

50 Cf. the claim maid in the same text-books, vol. 4, Metaph. disp. 1, q. 3, n. 49, p. 15: “Sed Metaphysica dividit ens, et alia suprema genera, et ex his divisionibus colligit parti- culas entis”. 51 Goudin [Goudinus; also: Gaudinus]: Philosophia juxta inconcussa Divi Thomae dogmata 1859. Earliest editions of this work known to me: Paris (Couterot) 1674 and Mediolani (Vigonus) 1674; latest edition known to me: Paris (Sarlit) 1886. On Goudin see Narciso, “Alle fonti del neotomismo.” 52 Ibid., vol. 1, Logica maior, pars 1, disp. 2, qu. 2, art. 2 p. 283: “Subjectum Physicum est, cui inhaeret aliquod accidens (. . .). Subjectum vero Logicum est, de quo aliquid praedica- tur; ut Petrus est subjectum logicum hominis (. . .).” 53 Ibid., art. 3, p. 291: “eas non esse proprietates physicas, sed solum attributales; id est non esse aliquid realiter distinctum a substantia, sed solum esse quasdam notiones secundas, quae attribui solent substantiae.” god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 301 ending the Tree one degree earlier, without justification, but it is evident that Petrus and Paulus are not to be understood as logical ‘divisions’ of “homo” in the way in which every lower grade is a division of the superior grade. It was Pierre Gassendi who had explained why one could refrain from including individuals in the scale, namely according to Porphyry a species is always related to a genus, but “homo” is not the genus of individuals.54 Gassendi refers evidently to the text of the Isagoge itself, where the example of Socrates the son of Sophroniscus occurs, but the question of how to include individuals in the scale of genus and species has been rarely debated in the 17th-century text-books. The Tree is presented as a mere logical tool in the Jesuit Melchior Cor- naeus, who treats the categories in his Summula, where he offers a wood- cut of the Tree (Plate 2).55 His Tree illustrates the logical divisions of genus and species in close reference to Porphyry’s Isagoge. When discussing the categories, Cornaeus not only presents a new scheme “Paradigma praedicamenti substantiae” (Plate 4), he also follows the original intention of Porphyry and gives samples of all categories56, which are divided from genus generalissimum down to individual things, marked as “hoc, illud”, “hic, ille” and similar. To give an example57 he divides the category of quantum/quantitas into: continua-discreta, the continua into permanens- successiva, permanens into corpus-linea, and finally corpus into hoc-illud. In the text the author mentions even more divisions than given in that scheme, and he defines “quantitas continua permanens” as: “to which it is not repugnant that it has all parts really at the same time, as the line, surface or body (. . .)” (“cui non repugnat omnes partes habere simul exis- tentes. Ut linea, superficies, corpus (. . .).”) We may note in passing that he admits here to conceive body as defined by quantitative extension, as Cartesian physics would do.58 Coming back to substance, his new paradigm of dividing substance gives as a first distinction spiritus-corpus, and develops only corpus which finishes on one branch in Homo and

54 Gassendi: Institutio logica, 95 A; there p. 94 Gassendi gives a scheme which goes from “Ens seu Res” via “Substantia” down to “Homo”, and the last is divided into three: “Hic Filius Sophronisci etc. -Alius-Socrates”. 55 Cornaeus: Curriculum philosophiae Peripateticae, Summula Dialecticae, cap. 3, p. 12. 56 The following authors also apply the tree on all categories: Veranus, Philosophia universa, I, p. 486 sq.; Sfondrati, Cursus philosophicus, I, I 3. 57 Cornaeus, ibid. 5, p. 17 sq. 58 For Cornaeus’ relationship to Cartesianism see above section 8.3. On Cornaeus’s relation to modern science see Hellyer, “Because the Authority,”and Catholic Physics, chapter 2. 302 chapter fifteen

Petrus-Paulus but also includes bees, lions, the four elements, the stars, and metals, which all is summed up as hic-haec-hoc (4 p. 17). But then we discover that he returns to the subject in his logic,59 and when discussing the question, whether God has to be included in the categories, he presents us with one more Tree, which starts from Ens, where on the division branch increatum hangs a leaf tagged: Deus (Plate 3). Now, this tree resembles again the Porphyrian shape, and goes down to “corpus etc.”, indicating thus that this tree has to be planted on top of the traditional Arbor.60 So far the general approach to the division of substance is no more controversial, the first division being now body and spirit even though the authors underline that this is to be seen as a logical and not ‘substantial’, or realist ontological resp. factual division of things. Also the protestant teacher Jacob Thomasius will follow that line, taking for granted that God is “superpraedicamentalis”.61 But Cornaeus’ “paradigm of substance” makes use of a different pattern of division, which is historically derived from the Platonic dialectics (as Porphyry’s Tree was,62 though independently from that), but was largely developed by Petrus Ramus and his followers.63 The most influential of these was Johann Heinrich Alsted who in his Encyclopedia summarizes every chapter with his system of dichotomies. There substance64 is to be divided into “Increata: Deus” and “Partim increata, partim creata:

59 NB: Summulae, i.e. the technical part on definition and argumentation, and logic as the scientific treatise on the topics of Aristotle’s Organon, are frequently separate in Catholic text-books. 60 Cornaeus: Logica, tr. 3, q. 1, dub. 5.—A full version of this kind of tree can be found in: Carolus Josephus a S. Floriano, Joannis Duns Scoti philosophia, appendix; here it is named “Arbor Sanctofloriana” and compared with the traditional Tree and that of Purcho- tius, about which in the following. This is also the latest scholastic philosophy text-books with the Tree I have encountered so far.—The Swiss Capuchin friar Gervasius Brisacensis presents two times the Porphyrian Tree in the identical traditional version, the only difference is that the Tree in the Summula is poorly printed, while the one in the Logic is a more decorated and explicit engraving: Gervasius, Cursus Philosophicus, 1699, elem. logic, art. 8, p. 21; Logica, pars 1, q. 4, art. 6, p. 189. 61 Thomasius: Erotemata logica, cap. 6, p. 13: “De Specie et Genere”, and cap. 11 on substantia. 62 Martano: “Albero di Porfirio,” 149 sq.; Caietanus, Commentaria in Porphyrii Isagogen, p. 53, 67. 63 Ramus’ friend Talaeus commented on the Isagoge criticizing it’s “confusio” and rejected the series of substances: Talaeus, Dialecticae praelectiones in Porphyrium, 946– 1001; esp. 970 n. 7, 1001. 64 Alsted, Encyclopaedia, vol. 2: tom. 3, metaph. pars. 2, cap. 2, p. 621 sq. god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 303

Christus”,65 and “creata”, which then splits into Corpus and Spiritus (Plate 5). Again this author opts for including God in the substance. What is interesting for the further development is that “spiritus conjunctus” denotes “Anima humana” while “Corpus completum mixtum perfecte animatum” leads to “animal” which is subdivided into bestia-homo. That is to say that human being appears three times: 1. in Christ, as partly created substance, 2. as a derivative of spirit, and 3. as derivative of body. The soul in the finite form of “animatum” finds a second place in addition to its proper place under spirit. This obvious inconsistency is not justified but explicable by Alsted’s assumption that categories divide beings into substances and accidents, and that substance is divided both in ‘degrees’ and in things: “The category shows specifically the division of being into substance and accidens. (. . .) Substance is the thing subsisting in itself; the division of it is derived from different degrees and different things.”66 Alsted turns back to a mixture of logical and ontological understanding of the categories, and we will see that his line was to be successful in the future. Another author who was influenced by Ramism was the Cistersian Eustachius a Sancto Paulo,67 known since Étienne Gilson’s studies on his influence on Descartes.68 Ramist dichotomies make up the whole Summa, and are also applied to all ten categories, not much different from Cor- naeus, even though a direct influence on him is still to be sought for.69 He also shows an engraving of the traditional Arbor Porphyriana, called “paradigma”.70 The series of substances (corpus, vivens, animal, homo, Petrus-Paulus) is marked as “genera intellecta”. Consequently the logical- ontological uncertainty is resolved by defining category as “appropriate disposition of the nature of things” (“naturae rerum apta dispositio”, p. 51), a wording that sounds like humanist dialectics on the traces of Rudolph Agricola. In addition to that, he interprets the ‘constitutive’ power of the series of genus and species in the terms of analysis and synthesis: “Moreover the direct line [of the Tree] is constituted in two ways:

65 This classification is rejected by Suarez, Disp. metaph. 33, sect. 1, 12. 66 Alsted, ibid.: “Praedicamentum in specie exhibet divisionem entis in substantiam et accidens. (. . .) Substantia est ens per se subsistens. Ejus divisio petitur e diversis tum gradibus tum rebus.” 67 Eustachius a S. Paulo, Summa philosophiae, 1616. 68 Gilson, Index scholastico-cartésien. But note recent studies on the subject such as: Grene, Descartes; Ariew, “Descartes and Scholasticism;” Robinet, Aux sources de l’esprit cartésien, 182–184. 69 However, Cornaeus spent some time of his career as a professor of philosophy in Toulouse. 70 Eustachius, Summa philosophiae, 1616, Dialect. pars 1, tr. 3, disp. 1, q. 1, p. 52. 304 chapter fifteen

(1) upwards by synthesis or composition, (2) downwards by analysis.”71 While the text of Porphyry uses the metaphor of descending with respect to the genera and species,72 it is unusual to connect this with the method of analysis and synthesis. We cannot trace back the humanist sources of this interpretation of the categories, but rather should have a look at the category of substance itself. After having dichotomized ens into “Subsistit, diciturque Substantia” and “Non subsistit, diciturque accidens” (q. 2, p. 56), Eustachius makes sure that God is not included in the categories basing himself, without naming sources,73 on the argument, which we found in Thomas’ De ente et essentia that all perfections are in God “nobiliore modo” (q. 3, p. 57). Thus the way is open to enumerate the divisions of substance into “spiritualis seu incorporea” and “corporea” etc. (q. 5, p. 64 sq.). In a very similar way like Cornaeus he tries to give a full account of all existing substances which include not only in the branch of bodies the stars, or gems, and not only individual angels (in Cornaeus it was Michael and Gabriel) but even the celestial hierarchies of Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones etc. and “spiritus mali” such as “Lucifer, Beelzebub et alij”. The most general differentiation in Eustachius is substantia finita/infinita, which includes—contrary to what he himself had said—God (p. 66). He also adds a division of the “substantia finita incompleta” (Plate 6). This dichotomy is extraordinary because it presents the well known features of the series of Porphyrian substances as incomplete parts of the substances: Since all corporeal beings are composed of matter and form, the soul is classified as the incomplete essential physical form of animated beings, as in plants, animals and humans. On another branch animal and rationale in human beings is classified as the incomplete essential metaphysical part, which is said to be equivalent to genus and differentia. Even though Eustachius, who as we have seen is well aware of the logical problem, does not discuss it, we have to state that he returns to an ontological interpretation of the categories, when he classifies genus and difference as ‘metaphysical’; the only way out of this surprising turn would be that Eustachius takes ‘metaphysical’ in a strict

71 Eustachius, p. 52 sq.: “Porro series directa duplici ratione constituitur: Altera per syn- thesim seu compositionem ascendendo, altera per analysim descendendo.” 72 Cf. Caietanus, Commentaria in Porphyrii Isagogen, 53: “descendere autem per media dividentes.” 73 Eustachius’ text-books is different from the other scholastics also in that he almost never quotes his sources when discussing contrasting opinions. god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 305 nominalist sense. His metaphysics seems indeed to have some nominalist inclinations, but this would deserve further study.74 For the present study we may conclude that in the first half of the 17th century the Arbor Porphyriana had a revival thanks to a variety of interpretations of the realm of logic and ontology and served rather to show the intertwining of logical and ontological problems than to solve them. This uncertainty was to change under the influence of Descartes.

