In the twelfth century Richard of St. Victor, a monastic who prized the understanding of God above all else wrote, “We call pure understanding that which is without admixture of imagination…” (Richard of St. Victor, 146). He believed the most elevated form of contemplation of God could not exist alongside imagination. While it could be beneficial in some contexts, at the highest levels to which a human could rise, the imagination could not exist. By the early sixteenth century the doctor Paracelsus supported a theory of the imagination that entirely contradicted many of his medieval predecessors. He believed that “Imagination is an ‘astral’ (a celestial force). It is thus capable of lifting man up and joining him to cosmic matter, the ‘primordial man’” (Pagel,
122). The earlier Richard of St. Victor believed the imagination held man back from the highest level of contact with God, while Paracelsus believed that such contact was possible only through the use of imagination. The history and causes of this dramatic reversal of the imagination’s status are traced in this paper. This study will underline the changes which occurred that allowed the imagination to transform from a faculty largely understood and analyzed in terms of its inborn morality and its ability to encourage moral
(or immoral) actions, to a force of enormous power which, of all the parts comprising a human, most resembled the corresponding force in God. This radical change in definition would result in an equally radical change in the manner and purpose for which the imagination was used.

The changing and various of beliefs in the imagination make it an ideal window through which to view the workings of the medieval and Renaissance mind. Study of the imagination is important, not only for its own sake, but also because it provides clues to the broader development of western thought as a whole. The imagination is the perfect pathway to cultural and historical understanding because it was often considered an integral component of cognition, sensory perception, memory, worshiping and connecting to the Divine and, at times, judgment. These are but a few examples of the diverse aspects of life and thought which the imagination encompassed. Since the imagination is tied to many things considered sacred by Medieval and Renaissance thinkers alike, its characteristics and abilities take on an importance that might seem, to modern eyes, thoroughly disproportionate. But in a society so totallly connected to God as that of Mediaeval and Renaissance Europe, the emphasis placed on the imagination is not only logical but necessary to those who would wish to use their God-given abilities to escape the fires of Hell and ascend to the perfection of Heaven.
One of the causes of the difficulties inherent in such a project as this is the sheer impossibility of consistently pinning down exactly what is being studied by those historical figures who concerned themselves with the imagination. From a modern perspective it appears deceptively simple. The imagination exists today and it existed in the past. What is more, the imagination often went by a similar name in the past
( imaginativa ). However, it quickly becomes apparent that imagination, or imaginativa , does not necessarily mean the same thing as it does today, nor does it mean the same thing across authors, texts, or eras. Additionally, there are several other words that roughly mean imagination: phantasia , eikasia , and fantasy are often associated with
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manifestations of faculties related to imagination – these too do not always mean the same thing. Though the history, usage and philology of these words can be helpful in shedding light on the nature of the imagination, such analysis provides only clues to its larger development and evolution. The concept rather than the words used to express that concept are of primary importance.
A vast number of philosophers and theologians have contributed their opinions on the nature of imagination. This is nowhere more clear than the Middle Ages, a time when the inclusion of the imagination within faculty psychology and the prevalence of that system led nearly every writer concerned with the nature of man or God to make at least some mention of the imagination’s nature. In the Middle Ages there seem to be two dominant strains of thought on this subject, the psychological (or empirical, as Murray
Wright Bundy terms it) and the mystical. There are numerous variations within these approaches, but in general the psychological approach consists of defining the imagination within the context of the human faculties, or inner senses, and evaluating it in relation to the other faculties. This approach may be concerned with the subject for its own sake or for the sake of fitting the imagination into the greater harmonious system of the cosmos in which a Christian should believe. The mystical approach will also often use faculty psychology to define the imagination, but here the emphasis is on how the imagination aids or abets the religious seeker’s goal of contemplating God. This concern entails an explanation of faculty psychology since the imagination’s function in mind and soul is key to its ability to help an individual in the pursuit of God, but in these texts the higher, ultimate, goal is consistently kept in the forefront.
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In the Renaissance, mentions of the imagination are slightly less common than they are in the Middle Ages, since the development of humanist thought led to study which focused on man instead of God. As a result of this new focus the importance of the imagination in aiding the contemplation of God lessened, but its study still remained at the forefront in certain groups (like the magi). In the Renaissance, the more conservative Scholastics tended to use much the same methods and explanations as had their medieval empiricist forbears, but a new branch of thought on the subject also developed. This branch, headed by Humanists and magi like Marsilio Ficino, Pico della
Mirandola, Cornelius Agrippa, and Giordano Bruno, took ideas that only had been implied in medieval texts and expanded them into theories that gave a new-found power and privilege to the imagination.
In the Medieval world, the imagination was often viewed as crucial to the exercise and development of morality and judgment. This connection may seem strange to the modern reader since in the current era the imagination is usually valued only for its ability to visualize and construct creative images; but in the Middle Ages the dominance of Christianity meant that every human characteristic would be evaluated in terms of the aid it could give towards the goal of correct and enlightened Christian life. The imagination was seen by some as an excellent tool for reaching this goal while, for others, it was mainly responsible for regressions from this goal. A sizable number of those who spent time considering issues pertaining to the distribution and function of the psychological faculties believed the imagination to hold a power capable of determining
(or aiding in the determination of) right from wrong. The imagination could, in some theories, help reinforce correct behavior through the visualization of the disastrous or
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beneficial consequences that a particular action might have. To understand the role of the imagination in the Medieval world, it is essential to understand contemporary views on psychology, anatomy, and, as with all things in the Medieval world, religion. These fields are vast and multi-dimensional, so for the purposes of this project their examination will extend only to those areas in which they intersect with the imagination.
Much of medieval thought and knowledge -- including definitions and theories on the imagination -- find roots in the classical world. This is true for religion as well as for science and philosophy. The saturation of the Christian corpus in pagan thought is not surprising since many of the earliest and most influential church fathers were originally pagans schooled in philosophy. The two philosophers of the ancient world who most influenced the Middle Ages were Plato and Aristotle. In the minds of many of
Christianity’s early thinkers, Plato was the dominant philosopher of the two. However, as
Christianity began to develop its own particular theology and methods of thought,
Aristotle partially usurped Plato’s position. This reversal was connected with the shift that occurred throughout the Middle Ages, most prominently in the 13 th century, in
Christian thought from the more individual and mystical, to the more scientific and defined.
Early Christianity allowed relatively extensive religious freedoms for its adherents. After all, at this religion’s inception there was no clear Christianity, but instead multiple Christianities localized in the various areas to which the followers of
Christ proselytized. At its beginnings Christianity was a religion into which the teachings of Plato could be easily incorporated. A unified theology did not exist and so individual believers could construct their religious beliefs as they wished. By the end of the Roman
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Empire Christianity had begun to undergo the early stages of unification under the leadership of bishops, the leading ecclesiastical authorities. This cohesion led to a restriction in the possibilities of thought and belief available to those who were, or wished to become, Christians. So while a core of general beliefs was common to
Christians, “…the primitive church was not characterized by an explicit unity of doctrine; therefore heresy could sometimes claim greater antiquity than orthodoxy” (Pelikan vi, pg
70). Movements which had originally been just another form of Christianity now became heresies (Gnosticism and Arianism were particularly reviled by the church at this time).
This fear of heresy extended not only to organized groups of those who considered themselves Christians, but also to individuals and their personal beliefs. Even writings from some of the most respected Christians, like Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) were deemed questionable, if not downright heretical by theologians of subsequent generations. In the case of Augustine (and many other Christian writers of his era), the main cause for this devaluation was the overly Neoplatonic stance that existed -- particularly in his earlier works.
Neoplatonism should not be equated with the beliefs of Plato, but it certainly values many of his beliefs and can identify its influences with the writings of Plato, particularly the treatises centered on more theological issues like the Phaedra and
Timeus . This Neoplatonism could be brought into line with a form of Christianity, but the later disseminators of orthodoxy did not always tolerate it. The writings of Plato explain the contents of the universe as Forms, those things copied from the Forms, or things copied from copies of the Forms. The Forms are ultimate, perfect, and divine.
There are Forms of Truth, Beauty, and other such concepts that, on earth, are never fully
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expressible, and certainly never fully present, but there are also Forms that are the perfect origins of things on earth (trees, clothes, or to use Plato’s frequent example, a bed).
These Forms cannot be fully accessed or understood by humans; the best which an individual can do is attempt to understand them. Despite the fact that humans cannot truly comprehend Forms, their pursuit should nonetheless be the primary goal of humanity since in grasping even a piece of a Form the Divine itself is glimpsed. Plato sees philosophy as a continual attempt to understand and reach these forms, and so he prioritizes the discipline of philosophy above any other activity. He devalues, though not completely, art, poetry, and the imagination since the product of all these enterprises is merely the creation of a copy of a copy of a Form. Unlike philosophy these lesser pursuits do not even strive to reach the Forms, but only to revel in the baseness of corporeal copies.
Scholars have formed opposing theories on the nature and development of Plato’s views on the imagination, his opinion of the imagination may have developed throughout his life to reach its most radical and powerful form in the Republic and his later treatises, or alternately, it may have existed in only the most brief and dismissive form. He clearly looks down on the imagination as a misuse of the human mind since it recalls and visualizes only copies of forms. Plato’s dislike of the imagination is interwoven with his theory of being and becoming. For Plato the imagination focuses on the inferior becoming and seeks to replicate those images of the inferior within the brain.
Here [Republic VI]. As in the earlier Dialogues, Plato continues to attach primary importance to the realm of Being, rather than to that of Becoming.
The soul for him is like the eye: ‘when resting upon that on which truth and being shine, the soul perceives and understands, and is radiant with intelligence; but when turned towards the twilight of becoming and perishing, then she has opinion only, and goes blinking about, and is first
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of one opinion and then of another, and seems to have no intelligence.’
Plato insists that truth is a matter of right vision, and is the first, so far as we know, to talk about the eye of the mind. At this point in his thought, however, the imagination could hardly be regarded as such an eye; rather, the powers which are our present concern seem to be hindrances to spiritual vision.
(Bundy, 24)
Here again the presence of the imagination is only implied. The “blinking about” motion of the mind’s eye indicates that there are targets for this gaze, images and shadows. The inconstant nature of the eye when it is directed inward shows Plato’s view of the contents of the imagination -- for him they are shallow shells which enthrall the discerning eye only momentarily as it rotates on its path towards truer sights.
Some modern scholars like Murray Wright Bundy believe that Plato’s later writings contain a radical shift from his earlier views. These later works are seen to grant the imagination a position of fundamental importance in the apprehension of Divine
Forms. Bundy sees an emphasis on phantasia in the text of the Timeaus, albeit one which principally extols the potent phantasia of the divine mover. The phantasia of the human is somewhat less exalted. In Bundy’s reading, Plato divides the role of phantasia into four categories. The first two are exclusively the domain of God.
The highest kind of creative activity is that whereby God made the universe according to a divine pattern. This function receives its most complete exposition in Plato’s theology, especially in the myth of the
Timaeus , where ideas are represented as existing in their purity only in the mind of God. According to the image of these he created the universe.
This highest creative activity has no counterpart in acquisitive activity. (2)
The second type of creation ascribed to God is the production of phantasms in our dreams and visions. …We must remember, however, that this creation of phantasms is an activity of God, not man. It results in the inspiration of poet and prophet…
(Bundy, 41-42)
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Bundy seems to be classifying the creation of Forms as an activity of the phantasia . This seems a logical conclusion to draw since Plato “…seems content to regard ‘phantasy’ or
‘phantastic imitation’ as the inclusive term, standing in the field of divine activity as well as in the human for image-making in general” (Bundy, 39). Plato clearly differentiates between the abilities of the Divine and of man; this is not surprising since in Plato’s conception of the universe humans should spend their lives trying to grasp the Forms.
Humans are so woefully inferior to the Divine that this goal is seldom met. As humans can barely grasp even the mere hint of the Forms, it is not surprising that the human use of phantasia, which is a similar, if enormously reduced activity to that of the one practiced by the divine, is totally inferior to the divine use. Despite its inferiority, human use of phantasia can be put to a good purpose. Plato describes this highest form of human imagination as the third level of phantasia .
