Book Two
Catholic Philosophy chpt I p.
– Catholic philosophy from Augustine to Renaissance
– Built on a ‘creed’ but also a sacred history
– The Church – a social institution
– A.D. 400 – 1400
– Power and wealth achieved by its creed
– The great majority convinced
– Church had to fight old traditions
– Roman and German
– Neither were to prove a strong enough opposition to Christianity
– Largely due to the fact that they were not embodied in any adequate philosophy
– Until 14th century Ecclesiastics have a virtual monopoly of philosophy especially the papacy
– St. Augustine’s ‘City of God’
– Dueling between Kingdom of God and Kingdom of this world
– Spirit and flesh
– Gregory the Great
– Relations of Samuel and Saul and the feudal system
– Arrian, semi – Arrian emperors
– Pope and Emperor
– A dualism
– Battles, tournaments, private revenge, Church cannot prevent
– Philosophy was concerned to defend the faith
– 13th century synthesis had an air of ‘completeness’
– Destroyed for various reasons
– Rise of the merchant class
– In Italy and elsewhere
– Medicis
– Feudal aristocracy – ignorant, stupid and common people sided with Church as superior to nobles in intelligence
– Morality and in capacity to combat anarchy – until merchant class who bettered them in all these areas.
– Third century A.D. ‘a period of disaster’
– Establishment of Barbarians 5th century
– Wars – Byzantian and Lombards destroyed Italy
– Arabs become very powerful
– Danes and Normans in England and France
– Gloomy superstitions
– i.e. hell
– evil spirits, sorcerors, witches
– mood of thoughtful men one of deep unhappiness in regard to the affairs of the world – rendered endurable by the hopes of a better world in the hereafter’
– nothing of value was possible in the sublunary world except the steadfast virtue that would lead in the end, to eternal bliss
– turned their hope to the ‘unseen’
– Catholic philosophy is essentially the philosophy of an institution namely: The Catholic Church
– ethics
– Political theory
– Church – State
– Greek, Roman
– God, Caesar
– Dual loyalty
– Between Boethius and St. Anselm (a period of over five centuries) – there is only one eminent philosopher – John the Scot, and he, as an Irishman, had largely escaped the processes that were molding the rest of the Western world
Chpt I The Religious Development of the Jews
- A sacred History
- Chosen People
- Righteousness – i.e almsgiving and practical philanthropy
– The Christian religion as it was handed over to the barbarians from the Romans consisted of 3 elements
– 1. Certain philosophical beliefs
– 2. A conception of morals and history derived from the Jews
– 3. Theories about salvation – which were new i.e. baptism – may be derived from Orphism or other Oriental pagan mystery religions
– The Law – The Dialogue
– The Creed
– Correct belief is at least as important as virtuous action (essentially Hellenistic)
– What is Jewish in origin is the exclusiveness of the Elect
– The Messiah (in future for Jews)
– The Messiah (Jesus for Christians)
– Revenge psychology
– Logos
– Triumph over enemies, not on earth, but in heaven
– Heaven – mainly new in Christianity though in part traceable to Orphism and kindred cults of the Near East.
– David and Solomon (may be accepted as kings who probably had a real existence but at the earliest point at which we come to something certainly)
– early history of Israelites : impossible to know at what point it ceases to be purely legend [there are already two kingdoms: Israel and Judah]
– King Ahab – first truly historical Jew (853 B.C.)
– Kingdom of Judah – just survived the Assyrians
– Capture of Ninevah by Babylonia and the Medes 606 B.C.
– 586 B.C. – Nebuchadrezzar captured Jerusalem & destroyed the Temple, and removed a large portion of population to Babylon
– Babylon Empire falls in 538 B.C.
– Cyrus King of the Medes and Persians
– Return to Palestine – Many of them did so
– Under leadership of Nehemiah and Ezra
– Temple rebuilt
– Jewish orthodoxy began to crystallize
– ‘thou shalt have no other gods but me’ – a Jewish innovation
– Esp. Jeremiah and Eziekiel
– Seem to have invented: ‘all religions but one are false’ and ‘the lord punishes idolatry’
– Tophet – burn sons and daughters
– Jews in Egypt condemned by Jeremiah (they were burning incense to other gods) : Yawheh will consume by sword and famine until there will be an end to them.
– Cakes to the queen (Ishtar)… ‘the Lord is angry about it’ – BR
– Incense to queen of heaven
– Women weeping for Tammuz (a Babylonian diety)
– And men worshipping the sun
– The Lord declares: “ Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eyes shall not spare neither will I have pity : and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them” – Jeremiah , VII (17-18)
– Fiercely nationalistic
– Looked forward to the day when the Lord would utterly destroy the Gentiles.
– If the Chosen people become wicked the Lord would make the men suffer i.e. the ‘Captivity’
– A psychology of paternal correction – the Jews are to be purified by punishment.
– Orthodoxy much more rigid and nationally exclusive in the Jews of exile – i.e. when they returned they dissolved all mixed marriages.
– Jews alone retained the belief in their own pre-eminence and their own misfortune because they had failed to preserve the purity of their faith and ritual.
– Synagogues, scripture, Sabbath & circumcision as mark of Jew
– Deutero-Isaiah & the Messiah
– A virgin shall conceive a son – Immanuel
– A controversy about ‘virgin’ or ‘young maiden’
– Between Jews & Christians
– The Inclusion
– a child is born: ‘Prince of Peace’
– Every form of exclusiveness
– Deutero-Isaiah: ‘There is no god, but I’
– Owing to the destruction of the temple, where alone sacrifices could be offered, the Jewish ritual perforce became non-sacrificial
– Ecclesiastics 200 B.C.
– Only the Apocrypha (Greek) until recently is very mundane
– Repetition
– Honesty, alms giving
– Only sign of Greek influence is in the praise of medicine
– Slaves are not to be treated too kindly
– Daughters are a great source of anxiety
– Women : ‘from garments come a moth, from women, wickedness’
– children: ‘bough down their necks from birth’
– Hasidism – Essenes – Christians – Pharisees
– Yawheh and Zeus – Antiochus
– Jews resisted Macabees
– Doctrine of immortality
– Antiochus IV was within Egypt when Jews rebelled
– Judas Macabee (164 B.C.)
– Recaptured Jerusalem
– Jews conquer part of Sumeria and negotiated with Rome for complete autonomy
– The Hasmonean dynasty
– Persecution of Antiochus IV a crucial time
– But for resistance of the Hasidim, the Jews might have easily died out – but in enduring and resisting persecution the Jews of this time showed immense heroism, although in defense of things that do not strike us as important such as circumcision and the wickedness of eating pork
– It may well be that the world today owes the very existence of monotheism both in the East and the West to the Macabees.
– The law and its rigidness makes the revolt of St. Paul against the domination of the law very remarkable
– Fourth book of the Macabees written in Alexandria, about the time of Christ
– Jews remained unshakeable
– Pork and circumcision
– Book of Enoch p. 317 -18
– Denounces various kings and princes meaning Hasmonean dynasty 164- 64 B.C.
– Early nineteenth cent.