15.4 Descartes and Cartesianism

René Descartes did not appreciate the Aristotelian categories and he intended to replace them in logic with his rules of inference.75 Conse- quently he mocks about the Porphyrian Tree. In his Recherche de la verité‚ one speaker calls the “gradus metaphysici” a labyrinth and full of obscurity, because they create more problems than they can solve and lead form one statement to another “like the branches of a genealogical tree”: What is at stake is the methodical and gnoseological service to be obtained from the scheme. The defender of scholasticism responds that the Tree presents successively “ante oculos” the grades which constitute individual being and knowledge of this depends on knowing what is common and what is different.76 The dialogue reveals that Descartes takes the Tree as a mechanical device to generate knowledge. The ironic reply by Descartes’ spokesman is that he owes his conviction about the uncertainty of knowledge to his school masters, and this uncertainty is due to the general lack of precision in the meaning of words; consequently the author opts for

74 Eustachius: Metaphysica, pars 1, disp. 1, q. 3, p. 8: “Formalis conceptus entis est re unus in unoquoque intellectu concipiente. Probatur, quia notitia quam efformat intellectus, audito nomine entis, est una numero similitudo actualis in ipso intellectu residens.” The usage of ‘metaphysical’ as opposed to ‘physical’ or ‘real’ is present in Suárez, Disp. metaph. 33, sect. 1, 13 on substantia incompleta: “hujusmodi subsantiam metaphysice seu potius logice esse completam”; and on the distinction between completa and incompleta, 24, p. 337: “aliter enim est de illa loquendum, si membra sumantur secundum metaphysicam considerationem, aliter vero si sumantur secundum physicas realitates.” 75 Descartes: Regulae ad directionem ingenii, 381: “res omnes per quasdam series posse disponi, non quidem inquantum ad aliquod genus entis referuntur, sicut illas Philosophi in categorias suas diviserunt, sed inquantum unae ex alijs cognosci possunt.” 76 Descartes, Recherche de la verité, 516. Gervasius Brisacensis Cursus Philosophicus, 1699, Logica, pars 1, q. 4, art. 6, p. 189, much later, said: “[linea Praedicamentalis] inde juvantur Philosophi ad construendas definitiones: Cum enim hae fieri debeant ex Genere et Differentia, et quidem ex genere proximo (. . .) inservit haec tabula etiam ad invenien- dum genus proximum (. . .).” 306 chapter fifteen a reduction and clarification of basic and experience related words the meaning of which is both evident and common to all, such as: “when I said I am a man, I spoke about those things the most simple man and the greatest philosopher know likewise.”77 As is well known Descartes reduces all divisions of substance to res cogitans and res extensa. Nevertheless in his Principia Philosophiae one can trace the Arbor Porphyriana. When speaking about substance Des- cartes, too, starts from the supreme being, God. So in a first approach substance, understood as something that “nulla alia re indigeat ad existen- dum”, is identified with God; but with explicit reference to scholasticism it is made clear that in this concept substance is not univocal, since there is no meaning of substance which covers both God and creature.78 Only after having laid this ground Descartes introduces the two all-inclusive substances “substantia corporea et mens, sive substantia cogitans, creata” (52, p. 24 sq.). For any reader raised like Descartes in scholasticism the following “modi” (55, p. 26): duration, order, and number, are introduced in order to replace categories. And whoever intended to reconcile Carte- sianism and scholasticism could find a good starting point here. The most influential book of logic of Cartesian setting was the so called Logic of Port Royal by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole.79 The authors abolish the dialectics of negative distinctions (such as: incorporeal) and expressly favor classifications through direct positive oppositions referring to Descartes’ “division de la substance en celle qui pense, et celle qui est étendue” (II 15, p. 163). Substance is treated here in the chapter on the five “idées universelles”, i.e. genus, species, differentia, proprium and accidens (I 7, p. 59). Their definition (p. 60) is: “On appelle genre, quand elles sont tellement communes qu’elles s’étendent . . . d’autres idées qui sont encore universelles (. . .): la substance est genre . . . l’égard de la substance étendue qu’on appelle corps, et de la substance qui pense qu’on appelle esprit.” In accordance to the rationalist or conceptualist approach genus is a special case of the idea of species, which is defined as: “idées communes qui sont sous une plus commune et plus generale” (I 7, p. 60). Now the universals are discussed as ideas and mere ideas. Truth is consequently defined (I 2, p. 49) as a correct relationship between ideas and the

77 Descartes: Recherche de la verité, 517: “cum me hominem esse (. . .) dixi (. . .) de ijs, quae vel omnium simplicissimus hominum, aeque et maximus (. . .) Philosophus, scit, locutus sum.” 78 Descartes, Principia Philosophiae, I 51, p. 24. 79 Arnauld and Nicole. La Logique. god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 307 objects they represent: “Que si les objets représentés par ces idées, soit de substances, soit de modes, sont en effet tels qu’ils nous sont représentés, on les appelle veritables (. . .)”; and Aristotle’s categories are but some of them (I 2, p. 49). This solution to the ambiguity in the universals between logic and ontology was still perceived by the scholastics as a problem. And it seems that in this atmosphere which shows its symptoms in the various and sometimes contradictory presentations discussed above the Porphyrian Tree was rediscovered in order to come to grips with it. Taking it as describing reality some scholastics80 criticized—like the Cartesians Arnauld/Nicole— that in the linea indirecta there are only negative statements, but they demanded that God as the highest substance should be included. While the original scholastic concept had to exclude God for theological as well as logical reasons, from a realist point of view they now felt themselves encouraged to search for a place within the scheme. On the other hand, for Arriaga, Eustachius, to some extent for Cornaeus and definitely for the Cartesians of Port Royal the difference between being, substance, and thing tended to vanish.81 This perspective had probably been opened by Renaissance-Aristotelians like Lorenzo Valla, who had said that substance and being are no operable concepts because all thought and knowledge is about “res”. Probably the univocal concept of being in the Scotist school helped to identify substance and being, too, because as soon as there is no difference in the concept of being between God and created beings, the major barrier against including God in the scale of being was removed, this is also evident in Poncius who can exclude God from the categories only by subtlety, admitting that in an ontology of “modes of being” this would not hold any more, as it also happened in Arriaga. Another scale of beings was popularized in the Renaissance through Neoplatonism and Lullism. In a 1512 edition of a book of Raymond Lull a wood cut shows a ladder on which the intellect steps up from stones over animals, Man, etc. to God and down again.82 There is no evident border between individuals and genera and universals and God. Regardless of the

80 Fardella, Universae philosophiae systema, I, 172 sq.; according to Risse, Die Logik der Neuzeit, 2: 1640–1780, 124. 81 It should be noted that Eustachius was acquainted with Pierre Bérulle, the founder of the Oratory: Ferrier, “Eustache de Saint-Paul,” 1132; Ariew, “Eustache de Saint-Paul.” Hence a mutual influence between the Cartesians and the Cistersian deserves further research. 82 Reproduced in Yates, The Art of Memory, 180. 308 chapter fifteen peculiarities of Lull’s art, for a real order of beings which is mirrored in the intellect this scale is as suggestive as the Arbor. It was the Paris Professor Edmund Pourchot (Purchotius), who first designed a Tree of Categories according to Descartes in a school book (Plate 7).83 His Arbor Purchotiana or Cartesiana had a remarkable career in catholic philosophy text-books of the 18th century. As we see immediately, God has found his place in a dead end of spirit. One finds him on the same level as the earth and the stars. Further more, the logical differences of the traditional Arbor have been turned into powers and chances (vim habens, praeditum, destinatus). And after having seen the discussion in Arriaga and in Descartes, we are not surprised to find ens, res, and substantia identified.84 One feature Pourchot is most proud of is the new position of Man in the middle of the order of beings. The human soul—which was a special case also in Thomas—is now one item joined with corporeality and constitutes the particular human place in the world. Pourchot man- ages to avoid the double identity of human soul and human body as it happened to appear in Alsted’s scheme. The philosophical background is obviously the Cartesian distinction of ‘extended thing’ and ‘thinking thing’. Therefore one can find the first distinction of “being, thing, or substance” marked as extensa vs. cogitans.85 The ideological background of this solution is certainly the Renaissance speculation on the dignity of man, which of course was foreign to scholastic logic. What is also striking is the absence of the individuals. We had observed the same absence in the second version of Goudin’s order of categories, who did not explain why he omitted the usual Petrus and Paulus. In Pourchot it is evident that if the substances are taken to be ideas (as in the Logic of Port Royal, and Pourchot expressly refers to it), individuals are not to be included in such a table. In this respect they all return—paradoxically enough—to the Thomist way. Given the authority of scholastic thought one can expect an attempt to reconcile the old and the new Tree, and we find it in the Piarist Donatus

83 Purchotius, Institutio philosophica, 1737. On Purchotius see: Risse, Die Logik der Neuzeit, 2: 1640–1780, 126–129, and Blum, “Pourchot.” 84 An Augustinian Canon even identified “Res=Natura=Essentia=Substantia”, see Plate 8 from Werner, Thomas, III, 641, taken from: Julius Franciscus Gusmann, Disserta- tiones philosophicae, quibus philosophia rationalis et naturalis (. . .) illustratur (. . .), Graz 1755 sqq. 85 Cartier, Philosophia eclectica, Logica p. 34, tabula 2. This was a text-books for the Benedictine abbey of Ettenheimmünster (Breisgau, Germany). god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 309 a Transfiguratione Domini.86 In his Arbor Porphyriana accuratius disposita (Plate 9) the linea directa that represents the degrees of substances is split into two lines, the upper divisions forming with Homo below the shape of a heart. These two lines represent two parallel scales of beings on each side outside the heart shaped lines: Deus-Angelus-Anima post mortem and: Lapis-Planta-Brutum which join again in Homo. On contemplating the two lines it is evident that the line Homo-Animal-Vivens Corpus represents the old linea directa in which the superior grade can be predicated of the lower, while the line Homo-Anima rationalis-Mens angelica vel humana- Spiritus is made up of spiritual substances. Looking at the horizontal levels the inconsistency of this solution is evident, because—if the items were realities—stone and God were of the same rank. The conceptualist and the realist reading of the Tree are fused again. The pretended ‘accuracy’ consists in displaying the problem, not in solving it. At the same time a Jesuit teacher in Dillingen, Berthold Hauser,87 reproduces the two trees with the same arguments as Pourchot (Plate 10). Yet he added his own new tree which he calls “analysis idearum” (Plate 11).88 Needless to say that his logic adapts as much as possible from the Logic of Port Royal. The linea directa consists now of inferences: “Plato est homo ergo animal ergo vivens (. . .) ergo ens.” The side branches which are almost all truncated represent distinctions and arguments which repeat one another. Albert the Great had also meditated the possibility of reading the line from the individual up to substance as a series of inferences, but he warned not to go on from substance to ‘being’: “It follows: if it is a man it is an animal, if an animal it is a living body, if a living body it is a body, of a body a substance—because of the inclusion of the genus in [the concept of] species. But it doesn’t follow: if it is a substance it is a being, because the genus—regardless whether it is something or not— follows always if a species is posited.”89 Genus can refer to non-existing merely possible or mental ‘things’ and therefore does not necessarily

86 Donatus a Transfiguratione Domini, Introductio in universam philosophiam, 1754, Table in I, after p. 142. 87 Hauser, Elementa philosophiae, I, tables in the annex. On Hauser see B. Bauer, “Experimentalphysik und Theologie.” 88 Hauser mentions that this tree has been designed by a certain “P. Laurens” (p. 53). 89 Albertus Magnus, De praedicabilibus, tr. 4, c. 3, p. 65: “Sequitur enim, si homo est, animal est: et si animal est, corpus animatum sive vivum est: si vivum est, corpus est, et si corpus est, substantia est, propter intellectum generis in specie. Sed non sequitur, si substantia est, ens est: quia sive sit aliquod, sive non, semper genus sequitur ad speciei positionem.” 310 chapter fifteen include actual being. It seems this distinction ceased to work with Carte- sianism to which every concept is just an idea. Thus finally the Arbor has been set back to a logical instrument, but to the logic of Descartes. And the whole sequence is turned upside down: Being is now at the lower end and the individual is on the top. This is paradoxical again, because traditionally the individuals marked the root because the scale of genera started from there by way of abstraction. On the other hand, an ontological interpretation could have marked being as the root. Right now, when the series is turned into method, the inference runs from top to bottom. Reality is not anymore a question since the philosophy of reality is conceived as the analysis of ideas; ontology has become gnoseology. This becomes obvious when we take a final look at Christian Wolff, the last authoritative philosopher of the schools. He defines species and genus as the outcome of intellectual comparison: “The similarity of single beings is what we call species. (. . .) Similarly, genus is the similarity of species.”90 In his Ontology and in his German version of the Metaphysics he adduces examples from mathematics rather than from the series of beings that makes up the Porphyrian Tree, because, as he says in an explanatory note, “one can keep an overview of everything contained in mathematical things [in entibus mathematicis] without fear to have overlooked some of the determinations, and their number is not many so that it is possible to reach the end soon.”91 Wolff ’s logic textbook of 1740 refers to living beings in explaining the meaning of species and genus; however, he also starts from bottom, i.e. from comparing individuals that build up species and genus: “Singular things that we perceive are in some features either similar or dissimilar. We assign those that are similar to the same class, termed species. (. . .) If concepts of species have something in common such that the individuals pertaining to them have such similarity among them, we constitute a higher class that we call genus as containing under it those species.”92 Classifying kinds and generalization has become an “operation of the mind”.93 We are on the threshold of Kant.

