Tag: poetry

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An Italian Itinerary for Understanding Dante’s Divine Comedy: Trajan’s Column in Rome

Long shot of a row of white statues AI-generated content may be incorrect.Visitors to the Museum of Civilization in Rome can see plaster casts of the entirety of Trajan’s column. Photo by Notafly – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4634304

I consider Italian art to be indispensable when teaching Dante. One way to think about the Divine Comedy is as a piece of Late Gothic/Early Renaissance art in poetry. Unfortunately for a classroom teacher, many of the pieces of art that can be most relevant for understanding him ought to be experienced in person because they are as spatial, and they are visual. These works of art do not fit neatly on a screen or piece of paper, and while a video can sometime be helpful in seeing details that are difficult to see in person, it cannot replicate the encompassing nature of the type of art produced in Italy during this time. So, grab a cappuccino (only if it is morning…if it is not, shame on you, espresso is the correct choice!), and plan your Dante-lover trip to Italy. While there are many guides to Italian travel, over the next few posts, I would like to focus here upon some specific pieces of art that Dante lovers ought to pay attention to. 

Most visits to Italy begin in Rome, and there are few things more indispensable to reading Dante than an appreciation for his love of the Roman Empire. The first stop is Trajan’s Column in Rome.

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Trajan’s Column in Rome, Italy. Photo by Livioandronico2013. Creative Commons.

The emperor Trajan appears twice in the Commedia, once as a carved example of humility in the cornice of the Proud in Purgatorio 10.73-99 and again as one of the six chiefs of Justice in the Circle of Jupiter in Paradiso 20. While reading the Commedia the tendency is to think about Trajan as he is depicted in Voragine’s Golden Legend, as a man saved from hell by the prayers of Gregory the Great:

In the time that Trajan the emperor reigned, and on a time as he went toward a battle out of Rome, it happed that in his way as he should ride, a woman, a widow, came to him weeping and said I pray thee, sire, that thou avenge the death of one my son which innocently and without cause hath been slain. The emperor answered: If I come again from the battle whole and sound then I shall do justice for the death of thy son. Then said the widow: Sire, and if thou die in the battle who shall then avenge his death? And the emperor said: He that shall come after me. And the widow said: Is it not better that thou do to me justice and have the merit thereof of God than another have it for thee? Then had Trajan pity and descended from his horse and did justice in avenging the death of her son. On a time S. Gregory went by the market of Rome which is called the market of Trajan, and then he remembered of the justice and other good deeds of Trajan, and how he had been piteous and debonair, and was much sorrowful that he had been a paynim, and he turned to the church of S. Peter wailing for the horror of the miscreance of Trajan. Then answered a voice from God saying: I have now heard thy prayer, and have spared Trajan from the pain perpetual. By this, as some say, the pain perpetual due to Trajan as a miscreant was some deal taken away, but for all that was not he quit from the prison of hell, for the soul may well be in hell and feel there no pain by the mercy of God. 

The visitor to Trajan’s column, which stands in the forum (or market) of Trajan, may have a slightly different perspective. In Roman Art, Donald Strong points out that this column “sets out…to provide an epic version of the [Dacian] wars, with the Roman army under its great leader in the role of hero” (151). In other words, this column shows viewers what Trajan thought was important about his life, the wars he fought and the battles he won.

This monument to the glories of Trajan’s empire does not include the act of kindness remembered by Gregory when he visits the marketplace. To find an artistic engraving of these events of eternal importance, one has to look to the epic poetry of Dante himself:

At that I turned my face
And, looking beyond Mary, saw,
On the same side as he prompted me,
Another story set into the rock.
I went past Virgil and drew near so that my eyes might better take it in.
There, carved into the marble…
Depicted there was the glorious act
Of the Roman prince whose worth
Urged Gregory on to his great victory—
I speak of the emperor Trajan,
With the poor widow at his bridle, weeping,
Revealed in her state of grief
The soil all trampled by the thronging knights.
Above, the eagles fixed in gold
Seemed to flutter in the wind.
In their midst, one could almost hear the plea 
of that unhappy creature: ‘My lord, avenge
My murdered son for me. It is for him I grieve,’
And his answer: ‘Wait till I return,’
And she: ‘My lord,’ like one whose grief is urgent,
‘and if you don’t return?’ and his answer: 
‘He who will take my place will do it,’
And she: ‘What use to you is another’s goodness
If you are unmindful of your own?’
And he then: ‘Now take comfort, for I must discharge
My debt to you before I go to war.
Justice wills it and compassion bids me stay.’
He in whose sight nothing can be new
Wrought this speech made visible,
New to us because it is not found on the earth. (Purgatorio X.49-96; transl. Hollander)

