till
I*" 1
"
127 660
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS The Mythological Tradition and
Its
Place
j
in Renaissance ...
1406 downloads
2935 Views
18MB Size
Report
This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form
till
I*" 1
"
127 660
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS The Mythological Tradition and
Its
Place
j
in Renaissance
Humanism and Art
By
JEAN SEZNEC Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY
BARBARA
F. SESSIONS
HARPER TORCHBOOKS/THE BOLLINGEN LIBRARY HARPER
&
BROTHERS, NEW YORK
TO
THE MEMORY OF
MY MOTHER
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS Copyright 1953 by Bolhngen Foundation Inc., New York, N. Y. Printed in the United States of America
This volume is the thirty-eighth in a series of books sponsored by Bolhngen Foundation Inc. This book was originally published in French as La Survivance des dieux antiques, STUDIES OF It
THE WARBURG INSTITUTE, Vol. XI, London, was first published in English in 1953
by Pantheon Books, It is
First
194O.
New York, for Bollingen Foundation. reprinted by arrangement.
Inc.,
HARPER TORCHBOOK
edition published 1961
Library of Congress catalog card number: 52-10520
Contents PACE
3
Introduction
BOOK TT^^JL
I
uNE: THE CONCEPTS
GENERAL ARGUMENT. The
ancient gods survive during the Middle of their origin and nature pro-
Ages by virtue of interpretations pounded by antiquity itself.
I.
The
11
Historical Tradition
Euhemerism and Christian apologetics, p. 12. Euhemerism in the Middle Ages, p. 13. The gods as precursors of civilization, p. 14; as founders of dynasties, p. 19. Euhemerism during the Renaissance, p. 20. Ethnological legends at the Burgundian court, in France, in Italy, p. 24. The historical tradition and iconography, p. 26
II.
37
The Physical Tradition Astral divinities at the end of the pagan era, p. 37. Attitude of the Church Fathers toward astrology, p. 42. Attitude of the Middle Ages: the role of the gods in science
and magic,
p. 46.
Astrology during the Renaissance:
The physical tradition and iconography, 64. The planets and their "children" in Italian fourteenth to the sixteenth century, p. 69. The
attitude of the humanists, p. 56.
The microcosms, p. monumental art from the gods of the Farnesina and
p. 63.
in.
the Cappella Chigi, p. 79
84
The Moral Tradition Mythological allegory in antiquity, p. 84; in the hands of the Church Fathers, p. 87; in the Middle Ages, p. 89. The Ovide moralise and its progeny, p. gi. Fulgentius metaforalis, p. p^. The Renaissance and mythological allegory, p. 95. Neoplatonism, p. 06. Hieroglyphs and emblems, p. go.
The moral
in art, p. /op. Titian, p. Jig
tradition
and iconography,
Symbolism in
Botticelli, p.
p. 104. The psychomachia 112; in Correggio, p. 117; in
CONTENTS
vi
PAGE iv.
222
The Encyclopedic Tradition Intermingling of the three cycles, historical, physical, and moral, p. 122.
The gods
The encyclopedic tradition spread in Italian monumental art of the
in medieval encyclopedism, p. 123.
and iconography,
its
125;
p.
The gods of the Tempio Malatestiano, p. 132. The Stanza della Segnatura, p. 143
fourteenth century, p. 127.
The Tarocchi
of Mantegna, p. 137.
PART TWO: THE FORMS GENERAL ARGUMENT. The
true role of the Italian Renaissance in
relation to the mythological material transmitted by the lies in restoring classical
manner of representing
Middle Ages
form, since from late antiquity on, the
the gods has undergone every variety of
change,
i.
The Metamorphoses of
the
149
Gods
THE PICTORIAL
TRADITION. Figures representing constellations, in manu-
scripts dating
from the Alexandrian period
to the fifteenth century,
p. 150; Greek types, p. 151; Oriental types, p. 233. Planetary
Michael Scot,
p.
Mythology in Byzantine
degli Spagnuoli, p. 160.
THE LITERARY
gods in
156; on the Campanile of Giotto and in the Cappella art, p.
163
TRADITION. The gods as described by late pagan and early
Christian writers and by the encyclopedists t p. 167* Representation of the gods in manuscripts: Remi of Auxerre and John Ridewall, p. 167. The Liber ymaginum deorum of Albricus and the Libellus de deorum imaginibus, p. 170. Petrarch
and Bersuire,
p, 172.
Sources of the gods of the
Profound alteration of the classical types of the gods under the influence of the two traditions by the end of the Middle Ages, Libellus, p. 175.
and
ii.
its
causes, p. 179
The Reintegration of
the
Gods
THE PICTORIAL TRADITION. Return
184 to the classical constellation types:
Durer's sky map, p. 185; planetary figures, p. 187
THE LITERARY
TRADITION. Diffusion of the types created by Albricus, Gradual evolution of these types toward classical form, p. 190. The Tarocchi of Mantegna, p. 199. The frescoes of Francesco Cossa in the
p. 189.
Schifanoia Palace, p. 203. Survival of medieval types at the height of the Renaissance, p. 210.
The
true junction of the Renaissance: the reintegra-
CONTENTS
vii
PACE tion of antique subject matter in the antique forms, p. 211. Italy, p.
BOOK
role of
II
The Science of Mythology in the Sixteenth Century THE PRECURSORS. Boccaccio and the Genealogia deorum, p. of the ancient and medieval mythographers, century compilations, p. 226
THE GREAT ITALIAN MANUALS. thology,
The
214
and Cartan's Images
p.
225; the
219 220; editions
first
sixteenth-
Giraldi's History of the Gods, Conti's
of the Gods, p. 22p. Sources of the
Mymanu-
als: return to the
medieval mythographic tradition, with incorporation of contemporary nonclassical elements, p. 234; neglect of figural monuments, p. 243 ; perpetuation of old systems of interpretation, p. 247. Aim of the manuals, assistance to poets and artists, p. 250. Proposed models often barbaric types, emphasizing symbolism and allegory to the detriment of plastic form, p. 252. Illustrations of the manuals never still
directly inspired by antiquity, p. 254
Theories Regarding the Use of Mythology ART CRITICISM. Armenini and Lomazzo, artists, p. 258. Insistence
p.
257;
-257 critics as
counselors of
upon thorough knowledge of mythology, espe-
cially of the attributes of the gods, p.
260
ECCLESIASTICAL CENSORSHIP. The Council of Trent and mythology, p. 264. Attitude of Paleotto and Possevino toward representation of the gods, p.
2(5(5.
The
3
artists
cendancy of allegory, p. 275.
p.
defense, p. 268. Results of the controversy: as9 269. Mythology "moralized' by the Jesuits,
The Iconologia of Cesare Ripa,
p.
278
279
The Influence of the Manuals The gods in festivals and processions after 1550, p. 280; in monumental frescoes after 1550, p. 286. V atari's Palazzo Vecchio decoy rations and the Ragionamenti, p. 2 88. Zuccaro s decorations at Caprarola and the instructions of Annibale Caro, p. 291. Zucchi's decorations in the Palazzo Ruspoli and the Discorso sopra li dei de'gentili, p. 29 8. The Venetians and mythological allegory: Veronese and Tintoretto, p. 303 IN ITALY.
IN
EUROPE OUTSIDE OF ITALY. France: lean Le Maire de Beiges, p. 309; Rabelais and Montaigne,
Ronsard, p. 307; du Bartas,
p.
306;
p.
311.
CONTENTS
viii
PAGE
England: knowledge of mythology among the Elizabethan poets, p. 312; Shakespeare, p. 3 14 ; the masques, p. 3 15. Germany, p. 316. Spain, p. 317
CONCLUSION The nature oj the Renaissance, its true role, and the causes ancient gods in seventeenthof its decline, p. 319. The fortunes of the century Europe, p, 321
Bibliography i.
ii.
Sources
327
Studies
332
346
Index
THIS TRANSLATION varies from the original text only where factual errors better
had
to be corrected; the illustrations are the
Institute,
London; the bibliography has been brought up
and rearranged
from
to date,
for the greater convenience of the reader.
In preparing assistance
press
same, and
photographs for them have been provided by the Warburg
this
new
edition, I have again received valuable
the staff of the
my special gratitude
to
Warburg
Institute. I
wish to ex-
Gertrud Bing, Assistant Director of
the Institute, for her unfailing
and friendly support. Jean Seznec
Illustrations
PACE 1.
CAELUS AND His DESCENDANTS
23
London, British Museum, ms. Egerton 1500, 2.
6
fol.
r.
BIBLICAL AND PAGAN HEROES
27
Collection of Sir Sidney Carlyle Cockerell, Picture Chronicle, 3.
5.
1 v.
APOLLO MEDICUS
28
Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare, ms. 202, fol. 4.
fol.
90
v.
AS A PHYSICIAN London, British Museum, Florentine Picture Chronicle,
APOLLO
29 fol.
153
r.
HERCULES SLAYING CACUS (Andrea Pisano)
30
Florence, Campanile di Santa Maria del Fiore 6.
DIANA AND HER WORSHIPPERS
31
Brussels, Bibliotheque Royale, ms. 9242,
fol.
175
(Chromque de
v.
Hainault] 7.
RAPE OF DEIANIRA
33
Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, ms. fr. 301, fol. 34 v. (Les Livres des histoires du commencement du monde) 8.
RAPE OF PROSERPINA
33
Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, ms.
fr.
6362,
fol.
161
r.
(UHistoire uni-
verseUe) 9.
JUPITER VANQUISHING SATURN
34
Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, ms. fr. 22 552,
fol.
39
v.
(Raoul Le Fevre,
Recueil des hystoires de Troye) 10.
THE ROYAL OLYMPUS: HENRI Chateau de Tanlay, Tour de
11.
II
AND His COURT
la
Ligue (fresco)
35
HERCULES AND THE LERNAEAJN HYDRA
36
Bergamo, Cappella Colleoni 12.
THE OLYMPIAN
JUPITER Madrid, Escorial, Biblioteca de San Lorenzo, ms. J-h-15, (lapidary of Alfonso
13.
THE SUN AND THE
54 16, fol.
102
r.
Xj 63
ZODIAC
Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, ms. lat. 7028, duodecim zodiaci signis et de ventis)
fol.
154
r.
(Scholium de
ILLUSTRATIONS
x
PAGE 14.
65
MICROCOSM Munich, Bayrische Staatsbibliothek, ms. lat 13003,
15.
66 fol.
160
fol.
25
r.
67
MICROCOSM Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, ms. 2359,
17.
r.
THE PLACETS AND THE HUMAN BODY
68 fol.
Copenhagen, Konegelige Bibliothek, G.Kgl.S. 78, 28.
v.
MICROCOSM Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, ms. 5327,
16.
7
fol.
THE PLANETS AND THE HUMAN BODY
(
8
r.
Livre des portraits et figures
du corps
68
humain, 1572) 19.
APOLLO AND THE CONSTELLATIONS
69
(Silvestro Giannotti)
Bologna, Archiginnasio (ceiling J 20.
THE PLANETS AND THE SPHERES Dijon, Bibliotheque Municipale, ms. 448,
21.
71 fol.
63
v.
THE PLANETS AND THEIR CHILDREN
72
Venice, Doge's Palace (capital) 22.
THE PLANETS AND THE LIBERAL ARTS
73
Florence, Santa Maria Novella, Cappella degii Spagnuoli 23.
74
MERCURY AND His CHILDREN London, British Museum, ms. Harley 4431,
fol.
102
r.
(Christine de
Pisan, Epitre cTOthee) 24.
MERCURY AND His CHILDREN
75
(school of Pintoricchio)
Rome, Vatican, Borgia Apartments 25.
ASTROLOGICAL MOTIF
77
Ferrara, Palazzo Schifanoia 26.
ASTROLOGICAL CEILING
77
27.
Rome, Farnesina, Sala della Galatea (ceiling) NIGHT SKY OF FLORENCE, July 8-9, 1422
78
Florence, San Lorenzo, Old Sacristy (chapel cupola) 23.
GOD AISD THE PLANETS (Raphael) Rome, Santa Maria
29.
30.
80
del Popolo, Cappella Chigi (cupola)
HOROSCOPE OF AGOSTINO CHIGI (Baldassare Peruzzi) Rome, Farnesina, Sala della Galatea (ceiling) JUNO-MEM ORIA Rome, Vatican Library, ms. Palat. lat. 1066, fol. 223
81
95 v.
(Fulgentius
metajorahs) 31.
VENUS-LUXURIA
Rome, Vatican Library, ms.
dum
diversos doctores)
107 Palat. lat. 1726, fol.
43
r.
(Ymagines secun-
ILLUSTRATIONS
xi PACE
32.
NATURE WITH VENUS, JUNO, AND PALLAS Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, ms.
fr.
108 143 (Le Livre des echecs amou-
reux)
AND THE GODS
33. JUPITER
110
Lyons, Bibliotheque Municipale, ms. 742, (Ovide moralise)
fol,
10
v.,
21
v.,
80
r.,
87
r.
110
36.
MERCURY AND ARGUS (ibid.) DIANA AND CALUSTO (ibid.) PALLAS AND THE MUSES (ibid.)
37.
WISDOM OVERCOMING THE VICES (Andrea Mantegna)
111
34. 35.
Paris,
38.
110
110
Louvre
COMBAT OF RATIO AND
Louvre
39.
VENUS AND THE TORTOISE
40.
PRUDENTIA (Titian?) London, Francis Howard
Collection
THE PUNISHMENT OF JUNO
(Correggio)
41.
Parma, Camera 42. JUPITER
di
113
LIBIDO (Baccio Bandinelli)
Paris, Cabinet des Estampes,
(Alciati,
Emblematum
115
liber}
116 117
San Paolo
AND MARS (Taddeo
129
di Bartolo)
Siena, Palazzo Pubblico 43. NARCISSUS (Girolamo Mocetto or Girolamo Santacroce)
44.
MARS (idem)
45.
SATURN (idem) Paris, Musee Jacquemart-Andre
131
132 132 (ceiling panels)
133
46. JUPITER (Agostino di Duccio)
48.
APOLLO (idem) APOLLO, THE PLANETS, THE MUSES, AND THE MODES
49.
L'HOMME
47.
133 (Gafurius, Practica
135
musice, 1496)
SCIENTIFIQUE (Geoffrey Tory,
Champfleury,
136
1529)
138
50. JUPITER (Tarocchi of Mantegna) 51.
PHILOSOPHY
138
(ibid.)
52.
THALIA
53.
PRIMUM MOBILE
54.
PERSEUS
139
(ibid.)
139
(ibid.)
150
London, British Museum, ms. Harley 647,
fol.
4
r.
(Cicero, Aratea, en-
larged reproduction) 55. PERSEUS
WITH THE HEAD OF MEDUSA
Leyden, Rijksuniversiteit, Bibliotheek, ms. Voss. lat, (Hyginus, Fabularum liber)
151 oct. 15, fol.
175
v.
ILLUSTRATIONS
xii
PACE 56.
152
VIRGO AND THE GEMINI Boulogne-sur-Mer. Bibliotheque Municipals ms. 188, manicus, Aratea
fol.
22
r.
(Ger-
>
57.