– Sheol
– Visions of heaven and hell
– Milton, “Paradise Lost”
– Blake, ‘Prophetic Books’
– Literary merit
– Prometheus – mettalurgy
– Only the virtuous can know astronomy
– Sun, moon have chariots, driven by the wind
– 364 days
– Son of Man
– The Messiah
– Punishment of sinners
– Sins are recorded in heaven
– Parable of the Pharisees p. 318
– And the publican
– Jews, like Christians, thought much about sin, but few of them thought of themselves as sinners –BR
– Darkness and chains
– a burning flame
– Christ denunciates scribes and Pharisees
– Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
– ‘Love thy neighbor’
– ‘turn the other cheek’
– Reprobation of all hatred
– King Herod – gay adventurer
– Idumean
– Rebuilt temple – Corinthian pillars
– Died 4 B.C.
– Pontius Pilate a procurator
– Succeeded him – A.D. 26
– The Septuagint – middle of third century – other parts somewhat later
– A.D. 66 – Jews revolt against Rome
– They lost
– Temple destroyed
– The Septuagint legend & early Christians
– Seventy translated the whole thing independently & simultaneously
– Later found to be ‘gravely defective’
– Then – translated into Latin
– A better one by Origen in 3rd cent.
– Those who knew only Latin had very defective Old Testament
– til Jerome 5th cent. ‘The Vulgate”
– Anti –semetism p. 323
– Philo (contemporary of Christ) influenced Christian fathers in reconciling Greek philosophy with acceptance of the Hebrew Scripture
– Jews – considerable colonies in all important cities of Antiquity
– Orthodox Judaism became more orthodox & narrow after the fall of Jerusalem
– After first century –Christianity crystallized & relations between it and Judaism were wholly hostile
– Falsified prophets in order that they should not foretell Christ
– Maimondes – influence on Spinoza
Christianity During the First Four Centuries chpt.
– At first preached by Jews to Jews
– As a reformed Judaism
– St.Paul was determined to admit Gentiles without circumcision
– Or submission to Mosaic Law
– The view that Jews were the Chosen people remained, however obnoxious to Greek pride
– Ioldabath temporarily inhabited the body of Christ (Gnostics) to liberate the world from the false teachings of Moses
– The rebellious son of Sophia (heavenly wisdom)
– He is Yawheh of the Old Testament while the serpent, so far from being wicked, was engaged in warning Eve against his deceptions
– Manichaens
– Manichaeism: Evil a positive principle embodied in matter, which the good principle is embodied in spirit
– Gnosticism a halfway house between Christianity and Paganism while it honoured Christ – it thought ill of the Jews
– Rejected that the Jews were the Chosen People
– World created by Iaoldabath
– Early on – Christian attitude towards Jews was hostile
– Prophets foretold of, but failed to recognize Him & thence forth to be ‘accounted’ wicked
– Christians abdicated Mosaic Law substituting just the two Commandments: To love our god & to love our neighbor
– this also the Jews failed to recognize
– a ‘perversity’
– As soon as the State became Christian, anti – Semetism in its medieval form, began, as a manifestation of Christian zeal
– How far economic motives, by which it was inflamed in later times operated in the Christian Empire, it seems impossible to ascertain
– Collossians II: ‘Beware lest a man spoil you through Philosophy and vain deceit’ – attributed to St. Paul
– Eunuchs: method of escaping the temptations of the flesh
– Origen of Alexandria
– Sun (he thinks) can sin
– Even the devil will be saved at the last
– Origen, ‘Against Celsus’
– Gospel: has a demonstration of its own spirit and power
– God, immortality and free will
– Plus the scriptures prophets foretelling of Christ
– Christianity, says Celsus, comes from the Jews, who are barbarians, and only Greeks can extract sense out of the teachings of barbarians
– Magicians invoke Hebrew
– ‘City of God‘ – not earthly politics (unworthy of any truly holy man)
– Council of Nicea
– The Nicene Creed
– Ecumenical Council
– almsgiving enhances power of bishops
– Bishops popularly elected
– Church developed rapidly after the conversion of Constantine
– William James
– Pope – not authority over Church as whole until much later period
– Inflexible and intolerant
– Zeal of Christians
– believed they alone would go to heaven, and the most awful punishments would fall on the heathen
– Orphics -> Greeks -> Hebrew Prophets
– resurrection of the body
– Their ‘sacred’ book
– Why, asks Origen, should you accept these traditions (Homeric account of Troy, Romulus & Remus, etc.) and not the Jews myths?
– Elements of mystery religions both Orphic and Asian largely into Christian theology
– Central Myth – dying god who rises again
– To a modern historical student it is obvious that the early history of the Israelites is in the main legendary
– Superior morals of Christians to average pagans
– A strict sexual ethic
– Pliny : Christians of high moral character
– Constantine’s ‘calculation’
– Monopoly of ‘zeal’ inherited from the Jews
– Union, discipline of the Christians and Republic of Christianity, from a political point of view this was the most important of Gibbons five causes of the spread of Christianity
– Athanasius – Hero of this period
– a peculiar period owing to the political importance of theology
– The prevailing view: Father and Son are equal and of the same substance, they were however, distinct Persons
– The view that they were not distinct persons, but only had different aspects of ‘One Being’ was ‘Sabellian heresy’
– Arrius – a cultivated Alexandrian priest
– Maintained Son was not equal of Father but was created by Him
– Two questions successively agitated the Christian world:
– First: the nature of the Trinity
– Second: the doctrine of the Incarnation
– Arrianism: ‘Distinctness’
– Sabellianism: ‘Oneness’
– Emperor Theodosius AD379
– gave complete control to Catholics
– victory was complete
– Emperors (except Julian the Apostate) were Arrian
– the Catholic Triumph
The Three Doctors of the Church
– Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine
– Gregory the Great
– all three flourished between Catholic triumph and the Barbarian invasion
– Orthodox – thus at last the Catholic faith achieved success
– fixed the mold for over a thousand years during the Dark Ages and Medieval Ages
– few men have surpassed the influence of these three men on the course of history –BR
– Goths – under Alaric – into Rome
– Vandals – into North Africa
– the Barbarian Invasion
– Goths and Vandals, for one century then destroyed by Justinian the Lombards and Franks (orthodox)
– St Ambrose (born in Treves) father a prefect (high official to Gaul)
– taken to Rome – eduacated with grounding in Greek
– at age thirty made governor of Liguaria & Emilia
– four years later – turned his back on secular gov’t. and by popular acclaim became Bishop of Mila
– gave all his worldly goods to the poor and devoted the rest of his life to the Church
– Emperor Gratian – assassinated
– Valentian II becomes emperor while still a boy
– at first, power exercised by his mother Justina
– as she was an Arrian, conflicts between her and Ambrose were inevitable
– Symacchus
– The Emperor, says Ambrose owed service to Almighty God
– Letters to Valentian II (in his youth)
– the possessions of the Church
– maintenance of the poor
– all three saints wrote innumerable letters (many of which are preserved)
– Statue of Victory bandied about
– Theodosius (394 A.D)
– Milan – grave matter of controversy
– prayed that he might not survive the destruction of Milan
– sack of Rome 25 years later
– Ambrose’s strength lay in the support of the people
– the Empire was compelled to give way
– anti-semetism rampant p. 339
– in the Saints opinion – the destruction of synagogues should not be punished in any way
– a great battle had been won – Ambrose had demonstrated that there were matters in which the State must yield to the Church
– had thereby established a new principle which retains its importance to the present day
– the Emperor repented
– praises virginity
– deprecates remarrying of widows
– on site of his new Cathedral, skeletons were found to perform miracles and were declared by him to be those of two martyrs
– St Ambrose as a statesman – a man of first rank
– since Christians were given to maintain that the Jews, since the rise of Christianity had falsified the Hebrew text where it seemed to predict the Messiah
– St. Jerome ‘The Vulgate’
– remains to this day the official Catholic version of the Bible
– Gaul
– a man of many quarrels
– moved to Jerusalem
– died there AD420
– St. Jerome b. AD345
– Aquilea
– AD363 went to Rome
– studied rhetoric and sinned
– became an ascetic
– spent five years in Syrian wilderness
– travelled from Constantinople
– lived in Rome three years
– friend to Pope Damascus
– translates Bible
– epitaph for Paula:
Within the tomb a child of Scipio lie
A daughter of the far-famed Pauline house
A scion of Graachi, of the stock of Agamemnon’s self illustrious:
Here rests the Lady Paula, well beloved of both her parents, with Eustochium for daughter,
she the first of Roman dames
Who hardship chose and Bethelehem for Christ.