Now, consider this: one of the iconic features of epic poetry is a figure of description known as ekphrasis, whereby a poet describes a work of art, like a painting or a statuary, in a way that competes with physical craftsman and shows that poetry is capable of doing more than a physical craft. For example, the shield of Achilles is described by Homer so that it has features that would be impossible in real life. (Think Harry Potter paintings.) Ekphrasis was one way that epic poets demonstrated that their craft had superior capabilities to that of other craftsmen.

A close-up of a book AI-generated content may be incorrect.

MS Holkam, Misc. 48, p.75, Bodleian Library University of Oxford. https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/10974934-30a5-4495-857e-255760e5c5ff/surfaces/ef18134f-8c01-4509-89e5-3f82de5ae6f2/

With this perspective in mind, it becomes clearer that Dante’s depictions of Trajan re-write the epic history that Trajan “wrote” for himself in Trajan’s column. In other words, Dante’s poetry competes with a physical piece of art by showing where Trajan’s true glory lay. Dante has imaged for us a “speech made visible” of Trajan’s act of true justice, carved by the divine artisan. Just as Jesus saw the poor woman give a mite to the temple when others marveled at the great riches donated by the wealthy, so Dante imagines the divine artist immortalizing an act that Trajan did not realize would be his most important. As you look at Trajan’s column in Rome, consider what it would take to make a better monument, so realistic that the figures move and make sound, on a subject matter that was higher than Trajan himself could imagine.

Lesley-Anne Dyer Williams is a Professor for Memoria College’s Masters of Arts in Great Books program and graduated with her doctorate from the University of Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute in 2012. She was also the founding director Liberal Arts Guild at LeTourneau University. Her research focuses upon twelfth-century Platonism and poetry, especially Thierry of Chartres and Bernard Silvestris.

Lesley-Anne Dyer Williams
Public Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow
Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame


Further Reading
Strong, Donald. Roman Art. Yale University Press, 1995.

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Distilling Tradition: Anglo-Saxon Botany and the Beginning of Gin

Since moving to England, I’ve become very fond of gin, and the medievalist in me was thrilled when I was recently gifted a bottle of Ad Gefrin Distillery’s Thirlings Dry Gin. The gin is inspired by Northumbria’s Anglo-Saxon roots, what Ad Gefrin describes as “a time of welcome, celebration, and hospitality,” and it has been crafted with “a Northumbrian heart and Anglo-Saxon soul.”[1]  

The gin is gorgeous, both in its presentation and its finish. The bottle itself embodies the location’s Anglo-Saxon heritage: “Far from just being a vessel for the spirit, the bottle tells its own authentic story. The stepped punt reflects the 7th Century wooden Grandstand discovered on the ancient site and the holes/dimples in the glass represent the post holes which identified where the royal complex of buildings were and enabled archaeologists to calculate their size and height.”[2] Its botanical profile is comprised of “flavours inspired by Northumberland, heather and pine from the Cheviot hills, elderberry and dill from the hedgerows, and Irish moss and sea buckthorn from the coast.”[3] But the base of all gins, of course, is juniper.

In addition to its distillery that produces both gin and whisky, Ad Gefrin offers an impressive collection of Anglo-Saxon artefacts and an immersive experience of Northumberland’s Golden Age, including the richness and hospitality of the medieval hall. Photo courtesy of Ad Gefrin.

