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Volume 2 · 1985
Essays in Medieval Studies
page 182
Pseudo-Dionysius' Metaphysics of Darkness and
Laurence J. James
It is a given among art historians that Abbot Suger of St. Denis Abbey, just outside Paris, was a seminal figure for Gothic art and architecture.1 Most would agree with the late Erwin Panofsky that Suger translated the light metaphysics of Pseudo-Dionysius and Johannes Scotus into the abbey church,2 and that the church had many imitators all over France.
Abbot Suger left us poems by which his intention [to do what Panofsky says he did] can be established.3 However, it seems to have passed notice that what one intends and what one accomplishes are often quite different things. Anyone who has been to St. Denis Abbey church knows that most of the light in the sanctuary is dependent upon the clerestory windows, which were not set in until the 13th century. In other words, if Suger was father to the idea4 which culminates in lantern churches, the idea comes round again, after his death, to produce what his words suggest; but what his words suggest did not exist, could not have existed, in the monument during his lifetime.
There is a danger
in taking any one feature of a given age and attempting to maintain that the
feature is characteristic or typical of the whole. There was, after all, a
certain light metaphysics in Christian thought since the Gospel according to
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insufficient to explain the occasion for combining various Gothic elements into an aesthetic system.5
Pseudo-Dionysius was introduced to the West in the 6th Century.6 Pope St. Martin honored him at the synod of the Lateran, in 649,7 and his writings came to be venerated as sacred.8 In the course of time, Pseudo-Dionysius was associated with St. Denis, the founder of the Gallic Church.9 Sometime between 830 and 835, Abbot Hilduin of St. Denis caused the Vita Dionysii to be written in such a way as to "prove" that St. Denis and St. Dionysius the Areopagite were the same man.10 It became a crime the equivalent to treason to deny it in France. Dionysius the Areopagite was probably a fifth century Syrian monk whose work is little more than "a superficially Christianized version of Proclus."11
Despite their great influence, Dionysius' works are few; what he said about aesthetics can be put into even fewer paragraphs. His longest statement is from On the Divine Names, chapter IV, paragraph 7, quoted here in toto:
This Good is described by the Sacred Writers as Beautiful and as Beauty, as Love or Beloved, and by all other Divine titles which befit Its beautifying and gracious fairness. Now there is a distinction between the titles "beautiful" and "Beauty" applied to the all-embracing Cause. For we universally distinguish these two titles as meaning respectively the qualities shared and the objects which share therein. We give the
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name of "Beautiful" to that which shares in the quality of beauty, and we give the name of "Beauty" to that common quality by which all beautiful things are beautiful. But the Super-Essential Beautiful is called "Beauty" because of the quality which It imparts to all things severally according to their nature, and because It is the cause of the harmony and splendor in all things flashing forth upon them all, like light, the beautifying communications of its originating ray; and because It summons all things to fare until Itself (from whence It hath the name of "Fairness") and because It draws all things together in a state of mutual interpenetration. And It is called "Beautiful, because It is All-Beautiful and more than Beautiful, and is eternally, unvaryingly, unchangeably Beautiful; incapable of birth or death or growth or decay; and not beautiful in one part and foul in another; nor yet beautiful in one place and not in another (as if it were beautiful for some and not beautiful for others); nay, on the contrary, It is, in Itself, and by Itself, uniquely and eternally Beautiful, and from beforehand It contains in a transcendent manner the originating beauty of everything that is beautiful. For in the simple and supernatural nature belonging to the world of beautiful things, all beauty and all that is beautiful hath
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its unique and pre-existent Cause. From this Beautiful all things possess their existence, each kind being beautiful in its own manner, and the Beautiful causes the harmonies and sympathies and communities of all things. And by the Beautiful causes the harmonies and sympathies and communities of all things. And by the Beautiful all things are united together and the Beautiful is the beginning of all things, as being the Creative Cause which moves the world and holds all things in existence by their yearning for their own Beauty. And It is the Goal of all things, and their Beloved. as being their Final Cause (for 'tis the desire of the Beautiful that brings them all into existence), and It is their Exemplar from which they derive their definite limits; and hence the Beautiful is the same as the Good, inasmuch as all things, in all causation, desire the Beautiful and Good; nor is there anything in the world but hath a share in the Beautiful and Good, for Non-Existence is itself beautiful and good when, by the Negation of all Attributes, it is ascribed Super-Essentially to God. This One Good and Beautiful is in Its oneness the Cause of all the many beautiful and good things. Hence comes the bare existence of all things, and hence their unions, their differentiations, their identities, their differences, their similarities,
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their dissimilarities, their communions of opposite things, the unconfused distinctions of their interpenetrating elements; the providences of the Superiors, the interdependence of the Coordinates, the responses of the Inferiors, the states of permanence wherein all keep their own identity. And hence again the inter-communion of all things according to the power of each; their harmonies and sympathies (which do not merge them) and the cordinations of the whole universe; the mixture of elements therein and the indestructible lineaments of things; the ceaseless succession of the recreative process in Minds and Souls and in Bodies; for all have rest and movement in That Which, above all rest and all movement, grounds each one in its own natural laws and moves each one to its own proper movement.12
Dionysius characteristically speaks as a dedicated, deliberate obscurantist, which leaves what he says open to various interpretations. For example, he speaks of Non-existence as being beautiful and good "when, by the Negation of all Attributes, it is ascribed Super-Essentially to God "and this Non-existence is a higher state than that which is reflected in the light of material things.
Given the monistic aesthetic system which Dionysius established in the foregoing, it would be difficult to have imitative art, since
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such art, being reflective of material existence, would necessarily be but the shadow of a shadow. As such, it would be morally untenable. It could only be "good," if it participates with the Beautiful/Good in reflecting Itself.
Though the Beautiful/Good is an impersonal principle, we are nevertheless to see Dionysius (who may have been a Monophysite) as "Christian." In his system of thought, the Beautiful/Good can reveal Itself to whomever It will. If, therefore, Dionysius was a Monophysite, it would be strange that he could think of making an image of God-as-Christ; nevertheless, using Dionysian thought, it is possible, whether he did or not, and:
... in sensible images, if the painter looks without interruption at the archetypal form, neither distracted by any other visible thing or splitting his attention toward anything else, then he will, so to speak, duplicate the person painted, and will show the true in the similitude, the archetype in the image, the one in the other, except for their different essences (or natures)."13
It is this that gives the Byzantine aesthetic system a foundation; such statements as this were gratefully received by the Eastern Church, as a means of bolstering the veneration of icons.
In the disputed Epistle X, Dionysius says: "... visible things are images of
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invisible things."14 And in Celestial Hierarchy III, he says: "phenomenal beauties become images of invisible beauty."15 That is essentially the same thought.