THE CENTAUR
153
Gottweig, Stiftsbibliothek. ms. 7, fol. 15 v. (Cicero, Aratea, ms. exactly reproducing a Carolingian original) 58.
154
VENUS
C
London, British Museum, ms. Royal 19 Beziers, Breviaire d' amour) 59.
(Ermengaut of 155
PERSEUS
155 fol.
21
v. (Sufi)
SATURN, JUPITER, MARS, AND VENUS
157
Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, ms. 2378, 62.
v.
5036 (Sufi)
London, British Museum, ms. arab. 5323, 61.
41
HERCULES Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, ms. arab.
60.
fol.
i,
fol.
12
v.
(Michael Scot)
MERCURY AS A SCRIBE
159
London, British Museum, Add. ms. 16578, 63. JUPITER AS
A
MONK
fol.
52
v.
161
(Andrea Pisano)
Florence, Campanile di Santa Maria del Fiore 64.
THE PLANETARY GODS
165
Rome, Vatican Library, ms. Urb. 65.
1398
lat.
VULCAN, PLLTO, BACCHUS, MERCURY Monte Cassino, cod. 132, fol. 386 Rabanus Maurus, De rerum naturis)
166
VULCAN, PLLTO, BACCHUS, MERCURY
166
(
66.
Rome, Vatican Library, ms.
Palat. lat.
291 (Rabanus Maurus,
De rerum
naturis)
67. SATURN, CYBELE, JUPITER,
APOLLO, AND OTHER GODS
Munich, Bayrische Staatsbibliothek, ms. Auxerre) 68.
APOLLO ANO THE MUSES
69.
Rome, Vatican Library, ms. Reg. bus dedrum) MARS AND VENUS; MERCURY
1290,
72.
169 fol.
11
r.
(Remi of
fol.
1 v. (Libellus de imagini-
247
v.
180 fol.
(Qazwini)
VENUS AND HER TRAIN; MERCURY
181
Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms. Rawl. B. 214, 72.
14271,
177 lat.
Vienna, Nationalbibliothek, ms. 1438, 70.
lat.
fol.
198
v.
JUPITER
Rome, Vatican Library, ms. Barb, lat HERCULES (Diirer, sky map, 1515)
186 76, fol.
6
r.
(Germanicus, Aratea)
186
ILLUSTRATIONS
xiii
PAGE 73.
PERSEUS Paris,
74.
189
Musee de Cluny,
celestial sphere,
MARS
191
Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, ms. 75.
1502
fr.
6986
MARS
191
Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, ms.
fr.
143 (Le Livre des echecs amou-
reux) 76.
MARS
191
Copenhagen, Konegelige Bibliothek, ms. Thott. 399 77. 78.
MARS (Ovide moralise, Bruges, MARS (Agostino di Duccio)
190
Colart Mansion, 1480)
192
Rimini, San Francesco (Tempio Malatestiano) 79.
MARS AND OTHER GODS
193
Landshut, Residenz (overmantel) 80.
PLUTO AND PROSERPINA
196
Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, ms.
fr.
143 (Le Livre des echecs amou-
reux) 81. HELLENISTIC
HERMES
Panticapeum 82.
MERCURY AND ARGUS
199
Paris, Bibliotheque de 83. 84.
55.
198
(relief)
1'
Arsenal, ms.
MERCURY (Tarocchi of Mantegna) APOLLO AND THE MUSES London, Victoria and Albert Museum
fr.
5066,
fol.
15
r.
200 203 (ceiling
from a palace
in
Cremona)
VENUS (Guariento)
204
Padua, Eremitani
87.
VENUS AND THE GRACES (Tarocchi VENUS
88.
Modena, Biblioteca Estense, ms. DCXCVll, DIANA, PAN, AND NYMPHS
86.
of
204
Mantegna)
205 fol.
11 (Liber physiognomiae)
207
Ghent, Cathedral Library 89.
TRIUMPH OF VENUS
(Francesco Cossa)
207
Ferrara, Palazzo Schifanoia 90.
PEGASUS AND PERSEUS Naples, San Domenico Maggiore, Cappella Caraffa
210
91.
MERCURY (Jacopo
210
Sansovino)
Venice, Loggetta 92.
Two IMAGES
OF JUPITER
(Cartari, Imagini degli dei, 1571)
237
ILLUSTRATIONS
xiv
PACE 93.
DIANA AND APOLLO
94.
MITHRA
95.
VENUS AND THE GRACES
I
237
(ibid.)
229
Herold, Heydemcelt* 1554)
96. JUPITER, JUNO.
I
239
Bote, Cronecken der Sassen, 1492)
NEPTUNE, AND MERCURY (du Ghoul, Discours de
la religion
242
des anciens Remains, 1556) 97.
MERCURY A>D PEACE
98.
APOLLO AND JUPITER
99.
MERCURY
244
(Cartari, Imagini degli del, 1571)
I
245
(ibid.)
246
Apianus, Inscriptiones, 1534
100. SACRED AND
)
PROFANE LOVE (Annibale Carracci)
270
Rome, Palazzo Farnese 101.
EROS AND ANTEROS (
102.
272
Cartari. Imagini degh dei, 1571
APOLLO, HADAD, AND ATARGATIS
)
(ibid.)
103. APOLLO^S CHARIOT Florence,
Uffizi,
280 281
Gabinetto delle Stampe (drawing for Mascherata della
genealogia degliddei, 1565) 104.
HARPOCRATES AND ANGERONA
105.
DIANA
{
Rome, Palazzo Ruspoli 106. SATURN (idem) 107.
(Cartari, Imagini, 1571)
OLYMPUS
I
297
299
Jacopo Zucchi) (ceiling)
299
Federigo Zuccaro)
302
Florence, Uffizi 108.
MERCURY AND THE GRACES Venice, Doge's Palace
(Tintoretto)
305
THE SURVIVAL OF
THE PAGAN GODS
Introduction
TITLE
THE
As
tion.
of the present
work requires a
certain
the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
come
amount of explanato
be better known,
the traditional antithesis between them grows less marked.
The medieval
period appears "less dark and static," and the Renaissance "less bright and
sudden."
less
*
Above
all, it is
now recognized
experiencing a "rebirth" in fifteenth-century the culture life,
and
that
Italy,
Middle Ages. Even
art of the
pagan antiquity, far from had remained alive within
the gods
for they had never disappeared from the
were not restored
memory
to
or imagination of
man.
Many works
published in recent years have studied the underlying
causes and the means of this survival. here, developing the
dawn
attention
it
along new
lines
of the Renaissance but to
upon
sical texts
2
its
traces of
aim
to
resume
it still
very decline.
those centers of medieval
and the study of
We
and taking
this investigation
further, not
We
merely to
have not focused our
humanism where the reading of clas-
pagan art kept the memory of the ancient artists; Jean Ad-
gods alive in the minds of scholars and the imagination of
hemar has made a
contribution of the greatest interest on this aspect of the
question, limited to France. 1
We view the problem from a different angle, and
Haskins, The
We
Gottergestalten (Leipzig, 1931) ; also the article by E. Panofsky and F. Saxl, which is of f undamental importance: "Classical Mythology in
Renaissance of the Twelfth Cambridge, Mass., 1927) , Pref., p. viL name here only the most important: F.
Centitry 2
3
(
Mediaeval Art," Metropolitan Museum Studies, (1932-1933), pp. 228-280; and E. Panofsky's article, "Renaissance and Renascences,"
von Bezold, Da* Fortleben der antiken Gotter mittelalterlichen Humanismus (BonnLeipzig, 1922 ; H. Liebescmitz, Fulgentius
im
iv
metaforalis, em Beitrag zur Geschichte der antiken Mythologie im Mittelalter, Stndien der Bibhothek Warburg, rv (Leipzig, 1926) ; A. Frey-Sallmann, Aus dem Nachleben antiker
vi (1944), pp. 201-236. Influences antiques dans fart du Moyen-Age of Studies the t Warburg Institute, vn franc.ais
The Kenyan Review,
3
(London, 1939). 3
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
4
in concepts which attempt to show that the gods lived on in the Middle Ages
had already taken shape
at the
end of the pagan epoch
interpretations pro-
the ancients themselves to explain the origin and nature of their
posed by divinities.
''to
"It is by no means easy," observes Fontenelle in L'Histoire des oracles, know how the pagan peoples looked upon their own religion." In fact,
they found themselves in a dilemma from the
moment they
son about their beliefs; for "the myth really possesses
only in those epochs when
man
still
first
its
began
to rea-
full significance
believes himself to be living in a divine
world, with no distinct notion of natural laws ; but long before the end of pa-
ganism, this
first
naivete had disappeared."
*
Indeed, the effort of
modern
mythographers, since early in the nineteenth century, has been to recover the primitive mentality
by way of philology and anthropology, and
to recapture
the intuitions of the earliest periods.
The their
own
ancients, however, in their inability to "investigate the origins of culture, to learn
how
their legends
have been their earliest meaning," to render
them
intelligible
ample, in Cicero's
De
5
were formed and what
may
evolved contradictory theories in order
theories which are brought face to face, for ex-
natura deorum. In essence, these
may be
reduced
to
myths are a more or less distorted account of historical facts, in which the characters are mere men who have been raised to the rank of the three: (1) the
immortals; or (2) they express the union or conflict of the elementary powers
which constitute the universe, the gods then being cosmic symbols; or (3) they are merely the expression in fable of moral and philosophical ideas, in which case the gods are allegories.
Now
it
was thanks
to these interpretations,
which were proposed by the
and which integrate mythology in turn with world hisnatural science, and morals, that the gods were to survive through the
ancients themselves tory,
Middle Ages, preserved alike from oblivion and from the attacks of their enemies. But, as we have said, we plan to follow the fortunes of the gods well beyond the Middle Ages, up to the end of the sixteenth century. This will give us an opportunity to show
how
greatly the art and thought of the Renaissance 5 G. Boissier, La Fin du paganisme, n, p. 372. i,
* E. Renan, Etudes ffhistoire rcligieuse, chap,
"Les Religions de 1'antiquite," pp. 25-26.
INTRODUCTION were indebted
to that particular tradition
unsuspected prolongations we hope to
This traditional aspect of is,
in fact, less striking
time, what
come
first to
drunken revelry
by nymphs 'and its
and sixteenth-century mythology If one attempts to
fifteenth-
less well
known than any other.
mind are
the scenes of seduction or rape, of love or
and admittedly no parallel
to these
had been seen since
The kingdom of Aphrodite and Bacchus, peopled
the end of the ancient world.
tian as
whose astonishing persistence and
reveal.
example, the profane themes most often treated in Italy at this
recall, for 6
and
5
satyrs, with the
reigning princesses,
Antiope of Correggio and the Ariadne of Tiis in
truth a
new
universe, rediscovered after
the lapse of centuries ; while the predilection of artists and
men
of letters for
voluptuous themes hears witness to the spiritual revolution which has taken place.
Once again poets dare .
.
.
to sing of
F amour vainqueur
et la vie
opportune
and to glorify Desire as master of gods and of men. But alongside or above this mythical realm within which nature and the flesh
no
if
have come into their own again, there
exists another realm, less familiar
where reign the great planetary above all in monumental art that
less seductive,
the allegories.
met with
It is
in palace vaulting, in chapel cupolas
may
and
figures of this type are
and their role should not
be mistaken for a purely decorative one. Actually character
deities, the heroes,
their true
meaning and
be understood only by establishing their connection with their
immediate forerunners, the gods of the Middle Ages, who had survived as the incarnation of ideas. In
recognize in the
some cases the
relationship
is
in Mantegna's painting represents the triumph of
we
easily
train,
which
obvious:
combat of Diana and Pallas with Venus and her
Wisdom
over Vice, one
of the spiritual dramas (psychomachiae) dear to the preceding age. At the
same 6
time, however, the
meaning of other mythological compositions, such as
These themes have been enumerated by
S.
Reinach, "Essai sur la mythologie figuree et 1'histoire profane dans la peinture italienne de la Renaissance" (works prior to 1580, with Index), Rev. archeol., ser. v, vol I (1915), pp. 94-171. The list has been completed by R. C. Witt, "Notes complementaires sur la mytholola peingie figuree et 1'histoire profane dans
ture italienne de la Renaissance," ibid , ser. v, vol. ix (1919), pp. 173-178. Ci also L. Roblot-
Delondre, "Les sujets antiques dans la tapis(1917), pp 296 ff.; ibid. (1918), pp. 131 ff.; ibid. (1919), pp. 48 ff., 294 ff.; the first section of this list deals with "La mytholoserie," ibid.
gie, les cycles legendaires, et les
des dieux," with Index.
Triomphes
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
6
those of Francesco Cossa in the Schifanoia Palace at Ferrara or of Baldassare
Peruzzi on the ceiling of the Farnesina, becomes clear only
if
we
see them as
the outcome of the medieval astrological tradition; even the Parnassus of
Raphael in the Stanza della Segnatura forms part of a spiritual structural elements of which are still largely scholastic. It is difficult, it
must he confessed,
edifice, the
to trace the frontiers separating these
two great profane cycles (the second of which alone concerns us here), for one melts insensibly into the other. Even the games and dances, the idyls and the Bacchic triumphs,
whose sole object
is
apparently to delight the senses
and transport the imagination, often embody some meaning or arriere-pensee are intended, in short, as food for the mind. It is only our indifference to 7
the subject, or our ignorance,
ing
it.
at the
which has kept us from examining or identifysome cases reveal the secret of the work; and
Patient analysis would in
same time we should recognize,
in the classical motif thus "resur-
rected," the transposition of a medieval theme.
The
difference in styles acts as a further hindrance to our awareness of
this continuity of tradition, for Italian art of the fifteenth
and sixteenth cen-
turies invests the ancient symbols with fresh beauty; but the debt of the Ren-
aissance to the Middle Ages
how
is set
forth in the texts.
We shall attempt to show
was handed down from century passed, and the extent to which,
the mythological heritage of antiquity
to century,
through what vicissitudes
it
toward the close of the Cinquecento, the great Italian treatises on the gods
which were to nourish the humanism and art of to
When conceived of in these terms, in itself, forces us to cover an
challenge, with to
all
Europe were
still
indebted
medieval compilations and steeped in the influence of the Middle Ages.
its
our subject, already vast and complex
immense period of time. We have accepted this we have had to limit ourselves
inevitable risks. Frequently
a cursory sketch, but in such cases
we have
tried to indicate the
main
out-
For the sake of precision, we have at some series of special importance, like
lines without altering the proportions.
some
points restricted our inquiry to
that of the planetary figures,
certain 7
phenomena
whose history has served us as an example of
of survival and evolution.
See for example a characteristic comment a Veronese painting: "It is
made by Taine on
an allegory, but the subject hardly concerns us" (Voyage en Italic [1866], n, p. 433).