Juniper, a type of coniferous evergreen, is native to various parts of the northern hemisphere. There are approximately 30 species, but the common European species, Juniperus communis, is described as “a hardy spreading shrub or low tree, having awl-shaped prickly leaves and bluish-black or purple berries, with a pungent taste.”[4] These berries form the base of gin’s distinctive botanical flavor, which the Craft Gin Club aptly describes as “[r]esinous, piney and fresh on the palate and nose.”[5]

Juniper berries begin green but adopt a deeper blue to purple-black color as they mature. Common juniper is native to most of the northern hemisphere, including the United Kingdom. According to the Woodland Trust, the plant “thrives on chalk lowland, moorland, in rocky areas and old native-pine woodland” and functions as a source of food and shelter for a variety of birds.

The Anglo-Saxons recognized juniper primarily for its medicinal properties. Its Old English name was cwic-beam, which literally translates to “life-tree.”[6] In the Old English Herbarium, a popular medieval treatise dedicated to the identification and application of plants, juniper is listed as sabine or savine in accordance with its Latin name, Juniperus sabina. As a compilation and translation of originally separate Latin treatises, the Herbarium employs Latin alongside English, much in the same way modern medical textbooks maintain Latin terminology for conditions that are then described in English.

The treatise indicates that juniper can be used to treat “painful joints and foot swelling,” “headache,” and “carbuncles.”[7] In the first instance, the treatise advises that the plant be concocted into a drink; the entry reads: “For the king’s disease, which is called aurignem in Latin and means painful joints and foot swelling in our language, take this plant, which is called sabinam, and by another name like it, savine, give it to drink with honey. It will relieve the pain. It does the same thing mixed with wine.”[8] Here, the king’s disease – in Old English, “wiþ þa cynelican adle”– likely refers to jaundice related to gout.[9] For the treatment of headache, the plant was to be mixed into a kind of poultice and applied to the head and temples.[10] In the case of carbuncles, which refer to a cluster of boils, the plant would be made into a honey-based salve and applied to the infected area.[11]    

Entries for chamomile and heart clover in the only surviving illustrated Old English herbal, a book that primarily describes plants and their applications. As the British Library notes, “Remedies for poisonous bites were marked out with drawings of snakes and scorpions.” The manuscript, produced in England and dated 1000-1025, also contains information on animals and their medicinal properties, though not all of its contents are reliable. (British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius C III, f. 29v).

While juniper was available to the Anglo-Saxons, even in drinking form, distilling was not. In fact, distilled liquors were virtually unknown in medieval England.[12] Rather than spirits, the early medieval English drank beer and mead.

According to John Burnett, “Beer was probably the first drink deliberately made by man.”[13] In his book, Liquid Pleasures: A Social History of Drinks in Modern Britain, Burnett explains that beer brewed from fermented barley has been recorded as far back as the third millennium B.C. in the Bronze Age civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and beer production became common across Europe during the Celtic Iron Age.[14] In its earliest use, the Old English beor, “beer,” likely referred to any type of alcohol produced through fermentation, though it appears have been distinct from the less frequently used ealu, “ale.”[15] Beor may have referred to drinks brewed from malt, while ealu may have been a sweeter and stronger drink.[16] These terms may also have been used interchangeably until hops were introduced much later in the medieval period.[17]

The introduction of hops to the brewing process distinguished ale from beer; it also displaced women as the primary producers of the beverage. As A. Lynn Martin explains, “In England ale brewing was a domestic industry dominated by alewives. Their brew was usually sweet, sometimes flavored with herbs and spices, and spoiled if not consumed within several days. The addition of hops created a bitter drink that was stronger and lasted longer than ale.”[18]

Mead, however, was the predominant drink of the Anglo-Saxons and was made by fermenting a mixture of honey and water. The Old English word for “mead” is the same for “meadow”: medu, effectively evoking the beverage’s connection to the flowers and bees essential for the production of honey and, in turn, mead. The plant now known as meadowsweet, or medu-wyrt in Old English, was also sometimes used to flavor the drink.[19]

Additionally, the Anglo-Saxon hall was commonly called the medu-hall, or “mead hall,” indicating not only a primary attribute of the hall but also the centrality of the drink to Anglo-Saxon culture. The hall was an integral part of early medieval English society and functioned as a space for social and political discourse, as well as communal gatherings and feasting celebrations. Indeed, the speaker of the Old English elegy known as The Seafarer describes his loneliness in relation to the absent sounds of the hall, which function as a synecdoche for the communal bonds he craves: “A seagull singing instead of men laughing, / A mew’s music instead of meadhall drinking.”[20]  

Dated to the 5th century, this glass Anglo-Saxon drinking vessel, known as the Castle Eden Claw Beaker, was found at Castle Eden in Durham, England. The object is currently on display at Ad Gefrin’s Wooler Museum, on loan from the British Museum, and returned to the North East after more than 30 years. Photo credit Sally Ann Norman, courtesy of Ad Gefrin.