90 Wolff, Philosophia prima, sive ontologia, §§ 233–234, p. 191: “Entium sigularium similitudo est id, quod speciem appellamus. (. . .) Similiter Genus est similitudo specierum.” Cf. Wolff, Vernünftige Gedanken, §§ 177–186, pp. 170–180. 91 Wolff, Vernünftige Gedanken, part 2, Anmerckungen, § 53, p. 980. 92 Wolff, Philosophia rationalis sive logica, pars 2, §§ 44–45, pp. 132–133. 93 “Operations of the mind” is the general heading of Wolff ’s and others’ logic books. god and individuals: the porphyrian tree 311

15.5 Conclusion

To conclude this survey of several variations on the theme of the Tree: From a Thomist point of view this presentation should assume a polemic tone, since it shows that the development of philosophy was achieved at the price of reducing and simplifying the problem. In Thomas Aquinas God was the major problem of metaphysics because God escapes linguistic and semantic as well as logical solutions to the philosophy of being. Early modern philosophy also was not free to choose a solution without God, since philosophy would have been poor without a supreme being that is at the same time the most exceptional case of being and its source or creator. But in Thomas God is also the opposite extreme to the individual being, therefore without God—in natural theology and apart from revelation—the table of beings or the order of the substances would not be complete if on the end opposite to the individuals there would not be one being that exceeds the entire scale. This is proven by Thomas’ argu- ment94 that God is not to be conceived as that universal that comprises formaliter all things, because this solution would not comply with the logical line of the order of being in which individuation is the ultimate perfection: pantheism excludes God’s excellent way of being a person. Thomas refers to the theology of Amalrich of Bena which has been repeated by Spinoza—following and transforming Descartes—, who held that there is only one substance, God, and that all other beings are but accidentals. This was, of course, a further step towards unification at the price of sim- plification, at least from the point of view of the early and the late scholastics who didn’t think that philosophy was called upon making things easy. The Arbor Porphyriana as it was received in the 17th and 18th century was partly used to keep the standard of complexity and partly to reduce it. From the perspective of the history of Cartesianism, we discover once again that Descartes’ theory of substance and his method had its prepara- tions in both scholasticism and Ramism, and that even these two early modern strains could be intertwined in thinkers like Arriaga or Cornaeus. If one dares to say that Arriaga and Eustachius were Cartesians ante Descartes, then only on the basis of the philosophical problem carried forward from Aristotle’s Categories through their ancient and medieval interpretation. On the other hand philosophers could be non-Cartesian after Descartes without losing any contact to the debates of early modern

94 Thomas, De ente et essentia, c. 5, p. 14 sq. 312 chapter fifteen philosophy exactly because, from the scholastic perspective, Descartes’ was just one solution of the persistent problem of realism and gnoseology that can also be paraphrased as the problem of essence and individuals. The graphical representation was revived in order to ban the complexity of the problem and eventually it was dissolved it into an plausible scheme. The Arbor Cartesiana is an indicator of the problem that was at the origins of modern philosophy of mind and substance. The last example in this paper shows that the inference of universals from individuals has an epistemic status only if we bear in mind the Porphyrian Tree in its double meaning as ontological hierarchy and gnoseological tool. Hauser’s Tree tries to present the individual as the complexion of higher ideas or concepts. The problem is that these ‘superior’ or ‘more basic’ levels lack a specific ontological status—and this is one reason why (as shown in the introduction) modern metaphysics wrestles both with the meaning of generality and the constituencies of the individual. APPENDICES

chapter sixteen

SIGER AND SAINT THOMAS IN THE PARADISO

Quanto son diffetivi sillogismi quei che ti fanno in basso batter l’ali! (Paradiso XI, 2–3) Torrents of ink have been unleashed by the fact that Dante praises Siger of Brabant by placing him alongside Saint Thomas in the Paradiso. This is because the situation in the poem is intrinsically enigmatic. Some of the perplexities are caused by the disequilibrium in what we know of these two mediaeval masters, by the information that Siger appears to belong to the Averroist group, and by our expectation that Dante is making a clear and definitive affirmation about theology and its relationship to philosophy—particularly here, in the Paradiso. In the present chapter, I shall give a summary of the various interpretations. I shall look at the passage in Dante in its literal sense,1 and I shall examine the relationship between theology and philosophy with reference to the text by Thomas Aquinas on the “unity of the intellect.” And I shall do this as a reader who has no claim in Dante or in mediaeval studies but is, rather, interested in the later development of Aristotelianism. The most reliable authority in philosophical Dante studies is certainly Bruno Nardi,2 who devoted decades of study to the philosophy of Dante, and hence to his philosophical milieu. If we look at the history of interpretation, the most striking element is the formation of “parties” among Dante scholars with regard to the relationship between philosophy and theology. Not only Thomistic writers such as Giovanni Busnelli, but also great scholars such as Pierre Mandonnet have felt themselves called to defend Thomism.3 Since these debates were conducted against the background of cultural questions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,

1 Par. X, 133–138. I quote from the following edition: Dante, La divina commedia, 1965. For an account of the various interpretations, see Steenberghen, Maître Siger de Brabant, 165–176, and Vasoli, “Sigieri,” Enciclopedia dantesca 5, 238–242. 2 Nardi, Studi di filosofia medievale, esp. 54–68 and 151–161. Nardi, Dal “Convivio” alla “Commedia”; Saggi e note di critica dantesca; Saggi di filosofia dantesca; “Lecturae” e altri studi danteschi, and Dante e la cultura medievale [1942]. 3 Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant. Busnelli, Cosmogonia e antropogenesi, esp. 104–113. 316 chapter sixteen the case of Siger can also throw light on modern Thomism/Aristotelian- ism, which has occasionally seduced its adherents into minimizing the role of Siger. For example, Busnelli seems to maintain that Thomas/Dante praised Siger, the master of the “vico delli strami” at Paris, as a logician. In other words, a teacher of the trivium is elevated to the divinity in the “luce etterna.”4 Another motif sees Saint Thomas letting his own “carità shine out” by acknowledging the virtues of a man who was his proud opponent on earth, after Siger had “submitted to the judgment of the church.”5 It is true that this idea allows the figure of Saint Thomas to shine out. But it fails to explain why the saint did not choose some other adversary—after all, he had no lack of them. Nardi argued against the idea that Dante was a pure Thomist, since Thomism came into existence only in the fourteenth century, and the Thomism of the nineteenth century was certainly completely different from the philosophical-theological teaching in the time of Dante. Nardi recognizes the contrast between Thomas and Siger and proposes that the poetical situation is dominated by the figure of Beatrice: Dante, the author of the Commedia, judges from the perspective of Beatrice, who “knows much more than Saint Thomas knew when he was on earth.” Accordingly, “once he has ascended into heaven, Aquinas recognizes in him [that is, Siger] a spirit worthy to shine along with him in the sphere of the sun.”6 We should note here that in a difficult passage like this, the interpretation necessarily involves both the poetical situation and the authorial act. The researches of Nardi and others have shown that the Averroism of the thirteenth century was never that depicted by Ernest Renan and by other historians who chose the Middle Ages as the battlefield on which they sent their cavalry against the Church of Leo XIII and the First Vati- can Council.7 This means that Averroism in the Middle Ages did not yet function as a label that would automatically dispatch a writer into hell or into paradise (depending on the party to which his judge belonged). This of course does not deny that there were in fact debates, nor that Thomas himself fiercely attacked heterodox doctrines; I shall say more about this below. According to Nardi, therefore, Thomas and Siger, who were adversaries on earth, “were reconciled” from the divine perspective. It is however

4 See Nardi, Saggi di filosofia dantesca, 358; Nardi, “Lecturae”, 171. 5 Busnelli, Cosmogonia, 109; see Nardi, Saggi di filosofia dantesca, 341–380. 6 Nardi, Saggi e note di critica, 392. 7 Nardi, “Lecturae”, 172. siger and saint thomas in the paradiso 317 difficult for the historian of this world’s philosophy to have the same access as Dante and Beatrice to supernatural sources; and this means that we must ask whether Thomas’ arguments, as he sets them out, remain valid. Mandonnet argues that Dante elevated Thomas’ adversary to heaven simply because he did not have the detailed knowledge of Siger’s philosophical teaching that we have today.8 Here, therefore, the divine knowledge joins up with ignorance in the historical sphere. Étienne Gilson has criticized this criterion of ignorance, proposing a solution of his own: Dante separates the spiritual realm from the temporal, and Siger is a representative of Latin Averroism, not because he maintains specific Averroist theses, but because he defends the separation of the two levels. Such a separation reflects the separation between the church and the empire. If then Thomas and Siger are judged in accordance with their respective merits in their lives here on earth, the verdict of the divine justice is that they deserve life in heaven, “where they must be placed according to justice, which—since it is the justice of Dante—is necessarily the justice of God too.”9 If however Siger represents the earthly part of this separation between the earthly world and the spiritual world, why then is he elevated to the kingdom to which he does not in fact belong? I do not feel able to comment on the dualistic interpretation that is implicit in Gilson’s explanation, but it is at any rate clear that it is decisively important here that we consider the scene in which Thomas and Siger are presented. If it is true that Dante judges from the divine and spiritual point of view, we need to know in what sense such a perspective can overcome the distance and allow Siger to reach Thomas the saint. A further incoherence in Gilson’s solution is that he forces Saint Thomas to acknowledge the merits of Siger, and this makes his own beatification a punishment in the name of eternal justice—but punishments are not inflicted in paradise. In his study of the relationship between Siger and Thomas, Albert Zimmermann10 has proposed a quasi-Solomonic, definitive solution: he argues that the two philosophers influenced each other. Although Siger took the occasion to react very positively to Thomas’ criticisms, he maintained some independent teachings of his own: Zimmermann mentions his anthropology (that is, the doctrine of the soul) and the theory of

8 Mandonnet, Siger, vol. 1, 301–303. 9 Gilson, Dante et la philosophie, esp. 273; quotation, 274. 10 Zimmermann, “Dante hatte doch recht,” and “Thomas von Aquin und Siger von Brabant.” 318 chapter sixteen creation and individuation. He quotes the striking words in which Siger speaks of the relationship between the Aristotelian philosophy and the suprarational truths: “sententia Philosophi (. . .) non est celanda, licet con- traria veritati.”11 This dictum asserts that one must not suppress the de facto truth that Aristotle said this or that, even if what he said is objectively erroneous. The contrast is not between the philosophical truth and religion, but between a correct interpretation and the true doctrine. Con- sequently, Zimmermann proposes that Dante has set up a monument to Siger as a representative of pure philosophy,12 and “the complete harmony between the great philosopher and the great theologian” is depicted when they are presented together in the Paradiso.13 Instead of a dominance of theology (represented by Thomas) vis-à-vis philosophy (represented by Siger), the scene indicates their reconciliation—though in a paradisiac state. This solution contrasts with those of Gilson and Nardi,14 both of whom emphasize the dualism. Furthermore, Nardi notes that in the Com- media (unlike the Convivio), philosophy assumes the role of handmaid (“ancilla”). A study by János Kelemen bears the title: “The noblewoman and the handmaid.”15 It links the dualism “philosophy/theology” by means of the formula of the “double truth” to the dualism of the “double end” of the human person, as this is affirmed by Dante in the De monarchia.16 Kelemen agrees with Nardi that the “noblewoman” becomes the “ancilla” in the Commedia.17 In other words, after asserting its autonomy in the human sphere, philosophy is subordinated to theology. Bearing in mind the general structure of the Commedia, in which the parallelisms are always accompanied pari passu by hierarchical ascendancies, Kelemen draws a parallel between Beatrice and Vergil on the one hand and Thomas and Siger on the other, and emphasizes that the praise of Siger is uttered neither by Dante nor by Beatrice, but by Thomas himself.18 This paral- lelism reminds us that we must respect the roles of the characters who