–
– the preservation of virginity
– a kind of erotic mysticism
– a nun is the ‘bride’ of Christ
– ‘sick of love’ p. 342
– a garden enclosed is my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed
– I would fast only that afterwards I might read Cicero
– ever after he scorns ‘worldly’ books
– sometimes slips into quoting Virgil and Horace and Ovid
– shudders to think of the catastrophes of our time – sacked, pillaged and plundered
– the Roman world is falling and the reknowned city the capitol of the Roman Empire is swallowed up in one tremendous fire
– an incidental note: in a letter replete with instructions on the rules to be observed by girls in preserving their virginity.
– never once does he point out the evils of the fiscal system or the reliance on an army composed of barbarians
– St. Augustine b. AD354 in North Africa
– It is no wonder the Empire fell into ruin when all the best and most vigorous minds were so completely remote from secular things
– Bishop of Hippo (near Carthage) AD396
– Tolstoy
– St. Augustine, ‘The Confessions’
– the pears
– the shame itself
– love of ‘wickedness’ for its own sake
– St. Augustine is in some ways similar to Tolstoy, to whom, however, he is superior in intellect
– Ghandi (whose biography contains passages closely similar to St. Augustine’s)
– if Yawheh, Jews are Chosen People, why didn’t they prosper? Because they weren’t righteous, had to be chastised and must recognize their chastisement as a mark of paternal love.
– The Church, like the Jews, suffered tribulations
– troubled by heresies, undivided Christians fell into apostacy under the stress of persecution
– The substitution of individual for ‘communal’ sin
– The Church however, never sinned
– These two types of theology evolve:
– 1) Church
– 2) Individual Soul
– those who are ‘saved’ – god has predestined for salvation
– learnt Latin but hated Greek
– ‘master’s rod’ – corporeal punishment
– sin is central
– even infants, the Saint believes, are full of sin: i.e. gluttony, jealousy and other horrible vices
– St. Augustine’s sense of sin was ‘abnormal’ – BR
– sixteenth year ‘the madness of lust’
– a cauldron of lawless loves
– but no-one will be saved unless he has been baptized and thereby becomes a member of the Church
– this makes the Church an intermediary between the soul and god
– ‘hell of lustfullness’
– a son
– a prayer: ‘Give me chastity and continence… only not just yet’
– celibacy
– at 19 becomes a Manichean
– taught rhetoric
– addicted to astrology
– read Aristotle’s ‘Ten Categories’
– St. Augustines first reasons for rejecting Manachaenism were scientific
– bad astronomers
– divine inspiration
– sayings of the Manachaens
– Faustus
– went to Rome
– the question of ‘sin’ pre-occupied him
– met Ambrose
– ‘my sick soul’
– compares Platonic philosophy with Christian doctrine
– he found especial comfort in the writings of St. Paul
– gave up Professorship, his mistress and his wife
– baptized by St. Ambrose
– his mother rejoiced, but died shortly afterwards
– 388- returned to Hippo writing letters against various heresies – Donatist, Manachaen and Pelagian
Saint Augustine’s Philosophy and Theology
– A voluminous writer
– practically influential down to modern times
– his ‘pure’ philosophy shows very great ability
– Pantheism – Spinoza – Greek view
– Creation – ‘out of nothing’ is impossible
– best purely philosophical – eleventh book of the Confessions
– creation hypothesis
– considered Plato, Aristotle vs. Genesis
– St. Augustine maintains, as every orthodox Christian must, that the world was created, not from any certain matter, but from nothing
– God created ‘substance’ not just arrangement
– first in a very long line whose speculative views are influenced by the necessity of agreeing with the Scriptures
– God is eternal
– no before or after
– a very admirable ‘relativistic’ theory of time – BR
– Augustine’s ‘Theory of Time’ p. 354
– there are three times
– 1) a present of things past –memory
– 2) a present of things present – sight
– 3) a present of things future – expectations
– a suggestion that time is ‘subjective’ i.e. occurs in the mind
– theory : ‘time is only an aspect of our thoughts’
– one of the most extreme forms of subjectivism we have seen
– Descartes and Gassendi
– ‘cogito’
– similar to Descartes ‘ I think therefore I am’
– contract between city of this world and City of God
– he asks ‘ do you know that you think? I do.’
– immensely influential
– on time: ‘better and clearer statement than Kant’s – BR
– a theory which has been widely accepted by philosophers
– on Time: ‘it is a great advancement on anything to be found on the subject in Greek philosophy’ p. 355
– the ‘sack of Rome’
– the ‘disaster’
– Troy
– ‘wicked Goths’ will suffer in the hereafter’
– suicide always a sin (except fo Samson)
– Philosophy
– wickedness of Roman Imperialism
– astrology
– Fate
– Free-will
– Rome was always ‘wicked’ from the Rape of Sabine’ onward
– Plato
– Perception not source of truth
– Angels, demons
– society of ‘elect’
– knowledge of God only obtained through Christ
– must rely on Scripture
– antithesis of rhetoric
– Devils have ‘airy’ bodies, better than ours
– ‘eating the apple’
– Adam’s sin
– Discussion of sexual lust
– Reveals a psychology of ‘asceticism’
– Sexual intercourse
– okay for begetting offspring
– world created in six days
– six – a ‘perfect’ number
– Porphyry
– ashamed of intercourse
– our ‘penal’ shame
– shameful lust is independent of the will
– the apple again
– Adam’s sin
– virtue is : ‘complete control of the will over the body’
– two cities: Gods : Abel; Satan’s: Cain
– the anti-christ p. 361
– the ‘truth ‘ of scripture
– eternal misery
– Two ressurections – soul and death of body at the ‘Last Judgement’
– the ‘elect’ and ‘reprobate’
– the ‘damned’
– heretics and sinful Catholics will be ‘damned’
– ‘…some people might think it unjust that the ‘Omnipotent’ should first deceive them and then punish them for being deceived, but to St. Augustine, this seems quite in order.’ –BR
– what was influential was the separation of Church and State
– supplied the Western Church with the theoretical justification of it’s policies
– the Reformation p.363
– A theocracy
– weak Emperors and Monarchs enabled this (submission of State to Church) in the West
– in the East where emperors were strong this never took place.