Because honey was used for a variety of purposes, including the making of both mead and medicine, beekeeping was also an important part of Anglo-Saxon society. In fact, sugar was not produced in medieval England, so honey was the primary sweetener, which is why it appears so frequently in culinary and medical recipes alike. The Old English “Charm for a Swarm of Bees,” a metrical incantation, serves as evidence of honey’s necessity. Essentially, the charm is a magic spell meant to entice a swarm of bees to a keeper and encourage them to remain:  

Charm for a Swarm of Bees

For a swarm of bees, take earth and throw it down with your right
hand under your right foot, saying:

I catch it under foot—under foot I find it.
Look! Earth has power over all creatures,
Over grudges, over malice, over evil rites,
Over even the mighty, slanderous tongue of man.

Afterwards as they swarm, throw earth over them, saying:

Settle down, little victory-women, down on earth—
Stay home, never fly wild to the woods.
Be wise and mindful of my benefit,
As every man remembers his hearth and home,
His life and land, his meat and drink.[21]

Eventually, mead went by the wayside, and wine became the more popular drink near the end of the Anglo-Saxon period – at least among the wealthy. As Burnett points out, while the consumption of wine was relatively high throughout the Middle Ages, “it never rivalled beer as the drink of the masses.”[22] 

By the 16th century, distilled drinks were “beginning to be served together with sweetmeats at the end of banquets as pleasurable, stimulating aids to digestion.”[23] Distillation describes the process of heating a liquid into a vapor, which is then condensed into a pure essence, and the procedure may have been known to the Chinese as early as 1,000 B.C.[24] Burnett explains that the “the requisite knowledge was brought to the West either by the Cathars or by returning Crusaders, who had seen distillation practised by Arab alchemists. A coded recipe for ‘aqua ardens’ appeared in a French monastic tract about 1190 alongside one for artificial gold, and through the medieval world spirits were regarded as mysterious, even magical, substances, used only medicinally for their stimulating, reviving qualities.”[25]

He continues: “English records of ‘aqua vitae’ distilled from wine appear in the fourteenth century, when it was made by monks and apothecaries, and became more widely known during the Black Death (1348-9) as a warming prophylactic. Spirits were also redistilled with herbs and flowers from the physic gardens of monasteries to make a variety of liqueurs with therapeutic properties, while in private households spirit-based ‘cordials’ were recommended for the treatment of palsey, the plague, smallpox, apoplexy, ague and other diseases.”[26]

Gin, from the Dutch genever, or “juniper,” because it was distilled with the plant’s berries, started being imported into England from the Netherlands during the late 16th century. The original product was “a highly flavoured, aromatic drink” that is still produced in the Netherlands and typically enjoyed neat.[27] By the mid-18th century, however, England had begun producing its own version in London, which was “less coarse and more subtly flavoured.”[28] By this time, spirits were being consumed largely for pleasurable, rather than medicinal, purposes.

While gin and distillation were not known to the Anglo-Saxons, juniper certainly was, and in this way, the spirit’s botanical roots are intertwined with medieval English history.

Emily McLemore, Ph.D.
Alumni Contributor, Department of English
Lecturer, Bishop Grosseteste University (U.K.)

[1] Ad Gefrin, https://adgefrin.co.uk/spirits/gin. Special thanks to Chris Ferguson and Claire Byers from Ad Gefrin for supplying additional information and wonderful photos.

[2] Ad Gefrin, https://adgefrin.co.uk/spirits/gin.

[3] Ad Gefrin, https://adgefrin.co.uk/spirits/gin.

[4] “juniper,” Oxford English Dictionary.