11 Zimmermann, “Thomas von Aquin und Siger von Brabant,” 429, quoting Siger, Quae- stiones in metaphysicam, 140. 12 This is also the position of van Steenberghen, 175ff. 13 Zimmermann, “Thomas von Aquin und Siger von Brabant,” 419. 14 Nardi, Dante e la cultura medievale, 163. 15 Kelemen, “A nemes hölgy . . .” (The noble lady and the maid, or: Dante and philosophy.) in his “A nemes hölgy,” 256–280. 16 Ibid., 266ff. 17 Ibid., 278. 18 Ibid., 278f. siger and saint thomas in the paradiso 319 speak, while the prominence accorded to Saint Thomas as spokesman in this poetical situation must mean that it is he himself who acknowledges the eminence of Siger of Brabant. This also means that no one can com- pel Thomas to retract his condemnations of Averroism, since these are an integral part of his philosophical and theological œuvre. Ultimately, Thomas was correct to combat Averroism: and it is only if we accept this that he can acknowledge the permanent value of the Aristotelian-Sigerian philosophy. If we now look at the text, according to the hermeneutical principle that a close reading always aids interpretation, we see that Saint Thomas presents a circle of thinkers to the reader, and then invites us to look at Siger—but with the promise that Siger will point the reader back to Saint Thomas. The doctor is first surrounded by representatives of asceticism and martyrdom, then by contemporary thinkers, and finally by Siger: Questi onde a me ritorna il tuo riguardo, è il lume d’un spirto che ’n pensieri gravi a morir li parve venir tardo: essa è la luce etterna di Sigieri, che, leggendo nel vico delli strami, sillogizzò invidiosi veri.19 We encounter here a circle of which Thomas is a part; equally, he is its beginning and its conclusion. And Siger belongs to the depiction of the glory of Thomas (a depiction over which Thomas himself presides); indeed, he completes this picture. The decisive words seem to be: “sillogizzò invidiosi veri,” because it is obvious that they supply the justification for the elevated position of Thomas’ colleague. Clearly, they express a paradox: what can it mean to say that “veri” are “invidiosi”? The verb “silogizzare” is a technical term from the philosophy of the schools, but this does not justify reducing Siger to a mere professor of logic, since the same verb is employed in a theological context too. In Canto XXIV of the Paradiso, Dante writes: “fede è sustanza di cose separate / ed argomento delle non parventi” (vv. 64–65). When he is asked to explain the use of the strictly philosophical terms

19 “This light from whom your gaze returns to me contains a spirit whose oppressive thoughts made him see death as coming much too slowly: it is the everlasting light of Siger, who when he lectured in the Street of Straw demonstrated truths that earned him envy”: Par. X, 133–138, trans. Allen Mandelbaum. 320 chapter sixteen

“substance” and “argument” in relation to the theological term “faith,” Dante declares that the matters of faith have their being only in believing (“Le profonde cose / che mi largiscon qui la lor parvenza, / alli occhi di là giù son sì ascose, / che l’esser loro v’è in sola credenza”: 70–73). In the logical terminology of scholasticism, we can say that real things have their objective being outside the mind that knows them; unlike these, the chimeras that are products of the imagination have their being only in the mind that fabricates them. Here, we have a third level of being, namely, the objects of faith. These are not “real” in the sense that they have entered the mind by means of the senses; nor however are they mere products of the mind. They come to birth in the mind thanks to faith. The first objects are substances in the common sense of the term, while the second objects have no substance. The objects of faith have their substance in the “believing.” Ratiocination with regard to the substances must pay heed to their properties, the categories, etc. In this sense, they are the starting point of scientific argumentations. In an analogous sense, the objects of faith must be taken as the starting point of theological argumentations: “E da questa credenza ci convene / sillogizar” (76–77). It is here that we find in a nutshell the entire difference between theology and philosophy: their modus procedendi is analogous, and this is why a scientific theology is humanly possible. But the basis of theology is the revealed truths, while the basis of philosophy is the empirical substances. This means that the problem of the relationship between the two levels of scientific argument comes down to the correct use, not of the modes of argumentation, but of the matters about which one is reasoning: “Quanto son difettivi sillogismi / quei che ti fanno in basso batter l’ali!” (Par. XI, 2–3). This is the beginning of the canto that follows the crowning of Thomas. On what then did Siger propound syllogisms? On “invidiosi veri.” We should note that Dante does not speak of “veritadi” (“truths”), but of “veri,” as if he wished to underline that it is a question of real “true things,” not of formally correct propositions which possess a logical truth guaranteed by their syllogistic form, while their real truth remains in suspension. This means that the truth is not a problem. But how are we to interpret the word “invidioso”? If we take it in its most common sense, linked to “invidia” (“envy”), we must ask: Who is envious, and why? If the true things are envious, of whom are they envious? And if the true things attract envy, what is the object of this envy, and what is its cause? In the etymological sense, however, “invidioso” can mean “invisible.” This solution, however, seems too simple: it would mean that Siger had proposed theories about siger and saint thomas in the paradiso 321 invisible things, that is to say, theological things. Perhaps the “invidiosi” things are those that people do not like to see, such as heretical theories (or theories suspected of heresy)?20 But it would be rather unkind to mention the suspected heresy of Siger precisely in this passage; and besides this, logically speaking, the “veri” would have been proved false and would thus have become errors.21 Let me repeat that the context—the whole garland of wise men— means that when the Parisian master is called “luce etterna” (Par. X, 136), this must be due to the “invidiosi veri.” The word “luce” suggests that we should look back to the word “lume” (134): Siger’s spirit contemplated with “pensieri gravi,” so that he felt death to be something desired, something that was delayed (135: “a morir li parve venir tardo”). I believe that this motif is linked to the death of Boethius,22 while Fernand Van Steen- berghen sees a reference to the violent death of Siger, who was accused of heresy. There may thus be a connection between the “envious truths” and the expectation of a wretched death.23 If therefore we wish to avoid easy solutions that hop over the negative connotation of the word “invidiosi,” we must find a meaning that accom- modates all the nuances. Siger’s “veri” must have been teachings that were both true and “invidiosi” in the sense that they tended to exclude other teachings and to attract envy or suspicion, so that they have a dialectical relationship to other “veri”—both to “veri” that are excluded by Siger’s teachings and to “veri” that cannot be excluded by these teachings. Fur- thermore, everything that makes Siger an “eternal light” must arouse emotions, since envy is an emotion. The situation becomes apparently more complicated when we recall the dictum of Saint Thomas that the quality of the one who is praised must find some confirmation in the teaching of the one who praises. In reality, however, this makes things easier, for it is Saint Thomas himself who will give us an exposition of Siger’s teaching that shows us why he deserves a place alongside him in heaven. In order to discover Aquinas’ position on Averroism, and hence on what may have been Siger’s teaching, we must return to his De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas.24 This work begins with the words: “naturale

20 This is suggested by Nardi, “Lecturae”, 172. 21 For this position, see also van Steenberghen, 166. 22 Par. X, 128–129: “da martiro / e da essilio venne a questa pace.” 23 Van Steenberghen, 22f. 24 Thomas Aquinas, Aquinas Against the Averroists. I refer to the chapters and the paragraphs in continuous enumeration. For a general picture of the debate, see Mahoney, “Science, Intellect, and Imagination in Albert, Thomas, and Siger.” 322 chapter sixteen desiderium inest hominibus fugiendi errores et eos cum facultas affuerit confutandi.” We should note the language and the tone here, because we are looking for “invidiosi veri.” Already at the beginning of this work, we find the motif of attack and defense that is characteristic of envy in the broadest sense of the term. Thomas wishes to present the problem that arises when the error concerns, not some theory that is formulated, but the very instrument that is used to discover what is true and to confute error, that is, the intellect: “error quo circa intellectum erratur, per quem nati sumus deuitatis erroribus cognoscere veritatem” (I, 1). As is well known, Thomas defends the unity of the individual intellect against the unity of the common intellect, prescinding from theological presuppositions and taking his stance exclusively on rational arguments (formulating syllogisms) and on the text of Aristotle. The error that Tho- mas rebuts is the same that Dante records: “fè disgiunto / dall’anima il possibile intelletto, / perchè da lui non vide organo assunto,” whereas the correct teaching is that which “ciò che trova attivo quivi, tira / in sua sustanzia, e fassi un’alma sola, / che vive e sente e sè in sè rigira.”25 In poor words: the intellect, which does not employ the body as its instrument, is nevertheless completely one with the soul that gives life and is sensitive. Thomas’ brilliant argument is as follows: “Manifestum est enim, quod hic homo singularis intelligit.”26 Although the intellect is immaterial, it is found only in the individual, and it constitutes the individual unity of the individual. Averroes, e contra, had said that the knowing intellect is a substance separate from the individual and “copulatur michi vel tibi per fantasmata que sunt in me et in te” (III, 63). For Thomas, this has a serious consequence: “quod homo non intelligeret, sed quod eius fantasmata intelligerentur ab intellectu possibili” (III, 66). In other words, it would not be the human being himself who thought: rather, the human being would be the object of the common intellect. Obviously, this is a conflict about competence, fought out between an intellect that is universal (so to speak) and operates on the individuals, and the individual and autonomous intellect (that “sè in sè rigira”).

25 Purg. XXV, 64–66, 73–75; on differences from the teaching of Thomas, see Nardi, Studi, 54f. 26 III, 62; cf. Siger, Les quaestiones super librum de causis, q. 52, p. 182: “dicitur homo, non anima, intelligere eo quod in ipso intelligere corpore egeat sicut obiecto cui naturaliter unitur.” There is an explicit response by Siger to the theses of Thomas in his De anima intellectiva, ch. III: Siger de Brabant, Quaestiones in tertium de anima, 81ff., cf. p. 86: “Sic et homo intelligit, cum tamen intelligere sit in solo intellectu et non in corpore; (. . .) homo autem ipse intelligit secundum partem, sicut videt secundum partem.” siger and saint thomas in the paradiso 323

According to Thomas, the Averroist theory of the intellect is philosophically erroneous, and it is philosophy that demonstrates the truth of the individuality and immortality of the soul. At the same time, however, this truth is true on the theological level. Here, we cannot say that philosophy “serves” theology; rather, it confirms something that is already true in theological terms. Saint Thomas upholds here a philosophy that is not abused as the handmaid of a dictatorial theology. He upholds a theology that is also philosophically true and a philosophy that, thanks to the correctness of its own modus operandi, taking its starting point in the right “substances,” arrives at conclusions that are ultimately theological truths. After presenting his own argumentation with serenity and a supreme command of his subject, Thomas attacks those who say that the individuality of the soul is a “lex,” a “positio” of Christian scholasticists (V, 122), and who even assert: “Per rationem concludo de necessitate quod intellectus est unus numero, firmiter tamen teneo oppositum per fidem” (V, 123). Although the text does not employ the term “double truth,” this is what is involved. Accordingly, it is important to note the structure of the position that Saint Thomas sets out here: “quod fides sit de falso impossibili, quod etiam Deus non potest” (V, 123). In this passage, Thomas presents the philosophical subject as an antagonistic and logical structure—a truth that is attacked precisely because it is true, attacked either as if it were an arbitrary position or as if it were the affirmation of a self-contradictory error. No matter who may have maintained such ideas, it is Saint Thomas himself who defends “invidiosi veri.” In the final paragraph, we find the element of emotion that is included in the semantics of “invidia.” Thomas addresses personally—though without mentioning his name—someone who “gloriabundus de falsi nominis scientia uelit contra hec que scripsimus aliquid dicere,” and he summons him to a public combat. He must stop speaking “in angulis (. . .) coram pueris qui nesciunt de tam arduis iudicare”; and Thomas promises that his adversary will encounter resistance from many other “ueritatis zelatores” (V, 124). We cannot claim that Dante knew these passages, but it is already clear that Siger cannot be the person whom Thomas is attacking—for if that were the case, it would be impossible to acknowledge him as a “light” and an “eternal light.” We are left with the following situation: The Saint Thomas of the Par- adiso has in mind a Siger who is well aware that the “true” is controversial, both inherently and as the object of attacks ab extra. It suffices to recall the preface to the commentary on the Liber de causis, in which Siger 324 chapter sixteen describes his methodology: “sic lucidius veritas appareat, hoc autem con- servato, quod dubitationes tales inducantur per quas veritas eorum quae in Libro de causis videntur esse dubia appareat.”27 It is precisely from the doubts that the truth emerges: accordingly, that which is dubious contributes to the birth of the truth. And in the treatise De anima intellectiva, in the context of the individuality of the soul, he presents the so-called double truth with a conclusion that proves the philosopher Aristotle to be right—but without reserving the truth to him alone. Since the purely philosophical truth is such only in appearance, we are mostly looking for that rather than for truth if we proceed philosophically by way of striving to understand the meaning of philosophers. Certain is—in truth that cannot lie—that intellectual souls do multiply with the multiplicity of human bodies. And yet, some philosophers thought the opposite and according to philosophical method the opposite appears to be correct.28 For Siger, truth is naturally controversial, and this means that, independently of his position with regard to Averroism, he agrees with Aquinas in recognizing the inevitability of debate in the philosophical modus operandi. It is thus evident that on the question of the philosophical- theological truth, Siger redirects our gaze to Saint Thomas.