The highest creative function of man, described as the making of things themselves…the carpenter, says Plato, creates the bed in the image of an idea, just as God creates the universe according to a divine pattern. The meaning will perhaps be clearer if we think of this carpenter as an architect aiming to express an immaterial ideal. In this sense the
Parthenon or a cathedral is the image or embodiment of a religious conception, the likeness of a spiritual ideal; and the artist is expressing his ideal through the same power of imagination of which the scientist makes use in his schematic representations.
(Bundy, 42)
As humans, we can only make approximations of the divine Forms. These rough imitations are, while malformed and polluted in comparison to the Forms, the closest and therefore the best approximation which an individual may physically encounter. This is a profoundly simple way of viewing the world – it is in the creation of the most basic elements of our lives, chairs, houses, as well as temples – that we come closest to
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imitating the role and power of the Divine on the corporeal earth. This does not imply that Plato is lowering the status of philosophy; in this theory he is dealing with creation, not the attempt to comprehend. Philosophy still reigns supreme. This type of phantasia would be, in the Renaissance, expanded and granted far more power than it was in its original description. However, at that time the act of phantasia would not be associated with the works of material craftsmen but instead with the creations of the forceful and well trained mind.
Plato’s fourth and final articulation of the functions of phantasia emphasizes his dislike for the human use of this power.
(4) ‘Phantastic imitation’ seems to be the creative activity corresponding the fourth acquisitive power…The ‘phantastic’ imitator has no higher concern than the production of impressions of material objects, just as the thinker who dwells in  ì  a  ía has no loftier conception of knowledge than the receiving of impressions. Each is concerned with opinion rather than knowledge, with things rather than ideas, with the changing rather than the absolute and eternal…”
(Bundy, 43)
In the reproach of the lowest form of phantasia Plato foreshadows the negative medieval views of imagination. Though he is not describing phantasia’s role as an encourager of sin, he is describing it as a concealer of truth and a delayer of the good pursuit (i.e. philosophy). Avoiding the pursuit of philosophy is tantamount to sin in Plato’s eyes since it is, in effect, a refusal to contemplate God. In this explanation of the powers of
 ì  a  ía the imagination is devalued, yet it is defined as being concerned with opinion.
For Plato the opinion ranked far below knowledge but for medieval thinkers the opinion would hold a potent power of its own as a distinguisher of the moral from the immoral – a prime concern in the Christian life, littered with the traps of sin.
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Plato also gives the imagination a second moral (or more often immoral) role in his description of the imagination’s power to create daydreams within the mind. He believes that daydreams reinforce incorrect beliefs in those who are immoral and serve no particular purpose in those who are moral.
We give very definite shape to our hopes and fears. Because this is so, phantasy plays an essential part in regulating conduct. ‘And the fancies of hope are also pictured in us; a man may often have a vision of a heap of gold, and pleasures ensuing, and in the picture there may be a likeness of himself mightily rejoicing over his good fortune.’ The good, he concludes, keep before them good images; while the bad have only ludicrous imitations of the true. Their images, the concrete embodiments of their false opinion, lead only to a pleasure ‘about things which neither have nor have ever had any real existence’. This power of phantasy, more intimately than ever bound up with the problem of knowledge, becomes the means by which conduct is regulated. To know oneself, from one point of view, is to know the state of one’s phantasies as the various shapes taken by our feelings in determining out acts our hopes, fears, and desires. This conception of the rôle of the imagination, the source of
Aristotelian and Stoic views, was to pervade classical and medieval ethics.
(Bundy, 47-48)
This is an internal form of creation, yet it does possess power since an individual’s imagined goals and outcomes easily affect actions and rational thoughts. Phantasia in this sense seems separate from the phantasia which aids in the reproduction of Forms or copies of Forms. In this expression, the act of the imagination itself is not morally reprehensible; instead the neutral image created by the imagination produces moral or immoral actions in the individual.
Cocking, a modern chronicler of the development of the imagination believes
Bundy’s interpretation of Plato may be seriously in error. He contends that Bundy’s reading of Platonic texts is entirely dependent on a misinterpretation of the term eikasia .
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When M.W. Bundy wrote his splendid book on imagination (1927) he was himself under the spell of the Romantics and anxious to give Plato credit for the Romantic belief in imagination as a means to truth. Part of his strategy is to read the Greek word eikasia as imagination, and to suggest that the distinction between ekasia and phantasia foreshadows Coleridge’s distinction between imagination and fancy. But ekasia and its associates have to do with copies and copying, just as phantasia and its associates have to do with appearances and appearing.
(Cocking, 13)
It seems likely that Cocking’s analysis is correct in that Plato does not appear to have seen “…imagination as a means to truth” but Cocking takes his devaluation of the imagination in Plato too far with his assertion that eikasia is not connected to the imagination because of its connection with copies and copying. Copying may not be the noblest of the traits associated with the imagination, yet it is described as a trait by medieval and classical chroniclers alike and appears to be one of the most common uses of the imagination for those eras. Most medieval thinkers believed that the imagination was concerned with retaining an image within the mind – a memory, or copy of the original. Though some went beyond the act of copying to describe further abilities, many left it at that fairly basic level. In his analysis of the term Cocking commits the common error of placing his own interpretations of the nature of imagination onto an historical analysis. Since these interpretations seem largely influenced by the Romantics, the fairly menial historical understanding of the imagination becomes clouded with a reverence that finds its roots in modern times.
Regardless of the degree to which Plato articulated the power and import of the imagination, it is clear that his work gave some validity to the study of the nature of images which would be crucial to the development of later theories on the imagination -even if this glancing attention was all that was included in Plato’s analysis. However it
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appears that Plato’s interest in the subject extended somewhat farther. The function of
Eikasia is important since it is through its exercise that the philosopher may learn to distinguish between the copied image and the Form.
Eikasia is the name given to the power proper to the very lowest subregion, in which Socrates places natural and, presumably, artificial images, such as shadows, reflections, and paintings. The upper region of the visible world contains all the objects of nature themselves, and its proper power is called ‘trust’ ( pistis ) – that is, the unconscious familiarity with which we move in the surrounding world. The divided line is meant to read from the top down, so that eikasia , although the lowest, is by no means the most primitive power. It is understandable only from a higher ground. Its exercise marks the complex beginning of all Platonic philosophy, which involves the ability to recognize images as images, to distinguish between copy and genuine original (Klein 1965).
(Brann, 37)
In so doing Plato teaches the philosopher to avoid unnecessary consideration of the products of phantasia produced in the lower two stages of Platonic imagination. Though the image produced by phantasia is degraded, the analysis of that image is a part of understanding the higher levels of the universe. This analysis is not carried out solely by the imagination, but by a combination of the psychological faculties. The imagination is essential, but not necessarily central.
Phantasia , the noun corresponding to the verb, is used where Plato is discussing the nature of perception in terms of ‘judgments’ made by the mind about sensation; the awareness of the sensation as such cannot be called true or false, but we may ‘judge’ or ‘interpret’ the sensation rightly or wrongly, mistaking, for example, the person we see in the distance for another.
(Cocking, 13)
This early connection of phantasia with judgment would be one of the components of
Plato’s thought on the human psychology to gain acceptance in the Middle Ages,
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however, the way in which this judgment was connected to the imagination would change dramatically as Platonic theories of the imagination were reinterpreted. Whereas for
Plato, the imagination helped to visually articulate the transmissions of the sense and judge them, in the Medieval world the imagination, in the majority of descriptions, would be stripped of its ability to contribute to the judging of sensory perceptions.
Plato’s thought was attractive to early Christians since it allowed for a divine and perfect space and order while, at least in the later Neoplatonic reinterpretation of Plato’s thought, allowing corporeal elements as well as the human form and consciousness to have a divine connection and model. The general Neoplatonic belief:
…included the common belief in a hierarchy or ladder of creation, stretching from God down through the spiritual world of the angels, through the celestial spheres and the spheres of the four elements (Fire,
Air, Water, Earth), to man, and, below man, to animals and to inanimate creation.
(Hillgarth, 14)
Through this depiction of the cosmos, Neoplatonists could see themselves as connected, albeit distantly, to God himself. This link mirrored, in the realm of philosophy, the
Christian connection to God which Jesus’ incarnation as a human assured. This slightly modified Platonic conception of the universe allowed the Neoplatonists to create an imagination that held far more power than that of Plato. Now, since humans had a connection to the divine realms, their failure to strive towards those levels in contemplation and prayer was far more reprehensible than it would be in a world without those interconnecting levels of being. To refuse God was a far more egregious failure for a Christian Neoplatonist than it was for a pagan whom any Christian would see as bound in an ignorance of truth.
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The imagination, like humanity in general, was subject to the same partial divinization and corresponding peril of damnation. Imagination could serve the one truly good purpose of contemplating, obeying, and worshipping God, but it could also lead towards sin. Medieval thinkers tended to emphasize the sinful aspects of the imagination, dwelling on its ability to corrupt the “holier” of the faculties like cognition and memory.
This Neoplatonist sense of responsibility in pursuing the Divine aligned itself perfectly with Christian conceptions of the role of humanity that stressed humanity’s duty to pray and struggle towards God, and simultaneously marked a refusal to complete these actions as the worst sort of sin – a refusal to truly desire and work towards goodness. The imagination, like humanity in general, was subject to these same constraints.
The later Neoplatonic writers, in their eclectic way, drive to the limit the dual notion of the imagination as open to infusions from above and as liable to corruptions from below. But the latter theme, the drag exercised by the sense-burdened imagination and the dangers arising from manic phantasy, is more preponderant.
(Brann, 50)
This dual nature of the imagination would be a significant cause of the Neoplatonic systems devaluation in the Middle Ages since the system introduced by Aristotle that dominated in the Middle Ages allowed the different components of the imagination to be termed either “bad” or “good”. This bifurcation allowed for a stable and consistent view of the world in which morality could be established by a being’s nature rather than the degree to which it had been corrupted or elevated. This way of thinking made it easier to declare the imagination as an immoral force in man. Though negative aspects of the imagination would, for a time, be seen as definitive, the positive aspects remained, waiting to be rediscovered.
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The positive attitude evidenced in the Neoplatonist interpretation of the imagination also existed for the universe as a whole. The Neoplatonists believed that since everything on earth was a model of the heavenly forms, the earthly things shared at least a little of the divinity allotted to the divine Forms.
…the Neoplatonists insist that the supra-sensible is sensibly representable.
Thus the Neoplatonic Synesius, Augustine’s pagan contemporary, speaks of a phantasticon pneuma , an ‘imaginary spirit,’ which mediates between matter and spirit, and performs the marvelous, paradoxical act of entering human dreams and visions to show the world beyond.
(Brann, 50-51)
This model of the universe was not at all in line with the original taught by Plato, but it did maintain several key components of his theory, like the existence of the Forms and the ladder of creation.
This Neoplatonism infused many of the ideas of Augustine. Augustine’s general theory of the imagination,
…distinguished between the simple impression, the phantasy proper, and the image in the service of reason, and denied to the first the name of
‘phantasy.’ Of almost equal importance is his insistence upon the power of the will, first, in the trinity of the outward man to confuse impressions, often called ‘phantasies,’ with physical states, and, second, in the trinity of the inner man, to confuse these simple memory-images with phantasies resulting from them.
(Bundy, 161)
Though this theory with its dependence on the will may seem more Christian than
Platonic, the distinction between the higher and more spiritual phantasies and the lower corporeal phantasies can be associated with the Neoplatonic hierarchical ladder of creation. Belief in this ladder also explains Augustine’s desire to separate the two forms of imagination (“simple impression” and “imagination in the service of reason”) since it
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seems somewhat immoral to have the results of one instrument positioned on such radically different levels of the ladder (Bundy, 161). By distinguishing between the causes of the two created images Augustine ensures a typically Christian psychology by maintaining a divide between the cause of holy abilities and the cause of sinful abilities.
Augustine, with his respect for classical authors, wished to view reason as an almost divine ability and the senses as inferior and often sinful. This respect for reason necessitates his separation of the two phantasies.