– eschatology is Jewish
– pre-destination is ‘Pauline’
– sacred and profane in Old Testament
– St. Augustine brought these elements together
– Hitler the ‘Maccabee’ p. 364
– To understand Marx psychology one could use the following dictionary:
Yawheh = Dialectical
The Messiah = Marx
The Elect = the Proletariat
The Church = the Communist Party
Second Coming = the Revolution
Hell = punishment of the Capitalists
The Millenium = the Communist Commonwealth
Pelagias
– A Welshman
– The Pelagian Controversy
– Real name was Morgan – man of the sun
– the ‘wily’ heresiarch
– Augustine’s ‘gloomy sense of universal guilt’
– A.D. 509
– Council of Orange
– since fall of Adam only god’s grace enables man to be virtuous
– we are all wicked
– this ferocious doctrine revived by Calvin
– found in St. Paul
– esp. ‘Epistle to the Romans
– conviction of sin so dominated him that he really believed children to be of Satan
– A great deal of what is most ferocious in the medieval church is traceable to his gloomy sense
– Universal guilt
– Strange that the last men of intellectual eminence before the Dark Ages were concerned with not saving civilization or expelling barbarians or reforming the abuses of the administration, but with preaching the merit of virginity and the damnation of unbaptized infants
– These were the pre-occupations that the church handed onto the barbarians, it is no wonder the succeeding age surpassed almost all other fully historical periods in cruelty and superstition
The Fifth and Sixth Centuries
– Fifth century – the English invade Britain, causing it to become England
– Frankish invade Gaul – France
– After death of Augustine (AD430 ) there was little philosophy
– St. Patrick turns Irish to Christianity
– Goths – Alaric sacked Rome (AD410) p.367
– Huns
– Vandals invade Andalusia – becomes Spain
– Atilla the Hun (Mongol Race)
– rough German kingdoms succeeded the centralized bureaucracy of the Empire – Imperial past ceased
– great roads fell into decay
– war put an end to large-scale commerce, and centralized power survived only in the Church (with much difficulty)
– St. Cyril vs. Nestorius
– Constantinople
– the relation of Christ’s divinity with his humanity roused an incredible degree of passion and fury
– Alexandria
– compound or divide his humanity with divinity
– Hypatia
– the 3rd century – Ecumenical Council
– Ephesus 431
– Hypatia – Mathematician and neo-platonist
– ‘torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the Church and inhumanely butchered… her flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster shells and delivered to the flames
– after this Alexandria was no longer troubled by philosophers
– Nestorians object to Virgin as ‘Mother of God’
– Monophysite heresy
– Pope Leo
– Mussolini p. 369
– Theodoric
– Nestorianism was so strong in China that it seemed to have a chance of becoming the established religion
Boethius
– a Senator
– jailed by Theodoric
– ‘Consolation of Philosophy‘
– wrote it in jail
– A ‘golden volume’ – Gibbon
– purely Platonic
– Dante – Vita Nuova
– Socrates. Aristotle. Plato are the three ‘true philosophers’
– the rest: ‘usurpers’
– free from superstition and fanaticism
– Pantheism
– ‘in wise men there is no place for hatred’
– not unlike Pope’s ‘Essay on Man’
– Lucifer
– he would have been remarkable in any age,
in the age in which he lived he was ‘utterly amazing’ – BR
– reform the coinage
– great learning
– executed
– Justinian’s ‘Digest’
– closed the school of Athens
– Persia: polygamy and incest
– lofty, disinterested, sublime
– St. Sophia 532
– mosaics at Ravenna
– Empress Theodora – lady of ‘easy virtue’
– met her at the circus
– eighteen year war Goths vs. Rome
– Rome suffers far more than from the barbarian invasion
– AD568 – three years after Justinian’s death, Italy invaded by a new and very fiecre Germanic tribe: the “Lombards”
– The Saracens
– It was this period that ruined Italian civilization
– Venice – founded by refugees from the Lombards
Saint Benedict and Gregory the Great
– incessant wars from sixth century on
– the Church
– secular learning thought ‘wicked’
– Ecclesiastical institutions created a ‘framework’
– Monastic movement
– Egypt and Syria
– two hundred years of war between the Lombards and the Byzantines
– conversion of ‘the heathen’
– barbarians
– Saint Anthony – first of the hermits
– born in Egypt – AD250
– city of Thebaid – full of hermits
– another Egyptian founded the first monastery (Pachomius)
– AD315
– asceticism
– monastery life
– communal meals
– communal religious observations
– did much work – mainly agricultural
– St. Basil
– Greek orphanage for boys
– Monks and Saints
– no way of distinguishing betwee genuine ascetics and men, being destitute found monastic establishments comparatively luxurious
– Nuns before there were monks
– some shut themselves up in tombs
– Benedictine rule
– St. Benedict AD480
– elected
– given great power for entire life
– cleanliness was viewed with abhorrence
– Benedictine Order
– lice – ‘pearls of God’ a mark of ‘saintliness’
– Abbots – almost ‘despotic’ rule
– at first all reading was devotional
– vow of poverty, chastity, obedience
– later library of Monte Cassino- is famous in many ways
– world is indebted to scholarly tastes of the Beneditines
– miracle of the sieve p. 377
– grace, piety, devotion
– temptation of the flesh
– women
– throws himself into a briar bush
– torn flesh
– another miracle- a thwarted assassination attempt
– bill-hook tool used to clear briars busted…… re-attached itself
– poisoned wine; poisoned lust
– miraculously saved
– wicked priest decided to kill his soul sent several naked women into monastery
– Satan annoyed p. 380
– increase of Papal power
– an astute statesman and a man of action
– his grandfather was Pope
– born into immense wealth
Pope Gregory
– ‘greatest man of the sixth century’ –W.H. Hutton
– born 540 A.D.