27 Siger, Quaest. in lib. de causis, p. 35f. 28 Siger, De anima intellectiva, ch. VII, p. 101: “. . . quaerendo intentionem philosophorum in hoc magis quam veritatem, cum philosophice procedamus. Certum est enim secundum veritatem quae mentiri non potest, quod animae intellectivae multiplicantur multiplica- tione corporum humanorum. Tamen aliqui philosophi contrarium senserunt, et per viam philosophiae contrarium videtur.” chapter seventeen

CULTIVATING TALENTS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: AIMS AND MEANS OF EARLY JESUIT EDUCATION

The Prefect of the Inferior Classes “should by all means support the Rec- tor in guiding and organizing our schools, so that all students make progress no less in the Liberal Arts than in their conduct of life.”1 The Inferior Classes at Jesuit colleges, for which these rules of the Ratio studiorum were crafted in 1599, comprised what elsewhere was termed studia humanitatis, that is, Latin Grammar, Greek, poetry, and rhetoric. Thus, they were the introductory studies before students could move over to philosophy and eventually theology. This first rule, expressly designated as the ‘aim’ of the Prefect, creates an unmistakable link between moral conduct and academic learning. So, moral conduct is an aim of education that goes on par with scholarly learning. But one might think that this simply refers to the individual moral perfection of the student. And, indeed, the rules for students seemingly confirm this individualistic view: “Our students should, in the first place, care for the purity of their souls and for the right attitude towards studies; nothing else should they seek therein but God’s glory and the fruit for the souls.”2 Still, one should remember that the spirit of Saint Ignatius was always two-fold: He was a convert soldier and his initial idea was to foster individual spirituality, as is best expressed in his Exercises. On the other hand, he endeavored to save the souls of the Roman Christians by preaching, but soon it dawned on him and his fellows that their mission should extend to recover the newly apostate protestant populations. It was this expansion that would shape the image of Ignatius and his Society of Jesus.3 Soon the Society engaged in founding colleges and universities, thus becoming a “teaching Order”.4

1 Ratio Studiorum, 1599, Regulae Praefecti Studiorum Inferiorum, n. 1: “ut omni ope atque opera adiuvet in scholis nostris ita regendis ac moderandis, ut, qui eas frequentant, non minus quam in bonis artibus, in vitae probitate proficiant.” 2 Ratio Studiorum, 1599, Regulae Scholasticorum Nostrae Societatis, n. 1. 3 Batllori, “El mito contrarreformista de San Ignacio anti-Lutero.” 4 Cf. “Introductio generalis” in Lukács, Monumenta Paedagogica Societatis Iesu, (MPSI), vol. 2, 6*–19*. O’Malley, The First Jesuits, chapter 6. 326 chapter seventeen

The aim which the Society of Jesus directly seeks is to aid its own members and their neighbors to attain the ultimate end for which they were created. . . . Therefore . . . it will be necessary to provide for the edifice of [the Jesuits’] learning and the manner of employing it, that these may be aids towards better knowledge and [better] service of God, our Creator and Lord. Toward achieving this purpose the Society takes charge of the colleges and also of some universities, that in them those who prove themselves worthy in these houses but have entered the Society unequipped with the necessary learning may receive instruction in it and the other means of helping souls.5 This purposeful declaration should be surprising to all who have learned in their philosophy core course, that the Liberal Arts are ‘liberal’ because they pursue knowledge for knowledge’s sake. In Catholic Reformation, studies aim at some employment: in the knowledge of God and in ‘helping souls’. The individual perfection and the care for the souls of others seem intimately conjoined and depend on one another. And they are so to say stimulated by the emphatic repetition of magis/”more”. Everything else follows from these premises. The spirit of outreach, of improvement, of teleology, of perfection in the sense not of perfected achievement but of permanent task is clearly present in the very justification of drafting a Constitution: Even though it lies in Divine providence to “preserve, direct, and carry forward” the Society of Jesus, on its part and as its way of coop- erating with providence, it needs some constitution “to aid us to proceed better . . . along the path of divine service on which we have entered.”6 We are used to associate the idea of progress with the Baconian project, and with Enlightenment, and this is correct if we think of it in merely secular terms. For it was secularization that allowed humans to strive for improvement of wisdom by way of accumulation of knowledge and that could pretend to improve individual and social welfare by secur- ing abundant means of survival. However, Ignatius and the early Jesuits appropriated the old metaphor of the Christian as viator, as being on the way, but they gave it a two-fold meaning, an individual and a societal one. As I said before, the perfection of the individual soul is at stake, but the Constitutions, and even more the Ratio studiorum declared that this

5 Constitutions, part 4, Preamble, n. 1, in Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises, p. 293. Never trust a translation! For reasons of smooth style the translator omitted the second “magis” = “better” (ad magis cognoscendum, magisque serviendum Deo), which in Latin, too, is not necessary, hence emphatic. 6 Constitutions, 288. aims and means of early jesuit education 327 goal can only be achieved by extending our operation to the world within which we live. The educational program of the early Jesuits clearly shows that scholarly achievements, personal salvation, and engagement for the other are not mutually exclusive; rather, care for the soul always includes caring for the souls of all. The comparative mode in the formula AMDG (“To the greater glory of God”) extended over all activities. After all, if God is great, what can multiply His glory? What increases is the devotion in the believers, and the number of believers, too. Now if we look for further indications regarding social engagement in early Jesuit education, there is not much, at least on the surface. However it should be noted that already in the Constitutions there is an “Instruc- tion of the Scholastics (i.e., students) in the means of helping their neighbor,” which draws upon the above mentioned ends of the Society of Jesus for which the students should “accustom themselves to the spiritual arms which they must employ in aiding their neighbor.”7 Even more importantly than that, poor students were admitted from the very beginning. The rules for the Prefect of Studies state: “He may not exclude an appli- cant, because he is not of noble origin or he his poor.”8 This is an enforce- ment of the ruling of the Constitutions that had suggested the acceptance of some poor students, even without their intention to enter the Order. They were to be admitted in case there was a shortage of other applicants, and this included even those potential students who—although they were of noble birth and well-off background—had to sustain themselves.9 This led eventually to a number of ‘houses for poor students’ (domus pauperum studiosorum) in many places. In Paris, for instance, a special ruling was necessary, given the sociological phenomenon of impoverished nobility: it was decided that in such colleges that young noblemen, even though they were relatively poor, were not to be preferred over those who “are really poor, provided they are equal in intelligence, habit etc.”10 All this looks quite encouraging. But for the sake of raising awareness of the specific method of education in the Ignatian spirit, let us of think of alternatives. Not long after the Jesuit Order had been founded and the education had been systematized, Tommaso Campanella and Francis Bacon drafted their view of science, education, and society. Bacon was already mentioned. In the “House of Salomon” of his New Atlantis (1626)

7 Ibid. p. 296. 8 Ratio Studiorum, 1599, Regulae Praefecti Studiorum Inferiorum, n. 9. 9 Constitutiones, IV 3, declaratio B. 10 MPSI, vol. 4, mon. 50, X, p. 437. 328 chapter seventeen plenty of research is going on, but clearly on a quantitative and expansive, rather than intensive, scale. Even though there is a dab of natural theology like whipped cream on top of all the New Atlantis, and morally good behavior is strongly recommended, there is no word about the education of the individual, for—it seems—Bacon believed that the improvement of the person comes automatically with technological advancement. His scientological approach, as we may term it, has no real place for the education of man as such. The Dominican friar Campanella had well thought about individuals and their education in his City of the Sun (1600). But as is well known, his solution has an air of communism in that personhood finds its perfection in annihilation in a happy society of brothers. Much more than in Bacon, the “City of the Sun” depends on God’s presence. Even more, it is ultimately a system of worship, though again at the cost of individual development. In Campanella, education is part of his social engineering: expose people to truth, keep them from private interest, and they will be good. That’s what was on the market at the time when Jesuit schools flourished. If there was any serious alternative around 1600, it was the “Pious Schools” of the Piarists, originated in 1597, by Joseph of Cala- sanz, and directly aimed at poor children in Rome. Eventually, in the late 18th century, the Piarist Order would replace the educational monopoly the Jesuits had, especially in the Habsburg Empire—but this is another story.11 As is well known, the proletariat as such was not the key target of the Jesuits, but rather Christianity on a whole, yet it’s apostolate was nonethe- less meant politically. The role of the confessors at several European courts from the mid 16th century on had been criticized and eventually it endangered the existence of the Order. As Robert Bireley, S.J., has pointed out, key to the engagement at the courts was an instruction by Saint Ignatius to the effect that there is nothing wrong with pastoral care of the higher classes, including nobility, especially if they act as generous promoters of the Catholic cause. Moreover, spiritual guidance to a prince benefits all subjects in the same way as all members of a body share the well being of the head.12 Now there was and would be plenty of room for historical and critical remarks on the political involvement of some fathers, starting from within the Order moving over to its critics. But this is not at stake

11 On religious orders with school ministry see Bireley, The Refashioning of Catholicism 1450–1700, 34–35 and 130–132. 12 Bireley, “Hofbeichtväter,” 387. aims and means of early jesuit education 329 here. Ignatius’s attitude repeats the pattern that I have tried to highlight in all the previous references and which I want to repeat now: The Glory of God and its increase The salvation of the individual The responsibility for the community All three are marked by transcending each other mutually, which becomes quite clear as soon as one translates them into more familiar words: Wor- ship is open to improvement; it is done both for God and for the care of the soul; and this can only be achieved by transcending the individual concern towards the community in which the individual factually lives. So, in search for social responsibility we are seemingly diverted to another focus of attention: the individual. For all references adduced so far evolve around the individual student, the personal target of ministry, even though everything seems to aim at the community. Paradoxically, Jesuit mission begins with the individual; mission being understood in the broadest sense of the word, and individual in an anthropological sense. In order to prove my point I should like to draw upon one key text of early Jesuit education, namely Antonio Possevino’s Cultura ingeniorum— which should translate as “Cultivation of Talents”, but in a more loose sense could be rendered as “Culture of the individual”. Possevino (+1611) was one of the great missionaries of his Order. He organized schools in the Baltics and in Transilvania, he negotiated with princes all over Europe, and he also wrote two important books that, on the surface, are something like commented bibliographies. But in many parts, the books expand to well pondered studies on the meaning of scholarship in general and an assessment of special areas. The book covering Theology had the title Apparatus sacer—“Sacred warehouse” and came out in 1603–08, the book covering humanities came out first in 1593 and was called Bibliotheca selecta—“Selected library” with the subtitle: “On the ratio studiorum [or rather, “on how to study”] for the sake of disciplines and salvation for all peoples.”13 Again, we see the view widen from what is at hand to universal salvation. The book initiates with a chapter, which from the second edition on, had the headline just mentioned. On a whole, it is a treatise on education, or more specifically on the initiation to the liberal arts. Not

13 1593: . . . Qua agitur de ratione studiorum in historia, in disciplinis, in salute omnium procuranda, 1603: . . . de ratione studiorum, ad disciplinas, et ad salutem omnium gentium procurandam. The following paraphrase will be based on the second edition. 330 chapter seventeen surprisingly, the treatise states the humanist view of human dignity, i.e., man as the median creature between angels and beasts: God has given to man the upright stature so that his spiritual eye may look to where his face is directed, he says. But for the rest, man is dependent on the earth which he may scrutinize and where he may gain virtue in order to proceed on his way to God. Note the circular movement of the images. On his way to learn about the world and his own destiny, man has been bestowed with senses, teachers, and tradition. The senses not simply help to experience reality; they are the condition for man to read the book of wisdom, namely the world which has been created for man’s instruction. And I may note that Possevino is echoing here a tenet of natural theology.14 Now in order to understand this book there are the angels, who according to traditional cosmology keep the outer universe revolving and thus transmit God’s gifts to nature. Moreover, there are also human teachers and educators, as we might expect to see in a pedagogical treatise. However, in addition to these there are the sages of the Old Testament, as well as the pagan Greeks and Romans, who all—in their ways—witness the power and wisdom of God. Again, we observe a standard humanist motive. But it is employed for the purpose of stating that all and any wisdom is a gift from God. The latter thought is expanded by reference to the tradition of tradition, as I would call it, namely a brief history of academic teaching from the Ancients, through the Apostles up to the academic teaching of the present time. So, as you can see, I am doing in my way what Possevino had done 400 years ago: I am making a point by recapitulating the history of my topic. Possevino then addresses the question of human error and identifies three reasons for it: Sin, imprudence, and method. As for sin, a favorite issue in protestant epistemology, Possevino condenses his point to the observation that wisdom and religion must be equally nursed in order to direct one’s life in all its activities towards the highest good. Having spoken to the heretics of his time, Possevino’s statement means that beatitude can, and can only be achieved by a pious and wise approach to real life. To Catholic teachers and students, this statement exhorts them to have confidence in learning and piety towards it and not to lose salvation from sight.