7
INTRODUCTION The
essential function of the visual image, which plays so important a
is the summing up of trends or currents of thought. Our exheen have chosen and analyzed at least for the most part not amples from the formal or stylistic point of view, but rather as documents and wit-
part in this book,
nesses. In
many
cases their
mere succession furnishes us with a guiding
thread; elsewhere they supplement or complement the texts. They allow us to recognize or to establish the continuity of a tradition and to trace the directions in
which
it
extends. In a word, iconography serves as a constant auxiliary
to the study of the history of ideas.
we have throughout subordinated our ambition to be comprehenour regard for clarity. To pioneer in a region which is still scarcely known because it is the meeting place of several disciplines and so belongs Finally,
sive to
specifically to none, to plant signposts there
help to orient other travelers directed.
this is the
end
and open up to
which our
vistas
which
efforts
may
have been
BOOK
I
PART ONE: THE CONCEPTS
The
Historical Tradition
THE APPEARANCE, early in the third century B.C., of the romance
ON
by Euhemerus which was destined
tellectual climate of the
vorable to
1
its
reception.
to exert so lasting
Greco-Roman world was
an influence, the
in-
in a state exceptionally fa-
Philosophical speculation and recent history alike
had prepared the way for an understanding of the process by which, in times long past, the gods had been recruited from the ranks of mortal men. Philosophy, from Aristotle onward, had recognized a divine element within the
by
human
the Stoics:
soul, the nature of
"Deus
via" ("For mortal to aid mortal 2
glory").
A noble
putations: those
which was thus more specifically defined
est mortali juvare mortalem et haec ad aeternam gloriam
formula
men have
tined for eternal life
this,
this is
God, and
this is the
road
to eternal
which Cicero develops in his Tusculan Dis-
within them a supernatural element and are des-
who regard themselves
as born into the world to help
and guard and preserve their fellow men. Hercules passed away to join the gods: he would never so have passed unless in the course of his mortal life he had
built for himself the road
he traveled.
8
superhuman career of Alexander, and above all where he became the object of adoration similar to had that which, according to the myth, had once greeted Dionysus there suddenly thrown light upon the origin of the gods. For the generations who
At
the
same
time, the
his expedition to India
subsequently witnessed the x
official deification
Dechanne, La Critique des traditions religieuses chez les grecs (Paris, 1904), pp. See P.
372-373, and chap, xh:
"L'Evhemensme
et
of the Seleucids and Ptolemies
2
Pliny, Historia naturalis, n, 7, 18; in all probability, a translation from Posidomus. 3 Cicero, Tusc , I, 32; see also ibid., 25-26,
and De natura deorum,
Finterpretation historique."
11
n, 24.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
12
there could be no further douht: the traditional deities were merely earthly rulers,
whom
in heaven.
the gratitude or adulation of their subjects
had raised
to a place
4
The appearance of Euhemerus* work was well timed. Its success was immediate. It was one of the first books to be translated from Greek into Latin; Ennius' version, as Picus, Janus,
is
well known, gave
it
general currency in
Rome, where
and Saturn promptly became princes who had once ruled over
Latium. The euhemeristic thesis set at rest for a time the disquiet that the
mythology had always inspired in the minds of educated men, who, though unable to accord it their literal belief, had nevertheless hesitated traditional
to reject as
Homer merism
a mass of outright falsehood the time-honored tales for which
himself stood guarantor.
A
few voices, however, denounced euhe-
5
as impious
and absurd. Above
all, its
prosaic character
made
it
number of persons who had succumbed craved a more emotional type of reliand supernatural
disappointing to the ever increasing
appeal of the
to the
6
gious belief.
But euhemerism was
to
enjoy an extraordinary revival
at the
beginning
of the Christian era. First the apologists, then the Fathers, seized eagerly this
weapon which paganism
against
its
itself
upon had offered them, and made use of it
polytheistic source.
was only too easy for Clement of Alexandria, who quoted Euhemerus Cohortatio ad gentes (PC, vin, 152) to declare to the infidel: "Those
It
in his
7
whom you bow were once men like yourselves." Lactantius, again, to whom we owe the preservation of a few fragments of Euhemerus and of Ento
nius* translation, proclaims triumphantly in his Divinae institutiones that the
gods, one and
all,
are nothing but mortal beings
4 Instances of deification of high Egyptian officials at an earlier date are given by Charles Picard in his article, "L'lnhumation *ad sane* tos' dans Tantiquite,** Revue archeologique (1947), pp. 82-85. Cicero, De natur. dear., I, 42. But in a passage in Tusc. (r, 12-13), Cicero seems implicitly to admit that all the gods are men i
5
whole mortal
hide
.
heaven
.
origin?")
et Osiride,
.
.
filled
LCL.
Cf.
raised
-with
from of
gods
De
Plutarch,
xm.
6
G. Boissier, La Religion romame, cTAuguste aux Antonins, n, vii, 2. On the fortunes of euhemerism in antiquity, see Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion (ed. 1935), pp. 152-160, and A. B. Drachmann, Atheism in Pagan Antiquity (Copenhagen, 1922) IQI vpotrxwovfievoi irop* iitt.lv &vdpairoi yev6-
who have been raised from earth to heaven, *Totum prope caelum . nonne genere humano completion est? w ("Is not almost the perot .
of
who have been
.
v6re.
THE HISTORICAL TRADITION
13
earth to heaven through the idolatry of their contemporaries (PL, vi, 190 ff.). Also euhemeristic in inspiration are the De idolorum vanitate of St. Cyprian, the
De
idololatria of Tertullian, the Octavius of Minucius Felix, the
Adversus nationes of Arnobius, the Instructiones adversus gentium deos of Commodian, and the De erroribus profanarum religionum of Firmicus Maternus.
Augustine, in the
St.
1056) and the
De
turn to this
Thus euhemerism became a a weapon which they
cists,
De
consensu Evangelistarum (PL, xxxnr,
Dei (vn, 18, and vm, 26), was to subscribe in his theory, which seemed bound to prove fatal to the adversary. civitate
9
shown, their
tactics
weapon of
favorite
made use
the Christian polemi-
8
of at every turn. In
fact, as
Cumont has
were not always wholly legitimate, being aimed for the
most part at an idolatry long since extinct, and at gods whose existence had been reduced to a mere literary convention. What matters to us, however, is that the Christian apologists bequeathed to the Middle Ages a tradition of euhemerism, with further reinforcement from the commentators of Virgil especially
from Servius, whose errors the Middle Ages accepted as
articles of
10
faith.
+
THE EUHEMERISTIC
tradition remains a living influence throughout the
Middle Ages, although
it
undergoes a
total
change of character. The
human
origin of the gods ceases to be a weapon to be used against them, a source of rejection
and contempt. Instead,
ing them a
it
them a
gives
right to survive. In the
end
it
certain protection, even grant-
forms, as
it
were, their patent of
nobility.
First of all,
euhemerism
at a rather early date loses
its
polemic venom,
become instead an auxiliary to historical research. Certain men have become gods; at what period, then, were they alive upon earth? Is it possible to to
assign 8
them a
And sometimes
definite place in
human history?
for contradictory ends. In the
towns, Christian preaching encountered a predominantly symbolic or allegorical explanation of the myths, which had to be refuted in a
summary and brutal way. In country districts, the chief obstacle to Christianity was offered by the tenacious survival of anthropomorphic cults; here the problem became one of still
further humanizing the divinities of springs, trees, and mountains, in order to rob them of
See P. Alphandery, "L'Evhemerisme et les debuts de 1'histoire des reliau gions Moyen-Age," Revue de fhistoire des their prestige.
en (1934), pp. 1-27, esp. p. 13. Religions onentales dans le paganisme remain (4th edL, 1929), pp. 186-187.
religions, 9 Les 10
See Alphandery, op.
cit^ p. 18.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
14.
This tendency
is
already apparent in Eusebius.
clesiastical History that the
He
explains in his Ec-
Babylonian god Baal was in reality the
first
king
of the Assyrians, and that he lived at the time of the war between the Giants
and the Titans (PG, xix, 132-133). The coincidence in time is still only approximate, and it is clear, furthermore, that Eusebius' main concern is to show the religion of the chosen people as antedating
who bequeathed
however,
It
was
he,
Middle Ages, through Jerome, the prosynchronizations which grouped all the events
to the
totype of those crude historical
and characters of human
pagan mythology.
history,
St.
from the birth of Abraham down to the
Christian era (including the gods themselves), into a few essential periods.
After Eusebius, Paulus Orosius does
much
the
same
thing.
Although
writing "adversus paganos" and under the inspiration of Augustine,
he
is
his
book
is
above
all
legend; this is all the
an attempt
more
to unravel the past,
significant since
it
even the past of fable and
remained a manual of the high-
throughout the Middle Ages and even into the Renaissance, go-
est authority
ing through twenty editions in the sixteenth century.
But that
we
it is
in the seventh century, in the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville,
find the
"De
most interesting application of euhemerism
diis
gentium" (Bk. vm, chap,
to history, in the
PL, LXXXII, 314). "Quos pau Not only does Isidore, gani deos asserunt, homines olim fuisse produntur." chapter
following Lactantius, accept this principle
xi;
he seeks to demonstrate
it.
He
"secundum ordinem temporum" in world periods: from the Creation to the Flood; from
attempts to "place" these gods history divided into six great
the Flood to
Abraham; from Abraham
to
David; from David to the Baby-
lonian Captivity; from the Captivity to the Birth of Christ; from the Nativity
onward. This scheme
may appear
abled him
with a wealth of marvelous detail concerning primitive
to enrich
it
rudimentary, but Isidore's erudition en-
Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and Rome. Drawing by
way
of Lactantius on Varro,
and even on Ennius, be reconstructed mythological groups and dynasties: Belus, king of Assyria, of
Above
whom
Eusebius had spoken, was the father of
he singled out in these primitive ages the heroic figures who, from Prometheus on, had been leaders and pioneers in civilization slayNinus,
etc.
all,
11 "Those whom the pagans claim to be gods were once mere men."
THE HISTORICAL TRADITION and
ers of monsters, founders of cities, discoverers of arts
was
and independence
to restore dignity
factors of
And on
The
skills.
result
personages of Fable: as bene-
humanity they had every right to be held in grateful remembrance. was no reason for subordinating them to figures
the other hand, there
from Holy Writ
and prophets; they could be
to the patriarchs, judges,
they were not of the same lineage. By gaining a history, the gods had acquired new prestige.
ranked together, even hold in
to the
15
This icle of the
is
if
clearly to be seen, for example, in
Ado
foot-
of Vienne, whose Chron-
Six Ages of the World stems from the Etymologiae. After speaking
of Moses and the Exodus, he refers to contemporary events in the pagan
world: "In those days, fashioned
said, lived
it is
men out of clay;
garded as a great astrologer; skilled in several arts.
placed him
For
after his death
Prometheus, who
is
believed to have
same time, was reMercury, was a sage
his brother, Atlas, living at the
the grandson of Atlas,
this reason, the
vain error of his contemporaries
the gods" (PL,
among
Aside from the expression "vain error," of contempt or hostility; instead,
this
cxxm, 35). passage has lost
all accent
we observe a concern for fixing dates,
termining pedigrees and genealogies, with a view
to
for de-
making room for
the
heroes of Fable in the annals of humanity. Does this not constitute a recognition of the virtues which, in times long past,
heaven? Parallel
had earned them their place in
to the story of Scripture, this account of
no longer subordinate
to it; the first neither influences
profane history
is
nor overshadows the
Mercury has his own kind of greatness, as Moses has his. We have come a long way from Eusebius, who derived all pagan divinities from the Moses type, and for whom profane wisdom was merely a reflection of the wissecond.
dom of Israel. ADO OF VIENNE
* is
only one
among the innumerable
continuators of Isidore;
in fact, there is hardly a chronicler or compiler of universal history writing after the great encyclopedist
who
fails to
meration of ancient kings and heroes.
include humanized gods in his enu-
We shall not present the endless list of 12
these authors here, especially as
it
has already been compiled by others.
us mention only the most important of them 12
See Alphandery, op. cit^ and J. D. Cooke, "Euhemerism, A Mediaeval Interpretation of
all
Classical Paganism,** Speculum,
396-410.
Let
Peter Comestor.
n
(1927)
,
pp,
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
16
the year 1160, this Peter Comestor, dean of the church of Notre
Around
Dame the
at Paris,
wrote under
of Historic, scholastica a history of God's people which penetrated to
title
all parts
[1294]
Dame
Troyes and later chancellor of Notre
at
of Europe in the translation
).
by Guyart des Moulins (Bible
In this work, which enjoyed tremendous authority,
fixed and, as
it
13
historiale
we recognize in
were, codified form, the euhemeristic orientation that
saw beginning to take shape
we
first
in the writings of Isidore.
As an appendix to his sacred history, Peter condenses the mythological him by Isidore and his predecessors, Orosius and St. Jerome, into a series of short chapters, or incidentiae. The parallelism between material furnished
the two narratives, sacred clearly, the figures
now achieved a
and profane,
presented with curious precision:
is
from the world of Fable, though of
different lineage,
have
basis of strict equality with the Biblical characters. In both
groups, Peter recognizes
men
of superior stature, geniuses endowed with pro-
found and mysterious wisdom. Zoroaster invented magic and inscribed the Seven Arts on four columns (Gen. xxxix) ters of the alphabet
;
Isis
eral arts, in particular that of weaving (LXXVI) his
wisdom,
is
taught the Egyptians the
and showed them how to write (LXX) ; Minerva taught
reputed to
let-
sev-
Prometheus, renowned for
;
have created men, either because he instructed the
ignorant or perhaps because he fabricated automata. All these mighty spirits are worthy of veneration, exactly as are the patriarchs, and for the
same
rea-
sons: they have been the guides and teachers of humanity, and together stand
as the
common ancestors of civilization.
This tendency of the Middle Ages to establish parallels between pagan wisdom and the wisdom of the Bible has long been recognized. It came clearly to light
when study was "
first
undertaken of the representations on cathedral
associating Sibyls and Prophets, and of the legend of Virgil, whom portals 15 the medieval imagination had transformed into a kind of sorcerer or mage.
The 13
Sibyls and the author of the Fourth Eclogue,
Yearly editions from 1473 to 1526; another edition, Venice, 1729. Huet quotes the work; Richard Simon refers to its lasting success, "See Enule Male, L'Art religieux du Sine siecle en France (6th ed^ Paris, 1925), p. 339; L'Art religieux de la fin du moyen age,
it is
true,
had had
intuitive
pp. 268-296.
"See ed.,
Comparetti, Virgilio net medioevo (new 1937) ; J. Webster Spargo,
Florence,
Virgil the
Necromancer (1934), chap,
Talismanic Arts."
ii:
"The
THE HISTORICAL TRADITION foreknowledge of Christian divinities of
paganism,
Not only does virtues, but
it
it
verity,
and had foretold
its
coming. Applied to the
tendency has, as will be seen, surprising results.
"justify" the false gods
by recognizing
in
even goes so far as to re-endow them with at
supernatural character. If
this
17
we now
them certain real
least
a part of their
16
look back at the diatribes of Arnobius and Commodian,
we
euhemerism was a weapon which cut both ways. What, in the intention of the apologists, it should have demolished, it actually confirmed and shall see that
exalted. "If deification," Tertullian
had argued,
"is a
reward of merit, why
was Socrates not deified for his wisdom, Aristides for his justice, Demosthenes for his eloquence?" Tertullian, in his irony, spoke better than he knew: the
Middle Ages were disposed to remedy this injustice. In his superstitious zeal, medieval man was ready to venerate sages whom antiquity itself had not placed
among
the immortals.