In addition to his frequent alignment with the Neoplatonic tradition, Augustine’s theories on the imagination were infused with the ideas of Aristotle.
Augustine is, of course, reproducing the distinction of Aristotle’s De
Memoria , perhaps as handed down by Neoplatonism and he is also using traditional material when he insists upon the supremacy of reason. His importance lies in his assertion that these errors of imagination are acts of will. ‘But if that will which moves to and fro, hither and thither, the eye that is to be informed, and unites it when formed, shall have wholly converged to the inward phantasy….then so exact a likeness of the bodily species expressed from the memory is presented, that not even reason itself [can] discern whether the body itself is seen without, or only something of the kind thought of within.’
(Bundy, 167)
By incorporating the will into the imagination (or placing it in the same location as the imagination, the exact nature of the connection is unclear) Augustine makes morality and judgment a concern of the imagination. With the power of the will the imagination has a motive force in its power capable of defining the nature of phantasms and transmitting the opinions on those phantasms to the reason.
It was Aristotle who provided the authority for Augustine’s theories on the imagination and its connection with the will. His treatises held information on the various faculties within the body (though they were not known as such at the time) and in
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so doing gave Augustine and other thinkers arguments to support their theories on the nature and interactions of the faculties. Aristotle became the basis for medieval explanations of where these faculties were located, how they functioned, why they functioned as they did, and more importantly the effect that these faculties had on the human and on the pattern of life as a whole. Aristotle’s work on the nature and psychology of man and animals would later be linked to the physiological work of Galen
(b. 131 AD), thus creating an imposing hybrid of philosophical argument and anatomical
“proof”.
Aristotle too believes that reasoning is the manipulation of pure ideas; but since, for him, ideas are not derived from a super-sensible realm, either by direct intuition or through the soul’s reminiscences of the ideas it knew in heaven before its incarnation, but by abstraction from the sensible world itself, images become the essential intermediary between perception and conception. The best thinking rises above images, as it were, but can only do so by rising through them…
(Cocking, 18)
This way of thinking not only allowed for the devaluation of the imagination which would become so common among the Medieval empiricists, but it also allowed for a mystical conception of the world in which the imagination was a stage on the path to the contemplation of God. Many of Aristotle’s theories were acceptable in the Medieval world since they closely coincided with the teachings of Christianity. He advocates for a universe in which images are devalued, serving as the perfect roots for sin, but which at the same time contain a path to God through the sins implicit in human nature.
While Aristotle does not focus entirely on the negative, the imagination unbridled by other faculties was considered a very dangerous thing.
Phantasia can be receptive and reproductive, as in perception, or creative and productive as in fantasies or the kind of ‘thinking out’ that uses
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images [for example math which makes use of the visualization of a certain geometrical figure]. But whereas the work of nous poietikos
[active mind] leads to true perceptions and true opinions, imagination can most mislead when it is most independently creative, as in hallucinations and some kinds of dreams.
(Cocking, 20)
This opinion of the entirely independent imagination seems to indicate a level of inherent deception and immorality. Since this is the only state in which the imagination is unfettered by other faculties, it would stand to reason that this state would most accurately reflect the nature of the imagination. By this measure it appears that in
Aristotle’s opinion the imagination has a level of innate falsity that can only be countered by the other faculties.
Aristotle’s solution to the problem of the nature of the imagination was comprehensive, complex, and altogether key to an understanding of medieval psychology and religion. He believed that two types of imagination exist, “… all imagination is either (1) calculative or (2) sensitive. In the latter all animals, and not only man, partake”
( De Anima 433b 30). The sensitive imagination receives the image transmitted from the sense organs, completes a rudimentary evaluation, and stores the image. His calculative imagination on the other hand had the ability to create. It could take several existing elements and combine them into one fantastic whole. For example, an individual could think of a horse and a bird, combine them, and create, through the calculative imagination, a Pegasus. Aristotle perceived the imagination to be in relationship with two other faculties:
…the activity of forming the mental images ( phantastikon ); the activity of reacting or forming opinions about these images ( dianoutikon ); and the activity of recalling those images and reactions ( mnemoneutikon ).
(Carruthers, 52)
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Aristotle’s system is somewhat unclear since the nature and function of some of the components contained within the system are not fully explained. This system is even further complicated by Aristotle’s inability to articulate exactly what these various faculties are. This confusion is particularly clear in the case of the imagination.
From some of Aristotle’s comments on phantasia it is clear that he was hard put to it to give a unified account of it and to link the various kinds of
‘presentations’ or ‘appearances’ in consciousness – including the pseudoconsciousness of dream – with the other operations of the mind. He fits it neatly into his biological hierarchy, with nutrition for the vegetable soul, sensation and imagination for the animal, sensation, imagination and intelligence of the human. But he is obviously puzzled himself by the varied functions and natures of the different kinds of ‘appearances’ in perception, discursive thought, waking fantasies and dreams…
(Cocking, 24)
This lack of confidence displayed by Aristotle in the classification of the imagination (or phantasia ) allowed for the diversity in theories of the imagination shown throughout the
Middle Ages. Even this pagan philosopher to whom it was felt a Christian could look, in relative safety, for information on the nature of man and cosmos was unable to give a full and unified accounting of the imagination.
Aristotle did succeed in conveying a sense of emotional neutrality to the imagination despite his inability to express its full and consistent definition.
For Aristotle imagination in itself has a certain emotional neutrality. In imagining we are like spectators looking, say, at something frightening without necessarily being afraid (427 b). However, imagining initiates movements of desire ( Movement of Animals 702 a) and induces pleasurable feelings ( Rhetoric II 2). Animals move themselves insofar as they have the capacity to desire, but they cannot desire without imagination ( On the Soul 433 b). Evidently the imagination, which is connected either with sensation or thought, has to present the object, be it sensory or rational, to any animate being before that animal can feel desire and is moved to act (Nussbaum 1978, 233).
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(Brann, 44-45)
By stating the nature of the imagination as emotionless and simultaneously causing emotion, Aristotle removes much of the imagination’s own potency while giving it the ability to incite action. It somehow manages to be without emotion in itself but, in the encounter of the conjured image with another of the faculties, an emotion is produced: this emotion is depicted as a result of the imagination. In relegating the imagination to the realm of motivation within another faculty, Aristotle damns it in Christian eyes by emphasizing its abilities to concoct sinful images and by giving it a hand in the creation of desires associated with those images.
One area of dispute in Medieval writings was the role of the imagination in relation to morality and judgment. Aristotle made significant contributions to the debate that would soon blossom on this subject: “Aristotle distinguishes imagination not only from perceiving and discursive thinking but from the kind of ‘judgment’ that gives rise to a state of feeling with regard to the object” (Cocking, 20). This judgment is connected with reason and reason must be present for an individual to possess a moral imagination.
Fantasizing, either as a fictional day-dreaming or as the imagining of possibilities leading to action became an important topic in ethics. Both
Plato and Aristotle had emphasized the moral indifference of phantasia , which can be directed towards good or bad ends. Though both are aware of the irrational elements in the human soul – the demands of appetite and the disturbing effects of emotion – they both, whether or not they entirely accept the Socratic precept reported by Plato that virtue is knowledge, assert unequivocally that the good life is dependent on the dominance of reason. This notion, like the perceptual triad of sensation-imaginationreason, goes right through to Kant. Reason can be variously interpreted; can be seen as mainly the result of proper education or, from Augustine onwards, as the exercise of will enlightened by grace. But the basic notion is that phantasia may be well- or ill-used, and judgment of ‘well’ or ‘ill’ is somehow reasonable judgment.
(Cocking, 25)
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For a faculty purported to have little will and no power of judgment, the phantasy holds a heavy ability to “choose” incorrect paths. The imagination seems, in relation to morality, rather like a human stripped of the ability to exercise a free will and bound irrevocably to the caprice of the senses for which it must suffer blame and punishment.
Aristotle’s explanations of the faculties were complemented by the work of Galen which provided a physical location for the psychological components. From Galen was received knowledge of the contents of the human body and the way in which those contents functioned. Galen, unlike Aristotle and Plato, was not a philosopher -- he was a scientist and a doctor. As such, he conducted minute. By combining the work of medicine and anatomy, he was able to see both the inner nature of a body, and the way in which that inner body was connected with the mental and physical health of a patient.
From his research Galen concluded that the psychological faculties were located in a connected series of three fluid filled ventricles, “…the anterior, medial, and posterior ventricles of the brain…” running from the front to the back of the head (Carruthers, 52).
These cavities were clearly distinct from each other but were connected by a series of passageways. From this connection it seemed clear to those who utilized Galen’s discovery to support their psychologies, that these three ventricles and their correspondent faculties were interrelated in some fashion. Galen’s physical model of the brain would serve as a proof for numerous psychological theories which in themselves had little or no basis in anatomy and the “hard” science of the era.
These classical authors, along with their later medieval interpreters would be of prime importance to anyone who considered the nature of the imagination in the Middle
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Ages. Though the precise nature of the imagination varied across the works of medieval authors, the general function and physical location of the imaginative faculty remained in agreement with the theories of Aristotle, Galen, and to a certain extent, Plato. Despite these common roots, those who considered these issues in the Middle Ages by no means created a unified system; many of the same ambiguities and confusions that appeared in the works of the Classical authors would reappear in the texts of the Middle Ages.
In addition to these distinctly western thinkers, the philosophers of Islam played a role both in the definition of the imagination and in the history of western thought in general. It was because of Arabic interest in Greek philosophy that the works of
Aristotle, Plato, and Galen were preserved. With the fall of the Roman Empire, many libraries were destroyed by the invading barbarians or by the neglect of their owners.
Many texts lost in the west were preserved in the east and, when the interest in these texts reappeared, they were transmitted back to the west.
Many in the Middle Ages derided their Islamic neighbors as barbarian savages, but in reality, the Islamic world was far more civilized than they. Because the many former Roman and Greek territories came under the domination of Islamic rulers,
Classical learning was easily accessible in the Arabic world. “The Arabs found Greek scholarship still alive in continuous tradition in Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Mesopotamia, and even in the capital, Baghdad itself” (Cocking, 104). From these, and other locations of learning, Greek and Latin texts began to be translated into Arabic.
The first stage of translation had taken place in Christian schools of the
Orient. Works by Aristotle and Porphyry and other Greek philosophers, mathematicians and writers on medicine were translated from Greek into
Syriac at the Nestorian schools of Edessa in Mesopotamia, the schools of
Nisibis and Grandisapora in Persia, and the Mesopotamia schools in Syria.
The second stage was the translation into Arabic of the Syriac version of
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Greek writings, though some translations were made directly from the
Greek. In 750 the dynasty of the Abbasides came to power, and a welcome was extended by the Arab rulers to Syrian scholars. In the reign of the Caliph Al-Mamun al Rashid a regular school of translators was set up at Baghdad.
(Copleston, 106)
Arabic philosophers tended to particularly favor the works attributed to Aristotle; however, many of these texts were not actually written by Aristotle.
Among the works translated into Arabic were the so-called Theology of Aristotle
(a compilation from the Enneads of Plotinus) and the Book on Causes (based on
P roclus’s Elements of Theology ). The erroneous attribution of these two works to
Aristotle meant of course that Aristotelianism, for which the leading Islamic philosophers had a profound respect, was seen and presented in a partly false light. It is true that in their amalgamation of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism the Islamic thinkers were also influenced by the Neoplatonic or Neo-platonizing ancient commentators on Aristotle. But Avicenna, probably the most outstanding
Islamic philosopher of the Middle Ages, was strongly influenced by the misnamed Theology of Aristotle , whereas Averroes tried to get back to the thought of Aristotle himself.
(Copleston, 106-107)
This led to a transformation in “Aristotelian” thought which would allow more metaphysical concepts a favored position. This mistake in attribution would be of primary importance to the status of the imagination since some of these false Aristotelian texts allowed the imagination a greater power than had Aristotle. As the west came into contact with the Arabic world through trade and the largely negative interaction of the
Crusades, this knowledge which had been preserved and expanded upon was reabsorbed.