It is true that in the Middle Ages various western thinkers held light to be an attribute of God, and a sign of His working, because light, like God, can penetrate substances without breaking them.16 Hence, what is called the lux continua of Gothic architecture is a conscious control of the condition, quality, and distribution of light within Gothic structures, to give interiors a distinctive ethos. However, that "continuous light" does not exist in all Gothic churches.
Gothic churches in
The flying buttresses are not mere aesthetic inventions; they may be looked upon as sculptural only in their decorative rib quality; their purpose was to take the stress of walls raised very high to permit huge windows, to admit more and more light. That is why the High Gothic lantern churches are seen as the culmination of the form-class begun by attempting to recreate Dionysian light metaphysics in architectural monuments. In lantern churches the walls are virtually eradicated.
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It should not be
supposed that a linked solution to a problem necessarily signifies the same
answer. Emile Male, the French art historian, said all French cathedrals,
except
This twilight creates a relative myopia, which lasts for at least an hour after one has come inside. One can make things out, but not distinctly. What light there is, is strained through the famous cobalt blue and red windows, colors which, curiously enough, give the least visual acuity.22
Like other
cathedrals', the windows at
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cathedrals. At
We know that the
schemata for cathedrals was worked out by theologians, and that the majority o 18218k1019s f
Gothic theologians held (with Dionysius the Areopagite) that the Ineffable can
be expressed in concrete form. However, at
If intellectual perceptions and mystical experience become indistinguishable, one can live in the mind, and thereby experience God. Dionysius may also be the source for this. In Mystical Theology II.1, he speaks of rising to that Void, where God is utterly Alone, as
... ascending upwards from particular to universal conceptions, we strip off all qualities in order that we may attain a naked knowledge of the Unknowing ... that we may begin to see that super-essential Darkness which is hidden by the light that is in existent things.28
There is an interesting reference in one of the sermons of John of Salisbury, bishop of Chartres from 1176 until his death in 1180, in which he speaks against those Scholastics who
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doubt everything, "... even their own senses and their memory."29 It may be that the bishop was speaking against sanctions held by his own monks; it is impossible to tell in context. However, we do know that later medieval mystics, notably Meister Eckhart, under what they said was the influence of Dionsyius the Areopagite, referred to God as "the Great Nihil."30
Mystical Theology II.1 begins by saying:
Unto this darkness which is beyond Light, we pray that we may come and may attain unto vision through the loss of sight and knowledge, and that in ceasing thus to see or to know that is beyond all perception and all understanding (for this emptying of our faculties is true sight and true knowledge) and that we may offer Him that which transcends all things the praises of a transcendent hymnody....31
That is: giving up sight and knowing physical realities, or things of this world, we rise (intellectually? spiritually?) to the plane of Darkness where God is Alone, where subject and object disappear,32 as we become like God:
... in proper truth we do but use the elements and syllables and phrases and written terms and words as an aid to our sense; inasmuch as when our soul is moved by spiritual energies unto spiritual things, our
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senses, together with the thing which they perceive are superfluous when our soul, becoming God-like meets in the blind embraces of an incomprehensible union the rays of unapproachable light.33
What we perceive, even at that level of existence, is not God, Who is similar to Himself and to nothing else, but the greatest possible similitude. And what is the difference between "seeing" the Rays of unapproachable Light, while locked in the blind embraces of the union with them, and being on that plane of super-essential divine Darkness which is hidden by the meritricious gaudiness of the lights of created things? None. One is rendered sightless by both. The two concepts are used complementarily. What we perceive is not God, but His effects: Rays of light in the first instance, and the thick Darkness-Beyond-Being in the second.
Extramission, Plato's theory of optics,34 is the source of Dionysian light metaphysics; but the light of physical things hides God from us, as we have seen. By shedding that light, we can rise to that Darkness where God is Alone.
If the theologians at Chartres were attracted to the notion that there is no difference between mystical experience and intellectual perception, does it not seem likely that they would have tried to find a way to make that mystical experience and the material world of their cathedral merge? Since they chose to use glass which gives the least visual acuity, and since they could have had clear
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glass, which was also available, and since a myopic condition which lasts for an hour or more results from their color choice, does it not seem likely that the coloristic darkness is purposeful? But, if purposeful, what is its meaning?
It could be
analogous to the stripping away of the senses that Dionysius discusses.
However, there is another possibility, which is to be found in examining the
windows themselves, the only source of what little light is admitted into the
cathedral at
Of the sixteen twin lancet formations, eight rosettes show an image of Christ, blessing. He appears in two of the windows in exactly identical form.35 Since the rosettes themselves are symbolic of the Virgin Mary, does it not seem possible that Christ is to be seen as literally within His Mother's symbol; or to put it another way: Christ is symbolically present within His mother, not yet born.
The cathedral itself has nine doors, three on
the west, three on the north, and three on the south, or three times three, a
mystical number signifying perfection. Hence, what one enters at
Therefore, it is
possible to interpret the interior of
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in at least eight instances, is Christ Himself, blessing.
Millard Meiss, in discussing paintings of the Northern Renaissance painter Jan van Eyck, gives a similar interpretation.37 He describes van Eyck's painting The Virgin in the Church as the first document we possess other than the buildings themselves, by which we can demonstrate "the actual appearance of a Gothic cathedral."38 The difficulty, of course, was to show the coloristic darkness as well as the elements of the architecture. How could one have the darkness, and show the building?
In The Virgin in
the Church, there is no stained glass. However, the nave of the church is in
unrelieved gloom. The Virgin is shown as a hieratic form; the infant Jesus is
shown as an embryonic figure, ill-formed. Behind the Virgin, there are two
pools of light. Meiss has demonstrated that those two pools of light are
intended to be symbolical references to the two natures of Christ, God and
Van Eyck created a conscious retardaire, a copy of something from another age; in it, he creates an archeologically correct version of a thirteenth century statue of the Virgin.39
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Was he expressing something which he perceived of the darkness in the nave of some Gothic church? Probably. He was also expressing Christ both post partum, or perhaps only embryonic, and present at His own Annunciation, as the two lights shining into the belly of the nave; likewise, the Virgin herself is shown both present in a hieratic form, and present as the structure into which the light of the Annunciation is shining. Hence, Van Eyck's church is the Virgin.
Can we
conclusively demonstrate that what Van Eyck saw and what you are being asked to
see at
Appearance is not
to be dismissed as subjective. Whatever the cathedral's symbolic reference,
since one cannot distinctly see anything within the cathedral at
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page 204
Bibliography
Abbot Suger, On the Abbey Church of St. Dennis and Its Art
Treasures, ed., trans., and annotated, Erwin Panofsky.