14 I am referring to Raymundus Sabundus, Theologia naturalis, written in 1434. aims and means of early jesuit education 331

The second reason for the failure of human wisdom was imprudence in the sense of not considering the true capabilities of the human mind. Evidently here, Possevino comes to the core of his message: There is no point in teaching young people without examining the actual talent they have. Talent [ingenium] is simply defined as the ability to learn with more or less effort the doctrines and arts.15 With the help of Aristotle, Plato, medical tradition, and the Church Fathers, Possevino insists that human individuals are diverse. The author then explains the origin and extent of diversity in talent among students. The thrust of his argument is that such talent is not identical with nature, and not unchangeably determined by nature: otherwise learning and education would be futile. And even if we assume that some people are less gifted than others, this is not to be mistaken for legal disenfranchisement. Commenting upon Aristotle’s famous distinction concerning ‘natural slaves’ (Pol. I 4, 1254a 13), he clearly argues that any servant—whether enslaved through warfare and trade or by charitable choice—is not per se excluded from culture.16 As to the natural gifts, the rule applies that every person has to till his own soil. All this is based on one elementary assumption, as mentioned above, namely that intellectual aptitudes are of spiritual nature and as such they are God’s endowment. Consequently, Possevino rejects any naturalist approach, such as assigning the difference of intelligence to physical and medical conditions, as Girolamo Cardano had tried.17 Rather, personal development depends on the openness of the pupil to the teaching, and this is ultimately an act of freedom: For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.18 Possevino equally rejects Juan Huarte’s (+1588) notion of ingenium (from whose Examen de los ingenios he had borrowed the title of his treatise) because in a similar naturalist approach he had endeavored to locate the

15 Chapt. 9. 16 Chapt. 10. 17 Chapt. 10, conclusion. 18 Chapt. 11; James 1.23–25 (King James version). 332 chapter seventeen variety of disciplines in the various faculties of the intellect.19 The divine origin of human faculties entitles the individual to seek for improvement, which is best done, first, by inquiring into personal propensities and strengths and, second, by employing all faculties of the mind towards an education in the full sense. It is the responsibility of the educators to discover, which are the foremost natural gifts of a student. But also, they are to refine or even to suspend their judgment about them, since “it is amazing with how many personal properties one individual differs from the other”.20 After that it lies in the responsibility of the youth to overcome difficulties of learning by care for body and soul through keeping order in his studies. By ‘order’ Possevino meant to engage all spiritual powers towards the study and not to fragment one’s mind by engaging in too many disciplines. So his remedy of imprudence consists in assessing the very personal talent of each individual and, at the same time, foster- ing all talents of an individual for the sake of learning. Both are necessary conditions to educate a person as a whole. In view of the three basic faculties of the intellect, reason, memory, and will, Possevino maintains that those will waste their efforts who train only reason, or fill their memory, or—unconcerned of both reason and memory—approach scholarship only with apparently pious intentions.21 Piety alone makes no one wise or prudent. Needless to say, all these recommendations apply for teachers as well.22 Possevino, the protagonist of re-catholization, had the salvation of endangered and lost souls in mind, when he wrote about education. Therefore he repeats the circular structure of Ignatian spirituality: The struggle for the greater glory of God depends on well trained individuals who will take over the apostolate for the greater glory of God. He underscores in his treatise what the Constitutions already had stated, namely, that education bestows the students with the arms needed for the struggle in this life. In this sense, all sciences are practical.23 College education serves two aims, which obviously converge: God’s glory and the salvation of souls. Possevino employs a simile to illustrate his point:

19 chapters 12–17. 20 Chapt. 18. 21 chapt. 20. 22 Chapt. 22. 23 Chapt. 32. aims and means of early jesuit education 333

The honorable lady Judith—before her attempt at capturing Holoph- ernes—not only prayed and fasted but also dressed up with earrings, sandals, rings, and any female embellishment, to which God added graciousness and splendor. In the same way religious people call eloquence and all disciplines as servants into their fortress, where they serve as shields to fend off the enemies of the Church.

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Abbot, George, 73 Augustine, xix, 9n, 32, 150, 159, 160, 249, abstraction, xix, 46, 47, 67, 128–130, 300 152–155, 159, 224, 229–238, 243–245, 251, authority, 6, 44–48, 61, 89, 91, 142, 149, 150, 299, 310 151, 179, 200, 202, 214, 272 Agricola, Rudolph, 68, 303 Averroes, 94n, 140, 141, 144–149, 186, 224, Agrippa von Nettesheim, Heinrich 236, 322 Cornelius, 167n, 168n, 169, 170n Averroism, 109, 116, 131, 140–149, 182, 223, Ajo, C.M., 39n 224, 315–317, 319, 321, 323, 324 Akai, Christophorus, 72 Aversa, Raphael, 46, 185, 196, 197, 228, 233, Alamanni, Cosmas, 131n, 229, 230 252n Albert of Saxony, 208n Avicenna, 148, 220 Albertini, Tamara, xiiin Albertus Magnus, 129n, 147, 219, 296, 298, Bacon, Francis, xvi, 68, 72, 89, 104, 105, 110, 309 167, 205, 327, 328 alchemy, 141, 163, 176 Baillet, Adrien, 199n Alcinous, 159 Balde, Jacobus, 41 Alexander of Aphrodisias, 145, 148, 157, 160 Baldini, Ugo, xiii, 39n, 87, 89, 90n, 113n, 123, Alexander VI, Pope, 99 140n, 156n, 204n Alexander VII, Pope, 37 Barbera, M., 28n Allen, Michael J.B., 162n Barleus, Caspar, 145 Alsted, Johannes, 68, 285, 302, 303, 308 Baronius, Caesar, 29 Alvarez, Emanuel, 28 Barthes, Roland, 95 Amalrich of Bena, 311 Bartoli, Daniele, 30 Amicus, Bartholomaeus, 196 Basilius, 150 Anacharsis, 160 Batllori, Miguel (Miquel), xi, 17n, 24, 31n, Anaxagoras, 160 325n Andreae, Jacob, 41 Batta, István, 74, 80 Andritsch, Johann, 53n, 54n, 55n, 58n, 59n, Bauer, Barbara, 21n, 31n, 309n 60n Bauer, Emmanuel J., 243n Apáczai Csere, János, xv, 67–70, 74 Baumgart, Peter, 36n Appleby, Scott, 94n Bayle, Pierre, 270n Aquilecchia, Giovanni, 39n Becanus, Martin, 74 Arabic philosophy, xiv, 61, 144, 146–148, Bellarminus, Robertus, 29 182, 201, 202, 220 Belluto, Bonaventura, 185, 194–197, 227n, Arcari, Paolo Maria, 39n 228, 299 Ariew, Roger, 190n, 192n, 303n, 307n Bendetto, Romedius, 53, 59n Armour, Leslie, 190n Bergström-Allen, Johan, 170n Arnauld, Antoine, 28n, 184n, 193, 276n, Bertalanffi, Pál, xv, xvin, 70–81 277n, 306, 307 Bérulle, Pierre, 307n Arriaga, Rodrigo de, xviii, 64, 123, 124, 127n, Bessarion, Cardinal, 162, 244n 137, 185, 217–226, 295–299, 307, 308, 311 Biagioli, Mario, 113n Ashplant, T.G., 113n Biderman, Jacobus, 41 astrology, 102, 116, 163, 176, 179, 180 Bigalli, Davide, 30n astronomy, 33, 51, 55, 61, 71, 72, 77, 78, 113, Bikfalvi, Géza, 71n 116, 118, 119, 180 Bireley, Robert, 328 atomism, 76, 87, 200, 204–208, 240, 266 Bitskey, István, xvin, 51n, 53n see also Epicureanism Blackwell, Constance, xviin, 10n, 209 360 index

Blancanus (Biancani), Joseph, 121, 125 Cesi, Federico, 39 Boehm, A., 203n Chaldeans, 150, 160 Boehm, Laetitia, 40n Chandler, John, 266n Boethius, 81, 115, 150, 278, 280, 292, 321 Chartier, Roger, 37n, 40n Bognár, Stephanus, 57n Chronitius, Martinus, 59n Bohatec, Josef, 210n Cicero, 160, 265, 266 Bonifacius, Johannes, 28 Clavius, Christoph, xvii, 41, 52, 111, 115–122, Borgia, Francesco, 99, 141n, 144, 147n 125, 133, 136, 213 Borsa, Gedeon, 53n Codina Mir, Gabriel, 25n, 28n, 35n Boscovich, Rudjer Josip, 87, 88, 123n, 204, Coffin, Charles, 266n 205, 268 Collingwood, R.G., 101, 135 Bossányi, Seraphinus, 75 Comenius, Jan Amos, xiii Brader, David, 28n Complutenses, 229–231 Brahe, Tycho, 72 Conimbricenses, 31, 196, 209n, 217n Bremer, H., 21n Contzen, Adam, 29 Brezik, Victor B., 15n Copernicanism, xvi, 72n, 73, 77, 114n, 134 Brizzi, Gianpaolo, 21n, 23n, 37n Copernicus, Nicolaus, 60, 61, 72, 73, 77, Brockliss, Lawrence, 37n 80, 134 Brucker, Johann Jacob, 10, 209n Copsey, Richard, 170n Bruno, Giordano, 8, 17n, 35, 39, 60, 69, 73, Cordet, Hanibal, 28n 77, 105, 110, 172, 210, 221 Cornaeus, Melchior, xvin, xvii, 126–135, Buckley, Michael J., 115 167n, 185, 190, 194, 282–284, 301, Burrell, David B., 241n 302–304, 307, 311 Busnelli, Giovanni, 315, 316 Coronius, Valentinus, 59n Butterfield, Herbert, 113n, 136 Cosentino, G., 156n Costabel, Pierre, 200n Cabeus, Nicolaus, 89, 90 Counter-Reformation, 15, 24, 29, 32, 35, 36, Caietano, Camillo, 164 85, 126, 164, 170, 179, 326 Cajetan, Thomas de Vio, 156, 217, 293, Courtine, Jean-François, 46n 302n, 304n Csernovics, Fanciscus, 64n Calasanz, Joseph of, 328 cura personalis, xx Calvin, John, 175n Cusanus, Nicolaus, 35, 102, 103, 259, 261 Campanella, Tommaso, 327, 328 Canisius, Petrus, 141, 142, 144, 146, 147n, 148 Dainville, François de, 30n Canisius, Theodorus, 147n Dante, xx, 315–323 Capedines, Albertus, 59n Danto, Arthur C., 5 Capittel, Andreas, 31 Darge, Rolf, 38n Cardano, Girolamo, 59, 60, 104, 107, 108, Darwin, Charles, 126 110, 163, 165, 331 De Franco, Luigi, 105n Carleton, Thomas Compton, 130n, 185, 188, Dear, Peter, 119n, 120n 189, 204n, 209n Deleuze, Gilles, 240n Carolus Josephus a S. Floriano, 302n Della Torre, Armando, 39n Cartesianism, xvi, xvii, 37, 76, 78, 81, 129, Delrio, Martin, 28n, 165n 130n, 183, 184, 198, 200, 209–212, 214, 298, Demetracopoulos, John A., 80n 301, 305, 306, 308, 311 Democritus, 160 Cartier, Gallus, 308n Descartes, René, xii, xvi, 3, 8n, 9, 23, 31, Caruso, Esther, 199n, 208n 32n, 45, 68n, 69n, 79, 88, 108, 183, 188, Casaubon, Isaac, 161 190n, 192, 193, 199–201, 207–211, 218, 225, Cassirer, Ernst, xii, 4 241, 266, 267, 278, 303, 305, 306, 308, Cattenius, Otto, 119 310–312 Celenza, Christopher, xv, 151n see also Cartesianism Cemus, Petronilla, xviiin Devaux, Michaël, 152n Ceñal, Ramon, 31n Dezza, Paolo, 13, 14 Ceruti, Antonio, 141n Di Liso, Saverio, 189n index 361

