Dungal and Macrobius: On the Perception of Ancient Texts by Medieval Authors

В статье обсуждается проблема рецепции античного (натурфилософского) знания за-падноевропейской наукой раннего Средневековья. Отмечается возможность ее решения посредством текстуальных исследований компаративного характера, цель которых состоит не только в формировании общей «картины» усвоения предшествующего знания средневековой наукой, но и в накоплении сведений о разнообразных способах и методах его трансформации и использования. Автор анализирует текст ответного письма (811 г.) ирландского монаха Дунгала (fl. 811-828) Карлу Великому о природе солнечных затмений, основанного на античных источниках – «Естественной истории» Плиния Старшего (I в.) и «Комментария на ‘Сон Сципиона’» Макробия (V в.). Выявляются цели изложения Дунгала при составлении ответа Карлу; обсуждается порядок планетарных сфер; отмечается знание Дунгалом основ античной натурфилософии; показано, как он (в зависимости от источника – Плиния или Макробия) перестраивает и перерабатывает исходный текст. Сделан вывод о попытке Дунгала ответить на вопрос Карла о солнечных затмениях и полученном результате. The paper discusses the importance of the problem of perception of ancient (natural-philosophical) knowledge by Western European science of the early Middle Ages. The possibility of its solution by means of textual comparative studies is noted. The purpose of such studies is not only the gradual and detailed formation of a general “picture” of the assimilation of previous knowledge by medieval science, but also the accumulation of information about various ways of using it. The text of the reply letter (811) of the Irish monk Dungal (fl. 811–828) to Charlemagne on the nature of solar eclipses, based on ancient sources (“Natural History” by Pliny the Elder [1st c.] and “Commentary on the ‘Dream of Scipio’ ” by Macrobius [V c.]), is under consideration. The explicit and hidden goals of the Dungal’s text are revealed; the order of the planetary spheres is discussed; Dungal's knowledge of the foundations of ancient natural philosophy is noted; it is shown how Dungal (depending on his source — Pliny or Macrobius) rebuilds and processes the original text. The conclusion is made about Dungal’s attempt to answer Charlemagne’s question and the result obtained.

Spheres, Sefirot, and the Imaginal Astronomical Discourse of Classical Kabbalah

The medieval expression of Jewish esotericism known as Kabbalah is distinguished by its imaging of the divine as ten hypostatic sefirot that structure the Godhead and generate the cosmos. Since Gershom Scholem, the preeminent twentieth-century scholar of Kabbalah, declared the term sefirah (sg.) as deriving from “sapphire”—pointedly rejecting its connection to the Greek σφαῖρα—scholars have paid scant attention to the profound indebtedness of the visual and verbal lexicon of the kabbalists to the Greco-Arabic scientific tradition. The present paper seeks to redress this neglect through an examination of the appropriation of the diagrammatic-iconographical and rhetorical languages of astronomy and natural philosophy in medieval and early modern kabbalistic discourse. This study will place particular emphasis on the adoption-adaptation and ontologization of the dominant schemata of these most prestigious fields of medieval science by classical kabbalists, what it reveals about their self-understanding, and how it contributed to the perception of Kabbalah as a “divine science” well into the early modern period.

Matthew Boyd Goldie, Scribes of Space: Place in Middle English Literature and Late Medieval Science. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2019, xi, 293 pp., 11 b/w ill.

In his highly stimulating study on space in Middle English literature and science, Matthew Boyd Goldie offers fascinating insights and observations about how the various poets and scientific writers saw their world and outlined strategies to convey spatial components through their writing. Intriguingly, Goldie combines this approach by studying also the way of how scientific writers at that time kind of measured their world and tried to comprehend the meaning of space in mathematical and geometric terms. This has significant implications for the reading of the literary protagonists’ movement through space.

Naturalist Tendencies in Medieval Science

This chapter argues that the masters of arts in the new universities institutionalized approaches akin to methodological naturalism in the populous medieval faculties of arts. Explanations of natural phenomena were to be justified or refuted by reason and sense perception, without appealing to the supernatural. This arts faculty naturalism diffused widely as the universities spread, and deeply shaped the intellectual landscape (e.g. Galileo). The masters of arts’ vision of their methodological autonomy also characterized theologians, many of whom were masters of arts. The Parisian condemnations of 1277 illustrate this outlook’s strength, not its weakness. Leading intellectuals of the era illustrate these naturalistic trends by using natural causes to explain occurrences that their predecessors and contemporaries treated as marvels.