Aubert, Marcel. The Art of the High Gothic Era, trans. Peter
George.
Baldass, Ludwig. Jan van Eyck.
Baumgardt, David. Great Western Mystics.
Coulton, G. G. Five Centuries of Religion.
Crombie, A. C. Medieval and Early Modern Science,
Dierick, Alfons. The Stained Glass of
Dionysiaca.
Dionysii Areopagitae, Omnia Opera. Patrologia Graeca. Ed. J. P. Migne. Parisiorum: Seu Petit-Montrouge, 1857, III.
Dionysius the Areopagite. The Divine Names
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and the Mystical Theology, trans. C. E. Rolt.
---. De Ecclesiastica Hierarchia, 1.2. trans. Ernst
Kitzinger, "The Cult of the Images Before Iconoclasm," The Dumbarton
Oaks Papers, 8.
---. De Ecclesiastica Hierarchia. IV. 3, trans. Wladyslaw
Tatarkiewicz. History of Aesthetics, II,
---. Epistle X, trans. Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz. History of
Aesthetics, II.
Eliot, Alexander. Sight and Insight.
Fletcher, Banister. A History of Architecture on the
Comparative Method, 16th ed.
Hatecoeur, Louis. Mystique et Architecture Symbolisme du
Cercle et de la Coupole.
Henderson, George.
page 206
Johnson, James Rosser. The Radiance of
Krautheimer, Richard. "Introduction to an Iconography of Medieval Architecture.'" Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5, 1942.
LaCroix, Paul. The Arts in the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance.
Ladnet, Gerhart B. "The Image Concept," The
Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 7.
Lethaby, William R. Medieval Art.
Male, Emile. Religious Art, From the Twelfth to the
Eighteenth Century.
Meister Eckhart, A Modern Translation. Trans. Raymond
Bernard Blakey.
The
Panofsky, Erwin. Abbot Suger, On the
page 207
Erwin Panofsky.
Panofsky, Erwin. Early Netherlandish Painting, Its Origin
and Character,
---. "The Friedsam Annunciation and the Problems of the
Pieper, Joseph. Scholasticism: Personalities and Problems of
Medieval Philosophy.
Plato, The Symposium. Trans. B. Jowett; intro. Louis R.
Loomis.
Reutersward, Patrik. "What Color is Divine Light,"
Light from Aten to Laser, Art News Annual, 35. Ed. Thomas B. Hess and John
Ashberry.
page 208
Rolt, C. E. "Introduction," The Divine Names and
the Mystical Theology.
Rouse, Richard H. and Mary A. "John of Salisbury and the Doctrine of Tyrannicide," Speculum, xlii, No. 3, 1967, p. 697.
Schaefer, Erwin. "The Origin of the Two-Tower Facade in Romanesque Architecture," The Art Bulletin, xxvii, No. 2, (1945), 85.
Tatarkiewicz, Wladyslaw. History of Aesthetics, II. Ed. C.
Barret. Trans. R. M. Montgomery.
Van der Muelen, Jan. "A Logos Creator at
Weatherbee, Winthrop. Platonism and Poetry, the Literary
Influence of the
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Notes
1. Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renancences in Western Art (Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksells, Harper Torchbooks, 1960), p. 187; and Emile Male, Religious Art, From the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century (New York: Pantheon Books, 1949, rpt., 10th ed., Noonday Press, 1972), n. trans., p. 9.
2. Panofsky, Ibid.
3. Nobile claret opus, sed opus quod nobile claret Clarificet mentes, ut eanut per lumina vera Ad verum lumen, ubi Christus janua vera ... and Pars nova posterior dum jungitum anterior, Aula micat medio clarificate suo. Claret enim claris quod clare concopulatur, Et quod perfundit lux nova, claret opus Nobile, quod constat actum sub tempore nostro, Que suggerus eram, ne duce dum fieret.
4. He may have accomplished this "inadvertently"; Whitney Stoddard, Art and Architecture in Medieval France (Middletown, Conn: Wesley University Press, Harper Icon Books, 1966), p. 101.
5. Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism, (New York: Medidian Books, 1971), p. 20, says there is a genuine "cause and effect" relation between Gothic architecture as an artifact and the Scholastic method as a method. He cannot be correct in emphasizing light metaphysics, if the above is true.
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6. Un Sainte, Gregoire le Grand, qui fin du sixieme annonce a l'Occident les ecrits d'un Denys presente par les Grecs comme le membre de l'Areopage converti par Saint Paul. Dionysiaca, (Paris: desclee e Brouwer & Cie, Editeurs, 1937), p. lxv.
7. Ibid.
8. Cinquante ans plus tard, c'est un Pape et un Saint, qui fonde solennell ement l'autorite doctrinale se Denys et cree son magistere. A trois reprises, au synode de Latran en 649, Denys est a l'honneur, sur les levres du Pontife Romain. Ibid., p. lxvii. This synod established Dionysius' authority as "uncontested" (Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F. L. Cross, (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 403).
9. Josef Pieper, quoting Hegel, Samtliche Werke, ed. H. Glockner, vol. 19, p. 199; from Scholasticism: Personalities and Problems of Medieval Philosophy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), p 48.
10. Richard Krautheimer, Studies in East Christian, Medieval and Renasissance Art, (New York: New York University Press, 1969), p. 245, n. 87; G. G. Coulton agrees, "... somewhere around 830 ... this identification was crystallized into a dogma"; Studies in Medieval Thought (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd., 1940), p. 61.
11. Krautheimer, Ibid.
12. Alfred E. Taylor, Platonism and Its Influence (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, Inc., 1963), p. 19.
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13. Dionysius the Areopagite, The Divine Names and The Mystical Theology, trans. C. E. Rolt (London: S.P.C.K., 1920, rpt. 1940), pp. 95-98; for the Greek version, Dionysius the Areopagite, Omnia Opera, "De Divinis Nominibus," Patrologia Graeca, ed. J. P. Migne, (Parisiorum: Seu Petit-montrouge, 1857).
14. Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, IV. 3, quoted from Gerhart B. Ladner, in "The Image Concept," Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 7 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 13.
15. Dionysius the Areopagite, quoted from Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics, II, ed. C. Barrett; translator, R. M. Montgomery (The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1970), p. 34.
16. Marcel Aubert, The Art of the High Gothic Era, trans. Peter George (New York: Greystone Press, 1966), p. 28.
17. Banister Fletcher, A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958), p. 500.
18. Male, Religious Art, Ibid., p. 94.
19. Ibid., p. 93.
20. James Rosser Johnson, The Radiance of Chartres, Columbia University Studies in Art History and Archeology, No. 4 (New York: Random House, 1964) pursued the idea to book-length; however, he also noted the
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relative mopia (see p. 19). George Henderson, while praising the clarity of the minds which constructed Chartres, indicated he wished they had permitted one to study it in a "better light" ("Gothic," Style and Civilization, ed. John Fleming and Hugh Honour, (Hammondsworth, England: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1967), p. 151).
