Martianus Capella.

The medieval vogue of the fifth century work of Martianus Capella, The Nuptials of Philology and Mercury, and the Seven Liberal Arts,[2288] has been too frequently demonstrated to require further emphasis here, although it is still a puzzle just why a monastic Christian world should have selected for a text book in the liberal arts a work which contained so much pagan mythology, to say nothing of a marriage ceremony. Nor need we repeat its fulsome allegorical plot and meager learned content. Cassiodorus tells us that the author was a native of Madaura, the birthplace of Apuleius, in North Africa, and he appears to be a Neo-Platonist who has much to say of the sky, stars, and old pagan gods, often, however, by way of brief and vague poetical allusion.

Absence of astrology.

Of astrology there is very little trace in Capella’s work. In a discussion of perfect numbers in the second book the number seven evokes allusion to the fatal courses of the stars and their influence upon the formation of the child in the womb; but the eighth book, which is devoted to the theme of astronomy as one of the liberal arts, is limited to a purely astronomical description of the heavens.

Orders of spirits.

The chief thing for us to note in the work is the account of the various orders of spiritual beings and their respective location in reference to the heavenly bodies.[2289] Juno leads the virgin Philology to the aerial citadels and there instructs her in the multiplicity of diverse powers. From highest ether to the solar circle are beings of a fiery and flaming substance. These are the celestial gods who prepare the secrets of occult causes. They are pure and impassive and immortal and have little or no direct relation with mankind. Between sun and moon come spirits who have especial charge of soothsaying, dreams, prodigies, omens, and divination from entrails and auguries. They often utter warning voices or admonish those who consult their oracles by the course of the stars or the hurling of thunderbolts. To this class belong the Genii associated with individual mortals and angels “who announce secret thoughts to the superior power.” All these the Greeks call demons. Their splendor is less lucid than that of the celestials, but their bodies are not sufficiently corporeal to enable men to see them. Lares and purer human souls after death also come under this category. Between moon and earth the spirits subdivide into three classes. In the upper atmosphere are demi-gods. “These have celestial souls and holy minds and are begotten in human form to the profit of the whole world.” Such were Hercules, Ammon, Dionysus, Osiris, Isis, Triptolemus, and Asclepius. Others of this class become sibyls and seers. From mid-air to the mountain-tops are found heroes and Manes. Finally the earth itself is inhabited by a long-lived race of dwellers in woods and groves, in fountains and lakes and streams, called Pans, Fauns, satyrs, Silvani, nymphs, and by other names. They finally die as men do, but possess great power of foresight and of inflicting injury.[2290] It is evident that Capella’s spiritual world is one well fitted for astrology, divination, and magic.

The Celestial Hierarchy of Dionysius the Areopagite.

Very different are the orders of spirits described in The Celestial Hierarchy, supposed to be the work of Dionysius the Areopagite, where are set forth nine orders of spirits in three groups of three each: Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; Dominions, Virtues, and Powers; Princes, Archangels, and Angels. The threefold division reminds us of Capella, but there the resemblance ceases. The pseudo-Dionysius takes all his suggestions from the Old and New Testaments, rather than from classical mythology and such previous classifications of spirits as that of Apuleius. And while his starting from such verses of the Bible as “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, descending from the Father of lights,” and “Jesus Christ the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” and his using such phrases as “archifotic Father” and “thearchic ray,” lead us to expect some Gnostic-like scheme of association of the spirits with the various heavens and celestial bodies, in fact he throughout speaks of the spirits solely as celestial and deiform and hypercosmic minds, and unspeakable and sacred enigmas of whose invisibility, transcendence, infinity, and incomprehensibility any description can be merely symbolic and figurative. Their functions seem to consist chiefly in contemplation of the deity or their superior orders and illumination of man and their inferior orders. They are not specifically associated by Dionysius with the celestial bodies, much less with any terrestrial objects, and so his account lays no foundation for magic and astrology, unless as its transcendent mysticism might pique some curious person to attempt some very immaterial variety of theurgy and sublimated theosophy. Although the Pseudo-Dionysius wrote in Greek,[2291] his work was made available for the Latin middle ages by the translation of John the Scot in the ninth century.[2292]

BOOK III. THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

Chapter 24.The Story of Nectanebus.
Chapter 25.Post-Classical Medicine.
Chapter 26.Pseudo-Literature in Natural Science of the Early Middle Ages.
Chapter 27.Other Early Medieval Learning.
Chapter 28.Arabic Occult Science of the Ninth Century.
Chapter 29.Latin Astrology and Divination, Especially in the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Centuries.
Chapter 30.Gerbert and the Introduction of Arabic Astrology.
Chapter 31.Anglo-Saxon, Salernitan, and other Latin Medicine in Manuscripts from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century.
Chapter 32.Constantinus Africanus.
Chapter 33.Treatises on the Arts before the Introduction of Arabic Alchemy.
Chapter 34.Marbod.