The Arabic philosophers who received the most respect in the Medieval world were Avicenna (980-1037) and Averroes (1126-1198). Both made significant contributions to the study of the imagination. Avicenna tended to emphasize the role of the imagination in a mystical context. The spiritual recognition of God by the majority of
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the population seems dependent on the imagination’s ability to convey the nature of God, to the fullest extent possible, to the soul.
Avicenna finds room for specifically Islamic themes. He emphasizes, for example, the role of the prophet. Ordinarily, intuitive vision is the culmination of a reasoning process. The prophet, however, receives illumination in such a way as to exclude the preliminary ratiocinative process. This illumination affects the prophet’s imaginative power (by way of what Avicenna calls the ‘internal sense’) and expresses itself in ways which are understandable by men in general and is capable of moving them.
(Copleston, 115)
As in Christianity, deep connection with God is a state reserved for the few. It is
Avicenna’s belief that the majority of the population must remain dependent on the imagination to convey the nature of God, to the fullest extent possible, into the soul.
Avicenna also clearly made use of Galen’s anatomy. He uses the structure of the brain to explain the differing ways in which the active and representative imagination function.
After things have been apprehended through the fivefold door of the senses, there is another faculty whose seat is in front of the anterior cavity of the brain, and which is called sensus communis or, in Greek, phantasia .
It is the faculty that perceives sensibles, and the five thresholds of the senses are so many instruments for it. This faculty can perceive sensible things at the moment when they are present; when they are no longer there, it can no longer perceive them. But there is another faculty, whose seat is in the center of the anterior cavity of the brain, and which is called the ‘representative Imagination.’ These forms are captured by this faculty and remain in it. This faculty is thus as it were their treasury, so that if the sensible thing itself disappears, this figure and this form do not cease to subsist in it.
(Corbin, 301)
The representative imagination of Avicenna easily matches descriptions of the most conservative Medieval thinkers. Here the role of the imagination is essentially that of
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visual recognition. It has no moral role and no real power. However, he does not confine the imagination to this description alone.
In the middle of the brain there is a passageway from the anterior to the posterior cavity; it is called the intermediate cavity. There another faculty, called the ‘active Imagination,’ has its seat. It has the right to inspect the two treasuries; it mingles, co-ordinates, and recomposes forms and significances. Sometimes it seizes a fragment of these, and it is in this state that our soul then comes to know them. Sometimes what reaches the soul is true, sometimes false…Hence it is necessary that from what is right and true, we separate the lies and erroneous forms or significances that he transmits to the soul.
(Corbin, 302)
This active imagination can easily influence the soul through the image it selects to transmit. It appears that there is some sort of conscious force at work in these choices; it is not pure chance by which images are transmitted to the soul. Avicenna believed himself to be following Aristotle’s teachings in this theory, but he was not. His active imagination contains far too much power for it to be acceptable in the eyes of Aristotle.
Averroes recognized Avicenna’s mistakes in terms of Aristotelian scholarship and attempted to craft his own theories along more authentic lines. He does not credit the more dramatic abilities of the active imagination, but instead defines the imagination as a type of simplistic memory.
All memory and investigation depend on imagination. The affection of our power of memory comes from the affection of imagination. The functions of the two powers, however, are different. The function of memory is to cause an object to be present after it has been absent, and to regard that object as one which has been previously perceived and imagined. To judge that this mental presentation comes from something previously perceived and imagined is an act of intellect, -- or cognition.
(Quoted in Bundy, 185)
This depiction clearly privileges the memory since the memory recognizes the impressions it contains as things that have already perceived and no longer lie directly
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before the senses. The imagination on the other hand apprehends sensory transmissions but seems to have little or no understanding of what it is perceiving. This depiction of the imagination is similar to that of Aristotle and matched most empirical definitions of the imagination that were created in Europe during the Middle Ages.
The Arabic translations and commentaries often did not reach the west until the later Middle Ages or early Renaissance. As a result, Medieval thinkers were left largely to their own devices in creating theories of the imagination (so long as those theories corresponded with Christian beliefs). Early Medieval empirical theories of the imagination chose to focus on a variety of aspects involved with the imagination but they tended to share a basic definition of the imagination and its location within the body.
According to the common notion, there are three internal powers (as distinguished from the five external powers or senses) residing in three cavities of the head. In the front cell or ventricle is imagination, affording a meeting place for separate sensations, thus constituting common sense, and forming the mental images necessary for thought, the work of imagination proper...in Latin imaginatio or phantasia , usually comprehending the function of sensus communis . Occasionally, however, imaginatio and phantastia are distinguished, and the latter is connected with the second cell.
(Bundy, 179)
This system is commonly accepted, but the exact nature of the imagination and the other faculties often changes radically between definitions. Even among those who agree on the nature of the human psychology, the aspects that are given preference vary. The imagination is often criticized as a lower faculty prone to and seen as capable of corrupting or confusing the mind by transmitting false impressions.
The theories of Honorious and John of Sailsbury, two early Medieval thinkers mimic the basic empirical theory and demonstrate the variation possible within that theory. Neither individual professed particularly radical ideas on the subject, but each
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chose to emphasize certain aspects of faculty psychology. Honorious (1090-1120) maintains the standard psychological system but focuses on the imagination in relation to the humors.
…the first cell is hot and dry and is called phantastica , i.e. visual or imaginative, because it is the power of seeing and learning. It is hot and dry that it may seize upon the forms and colors of things. The central cell is called  rational, because in it is the power of discernment; whatever the phantastic cell makes a mental picture of it hands over to this power, whereby the mind discerns. This cell is hot and moist for memory is cold and dry that it may retain better.
(Bundy, 184)
His basic theory is not unusual, in fact it fits in exactly with a general description of
Medieval empirical faculty psychology, but his decision to concentrate his analysis on the humors is somewhat less common. Many authors mention the humors in passing, but
Honorious seems to believe that through them, the internal workings of the mind are most clearly shown.
John of Sailsbury (c. 1115-1180) also focused on the more “scientific” aspects of the imagination, unlike Honorious, he was not overly concerned with the humeral distribution among the faculties, but he is concerned with the spirit of the body in general and of the imagination. Aside from his interest in the role of spirit in imagination, John of Sailsbury’s psychology is fairly typical for an empiricist.
There is, in the front part of the head, in a cell which is called phantastic , a certain spirit even more subtle and more lively than the spirit diffused through the arteries. When the mind is functioning in that spirit as its instrument, it comprehends the form in the matter, the object being absent.
This power of the mind is called imagination….In this cell the spirit is thinner and more subtle, and when this part is functioning, it comprehends forms mingled with matter; not does it perceive the truth of objects, but it discerns and seeks. For matter, being a substratum, cannot comprehend the truth of forms….[The power which can do this] is called reason, and its cell is the rational cell.
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(Quoted in Bundy, 184)
The distribution of the faculties is generic; John does seem to have a divergent idea of the way in which these faculties are used. He speaks of the time at which “…the mind is functioning in that spirit as its instrument…” (Bundy, 184). This would seem to indicate that John believes the mind capable of choosing which faculty it will use at a given time.
There are undoubtedly overlaps in the use of the faculties, but a certain preference for one or another seems possible in this system. John also endows the imagination with a certain ability to choose. This is seen both in the above description in which the imagination “…discerns and seeks” and in an extended description of the nature of the imagination in which he comments that “Opinion has its source, sometimes in sense, sometimes in imagination, for, when the mind operates through its organs of sight or through imagination, thinking that the object is either this or that, other than it really is, then it is called false opinion” (Bundy, 184-185). He does not describe exactly how this opinion functions, but it seems that it is more active choice than a random selection.
John of Sailsbury grants the imagination more power than is common in most empirical theories, but it is still largely a power of perception. It seems only in the theories of the mystics that the power and import of the imagination is fully recognized and described. For the mystics, the faculties are often considered important because of their role in the contemplation of God. Since contemplation is emphasized, the imagination and the other faculties enjoy a corresponding importance.
In the thought of the mystic Richard of St Victor (d. 1173), the imagination is a vital component of the human psyche. This view is expressed in Richard’s treatise, The
Twelve Patriarchs , written somewhere between 1153 and 1162 as an extensive allegory
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for the last 21 chapters of Genesis, which in its own highly visual style reinforces the importance of the imagination. Richard sees imagination as an important aid in the pursuit of the contemplation of God. Richard believes that this contemplation should be the goal of man.
For Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173), as for Hugo, there is a primary interest, not in the description of the imagination, but in finding its relation to the highest of activities, contemplation. In his first analysis of faculties and function imagination is not regarded as even the lowest kind of contemplation, but, rather, an instrument of thought, the function of which is a kind of wandering, just as reason, a kind of meditation, has as its function investigation, and intelligence, by means of contemplation, aims at wonder.
(Bundy, 202)
For Richard and many contemporary mystics, contemplation was not merely thought directed towards God. Instead it was a profound spiritual exercise that resulted in theophany, or knowledge of God. Richard, his predecessor Hugh of St. Victor and other medieval mystics,
…were not primarily interested in descriptive psychology, save as it helped one to understand the experience called contemplatio or visio in the highest sense. Man’s primary concern is not with the world of phenomena, not with investigatio or with cogitatio , the thought which takes its rise in impressions, but with contemplatio , having to do with that which is beyond sensible experience. Man may have certain uses for his senses, and the internal powers of the three cells may be of aid in interpreting the messages of the sense; but there is a higher kind of knowledge which cannot be said to issue from the lower stages of thought.
There is a kind of vision of the bodily eye, and, again, a kind of inner eye when we remember; and then there is a third transcendent kind, as when
Moses saw God. The mystic is interested in the faculties concerned with experience in so far as they contribute to or impede vision of the highest sort; in this respect it is a critical psychology which indicates relative values.
(Bundy, 199)
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Thus, since the imagination aids in various lower stages of contemplation, it is worthy of respect and analysis, though not total privilege.
Most of Richard’s writings center around the explanation of the stages involved in contemplation and the means that should be used to reach those stages. This focus leads him to regard all human characteristics as tools designed for reaching these states of contemplation. This view of human psychology is not surprising given the dominant
Medieval belief in the divine order of the universe. Because of this approach, Richard could attribute any human components to the will of God. In so doing he could explain how their nature served to meet the goal of contemplation which, logic could clearly show, was desired by God. Richard believes six stages of contemplation exist.
There are six kinds of contemplations in themselves, and within each there are many divisions. The first is in imagination and according to imagination only. The second is in imagination and according to reason.
The third is in reason and according to imagination. The fifth is above but not beyond reason. The sixth is above reason and seems to be beyond reason. And so there are two in imagination, two in reason and two in understanding.
(Richard of St. Victor, 161)
The imagination is concerned with the first three stages. This connection is thoroughly explained in Richard’s treatise on The Twelve Patriarchs (also known as Benjamin
Minor ).
Because Richard sees all the psychological faculties as tools to be used for a divine purpose, his descriptions of those faculties are entirely connected to a discussion of their relative morality. His descriptions of the human psychology are based on the relative success rates of the various parts to achieve or aid in the achievement of the
“good” (i.e. contemplation). The components associated with the higher stages of
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contemplation are more “moral” than those that aid in the realization of the lower levels.
The various faculties serve a second moral function in that many of them aid in judgment.
The nature of this judgment varies from the simple act of recognizing a figure as a man to the more complicated judgment of labeling that figure as a “good man” or a “bad man”.
Through informing the soul and enabling correct judgment, the various faculties ensure that correct conclusions have been made. As the allegorical reading of the Bible that occurs in The Twelve Patriarchs demonstrates, the imagination is largely responsible for informing reason though it does not always perceive correctly and so at times prompts immoral judgments.
Richard of St. Victor’s reading of the story of the births of the twelve patriarchs is only possible in a world entirely inscribed with divine typology. Every implication of the text must relate to multiple levels of meaning in the world. Just as the characters in the story cannot be only human, so each natural element or human creation is by necessity symbolic of far more than its literal level. This intense symbolic nature of the world allowed the Medieval mystic to see God, the angels, the devil, demons, and pathways to heaven and hell in all that surrounded him. Though this allegorical reading of the world seems to remain relatively individual during the Middle Ages, by the Renaissance the allegory of the world would become fully codified into a common system of correspondences in which the microcosm of earth had specific equivalents with the world of the heavens.