[5] Craft Gin Club, “The Gin Herbarium: A Guide to Herbal Gin Botanicals!,” https://www.craftginclub.co.uk/ginnedmagazine/guide-gin-herb-botanicals.

[6] “cwic-beam,” Bosworth Toller’s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary.

[7] Anne Van Arsdall, Medieval Herbal Remedies: The Old English Herbarium and Early Medieval Medicine, Routledge (2023), p. 113.

[8] Van Arsdall, Medieval Herbal Remedies, p. 165.

[9] Van Arsdall, Medieval Herbal Remedies, p. 165.

[10] Van Arsdall, Medieval Herbal Remedies, p. 165.

[11] Van Arsdall, Medieval Herbal Remedies, p. 165.

[12] William Edward Mead, The English Medieval Feast, Routledge (2019), p. 123.

[13] John Burnett, Liquid Pleasures: A Social History of Drinks in Modern Britain, Routledge (1999), p. 112.

[14] Burnett, Liquid Pleasures, p. 112.

[15] “beer,” Oxford English Dictionary.

[16] “ale,” Oxford English Dictionary.

[17] Burnett, Liquid Pleasures, p. 112.

[18] A. Lynn Martin, Alcohol, Sex, and Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Palgrave (2001), p. 7.

[19] Emma Kay, Fodder and Drincan: Anglo-Saxon Culinary History, Marion Boyars Publishers, Ltd. (2023), p. 153.

[20] Craig Williamson (translator), The Complete Old English Poems, University of Pennsylvania Press (2017), p. 468.

[21] Williamson (translator), The Complete Old English Poems, p. 1081.

[22] Burnett, Liquid Pleasures, p. 142.

[23] Burnett, Liquid Pleasures, p. 160.

[24] Burnett, Liquid Pleasures, p. 160.

[25] Burnett, Liquid Pleasures, p. 160.

[26] Burnett, Liquid Pleasures, p. 160.

[27] “gin,” Oxford English Dictionary.

[28] “gin,” Oxford English Dictionary.

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Plato, Mathematician and Myth-Maker

Pisano, Giovanni, 1240?-1320?. c.1284. Siena Duomo: det.: Plato. Place: Museo dell’Opera del Duomo (Siena, Italy). https://library-artstor-org.proxy.library.nd.edu/asset/ARTSTOR_103_41822000532257.

The Republic, The Symposium, The Phaedrus, The Apology, and The Phaedo––these are just a few of the works of Plato that were not widely available throughout most of the Middle Ages. No extended depiction of the most just city in the Republic. No discussion of love in The Symposium and The Phaedrus. No self-defense for Socrates at his trial as found in The Apology, and no final dialogue before his suicide as found in The Phaedo. For lovers of great texts, especially Plato, such news can be shocking. What kind of Plato does a person know if they don’t have these key works? How much of Socrates’ life and Plato’s philosophy could even be known? These are the questions that many medieval scholars of the Latin Platonist tradition have dedicated their lives and careers to answering, and the answers can be quite surprising.

One aspect of this research that ought to be appreciated by the wider reading public (outside of the narrow confines of medievalists) is that Plato’s Timaeus wasthe most widely available Platonic work throughout most of the Middle Ages. In fact, examining the text of the Timaeus and why itwas such one of the few Platonic texts preserved reveals how peculiarly modern our current canon of Platonic literature is.

What we value in Plato was not necessarily what late antique or medieval readers valued, and yet, their ability to read well meant that they understood a lot more than might be supposed. An attention to the reception history of Plato’s Timaeus can give modern readers of Plato a better appreciation for the importance of both mathematics and poetry in Platonic philosophy.

The Timaeus is Plato’s work on the origins of the universe. It begins with a dialogue between Timaeus, Socrates, Hermocrates, and Critias, in which Socrates expresses a desire for a “moving image” of the city they had been talking about the day before. The summary of the previous day’s discussion appears to bear some resemblance to the conversation found in the Republic although scholars are divided over whether this summary perfectly matches the Republic that we now possess. Regardless of its accuracy, this summary would have been the closest a medieval reader would have had to a taste of the Republic. The opening dialogue covers all sorts of fascinating topics from Solon’s visit to Egypt, oral culture, the mythic origins of writing, and the myth of Atlantis, but the bulk of the work features a narration about the origins of the universe recounted by the Pythagorean, Timaeus.