21. Patrick Reutersward, "What Color is Divine
Light?" Light: from Aten to Laser, Art News Annual XXV, ed. Thomas B. Hess
and John Ashberry (New York: MacMillian Co., 1969), p. 109; he suggests:
"to enter the cathedral of
22. Johnson, p. 19.
23. Paul LaCroix, The Arts in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1964), p. 258; however, Alfons Dierick, The Stained Glass of Chartres, (Berne: Hallwag, Ltd., N.D.) p. 8, says there are one hundred and seventy-three.
24. William R. Lethaby, Medieval Art, rev. David Talbot Rice (New York: Greenwood Press, 1950), p. 130.
25. Hetwin Schaefer, "The Origin of the Two-Tower Facade in Romanesque Architecture," The Art Bulletin 27, No. 2 (1945), p. 85.
26. Alexander Eliot, Sight and Insight (New York: McDowell-Oblensky, Inc., 1959),
page 201
suggests that looking from the nave into the clerestory
windows at
27.
28. Rolt; see n. 13.
29. Richard H. and Mary A. Rouse, "John of
30. David Baumgardt, Great Western Mystics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), p. 46; Meister Eckhart, A Modern Translation, trans. Raymond Bernard Blakney (New York: Harper and Brothers, Harper Torchbooks, 1941), pp. xi, 185, and 231.
31. Rolt; see n. 13.
32. Louis Hatecoeur in Mystique et Architecture Symbolisme Cercel et de la Coupole (Paris: Editions A. et J. Picard et Cie, 1954), says: "Cette doctrine de l'ignorance infinie, de la nuee divine se retrouve chez tous les mystiques ... Plotin et son ecole, Origene, Evagrius, Gregoire de Nysee, et le Pseudo-Denys" (p. 177).
33. Rolt, Mystical Theology II.1, p. 103.
34. A. C. Crombie, Medieval and Early Modern Science, I (
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University Press, 1953; Doubleday and Co., revised, 1959), p. 14} Plato, "The Timaeus," trans. R. G. Bury, The Loeb Classical Library, VII, ed. T. E. Page (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1928), Section 46, paragraphs B/C.
35. Jan van der Meulen, "A Logos Creator at
36. Henderson, "Gothic," p. 74. Hatecoeur suggests the first attachment to the idea of the church as Heavenly Jerusalem is: "D'apres la mystique de saint Maximin le Confesseur" (p. 229. n.2).
37. Millard Meiss, "Light as Form and Symbol in Some Fifteenth Century Paintings," The Art Bulletin, 17, No. 3 (1945).
38. Meiss, p. 180; Ludwig Baldass, Jan van Eyck, (London: Phaidon Press, n.d., 1951) says van Eyck's use of light in The Virgin in the Church allows him to "give correct values to everything" (p. 28).
39. 39Meiss, p. 181, indicates that he is not certain the statue is from the 13th century, just that it is "of an earlier style." However, Panofsky, in "The Friedsam Annunciation," Art Bulletin, 17, No. 4 (1935), p. 449, is certain this painting is one in which van Eyck "felt his way to an almost archaeologically correct ... thirteenth century Gothic...."
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40. The clerestory windows were all set between 1200 and 1240. (Alfons Dierick, The Stained Glass Windows of Chartres, p. 9).
Essays in Medieval Studies 2
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Thomas's Doctrine of Woman and Thirteenth-Century Thought
Richard J. McGowan
While we may legitimately expect great thinkers to swim against the currents of their times, we can hardly expect them to swim up waterfalls. This metaphor fits the great thirteenth-century thinker Thomas Aquinas on the thirteenth-century's "obvious truth" that women are inferior to men. We can hardly expect his doctrine of woman to hold other than what it holds: Woman is the imperfectus sexus1 and morally inferior to man.2 In these claims, Thomas agrees with his contemporaries, and with the two most influential predecessors of the thirteenth-century intellectual milieu, Augustine and Aristotle.
But if Thomas's doctrine of woman holds that woman is metaphysically and morally inferior to man, his path to the idea of woman's inferiority differs significantly from the paths of Augustine and Aristotle as well as his contemporaries. Thomas's view of woman is neither a restatement of Aristotelian philosophy nor, as Boerresen maintains, "to be found in the reflections of Augustine, from whom he differs little on this subject."3 I will show, even if briefly, the difference between Thomas and Augustine on woman and note the pivotal importance of thirteenth-century biology for Thomas's treatment of woman. His dependence on close empirical observations as the foundation of his thoughts, while leading him to conclusions we find unacceptable, announces a new method-
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ology for understanding human spirituality. Thomas's importance to the scientific tradition marks his method as more powerful than even he could imagine.
Thomas and the Augustinian Heritage
Thomas's philosophical anthropology differs so dramatically from Augustine's that Thomas cannot but help to have a different doctrine of woman. For Thomas, a human being is not a rational soul using an earthly and mortal body, but a hoc aliquid of body and soul, a body and soul unity. Thomas asserts that the soul is a forma materiae, a form of matter, not a forma in materia, a form in matter.4 The body and soul are intimately joined; the soul does not use the body as a tool. The soul is neither the mover in the moved,5 nor does it exist as a sailor in a ship.6 A human being is not two different kinds of things mixed together somehow. In maintaining that the rational soul is immediately and intimately united to the body, Thomas feels he has protected the unity of being human. But in protecting the unity of a human being Thomas has done something more: he has advanced a position quite different from anything Augustine's philosophical anthropology holds.
Augustine's celebrated definition of a human being holds that a human being is a rationalis anima utens corpore, a "rational soul using a body. "7 If a human being is a rational soul using a mortal and earthly body, then the soul and body do not seem to be a hoc aliquid, a "one object," and the soul and
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body are not immediately united. Thus, Augustine places a greater distance between the soul and body than Thomas does. This greater distance, in turn, enables Augustine to maintain that man and woman are spiritually equal, but bodily unequal. His discussion, in The Trinity, of the human being as an imago Dei, an image of God, shows us as much.