In The Twelve Patriarchs , Richard centers an extended allegorical interpretation of the biblical story of Jacob and Rachel on an explanation of the nature of contemplation. The imagination and those senses that surround it are central to this
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explanation. The literal level of this story appears to have absolutely nothing to do with the imagination; instead it is the account of a marriage, or rather two marriages and two concubinages and the children produced by those unions. This section of Genesis recounts how Jacob comes to the lands of one of his uncles, meets that uncle’s beautiful youngest daughter Rachel, and agrees to work there for seven years in exchange for her hand in marriage. Jacob works the allotted time and as a result receives a bride.
However, the uncle does not marry his youngest daughter to Jacob as tradition dictated that the eldest marry first. By the time Jacob discovers he has been deceived into marrying the elder sister, Leah, the marriage has already been consummated. Jacob objects to this breach of contract and the uncle agrees that after an additional seven years work, Jacob may marry Rachel. He completes this second period of work, and is married to Rachel. By this time Jacob has had children by Leah. Unlike her sister, Rachel seems unable to conceive. To compensate for this inability, Rachel gives her handmaid Billah to Jacob to have children in her stead. This handmaid conceives and gives birth to Dan and later Naphtali. Eventually Rachel gives birth to her own children as well. In an attempt to gain favor in the eyes of her husband, Leah also gives her maid to her husband as a concubine. This maid, Zelpha, gives birth to two sons, Gad and Asher. The obvious polygamy in this text does not appear to pose any problem for Richard of St. Victor since instead of considering the literal implications of the test he chooses to plunge his interpretation deep into the realm of allegory.
In The Twelve Patriarchs , Richard of St. Victor explains the story of Jacob, his wives, and his children as a story primarily centered on Rachel, Billah, Leah, Zelpha and their children. Jacob, a main focus of the biblical story, rarely enters into the allegory.
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Richard interprets these characters and their actions as an allegory for the interactions that take place between some of the interior faculties and the role which these faculties play in pushing the rational soul (personified as Jacob) towards the contemplation of the
Divine. Since the stages of contemplation are organized into a hierarchy, different characters may be more or less useful in reaching each of the stages. To reach the last, or ultimate stage, none plays pivotal role since this stage is reached only through the grace of God. But for the lower stages different characters may act together or by themselves to cause the contemplation of God to occur.
Richard of St. Victor’s assignment of faculties to the characters within the story provides a space in which his theory of human psychology and the soul may be properly developed. These correspondences are summed up by Grover Zinn.
In the figures of Jacob, his wives, and their handmaids Richard finds an entire epistemology signified. Jacob, father of the twelve patriarchs, represents the ‘rational soul.’ His two wives represent the principle powers of the soul. Rachel is reason; Leah, affection, which includes will, emotion and sensibility. Rachel, reason, leads to all truth. From Leah, affection, comes all virtue. Rachel’s handmaid Bala signifies imagination, which links reason to the world of sense perception through the formation of images of things. Leah’s handmaid Zelpha represents the five bodily senses, which connect affection with the external world.
Victor, 11-12)
(Zinn in Richard of St.
This brief description is not the extent of Richard’s allegory. He continues to develop each of these characteristics (as well as those connected with the sons of each of the women mentioned) and their actions in relation to the nature, motivation, and contents of the rational soul (i.e. the faculties) become clear. In bringing the reader to a complete understanding of this complex subject Richard believes himself to be giving readers a key which, if used, opens the way to God. At the same time he is giving the modern reader a
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key to understanding the medieval faculty psychology that he espoused. In explaining the way to God he explains the corporeal aspects of humanity, including the imagination, in the character of Billah.
In the Biblical story, the first extensive mention of Billah 1 concerns Rachel’s gift of her to Jacob and the children produced by this union.
Then she said, ‘Here is my maid Bilhah; go in to her, that she may bear upon my knees, and even I may have children through her.’ So she gave him her maid Bilhah as a wife; and Jacob went in to her. And Billah conceived and bore Jacob a son. Then Rachel said, ‘God has judged me, and has also heard my voice and given me a son’; therefore she called his name Dan. Rachel’s maid Billah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. Then Rachel said, ‘With mighty wrestlings I have wrestled with my sister, and have prevailed’; so she called his name Naph’tali.
(Gen. 30:3-8)
This brief depiction of Billah’s role within the history was, for Richard, enough to shape an entire theory of the imagination. In The Twelve Patriarchs Billah is not given to Jacob for the purpose of bearing children but instead she must encounter carnality first since it is her role to absorb the images of the senses and transmit them to her mistress.
It thinks by means of imagination because it does not yet have the power to see by means of purity of the understanding. This, I think, is the reason why Rachel must first have children from her handmaid rather than giving birth from herself because it is sweet for her to retain, at least by means of imagination, the memory of those things while she does not yet have the power to grasp by the reasoning process an understanding of them.
(Richard of St. Victor, 66)
Because the imagination is involved, it is clear that the soul is involved in a lower stage of contemplation.
1 The gift of Billah to Rachel by Laban, Rachel’s father, is mentioned in the previous chapter of Genesis. “Laban gave his maid Bilhah to his daughter Rachel to be her maid”
(Gen. 29:29).
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Though Richard is not entirely clear on this point, it seems that his Twelve
Patriarchs depicts contemplation in two ways. The first, and clearer of the two, occurs in a series of chapters designated specifically for explaining each stage. The second method uses the progressing genealogy of Jacob’s family to explain the various stages. Through this interpretation Billah and her children not only represent the components involved in a particular stage but also, through their connection with Jacob, the rational soul, they represent the stage itself.
By connecting individuals with a particular stage of his hierarchy of contemplation, Richard binds both characters and stages into a strict orginization. Since he assigns each biblical character to a stage of within the hierarchy of contemplation, his interpretation of the biblical story must illustrate a social hierarchy that is as rigid as that which governs contemplation of the divine. This hierarchy is first introduced in the relationship between Jacob’s wives and their handmaids.
Each of these handmaids [Billah and Zelpha, the handmaid of Leah who represents the five senses] is known to be necessary to her mistress to such a degree that without the former all of the world seems unable to confer anything upon the latter. For without imagination, reason would know nothing; without sensation, affection would have sense of nothing.
(Richard of St. Victor, 57)
While Richard does place the faculties in a distinct hierarchy, he also acknowledges that, for the most part the lower levels are necessary to the existence and efficacy of the higher rungs. Richard further emphasizes this point by writing,
Again, as it is written: ‘Since the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by means of those things which are made’ (Rom. 1:20). From which it is manifestly conclude that reason never rises up to cognition of the invisible things. For through the appearance of visible things she rises to knowledge of invisible things, as often as she draws a kind of similitude from one to the other.’
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(Richard of St. Victor, 57)
The hierarchy that Richard has created must remain constant despite any variations in the biblical story since any disruption to that system would entirely disrupt the path to God achieved through the stages of contemplation.
The nature of Richard’s analysis can be explained by common Medieval habits of exegesis, specifically Victorine exegesis, and Medieval visions of the cosmos as explained through art. In the Middle Ages, the purpose of exegesis was not to deconstruct, that is, to extract meaning by reducing worlds and tales to their historical meanings and by rebuilding a religion from the remaining cracked foundations. Instead
Medieval exegetes wished to construct layers on top of the already existing texts and through these edifices of words and images, propel themselves heavenward. “Exegesis itself was understood in a fundamental sense to be a ‘constructive’ activity, comparable in rhetorical terms to the elaboration of a coherent and harmonious edifice” (Cahn, 55).
This impulse towards construction caused Richard’s addition of layers of meaning to a cast of already existing characters who would, at the end of his exegesis, resemble in no way their eventual reinterpretations.
This common method of exegesis was not the only one used by Richard. He also employed the favored Victorine method of interpretation that focused on the literal meaning of the text. Richard “…like other Victorine masters…was strongly influenced by Hugh’s emphasis on the understanding of the literal meaning of Scripture as the necessary basis of moral and allegorical exegesis” (Cahn, 53). In Richard’s variously titled treatise on the construction of the temple in Ezekiel, he justifies and apologizes for his use of the favored Victorine habit of literal reading.
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Richard was aware that his attempt to take the Prophet at his literal word was a novel endeavor. The prologue of his work, whose methodological interest Beryl Smalley has stressed, acknowledges the privileged status accorded to moral and allegorical exegesis by his predecessors and contemporaries, a point of view that he professes to share. But such symbolical readings, he argues, must be grounded in an understanding of the literal sense of the word. The Fathers, it was clear, had proceeded differently, delighting in the seemingly inexplicable rather than seeking to resolve it. Yet this was only a tactical means on their part to convince the reader of the spiritual and mystical dimensions of Scripture, the plain sense being made to appear either absurd or incapable of being grasped, and thus impossible to credit to divine inspiration. Had these authors chosen to explain these difficult passages in a literal way, they would undoubtedly have done so more successfully than their modern followers.
In this adroit fashion, Richard affirmed his respect for the traditional authorities and justified his own enterprise as in no sense a departure from them, but only a modest journey along the path that had already been laid out through their efforts. Indeed, professing to follow them, yet refusing to go where their example clearly pointed was laziness, and not a mark of the true reverence that they deserved.
(Cahn, 56)
It is through this willingness to explore the literal meaning of the text that Richard is able to create the cohesive and comprehensive text of The Twelve Patriarchs . He pays attention to the family structure, noting the actions of each individual and how that individual interacts with others. After his assignment of roles to all the biblical characters he is then able to see, by recalling the information gleaned from his literal analysis of the text, how each of these individuals acts. From these previous observations he can construct a model of human psychology and the contemplation of God in which the nature and interactions of the faculties are aligned with the nature and interactions of the biblical figures. By approaching the Bible and his own writing in this manner,
Richard provides himself the means of constructing a solid and clear defense of any conclusion that he makes.
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Richard’s explanation of the nature of the imagination throughout the allegory of
Billah is a perfect example of this exegesis since it uses analysis of her character that is based on evidence taken directly from the Bible as evidence. Though Richard may value
Billah’s role in guiding the rational soul towards contemplation, she is heavily faulted.
She is described as overly strident in her communication of images to Rachel.
Now the imagination makes noise in the ears of the heart with so much importunity, and so great is its clamor, as we have said, that Rachel herself can scarcely, if at all, restrain her…She calls to memory every thing, whether seen or heard, that we ourselves have done or said at some time or another. And she does not cease repeating over and over again the same things she has already set forth in a full explanation. And often when the will of the heart does not give assent to hearing her, she herself nevertheless unfolds her narrative although, as it were, no one listens.
(Richard of St. Victor, 59)
Richard goes so far as to characterize Billah as an old woman who is always telling stories and is not able to recognize her audience’s boredom (Richard of St. Victor, 59).
Billah’s inability to sufficiently control the sensory perceptions she brings to Rachel necessitates the role that Billah’s sons play in this allegory. It is the duty of Dan, the elder son, to encourage the soul to see images of the suffering that will occur in the afterlife, should the correct path not be followed. He is also seen as the figure of judgment, particularly the judgment of images. “ For since Dan forms the representation of future things in each person’s mind from that person’s own judgment, I think anyone rightly calls Dan, that is judgment, the artificer of such things” (Richard of St. Victor,
71). It is through the former characteristic that Dan seems best able to control the imagination.
Often it happens that having been established in prayer, we must bear certain phantasies of thought throwing themselves at the heart with great importunity. But ought we to overlook such things without out reprehension? Is it not necessary to reprove these things more quickly,
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and as it has been said, by means of the representation of punishments to restrain the infatuation of sin and to chasten it by our thoughts? Therefore it is written: ‘Dan shall judge his people just as the other tribes of Israel do’ (Gen. 49:16). Certainly, to the sons of…Bala, surely, governing of thoughts. Thus any thought is judged in its tribe, as it were, when every error is corrected by parallel, when will is corrected by will, when work is chastened by work, and assertion is corrected by assertion.
(Richard of St. Victor, 72)
By halting false phantasies that enter into prayer or any other part of life, Dan allows contemplation of God to occur from his own powers and from the powers of his brother
Naphtali who brings similitudes of the wonder and glory of heaven into a mind cleansed by the projected horrors of his brother.