– Archdeacon of Northampton
– turned his palace into a monastery
– wars and disorder
– simony
– turbulent times until eleventh century
– letters and books
– book of pastoral rule
– advice to bishops
– Alfred the Great translated it into Anglo-Saxon
– his letters are ‘extraordinarily interesting’ – BR
– directives
– Alleluia
– the Three Chapters (?) reference p. 383
– Brunichild – Queen of Franks
– writes to Agilulph, King of Lombards and then to his wife Queen Theodolints, then to Theodric and Theodobert King of Franks
– Richard – King of Visigoths
– Gregory is friend to secular learning
– lasted four centuries
– Phocus – killed Emperors
– Maurice’s five sons in front of him before killing him
– Gregory writes to the usurper in adulation
– Empress Leontia
– increasing influence of Church
– convert the heathen
– the conversion of England
– St. Patrick
– mission prospered
– this is why we are all Christians today – BR
– Edilbert King of the Angeli
– Chair of Peter the new throne of Caesar
– Mahomet born when Gregory was 30
– sent St. Augustine to Kent to convert England
– the Papacy of the Dark Ages
– Emperor and Pope
– Lombards
– 1000 A.D. vital period to understanding Church and State
– Popes ally themselves with Franks and Charlemagne thus : the Holy Roman Empire
– 7th century most Popes either Syrian or Greek
– Lombards p.309
– the main cause of the separation of Eastern and Western Churches was the refusal by the former to submit to Papal jurisdiction
– The Merovingian Kings AD739
– Charles Martel
– Battle of Tours
– defeated Moors saving France for Christendom
– Pepin
– Rome: combined the Imperial legends and martyrdom of Peter and Paul and of Peter as first Pope
– Pope crowns the Emperor of the West
– the Papal monarchy
– the Donation of Constantine p. 391
– a forgery
– forged document transferring power of emperor to Pope
– accepted as genuine by the whole of the succeeding Middle Ages
– discovered to be a forgery by Lorenzo Valla (1406 -57) in 1439
– summarized by C. Delisle Burns
– Charlemagne defeats Lombards in Italy and conquers most of Germany
– revives Western Empire being crowned by Pope AD800
– Emperor and Pope and mutual dependency
– galling to both but inseperable
– Alcuin p.392
– Charlemagne –unduly fond of his daughters
– Holy Roman Empire formed
– first book of Kings
– gains of Church
– England and Germany – St. Boniface
– St. Gall
– Yorkshire
– St. Boniface – native of Devonshire
– converts the Germans
– Britains monasterial Abbeys
– Bede
– Jarrow – York
– Ecgbert
– Alcuin
– Parma p. 395
– Danes, Normans, Saracens
– tenth century – about the darkest
– Pope Nicholas the First
– Pope Power
– royal divorces
– Johannes Scotus
– King Lothair
– King of Lorraine
– Charles the Bald
– Royal divorces
– Lothar II
– King Henry the Eighth p. 396
– King Edward the VIII
– King was head of Church of England
– independence of Pope
– the day of ‘king-priests’ and ’emperor-pontiffs’ is past
– Christianity has separated the two functons and Christian Emperors have need of the Pope in view of ‘life eternal’ whereas Popes have no need of Emperors except regards temporal things
– Photius and Emperor summoned a council and excommunicated the Pope
– Bishops and how they were appointed p. 397
– tenth century Rome
– not a civilized city
– anarchy
– Hungarians, Normans
– archbishops had come to consider themselves very great men
– the Saracens conquer Sicily
– Papacy began for about 100 years a prerequisite for the Roman aristocracy
– Marozia Pope John
– the new hereditary succession of Popes until John XII (pope at 16)
– a debauched life
– orgies at Lateran Palace
– Bishops become more and more subject to ‘lay’ feudal magnates
– year AD1000 – lowest depth to which civilization of Western Europe sank
– Monastic reforms
– Anarchy p. 399 in Europe
– in China – Tang dynasty
– from India to Spain – brilliant civilization of Islam
– A.D. 600 – 1000 the ‘Dark Ages’
– from this point the upward movement began
– which lasted til 1914 p.399
– science
– Russell’s summation of the path of civilization p. 400
– Asia
– John the Scot ChptVIII
– 9th century
– Scot means ‘Irishman’
– Greek scholar
– escaped persecution (despite not being orthodox)
– patronage from Charles the Bald
– Gauls fled to Ireland (from Atilla, Goths, Vandals and Alaric)
– Greek and Greek knowledge
– survived there (the ‘learned’)
– Latin
– returned it to continent with missionary zeal
– monadic p. 402
– comparison to German at present (i.e. flee)
– Pelagias
– extraordinary ‘freedom’
– ‘freshness’ of John Scotus (800 – 877 A.D.)
– speculations
– invited to France by Charles the Bald
– placed at head of Court school
– free will
– a philosophy ‘free of revelation’
– reason is to be preferred
– Scots porridge
– translated ‘pseudo-Dionysus’
– wrote ‘On Predestination‘
– a great influence on Catholic philosophy
– a realist
– Logos
– his greatest work: ‘On the Division of Nature’
– God : does not know ‘hisself’
– God: beginning, middle and end of all things
– God: has no ‘opposite’
– Platonic ‘world of Ideas’
– On Creation p. 405
– On Evil
– Plato the ‘summit’ of philosophers
– God is not a ‘what’
– Aristotle
– heresies
– sin is ‘misdirected will’
– punishment is not ‘eternal’
– in the end – distinction of sex will again disappear and we shall have a purely spiritual body
– even the ‘devils’ will be saved at the last.
– 1225 A.D. Pope Honorius III orders all copies of his ‘Division of Nature‘ burned
– Ecclesiastical Reform of the Eleventh Century Chpt. IX
– rapid progress
– education
– increased power of the clergy
– Architecture attained ‘ sudden sublimity’
– violent conflict between Emperor and Pope
– priest
– marriage dissolution
– extreme unction
– most important
– transubstantiation could not be performed without a priest
– ‘miraculous powers’ of priests could determine whether a man would spend eternity in Hell or Heaven.
– time in purgatory could be reduced for a fee
– one could repent on one’s deathbed
– Church becomes rich
– simony
– Bishops buy their posts & thus power and wealth not a merit
– King sells bishoprics
– celibacy
– St. Paul says, “If they cannot contain, let them marry, but a really holy man ought to be able to contain.”
– the Reform Movement
– Cluny
– William the Pious
– 12th century St Bernard
– Cistercian Order 1098 A.D.
– beauty and the devil p.411
– Conversi – labourers
– agriculture and architecture
– Fountains Abbey, Yorkshire
– the ‘lay’ brethren
– Pope Benedict the IX (12 yrs old)
– wicked debauchery
– Emperor Henry III reformer
– Leo IX
– Emperor Henry IV – ruled for fifty years
– Nicholas II made peace with Normans
– thus began the great conflict which lasted two hundred years and ended in the defeat of the Emperor
– On Divine Omnipotence
– ‘Patarine’ reform movement
– emancipation of the Papacy from ‘lay’ control
– Simony reform
– Damian
– Hildebrand
– Gregory VII
– favoured Normans
– William the Conqueror 1066
– clerical celibacy enforced
– investitures controversy
– dispute
– detaching ecclesiastical from feudal hierarchy
– the ‘stage was set’
– he (Gregory) decreed that sacraments of married clergy were invalid
– Cannosai – the Pope kept the emperor waiting for three days
– Pope pardons Henry
– this influences Henry’s German enemies
– Germans elect a rival Emperor – Emperor Rudolph
– Pope – sensing Henry’s insincerety – sides with Rudolph
– Henry defeats Germans
– elects an Anti-Pope who duly crowned him
– both had to retreat as Normans sacked Rome and took Henry prisoner
– he died one year later
– Berenger of Tours
– Lanfranc – Archbishop of Canterbury 1070
– the “ontological argument’ for the existence of God p. 417
– Descartes and Leibniz accept it as valid
– St. Anselm as inventor of the Ontological argument
– Anselm
– Trinity
– Plotinus
– Roscelin
– marks a new beginning
– Pseudo-Dionysus
– Plotinus
– Boethius
– are Platonic, but since it is fragmentary it omitted almost everything that had no bearing on religious philosophy It enlarged and emphasized certain aspects at the expense of others.