Augustine's remarks in book twelve of The Trinity reveals his position that the body does not bear upon human spirituality and spirituality is sexless. Of Ephesians 4:238 and Colossians 3:109 Augustine says that
not according to the body, nor according to every part of the soul, but according to the rational mind, where the love of God is able to be, is a person made to the image of the one who created the person.10
The body has no bearing on a person's status as an image of God. Augustine is most adamant about the non-corporeal character of human spirituality: "Not only is it shown by truest reason, but also the authority of the Apostle declares, that not according to the body is a person made to the image of God, but according to the rational mind."11
Augustine adds later that where a person is renewed to the image of God, "there a person is made to the image of God, where no sex is."12 As images of God and spiritual creatures, being human admits of no sexual distinction. Conversely, we must realize that for Augustine, sexuality is wholly corporeal. The distance he thinks exists between the
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body and soul enables him to make this separation. For Augustine, a person is a rational soul using an earthly body, the latter of which is male or female. Hence, if Augustine asserts woman's inferiority, which he does,13 that inferiority must be confined only to man and woman in their bodily aspects since that is the only place a sexual distinction occurs. The quality of the body does not bear upon the quality of the soul in Augustine's philosophical anthropology.
Thomas thinks differently. If the soul is a form of matter, not a form in matter, the body will bear upon the quality of the soul and the soul will reflect the body. That the body has an impact upon the quality of the soul is itself a product of the fundamental Thomistic principle that a form can be received only to the extent that the matter allows its reception: "in matter better disposed, the form more nobly participates."14 Thomas says of being human that "by as much as the body will have been better composed, it receives a more noble soul."15 In Thomas's philosophical anthropology, the body is a limiting factor in being human. While souls are of the same species and are the same form, they can exist and operate only to the extent that the body enables them to exist and operate.
Here we have a rather important point of departure by Thomas from Augustine. Augustine speaks as though the body has no bearing on the spiritual aspects of being human. Thomas's philosophical anthropology holds that the body bears greatly upon the quality of the soul. Thomas even goes so far
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as to say that there is a gradus inter virum et mulierem,16 a grade between man and woman, where the imago Dei is concerned, and that not in all beings having an image is the image found equally."17 For Thomas, then, knowledge of the body becomes both important and necessary for an understanding of the soul and the human being. But the knowledge of the body which Thomas relies upon for his understanding of being human is the biology of the thirteenth-century. That biology, besides being heavily Aristotelian, posits very different reproductive roles for man and woman. That biology, in short, is quite mistaken.
Thomas's Understanding of Bodily Imperfection and the Birth of Women
Thomas thinks that woman is materially deficient with respect to man. When discussing the birth of children in the state of innocence, Thomas explicitly asks 'whether children would have been born with a perfect body regarding strength and stature and sex immediately after birth.'18 Thomas refers here to a person's sex as a perfection of the body and acids that in Paradise, not only was woman bodily imperfect, but that "woman, even with respect to her soul, was less perfect than man.'19 We might wonder why women would even be born in the state of innocence, where no defect of natural operation would have been present20 but Thomas anticipates precisely this question. He explicitly says women would have been born in the state of innocence, meaning that woman is perfect somehow.
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Yet, that Thomas thinks women would have been born in the first state is of small consolation to woman's perfection, for Thomas also thinks woman is somehow occasionata, accidentally born and not fully intended by nature. He says that "although woman is beside the intention of a particular nature, which occurs in semen, intending offspring to follow in perfect likeness to the generator, she is not beside the intention of universal nature because without woman, generation is impossible."21 What Thomas means by this statement is that women are born when the father, the form-inducer,22 fails to produce what the father's reproductive power sets out to produce, namely, male offspring. Women, thinks Thomas, are born when something goes awry.
Thomas cites Aristotle's The Generation of Animals 4, 1 in showing this. He states that a woman is produced when "the semen of the man is unable to prevail over the matter of the woman as [the semen] sets the matter in its most developed arrangement and brings the matter into the perfect sex."23 This inability on the part of man's semen means that the process of embryonic development, such as Thomas understands it, stops short of the process's ultimate goal, namely, the birth of a member of the perfect sex. Thomas refers to the inability of man' s semen as an impotentia,24 a weakness, with all the connotations "weakness" has.
Any understanding of the impotentia itself turns on the reproductive biology Thomas commits himself to. In Thomas's account of reproduction, man and woman have completely
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different roles and make completely different kinds of contributions to the offspring. Thomas believes that in the act of generation, man provides an active power in the semen that will shape the matter that the mother provides. The man's semen and the woman's matter join together so that the active power of the man's semen can cause the offspring to gain its form. He says
The power to produce offspring is not passive in the semen of the man, as we say wood and stones are the house in potency, for in such a way that power is in the menstruum of the woman, but it is an active power, as we say the form of the house in the mind of the maker is the form of the house in potency.25
The man, according to Thomas, contributes to the offspring actively and the woman passively. He says that "in all perfect living things in which there is the distinction of sex, the female is the patient and supplier of matter and the male is the agent and inducer of form, as is said in 15 de Animalibus.'26 In twentieth-century words, the thought is this: the father is the only parent who brings to the offspring anything of genetic importance. In thirteenth-century words, the idea is that only the father passes human nature to offspring.
Thus, Thomas can maintain, with Aristotle, that "a person is more like the father than the mother, since from the father the person receives the form and from the
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mother, the matter."27 And on these grounds, Thomas can say of children that "the father is to be loved more than the mother. The mother and father are loved as principles of natural origin. The father, however, is a more excellent reason for origin than the mother."28 The father's role in reproduction, if Thomas is correct, is more important for the child's existence as the kind of being the child is. Her role in reproduction and the manner of her birth marks woman as bodily inferior to man, in Thomas' s account. Upon the bodily inferiority, though, Thomas bases other conclusions about the sexes.
Some Consequences of Woman's Bodily Inferiority in Thomas's Thought
Since Thomas's philosophical anthropology holds that the quality of the body has an impact upon the quality of the soul, and that the soul is subsistent and intellectual, he is led into claiming that women, by nature, are subject to male authority. He says that "because nature is diverse in diverse beings, so according to nature there are diverse beings that rule and are ruled; for in one way a free person rules the slave and a male, the female, and a man, the boy."29 By nature, men are fit to rule women, claims Thomas. This claim is not merely descriptive of the relative perfection of man and woman, but also prescriptive regarding good social order. Thomas says that "good order would have been lacking in the human multitude if some were not governed by others who are wiser. And thus, from such a subjection woman is
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naturally subject to man."30 But if women are subject to men, women should not speak publicly in church as teachers or priests, or so Thomas reasons. Thomas argues that teaching and persuading are not activities that subjects perform.31
Woman, owing to her material deficiencies, is less wise than man, and should not be priests, says Thomas. Further, Thomas says, on the grounds of woman's lesser wisdom, raising children requires a father more than a mother. When he explains why marriages should last the lifetime of the husband and wife, Thomas says that the task of raising children requires a long time and that 'a woman alone does not suffice, but more is required in the work of the man, in whom there is more perfect reason for instructing and greater strength for punishing."32
And not only do men have more perfect reason, but men are more capable of acting on the basis of their reason, according to Thomas. Women are easily led about by their passions.33 Thus Thomas agrees with Aristotle that men and women do not have the same ethical standards. Women, they think, are morally weak propter imperfectionem corporalis naturae, on account of the imperfection of their corporal nature.34 Thomas claims not only a metaphysical or constitutional inferiority for woman, but also a moral inferiority attached to that alleged constitutional inferiority. Thomas thinks woman, owing to her allegedly imperfect body, is the imperfectus sexus: she is spiritually and morally man's inferior.
