The
14th and the 15th Centuries
The last two centuries of the Middle Ages were centuries of conflict:
conflict between political power and ecclesiastical power in the
14th c.; in the 15th c., wars exploded between nation-states (the
Hundred Years’ War between France and England, 1339-1423);
and inside the Church, a split opened up between an ecclesiologic
concept of power concentrated around the pope and the papal curia,
and a spiritual and communitarian concept, starting with the move
of the papacy to Avignon and lasting into the first decades of the
15th c., the age of antipopes and of conciliarism (the councils
of Constance, 1414-18 and of Basle, 1431-49). The 14th c. is a century
of intense intellectual activity, innovation, and criticism which
saw the evolution of positions on universals,
with various forms of realism (bound to the Platonic ideas) and
of nominalism; different kinds of relations between logic, physics,
and theology, in particular on the notion of divine
omnipotence; the rise of ideas about nature which are different
from Aristotle’s: the theory of impetus
elaborated by nominalist students of physics at Paris; the articulation
of counterfactual hypotheses by the Calculatores
of Oxford; the alchemical
notion of integration between the creation and transformation of
the world, which made use of Raymond Lull’s logic of correlatives.
The most interesting thinkers of the epoch developed their systems
after the crisis produced by the condemnation
of 1277, which revealed the non-definitive and unstable status of
the Christian-Aristotelian synthesis proposed by the Scholastics
and codified by St.
Thomas.
In Germany Dominican masters who had studied at Cologne under the
direction of Albert the Great proposed original concepts relative
to the intellect: Thierry
of Vriberg (1270-1320) identified it with the abditum mentis
(the ‘bottom’ or ‘core’ of the soul), and
he conceives of it as a dynamic substance insofar as it acts; on
this line one can also place Eckhart
(c. 1260-1328), who further elaborated the idea of divine being
as ‘pureness of being,’ thereby putting it in relation
with the Neoplatonic and Dionysian notions of negative
theology. Having encountered the work of the beghina Marguerite
Porete (d. 1310), Eckhart proposed a philosophic interpretation
of the concept of the ‘annihilated soul’ (a soul freed
from the limits of individuality through mystical experience), understanding
it in the light of the ‘core of the soul’ doctrine and
connecting it to Aristotle’s ethical ideal of the happy life
in the new figure of the ‘noble man,’ an idea of nobility
close to Dante’s. The themes of Neoplatonic philosophy are
cultivated in Berthold
of Moorsburg’s commentary on the Elementation theologica
of Proclus. In Paris, the Franciscan John
Duns Scotus (1265-1308), though belonging chronologically to
the previous century, distinctly surpassed Thomist positions by
putting at the center of his work ideas on the unity of being, individual
knowledge, and the absolute power of God. William
of Ockham (c. 1285-1349), also a Franciscan, never obtained
a position as master of the University of Oxford, due to the harsh
opposition raised by his philosophic ideas: contingency and individuality
replaces the ontological chain of beings; the link between the absolute
power of God and the order of creation (as a guarantee that the
human intellect can recognize order in nature) in the notion of
a ‘pact’; complete nominalism in logic, according to
which the universal is a pure mental concept (or intentio)
which stands for the individual and the species; and the concept
of intuitive
knowledge. With respect to intuitive gnoseology, a broad discussion
unfolds, in which Peter
Auriol, Gregory
of Rimini, and Nicholas
of Autrecourt stand out. The political doctrine that the emperor
is not subject to papal authority, articulated by Ockham after fleeing
from the papal prison at Avignon together with the spiritual Franciscan
Michael of Cesena, found intellectual sympathizers in the figures
of Marsilius
of Padua (c. 1275-1342) and Dante
Alighieri (1265-1321). Both created arguments at variance with
the traditional discourse on the relationship between the powers
Church and empire, by drawing on ideas in Aristotle’s Politics
and theoretically reformulating the idea of power itself in the
context of profound European political change; at the same time,
however, they distinguished themselves from Aristotle by paying
close attention to the empirical reality of their time. Other specialist
disciplines concerning nature and the human body evolved and slowly
loosened the universalizing tendencies characteristic of Aristotelian
philosophy during the course of the 14th c., above all medicine
and physiognomics.