Dibon, Paul, 36n Feyerabend, Paul, 6, 7 Dickerhoff, Harald, 29n Ficino, Marsilio, 7, 11, 12, 30, 35, 39, 102, 103, Dionysius the Areopagite, 159 109, 143, 149n, 150, 158, 161, 162, 165, 210, D‘Irsay, S. 39n 223–225, 261 Dobbs, Betty Jo Teeter, 113n Finster, Reinhard, 276n Dobronoky, Georgius, 63, 64n Fischer, Karl A.F., 119n Donatus a Transfiguratione Domini, 289, Fletcher, John E., 134n 308, 309 Fonseca, Petrus, 58, 140n, 185 Dorsch, Johann Georg, 126n Fontenelle, Bernard, 69 Doyle, John, xiii Forlivesi, Marco, xixn, 227n, 228n Drake, Stillman, 208n Foscarini, Paolo, 114n Drexel, Jeremias, 31, 41 Fracastoro, Girolamo, 90, 165 Duhr, Bernhard, 23n, 24n, 29n, 36n Frank, Günter, 117n, 150n Dülmen, Richard van, 32n Frederick II, Emperor, 68 Duns Scotus, John, 76, 130, 154n, 156, 196, freedom, 7, 12, 18, 40, 69, 76, 88, 93, 97, 98, 197, 235–237, 256, 265, 299 116, 180, 205, 242, 249, 263, 272, 275, 331 see also Scotism Fritsch, Matthias, 269n, 270n, 271n, 272n, Dupasquier, Sebastian, 194 273n Dvořák, Petr, xiii Frusius, Andreas, 28n Fueter, Eduard, 29n eclecticism, 12, 89, 142, 147, 205, 209, 214 Ehrle, Franz, 15n, 186n Gabriel, A.L., 39n, 141n Empedocles, 160 Gagliardi, Achilles, 144, 146, 147 Engelbrecht, Helmut, 23n, 40n Galileo Galilei, xvi, 17, 39, 41, 61, 69, 89, Epicureanism, xviii, 208, 210, 224 113, 118, 119, 121, 122, 133, 134, 185n, 207, see also atomism 208, 228 Epicurus, 31, 160 Galluzzi, Paolo, 121n, 122n Erasmus of Rotterdam, 30, 35n Ganthaler, Heinrich, 183n Erdély, János, 77n Garber, Daniel, 209n Ermann, W., 39n García Mateo, Rogelio, 94n ethics, 25, 26, 142n, 144n, 213, 219, 265, 268 Garcia, Elisaeus, 32n Euclid, 115–119, 133n, 213 Garin, Eugenio, 10n, 203n Eusebius, 91n, 160 Gassendi, Pierre, 32, 203, 207, 208, 301 Eustachius a S. Paulo, 190, 191, 192, 286, Gaza, Theodore, 69, 160 303–305, 307, 311 Gellert, Christian Fürchtegott, 273 Evans, R.J.W., 39n geometry, 87, 117, 118, 121, 126, 137, 157, 200, 204, 211, 213, 214 Fabri, Honoré, xvii, xviii, 76, 88, 89, Gerencsér, István, 52n, 53n, 57n 199–214 Germann, Nadja, 220n Fabri, Philippus, 196 Gervasius Brisacensis, 302n, 305n Fabro, Cornelio, 97n Giacobbe, G.C., 156n Falck, Joseph, xixn, 266–268, 274 Giard, Luce, xin, 116n Faludi, Ferenc, 163n Gilson, Étienne, 89n, 192, 209n, 303, 317, Fardella, Michelangelo, 228, 307n 318 Farmer, S.A., 168n Gioberti, Vincenzo, 8, 9 Farrell, Allan P., 25n Giustiniani, Agostino, 143n Fehér, Márta, 114 Goclenius, Rudolph, 152n Feiereis, Konrad, 139n Gordon, Andreas, 32 Feingold, Mordechai, xx, 37n, 87n Goudin, Antonius, 135n, 189, 300, 308 Feldhay, Rivka, 119 Goudriaan, Aza, 243n Félegyházy, József, 53n, 57n, 63n Gracia, Jorge E., 101, 102 Fellmann, Emil A., 208n Graff, Theodor, 53n Feoldesi, Johannes, 72n Grafton, Anthony, 36n, 160n Ferrier, F., 190n, 307n Grant, Edward, 132n, 203n 362 index

Gredt, Joseph, 13, 14, 38, 189 Hurtado de Mendoza, Pedro, 128, 185, 252n Grega, L.A., 127n Hurter, Hugo, 199n Gregory of Nazianzus, 150 Husserl, Edmund, 4, 5 Gregory of Nissa, 150 Gregory XIII, Pope, 14, 147 Iamblichus, 161 Grene, Marjorie, 209n, 303n Idealism, 13, 255 Guericke, Otto von, 132 Ignatius of Loyola, xvii, 24–27, 28n, 48, 75, Gusmann, Julius Franciscus, 308n 85, 93–96, 97n, 98n, 99, 126, 167n, 178, Gusztini, János, 75n 179, 200, 325, 326, 328, 329 Illei, Jámos, 81 Hacking, Ian, 278n immortality, xviii, 109, 145, 149, 151, 155, Hajós, József, 68n 156n, 162, 217–225, 268, 323 Hall, A. Rupert, 113n Ivul, Gabriel, 64 Haller, Albrecht von, 273 Izquierdo, Sebastián, 31 Hammermayer, Ludwig, 32n Hammerstein, Notker, 35n, 36n, 38n, 41n Jamblichus, 30 Hankins, James, 39n Jansen, Bernhard, 40n Hardy, Jörg, 224n Jardine, Lisa, 36n Hargittay, Emil, xivn, 51n Jardine, Nicholas, 105n, 183n Harris, Stephen, 122 Jaszlinsky, Andreas, 281, 292n Hartfelder, Karl, 36n Javelli, Chrysostomus, 144 Harvey, William, 212n Jesuit education, xi, xx, 15, 40–48, 325–333 Hassinger, E., 40n see also Ratio studiorum Hauser, Bertholdus, 290, 291, 309, 312 Jilek, L., 40n Havenzweig, Martinus, 53, 59n Joachimsen, Paul, 36n Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 3, 4, 9, Johannes a S. Thoma (Poinsot), 196, 293, 10, 11, 241 294 Heidegger, Martin, 4, 107, 241–243, 256 Johannes de Janduno, 144, 145 Heider, Daniel, xiii, 194n, 239n Justin Martyr, 164 Heilbron, John L., 208n Hellyer, Markus, 121n, 190n, 301n Kabbalah, 143, 163, 166–176 Helm, Jürgen, xvin Kaldi, Nicolaus, 59n Hengst, Karl, 23n, 25n, 26n, 37n, 41n Kant, Immanuel, 9, 35, 87n, 152n, 227, 228, Heraclitus, 160 241, 267, 310 Herman, J.P., 26n Kármán, Tódor, 265n Hermes Trismegistus, 30, 31, 160 Kelemen, János, 318 Hettwer, Hubert, 36n Kelter, Irving A., 114n Hevenesius, Gabriel, 64 Kepler, Johannes, 60n, 119 Hieronymus, 150, 172 Kéri, Johannes, 72 Hieronymus de Ferrariis, 236n Kern, Anton, 59n, 60n historicization, 10, 14, 273 Kernbauer, Alois, 55n Hoffmann, Tobias, 239n Keßler, Eckhard, xivn, 27n, 106 Homer, 31 Kircher, Athanasius, 17, 30, 31, 39, 41, 134 Honnefelder, Ludger, 47n, 154n, 235n, Kleesl, Antonius, 147n 243n, 299n Kleutgens, Joseph, 14n Horn, E., 39n Klimke, Friedrich, 9n Huarte, Juan, 331 Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 273 Huet, Pierre Daniel, 32n Kneale, W., 183n humanism, xi, xii, xviii, xix, 19–36, 39, 52, Knebel, Sven, xiii 56, 62, 63, 69, 92, 103, 105, 115, 147n, 150, Kobau, Pietro, 152n 175, 177, 182, 191, 192n, 214, 259, 292, 293, Köberle, Abraham, 59n 303, 304, 330 Kohut, Karl, 33n Hume, David, 257 Kornis, Gyula, 79n Hunecken, Fridericus, 59n Krafft, Fritz, 126n index 363

Krayer, Albert, 119n Maggi, Vincenzo, 105 Kremmer, Dezsö, 69n Magni, Valerian, xiii Kristeller, Paul Oskar, xi, xii, 25n, 28n, 35n, Mahoney, Edward P., 321n 224n Maierù, Luigi, 156n Kropff, Franz Xaver, 33 Maignan, Emmanuel, 132n Kunz, Erhard, 98n Mairold, Maria, 59n Kusukawa, Sachiko, xviin, 117n Makar, Andreas, 64 Kymbar, Johannes, 54, 59n Malebranche, Nicolas, 9 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 136, 137 Lacoarret, Marie, 37n Mandonnet, Pierre, 315, 317 Lactantius, 91n Marangon, P., 228n Laelius, Hieronymus, 55, 56 Maria Theresia, Empress, 73 Lainez, Jacobus, 26, 144n, 145n Maróth, Miklós, xiv Lakatos, Vince, 60n Marsilius de Inghen, 144 Lamanna, Marco, 152n Martano, G., 302n Lana-Terzi (de Lanis), Francesco, 69, 89, Marti, Hanspeter, 38n 205 Martial, 28 Launoy, Johannes de, 10 Marty, Martin E., 94n Lécrivain, Philippe, 97n Mastri, Bartolomeo, xix, 46, 154n, 185, Ledesma, Jacobus, 28n, 143–145, 151, 162 194–197, 227–256, 266, 299 Lehner, Ulrich L., 33n mathematics, xvi, xvii, 25, 41, 81, 111–123, Lehrich, Christopher L., 170n 127, 131, 136, 137, 141, 142n, 151, 154, 156, Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 41, 69, 76, 199, 158, 200, 230, 231, 235, 236, 251, 253, 266, 200n, 202n, 205, 207, 208, 266, 276, 277 268, 310 Leinsle, Ulrich G., 36n, 47n, 139n, 152n, 154n Matton, Sylvain, 163n, 176n Lenoble, Robert, 39n Maurer, Wilhelm, 36n Leo XIII, Pope, 15, 38, 316 Maurus, Sylvester, 186n Lesch, Karl Joseph, 29n, 32n Maximilian, Emperor, 29 Lessius, Leonardus, 115 Maylender, M., 39n Leturia, Pietro, 24n, 26n, 27n, 29n McArthur, Ronald P., 296n Lévinas, Emmamuel, 102 McGinnis, Jon, 220n Lewis, David, 275n McGonagall, William E., 115 Liberatore, M., 186n McMullin, Ernan, 108n, 114n Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph, 6n McNeil, Brian, xx, 266n Liguori, Alphonsus Maria, 42n Mederer, Johann Nepomuk, 29n Lines, David, 144n Medina, Miguel de, 170, 171 Lippomani, Aloisio, 28n, 174 Melanchthon, Philipp, 23, 36, 117, 121, 137, Locke, John, 136, 241 218 Lohr, Charles, xii, 54n, 87n, 122, 140n, 141n, Menk, Gerhard, 37n, 38n 142n, 143n, 144n, 146n, 156n, 163, 170n, Meroi, Fabrizio, xviin 175n, 188n, 192n, 194n, 196n Mersenne, Marin, 39, 199 Loux, Michael, 242n, 275n, 276 Merton, Robert K., 122 Ludeckius, Johannes, 53, 55 Mészáros, András, xv, 67n Ludwig, Walter, 28n Mészáros, István, 73n Lukács, László, 15n, 21n, 24n, 37n, 40n, 56n, Mészárosová, Klára, 58 58n, 59n, 71n, 118n, 145, 146, 325n Middendorp, J., 39n Lukens, David Clough, 199n Mikkeli, Heikki, 62n, 183n Lull, Raymond, 31, 307, 308 Mohay, Gergely, 67n Lullism, 31, 307 Molina, Luis de, xixn, 263–265, 274 Lundberg, Mabel, 27n Molnár, Andrea, xvi, 67n Lutz, Heinrich, 39n Montaigne, Michel de, 92, 259 Moore, G.E., 5n Mabillon, Jean, 32 Morison, Samuel Eliot, 38n Machiavelli, Nicolò, 35, 175n Mourat, Johannes, 33n 364 index

