The Latin Transmitters

From Scienticity

In his book Ideas,^[1] Peter Watson discussed the early Middle Ages (c. 400 to 800) as a perilous time for learning and for books in western civilazation -- a "near-death" experience for the book, to use his phrase. Some of Classical Greek knowledge survived largely through the work of four authors known as "the Latin transmitters": Martianus Capella, Boethius, Cassiodorus, and Isidore. He wrote these concise sketches of their contributions.

Another reason for the eventual survival of classical ideas is that there were a set of writers who have become known as the 'Latin transmitters', men -- encylcopaedists, mainly -- who kept alive classical thought (or at least the texts of classical thought) and provided a crucial bridge between the fourth century and the Carolingian renaissance four hundred years later. Marcia Colish, among others, has described their work.

The first of these transmitters was Martianus Capella, a contemporary of Augustine and a fellow north African. Capella was probably a Christian but his religion is referred to nowhere in his writings. His main work bears a strange title: The Marriage of Philology and Mercury. The structure and text of the book are no less bizarre, but in a very readable way, which make it clear that he at least thought that the seven liberal arts were under threat at that time and needed preservation. There were seven-- and not nine -- partly because of the biblical text, in the Book of Wisdom: 'Wisdom hath builded herself an house, she hath hewn out seven pillars.' But medicine and law were omitted by Martianus (and hence from the arts faculties of medieval universities, and some modern liberal arts colleges) because they were not 'liberal', but concerned with 'earthly' things. The action of The Marriage takes place on Mount Olympus and, to begin with, mercury is the centre of attention. having spent so much of his time acting as messenger for the gods, in their quarrels and in particular their love affairs, he has decided to seek a wife himself. He is introduced to Philology, the language arts, and the introduction is a great success. The other gods agree to confer divinity on Philology and after the couple have exchanged vows, Apollo announces his wedding gift -- seven servants. 'These servants turn out to be none other than the seven liberal arts.' Each art now gives an account of herself, all being suitably attired. Grammar, for instance, is an old woman with grey hair, carrying a knife and a file, 'with which she excises barbarisms and smoothes the rough edges off awkward phrases'. Rhetoric is taller, much younger, far more beautiful, 'whose colourful dress displays the flowers of rhetoric...' The arguments brought to bear by Martianus rely on Greeks -- Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy. Bizarre it may have been, but The Marriage of Philology and Mercury was very popular and helped keep alive at least the basics of Greek thought.

Boethius, the second of the transmitter, wrote his most famous work Consolation of Philosophy while he was in jail, awaiting execution. He had no reference library on which to fall back, just what was already inside his head. Before that, however, he had set himself the task of translating the works of Plato and Aristotle into Latin. His premature death meant that he did not complete this task, but his translation of Aristotle's logic was the only text of the great philosopher available in the west in the early medieval years, ensuring that some Greek philosophy was preserved. At the same time, Boethius' conviction that his translations were necessary reinforces the view that he was persuaded of the importance of Plato and Aristotle and that there was little instruction in these authors available at the time.

The book he wrote in jail, the Consolation, is designed as an elegant dialogue between Boethius himself and Lady Philosophy, and its subject -- why a just man suffers -- made it an immediate success. Lady Philosophy is an extraordinary figure: her head touches the clouds and the hem of her Greek-style dress is decorated with the words 'practical' and 'theoretical'. She begins by chasing away all the other muses in which Boethius had sought earlier consolation.

Cassiodorus was a contemporary of Boethius and, like him, rose to a high position in the government of the Ostrogothic king, Theodoric. And, like Boethius, Cassiodorus was concerned about the decline of Greek studies in the west. (Unlike Boethius, however, he lived to a ripe old age.) His first idea was to found a Christian university in Rome. He approached the pope but, given the political unrest of the era, he was turned down. Cassiodorus next turned to the growing monastic movement. Using his own money, he founded (at Vivarium, in southern Italy) the first monastery that became a centre of scholarship, a practice followed by many other monasteries as the centuries passed. He collected manuscripts, of both Christian and secular works, and served as head of the school for the rest of his life. Cassiodorus shared the basic assumptions of the time in which he lived, namely that the main aim of education was the study of theology, church history, and biblical exegesis, but he also believed that, first, a proper grounding in the liberal arts was needed. He therefore prepared a kind of 'syllabus of universal knowledge' -- this was his major work as a transmitter, the Institutes Concerning Divine and Human Readings, and appended to it a bibliography of classical writings that, he said, would aid monks' understanding. Besides identifying titles that should be read, Cassiodorus outlined the history of each of the liberal arts, even including authors whose views were by then dated, but who had been important in their time. This set of ideas became the basis of the curriculum in many monastic schools of the Middle Ages and in order to be able to read the classical texts more copies of these books were needed. Therefore, it was at Cassiodorus' instigation that monasteries began to copy selected classical works, another reasons why they became centres of scholarship. Cassiodorus also produced a book on spelling, which has generally been taken as proof that, in addition to the declined in Greek studies, there was at the same time a fall in Latin literacy as well.

[The remaining transmitter was] Isidore, the early seventh-century bishop of Seville. His most important work in the transmission of ideas was the Etymologies, the title of which reflects his view, not uncommon at a time fascinated by symbolism and allegory, that the road to knowledge led through words and their origins. He made many mistakes (just because the origins of words are similar does not mean that the objects or ideas they represent are similarly related), but the had an extraordinary range -- biology, botany, philology, astronomy, law, monsters, stones and metals, war, games, shipbuilding and architecture, in addition to Christian subjects. The gusto and relish which he brought to his task reveals, says Marcia Colish, his view 'that if he did not save culture, armed with his own extensive knowledge and the weapons of scissors and paste, no one else would'. Despite its shortcoming, in the early Middle Ages Etymologies became a standard reference work.

Notes

1. ^ Peter Watson, Ideas : A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud, New York : HarperCollinsPublishers, 2005, pp. 247--249.