We can see, therefore that the sons of Billah are intrinsically connected to the imagination. Though Dan’s basic role may be that of judgment, it is made clear throughout the text that his role is highly connected with images. He encourages the visualization of the horrors that may occur in the afterlife if a correct path is not followed in life, “To Dan especially pertains consideration of future evils…” (Richard of St.
Victor, 70). Dan’s brother Naphtali, who represents comparison, fulfills a similar role by encouraging the visualization of the beauties of earth as similitudes for the beauties of heaven. In so doing he attempts to encourage people along the right path. Regardless of the content through which they work, both sons of Billah instruct by encouraging the use of the imagination in the reasoning mind. Their images of suffering or joy are meant to trigger the rational response that good should be done in order to avoid the former and attain the latter. It seems clear that this rational response would not be possible were it not for the flights of fancy pertaining to the imagination. Though due to their position within the hierarch of The Twelve Patriarchs , Dan and Naphtali clearly do not represent
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the absolute best path towards the divine, their method is still considered entirely valid.
Richard of St. Victor allows a power and efficacy to the imagination and her tools that most contemporary authors did not. For most, the imagination was primarily something that distracted a person from the worship of God through false phantasms, but for
Richard the imagination and the image served a vital, if lowly, function in the pursuit of the divine.
The later thirteenth century theologian Bonaventure (1221-1274) articulates a similar idea of the role of the imagination in the soul, its helpfulness in the realm of contemplation, and its numerous faults, but he continues to emphasize some things that
Richard did not. Bonaventure substantially departs from Platonic theories by contending that the production of art is an act of imagination related to God’s act of creation. He of course devalued this sort of creative action as an inferior imitation of the original creation of the cosmos, but by putting human artistry in direct relationship with Divine Artistry, he gave a sacred potency to the imagination with which Plato and many medieval thinkers would disagree. Though Bonaventure clearly placed man’s creativity far below that of God, a comparison still existed between the weak fallen man and the supremely powerful God. With this comparison the importance and power of the imagination began to change from a power that allowed man to see God to one which allowed man to act in ways that mirrored the actions of the creator. Bonaventure also seemed concerned with the misuse of the imagination. This misuse was not primarily concerned with the imaginations propensity to project false images or distract the individual from the contemplation of God (though these failings were noted). Instead Bonaventure seemed primarily concerned with the willful misuse of the imagination; specifically occult uses.
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While earlier Medieval thinkers had feared the ability of the imagination to stealthily corrupt the reason, Bonaventure was worried that the reason might use the imagination to corrupt the soul.
Thomas Aquinas, another thirteenth-century theologian, also considered the nature of the imagination in what was perhaps the greatest synthesis of Medieval thought and knowledge, the Summa Theologica . His division of the faculties was relatively common, but much of Aquinas’ material on the subject defines the roles that angels and demons play in the imagination. The consideration of such an issue was generally the domain of the mystics, but for Aquinas whose plodding logical proofs demonstrate him to be the most empirical of thinkers, it was clearly an issue of great importance. He contended that angels did not directly alter the imagination, but instead skillfully encouraged it along certain paths by influencing the external senses and other lower faculties. Demons and the Devil, on the other hand, do appear able to directly alter the imagination and in so doing prompt man to sin. Many of those who considered the nature of the imagination worried that it was particularly likely to lead the soul astray through misrepresenting images or presenting certain images at inopportune times, but
Aquinas’ worries over the intense corrupting powers of the Devil and demons seems somewhat unique.
During the Renaissance, much of the medieval though collected in Aquinas’
Summa Theologicat remained in currency. However, it was subtly altered. These changes resulted in transformations within the field of philosophy that would serve as the root for much of modern thought. The thinkers of the day took texts from ancient history, the Middle Ages, and their own era and interpreted them in ways which often completely
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contradicted the author’s apparent original meaning. This misinterpretation was often the result of a philosopher’s desire to read a Christian message into all important texts – even those texts written by pagan authors. Systems of ethics and philosophy were designed or taken from the existing Christian superstructure, and then substantiated by past thought crafted to support those ideas. This was not a surprising approach given the scholastic method of the Middle Ages which relied on the repetition of others ideas to prove orthodox theories. Renaissance philosophy differed in that changes which occurred allowed individuals to conceptualize and support ideas that were not entirely orthodox
(such as beliefs that granted the imagination powers which were, at times, super-human).
These new thoughts were still justified through the same texts and methods that had been used throughout the Middle Ages.
One of the most effective adaptors and transformers of Medieval thought was
Marsilio Ficino. He was able to defend his ideas with particular efficacy since he was one of the principle Renaissance translators of Greek and early Christian thought. These translations, combined with an extensive knowledge of Medieval and classical thought, allowed him to adapt the ideas of the Middle Ages to his own beliefs in subtle but utterly transforming ways. These changes were not overly shocking in Ficino’s own works, but they became increasingly radical and pronounced throughout the Renaissance until the philosophy of many no longer resembled its Medieval origins.
Ficino was born and raised in much the same manner as other Renaissance
Humanists. He exemplified the traditional Humanist pattern of Florentine birth, extensive education, and patronage by a prominent political figure.
He was born on October 19, 1433, in Figline, near Florence, the eldest son of a physician called Diotifeci. Of his youth and early studies we know
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very little. It is probable that he studied grammar in one of the public or monastic schools in Florence and later philosophy and medicine, with perhaps also some Latin and theology, at the university of
Florence…About the year 1456, at a time when he had already written his first philosophical treatises, he took up the study of Greek in order to become acquainted with the sources of ancient philosophy. His relations with Cosimo de’ Medici, which date from 1452, took a decisive turn in
1462, when Cosimo bestowed on him a grant of a villa at Careggi, near
Florence, at the same time placing several Greek manuscripts at his disposal, with the understanding that he would dedicate himself to the interpretation and teaching of Platonic philosophy. This was the origin of the Platonic Academy. Ficino spent the rest of his life teaching and writing, remaining constantly in close relation with the Medicis and their circle.
(Kristeller, 16-17)
The patronage of Cosimo de Medici not only gave Ficino the financial resources to pursue his studies, but it also put him in association with the numerous other thinkers and artists whom Cosmo patronized.
As in the Middle Ages, those who lived in Europe during the Renaissance were bound to align their thoughts and writings with the church’s beliefs. In the Renaissance with the prominent resurgence in the study of the pagan classical writers, the restrictions of the church often caused problems for those who were incautious in repeating or replicating certain pagan ideas. Ficino’s powerful political connections and his own astute methods combined to permit him the freedom not only to study the ancients, but also to innovate and step outside the boundaries clearly set by the church. Ficino completed these innovations in safety through two methods. The first was the addition of passages to his texts which contended that he was not stating his own opinion but merely recording the opinion of others. His second method of self-protection consisted in statements that his theorizing was not true philosophical speculation, but more of a poetic creation which helped him to understand spiritual truths. His writings often state “…that
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he is not sure whether in elaborating his own view of the cosmos he has not strayed over from philosophy into poetry – by which he means fictions pleasing to his mind, a kind of spiritual self-indulgence” or other similar excuses (Cocking, 170). These defenses were so effective that, later in life, Ficino was able to take ecclesiastical orders and rise within the church hierarchy. “In 1473 he turned priest, and he received several benefices. In
1487 he became a canon of the Cathedral of Florence” (Kristeller, 17). Through the combined power of the Medici’s protection and his own defensive writing, Ficino was able to hold himself just above the chasm of heresy into which so many of his fellow radical scholars fell.
Though Ficino’s stratagems managed to uphold his religious legitimacy, he was, for all intents and purposes, a magus. During the Renaissance magi were fairly common
– they were magicians who achieved their ends through a mixture of philosophy, theology, and occult practices. The ability of a magus, such as Ficino, to survive and flourish during the Renaissance, an age which, in Europe, demanded a unity of Christian belief, was due in large part to the advent of Humanism and the surge in Classical scholarship which accompanied it. In general, Humanists believed in the power and worth of man. They advocated for scholarship, not just of texts considered acceptable by the Medieval scholastics, but also of the more heretical Classical texts and perhaps most importantly the spurious Corpus Hermeticum . Though many still practiced the more conservative Scholastic method of study, Humanism was able, largely through the patronage of those like the Medici, to gain acceptability and respect.
Renaissance thought did not only influence Ficino -- he also made substantial steps towards creating it. In addition to his translations and commentaries on various
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legitimate classical authors, he translated the influential Corpus Hermeticum. This translation, ordered by Cosimo de Medici, necessitated the temporary abandonment of
Ficino’s translations of Plato. The importance, indicated by this suspension of Ficino’s
Platonic scholarship, is due to dating of the Hermeticum -- this text was seen as a key influence to the thought and writings of Plato. Ficino explains this in his preface to the translation.
At the time when Moses was born flourished Atlas the astrologer, brother of the natural philosopher Prometheus and maternal grandfather of the elder Mercurius, whose grandson was Mercurius Trismegistus….They called him Trismigistus or thrice-greatest because he was the greatest philosopher and the greatest priest and the greatest king….Just as he outdid all philosophers in learning and keenness of mind, so also he surpassed every priest…in sanctity of life and reverence for the divine….Among philosophers he first turned from physical and mathematical topics to contemplation of things divine, and he was the first to discuss with great wisdom the majesty of God, the order of demons and the transformations of souls. Thus, he was called the first author of theology, and Orpheus followed him, taking second place in the ancient theology. After Aglaophemus, Pythagoras came next in theological succession, having been initiated into rites of Orpheus, and he was followed by Philolaus, teacher of our divine Plato. In this way, from a wondrous line of six theologians emerged a single system of ancient theology, harmonious in every part, which traced its origins to Mercurius and reached absolute perfection with the divine Plato. Mercurius wrote many books pertaining to the knowledge of divinity,…often speaking not only as philosopher but as prophet….He foresaw the ruin of the old religion, the rise of the new faith, the coming of Christ, the judgement to come, the resurrection of the race, the glory of the blessed and the torments of the damned.
(Copenhaver, xlviii)
The Christianizing mythology attached to the Hermeticum not only rendered these texts legitimate, but also provided an almost Christian backdrop on which Plato and other
Greek philosophers could acceptably be seen to be basing their own philosophy. Seen in this light, the Hermeticum’s statements on the imagination became legitimate and influential in the eyes of the many Renaissance thinkers who respected the genealogy
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attributed to Hermes, the reputed author of the text. Renaissance scholars were correct in believing that numerous correlations can be made between the Corpus Hermeticum and Greek philosophical texts. However, this is not because authors like Plato relied on the Hermeticum , but rather because the authors of the Hermeticum relied on Plato. Ficino and his contemporaries would not have known this and so his conclusions based on the similarities of texts to the Hermeticum would have appeared entirely valid.
The Hermeticum was a body of texts believed to be written by Hermes
Trismegistus, an individual of divine origins who was a contemporary of the biblical figure Moses.
…according to the records of a Byzantine monk, reading what he took to be reports made a thousand years earlier by an Egyptian priest, there were two gods named Hermes. The first was Thoth, who originally carved the sacred writings on stelae in hieroglyphics. The second Hermes, named
Trismegistus, was the son of Agathodaimon and the father of Tat; after the flood he transferred the carvings to books, which came to be translated from Egyptian to Greek…The mention of the flood by Syncellus was the sort of clue that would eventually permit Christians to fit the Hermetic ancient theology into their own doxographis and genealogies.
(Copenhaver, xv-xvi)
In reality these texts were written at a far later date. They were not connected with the
Egypt of the ultimately powerful pharaohs, but rather with the heavily Hellenized Egypt of the late antique period. As a result, the Hermeticum is not the exotic text from a radically different culture which most westerners during the Renaissance pictured it to be, but instead it was a product of a Hellenized society that would have been similar to those of most countries in the Roman Empire – which of course included the countries from which the Renaissance scholars who studied the Hermeticum originated. Proof of the
Hellenized nature of this culture may be seen in the languages and letterings used throughout the period in which the Hermeticum was written.