– reason is subhordinate to faith
– St.Anselm
– Aristotle – all that was known of him was ‘ The Categories’
– De Emendations
– thus he was conceived as a dialectician
– fragmentary Plato and Aristotle gradually emended as regards Plato – not until the Renaissance
Mohammedan Culture and Philosophy
– Arab attacks began almost immediately after his death
– Eastern Emperor survived until 1453
– Syria, Persia, Constantinople, Egypt, Carthage battles
– conquered
– The Hegia – Mohammed from Mecca to Medina Spain
– finally defeated
– Battle of Tours 732 A.D.
– 632 -732 one hundred years warfare
– Ottoman Turks come later
– Nestorians, Monophysites, Berbers, and Jews all helped the Arabs overcome and defeat their persecutors
– Mohammedism – a simple monotheism unencumbered by elaborate theology of the Trinity and Incarnation
– no claim to be divine
– no taxation
– no tributes
– accounted for many Christians to abandon their religion to Islam
The Arab Empire
– Ummayads 750 A.D.
– a very religious race
– plunder and wealth
– virtue and lack of fanaticism
– Harun-al Rashid (d. 809) best known of the Abbasid Caliphates
– their great ‘splendour’
– contemporary of Charlemagne & also Emperor Irene
– ‘Arabian Nights’
– luxury, poetry, learning
– from Straits of Gibraltor to the Indus Valley
– slaves
– insurrections
– silks from China, furs from Northern Europe
– Spread of Arabic language as a world language
– Prophet himself had been a merchant
– Irrigation
– Aristotle
– Kindi 873
– “Enneads” of Plotinus
– Published as theology of Aristotle, introducing great confusion into Arabic ideas of Artistotle
– Sufis
– 830 –Arabic numerals (should be called Indian numerals –Sanskrit)
– Algebra
– Omar Khayyam poet, mathematician – reformed calendar
– Firdousi – ‘Shanama’ some say equal to Homer
– Khayyams best friend was founder of ‘the Assassins’
– The ‘Old Man of the Mountain’ of legendary fame
– Nestorians at Eddessa
– Astrology, astronomy, zoology, philosophy
– Avicenna (Iba Sina) (980 -1037)
– Taught medicine and philosophy
– Passion for wine and women
– Averroes
– Occupied with problem of ‘universals’
– Albertus Magnus p.425
– ‘generis’ universals
– Logic and metaphysics
– Books banned
– Thought brings about the ‘generality of forms’
– Ueberweg
– The Koran
– Existence of god can be proved independently of revelation (as did Aquinas)
– Soul not immortal , but intellect
– Is (nous) a la Aristotle
– No personal immortalist
– Combatted by Christian philosophers
– Al Ghazeli writes : ‘The Destruction’
– Averroes counters with ‘The Destruction of the Destruction’
– regards religion as containing philosophic ‘truth’ in allegorical form
– applies in particular to ‘Creation’
– more important to Christianity
– his influence in Western Europe was very great
– denied immortality
– Spanish Jews p.427
– Arabic philosophy not original
– no capacity for for individual speculation in theoretical matters.
– Franciscans of University of Paris
– Mathematics
– Chemistry (incidental result of alchemical researches)
– Maimonedes – a Spanish Jew ’Guide to Wanderers’ written to reconcile Aristotle and Jewish theology
– The Twelfth Century p.428
– Emperor vs. Pope
– Crusades
– Scholasticism
– Lombard Cities
– Council of Clement 1095
– Henry IV ‘s son Conrad
– Crusades
– Atrocious pogrom of Jews
– Henry V
– Urban II
– Crusades – a wave of religious enthusiasm
– 1088 – 1099 – Triumphal Procession
– Investitures
– Legates
– Papal power – bishops lose control
– Concordant of Worms 1122
– Pope had become equal of Emperor
– Emperor Frederick Barbossa & Pope
– Hadrian IV an Englishman
– Missionary in Norway
– becomes Pope
– interdict
– Arnold Brescia
– thought clergy should not own property but devote themselves purely to spiritual matter
– burnt
– Resistance of populace quelled with great slaughter p.432
– Pope and Lombards vs. Emperor & Normans
– Twenty years warfare
– Pestilence destroyed Frederick’s army
– Battle of Legnano 1176
– Peace
– Third crusade with Barbossa (he died one year later) 1184
– Milan most important and interesting of Italian cities at this time
– Anti-pope
– Rise of ‘free’ cities
– Milan, Genoa, Venice, Pisa
– Lived by trade
– Patarine movement
– Some beginnings of democracy
– Elections
– Bologna
– ‘lay’ lawyers
– rich laity better educated than feudal aristocracies (nobility) of North of Alps
– Dante – last of ‘Old’ type
– Boccaccio – first of the new
– Massacre of Jews p. 434
– Richard Coeure de Lion
– Englan persecution and some of the most appalling mass atrocities against Jews
– large scale murder of Jews in Germany
– Religious propaganda
– Jews monopoly of trade in East …after Crusades largely in hands of the Christians
– much literary ‘intercourse’ with Constantinople
– translation of Greek texts into Latin
– Italian merchant paid no attention (much like Americans in China in later times)
– Shanghai
Growth of Scholasticism
– Aristotle is supreme
– Orthodox
– Aristotle – supreme authority
– Great belief in ‘dialectic’
– 12th century Rome
– reason
– question of universals
– undo emphasis on verbal distinctions and subtilties
– Roscelin
– dialectic and syllogisms
– Compegne 1050
– Abelard his pupil
– accused of heresy at Council of Rheims 1092
– recanted – for fear of ‘stoning’
– fled to England
– some sort of ‘Nominalist’
– Abelard
– Nantes 1079
– taught in Paris Cathedral
– extraordinary popularity as a teacher
– Lover of Heloise
– Schmeidler a learned German claims all Abelards letters were composed by Abelard
– condemned at Soissons
– wrote book called ‘Yes and No’ (Sic et Non)
– After ‘submission’ became Abbot of St. Gildas in Brittany
– Condemned (again) by St. Bernard this time – retires to Cluny and dies next year
– Excessive valuation of ‘Logic’
– Logic and theory of knowledge
– Critical analysis
– Largely linguistic
– A ‘Nominalist’
– Words as meaning
– Universals and resemblance
– Faith vs. reason
– Thought ‘Trinity’ could be ‘Ideas’
– Ideas are God’s Concepts
– Rationally demonstrated without help of revelation
– ‘Holy Ghost’ – Platonic ‘soul’ of the world
– Heretical hersy
– School of Chartres
– Humanistic movement
– Plato and Boethius
– reknowned interest in mathematics
– Euclid
– St. Bernard and mystical movement
– Abbot of Abbey of Clairveaux
– combats heresy in Northern Italy and southern France 1115
– a religious ‘mystic’
– Saintly heresy hunter
