DOC33/4499 - The 'artes liberales' in the 'Anticlaudianus' of Alanus ab Insulis
Arithmetica adding the second wheel to a two-wheel cart. Verona, Bibl. Capitolare, Cod. CCLI (13-14th cent). Fol. 10r (detail). Abb 9 in:
TEZMEN-SIEGEL, Jutta (1985). Die Darstellung der 'septem artes liberales' in der Bildenden Kunst als Rezeption der Lehrplangeschichte. tuduv-Verlagsgesellschaft, Munchen. ISBN 3-88073-167-5
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See also:
art-of-reasoning.huygens.knaw.nl/controversial-art.html
The allegorical poem Anticlaudianus (c. 1280) of Alanus de Insulis or Alain de Lille is a testimony to the scholastic program that placed the liberal arts in the service of the study of theology. In the Anticlaudianus, the liberal arts build a cart for Prudentia and take her to God. Reason acts as the charioteer of the team. Only during the last part of the journey to God, Theology takes over from the liberal arts.
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Alain de Lille (or Alanus ab Insulis) (c. 1116/1117–1202/1203), French theologian and poet, was born in Lille, some years before 1128. An exact birth date has been hard to determine, but due to a monk's recent discovery of his' grave, it seems that 1116 or 1117 could be closer estimates. His exact date of death remains unclear as well, with most research pointing toward it being between April 14, 1202, and April 5, 1203. (Wikipedia)
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www.illinoismedieval.org/ems/VOL4/sweeney.html
The Anticlaudianus and the "Proper" Language of Theology- Eileen C. Sweeney (Marquette University)
In Book V of the Anticlaudianus Prudence accompanied by Reason arrives at the summit of the world. Prudence has undertaken the journey from earth to heaven at the behest of Nature; what they seek is a soul from God for the new and perfectly good man they are fashioning. Alan spends Book V portraying the transition from earth to heaven. This section of the poem emphasizes the discontinuity between the two realms. The laws of nature are contradicted everywhere Prudence looks, and Prudence herself loses her ability to function properly; most important, and a mirror of these changes in the natural order, the language of the poem discards the rules of ordinary discourse.
What I would like to trace in this paper is the relationship of theology to the liberal arts and of proper to improper language portrayed by the poem at the juncture between heaven and earth. An examination of the events and language of the Anticlaudianus reveals that though, according to the poem, there is a definite place where the rules of language and the laws of nature no longer function, they cease to function in a way that it is possible to explicate. Language ceases to function "normally" because it is transcended and becomes a "higher" kind of language, and the laws of nature no longer function because Prudence finds herself in the presence of the source of those laws.
The portrayal of theological language in the Anticlaudianus is clearly indebted to Pseudo-Dionysius; it makes use of the Dionysian/neo-Platonic notion that God is the source of all the perfections attributed to creatures, and, like Dionysius, emphasizes the deficiency that marks all divine predication. However, Alan's presentation of these Dionysian themes in the Anticlaudianus is different from their most well known use by Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas can be read as minimizing the mystical and suprarational elements of the Dionysian view because of his emphasis on degrees of propriety of divine predication in his doctrine of analogy. In contrast, Alan's poem almost rejects the possibility of constructing any analogy between language as it applies to God and creatures, emphasizing the impropriety that marks all theological language when viewed from the perspective of the arts. Moreover, Aquinas's account of Pseudo-Dionysius' three levels of divine predication stresses the resolution of the tension between affirmative predication (e.g., "God is good") and negative predication (e.g., "God is not good as we are good") in a third moment-Predication by "supra-eminence" (e.g., "God is good without limit"). Alan's poem, however, refuses to resolve the tension and predicates contradictions of God, but it does not, I would argue, predicate non-sensical contradictions. In language Alan might find congenial, his is a theology of negative affirmation and affirmative negation.
DOC33/4499 - The 'artes liberales' in the 'Anticlaudianus' of Alanus ab Insulis
Arithmetica adding the second wheel to a two-wheel cart. Verona, Bibl. Capitolare, Cod. CCLI (13-14th cent). Fol. 10r (detail). Abb 9 in:
TEZMEN-SIEGEL, Jutta (1985). Die Darstellung der 'septem artes liberales' in der Bildenden Kunst als Rezeption der Lehrplangeschichte. tuduv-Verlagsgesellschaft, Munchen. ISBN 3-88073-167-5
---
See also:
art-of-reasoning.huygens.knaw.nl/controversial-art.html
The allegorical poem Anticlaudianus (c. 1280) of Alanus de Insulis or Alain de Lille is a testimony to the scholastic program that placed the liberal arts in the service of the study of theology. In the Anticlaudianus, the liberal arts build a cart for Prudentia and take her to God. Reason acts as the charioteer of the team. Only during the last part of the journey to God, Theology takes over from the liberal arts.
---
Alain de Lille (or Alanus ab Insulis) (c. 1116/1117–1202/1203), French theologian and poet, was born in Lille, some years before 1128. An exact birth date has been hard to determine, but due to a monk's recent discovery of his' grave, it seems that 1116 or 1117 could be closer estimates. His exact date of death remains unclear as well, with most research pointing toward it being between April 14, 1202, and April 5, 1203. (Wikipedia)
---
www.illinoismedieval.org/ems/VOL4/sweeney.html
The Anticlaudianus and the "Proper" Language of Theology- Eileen C. Sweeney (Marquette University)
In Book V of the Anticlaudianus Prudence accompanied by Reason arrives at the summit of the world. Prudence has undertaken the journey from earth to heaven at the behest of Nature; what they seek is a soul from God for the new and perfectly good man they are fashioning. Alan spends Book V portraying the transition from earth to heaven. This section of the poem emphasizes the discontinuity between the two realms. The laws of nature are contradicted everywhere Prudence looks, and Prudence herself loses her ability to function properly; most important, and a mirror of these changes in the natural order, the language of the poem discards the rules of ordinary discourse.
What I would like to trace in this paper is the relationship of theology to the liberal arts and of proper to improper language portrayed by the poem at the juncture between heaven and earth. An examination of the events and language of the Anticlaudianus reveals that though, according to the poem, there is a definite place where the rules of language and the laws of nature no longer function, they cease to function in a way that it is possible to explicate. Language ceases to function "normally" because it is transcended and becomes a "higher" kind of language, and the laws of nature no longer function because Prudence finds herself in the presence of the source of those laws.
The portrayal of theological language in the Anticlaudianus is clearly indebted to Pseudo-Dionysius; it makes use of the Dionysian/neo-Platonic notion that God is the source of all the perfections attributed to creatures, and, like Dionysius, emphasizes the deficiency that marks all divine predication. However, Alan's presentation of these Dionysian themes in the Anticlaudianus is different from their most well known use by Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas can be read as minimizing the mystical and suprarational elements of the Dionysian view because of his emphasis on degrees of propriety of divine predication in his doctrine of analogy. In contrast, Alan's poem almost rejects the possibility of constructing any analogy between language as it applies to God and creatures, emphasizing the impropriety that marks all theological language when viewed from the perspective of the arts. Moreover, Aquinas's account of Pseudo-Dionysius' three levels of divine predication stresses the resolution of the tension between affirmative predication (e.g., "God is good") and negative predication (e.g., "God is not good as we are good") in a third moment-Predication by "supra-eminence" (e.g., "God is good without limit"). Alan's poem, however, refuses to resolve the tension and predicates contradictions of God, but it does not, I would argue, predicate non-sensical contradictions. In language Alan might find congenial, his is a theology of negative affirmation and affirmative negation.