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Records written in Egyptian Demotic script are plentiful through early
Roman times, rarer after the first century CE. No hieroglyphic inscription can be dated later than the end of the fourth century CE. Coptic emerged in the third century when the church found it still necessary to use an
Egyptian dialect but wanted it written in modified Greek letters. Latin never had wide application outside the army and government. The many papyri that survive from Hellenistic times and later suggest that Greeks and Hellenizing Egyptians had access to the whole scope of Greek literature. Greek culture was rich enough in Roman Egypt to produce a scholar as learned as Athenaeus, a philosopher as profound as Plotinus and a theologian as subtle as Origen.
(Copenhaver, xx)
Despite the heavy influence of Greek and Roman learning, many of the beliefs and practices originating from Egypt at its height of power existed in some form and so the
Corpus Hermeticum contains elements appearing alien to the ethnocentrically schooled western scholar of any age. The true date of origin along with the cultural context entailed within that date was not known during the Renaissance, and so none of the actual historical context of the text was taken into account. Because the Hermeticum was dated inaccurately, those Renaissance philosophers who attributed particular importance to its teachings misread much of classical philosophy.
Among the parts of the Corpus Hermeticum that identify it as post-Platonic and certainly post-Hebraic, is an account of God’s creation of earth and man. While this description is certainly not identical to the biblical creation (for instance, it emphasizes the creation of the four elements) corollaries clearly exist, particularly in the creation of a man molded in the image of God. The genesis described in the Corpus Hermeticum seems particularly appealing to those like the Renaissance Humanists who would have emphasized the importance of man. Additionally, it would have appealed to the magi who would have added man’s ability to control and change much (or all) of creation to
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the elevated status proscribed by the humanists. In this account of Genesis, as in that of the Old Testament, man is created in the image of God.
Mind, the father of all, who is life and light, gave birth to a man like himself whom he loved as his own child. The man was most fair: he had the father’s image; and god, who was really in love with his own form, bestowed on him all his craftworks.
(Copenhaver, 3)
Unlike the biblical Genesis, man is given, not the total power of God, but God’s abilities.
It was through God’s craftworks that the cosmos was created, and so presumably man too can create, though it seems unlikely that man’s creation could reach the size and grandeur of God’s design. Medieval theologians like Bonaventure had already stated creations intrinsic ties to the imagination. The Genesis story of the Hermeticum was interpreted under this belief; as a result mans imagination not only created -- it created with the abilities of God.
As was stated in an early description of Plato’s psychology, the idea of the craftsman has historically been used not only to describe physical creations (like the earth or a chair) but also to describe activities within the soul.
The soul, Socrates says, resembles a book, and sensation and memory combine to inscribe he propositions into it. Both are needed because sensation must be referred to some sort of pre-knowledge in order for propositional apprehension to arise. The cognitive scribe is allowed by ‘a second craftsman,’ an inner painter, who draws illustrative images to accompany the propositional text in the soul. In other words, the verbal judgments are converted into mental images, which are true or false according to their originating propositions.
(Brann, 36)
Though Ficino and his contemporaries would not have known this, the writers of the
Hermeticum were drawing from an earlier philosophical tradition and in so doing implying the ability of man to create craftworks within the mind, but because those in the
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Renaissance believed Plato’s writing to be a continuation of the work began in the
Hermeticum , the two passages could be interpreted somewhat differently. The
Hermeticum clearly indicates the broad and powerful craftworks of which man is capable; these works seems second only to those of God. Seen in the context of the
“preexisting tradition” of the term, it would appear that the craftworks of the mind to which Plato refers have a power and range close to those of Gods. By this measure, all those who imitate Plato’s work would also be indicating a similar strength in their descriptions of the abilities of man.
The abilities implied for man in the Hermeticum are not the sole and dominating characteristic. The Hermeticum shows man in two stages of being, the first and higher is that in which man was created by God, the second lower stage is caused by the actions of that original creation. In his first form, directly after his creation, man possesses a sacrality which would abandon him after a later transformation.
Having all authority over the cosmos of mortals and unreasoning animals, the man broke through the vault and stooped to look through the cosmic framework, thus displaying to lower nature the fair form of god. Nature smiled for love when she saw him whose fairness brings no surfeit <and> who holds in himself all the energy of the governors and the form of god, for in the water she saw the shape of man’s fairest form and upon the earth its shadow. When the man saw in the water the form like himself as it was in nature, he loved it and wished to inhabit it; wish and action came in the same moment, and he inhabited the unreasoning form. Nature took hold of her beloved, hugged him all about and embraced him, for they were lovers.
(Copenhaver, 3)
This contact with nature, or woman, is what changes man. He is not exactly lessened, but his original power and abilities are bound to a lesser half, the corporeal nature attached to the divine form that is implied by his contact with nature. This is clearly a retelling of the
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Adam and Eve story – here woman tempts with her body (i.e. nature) instead of an apple, but the result of the temptation remains the same; man gives in and as a result is lessened.
The biblical mimicry is not the only limitation that occurs in this Genesis : the authors of the Hermeticum also draw on Greco-Roman mythology. It is interesting that it is at the moment in which man realizes the beauty of his corporeal form – the moment at which he, Narcissus-like, beholds his own image – that he is bound.
Because of this, unlike any other living thing on earth, mankind is twofold
– in the body mortal but immortal in the essential man. Even though he is immortal and has authority over all things, mankind is affected by mortality because he is subject to fate; thus, although man is above the cosmic framework, he became a slave within it.
(Copenhaver, 3)
So in this explanation of human origins, a portion of man is reserved as entirely and fully divine. The Hermeticum does not speak of the corruption of the holier aspects of the human (i.e. the soul) as do Christian authors, but it does explain the limiting nature of the corporeal earth. This extreme dualism exhibited within man seems particularly strange given the continuing divine nature in part of man. In the creation of man, God creates from an image, but for this creation, the recognition of this image ( in the gaze directed towards the mirror of the waters on earth) results in the extreme limitation of man’s created nature. This implies two entirely different roles for the image. In one sense, the image expresses and mirrors God, and in another, it condemns man to a partial separation from God. This duality of the image establishes a similar duality within the imagination.
Though the Corpus Hermeticum does not explicitly define the nature and function of the imagination it is clear from the account of genesis that the imagination can be used to elevate the actor by mimicking God’s act of creation and the power he exerts throughout
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the cosmos, or it can be used, as it was in the first man’s self infatuation, for ends that bind the imaginer to the earth.
Because the Hermeticum was believed to predate Plato and all the other Greek authors whose texts circulated during the Renaissance, all the classical texts were read in relation to the Hermeticum . This led Renaissance scholars to emphasize cosmology, demonology, and other more occult components of classical philosophy – including the nature of the imagination. And so, though the Humanists usually read the same texts as the scholastics, they read them with entirely different historical and philosophical understandings and thus, in the course of a few generations, entirely transformed philosophy and cosmology. These changes allowed the appearance and legitimization of the Renaissance magus. The magi concerned themselves with learning how to manipulate the world, the cosmos, and all the powerful actors within those systems. This manipulation took many different forms, from alchemical distillations and spells complete with words of power, offerings and ritual purifications, to simple prayers or the belief in the power of the individual, particularly of the power of the individual’s imagination to affect both operator and object. Ficino seems to have mainly ascribed to the latter form. His beliefs in the imagination were central to his methods of affecting universe and man, or microcosm and macrocosm.
Despite Ficino’s ability to remain “officially” in line with the Church and, by relation, with traditional philosophy, he did in fact change the ideas of certain Christians and ancients so that they might fit into his cosmology.
Many of his central concepts are derived directly from those ancient sources, for example, the theory of Ideas, the hierarchical series of forms, and the concept of Soul and its ascent to God. It would, however, be a mistake to say that Ficino’s Platonism is a mere repetition of Plotinus or of
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other Neoplatonists. Many factors render this impossible: among others, the great span of intervening time, the medieval and Renaissance elements in Ficino's thought, and his own quality as a thinker of wide interests and of remarkable speculative force. Ficino did not repeat Platonic theories just because he translated Plato and Plotinus. As his early tracts show clearly, he was rather led to study and to translate these thinkers because he had first become interested in their ideas. In restating their thought he could not fail to combine it with the original impulses of his own philosophy.
(Kristeller, 16)
Two figures appear to have been of special importance in this enterprise, the earliest of these was Plato the later was Dionysius the Areopagite (or Pseudo-Dionysius) an early
Christian who used much of pagan thought to support Christian theology and cosmology.
The works of Dionysius are clearly mystical yet they contain empirical elements.
Dionysius, like most mystics, is primarily concerned with the path to such contemplation are full of precise descriptions of the inhabitants of the divine realms. In The Celestial
Hierarchy he describes the angelic orders, each in turn both in regards to their rank and their nature. Though some of this knowledge can be found in the Bible, some is not.
The word of God has provided nine explanatory designations for the heavenly beings, and my own sacred-initiator has divided these into three threefold groups. According to him, the first group is forever around God and is said to be permanently united with him ahead of any of the others and with no intermediary. Here, then, are the most holy ‘thrones’ and the orders said to possess many eyes and many wings, called in Hebrew the
‘cherubim’ and ‘seraphim.’ Following the tradition of scripture, he says that they are found immediately around God and in proximity enjoyed by not other. This threefold group, says my famous teacher, forms a single hierarchy which is truly first and whose members are of equal status. No other is more like the divine or receives more directly the first enlightenments from the Deity.
(Pseudo-Dionysius, 160-161)
Nonetheless he proceeds as if all of his information is biblically based and as such can stand up to the exegetical scrutiny which he himself brings to bear on his work. Along
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with his scientific descriptions Dionysius emphasizes contemplation in much the same manner as his Medieval successors. All of his writings are designed to guide the spiritual seeker towards the contemplation of God. In the works of Dionysius Ficino would have seen the beginnings of a path to the power of God. Dionysius’s knowledge of divine things could be combined with the models for imitation offered by Plato and the
Neoplatonist model of elevation through imitation. Plato taught that humans imitated the
Divine Forms in their acts of creation, Neoplatonists taught that elevation would occur through the imitation of the divine forms since this imitation was akin to the creations completed by God. By combining Platonic and Neoplatonic ideas with the knowledge of
Dionysius, Ficino had at his command a series of methods and a system of knowledge through which the Divine could be reached and imitated.
Ficino was deeply indebted to Plato’s thought in terms of philosophical origins and scholarly usage. Ficino’s most famous work, the Theologica Platonica , was an extensive commentary on Plato’s “theology”. Even the title of the work demonstrates
Ficino’s extreme bias in analyzing and reconstructing classical thought. It seems unlikely that Plato would refer to his thought as theology – cosmology would probably be the closest he would get towards the religious belief system that Ficino forcibly superimposes onto his thought. Ficino’s new philosophy was largely a product of the need to assimilate classical and pseudo-classical thought with the beliefs and dogmas of Catholicism. For
Ficino to use Plato’s writings as a theology and an accurate map of the cosmos, he had to make Plato into a Christian figure. This he did:
He considers ‘religious philosophers’ such as Pythagoras, Socrates, and
Plato precursors of Christianity and allows them a share in eternal salvation, along with the prophets of the Old Testament. In the same
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sense he assigns to Platonic philosophy the task of furthering religion and of bringing men back to the Christian faith.
(Kristeller, 28)
Through this alignment, Platonic philosophy (and other classical thought) became a form of Christian philosophy.
The innovations made by Ficino in the understanding of the imagination were significant, but they were not so radical as to appear entirely separate from the dominant
Medieval understandings of the imagination’s power 2 . As the Renaissance progressed, the imagination would resemble its earlier nature less and less. This transformation appears due in large part to the eventual prevalence of the vis imaginativia , a disciplining of the imagination that resulted in the ability of individuals to control various levels of power . Unlike in the Middle Ages when the nature of the imagination was sometimes studied only so its functions within the mind could be curtailed, many in the Renaissance wanted to capitalize on the power which they saw present in this interior force. The vis imaginativia is understood differently by many individuals, but it is generally understood to be “…an ability to act upon Nature, whether the action is exercised on the body of the imagining subject only (called intransitive action) or else on objects exterior to it (called transitive action)” (Faivre, 99). These abilities of the imagination are clearly very different from early conceptions which saw the imagination as a faculty capable of only a
2 The vis imaginativa was a concept in existence during the Middle Ages, but it did not enjoy the prevalence it would later gain. Arabic thinkers, such as Al Kindi, Avicenna, and Al Gazzali, were particularly interested in the vis imaginativa at this time, and a few
European thinkers such as Jean Ganivet (who “…explained that human souls are capable, through strong imagination, of uniting with the intelligence of the moon”) and Nicholas de Lyra wrote about this particularly powerful form of the imagination (Faivre, 100).