Muccillo, Maria, 161n Petrarca, Francesco, 259 Müller, R.A., 40n Pherecydes, 160 Mundt, Hermann, 38n Philo of Alexandria, 261 Philosophenphilosophie, xiii Nagy, Stephanus, 59n philosophia perennis, 4, 14, 42n Narciso, Ignazio, 300n philosophy of religion, xix, 257, 269 Nardi, Bruno, 315, 316, 318, 321n, 322n Philostratus, 164 natural theology, xix, 45, 46, 76, 85, Piaia, Gregorio, xviin 90–93, 97, 111, 139, 153, 154, 157, 169, 202, Piccolomini (of Padua), Francesco, 105 205–207, 236–238, 251, 257–260, 263, Piccolomini, S.J., Francesco, 131n, 133n, 266, 268, 274, 311, 330 201, 202 Németh, István, 58n Pico della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco, 261 Neoplatonism, 30, 31, 103, 151, 158–161, 209, Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 12, 143, 161, 280, 296, 307 162, 168, 170, 173, 174, 179, 180, 259, 261 Newton, Isaac, 61, 113n Plantinga, Alvin, xix, 114n, 115n, 126n, 254n, Nicole, Pierre, 184n, 193, 306 275n Nietzsche, Friedrich, 241 Plato, 11n, 30, 31, 91, 143, 150, 151, 156–160, Niphus, Augustinus, 145, 196 162, 172, 217, 309, 331 nominalism, 9, 129, 130n, 196 Platonism, xii, xvii, xviii, 39, 103, 119, 122, Novotný, Daniel, xiii 143, 150, 156–159, 161, 171, 172, 217, 219, 220, 223, 226, 255, 266 Oldrini, Guido, 8n Plečkaitis, Romanas, 54n Olesh, Jr., Andrew, xxin Pletho, Georgios Gemistos, 162 Olivieri, Luigi, 35n Pliny, 59 Öllerus, Franciscus, 59n Plotinus, 161, 261, 296 Olmi, Giuseppe, 39n Polanco, Johannes, 26, 144 O’Malley, John, xi, 21n, 325n Polgár, László, 15n, 24n, 51n, 54n ontologism, 8, 9, 13 Poliziano, Angelo, 150, 160 ontology, xvii, xix, 78, 110, 111, 139, 153, 154, Polkinghorne, John, 135 182, 192, 193, 219, 233, 236n, 237, 238, 251, Polman, Pontien, 29n 278, 295n, 297, 305, 307, 310 Polya, George, xvin Opffermann, Lucas, 32n Pomponazzi, Pietro, 139, 151, 155, 156, 217, Oravcová, Marianna, 72n 225 Orpheus, 160 Poncius (Punch), Johannes, 194, 195, 239n, Őry (Oery), Miklós, 52, 53n 298–300, 307 Ostorp, Johannes, 51, 58, 59 Pontanus, Jacobus, xviii, 21, 22, 27, 28, 30n, Otto, Stephan, xiii, 6, 19n 31n Oviedo, Franciscus de, 185 Poppi, Antonino, 196n Porphyrian Tree, xx, 79n, 184n, 238, 244n, Pachtler, G.M., 15n, 24n, 131n, 133n, 201n, 275–312 203n Porphyry, 129n, 161, 173, 278, 292, 293, 301, pantheism, 8, 10, 11, 12, 107, 311 302 Paracelsus, Theophrastus, 23 Porro, Pasquale, 279n Pardiès, Gaston, 200, 209, 211, 212 Port Royal, 28n, 79, 81, 184, 193, 306–309 Parfit, Derek, 250n Portius (Porzio, Porta), Simon, 139, 151n, Parmenides, 160, 161 217n Pascal, Blaise, 85, 193, 194 Possevino, Antonio, xin, 30, 329–332 Patrizi, Francesco, 37, 39, 52, 105n Pozzo, Riccardo, 183n Patzig, Günther, 152n Prins, J., 183n Paulsen, F., 39n Prionius, Adam, 59n Paulus Venetus, 145 Proclus, 156, 159n Pázmány, Péter, xiv, xvii, xviii, 51–64, 71n psychology, xvii, 77, 78, 94, 108, 155, 179, Pererius, Benedictus, xv, xvi, xvii, xviii, 185, 213, 220, 223, 233 52, 58, 111, 118n, 119–121, 124, 131n, 136, Ptolemaeus (Tolomei), Johannes Baptista, 139–182, 236, 237 32n index 365

Purchotius (Pourchot), Edmundus, 80, 287, Sander, Franz, 203n 302n, 308, 309 Santinello, Giovanni, 10n Pyle, Cynthia M., 103n Sartori, Bernardus, xv, xvin, 74–81 Pythagoras, 31, 150, 151, 160, 161, 167n, 171, Sartre, Jean-Paul, 4, 102 174 Saur, Georgius, 32n Pythagoreanism, 117, 119, 120, 129n, 150, 167, Saxlová, Tereza, 124n 171, 172, 176 Scaduto, Mario, 144n, 145n, 147n Scaliger, Joseph, 160n Quinto, Riccardo, 13n Scaliger, Julius Caesar, 59, 60, 163 Scapparone, Elisabetta, xviin Raconis, Carolus Franciscus d’Abra de, 192 Scheiner, Christoph, 41, 125, 126, 134 Rader, Matthaeus, 28n Scherer, Georg, 28n, 29n Rahner, Karl, 85–87, 89 Schindling, Arnold, 37n Ramism, xv, 37, 68, 190, 303, 311 Schmidt, Peter, 24n Ramus,Petrus, 23, 68, 69n, 302 Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm, xi, 68n, 161n Ratio studiorum, xii, 15, 17n, 21–24, 37, 42, Schmitt, Charles, xii, 37n, 38n, 87n, 196 43, 45, 52, 118, 131, 133n, 147, 167, 200, 201, Schmutz, Jacob, xiv, 227n 325–327 Schneider, H., 42n see also Jesuit education Schnepfen, H., 39n Raynaud, Théophile, xixn, 18n, 90–94, Schobinger, Jean-Pierre, 193n, 227n 260–263, 266, 274 scholasticism, xi–xviii, 13, 14, 19, 33, 40, Reeb, Georg, 48 67, 76, 110, 111, 148, 159, 164, 173, 197, 199, regressus, xvii, xviii, 62, 106, 183–198 209, 210, 237, 243, 252, 295, 305, 306, 311, Reinhard, Wolfgang, 27n 320, 327 Reisman, David C., 220n Neo-Scholasticism, xi, 13, 14 Reiter, Hyacinthus, 75 see also school philosophy, Thomism, Renaudet, Augustin, 37n Scotism Renazzi, Filippo Maria, 37n Scholtz, Franciscus, 53, 59n Reuchlin, Johannes, 167n, 168n, 169, 173 Schönborn, Johann Philipp von, 127, 133n Revard, Stella P., xvin Schöne, Albrecht, 98n Ribadeneira, Petrus, 140n school philosophy, xi, xiii, xviii, xx, 5, 7, 9, Ricci, Paolo, 174n 11–19, 30, 37, 57, 62 Riccioli, Johannes Baptista, 131, 134n Schott, Gaspar, 132n, 133n Risse, Wilhelm, 140n, 163n, 293n, 307n, Schreiber, Johannes, 134n 308n Schröder, Winfried, 115n Roberval, Aegidius, 132n Schubert, E., 36n Robiglio, Andrea A., 219n Schüling, Hermann, 213n Robinet, André, 303n Schulphilosophie, xi, xiii Roling, Bernd, 174n Schurhammer, Georg, 35n Romano, Antonella, 116n, 119n Schütze, Ingo, 107n Rorty, Richard, 241 Schwarz, Ignatius, 33n Rosenthal, Paul, 27n Scotism, 47, 79, 129, 130n, 154, 194, 196, 197, Rosmini, Antonio, 9 233, 236, 237, 243, 244n, 245, 247, 296, Róth, András Lajos, 74n 299, 300, 307 Rudolph II, Emperor, 39 Scotti, Giulio Clemente, 48 Ryan, Edward A., 29n Scultetus, Henricus, 53, 58, 59n Scotus see Duns Scotus Sabundus, Raymundus, xix, 92, 93, 96, 97, Secret, François, 170 258–261, 267, 268, 274, 330n Seibertz, Joh. Suibert, 127n Sade, Marquis de, 95 Seifert, Arno, 36n Sager, Eugen, 29n Seils, Ernst-Albert, 29n Sainz de Robles, F.C., 39n Semery, Andreas, 189 Sainz de Zuniga, G., 39n Seneca, 59, 60 Salcedo, Leovigildo, 189n Sfondrati, Coelestinus, 301n Salutati, Coluccio, 259 Shoretics, Michael, 81n 366 index

Siegersreitter, Johannes, 30, 31 Thomism, 4, 5, 15, 37, 47, 87, 128, 129, 186, Sievernich, Michael, 98n 189, 196, 243, 279n, 300, 308, 315, 316 Siewerth, Gustav, 243n Toffanin, Giuseppe, 30n Siger of Brabant, xx, 315–324 Toletus, Franciscus, 58, 145, 185, 186, 187, Simonzin, Ludwig, 31 188, 191, 209n, 229, 294, 295, 298 Simplicius, 145, 148, 161 Tommasi, Francesco Valerio, 152n Soarez, Cyprianus, 28 Tóth, Béla, 75n Socrates, 160 Toussaint, Stéphane, 27n Sokolowski, Robert, 241n Trainer, Megan, xxi Solana, Marcial, 152n transcendentals, 152–154, 157, 233, 237, 238, Sontag, Frederick, 277n 243, 244, 246 Sortais, Gaston, 209n Trescherus, Johannes, 59n Soto, Domingo de, 189n Tribauer, Christianus, 74–76 Sousedík, Stanislav, xiii, 185n, 225n, 239n Trombetta, Antonio, 233, 236 Sparn, Walter, 36n Trossarelli, F., 27n Spaventa, Bertrando, 8, 11, 12 Trunz, Erich, 39n Spee, Friedrich, 98n Tugendhat, Ernst, xiii, 5, 6n Spinoza, Baruch, 8n, 266, 311 Tüll, Alajos, 71n Stadtfeldt, Henricus, 59 Tursellinus, Horatius, 28 Stornajolo, Cosimo, 141n Tutius (Tucci), Stephanus, 121n, 142n, 143n, Steenberghen, Fernand van, 315n, 318n, 321 175 Stein, Edith, 4, 5 Steuchus, Augustinus, 161, 169, 170, 174, 261 Valla, Lorenzo, 68, 115, 150, 292, 293, 298, Stolleis, Michael, 269n 307 Storchenau, Sigismund von, xix, 269–274 Valla, Paulus, 118n Strawson, P.F., 243n Van Inwagen, Peter, 239n, 242n, 250n, Sturm, Johann Christoph, 209n 275n Sturm, Johannes, 36 Vasoli, Cesare, 315n Suárez, Francisco, xiii, xiv, xviii, 46n, 47n, Vassányi, Miklós, 86n 52, 53n, 57, 58, 128, 130, 184n, 209n, 228, Veranus, Caietanus Felix, 301n 243, 293n, 297, 299, 303, 305n Verga, Emilia, 217n Sudbrack, Josef, 98n Vergil, 142n Szábo, Ferenc, 53n Vesalius, Andreas, 131 Szauder, József, 163n Vico, Giambattista, 7–9, 11, 12 Szentiványi, Marton, 72 Villoslada, Ricardo, 25n, 27n, 35n, 37n, Szinnyei, József, 74n 140n, 147n, 177n, 189n Visler, Ferdinand, 33n Talaeus, Audomarus, 302n Vitoria, Francisco de, 25n Tapolcsányi, Gergely, 73, 74 Vivés, Juan Luis, 35n Telesio, Bernardino, 52, 103–108, 139, 156 Voigt, Vilmos, 69n Ter-Menassian, 37n Vollrath, Ernst, 139n Teresia Renata de Spiritu Sancto, 5n Volmari, Hermannus, 59n Thales, 160 Vormbaum, Reinhold, 36n Themistius, 145, 148, 186 theodicy, 12, 275 Waard, Cornelis de, 132n Theophrastus, 69 Wagner, Hans, 278n Tholuck, A., 39n Waldensis, Thomas Netter, 169–171 Thomas a Kempis, 96 Walker, Daniel P., 90n, 164n Thomas Aquinas, xviii, xx, 16, 31, 42n, 44, Wallace, William A., 40n, 113n, 118n, 119, 99, 131, 135, 147–150, 164, 186, 218, 226, 185n 230, 241, 247, 248, 253, 260, 278–280, Warnock, G.J., 5n 292, 293–296, 298, 300, 311, 315–324 Waschkies, Hans-Joachim, 86n Thomasius, Jacobus, 302 Weber, Max, 122 index 367

Werner, Karl, 9n, 279n, 288, 308n Zabarella, Jacopo, 52, 55n, 62, 105, 106, 183, Whitehead, Alfred N., 246 185, 187, 188, 197 Whitmore, P.J.S., 132n Zalta, Edward N., 239n Wilson, Adrian, 113n Zara, Antonius, 53, 55, 56 Wilson, Catherine, 243n Zemplén, Jolán, 67n, 72n, 73, 76n, 77n Winkelmann, Anette, xvin Zeno of Citium, 160 Wolf, Ursula, 5, 6n Ziegler, Johann Reinhard, 119 Wolff, Christian, 47, 69, 78, 227, 228, 238, Zika, Charles, 167n 252n, 269, 271–273, 310 Zimara, Marcantonio, 145 Wright, Guglielmus, 54n Zimmerman, Dean, 242n, 250n, 275n Wycliffe (Wyclif ), John, 169, 170, 172 Zimmermann, Albert, 317, 318 Zoroastres, 160 Yates, Fances A., 110, 307 Zwingli, Ulrich, 175n