The Timaeus was received in the Middle Ages through three main channels of Latin translations: the translation of Calcidius (which ends at 53b), the translation of Cicero (available but not widely used or even known, which ends at 42b), and the excerpts from the Ciceronian translation of the Timaeus that can be found in Augustine’s City of God. Although it does not contain the whole text of the Timaeus, Calcidius’ translation is much more complete than Cicero’s: rather than giving merely the speech of Timaeus like Cicero’s translation does, it includes the opening dialogue (even though the commentary itself ignores it).

Most modern Plato scholars would probably not choose The Timaeus as theone and only work they could save from destruction for all time. But, a better understanding of who Calcidius was and why he wrote the commentary on the Timaeus suggests that the preservation of the Timaeus in the Latin West was not an accident of fate. Rather, the results of Gretchen Reydams-Schills’ lifelong study of Calcidius give a plausible reason for why Calcidius’ commentary may have been the Platonic work of choice for many late antique philosophers.

Reydams-Schils argues that Calcidius wrote his commentary as an introduction to the Platonic corpus, essentially reversing the Middle Platonic curriculum, which traditionally ended with the Timaeus. One major piece of evidence for this theory is that Calcidius’ commentary often reserves discussion of harder philosophical concepts for the end of the commentary.Furthermore, unlike the Neoplatonists, Calcidius did not read the Timaeus synoptically and believed strongly in the importance of sequential reading of the Platonic corpus. In Calcidus’ Platonic curriculum, the Timaeus came first with its teachings on natural justice, then the Republic with its teaching of positive justice, and finally, the Parmenides came with its teaching of the forms and intelligible realities. Calcidius believed that a thorough understanding of mathematics was necessary for understanding of almost all of the Platonic works, which is why his commentary on the Timaeus turns out to be something like a crash course in Pythagorean mathematics.

Thus, although the Timaeus was one of the only Platonic works available throughout the early Middle Ages, Calcidius’ commentary gave readers some introduction to the entire Platonic corpus as well as a great deal of Pythagorean mathematics. Perhaps there might be good reason for a philosopher to save The Timaeus (especially a copy with Calcidius’ commentary)from a burning building!

Plato; Chalcidius (translation). Timaeus. Manuscript. Place: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, <a href=’http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/’>http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/</a>. https://library-artstor-org.proxy.library.nd.edu/asset/BODLEIAN_10310768399.

Medievalists who study the textual reception of the various translations of The Timaeus have been able to identify a shift in kinds of interest in Plato over time. The primary Latin translation of the Timaeus used until the eleventh century was Cicero’s. Medieval scholars used to assume that the revival of Calcidius began with the twelfth century Platonists, but Anna Somfai has demonstrated that the proliferation of copies of Calcidius’ text and commentary began in the eleventh century when championed by Lanfranc of Bec (c.1050). The late twelfth-century actually experienced a decline of copying the Timaeus as interests shifted towards other texts.

What motivated the eleventh-century interest in Calcidius appears to have been the mathematical content of the Calcidian commentary because, by the Carolingian period, much of the actual content of the quadrivial arts had been lost, and scholars in the Middle Ages attempted to piece together what scraps of it remained from a variety of sources. Calcidius’ commentary on the Timaeus appears to have been particularly valued as a source text for the quadrivial (or mathematical) arts. As my two previous MI blogs have explored here and here, medieval thinkers in the traditional liberal arts tradition recognized that the quadrivial arts were the foundation for philosophical thought, even if they had few textual sources for actually studying them.

And although some of the interest in the kinds of mathematics found in the Timaeus and Calcidius’ commentary may have declined after the twelfth century, it was by no means lost completely. As David Albertson has demonstrated, the mathematical interest in Plato found in the work of the twelfth-century scholar, Thierry of Chartres, would eventually be picked up by the fifteenth-century scholar, Nicholas of Cusa, and many scholars have noted resonances of Cusa’s quadrivial agenda in the thinking of Leibniz, the founder of calculus:

It seems that God, when he bestowed these two sciences [arithmetic and algebra] on humankind, wanted to warn us that a much greater secret lay hidden in our intellect, of which these were but shadows. (Leibniz as quoted by Albertson, p.2)

Bernardus Silvester. Liber fortunae, also known as Experimentarius.. Manuscript. Place: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, <a href=’http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/’>http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/</a>. https://library-artstor-org.proxy.library.nd.edu/asset/BODLEIAN_10310765350.