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Thomas's Doctrine of Woman and Thirteenth-Century Thought
In that Thomas's doctrine of woman holds that woman is imperfect with respect to man, his thought in this area is quite ordinary for the thirteenth century. In its conclusions about woman, Thomas's thought hardly stands out from Aristotle's and Augustine's. In many ways, his doctrine of woman represents the typical, somewhat unenlightened, patriarchal point of view. Yet, Thomas's doctrine of woman represents a divergence from thirteenth-century traditions while at the same disclosing what the thirteenth century mind must have thought.
The idea that the soul is a material form reflecting the body is an Aristotelian thought. The idea that the soul is spiritual and subsistent is an Augustinian thought. What Thomas managed to do in his heavily Augustinian environment was to fashion a philosophical anthropology that holds that the soul is a material form, but subsistent and spiritual, too. In holding this, he enables his doctrine of woman to part company with Augustine's and Aristotle's doctrines. In holding that the soul is a material form yet subsistent, Thomas gives great impetus to understanding the body as a means to understanding what it means to be human. Biological knowledge is pivotal in understanding man and woman not merely in their corporeal aspects, but in their spiritual aspects as well. Sexuality, in short, can not be put exclusively in terms of the body and, paradoxically, biological knowledge becomes more important in understanding human beings. Thomas's emphasis on biological
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knowledge is breathtaking, set, as it is, in a theologically oriented century.
Thomas solves the problem of gaining biological knowledge by assenting to a reproductive theory in which man and woman have wholly different roles. Thomas's doctrine of woman shows this as well as showing how heavily Aristotelian that biology is. While Thomas constantly refers us to something which Aristotle says, he does not rely on Aristotle's writing for a foundation of biological knowledge. Instead, he turns to Aristotle for corroboration of biological truths. Thomas seems to accept a body of knowledge independent of Aristotle's work, asserting that these facts are so and that that is why Aristotle makes the claims he makes.35 May we conclude that Aristotle's biology was the accepted biology of the thirteenth-century thinkers, but that Thomas and others are unaware of the source of that biology? I am satisfied that that is indeed the case, though that thesis demands more thorough investigation.
And what are we to make of the ostensibly extraordinary woman, the one who is equal or superior to man? Does Thomas and do others overlook these women in formulating a doctrine of woman that states woman's imperfection? If Thomas does this, his doctrine of woman is, at best an a priori construct by an educated intelligent man. Furthermore, if Thomas does this, he would be contradicting his own system's demand to understand the body by empirical observation. In fact, Thomas does not overlook the evidence of "strong and brave women,"36 women who
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would disprove the rule that woman is the imperfectus sexus. Thomas handles this evidence by saying that what is small is counted as if nothing,37 so these ostensibly rare women need not be taken into account when formulating generalizations about women. The question of whether Thomas, or any thirteenth-century thinker, has any idea of a universal scientific law must be asked here. On the face of it, Thomas's doctrine of woman seems to have no conception of a universal scientific law. Here again I would counsel further examination.
Finally, I wish to conclude with what I consider to be the most important, and, by now, obvious point about Thomas's doctrine of woman as well as thirteenth-century thought. We must concede that medieval thought treats woman as imperfect and inferior. But we do not have to concede that Thomas's thought on woman or the thought of the Middle Ages is a product of hysteria, bias, or prejudice. Thomas's doctrine of woman is a doctrine formulated rationally upon the limited information available to him. Contemporary thinkers, especially feminists, among whom I number myself, have a tendency to treat too harshly any person who espouses a position at odds with accepted contemporary thought.
Doctrines like Thomas's are labeled misogynous and dismissed. However, if we take the time to investigate a doctrine of woman like Thomas's, we would find that such a doctrine, while wrong in many ways, can still be admired for the way it is put together. As contemporary thinkers, we should reserve judgment on the person and qualify the
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harshness of our criticism. If contemporary thinkers, especially feminists, do this, the Middle Ages in all its richness will be more nearly within the grasp of our understanding.
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Notes
1. Summa Theologica (ST) III, q. 31, a. 4, obj. 1 and ad 1, Parma Opera Omnia vols. 1-25 (New York, New York: Misurgia, 1948), 4:137 "Sexus enim masculinus est nobilior quam sexus femineus." See also In II Sent., d. 21, q, 2, a. 1, ad 2 and d. 18, q. 1, a. 1, sed contra. All translations are mine.
2. In II Sent., d. 22, q. 1, a. 3, obj. 2; 6:580. "Infirmitas peccatum excusat. Sed mulier infirmior viro." See also ST II-II, q. 156, a. 1, ad 1.
3. Kari Elisabeth Boerresen, Subordination and Equivalence: The Nature and Role of Woman in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, trans. Charles H. Talbot (Washington U. Press of Amer., 1981), p. xvii.
4. In II Sent., d. 1, q. 2, a. 4, ad 3; 6:399. "Essentia animae rationalis immediate unitur corpori sicut forma materiae."
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum I, 27, 52; Migne's Patrologia Latina (PL) 32, 1332. "Homo igitur, ut homini apparet, animo rationalis est mortali atque terreno utens corpore."
8. Eph. 4:23: "Be renewed in the spirit of your minds."
9. Col. 3:10: "You have put on the new nature which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator."
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10. De Trin. XII, 7, 12; PL 42, 1004-5. "... non secundum corpus, neque secundum quamlibet animi partem, sed secundum rationalem mentem, ubi potest esse agnitio Dei, hominem factum ad imaginem ejus qui creavit eum."
11. Ibid.; PL 42, 1004. "Sicut enim non solum veracissimo ratio, sed etiam ipsius Apostoli declaret auctoriats, non secundum formam corporis homo factus est ad imaginem Dei, sed secundum rationalem mentem."
12. Ibid. "... ibi factus est homo ad imaginem Dei, ubi sexus nullus est."
13. Augustine refers to man as the melior sexus and woman as the sexus infirmior in De conjugiis adulterinis II, 20, 21; PL 40, 486.
14. In II Sent., d. 32, q. 2, a. 3, ad 1; 6: 683. "... secundum quod in materia melius disposita dignius forma participatur."