*
As WE have
said, the
pagan gods were no longer thought
to
have purloined
the magic gifts they were believed to possess from the treasury of Christian
wisdom. But might they not have inherited their power from the demons, with
whom the first apologists often sought to identify them? In the tradition with which traces of this idea
we are
concerned,
it
1T
might be possible to find
distant recollections, but nothing more. Neither Isidore
nor his followers attribute a demonic character
to the genius, the supernatu-
which have brought about the elevation of great men to the rank of True, Apollo and Mercury have taken on the look of magicians, but
ral gifts 18
gods.
no reason for regarding them with suspicion. They are good magicians, benevolent sorcerers. Humanity has much to thank them for.
this is
That
this
was indeed the common
Middle Ages can be Not only did the Historia of Peter
attitude in the
clearly seen in the works of popularization. X6 Peter Comestor may have had in his hands the De incredibilibus (TLepl dviffruv) of Pa-
tine,
laephatus, which he cites (Judges, zx), and which would still further have strengthened
xxxvi, 1231-32), verse 5: "Omnes dii gentium daemonia" ("All the gods of the heathen are
his appreciation of the element of prodigy in pagan science.
demons").
17
See, for example, Tertullian,
PL,
i, i,
De
spcctaculis,
641 and 643: Venus, Bacchus, Castor,
Pollux, etc., are "daemonia." Cf. St. AugusEnarratto in Psalmos, Psalm 96 (PI,
We
18 shall study the tradition of the demonic in the next chapter in connection with astrol-
ogy.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
18
Comestor, which had come into general use as a textbook fa \eritable "me-
mento of the history of
religions," as
Alphandery
calls it),
mold generations
of readers in orthodox euhemerist views and furnish Vincent of Beauvais
with all the essentials of what he wrote of the gods in the Speculum historiale; it
also directly or indirectly inspired the compilations in vulgar tongues 19
which brought science within reach of the layman.
These books go even
far-
They proclaim the gratitude of humanity toward men of genius whom antiquity had made into gods. The Book of the
ther in the the
same
direction.
Treasure of Brunette Latini places Hercules side by side with Moses, Solon, Lycurgus,
Numa Pompilius,
legislators,
who
by instituting codes of law saved the nations of
ruin to which their
them.
and the Gieek king Phoroneus as among the
own
first
men from
the
and impurity would have condemned
original frailty
20
Our medieval compileis
feel themselves indebted to all these great
For
they also feel themselves their heirs.
civilization is a treasure
men;
which has
been handed down through the centuries; and as no further distinction
made between
the sacred
forged that treasure,
it is
and profane precursois of Christianity medieval
at last possible for
man
who
is
first
unreservedly and
even with pride to claim the heritage of antiquity. In the twelfth century, cul-
men were
tivated 21
ture,
already aware of the Greco-Roman origins of their cul-
and Chrestien de Troyes affirms the idea
that
France has garnered the
patrimony of antique culture and viitue: Grece ot de chevalerie
Le p&mier 19
See
los et
P
de clergie
Meyer, "Les Premieres Compilations franchises d'histoire ancienne," Romania, xrv (1885), pp. 38-81. Cf., at a much later date,
m
the fourteenth century, the "historical" early interpretations found in a poem of essentially "edifying" character, the Omde moralise (i,
w.
859
ff.
andw
1101
Rois de Crete, et fesoit accroire Par Fart de son enchantement Qu'il ert Deus ... ("Jupiter, according to history, was King of Crete, and by his magic art caused it to be believed that he was God.")
Or vous
coment la fable d Pestoire acordable".
dirai
estre
I will tell
you how fable can be made
C
V. Langlois, La Connaissance de fa nature et du monde ait moyen age., in idem, La Vie en France au moyen age, in (Paris, 1927),
See
pp. 341-^342. 21
f.)
Jupiter fut, selon Testoire
Peut
("Now
to agree with history") 20
.
.
See E. Faral, Recherches sur les sources latines des contes et romans courtois (Paris, 1913) , pp. 398 ff. The idea of the continuity between the ancient and contemporary worlds is thus seen not to have been peculiar to the Renaissance humanists Cf., on this point, the controversy between Bremond and Hauser, in Bremond, Histoire htteraire du. sentiment rehgieux en France, vol. I- L'Humanisme devot, chap,
i,
section
11,
esp. pp. 4-6.
THE HISTORICAL TRADITION Puis vint chevalerie a
Et de
la clergie la
Qui ore
est
19
Rome
some
en France tenue
.
.
.^
This idea reappears insistently in the popular encyclopedias of the 23
teenth century.
And among
the "chevaliers"
and
"'clercs,"
thir-
whose glorious
French are so proud of continuing, appear valiant captains
tradition the
at
times called Alexander or Caesar, but at others Hercules or Jason, and great inventors,
now known
as
Ptolemy or
Aristotle,
and again as Mercury or
Prometheus. *
As WE have
just seen, the
French of the thirteenth century believed that the
heritage of antiquity was theirs by special right; other peoples had long ad-
vanced the same claim. In the boasts of being a genuine Seville,
were
Roman;
later, a
Gregory of Tours, an Isidore of
to see themselves as belonging to peoples especially privileged
comparison with "baibarian"
in
century, the Spaniard, Paulus Orosius,
fifth
stock.
But
this
pride of descent, which
is
hardly ever absent from the learned writings of the Middle Ages, brings with it
one curious consequence:
in order to justify his pretentions, the scholar
turns to the fabled past of antiquity for supporting witnesses, for ancestors
and
Thus originate those "ethnogenic" fables (as Gaston Paris called them) which name a hero or demigod as ancestor of a whole people. One such fable, which proved to be a paiticularly hardy one, is famed begetters.
above
that according to which the Franks
all
Francus, as the tion of
Romans were
24
Merovingian scholars,
were descendants of the Trojan
of the Trojan Aeneas. This legend
but
it
was an inven-
should not be dismissed as a mere fan-
was taken seriously as genealogy, and became a ^ Its plausibility was enhanced by "veritable form of ethnic consciousness." the apocryphal journals of the siege of Troy by the "Cretan" Dictys and the
tasy of learned minds.
It
"Phrygian" Dares, which had been popular ever since the Greek decadence: 22
W. Foerster), w. 32 ff. ("Greece the leadership in chivalry and then learning; chivalry passed to Rome together with the sum of learning, which now has come to France.") Cliges (ed.
had
once
^For
example, in L'Image
du.
monde
See
Langlois, op. cit^ p. 73. 24
The
25
Alphandery, op. dt.t
earliest evidence of this
is
met
legend with in the Chronique de Fredegaire; the Liber histonae Francorum adds new elements. p. 8.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
20
with their appearance of exact documentation they, as
it
were, secularized the
marvels of antiquity and gave them the color of true history. "These proces-
verbaux of gods and heroes presented them in such a light that they seemed more convincingly historical than Charlemagne, Roland, or Oliver. . . ."
But even when thus humanized, and brought near enough
to
look like prob-
able ancestors, these figures lost none of their mythical prestige; mortals
who
claimed relationship with them on historical grounds could boast of their supernatural origin. Did not the Trojan Aeneas, "de'
Romani
26
il
gentil seme,"
leave a quasi-divine imprint upon the whole race of his descendants?
The
exceptional popularity enjoyed by the legend of Troy in the
Middle
Ages was therefore not due exclusively to the interest of the romantic narrative in itself; the Roman de Troie of Benoit de Sainte-Maure contained a "sort of mythical substratum"
where the medieval
more or
"something of his moral genealogy."
less consciously detect
This, then,
is
one of the
effects of
listener or reader could
euhemerism in the Middle Ages: myth-
ological figures are no longer presented as
common benefactors
of humanity.
37
They are the patrons of this or that people, the parent stem from which the race has issued and from which it derives its glory.
IN THIS regard no break
is discernible
between the Middle Ages and the Ren-
aissance; the same considerations which have protected the gods continue to 26 Dante, Inferno, xxvi, 60 ("of Romans the noble seed") . In addition to the Romulus story and the legend of Trojan descent, Rome has other and purely mythological origins, In his Dittamondo, Fazio degli Uberti relates that Janus was the first king of the Latins; then came Saturn and his sons, "Iddii nomati
in terra,**
who
civilized Italy. Cf. supra, p. 12.
See A. Graf,
Roma
nella memoriae e nelle
immaginazioni del medioevo (1882). Or even of this or that city: medieval scholars did their utmost to prove that their cities had been named for a hero or demigod. According to Flodoard (PL, cxxxv, 28) Rheiras was founded by Remus; Sigebert de Gembloux (PL, cix, 717) held that Metz was founded by one Metius, "who lived under Julius Caesar," and whose name he had read upon an ancient stone. Other similar examples 27
,
could be given. Cf. also the legend of Hercules as protector and symbol of Florence; from the end of the thirteenth century he appears on the seals of the Signoria with the legend: "Herculea cla\a
domat Fiorentia prava"
(see
Muntz,
Les Precurseurs de
la Renaissance [1882], Tradition would have it, on the other hand, that the patron of pagan Florence was Mars, a supposed statue of whom was to be seen in the Middle Ages near the Ponte p. 48)
.
Vecchio
(Dante, Inferno, xin,
143-150). It
was believed by some that the fortunes of the city were intimately bound up with this statue (R. Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, 11, The Florence statue is actually pp. 1156 ff.) of the group of Patroclus and Menelaus from which the Roman Pasquino was derived,
THE HISTORICAL TRADITION assure their survival.
They are
early chronicles, printed and
still
21
given a place in history: not only do the
times reissued, retain their full authority,
many
but the fifteenth-century chroniclers follow their lead, and never fail to devote one or
more
chapters to the pagan divinities. This
is
true of the Rudi-
mentum noviciorum (1475),
the Fasciculus
des hystoires (1488)
Annius of Viterbo, the pseudo commentator on
28
Berosus,
;
also of
temporum (1475), and the Mer
and Jacopo da Bergamo.
The last-named,
for example, in his
Supplementum chronicarum,**
and the pedigrees of the gods (Bk. in, f. 12). Jupiter is a king who has been worshipped under that name because of his resemblance to studies the origin
the planet Jupiter; other kings have borne the
who
Candia, a son of Saturn 30
Uranus, Vesta, little
etc.
later (f. 15, r
Next we pass
is,
Then Semiramis
is
dealt with, and Lot and Isaac; but a
and v) the gods reappear
Cybele, Pallas, the Sun, Diana.
and Rachel, and
to Jacob, Leah,
come Ceres and
same name, notably the king of
of course, historical, as are Ops, Caelus,
17
to the
monarchs of Assyria;
and after a paragraph devoted to Joseph, we meet Apollo, Bacchus, Vulcan, Apis, and Osiris. As in Peter Cothen
Isis
16,
(f.
r)
;
mestor, mythology alternates with sacred history. that this compilation
It is
of interest to note also
by Jacopo da Bergamo includes additional chapters on
the Sibyls and on the Trojan war, a geographical section containing a
famed
all cities
since the beginning
of time, and, last of all,
list
of
a contemporary
history.
The
sixteenth century
is
in this respect a repetition of the fifteenth: the
Promptuaire of Guillaume Rouille (Promptuarium iconum insigniorum a saeculo
hominum [1553]),
World Chronicle of Antoine du Verdier
the
(Prosopographie ou Description des personnes, patriarches, prophetes, dieux des gentils, roys, consuls, princes, grands capitaines, dues, philosophes 9 orateurs, poetes, juriconsuUes et inventeurs
tfaucuns tficeux
.
.
.
(Fax poetica sive genealogia 28
Commentaria
fratris
Joannis
et res gestae
Anna
.
.
.
su~
per opera diversorum auctorum de antiquitatibus loquentium confecta . (Rome, 1498). ^Venice (1483); our references are to the .
edition of 1485.
de plusieurs
arts,
avec les
effigies
[1573]), and the compilation by Eilhardus Lubinus
deorum gentilium, virorum, regum,
30
Similarly, Jacopo da Bergamo distinguishes several different Minervas, etc. In order to
make clear these mythological genealogies, he has recourse to Boccaccio's Genealogia deorum, of which we shall have much to say later.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
22 et
an apparphilosophers, and
Caesarum Romanorum [1598]), show us gods and heroes,
ently secure historical framework,
among
patriarchs,
in
Caesars.
THUS THE EXISTENCE
of the gods continues to be sanctioned on historical
grounds; furthermore, as in the Middle Ages, there
them as the forerunners of in Jacopo
da Bergamo. Minerva, he
the art of working in wool (f.
18, r),
first
musician ff.
rings
(f.
Hermes Trismegistus
15) the
was the
a disposition to regard
already very evident
is
woman
first
to
understand
Chiron was the inventor of medicine
first
astronomer
21, r),
(f.
20, v). Prometheus taught men to make
(f.
19, r)
says, ;
is
This tendency
civilization.
fire
Mercury the and to wear
Atlas taught the Greeks astrology (ibid.). Apollo, Aescula-
;
pius, etc., are placed in a section entitled "Viri disciplinis excellentes"; other
gods, like Faunus, Mars,
etc.,
appear under the heading: "Viri doctrinis
excellentes."
Even more
typical, 31
of Polydore Virgil. tion,
we
things
from the same point of view,
is
the
In the preface, already present in the
find first a declaration of euhemeristic belief:
may have
been attributed by us
to Saturn, Jove,
De
first
inventoribus
(1499)
Neptune, Dionysus,
Apollo, Aesculapius, Ceres, Vulcan, and to such others as have the gods,
we have
even though
edi-
"And whatsoever name
of
thus attributed to them as to mortal men, and not as to gods,
we
them by
still call
that
name." After
this declaration,
which
he obviously thinks should protect him from any quibbling on the part of the Polydore does not hesitate
ecclesiastical authorities,
to salute
each god as an
Hermes Trismegistus established time divisions Bacchus, man learned how to make wine (in, 3) ; Venus taught
innovator:
their art (HI, 17)
alphabet to the
;
from
Mercury, according to Diodorus and Cicero, taught the
Egyptians
(i,
6). Pliny attributes man's knowledge of the
heavenly bodies to Jupiter Belus; Diodorus, to Mercury 81
(n, 5);
the courtesans
Polidoro Virgilio da Urbino,
De rerum
inven-
toribus. The first edition (Venice, 1499) consisted of only three books, later increased to eight in the Basel edition of 1521. In spite of all his precautions, Polydore's
work was put
(i,
17).
upon the Index.
On
a copy of the
annotations
by
De
Rabelais,
rer.
invent,
with
see
Perrat,
"Le
Polydore Virgile de Rabelais,** Humanisms et Renaissance, xi (1949), pp. 167-204.
THE HISTORICAL TRADITION Thus the Renaissance only confirmed the those geniuses responsible for our civilization
23
right of the ancient gods to the gratitude of the
*:$
human
HH"
iS.n*S*-fcf
Jf.
race. It is
no exaggeration
Caelus and his descendants to
say that the Renaissance even restored them to
their place in heaven: "Shouldst thou follow in the footsteps of
wrote Zwingli to Francis I in 1531,
and near to
32
"thou wilt one day see
David,"
God Himself;
Him thou mayest hope to see Adam, Abel, Enoch, Paul, Hercules,
Theseus, Socrates, the Catos, the Scipios.