– his Latin Hymns have great beauty – BR
– Ecclesiastical politics
– his father a knight in first Crusade
– a Cistercian monk
– unbounded admiration for Pope
– On Pope: ‘prince of bishops, heir of apostles, etc. p 439
– John of Salisbury
– a ‘gossipy’ account of his times
– secretary to three bishops of Canterbury (including Becket)
– friend of Hadrian IV
– at end of life Bishop of Chartres died 1180
– Cathedral schools give way to universities
– Plato ‘prince of all philosophers’
– called himself an academic
– an illiterate being is a ‘crowned ass’
– James of Venice – vast translations of Aristotle and Plato
– Toledo and Venice
– d. Catonia 1160
– most philosophers of this time were French
– Scholasticism can be viewed as an offshoot of the Church’s struggle for power
The Thirteenth Century
– Middle Ages reaches culmination
– Magna Carta and House of Commons
– The great men of the thirteenth century are very great
– Innocent III, Saint Francis, Frederick II, and Thomas Aquinas
– Fiefdom
– Pope Innocent III
– A shrewd politician
– called himself ‘King of Kings, Lord of Lords’
– in Sicily the king was Frederick II
– in England King John
– after vehement resistance was compelled to yield his kingdom Innocent III and received it back as a papal fiefdom
– fourth Crusade
– soldiers of the Cross capture Constantinople upon urging from Venetians (who had the ships)
– ordered the Great Crusades against the Albigenses which rooted out heresy, happiness and prosperity and culture from Southern France
– codified canon law ‘blackest book Hell ever gave’ deposed of Emperor Otto and replaced him with Frederick II
– Monteford – father of father of Parliament
– Frederick II – ‘one of the most remarkable rulers known to history’ – BR
– Born Palermo, Sicily
– Much turbulence
– Muslim, Byzantine, Italian and German civilizations met there
– Innocent III ‘was first of great Popes in whom there was no element of sanctity’ – BR
– Greek and Araic were living languages
– fluent in six languages
– in culture and sentiment he was Italian
– a tincture of Arab and Byzantine
– was ‘at home’ with Arabic philosophy
– ‘De Tribus Imposteribus’ – book that never existed
– Lombard poet ‘love not the folk of Germany, far far from you be these mad dogs’ p.445
– 1230 – Frederick married the daughter of King of Jerusalem despite ex-communication
– led a crusade and negotiated peace with Jerusalem where he was duly crowned
– fought with Pope and League of Lombards
– Frederick became increasingly cruel
– plotters ferociously punished
– prisoners deprived of their right hand and right eye
– Sicily – Pietro della Vigna
– Gold, coins, augustals
– Roman law translated into Greek
– founded an important University at Naples
– thought of founding his own religion where he would be Messiah
– in culture he was enlightened but politically he was retrograde
– his court was ‘Oriental’ – he had a harem which included eunuchs
– Italian poetry began
– bit of a poet himself
– of all the failures in history he remains ‘one of the most interesting’
– Albigenses – cult of poverty
– Southern France
– Doctrine from Asia by way of Balkans
– like the Gnostics they considered Old Testament Jehovah a ‘wicked Demiurge’ the true god only being revealed in the New Testament
– Duality
– from the Bogamiles in Bulgaria
– a fusion of Manichaesim and Paulicians
– Marcion 150 A.D. – rejected Jewish elemnets in Christianity
– Peter Waldo
– ‘The Waldenses’ (followers of Waldo) 1170
– Poor man of Lyons
– Condemned at Council of Verona 1184
– ‘every good man is competent to preach’
– paved the way for Hussites
– Milton, “Avenge O Lord thy slaughtered Saints‘
– Carcassonne appaling massacre of Albigenses (guilty of treason to Christ)
– Innocent III
– Gregory IX 1233 founded the ‘Inquisition’
– Dealt with heresy in the usual sense but also with sorcery amd witchcraft
– In Spain mainly directed against crypto- Jews
– Jews
– Dominicans and Franciscans
– Joan of Arc
– Completely stamped out Albigenses heresy
– St. Francis of Assisi (1181 – 1226)
– one of the most loveable men known to history – BR
– Complete poverty
– Personal friend of Gregory IX
– Traveled East and preached before the Sultan
– His spontaneous happiness, his universal love and his gifts as a poet
– Hymns to the Sun
– Felt a ‘duty’ to lepers
– More interested in happiness of others than in his own salvation
– ‘if Satan existed, the future of the order founed by St. Francis, would afford him the most exquisite gratification’
– Recruited sargeants in the bitter and bloody wars of the Guelphs and Ghibellines
– Thomas of Colano
– St. Dominic – much less interesting than St. Francis
– A Castillian fanatically orthodox like Loyola
– The Dominican Order
– Confession to Jordan of Saxony
– They performed, however a valuable service to mankind by their devotion to learning
– Dominicans even more active than Franciscans in the ‘work’ of the Inquisition
– Authority of St. Thoams Aquinas – overwhelming
– Saint Thomas Aquinas chpt. XIII p.452
– Malebranche
– Aquinas – greatest of Scholastic philosophers
– A living influence
– The Stagyrite
– The battle of Aristotle as against Plato was ‘arduous’
– Son of the Count of Aquino
– Aquinas’ castle
– Kingdom of Naples
– Monte Cassino where the education of the ‘angelic doctor’ began
– Six years at Frederick II’s University at Naples
– Went to Cologne
– Studied under Albertus Magnus
– Period in Paris, then returned to Italy for the rest of his life except three years when he returned to Paris
– Trouble
– Suspected of heresy
– Heretical sympathy with the Averroists who had a powerful party in University of Paris
– Aquinas’ really competent understanding of Aristotle
– “Summa Gentiles” 1239 -64
– Wisdom – council with end of universe
– ‘nothing in revelation is contrary with reason’
– Faith
– The ‘Unmoved Mover’ is God
– God is Simple
– He is his own ‘essence’
– God is Good (John the Scot thought otherwise)
– God is Truth (this is to be understood literally)
– The Divine Intellect
– The Divine word
– Can God know particular things or does he only know general truths and universals?
– God knows an infinity of things
– Knowing anything good involves knowing the opposite (evil)
– Singulars
– ‘God could not make man to be an ass’
– The consideration of creatures book II
– God cannot…p.458
– God cannot make the sum of the angles of a triangle not be two right angles, etc.
