The Chain of Being
Chaos and Order in the Renaissance Worldview
In the Beginning...
• Biblical explanation for cosmology
• Designed by a benevolent deity
• Perfection and lack of change
• Perfect order and hierarchy from God down to the most insignificant creature or object
In Principio creatavit Deus caelum et terram....
“In the Beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. But the Earth was void and without
form, and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the spirit of God moved over the
waters.” Genesis 1:1
For Renaissance Christians, the act of creation is an act of imposing organization on raw
chaos. For them, orderliness is next to Godliness.
The Design? A Chain from Highest . . . .
• Creator seen as highest link in chain, but also outside it.
• Purely spiritual beings below the creator.
• Beings of both spirit and physical body (humans) below angelic beings.
• Then animate creatures with only physical bodies and five senses, but lacking reason (nonhuman mammals, fowl, fish, insects)
. . .Down to the Lowest
• Then animals with fewer than five senses or inanimate bodies (oysters, barnacles, mollusks)
• Then plant life, which is both inanimate and lacking in sensory organs (trees, shrubs, bushes,
vegetables)
• Then minerals and inanimate objects
Everything had a place in the hierarchy, and all was well as long as each creature behaved
according to its station.
The Universe as We Know it
Versus the Ptolemaic Model
The Ptolemaic Model
Grew Increasingly Elaborate Under Medieval Theology
• Sublunary Spheres
• Music of the Spheres
• Astrological Influence
• All Creation interconnected by Divine Love
• Stars and Planets corresponded to Alchemical elements, to Bodily Humors, to types of
plants....to nearly everything.
Four Alchemical Elements
Fire (Highest but most volatile element, closest to heavenly matter that composes spiritual ether
and stars; its natural state was warm/dry)
Air (Second ranking element; Natural state: warm/wet)
Water (Earth naturally sinks below water, so water is higher in status. Natural state: cool/wet
Earth (Lowest but most stable element, closest to base desires. Natural state: cool/dry)
Four Bodily Humors
• Choler (called Yellow Bile in some models) liquid in the body that caused irritability and anger
• Tears (in some models, Black Bile) liquid in the body that caused melancholy, sadness, and
depression)
• Blood (corresponded to excitement, energy, sexual arousal, happiness, desire for activity)
• Phlegm (corresponded to lethargy, boredom, inaction, fatigue, sleepiness)
So What Went Wrong?
For medieval and Renaissance Christians, the universe was created by a benevolent deity.
So how did one explain the existence of unpleasant evil within a world that was thought
to have been created as an ordered paradise?
Keep in mind, all of creation was bound together. Whatever affected one thing affected
other things in the Chain of Being. This was called a “Correspondence.”
Correspondences
Three interlocking parts of the Chain corresponded to each other. These were:
 Macrocosm (the universe, nature, and the skies)
 Microcosm (the Human body as a map of the Universe)
 Body Politic (the kingdom as a social institute, including its government and its citizens).
The Human Body was the Microcosm
“The Body is a Little World.”
Created in God’s Own Image
Set in the very center of creation
Given the position of primate over the animals
Given both soul and flesh.
Immortal, never dying....
Remember those Four Bodily Humors?
• Choler (called Yellow Bile in some models) liquid in the body that caused irritability and anger
• Tears (in some models, Black Bile) liquid in the body that caused melancholy, sadness, and
depression)
• Blood (corresponded to excitement, energy, sexual arousal, happiness, desire for activity)
• Phlegm (corresponded to lethargy, boredom, inaction, fatigue, sleepiness)
Health and Balance
Unbalance Leads to Disease
...And to Civil Disorder
...And to Disorder in Nature
...And to disorder in the heavenly constellations.
Enter Sin and Disorder
“Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God had
made. And he said to the woman: Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of
every tree of paradise?” (Gen 3:1)
Decay in the
Sublunary Sphere
Note that the vast majority of creation was still thought to be perfect, uncorrupt. The effects of
sin were limited to the earth and its immediate atmosphere, i.e., everything beneath the orbit of
the moon.
Thus the references in Shakespeare to “the sublunary sphere,” and “everything beneath the
moon.”
Within this boundary, the nature of the world changed. It began to rot....
Mutability
• Old Age
• Death
• Erosion
• Disease
• Rain, Wind, and Weather
• Rust and Decay
• Entropy
So how did the Great Chain Work?
• Sort of like the Death-Star, the Chain had a few pieces missing due to human rebellion.
• But enough pieces remain for it to function.
• The trick is for each creature to know its duty and its place in the Chain, and act
accordingly.
Hierarchy
• Primate
• Higher on Chain had more spiritual aspects, greater capacity for rationality (as opposed
to instinct), closer in likeness to God.
• Correspondences on three levels:
– Microcosm (the individual human body)
– Macrocosm (the universe and the world of nature)
– Body Politic (the kingdom)
God
•
•
The Supreme Primate
King of Angels (Rex Angelorum)
Angelic Beings
Organized in strict hierarchy of seven choires (or nine, depending upon source).
“There are nine orders of angels, to wit, angels, archangels, virtues, powers, principalities,
dominations, Ophanim, Cherubim, and Seraphim.”
--St. Gregory, Summa Theologica
The King and Nobility
Right to rule given by God, and could only be removed by Him.
Believed superior in his virtue, wisdom, grace, and strength.
Humanity of Various Ranks
Ancient medieval model of Three Estates:
• Bellatores: Knights and royalty, those who fight and rule, protecting the physical health of
God’s flock
• Oratores: The Clergy, the priests who pray and tend to the spiritual needs of God’s flock.