.
.
."
* 82
Christianas fidei brevis et clara expositio.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
24
FINALLY, we have noted during the Middle Ages a strange phenomenon
a
whole people claiming a mythological hero as ancestor, choosing him, as
it
were, for their progenitor and patron. This phenomenon persists into the Renaissance, even taking on new and striking forms.
The legend of the Trojan origin of the Franks was, as is well known, exde Gaule et singuploited by Jean Le Maire de Beiges, in his Illustrations larites
cess
de Troie, which attained immense popularity. One reason for this sucthat "nearly every nation could find there, as if in an archival set-
was
ting, its
most ancient
of nobility.
titles
Only the Germans and French could
boast undisputed descent from Hector himself, but others ings, Scandinavians,
asserting their
ambition."
ra
own
Normans,
Italians,
and Spaniards
Bretons, Flem-
also found
ways of
relationship with him, to justify either their pride or their
Now Le
Maire distributed the names of the various Trojan he-
roes, like spoils of war,
descendants of Brutus, Italians of Italus, the
among
first
men
these claimants: the Bretons were said to be
king of Brittany; the Spaniards of Hesperus, the
of Brabant of Brabo, the Tuscans of Tuscus,
the Burgundians of Hercules the Great of Libya.
and
8*
Let us further note that Jean Le Maire greatly strengthens the divine
element in the legend of Troy. The gods are given a preponderant role in his historico-mythological romance
Dares, or Benoit de Sainte-Maure.
something which we do not find in Dictys, 35
Ronsard's Franciade was less successful than the Illustrations; the ure and neglect which were to be the
lot
epic are well known. But the Franciade reveals a ticularly appropriate to the Renaissance:
sciousness" but position of the ,
fail-
of this enthusiastically anticipated
it is
new tendency which
is
par-
inspired not by "ethnic con-
by dynastic pride. Charles IX personally supervised the com38 in his concern to have it establish a direct connection
poem,
Marguerite d'Autnche
et
Jean Le
Afavre de Beiges, pp. 171-172. See G. Doutrepont, Jean Lemaire de Beiges et la Renaissance, pp. 273-274. Goropms Becanus (Jean Becan van Corp), in his Origines Antwerpianae (1569), invents a still more 34
extravagant ancestry for the Flemings They are Cimmerians, sons of Japheth; their wis*
dom conies to them from the Thracian Orpheus (Bk. vn). Etienue Pasquier, in his Recherches de la Frame, and Claude Fauchet, in his Antiquites gauJoises et franqaises, were at last to dispose of the 3%
Trojan legend. See Doutrepont, op. cit. t p. 387. Ronsard's "Avis an lectern-/*
M See
25
THE HISTORICAL TRADITION
between the sixty-three sovereigns of his own line and the most fabulous antiquity.
Princely pretensions of this
sort,
indeed, are seldom glimpsed before
the end of the Middle Ages. In 1390, however, Jacques de Guise wrote a universal chronicle which bore this revealing lustres princes
de Hainaut, depuis
dukes of Burgundy were
le
title:
god; the Trojan legends were in great favor 35
on
their descent
des
il-
Later, the
from a demi-
Late in the fifteenth, a Recueil des histoires de
prominence. The author, Raoul Lefevre, proposes three books, the second of which that
37
and that as early
at their court
Troyes (1464) was being read there, in which Hercules
show
I'histoire
commencement du monde.
to pride themselves
as the fourteenth century.
Annales de
is to treat
he twice destroyed the
city of
is
given unwonted
to deal with his subject in
of the Labors of Hercules, and to
Troy. Furthermore, Hercules ap-
peared in the tapestries decorating the hall where the Banquet of the Pheasant Oath
ding
w as held T
festivities of
(Lille,
emphasis upon Hercules? nasty. Olivier de la
long ago
1454), and in a pantomime performed
Charles the Bold and Margaret of York. It is
Marche
due
to his
relates in his
Why
at the
wed-
this special
reputed place as founder of the dy-
Memoires
into Spain, passed through the land of
that Hercules, journeying
Burgundy and there met a They were wed, and
lady of great beauty and noble lineage, Alise by name.
from their union issued the line of Burgundian princes. Another mythological hero, Jason, was well known
at the
Good put himself under his aegis when, founded the Order of the Golden Fleece. To be sure, a Biblical
court: Philip the
Burgundian in
1430, he
hero, Gideon,
seconded Jason in his functions as patron of the order. But this very partnership, bringing out as
it
does the parallelism between sacred and profane,
37 Annales histonae Ulustnum principum Hanoniae ab initio rerum usque ad annum Ckristi 1390; partially translated into French by Jean Wauquelin around 1445, and pub-
by E. Sackur, MGH, Scnptores, xxx, pL i (1896). (Of. cod. 9242 of the Bibliotheque Royale, Brussels; see fig. 6.) 38 The library of Philip the Good contained
lished
seventeen volumes destined to disseminate the legend. See Doutrepont, "La htterature frangaise a la cour des dues de Bourgogne," Societe d'Emulation de Bruges, Melanges, I
(1908). It should be recalled that the Illusof Jean Le Maire were published from 1509 to 1513 -that is to say, long after
(rations
the last duke of Burgundy had disappeared (1477).
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
26
serves admirably to illustrate the persistence of the medieval point of view.
39
Princely pride found ample satisfaction in these claims of mythological
sponsorship and heredity. In addition to the dukes of Burgundy and the kings of France, should
who used
we perhaps
example of Pope Alexander VI, arms as warrant for having the ceiling of
also cite the
the Borgia coat of
his Vatican apartments decorated with frescoes representing the story of Isis, Osiris,
and the monster Apis
unexpected antecedents, indeed, for a Chris-
v"
tian pontiff?
Other comparable instances might be found in the seventeenth century. In 1600, the Jesuits of A\ ignon, charged with organizing the ceremonial reception given by the city to Marie de Medicis, bestowed on her royal consort the
title
flatten7
of Gallic Hercules ("Hercule Gaulois"), justifying the extravagant
on the following grounds:
source de Tancien Heicule,
fils
'"I/illustre
maison de Navarre a prins sa
d'Osiris, lequel ayant battu et
Lominiens, qui etaient les trois enfants
combattu
ayant affranchi ce peuple de leur ser\itude, etablit en cette monarchic son Hispalus, les neveux duquel succederent depuis a la couronne du
de Navarie."
les
de Geiyon, tyran des Espagnes,
et
fils
royaume
40
* ICONOGRAPHY,
and gives
in turn, attests the continuity of the
striking illustration to its varied aspects.
"euhemeristic" tradition,
We
shall limit ourselves
few examples.
to a
In the
first
place, for visual demonstration of the insertion of the gods
into history, let us glance at a Provengal chronicle
(
British
Museum, Egerton
ms. 1500) of the early fourteenth century (after 1313). This chronicle, in 39
See Doutrepont, op.
cit.,
p.
147
On Jason
and Gideon, see Olmer de la Marche, Epistre a Philippe le Beau pour temr et celebrer la noble feste de Toison d'Or. The Jason legend spread by Raoul Lefevre (Jason), Michaut Taillevent (Le songe de la Toison, cTOr}, and Guillaume Fillastre (La Toison d'Or). \va&
11-1
malus serpens, qm compukt Evam in laqueos mtae perfragilesque vices. tile
In the seventeenth century, attempts -were
made
mundi
Conches has been falsely attributed to Bede, Honorius of Autun, and William of Hirschau, t^ie L*^ text roust be sought in the Patrologia Lot*, either in xc, 1127-1178 (Bedae opera, ' bk h) r fa 39-102 (Hon - A -
signify the son of St. Mary. ) In the fifteenth century, Lorenzo Bomncontri (Dierum solemnium Christumae re.,
Coelum stellatum Chrts-
& &
61
Li multiuis
Schiller:
tianunt (1627). As e e phdosophia
found:
in-
and the Almagest
Aristotle,
to "Christianize** the sky.
See the
atlas
^e
des Mittelalters." Thorndike
(op.
,
pp< 690^9i) i s o f a different opinion. For the history of astrology in Byzantium. see Boll-Bezold, op. cit^ pp. 32-33. *
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
52
and Tetrabiblos from Ptolemy. In due time they were age
to the Occident,
own
scholars, like
to transmit this herit-
enriched by having passed through the hands of their
Alhumazar and Al-Kabisi. Thanks
to the Crusades,
and
to
Arab philosophy and science into Sicily and Spain, Europe came to know the Greek texts with their Arab commentaries, in Latin transw lations for the most part made by Jews. The result was an extraordinary increase in the prestige of astrology, which between the twelfth and fourteenth
the penetration of
centuries enjoyed greater favor than ever before. It
was during
this
period that the greatest princes took astrologers into
their service as intimate counselors
Frederick
II of
Hohenstaufen and Al-
fonso the Wise in the thirteenth century, and in the fourteenth Charles France. In Italy, astrologers directed the life of
cities, cortdottieri,
and
V
of
prel-
65
ates.
The
astrologers were anxiously interrogated, just as the "Chaldeans"
had been by Romans of the Empire; strong in its new prestige, astrology inspired new fears. Furthermore, the Arabs had developed one of its most threatening aspects in the theory of planetary conjunction. together in the
birth of
junction, 66
portent.
constellation of the three
The appearance
major planets
Saturn, Mars,
could precipitate illness, war, famine, and religious upheavals.
and Jupiter
The
same
Mohammed,
long ago, had actually coincided with such a con-
and the Black Death of 1348 again confirmed the same
terrible
There was a growing sense of inexorable doom threatening from the
skies.
Timor
fecit deos: the fear of
these threats which
demons revived
hung over them,
men
felt evil
at the
same time. In
presences at
looked to the magicians for means of escape or propitiation. *
all
work, and
We
are fortu-
There were also direct translations from the Greek. See Haskins, The Renaissance of the
Jourdam, "Nicolas Oresme et les astrologues de la cour de Charles V," Rev. des
Twelfth Century, chap, is: "The Translators from Greek and Arabic." Cf. also G. Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science (1927), i, esp. chaps, xviu-xxiv (with detailed bibhog-
questions hist. t xvin (1875), pp. 136-159. Cf. an excellent portrait of the Renaissance astrologer in Soldati, La poesia astrologica net quattrocento, Florence (1906), pp. 107-118. Soldati distinguishes between the philosopher-mathematician and the ordinary
raphy). 85
The astrologer of Frederick II was the famous Michael Scot whom Dante placed in the abyss reserved for diviners and sorcerers (Inf., xx, 116-117). Thomas, father of Christine de Pisan, was official astrologer to Charles V.
Cf.
C.
magician or diviner. In actual often one and the same person.
^See
fact,
Boll-Bezold, op. cit^ p. 34.
they were
THE PHYSICAL TRADITION
53
nate in possessing a document of cardinal importance which throws into
sharp relief this recrudescence of the demonic in astrology and the state of
mind which
resulted. This is a manual of magic, composed in Arabic in the from Oriental and Hellenistic elements, translated into Spanish
tenth century
at the court of
Some twenty
Alfonso X, and widely circulated
Latin manuscripts are known.
This manual, the Arabic
title
of which
is
Ghdya and
(probably a corruption of Hippocrates),
trix
treatise
in the late
Middle Ages.
67
is
the Latin title Pica-
openly and professedly a
on the practice of magic, based on astral science. Indeed, its aim is to and to utilize their power, though for Picatrix spirits
conciliate the "spirits"
and planets are intimately associated, instructions are given
by
how
their aid, just as if they
For
all this there is
to
to
if
not actually interchangeable.
"Many
each of the planets and to work magic
pray * were demons."
an established ritual. Picatrix prescribes propitious
times and places and the attitude and gestures of the suppliant; he also indi-
what terms must be used
cates his
formula for a prayer
in petitioning the stars. Here, for example, is
to Saturn:
"0 Master
of sublime
name and
Master Saturn: Thou, the Cold, the
power, supreme Master;
Mournful, the Pernicious Thou, whose ;
life is sincere
great
Sterile, the
and whose word sure ;
Thou, the Sage and Solitary, the Impenetrable; Thou, whose promises are kept; other, ter of ity
Thou who
art
weak and weary; Thou who
hast cares greater than
or ruin, and makest
preme Father, by Thy
me what I ask.
.
.
men
to
be happy or unhappy!
great benevolence and
I
conjure Thee,
Thy generous
The Arabic
Su-
bounty, to do for
."
In this pagan prayer one finds, as F. Saxl has pointed out, 67
any
who knowest neither pleasure nor joy; Thou, the old and cunning, masall artifice, deceitful, \\ise, and judicious; Thou who bringest prosper-
text of the Picatrix
was pub-
cussion of the Picatnx
See,
69
the accent
on the same subchap. Ixvi; and
hshed for the
first tune by the Warburg Library in 1927. A critical edition of the mediLatin translation, based on the manuscripts, is in preparation. I am indebted to
ject,
eval
Handbuch hellenistischer Magic," Vortrage d. Bibl Warburg (1923), pp. 94-124, esp. p. 113.
Dr. E. Jaffe, the editor, for several important items of information. Two further volumes, prepared by Dr. M. Plessner, will contain a
^See
modern translation and a
full historical dis-
Thorndike, op. cit., n, Hellmut Ritter, "Picatnx,
"Nachleben antiker Cotter
als
m Thorndike, op. cit., n, p. 820. "Rinascimento
torium 220-272.
fur
ein
arabisches
Sterndamonen."
dell* Antichita,"
Kunstwissenschaft
Reper-
(1922),
pp.
54
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
and even the very terms of a Greek astrological prayer
to
Kronos. This
indication that the sources of Picatrix are in large part Hellenistic.
amazing
to
think that such prayers were
now being
70
one
is
But how
raised to the skies in
Christian Europe!
Let us
now
ask by what material means, what
to force the astral divinities to
lend
him
tools, the
One
their aid.
magician hoped
essential factor
was
the actual likeness of the god. Engraved, preferably on precious stones, ac-
cording to the aspect of the heavens at some particularly favorable
moment, such images were supposed
and
to receive the greatest pos-
amount of
sible
to store
it
celestial influence
away, so
to speak,
for future use. To this end, describes
some
the
images of and zodiacal
fifty
fixed stars, planets, signs,
Picatrix
efficacy
of which he
guarantees.
Surprises are in store for us as 12.
The Olympian
Jupiter
we read
these descriptions.
assure the favor of Jupiter, for
stance, a white stone should be engraved with the figure of a
To in-
crowned per-
sonage seated on a throne, his hand upraised (see fig. 22, taken from the lapidary of Alfonso X) ; each of the four feet of the throne should rest on the neck of a winged man.
Who
is this
personage? None other than the
Olympian Zeus as described by Pausanias: "The god he
is
hand
made of is
gold and ivory.
a scepter.
the throne.
.
.
."
.
n
.
.
On
There are four Victories
To win
sits
his head lies a garland. .
.
.
on a throne, and
...