However, the most prominent theologians and mystics do not seem to have included this form of imagination in their analyses of the subject.
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limited type of memory or, at best, an aid in the tasks of judgment and contemplation.
The active role of the imagination permitted radical expansions to the occult uses of the imagination. Though Ficino had permitted an active power to the imagination, this activity seemed to be more a product of influence and not direct action stemming solely from the imagination. With the Vis Imaginativa the creation and change could occur solely through the efforts of the imagination. The other faculties like reason and memory could be entirely bypassed in the use of this supremely powerful internal force.
For most Renaissance magi, the vis imaginativa was a key component of magical practice; for some it was the way of achieving magical results. Giordano Bruno was one who went far beyond Ficino in terms of the power he ascribed to the imagination.
Ficino’s theories place him, at times, in alignment with the more Medieval faculty psychology and at times closer to the radical Renaissance understanding of the vis imaginativa . For Bruno, there was no such waffling. He saw the imagination as the prime tool through which any aim should be undertaken – it could dramatically influence the self, others, and the natural world. Through the cultivation of the vis imaginativa the imagination could be crafted into an ability capable of rivaling that of the gods.
…the work of Giordano Bruno, De Imaginum, Signorum et Idarum compositone (1591), propounded a theory of imagination conceived of as the principal instrument of magical and religious processes. In so doing,
Bruno…transformed the art of memory, which had been merely a rational technique using images (as in Thomas Aquinas), into a religious and magical one. It was a matter of training the imagination to make it an instrument allowing the acquisition of divine powers. One could attract the spirits through incantations, seals, and markings, but also by the imagination alone, this third method being the principle one.
(Faivre, 102)
By allowing the imagination to elevate a human to the level of a demi-god, Bruno, and others who supported similar theories, entirely removed many Medieval concerns from
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their analyses. Where the morality of the imagination in relation to the other faculties had been a primary concern in the Medieval study of psychology, morality was now entirely irrelevant (outside of the consideration of whether an individual magus was completing moral actions with his imagination). Through the practice of the vis imaginativa the imagination had become the power of man which most resembled the power of God, it could no longer be devalued. Indeed the reason for which it had been devalued (i.e. that it distracted the soul from the contemplation of God) was in itself no longer valid, since through the fine-tuned power of the imagination the magus had elevated himself almost to the level of God. As a result of this elevation, imitation, not contemplation, was the primary goal, and for that goal, the imagination aided, not impaired, the seeker.
Towards the end of the Renaissance Paracelsus stretched the abilities of the imagination still farther. He took Bruno’s idea of the imagination as the primary power through which the Magus could access the divine and applied it to situations that Bruno had not. He further increased the potency of the imagination by aligning it with two other parts of the human psyche that most commonly were associated with connection to and contemplation of God.
He made it [the imagination] the intermediary between thinking and being, saw in it the incarnation of thought in the image. The soul ( Gemüth ), faith, and imagination represent the three great faculties at the disposal of humanity. The Gemüth is the ‘bursting of sidereal power into us, the preeminent connection of our opening to the invisible word, which governs us from inside ourselves.’ Faith ‘produces imagination, this produces a star, and this in turn an effect. Faith produces imagination in
God.’
(Faivre, 102)
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It seems here that faith and the soul are more stationary and not exactly under human control. The imagination, on the other hand, is entirely controlled by the human operator
(and through the imagination, presumably faith and soul could be altered to a certain extent much as, in the more scientific understanding of the world, the stomach can be altered by the food we eat, but not necessarily by an act of will). Paracelsus sees it as capable of just about everything. His general view of the imagination sees it as a sort of interpersonal current, almost like an overly potent form of charisma – something inborn which, with work, may be improved.
Imagination acts through magnetic attraction on an object in the outside world. This is ‘drawn into’ the person who is exerting imaginative powers and then ‘impressed’ on another person. Hence imagination (‘belief’) misused can inflict most grievous harm. It is ‘like an invisible nettle, invisible Celandine or Troll’. If we have sufficient faith our prayer can make people crooked or lame and convert natural into supernatural disease. Belief, therefore, is like a weapon that needs careful handling.
The more a person is given to speculation, the more powerful is his imagination. ‘He may give birth to a spirit, may exercise the gabalistic art and – like a magnet – will find nothing too difficult for him.’ Such people are often mistaken for saints.
(Pagel, 122)
Paracelsian imagination is highly similar to religious faith. Just as, in the New
Testament, the faith of St. Peter allows him to complete the impossible task of walking on water, so is the belief exercised by an individual in the power of the imagination capable of producing supernatural results. It is the strength of Peter that allows him to begin his miraculous task, but it is in his doubt that he begins to fail.
And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea.
But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" And they cried out for fear. But immediately he spoke to them, saying, "Take heart, it is I; have no fear." And Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water." He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus; but when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to
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sink he cried out, "Lord, save me." Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "O man of little faith, why did you doubt?"
(Mat: 25-31)
While Paracelsus’ idea of the strength of belief holding supernatural powers may be one present in the Christian faith, the extent to which he takes this theory steps far outside the realm of what would have been considered religiously defensible by most Christians.
Paracelsus does not emphasize the use of belief in attaining supernatural salvation, or even in performing earthly miracles as saints would have done, to prove the power and glory of God to others. His theory makes the power of belief either unintentional or largely self-interested. The potency of the imagination in women shows how this belief is active even in those who often do not, as his writing implies, have the ability to independently create or stop the acts of their imaginations.
Women are superior in this respect to men as their emotions, their hatred and lust for vengeance, are stronger. Hence women should not be left with melancholy thoughts; they should be humored, kept cheerful and in company given to simple straightforward thinking. If a woman has a trade and this does not prosper, her unsatisfied capacity and imagination may contaminate the goods she sells. Nor should a woman have and rear too many children, as her wrath will impress itself on them. A woman may die in childbed wishing in wrath and anger that all the world may die with her. This strong imaginative volition may convert itself into a spirit.
Such a spirit can act by means of the (‘menstrual’) birth discharge as its material instrument and thus generate an epidemic.
(Pagel, 122)
It seems unlikely that a woman about to die in childbirth would be consciously gathering her imagination to retain her spirit in the corporeal world, and yet the power of her imagination is purported to cause just such an effect. Despite this sort of unintentional use of strong imagination it is implied by Paracelsus’ own work that the imagination can be manipulated by those fully aware of its nature and its abilities. Since he sees disease
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as a product of the imagination, he as a doctor would need to both diagnose the sort of imaginative action that caused the disease and, in all likelihood, use his own imagination to repair the damage, or guide the imagination of the patient towards the same end.
Paracelsus explains his theories on the imagination through his belief in a vital fluid, or semen, which runs throughout the cosmos. There are two types of semen, the ordinary sort simply exists and performs whatever function it is designed to do, active semen on the other hand is very different – it is this sort of semen that allows the imagination to hold so much power within the cosmos.
‘It is by imaginative speculation that vital fluid is converted into active semen – just as the heat of the sun sets wood alight. Semen is a fire kindled in the microcosm by an object of the outside world. It develops when the will of man becomes ‘entangled’…with the object. The superior strength of imagination of one partner as compared with the other decides the sex of the child begotten.
(Pagel, 124)
This active semen, under the control of the imagination, can cause a myriad of results within the initiator and in the outside world.
As a doctor, Paracelsus pays particular attention to the medical costs and benefits.
He believes that imagination can intentionally or unintentionally cause or cure disease.
Though minor cures and ailments can be caused directly, more dramatic actions must involve the intermediary of the stars.
Since man is made from heavenly matter, heaven is not too far away to be reached and acted upon by human imagination. Just as the stars send us poisonous influence, we may send poison to the stars. This is seen in the causation of the plague. The pestilential agent is formed by and in the stars after the effluvia of sinful human imagination have reached them.
But imagination may also work more directly in plague. The news that my brother was carried away by the plague abroad may ‘reverberate’ in myself so much that it finally displays an action similar to that of the semen in conception, kindle the disease in myself and thereby create the source of an epidemic. This can propagate itself not only through
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contaminated air, but also by the transmission of morbid, pestilential imagination from one person to the other. Hence one part of plague prophylaxis is to keep people cheerful and pleasantly occupied. Fright is one of the most dangerous emotions – it is the coward who is killed in wars, and he who imagines himself a reborn Roman warrior wins.
(Pagel, 123)
It is the use and presence of strong emotions that seems to be at the root of his medical ideas. Imagination transmits these emotions to others or to parts of the self and in so doing prompts an illness or a cure. These emotions even effect the heavens, as in the case of the creation of the plague. This is partially because man has a particularly strong emotion and partially because the heavens are imagination. “Finally, all action is through imagination – ‘as all heaven is nothing but imagination; it acts on man, causes plague and other disease, not through bodily instruments, but through its form (‘Gestalt’), as the sun kindles fire’ (Pagel, 122).
Paracelsus’ understanding of the heavens is in line with the Renaissance theory of correspondences that would have held that the powers of the cosmos (or macrocosm) could be accessed by manipulating the corresponding items within the microcosm. His theory is even more closely aligned with the theories of kabbalah, or “gabala” as he terms it. Kabbalistic understandings of the cosmos saw humanity as connected to the prime originator (or Adam Kadmon) through the intermediary of a series of facets of God, which can also be seen as individual gods themselves, though they are all connected as one and are, at their highest level of being, entirely one. The lowest level of this hierarchy is humanity in general, or Malkut. Malkut is connected to the other emanations, and through them, to Adam Kadmon. In this theory of the cosmos it is believed that humanity can manipulate the upper portions of the hierarchy since it too is connected to all the rest. Jewish Kabbalism would certainly not have allowed man the
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degree of control granted by Paracelsus, but it is clear that Paracelsus did take his theory of the power of humanity from Kabbalah. The control exercised by Malkut on the other emanation and on Adam Kadmon itself can be equated with the divinized motive force that Paracelsus sees in the active semen and the imagination. Paracelsus differs in the degree of power ascribed to the individual person and the lack of control that seems to appear in God or the gods. He does not mention any conflicts with God, but it seems that humanity is allowed to do generally as it pleases with creation, and by that measure it would appear that humanity is capable of out-muscling God, at least in this lower level of creation.
In both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, a highly defined hierarchy existed – every creature, earthly or angelic, held a pre-ordained place. At the top of both of these systems was God; his rank, the rank of the angels, and that of most of creation, remained constant. However, under the influence of the Platonic and Neoplatonic thought that infused the Renaissance, the organization of the cosmos transformed to allow man an extensive degree of mobility amongst the stages of the hierarchy. Now, instead of remaining locked in a predetermined position capable only of gazing – albeit with the most penetrating and enlightening stares – to the angelic and divine levels, man could ascend and descend. For the Renaissance magi, an ascent on the levels of the hierarchy appears to result, not in contact with the divine or angelic, but instead with an increase in the imaginative powers of the individual which mimic the powers associated with whichever level has been reached. Though the hierarchy of the Christian world remained constant, the view and use of the hierarchy changed for many in the Renaissance.
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For the magus of the Renaissance, imitation, not contemplation, became the driving force in the pursuit of the divine. With the innovations of Humanism scholars no longer had to wallow in the debasement of their sinful natures. An easier path was now available – this was a path that went beyond the transcendent glimpses of God available to the Medieval mystic and fully incorporated the magus with the celestial. The theories espoused by magi like Ficino and Paracelsus appear to contend that with the application of the proper imaginative force, the actions of the divine may be imitated. In this theory
God appears, no longer as the punisher, but instead as the initiator, leading the neophyte forward to the most profound of elevations.
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