• Labores: Those who work, the farmers and serfs who feed God’s flock.
If those who protect the kingdom do their job, the people will be safe. If those who work the fields
do their job, all will be fed. If those who tend to the soul do their job, all will have their spiritual
needs met. Refusing to keep one’s place damages the Body Politic, society as a whole.
The knights’ duty was
to protect the innocent and uphold justice.
“Our duty as priests is to nourish the flock spiritually as good shepherds ought with
Christ’s grain and the water of life. Your destined task, O worthy lords, is to defend the
flock by force of arms, to drive away the wolves and bears that would devour God’s
children. You are to smite with iron the evil and the arrogant but uplift the humble, the
widow, the orphan.”
--Saint Bernard of Clairvaux,
c. 1140 AD
This entailed combat as a virtue; one’s worth as a knight was determined by one’s loyalty, by
steadfastness in combat.
But this also entailed violence as a virtue--the willingness to do barbaric deeds with civilized
affectation.
Even the lowest serf slaving away in a field had some dignity and authority over other creatures....
. . . Ruling over the Fields and Floods
Just as God had authority over all kings, and king had authority over men, lesser men had
dominion over animals and plants.
Once again, this authority was believed to be sanctioned by the Bible.
“Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes
of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the field, and the whole earth, and
every creeping creature that moveth upon the ground.” (Gen 1:26)
“And let the fear and dread of you be upon all the beasts of the earth, and upon all the
fowls of the air, and all that moveth upon the earth, all the fishes of the sea are delivered
into your hands. And every thing that moveth and liveth shall be meat to you, even as the
green herbs have I delivered them all to you.” (Gen. 9:2-3)
Each had its hierarchy.
“And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and cattle, and every thing that
creepeth on the earth after its kind. And God saw that it was good.” --(Gen. 1:25)
Noble Beasts
But each animal, plant, fish, and mineral had its own king, a superior example of its own “species.”
This creature was known as the “Primate.”
Among Beasts, the primate was either the lion or the elephant.
Fish, Flesh, and Fowl
Vegetable Love
• “My vegetable love shall grow vaster than empires.”
– Andrew Marvell, “To His Coy Mistress.”
Mineral World
“You Blocks, You Stones, You Worse Than Senseless Things!”
--Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
Even rocks had rankings. Diamonds were the mineral primate, with other gems below them.
As Tillyard notes, every object in creation was thought to have unique gifts. Even the basest of
objects, a stone lacking sentience, sensation, location, and reproduction, was still endowed with
the trait of unusual durability and hardness.
Everything, even stones and dirt, had an important place, even if just supporting those who walked
upon them.
This cosmology permeated earlier medieval society in Western Europe
• Barthomew Anglicus’ Natural Philosophy
• Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura
• Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica
Any educated person would be familiar with these concepts in the days before the 1600s.
Modern people know about atoms or evolution, even if they aren’t themselves physicists
or biologists. Likewise, even uneducated peasants would know about the chain.
An Example: Hawking
Consider for example the sport of hawking (hunting small animals with trained birds).
An Example: Hawking
Each rank in society had a corresponding bird to use.
" Emperor: Golden Eagle, Vulture, & Merlin
• King: Gyrfalcon (male & female)
• Prince: Female Peregrine
• Duke: Rock Falcon (subspecies of the Peregrine)
• Earl: Peregrine
• Baron: Male peregrine
• Knight: Saker
• Squire: Lanner Falcon
• Lady: Female Merlin
• Yeoman: Goshawk or Hobby
• Priest: Female Sparrowhawk
• Holywater clerk: Male Sparrowhawk
• Knaves, Servants, Children: Old World Kestrel
To use a bird for the wrong rank was an act not just of poor etiquette, but of subversion.
For example, keeping a falcon above one's station was considered a felony and duly regarded as
an act of rebellion against an inflexible social order. The Boke of St. Albans relates that the
typical punishment of cutting off the hands of people who kept birds above their social rank also
served as an excellent deterrent to the crime.
Another Example: Hunting
Even the more general sport of hunting was a re-enactment of the social hierarchy.
Ethical, Political and Literary Ramifications?
Important to know one’s place, and not seek to rise above it through unholy ambition.
Equally important to know one’s place, and not to sink below it by neglecting one’s duties.
Important to balance physical and animal needs of the body with divine reason.
Pre-established hierarchy of literary symbols, accessible to any educated reader or writer.
Thus Pride Becomes the Worst Sin
After all, it is the original sin leading to Lucifer’s fall in medieval theology.
“And thou saidst in thy heart: I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of
God, I will sit in the mountains of the covenant, in the sides of the North. I will ascend above the
height of the clouds, I will be like the most high.” (Isaiah 14:13-14)
Regicide: The Worst Act of Pride
“If I could find example
of thousands that had struck anointed kings
And flourish’d after, I’ld not do’t; but [. . .]
Nor brass nor stone nor parchment bears not one.”
--The Winter’s Tale I.ii. 357-360
The King is God’s deputy on earth, and is himself parallel in authority to God. Just as
God is king of Angels and all creation, the king is ruler of his countrymen, and deserves
similar awe. The unlawful death of kings always causes disruption in the heavens (stars
fall from the sky, freakish storms blow across the country) and disruption in the world of
nature (famines, plagues, unnatural activity among the animals, etc.)
Killing the King is attacking an emblem of Godhead. It is worse than even killing a priest.
For he has two bodies, and injuring the head of the state is a blow to the entire people.
Explicit Presentatio!