In the left
one at each foot of
the benevolence of Mars, one needs a
graved with the image of "a young man, naked with hair knotted at the back of her head; his 70 It
denves also from Babylonian sources. Cf. the article of Dozy and de Goeje on the Ghdya,
Actes du vie Congres International des Ori-
left
at his right
hand
rests
gem
en-
a young girl
on her breast, his
entdistes (Leyden, 1885), n, pp. 285 71 Pausanias, v, 11, 1-10.
&
THE PHYSICAL TRAD1TIO^ on her neck, and he gazes
right
classical motif of
into her eyes." 7"
Mars and Venus.
The reader
learned Picatrix,
cock's spurs.
more
that of a
is
feet of a camel/'
We
man
will recognize the
Other images are even more perplexing.
Here we have a barbaric Saturn: "The foim of Saturn, and the
55
in the opinion of the
seated on a throne, having a crow's head
Elsewhere appears a Jupiter with
lion's
head and
shall have occasion later to study these puzzling figures
closely; here let us recall merely that ever since the end of the
era monsters out of the East had been making their
way
pagan
into the firmament,
mingling with the Greek gods who had won a place there.
As a matter of
gems bearing
fact,
effigies
of the gods had been in un-
interrupted use throughout the Middle Ages. Great monasteries had their col-
cameos and
lections of antique
seal of
is
Charlemagne
the surprising discovery of a
Gems
tical seal.
crosses,
Venus Anadyomene or a Leda on an
The
make
ecclesias-
with mythological subjects are often found mounted in
on book covers -and reliquaries."
Scholars have been selves
intaglios as early as the seventh century.
a head of Jupiter Serapis; sometimes we even
why and
The explanation
in
much
intrigued by this phenomenon, asking thempagan gems were put to such unexpected uses. some cases lies doubtless in mere ignorance, or misunder-
what
in
spirit
standing of the figure represented
could be taken for
Adam
:
and Eve.
thus Poseidon and Athena, under a tree, 74
But for the most part these stones were
used because they were thought to possess special lapidaries, both Hermetic
Ptolemy himself was thought
de impressionibus imaginum 72
in
The Alexandrian
w
.
.
.
to
have composed a Liber
gemmis. These varied traditions were trans-
Joan Evanfe, in her Magical Jewels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Particularly England (Oxford, 1922), p. 102, cites the text of a French lapidary derived from the un bacheher nu same source as Picatrix: ". estant et une pucele que estoit adestre de li nue que eit ses chevus hez entor et le bachetter ." (B. M. eit sur le col de la pucele sa main Add. 18.210 . 73 See Demay, Des Pierres antiques dans les }
virtues.
themselves derived from Egyptian
recorded the magic effects of stones bearing represen-
and Chaldean sources tations of divinities.
and Gnostic
sceaux du
May en-Age (Paris, 1877), F. de Mely, '*Du role des pierres gravees au Moyende Part chretien (1893). E. Revue Age," Babelon, "Les Camees antiques de la Bibhotheque Nationale," Part rv: "A quoi servaient
xxi
les
camees," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, W. S. Heckscher, Pagan Antiquity in Mediaeval Set-
(1899), pp. 101-116;
"ReKcs
of
Journal of the JParburg Institute, (1937-38), pp. 204 ff.
tings," 74
See de Mely,
art. eit.
r
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
56
mitted, directly or indirectly, to the
Middle Ages: Picatrix combines several
of them. But long before his day, belief in the power of engraved stones was
very general. Since the art of glyptics had been lost at an early date the second and third centuries A.D.
ancient
gems corresponding
between
such images were no longer made;
in color
and subject
lapidaries continued to be used as talismans. teenth century, however, that the treatises
It is
make
7S
but
to the prescriptions of the
not
till
the
end of the
thir-
the action of the stars respon6
sible for the properties
bod of Rennes
which they attribute to gems.' To be sure, as Mar-
says, .
.
.
Nul sage homme doter ne
Ken pirres
doit
grant vertus ne soitJ
7
But for the most part these virtues are regarded as being of a medical nature only; so, in his day, old Isidore, speaking "de lapidibus insignoribus,"
been at special pains
to share
7S
had
none of the "pagan superstitions" on the sub-
ject.
On century,
the other hand, and especially during the renaissance of the twelfth
men who were
true humanists
made
discerning selection
for rea-
some special personal appropriateness 79 gods. But in the thirteenth and fourteenth
sons of taste, or perhaps because of of
gems bearing images of it is
centuries,
the
unmistakably as amulets that they are used, and in a distinctly
The ferment
religious spirit.
of diabolism has regained all
its
old virulence,
and the "astrolatry" expressly recommended by Picatrix takes us back to the time of Apuleius to the days of incantation and sacrifice offered to the astral divinities.
IT
MAY
^
well be asked
how
velop to this point, wheie 75 The formula "Carve in stone in lapide
.
.") is
.
"Should you find ris in lapide
.
.
it
the
Church could have allowed astrology
constituted a direct threat to the faith.
. . ." ("Sculpe replaced at an early date by a stone . . .** (**Si mveneSimilarly, in the lapidaries
in
.**)
.
in vulgar idiom the formula begins, "If find . . ." 76
you
See Evans, op. cit^ chap, v: trology: Lapidaries of Engraved Gems.** 77
Gted
by
Evans
(ms.
2200,
BibL
lues.") 78
Etym., xvi, 4, *'. . . quibus gentiles in superstitionibus quibusdam utuntur." On the other
hand, a
Ste-
("No man of sense Genevieve, foL 120, v.) should doubt that in stones reside great vir-
list
of astrological seals will be found
in Vincent of
vm,
"Mediaeval As-
to de-
Not only
79
Beauvais,
Speculum
naturals,
35.
See Demay, op
at.,
and Adbemar, Influences
antiques dans I'art du Moyen-Age frangais, Studies of the Warburg Institute, vii (London, 1939), pp. 106-107.
THE PHYSICAL TRADITION was
it
57
leading Europe back to one of the most demoralizing forms of idolatry,
but by representing the various religions and the earthly appearance of their
founders as dependent upon the
ranked Christianity on a level with
it
stars,
the other faiths and seemed to foreshadow
And,
in fact, the
Church did
its
decline.
Even though, as we have seen, she had and had not rooted it out, she under-
react.
conceded the principle of astrology,
stood the extent of the danger. This reaction, which can he detected as early as the twelfth century, rigor.
We
need only
50
was
recall
later to be carried at times to the point of
Cecco d'Ascolfs expiating
utmost
at the stake the
crime
of having calculated the date of the birth of Christ by means of the stars.
Such examples might
they did not arrest the
instill terror;
evil.
The dan-
gerous impetus that astrology had gained in the thirteenth century was accentuated in the fifteenth and sixteenth. Here, again, the Renaissance
was
to
prove a continuation of the Middle Ages.
We shall in a classic
not repeat in this connection all that Burckhardt has shown us
work:
81
never since antiquity had the science of the stars been
more highly or played a
rated
greater role in the lives of states or individuals.
The great Cinquecento popes alone may
serve as examples
Julius II basing
the date of his coronation on the calculations of the astrologers, as Paul III
did the hour of each consistory, or Leo
Sapienza which was
X founding a chair of astrology at the
to rival similar foundations at the universities of Bo-
logna, Padua, and Paris.
82
Here we see
to
what extent the Church, or
at least
the Vatican, yielded to the prevailing superstition. It is
of course true that at the same time profound intellectual forces
work which were one day, with Copernicus and Galileo, to lead far the astrological concept of the universe, and to liberate science from beyond it would be a mistake to view this development as the logical reBut magic. were
at
sult of a
more profound and enlightened culture.
On the contrary, the
first effect
of humanism was to encourage astrology.
The precursors of humanism, men like Petrarch and 80
According to Thorndike (op. at., n, pp. the reaction began somewhat earlier, at the end of the eleventh century.
5
ff.),
w The pt 82
Salutati, still
maintained
Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy,
chap. iv. Boll-Bezold, op. vi,
cif., p.
36.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
58 the orthodox
and reserved
attitude of
Dante and Thomas Aquinas.
83
As time
went on, however, and profane learning gained ground, the harriers within
which the Middle Ages had attempted
Drawn new
to confine
it
were steadily weakened.
in large part from the literature and philosophy of late antiquity, the
studies confirmed the astrological concept of causality in a thousand 84
ways.
This concept ended hy penetrating
all
new
natural philosophy, just as
it
had formerly sustained the great intellectual structures of the encyclopedists and theologians. It continued to dominate physics and the other natural sciences.
The notion of
the intimate
bond between microcosm and macrocosm,
for instance, remained basic to the art of medicine. Paracelsus, following
Marsilio Ficino, proclaims that "the physician must have knowledge of man's other half, that half of his nature which
is
bound up with astronomical philos-
ophy; otherwise he will be in no true sense man's physician, since Heaven retains within its sphere half of all bodies
and of
all
maladies."
M
In
fact, in
order to account for the origin of syphilis and the ravages of the disease, physicians invoked the baleful conjunction of Saturn and Mars.
Attempts were doubtless
still
to differentiate in this connection
made, as in Ronsard's between body and
86
Hymne
des astres,
soul, the former alone
being subject to astral influence:
Les Estoilles adonc seules se firent dames tons les corps humains, et non pas de nos dmes.
De
83 Petrarch, who jests at the astrologers without being himself entirely immune, refers to SL Augustine, Epist. rer. famil^ m, 8. In the
De
fato et fortuna, Salutati regards the heavenly bodies as instruments in the hands of
God. because he is a humanist and Neoplatonist that Marsilio Ficino believes in classical antiquity is his guarantor. astrology: See, for example, his letter to Rinaldo Ursino, archbishop of Florence (Epistolae [Venice,
"In
fact, it is
astrological bases. Cf. Bonmcontri, who in a didactic poem, De rebus caelestibus, ofiers a
complete system of astrological physiology in verse, including, for example, an explanation of how all the planets in turn contribute to the formation of the foetus (cod Laur. xxxiv, c, 23 a, b) . ^See the Remede centre la grosse verolle
52
(Lyons, 1501) : "I affirm that the conjunction of two adverse aspects of Saturn and Mars . . and the . conjunction and evil look of the
there that all knowledge finds its
said planets were at its origin. . . . For Saturn causes ill to be suffered in the legs and other members. And Mars is the cause of begetting. . . . Hence the effect of the said conjunction is cause of this malady." Cited by K.
confirmation." Ficino, in his De vita tnphci, had attempted to construct all medicine on
Sudhoff, AILS der Fruhgeschichte der -Syphilis (Leipzig, 1912), p. 157.
1495], ra, p. Ixvi, v.). He adds: "What is a physician who knows nothing of cosmography? He ought, on the contrary, to have a special understanding of 83
it,
since
it is
THE PHYSICAL TRADITION
59
But physiology and psychology are inseparable; "temperament"
is
the un-
failing determinant of character.
Thus the Renaissance saw no contradiction between astrology and science; rather, the dominion of the heavenly bodies over all earthly things
was viewed by some
as the natural law par excellence, the law which assures phenomena. For Pomponazzi, it was the very form and pat-
the regularity of
tern of universal determinism. self
from the bonds of
mind than
87
And
this natural
though speculation gradually freed
philosophy
the bonds of theology
outcome should not be interpreted
this
merely as a victory of experience and exact calculation over fact, as Cassirer
has shown,
88
it
was
it-
even more tyrannous for the
essentially for
humanists finally rebelled against the tyranny of the
superstition. In
moral reasons that the
stars.
In a world system all parts of which are interconnected, with no single
creature possessing an existence independent of the cosmos, man's position is
impossibly humiliating.
To be
universe are undeniable; but they
sure, the
now
man
bonds which attach
to the
cease to be thought of as a form of
imprisonment. Marsilio Ficino
still adheres to the notion of "superior" powdominion over "inferior" beings (the stars sending their influences down toward the earth). Nicholas of Cusa no longer accepts this subordina-
ers with
tion of earth to sky;
he sees only harmony and correlation, not dependence.
Paracelsus goes even further; he suggests that the influence the other direction
from man
to the stars,
from soul
may
to thing,
89
operate in
from the
in-
ner world to the outer. "It might be said that Mars has more resemblance to
man
than
man to
Mars, for
man
is
more than Mars and
The decisive word has been spoken: mind
is
the other planets."
superior to matter^Even
where the astrological world picture remains unchanged, a tendency clearly manifested to create a
tem."
91
This tendency
For him, things 87
De
is still
new
is,
more proudly affirmed by Pico
naturalitan
seeing things not so effectuum
is
place for the individual within the sysdella Mirandola.
too, acceptance of astrology signifies a reversal of the true
that
M
much according
admirandorum
causis stve de incantationibus (Basel, 1556). Individuum und Cosmos in der Philosophic
88
der Renaissance (Leipzig-Berlin, 1927), chap.
hi: "Freiheit
und
w Cassirer, op. M Ibid p. 117. ,
&1
Ibid^ p. 118.
order of
to their essence as ac-
Notwendigkeit.**
at, pp. 116-117.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
60
and
cording to their worth matter over his
solemn
spirit. Against this, the author of the
He
protest.
refuses, so he says, to
which creates the genius,
ingenium melius."
And
it is
the second
dignitate hominis raises
to
is
a loftier mind:
in think-
It is
not a better
"Non astrum
melius, sed
the miracles of the spirit are greater than those of the
sky: "Miracula quidem animi first to
De
honor in great men
anything other than their humanity.
ers, statesmen, artists
star
tantamount to admitting the sovereignty of
is
.
.
.
w
coelo majora sunt."
To
deny and lower rather than rightly
attribute the
to understand
them.
Thus "the true impulse toward liberation came not from a new concept new concept of man's own worth." Humanist pride
of nature but from a
new methods
arose in opposition to astrology even before
reckoning had advanced far enough to condemn
However, one grave misunderstanding
of observation and
it.
fear of the stars
still persists:
does not disappear with these proud declarations. The humanists have fused to fetter ciple.
as
man
to
any system of physical
re-
causality, to a material prin-
But are the heavenly bodies purely material? From the earliest times, seen, they have, on the contrary, been viewed as animated by in-
we have
telligences (spirits, gods, or
by more or
less
demons) who determine
their
movements, and
malevolent forces. Have the Renaissance philosophers and
savants wholly renounced this conception?
To be
sure, it
is
rejected in unmistakable terms
by a Pomponazzi, who
denies that either demoniacal or divine forces can directly usurp power in violation of the natural laws which govern the production of
World order would be continually compromised able,
under cover of the heavenly bodies,
if spirits
phenomena.
or angels were
to exert a direct influence
upon
nature and man.
The stars, if
attitude of Marsilio Ficino is
but at the same time his sinister ancient 92
more
He
typical.
maintains that the
they do influence the body, have no compulsive power over the soul;
own
inner life is shadowed
who presided over
his birth.
In astrologiam, nr, cap. 27, foL 517 ff. On the controversies aroused by this work of Pico,
cf.
by fear of Saturn, the
He knows
Soldati,
that
La Poesia
he cannot escape
astrologies chap.
iv.