15. Ibid., sol.; 6:683. "... ut quanto corpus melius complexionatum fuerit, nobiliorem animam sortiatur."
16. Ibid., d. 16, q. 1, a. 3, sed contra; 6:525.
17. Ibid. "... et ita non in omnibus habentibus imaginem imago aequaliter invenitur."
18. Ibid., d. 20, q. 2, a. 1; 6:564. "Utrum in statu innocentiae homines habuissent omnem perfectionem corpus quo ad virtutem et staturam et sexum, statim post nativitatem."
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19. Ibid., d. 21, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2; 6:572. "... et ideo mulier, etiam quantum ad animam, viro imperfectior erat."
20. Ibid., d. 20, q. 2, a. 1, obj. 1; 6:564. "... in primo statu nullus defectus naturalis operationis fuisset."
21. Ibid., ad 1; 6:565. "... quamvis mulier sit praeter intentionem naturae particularis, quae agit in hoc semine, intendens prolem adducere in perfectam similitudinem generantis, non tamen est praeter intentionem naturae universalis ... quia sine femine non posset esse generatio."
22. The form of a human being, its soul, comes directly from God, but the alleged generating parent, the father, predisposes the soul's reception. See In II Sent., d. 31, q. 1, a. 2, ad 4; 6:673: "... anima autem ex mari, non ita quod anima rationalis traducatur, sed quia in semine est virtus formitiva ... organizatur corpus et praeparatur ad receptionem animae rationalis" ("the soul is from the man, not that the rational soul is transmitted [by him] but because in the semen is the formative power which ... organizes and prepares the body for the reception of the rational soul"). Thus, for Thomas, only the father passes human nature to the offspring.
23. Ibid., d. 20, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2; 6:565. "... generatio mulieris contingit, ut in 18 de Animalibus (sive 4 de Gener Anim., cap. 1) dicitur, ex hoc quod semen viri non potest vincere super matetiam mulieris, ut digerat ipsam ultima digestione, et in perfectum sexum adducat."
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24. See In II Sent., d. 20, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2.
25. Ibid., d. 18, q. 2, a. 3, sol.; 6:550. "Haec autem potentia non est passiva in semine maris sicut dicimus ligna et lapides esse in potentia domus (sic enim est potentia in menstruo mulieris), sed est potentia activa, sicut dicimus formam domus in mente artificis esse potentia domus.
26. Ibid., d. 20, q. 1, a. 2, sol.; 6:563. "... in omnibus enim viventibus perfectis in quibus est sexus distinctio, femina se habet ut patiens et materiam ministrans, et mas se habet ut agens et formam inducens, ut in 15 de Animalibus dicitur."
27. Ibid., d. 30, q. 2, a. 2, ad 5; 5:667. "Philosophus ostendit in 5 Metaphysica (text. 53)), dicens: 'magis homo est de genere patris sui quam matris, cum a patre formam recipiat et a matre materiam.'"
28. ST II-II, q. 26, a. 10, resp.; 3:109. "Sed, per se loquendo, pater magis est amandus quam mater. Amantur enim pater et mater ut principia quaedem naturalis originis. Pater autem habet excellentiorem rationem principii quam mater."
29. Politicorum Aristotelis I, lectio X; 21:398. "Et quia natura diversificatur in diversis; ideo secundum naturam sunt diversa quae principantur et subjiciuntur. Alio enim modo homo liber principatur suo servo, et masculus feminae et vir puero."
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30. ST I, q. 92, a. 1, ad 2; 1:363. "Defuisset enim bonum ordinis in humana multitudine, si quidam per alios sapientores gubernati non fuissent. Et sic ex tali subjectione naturaliter femina subjecta est viro." Of course, the subjection of woman to man is, in Thomas's view, for woman's own benefit.
31. ST II-II, q. 177, a. 2, resp.; 3:595. On why women should not speak in church, Thomas writes: "Primo quidem et principaliter propter conditionem feminei sexus, quo debet esse subditus viro."
32. Summa Contra Gentiles III, 122, 8; 5:260. "Ad hoc autem mulier sola non sufficit, sed magis in hoc requiritur opus maris in quo est et ratio perfectior ad instruendum et virtus potentior ad castigandum."
33. See Pol. Arist. I, lectio X and Ethicorum ad Nicomachum Aristotelis VII, lectio 5.
34. Eth. ad Nic Arist. VII, lectio 5; 21:237.
35. See. e.g., see nn. 26 and 27.
36. Ibid., XII, lectio 5; 21:237. "raro inveniuntur mulieres sapientes et fortes." See also ST II-II, q. 156, a. 1, ad 1.
37. ST II-II, q. 156, a. 1, ad 1; 3:525. "... id quod est parvum vel debile, reputantur quasi nullum."
Essays in Medieval Studies 2
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Christian Europe and Mongol
First Medieval Intercultural Contact Between East and West
Gregory Guzman
Between
approximately 400 and 1000 A.D., Christian Europe was an isolated and inward
looking civilization due to an almost continuing series of invasions by
Germans, Huns, Muslims, Avars, Vikings, and Magyars.
Medieval
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Islam, and thus as friends of all Christians. However, this early Western hope and expected friendship soon changed to fear and terror, as the Mongols conquered all of Christian Russia by 1240. The Mongols were too cruel and too vicious to the Russian Christians to be either Prester John or his son, King David.
In 1241, the
Mongols entered
The Mongols'
sudden withdrawal from
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enemy and cousin, Guyuk. Batu failed as Guyuk was elected
Great Khan. Modern scholars now believe that the Mongols left Christian Europe
because there was not enough grass for the numerous horses and herds of these
steppe nomads and because they had decided that wooded and mountainous
While the West did not know why the Mongols left in 1242, most Europeans believed that they would return. Many Christians viewed the Mongol invasion as punishment for sin and possibly the beginning of the End of the World. The latter belief carried additional weight when the devastating Mongol invasion was added to the Fall of Jerusalem in 1244 and the ongoing life and death struggle between the papacy and Emperor Frederick II.
The first phase of East-West relations between Mongol Asia and Christian Europe revolves around Pope Innocent IV (1243-1254). As the nominal leader of Western Civilization, Pope Innocent IV was the first to take action. The Mongol threat was one of the three major items (along with the deposition of Emperor Frederick II and the call for a new Crusade) on the agenda of the 1245 Council of Lyons.
Innocent IV was a
far-sighted leader who realized the danger of a renewed Mongol attack on
divided and unprepared
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mendicant friars as they were active and dynamic preachers, teachers, and missionaries. Pope Innocent IV sent four separate embassies to preach and gather information in 1245. The two Franciscan and two Dominican missions all carried religious and diplomatic letters addressed to various Mongol leaders and military commanders. The papal letters asked Mongol intentions, told them to stop killing and slaughtering people (especially Christians), and urged them to accept baptism. The papacy thus favored peace and harmony with the Mongols via diplomacy and conversion.