Even though the interest in scribal copying of the Timaeus seems to have declined somewhat by the twelfth-century, another kind of imitatio or translatio studii was being enacted by a different kind of scholar, Bernard Silvestris. He wrote a prosi-metric telling of the creation of the world that emulates Plato’s Timaeus. The title of his work, Cosmographia, roughly translates as “universe writing,” and Bernard delivered an oral performance of itbefore Pope Eugenius III in 1147. Bernard’s creative retelling of the Timaeus poetically depicts the role of imitation in the divine creation of the world in the form of “divine writing.” Performatively, the Cosmographia demonstrates that this divine writing is then imitated by poets in the form of human writing. In other words, Bernard values Plato’s Timaeus here not merely for its insights into mathematics or even the structure of the universe, but also what this mathematics in the universe implies about the mimetic nature of poetry itself.

As many literary scholars have demonstrated, much of the European literary tradition follows suit in seeing the value of Timaean Platonism for the production of literature. This interest can be seen in such diverse authors as Alan of Lille, Chrétien de Troyes, and Dante.

While I would personally be loath to give up the access to the Platonic corpus that I possess, the medieval reception of the Timaeus constantly pushes me to reconsider how I am reading that corpus. Having a large corpus of texts actually places an onus on the modern reader to ask the question of where to place the textual emphasis: Which texts of Plato should be considered central (and which ones periphery) and why? For example, should Plato’s Republic be considered his last word on poets and poetry? What would happen if Plato’s Timaeus were given more weight?

C.S. Lewis once wrote in his introduction to On the Incarnation by Athanasius:

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.

These words about reading the great books can also apply to reading the old books as they were read by past readers. Understanding medieval readings of Plato might very well be a good counterweight to modern presuppositions about who Plato was and what he was about. How might the idea of Plato as both a mathematician and myth-maker transform our modern understanding of Platonism and its history?

Lesley-Anne Dyer Williams is a Professor for Memoria College’s Masters of Arts in Great Books program and graduated with her doctorate from the University of Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute in 2012. She was also the founding director Liberal Arts Guild at LeTourneau University. Her research focuses upon twelfth-century Platonism and poetry, especially Thierry of Chartres and Bernard Silvestris.

Lesley-Anne Dyer Williams
Public Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow
Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame

For Further Reading:

Albertson, David. Mathematical Theologies: Nicholas of Cusa and the Legacy of Thierry of Chartres. Oxford University Press, 2014.

Baxter, Jason M. The Infinite Beauty of the World: Dante’s Encyclopedia and the Names of God. Peter Lang, 2020.

Bernardus Silvestris. Poetic Works. Edited by Winthrop Wetherbee, vol. 38, Harvard University Press, 2015.

Caiazzo, Irene. “Teaching the Quadrivium in the Twelfth-Century Schools.” A Companion to Twelfth-Century Schools, edited by Cédric Giraud, translated by Ignacio Duran, vol. 88, Brill, 2019, pp. 180–202.

Calcidius. On Plato’s Timaeus. Edited by John Magee, vol. 41, Harvard University Press, 2016.

Chenu, M. D. “The Platonisms of the Twelfth Century.” Nature, Man and Society in the Twelfth Century: Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West, translated by Jerome Taylor and Lester K. Little, vol. 37, University of Toronto Press, 1997.

Dronke, Peter. The Spell of Calcidius: Platonic Concepts and Images in the Medieval West. SISMEL edizioni del Galluzzo, 2008.

Gersh, Stephen. Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism: The Latin Tradition. Vol 1 and Vol 2. University of Notre Dame Press, 1986.

Hoenig, Christina. Plato’s Timaeus and the Latin Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Murray, K. Sarah-Jane. From Plato to Lancelot. Syracuse University Press, 2008.

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