THE PHYSICAL TRADITION that baleful influence, which
can try to turn
and
inertia tion.
sterility, is also the
But even
whom
so, Saturn's
extends, and
it
condemns him
it is
for good: Saturn,
demon of
presiding genius of intellectual concentrastrict limitations
only within these limitations that
friends try in vain to distract at the very
it
patronage imposes
shape his personality. This conviction
Thus
melancholy. At the most, he
to
into other channels, to use
it
61
literally ohsesses Ficino,
him from his somber thoughts.
moment when
on those
man
is
to
free to
and
his
83
great thinkers are striving to throw off
the humiliating yoke of the cosmic bodies as such, they tremble before the
mysterious divinities which inhabit them.
Man
proclaims the freedom of the
will; but there are other wills stronger than his own,
The premature death of Pico
prevails.
and
it
is
Destiny that
della Mirandola, which confirmed the
predictions of the astrologers to the day and hour, appeared to his contem-
poraries like a terrifying denial of his proud assertions. self,
and
who
94
And Luther him-
scoffed at astrology as irresponsible fantasy, or as an unhealthy
pitiable art, admitted that the awe-inspiring conjunction of several plan-
ets in the constellation Pisces
heaven.
which occurred in 1524 was a warning from
95
Outmoded of those
fears of this kind were stubbornly reborn even in the minds
who thought
much more reason
themselves most completely emancipated. With
did they persist
among
those
who lacked
how
the support of
philosophical meditation, while no longer wholly accepting the assurances of the faith.
Men
done, to conjure
like these turned to magicians, just as their ancestors
away
the evil powers.
93
Epistolae (Florence, 1495), m, p. Ixix, v.: Ficino complains to Cavalcanti of the malign influence of Saturn; Cavalcanti attempts to reassure him, saying that it is impossible for the stars to injure man ("Nullum hercle malum facere nobis possunt astra" ) . But Ficino continues his lament (p. Ixx, r.). Saturn may have good effects, but "I am too timorous
about the
evil
ones"; and he comes back to
his horoscope: "This melancholy seems to have been imposed on
temperament me from the
beginning by Saturn, set almost in the center my ascendant sign, Aquarius [the Water
of
had
They searched the treatises on magic Bearer] and being met by Mars in the same and by the Moon in Capricorn while looking toward the Sun and Mercury in the Scorpion, occupying the ninth zone of Heaven.**
sign,
4
95
Boll-Bezold, op.
See
A.
cit. f p.
41.
Warburg, Heidnisch-antike
Weis-
Wort und Bild zu Lathers Zeiten, sagung Gesammelte Schriften (Leipzig, 1932), n, pp. in
487-558. In this regard, the Reformation brought no more essential a break than humanism had done. Melanchthon was an astrologer, even Tycho Brahe, a devout Protestant, believed in the harmful influence of the stars.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
62 for images
and formulas with which
to placate the astral
demons, the very
recommended by astrologers of the thirteenth century. It is from the "Reverend Pere en diable Picatrix, recteur de la faculte diabo-
recipes once
logique," as Rabelais calls him, rives the chapters
he devotes
engraved on talismans;
Ragot belong
to the
9r
96
to the
that Cornelius Agrippa, for
the lapidaries of Camillo Leonardi
same
example, de-
images of decans and planets suitable to be 98
tradition.
and Hugues
Henri Estienne reports that Queen
Catherine de Medicis, whose passion for astrology
is
of course well known,
always carried a gem on which were engraved names of celestial
one side showed Jupiter, to
whom Anubis was
spirits
offering a mirror,
and the
other Venus, with her planetary symbol. This talisman had been designed
and executed by the Sieur Regnier, a famous mathematician and reputed 09 magician in whom she had great confidence. At about the same time, Benvenuto Cellini had his horrifying nocturnal vision of the Colosseum smarming with a troop of demons which a necromancer had
"in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin."
summoned
at his request
1UO
We need not multiply examples of this kind.
Still in full
force in the six-
teenth century, astrology continued to keep alive the veneration for the gods for
which
made
it
had served as
shelter since classical times. Attempts
to Christianize or laicize this veneration, to bring
ology or reduce
it to
a rational theory of universal law;
print of those mythological powers
it
might be
into line with the-
it still
bore the im-
whose names had been preserved by the
stars.
* 96
Ptmtagruel, m, 23; Pantagruel studied under Picatrix in Toledo. Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (French
97
: La philosophic occulte (Paris, 1919), Bk. H, chaps. 36-44. Picatrix also inspired Marsiho Ficino, who believed in the powers possessed by stones engraved with images of the gods.
tran.)
88 C.
Leonard, Speculum lapidum (Venice, 1502) : De figuris sive imaginibus quae similitudinem habent constellationum Caeh et ad quid valent. H. Ragot, Force et vertu des pierres qui sont entedllees. 89 H. Estienne, Discours merveilleux de la we, actions et deportements de Catherine de Medi-
(1575). Celhni, Vita (ed. Bacci [Florence, 1901]), Such demons, responsive to magic arts ("saepius ad magicos sohtos conscendere
cis 100
p. 127.
cantus"), are, according to the astrologer Bonincontn, angels who have remained uncertain in their allegiance, belonging neither to God nor to Lucifer. (Rerum naturalium, cod. Laur. xxxiv, 52 c, 69 b) The view r, held by the Church Fathers may be recognized here, especially that of St Augustine. For the rest, Bonincontn affirms the astral nature of
demons: "astraeumque genus cunctis." Cf. Hymne des dtamons (ed. A. M. Schmidt [1939], with commentary). all
Ronsard's
THE PHYSICAL TRADITION To ILLUSTRATE
different aspects of this
63
mythology of the heavens and to
convince us that the gods survived as sidereal demons, posal an extremely rich and curious iconography.
73.
in our study (pp. in the course
step
by
step.
149
ff.)
We
all that
at
our dis-
shall investigate later
The sun and the zodiac
the process
by which
this
of the centuries, and shall try to trace
Here
we have
we plan
to
do
is to
iconography took shape its
singular vicissitudes
point out a few of the pictorial
themes in which medieval and Renaissance ideas of the nature of the gods
found expression.
How
are the gods represented in the cosmology of the Middle Ages?
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
64
Before the twelfth century,
we
find little
by way of
illustration of the
systems of which the gods form part beyond an occasional diagram of or less
sort.
summary
These diagrams
world
more
are usually circles containing in-
scribed rosettes, the interlacings of which form symmetrical compartments:
each such compartment bears the of an element, humor, season,
who
is
name
etc.
of one of the fundamental qualities,
At the center we read the name of Man,
shown as surrounded and hemmed
thus
universe. It
is
easy
lents (supra, p.
47) which, in
interdependence of
all parts
appears also, accompanied astral deities.
As
in
to recognize in this decorative
all sides
by the physical
scheme the table of equiva-
late antiquity, expressed the correlation
of the cosmos.
first
on
by
the
101
The theme of melothesia
names and
later
and re-
by the images of the
early as the eleventh century a miniature depicts the Sun,
a halo of rays about his head, standing at the center of a circular zone
made up the
of the zodiacal signs.
names of the
As
parts of the
Each sign
body which
is
marked with
own name and
its
102
it
controls
(fig.
13).
the astrological doctrines spread, there is an increase in the
number
of figures showing the zodiacal symbols distributed over parts of the
body
the
Ram
on the head, the Fishes under the
feet, the
the shoulders. In the fourteenth century, this figure is
from these centuries
it
it
passes to
prayer books, where in the
human
Twins grasping
common fifteenth
in calendars ;
and sixteenth
serves as a sort of frontispiece. It appears, for example, on a 103
page of the Tres Riches Heures of the Due de Berry. But of greater interest for us are the microcosm pictures in which the planets are represented. One of the earliest examples is a miniature in a manuscript in Munich (cod. lat Monac. 13002) showing 101
man among
the
102
eighth-century manuscript of Isidore of Seville (ms. 423, BibL de Laon), reproduced E. Fleury, Les Manuscrits a miniatures de by la Bibliotheque de Laon (1863). The same ms.
Bibl. Nat., ms. 7028, fol 154. Wickersheimer has mistakenly seen heie an image of Christ. The original ms. of the Liber Floridits cornposed in 1120 (see Leopold Delisle, Notices et extraits, vol. xxxvin [Paris, 1906]), and pre-
a miniature "De positioae septera stellarum errantium." Ms. 422, a ninth-century copy of 423, includes miniatures representing the constellations. Cf. Wickersheimer, art ciL,
served in the University Library of Ghent, no. microcosm representing the "six ages of the world" (foL 20, v) and an image of the sun surrounded by the planets
and J. Baltrusaitis, "L'Image du monde celeste du ixme au xnme siecle," Gazette de$ Beaux-
103
Cf., for
example, a miniature in a seventh-
or
contains
Arts (Oct^ 1938), pp. 134-148.
92, contains a curious
(foL 38, v)
.
See H. Bober, "The Zodiacal Miniature of the Tres Riches Heures of the Duke of Berry:
THE PHYSICAL TRADITION
65
make up his being as they do the world itself. From the eyes, and mouth issue scrolls hearing the names of the planetary
elements, which nostrils, ears,
A
deities.
nimbus surrounds the head, inscribed with
sort of
star celestis spere" (sic).
of the sky. presses
curve
firmament and
its
of
seven
as
it
the legend, "In-
were, a small-scale image
the ori-
to the
seven
great planetary lights
(fig.
fices
is,
roundness ex-
Its
the
Thus man's head
correspond
14).
Aside from
this
which faithfully
image,
reflects the
concepts of an Honorius of
Autun or a Hildegard of Bingen as
to
man's relation 10*
to the universe,
of
others,
later
there are in
date,
which a new sentiment
finds
some of these
expression. In
man
the figure of a
is
en-
closed in a series of concentric
circles,
may be
to
attached
which he
by rays;
;__
frangoys (Petit: Paris, 1525). The calendars, almanacs, lot books, and collections of prognostica of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries contain a great many mythological-astrological conjunctions of the planets, for instance, are frequently represented. Cf. the rich documentation in Warburg, op. c/t, pp. illustrations;
489-565. 104
Honorius
rT.XTrn,
1116:
of
Autun, Eluddarium> PL, is a little world composed . . His head is round, like sphere, within which his eyes
"Man
of four elements.
the celestial
.
we
-
in
1
Sources and Meaning,* in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xi (1948), pp. 1-34. See further, Pierre Gringoire, Les Heures de Ifostre Dame translatees en Its
_-
_
^T.-jiAiiySfiSs-.--*--
14.
=
Microcosm
shine like two of
its
luminaries."
Hildegard of Bingen, Causae
et
curac (ed.
P. Kaiser), pp. 10, 33, 36. "The firmament is man's head, the Sun, Moon, Stars like his
like
eyes," etc.
On
representations of the microcosm, see d Heidelb. Akad. d.
Saxl, Sitzungsberichte
Wissen^ Philos.~hist. Klasse (1925-26), pp. It is interesting to note that these drawings combine, from the first, the "scientific" theory of the microcosm with aesthetic theory as to the proportions of the human body. In 40-49.
other words, microcosms inscribed in rectangles or circles are at the same time canons.
Herwegen, "Ein mittelalt. Kanon des Korpers," Rep. fur Kimstto., xxxii (1909), pp. 455 ff.
Cf. P. J.
menschl
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
66
others, the figure appears alone, tattooed with inscriptions of the 105
planets.
106
manuscript, planet
names of the
Elsewhere, as in a most curious miniature in a Copenhagen
(fig.
the
body
is
covered with disks, each hearing the image of a
17). These small images have
much
to tell us
on
attentive ex-
amination. They betray the conviction which had begun to assert itself in the fourteenth century that
man
is
the prisoner of the heavenly bodies, entirely
15.
at their mercy. This
15) if
in
is
Microcosm
the impression given
by other representations
which he appears as a victim or martyr,
(fig.
fettered, helpless, pierced as
with arrows by the rays of the twelve constellations, his body divided into
segments each of which belongs to a given planet or this
tyranny
is
the figure of a 105
sometimes expressed as well. In one case
happy
child,
E.g., cod. Vindob. 3162, foL 196, 106 GL KgL S. 78.
107
107
star.
But resistance
(fig.
to
26) we have
unconcernedly plucking flowers and paying no r.
E.g., cod. Vindob 5327, fol. 160, r. This fifteenth-century manuscript, of German origin,
contains several treatises on the practice of The illustrations of the other mss., on the other hand, are no more than visual ex-
astrology.
pressions of cosmological theory.
THE PHYSICAL TRADITION attention to the nine spheres which gravitate
dread symbols.
108
In their
own way,
67
around him charged with their
these naive images raise the whole prob-
lem of necessity versus freedom of the will, the heart-rending conflict which Renaissance thinkers were to make so great an effort to resolve. Microcosm pictures of this type survive throughout the sixteenth cen-
16.
tury.
Microcosm
We have an example as late as 1572 in the Livre des portraits et figures
du corps kumain, published by Jacques Kerver. In place of a frail puppet and a set of summary inscriptions, we are here shown finely developed athletes, surrounded by circling the clouds (figs.
18
deities
a, b).
old astro-medical theme.
who
gracefully launch their hostile bolts from
But these new pictorial
More than a century
merely clothe the on the ceiling o the
qualities
later,
astronomical theater of the Archiginnasio at Bologna, Silvestro Giannotti
was
to carve
an array of stellar demigods around the 108
Cod. Vindob. 2359,
fol. 52, v.
central figure of Apollo
This miniature
belongs to the Italian pre-Renaissance.
17.
The
planets
and
the
human body
>.
The
planets
18 a. The planets and
and the human body
the
human body
19. Apollo (fig.
19)
homage
and the
constellations
to the inventor of medicine, but also, without doubt, a
by such men as Paracelsus and
distant echo of the principles proclaimed
Marsilio Ficino: without knowledge of the stars, no one can pretend to the
human body
know
109
or to cure its ills.
Images of the microcosm are
essentially illustrations of the influence
of celestial forces on man's physical being. Another iconographical series
shows us the same influence as destiny. 109
it
bears upon his moral existence and his
These representations show us the planets with
At Milan a medical calendar was
still be-
ing published in 1754: II corso de'Ptaneti detto Effemeridi osi il Diario de' moti celesti pla-
"a work needed by physicians aud surgeons for administering bleedings and netari,
etc.
medication under the proper aspects of the
110
their "children.**
moon." This corresponds exactly
to
the rac-
dieval theory. See supra, p. 50, n. 55. 110
See Hauber, Planetenkinderbilder und u SternbUder (Strassburg, 1916); Saxl, Prob-
leme der Planetenkinderbilder," Kunstchronik, LTV
f
1919), pp. 1013
ff.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
70
Illustrations of this type
nomenon which would of period, and
its
first
appear
in the fourteenth century,
itself suffice to attest the revival
a phe-
of astrology at that
popularity. In all astrological calculations the planets are of
course the predominant factor. Yet up to this date they have held only a rela-
modest place in medieval iconography. In the miniatures decorating
tively
astronomical manuscripts they are sometimes met with in the form of husts disposed along the circumference of the sphere, or inscribed in small medal111
From the
lions.
fourteenth century on, the planets are not only found
more
frequently in manuscript paintings, but they are revived in Italy in monu-
mental cycles as well. In Venice, they appear on the Gothic capitals of the Doge's Palace
(fig.