Astrology
and alchemy,
were still a part of the shared intellectual heritage, though their
central matrix concerning the interaction and transformation of
nature were not Aristotelian physics, but rather Hermetism.
The 15th c. saw the multiplication of universities, the diffusion
of the culture developed in the traditional venues of teaching,
and a crystallization of Scholastic positions opposed to the viae,
i.e. the most representative philosophic systems created between
the 13th and 14th c.: the via of Thomas, the 'via moderna' (the
followers of Ockham, among whom Gabriel
Biel and Paul
of Venice are the most significant), the 'via antiqua' (the
followers of Albert the Great such as Heimeric
van de Velde, 1395-1460), and the humanist movement, already
begun in the previous century by laymen like Francis Petrarch (1304/1374).
The diffusion of philosophic concepts even outside the schools,
especially in the courts and humanistic environments, influenced
in France the work of Christine
de Pizan (c. 1363-1430), a writer of central importance in the
emerging debate on gender equality or difference, which will later
continue into the modern period with the so-called ‘querelle
des femmes.’ The university became the third power after the
Church and the states (sacerdotium, regnum, studium); this can be
understood in relation to the other two powers in two ways, organic
and critical. First, intellectual power can be considered as an
organic extension of one of the other two: of ecclesiastical power,
according to the theocratic position of Giles
of Rome (13th c.), who utilized a theological concept of hierarchy;
or of royal power, according to the position of the jurists in the
court of Philip the Beautiful, who used among other things the organic
metaphor of comparing the state to the human body, fully developed
by Marsilius of Padua, who argued for a non-hierarchical and metaphorical
understanding of the two powers based on the equality of heart and
brain. Secondly, it can assume a critical stance: for example, in
the problem of ecclesiology, as is demonstrated both by the distinction
between the Greater Holy Church and the Lesser Holy Church in the
mystical proposition of Marguerite
Porete, shared by other exponents of the Beguinal
world and of speculative mysticism, and by the emerging ideas of
lay spirituality and of a national church, first with John
Wycliffe (1330-1384), and then with Jan
Hus (1372-1415). The most representative philosopher of the
century is Nicholas
of Cusa (1401-1464), who is usually considered as the first
‘modern’ philosopher for his arguments on the relationship
between the finite and infinite, the relationship between God and
the world, and for his original ideas on knowledge as ‘learned
ignorance.’ Nicholas conducted his philosophical investigations
outside of the universities, immersed in problems raised by conciliarism
and more generally by the political moment. His work entitled De
pace fidei, a dialogue between various religions
about the idea that modernity would call ‘tolerance,’
was written in 1453, right after the Turks sacked Constantinople.
One of the outcomes of this event was that it drove many philosophers
and theologians of Byzantine origin into Italy, and encouraged the
resumption of contact between the East and West already begun with
the presence of eastern scholars at the councils of Florence and
Ferrara (1433-34). George Gemistus Plethon, George of Trebizond,
Johannes Bessarion introduced the works of Plato and the philosophic
need to reconcile Plato and Aristotle, which would have been attempted
by many writers gathered together in the Platonic Academy, founded
at Florence in 1440. Thus Renaissance philosophy begins, and its
developmentwill also be influenced by Hebraic philosophic writings
produced in Latin by authors such as Hazdai Crescas (d. 1410), Isaac
Abrabanel (1437-1508), and Elias Delmedigo (1460-1497), all of whom
reintroduce Kabbalistic themes into philosophic discussions.
Philosophically speaking, the end of
the Middle Ages is marked by the rupture
with late-Scholastic logic and Aristotelianism,
the trends begun in the 12th c. The Renaissance
will construct its own philosophical identity
starting with programmatic anti-Scholastic
polemics (Garin, Renaissances and Revolutions).
But with respect to other forms of thought—for
example scientific knowledge: nominalist
physics, medicine, and Hermetic-practical
doctrines—the break between the
Middles Ages and Renaissance is neither
so clear nor contemporaneous with the
humanist critique of Scholasticism. Scholasticism
will continue in the universities for
centuries, and its contents will change
at an almost imperceptible pace: between
the 16th and 17th c., in fact, we find
the resumption of Scholastic thought,
the so-called ‘Second
Scholasticism,’ which is expressed
in the Aristotelian commentaries of Coimbra
(Conimbricenses).
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