The Franciscan
mission of John of Plano Carpini is probably the most interesting and best
known of these four early embassies. John was a portly sixty-year-old friar who
traveled to
Friar John's report to the Pope in 1247 represented the first Western eye-witness account of Mongol Asia. It was a widely read
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account as it was incorporated into Vincent of Beauvais' popular Speculum Historiale. Friar John' s history contained an accurate description of Mongol life and customs, and was especially revealing in Mongol military organization and tactics and how best to oppose them. He was as much a military spy for the Christian West as a religious envoy for Pope Innocent IV.
Thus this first state of East-West relations between Mongol Asia and Christian Europe was not too successful as it became apparent that a deep political-religious gap existed between Mongol Asia and Christian Europe. Since both the Mongol Khan and the Christian Pope regarded himself as God's divinely appointed representative on earth, meaningful dialogue and communication between these two East-West leaders came to a temporary standstill.
After the reign of
Pope Innocent IV, the initiative in
King Louis IX of
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sent two envoys to the crusading Louis IX on the
The second stage
of the political-military alliance phase of Christian-Mongol relations centers
on the activities of the Mongol Khans of Persia. The middle of the thirteenth
century saw a major redistribution of power in both
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of the Mongols on the battlefield (at Goliath's Spring in 1260) even if Hulegu's main Mongol army had gone East for the election of a new Great Khan and even if there were only a handful of Mongols at the battle.
While all this was
taking place, Hulegu established the Mongol Khanate in
Caught between his
enemies, Hulegu began to view the European Christians as potential allies
against his hostile neighbors. At first the Western Christians were not too
receptive to the Persian Khan's friendly overtures. They were confused by the
hostility of the Golden Horde in
Hulegu and his
successor khans in
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Western kings; they asked for a political-military alliance against the Mamluks. Many of the Persian Khans had Nestorian Christian wives; the khans were thus assumed to be favorably disposed to Christianity. Since most popes continued to see baptism as a prerequisite for a political-military alliance, the Mongol envoys spread rumors of the various khan's imminent conversions with almost all of their embassies. The three Mongol envoys who appeared before the 1274 Second Council of Lyons dramatically asked to be baptised before that assemblage to create an even more favorable climate for their mission. The Latin sources report that the Western Churchmen recognized this obvious ploy.
As a result of these Mongol embassies, the English King Henry III and his son Edward I planned a joint military attack with the Mongols against the Muslims of Egypt, but the Mamluks seized the military initiative in 1271 and prevented any significant joint activity by these Christian Crusaders and Persian Mongols. From this point onward, the Western kings were no longer eager for a new Crusade, but dialogue and embassies between Western Christians and Persian Mongols continued for the next fifty years due to the Il-Khan initiative.
Actually, the Persian Khan's diplomatic activity peaked under Arghun Khan (1284-1291). He sent four embassies to Christian Europe in less than eight years. His most serious and interesting mission was led by a Christian monk named Rabban Sauma. He was a reverse Marco Polo in the sense that he was a Chinese Uighur who traveled to the
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At this point, the
Christian West was no longer interested in military action to liberate the Holy
Land, especially after the Fall of Acre in 1291 the last Crusader State in the
Levant. For all practical purposes, the Western crusading spirit died with King
Louis IX of
With this shift in
Western sentiment, the popes and Western Christians returned to their earlier
policy of diplomatic-religious propaganda and missions over the
political-military alliance policy of the Western kings and crusaders. The
conversion of the Mongols to Christianity had always been the chief aim of the
Church since 1245, even though this goal was temporarily overshadowed by the
political-military phase of the Western kings. This primacy of conversion and
evangelization was evident in all papal letters and bulls. This Western
preference for conversion continued to be the dominant theme of East-West
relations after 1300, but now the popes and friars looked beyond the Middle
Eastern Persian Khanate. They looked to the Far Eastern home of the Mongols;
they looked especially to
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most powerful khanate of the four parts into which the earlier united Mongol Empire had split.
Papal interest in
a Christian mission to the
The early papal
mission to Mongols of China revolves around the activities of John of Monte
Corvino. He was eventually appointed the first Christian Archbishop of
Friar John presented the papal letters to the new Khan. He was granted permission to settle and preach in the capital city as he had status as both a clergyman and a Western ambassador. The Khan's court was primarily Buddhist, but it was tolerant of all other religions. John was given up for dead in the West until the Pope received two letters from
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him in 1306-1307. It was at this time that the pope
appointed him Archbishop of Peking and Patriarch of the Orient. These letters
were the last friar John wrote to the pope. It was first in 1333 that the pope
was informed of John's death five years after it occurred in 1328. The pope
responded by sending a friar Nicholas to be the new Archbishop of Peking. His
exact fate is unknown, but he never made it to
The Franciscan
John of Marignolli led the last documented Christian mission to the
A few words on the impact and consequences of this early Christian Europe-Mongol Asia intercultural contact are in order here. In the first place, it should be noted that there was little lasting European impact on the Mongols and Asians. Hardly any evidence of Western Christian influence and activity exists in Mongol and Chinese sources.
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Most of the information in this study comes from the Latin
sources of the West. Furthermore, the united Mongol Empire split into four
separate Khanates at first and into more regional units later. The Mongol
rulers were soon assimilated into the respective cultures, religions, and
civilizations, especially in
In the second
place, it can be concluded that
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Mongol Khans in
The final
conclusion to be drawn is that the papacy played the central role in this early
contact between Christian Europe and Mongol Asia. As the nominal leaders of
Medieval Europe, the popes guided, directed, and orchestrated the work and
activities of the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the kings of
The Europeans began to learn Middle Eastern and Asian languages at least Arabic and Persian if not Mongol and Chinese. This significant advance played an important role in trade and commerce as well as in diplomacy and the exchange of intercultural ideas.
The papacy and the Church became less rigid in dealing with Eastern Christians and infidels. Occasionally the Western Christians agreed to overlook their theological differences with Maronite, Jacobite, and Nestorian Christians, and to present somewhat of a united Christian front against Muslim and Buddhist beliefs. Intellectually this can be viewed as the beginning of the spirit of toleration and ecumenism within Christianity.
Diplomatic exchanges between Christian Europe and Mongol Asia led to the emergence of the first Western eye-witness accounts of
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far-off
This early
Christian-Mongol contact is an interesting and important chapter of Medieval
and World History.Unfortunately, it is a chapter frequently overlooked by
Western historians because the Latin sources are scattered and poorly organized
at present. This early East-West contact represented
page 241
represented
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