– The transmission of Adam’s original sin
– Soul is not transmitted with the semen but is created afresh with each man
– The ‘soul’ in man
– Animals are not immortal like man
– The intellect is part of each man’s soul
– Angels are not all equals – a ‘hierarchy of order. P.459
– Evil – second causes as in the case of an artist with bad tools
– Eternal life
– Angels
– Matrimony should be indissoluble
– Incest is to be forbidden because it would complicate family life
– Against brother/sister incest there is a very curious argument: that if the love of husband and wife was combined with that of brother and sister, mutual attraction would be so strong as to cause unduly frequent intercourse. P.459
– Prayer is useful even thought Providence is unchangeable
– Divine Law
– Evil is unintentional, not an ‘essence’ and has an ‘accidental’ cause which is ‘good’
-Voluntary poverty
Objections
Mortal sin = eternal punishment
No man can be freed from sin except by grace
Three ways of knowing God
1) by Reason
2) by Revelation
3) by intuituion of things previously known by revelation
– The sacraments are valid even when administered by wicked ministers
– Led to heresy and schism
– The ‘originality’ in Aquinas is shown in his adaption of Aristotle to Christian dogma– BR
– Sharpness and clarity
– Admirable
– Nonetheless, his appeal to reason is in a sense insincere, since the conclusion to be reached is fixed in advance
– All Aquinas’s arguments depend upon the supposed impossibility of a series having no first term. i.e. series of negative integers ending with -1
– Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth, it is declared in the Christain faith; not philosophical but ‘special pleading’ – BR
The Franciscan Schoolmen
– Roger Bacon
– Dun Scotus
– William of Occam
– Roger Bacon
– Alchemy, black magic, science
– Opus Majus
– 1292
– His books condemned
– Prison 14 years
– Columbus p.464
– Euclid
– Four Causes of Ignorance
– 1) Frail and unsuitable authority
– 2) Influence of Custom
– 3) Opinion of unlearned crowd
– 4) concealment of one’s wisdom in a display of apparent wisdom
– Avicenna ‘prince and leader of philosophy’ (not Aristotle)
– The rainbow
– Praises mathematics
– Valued experiment as a source of Knowledge
– Al Farabi, Albumazar
– Influenced more by Arabic writers than Christian philosophers
– `principle of individualism’ was one of the important problems of Scholastic Philosophy
– Leibniz p. 467
– Proper names
– Black Plague 1349
– William of Occam (Yorkshire)
– Pupil of Duns Scotus
– Michael of Cesena, the pope and property of monks
– Avignon
– – Marsiglion of Padua, Emperor Louis
– All three excommunicated
– Munich – political treatise
– Reformation action
– Dante, ‘Divine Comedy’
– Conflict between Pope and Emperor really a conflict between France and Germany
– Dante not influential and ‘hopelessly out of date’
– Marsiglio of Padua politically more important than Occam
– The majority has right to punish princes
– Democratic (sort of)
– The General Council
– All beleivers will have a say in deciding doctrine
– Protestants:
– Mostly substituded the King for the Pope & secured none of their ‘ideals’
– English Civil War
– Eight questions of private judgement
– Power of Pope
– Liberty and democracy
– Moody, ‘The Logic of William Occam’
– Of all the Schoolmen, Occam was the one Luther preferred
– Protestants: the right of private judgement
– Religious belief is not a matter to be decided by any government
– Occam: concerned to restore ‘pure’ Aristotle
– Occam’s razor not to be found in his works
– A nominalist
– Aristotles ‘Categories’ and Organon’
– ‘Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity’
– Occam’s Razor
– ‘It is vain to do with more , what you can do with less’ – another version
– Logic: an instrument for the philosophy of Nature
– Understanding is of ‘things’
– Six metaphysical terms:
– Being, thing, something, one, true, good
– Explanation of ‘human knowledge’ p. 474
– – similarity is a term of second intention and is in the mind
– Intuitive
– Knowledge- perception
– Sensitive/intellectual soul
– Copernicus
– Each man’s intellect is his own not something impersonal
– Nicholas of Oresme
– A pre-cursor to Copernicus
– Copernicus p. 475
– Aquinas was primarily a theologian
– And Occam was, as far as logic is concerned, primarily a secular philosopher
– After William of Occam there were no more great Scholastics til the Renaissance
– The Eclipse of the Papacy
– Oriental mysticism p. 476
– Orphism – mystery cults
– – Rituals, priesthood, life after death
– – Ahura Mazda vs. Ahriman (Satan)
– Pagan Gods – followers of Satan
– Resurrected God
– Christians gave a new definition to heaven and hell, and to the ways of reaching one and escaping the other
– Ritual had become, by the time of St. Ambrose extremely impressive
– Church owed much to Roman Empire
– Priesthood
– Laity
– Taken from East p.478
– Plato vs. Aristotle
– The Old Testament, the mystery religions, Greek Philosophy and Roman methods of administration were all blended in the Catholic Church
– – 14th century – the Pope a ‘tool’ in the hands of the French King
– – Rise of rich commercial class and increasing knowledge of the laity
– – Thirteen years of ‘Jubilee’
– – Decline of Pope began
– – Indulgence p. 479
– – Democratic, nationalistic tendencies even stronger
– – North Italy – law and medicine
– – Spirit of Independence
– – Flanders
– – Hanse towns
– – Wool trade in England
– – Boniface III imprisonment in Tower of London
– – Henry III
– – Edward I freed the Pope
– – Nepotism and avarice
– – Averroist – did not believe in immortaliy
– – 1307 Templars tortured and killed Clement V
– – King of France vs. Templars (bankers with immense wealth, landed estates)
– – Persecution of Jews p. 480
– – Marsiglio
– – Cola di Rienza (a remarkable man)
– – The revolt against papal domination
– – Petrarch p.481
– – A ‘sort of’ Parliament
– – Democratically
– – Byron and Plutarch both wrote poems about di Rienza
– – Anglo-French Wars p.482
– – Scotland allies with French vs. England
– – The Great Schism
– – Two Popes
– – One in Avignon one in Rome
– – The General Council – every seven years
– – University of Paris (Gerson)
– – Baldessare Cossa (John XXIII) ex pirate
– – Three Popes
– – Martin V
– – Huss condemned death at stake
– – Wycliffe – bones dug up and burnt
– – 1414
– – Council 1424, 1431
– – Basel
– – Eugenius IV
– – 1433,1437, 1448, 1454
– – Anti-pope
– – Ferrara
– – Turks
– – Greek Church
– – Wycliffe last of important Oxford Scholastics
– – Fifty became heretical
– – Property a sin
– – Clergy should not own property
– – English Universities
– – Academic Freedom
– – The ‘Peasant’s Revolt’ 1381
– – Wat Tyler
– – Wycliffe’s communistic opinions
– – Poor priests
– – University of Oxford
– – House of Lords
– – House of Commons
– – The Lollards
– – Louis XI
– – Edward IV of England
– – Gunpowder p. 486
– – Strengthened the central government at expense of feudal nobility
– – Savanarola and Leonardo born in the same year
– – New Liberty of Spirit
– – On intoxication (would not last)
– – Fame, beauty and adventure
– – A riot of art, poetry and pleasure
– – Vasco de Gama & Columbus enlarged the world
– – Copernicus, the heavens
– – Donation of Constantine is rejected as a fable
– – Plato comes to be known first hand
tomreading 
Leave a comment