21); in Padua, among the
grisailles frescoed
riento in the choir of the Eremitani; in Florence,
Maria del Fiore just
(fig.
by Gua-
on the Campanile of Santa
63), where they occupy the second zone of bas-reliefs,
above the legendary heroes, inventors of the
the preceding chapter. Also, in Santa
arts,
whom we
studied in
Maria Novella we see them ornament-
ing the backs of the thrones occupied by the allegorical figures of the arts in the Cappella degli Spagnuoli (fig. 22).
century,
Taddeo
in the first years of the fifteenth
the Palazzo Pubblico
in Siena, four mythological divinities,
Apollo, Mars, and Jupiter It
And
di Bartolo represents, in the vault leading to the
must be admitted
(fig.
Chapel of
among them
42).
that in these great cycles, as well as in the con-
temporary miniatures, the gods often take on unwonted aspects
aspects so
strange, indeed, that there has sometimes been hesitation in identifying
them. They are unmistakably themselves, however, even in the most unex113
pected disguises,
and they are once more beginning
ful patronage over humanity. It is they tudes, the activities of those born
receives visual expression.
who determine
under their influence
Each planetary
111
its
''children," whose vocations
For the
first
it
the humors, the apti-
and
this idea, also,
divinity presides, so to speak,
over an assemblage of persons disposed beneath are
to exercise their power-
it
in series or groups.
These
has determined. Thus, Mercury presides
case, see cod. 448 of the Bi-
bliotheque Municipale of Dijon, fol. 63, v. (fig. 20). For the second, cod. Vatic, Reg. 123; and cod. lat 8663 in the Bibliotheque National^
foL 24. 112
The reason
for these profound alterations
in the classical type representations of the gods will be explained later (infra, pp. 158 fE.).
THE PHYSICAL TRADITION
71
over an assemblage of painters, writers, and merchants. Schematic representations of this sort, which
first
fruit in the fifteenth century in a
the gifts of the
114
Holy
11=
bore
whole family of images, often as beautiful
We may cite
as they are curious.
Christine de Pisan,
took shape in the late Middle Ages,
the illustrations of the Epitre cTOthee of
where the "children" resemble the Apostles receiving
Spirit; the
frescoes in the Borgia apart-
ments of the Vatican
24)
and a whole
;
gravings
and
(figs.
23,
series of en-
drawings
in
which the planets are usually
shown riding
in chariots, as in
the trionfi of Petrarch. these,
in
Florence,
Among are
the
prints of Baldini, of which two
versions exist, and which in-
spired the frescoes in the
Cam-
bio in Perugia; and, in Ger-
many, the Berlin Blockbuch, also the Hausbuch belonging Prince Waldburg-Wolfegg-
to
Waldsee
at
The
planet$
and
Wolfegg, and a
Cassel manuscript of 1445.
U3
^ ^^
In the sixteenth century, Giolito de'Ferrari and
Hans Sebald Beham took up the same theme again, with variants and toward the end of the century it was treated, with varying success, by a whole group ;
of Dutch and Flemish engravers
Martin de Vos, Crispin de Passe, Goltzius,
Sanredam, Thomas de Leu, Gerard de Jode.
The appearance
of this theme in so
116
many
parts of
Europe
is
sympto-
matic of the wide diffusion of astrological beliefs during the Renaissance. 113 11
E.g.,
BodL, cod. Or.
*Bibl. Nat., cod. 4431; Bodl. 421.
fr.
133.
606; Brit. Mus., Harley
115
See Lippmann, Les Planetes et leurs enby the Societe Internationale de Chalcographie (1895) ; J. Mesml, UArt OIL nord et OIL sud des Alpes a fants, reproductions published
de la Renaissance, Brussels-Paris (1911), chap, iv: "Sur qnelques gravures du
Vepoque xve
siecle,"
116
The Cabinet des Estampes of the Bibliotheque Nationale owns a rich collection of these series: Imagines septem planetarum, De effectu
septem planetarum,
etc.
(vol.
Td
28).
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
72 But not
in all cases are
superstition
hy means
we
dealing merely with the spreading of a
of the visual image; sometimes an original
born of the encounter between
artist
and scholar
common work
an encounter which
is
may
be especially significant when one is of the South and another of the North. This was the case with Albrecht Diirer's Melencolia. This famous figure is, in
21.
fact,
an
isolated
The planets and
example of the type of subject which we are discussing; she
symbolizes the contemplative to the
their children
laws of their
star,
life
of the "children of Saturn," who, obedient
meditate gloomily and at length on the secrets of
wisdom. Diirer, as penetrating studies have shown,
work from a distinguished humanist
for this
1
"
took his inspiration
none other than Marsilio
Ficino himself. 117
See
E.
Afelencolia
n
Panofsky and F. Saxl, Durer's Studien der Bibhothek Warburg,
I,
(1923).
Further study has led to the tracing of Cornelius Agrippa's influence in the Diirer
design. See K. A. Novotny, "The Construction of Certain Seals and Characters in the Work
of
Agnppa
of Nettesheim," in Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld
Institutes, xii (1949),
pp. 46-67. Cf. supra, p. 62, n. 97.
THE PHYSICAL TRADITION Lastly,
cycles which
we
73
find the "children of the planets" in two vast Italian fresco
constitute a different category, since they incorporate
in a complete cosmological ensemble.
The
first
our theme
of these series decorates the
Palazzo della Ragione in Padua, more commonly known as "il Salone." The
22.
The planets and
the liberal arts
upper part of the immense fresco which covers the walls of
this hall is di-
vided into horizontal zones. These show us, from the lowest
to the highest,
first
the planets
and 118
twelve Apostles
make
it difficult
their "children"; then the signs of the zodiac, with the
and the Labors of the Months. Although
later restorations
to judge, the orientation of the hall is apparently such that
each month the beams of the rising sun would strike the zodiacal sign which 118
On
the association of the twelve Apostles twelve zodiacal signs, see Piper,
with the
Mythobgie and Synbolik der christlichen Kunst (Weimar, 1847-51) , I, 2, pp. 292 ff.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS the sun
was actually traversing
in the sky.
The uppermost zone holds a row
of
mysterious figures which have only recently been identified: they are the
decans and paranatellons of the "barbaric sphere." system
119
is
A
complete world
thus presented in the
Salone: the zones correspond to the concentric
veloping
which
the
spheres enwithin
earth,
the
reign
ordering
forces of the cosmos.
In the frescoes of the Palazzo Schifanoia, in Ferrara,
we
find an analogous disposi-
tion.
Here we have three hori-
zontal
bands:
the
topmost
shows not the planetary gods, but the twelve great gods of
Olympus
("masters
of
the
months," as Manilius calls them), each mounted on a chariot and
surrounded by
his "children"; in the central
band appear the signs of the zodiac,
and the decans (each
controlling ten days of the
month-) 23.
119
On
Mercury and
the Salone, see
W
his children
u Surges,
;
finally, in
the lowest
band, we see the pastimes and
La Ragione
de Padoue," Annales archtotogiques, xvrn, pp. 331-343; xix, pp. 241-251; xxvi, pp. 250-271. Also A. Barzon, / Cieli e la loro influenza negli
Vindob. 2359, fourteenth century), and
(2) intensive analysis of the Astrolabmm plenum of Pietro d'Abano, published in Augs-
in an
burg by Johann Engel in 1488, the illustraof which are in turn derived from a manuscript of Albumazar (cod. Vat. Reg. 1283). Pietro d'Abano is believed to have provided the original program for the Salone (as is
Salone in Padova (Padua, 1924) Interpretation of the frescoes as a whole was first given by Dr. Saxl tSitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften
tions
[1925-1926], pp. 4,9-68), who found the key them (1) in the miniatures illustrating the
usually said, for Giotto), but the frescoes in their present state are not earlier than 1420.
affreschi del
.
to
Anima
astrologiae
of
Guido Bonatti
(cod.
24.
Mercury and
his children
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
76 occupations of
Duke Borso
at different seasons of the year
in other words, a
sort of illustrated chronicle or calendar of the life of palace, court,
and
120
city.
Here, again, the three superposed zones are merely the projection of a spherical system
( fig.
25) of which the lowest zone, the earth, forms the nucleus or ,
121
core.
These two great fresco cycles
one ornamenting a public palace and
the other a princely dwelling, but both bringing together, in an astonishing
synthesis with familiar scenes real
and episodes of daily life, figures of the 123 often from barbaric sources
side-
demons drawn from antique and
essential
documents for any true estimate of the place of astrology
fifteenth century.
They are
the exact
and
are
in the
full translation in visual terms of a
concept of the universe in which the pagan gods have regained the place of
cosmocrats (KoapOKpatopes), of sovereign masters.
But even in the
same time
ecclesiastical buildings, there
appeared
astrological representations of an entirely
the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo in Florence, at Santa Croce,
it
may
and again
here, as has
been proved,
is that 120
On
123 *
123
they represent no merely this score the Tres Riches
is
Chapel
27) .
We have to
do
remarkable about the Florentine cupolas
Heures of the
shown, for instance, feasting and fighting in the months of January and February, beneath the corresponding planet and signs of the zodiac: Saturn, Capricorn, Aquarius. See A. Warburg, "Italienische
(fig.
random arrangement
Duc de Berry may be compared with the fresPalace; the duke is
of the stars : the artist
type appears in a fresco in the Palazzo Castelbarco at A\io, in Tirol, and in a miniature illustrating a poem of Francesco da Barbenno (see F. Egidi, in the Gwrnale storico della letteratura italutna, xcvn, pp. 49-70; Zonta,
Storia
della
letteratura
italvaia,
I,
pi.
14),
by Boccaccio in the Genealogia deorum, EX, 4: "Pedes illi gryphis apponuntur." Here we have Love transformed into a monster, like cited
Kunst und
Internationale Asjtrologie im Palazzo Schifanoja zu Ferrara," in Gesammelte Schriften, n, pp.
476
in the Pazzi
with a type of antique decoration already re-
But what
coes of the Schifanoia
121
about
significance. In
surprise the visitor to find, just above each altar, a
cupola containing mythical figures of constellations
vived by the Arabs.
in Italy at
new
ff.
122
These same "demoniacal" figures are found in the lapidaries and the treatises on magic of which we have already spoken (see supra, pp. 54 ff.). Outside the astrological cycle, we sometimes meet with one of the gods conceived of and represented as a diabolical also
being. A noted example is the Cupid painted by Giotto in the cupola of the Lower Church at Assisi, above the tomb of SL Francis: he has the talons of a bird of prey. The same
the
Apollo
who tormented
St.
Benedict
a
cruel downfall for the fairest gods of Olympus! As if to restore the balance, Christ will be
given the features of Love or of Apollo by artists of the Italian Renaissance.
^See
F.
Saxl,
La Fede
astrologica
di
Agostino Chigi, published by the Reale Accademia d'ltalia (Rome, 1934) , pp 12-20. 123 * See Excursus by F. Saxl on the zodiac of Qusayr' Amra, in K. A. C. Creswell, Early Muslim Architecture (Oxford, 1932-1940), i, pp. 289-294.
THE PHYSICAL TRADITION has preserved the aspect of the sky exactly as hour.
Why
was
this
done? Without the
it
77
appeared at a given day and
slightest doubt, because
some event of
decisive importance for the Church had taken place at that very
moment
an
event over which the celestial powers then above the horizon had presided.
Aby Warburg was
able, in fact, to prove that the arrangement of the stars
shown in the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo corresponds exactly
26. Astrological ceiling
25. Astrological motif
tions in the sky
of the
main
above Florence on July
9,
1422, the date of the consecration
124
altar.
These astral bodies which the Church welcomed
were
later, as
popes.
The
to their posi-
we need
into her sanctuaries
hardly remind ourselves, to invade the palaces of her
zodiac, the constellations, the planets, play a curiously prominent
part in the decoration of the Vatican.
To
cite
only one example, the vault of
the Sala dei Pontefici, in the Borgia apartments, decorated
shows the names of Peter's successors surrounded by Boniface IX, Cygnus
is
seen in
flight
by order of Leo X,
celestial
symbols; above
between Pisces and Scorpio, while in
medallions at each side Mars and Jupiter ride past in chariots. 124
See A. Warburg, "Eine astronomische Him-
melsdaistellung in der alten Sakristei von S.
Lorenzo in Horenz," in Gesammelte Schriften, i, pp. 169-172.
27. Night sky of Florence, July 8-9, 1422
THE PHYSICAL TRADITION And lized in
finally, the
79
most radiant period of the Italian Renaissance crystal-
two celebrated works the visual and spiritual elements of
astro-mythological scheme. Both works were executed
at the
this great
dawn of
the
Cinquecento for an outstanding epicurean and humanist, Agostino Chigi.
One
profane in character and the other religious, for one
is
the vault of his
is
palace and the other the cupola of his tomb.
The
hall in the Farnesina Palace where Raphael painted his Galatea
shows us a vault peopled with mythological figures
we
recognize at first glance Perseus slaying
Leda and the Gemini. In our
(fig.
29),
^
among whom
Medusa, Venus with her doves,
instant admiration for Baldassare Peruzzi's
decorative fantasy and for the skillful distribution of his vivid images in
groups and tableaux, we
not at
may
grasp the connection between this
first
ensemble and the astrological cycles with which we have been dealing. What, in fact,
do these noble
deities,
moving through the serene heights of the ether
with an elegance that reminds us of Ovid, have in
bound demons of the
realistic
common
Paduan and Ferrarese
with the earth-
frescoes, or with the
schematized sky plan of the Florentine cupolas?
However, the two central scenes of
What does
background of starry sky.
the Peruzzi vault are set against a
this indicate if not that here, again,
astrology alone can provide the key? And, in fact, careful analysis has shown that precise scientific data underlie the choice
ures
126
the corresponding sky
shown
made
so precise indeed that they have
to
map
(fig.
and arrangement of the
fig-
possible a reconstruction of
26), which astronomical calculations have
be identical with the aspect of the sky of
Rome on December 1, 1466
127
the very
day of Agostino Chigi's birth.
Thus the same
fateful
garments of Fable. But
owes his fortune and glory
among 125
powers hold
vigil here, disguised in the iridescent
now they herald
the destiny of an individual,
to their favor:
Fame,
as she sounds her trumpet
the stars of the vault, publishes the fact triumphantly.
See F. Hermanm, La Farnesina (Bergamo,
F. Saxl, La fede astrologica . . . , , and p. 11 The Galatea evidently had her own significance in the ensemble so learnedly conceived: she doubtless represented one of the
1927)
elements, Water.
On
the other walk, myths
who
relating to the other elements
Whenever he were probably
to figure. 126 owe this analysis to Saxl, op. czi-,
We
22-23
pp. "Interpretazione astronomies dei singoli
quadn
della \olta."
^Arthur
Beer, in Saxl, op. cit, pp. 61-67.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
80
glances up at this ceiling, the master of the house
may read anew the promises
of his horoscope, his heart full of confidence and pride.
Nothing in the Farnesina
recalls the Christian
gods of Olympus reign there alone. But
28.
God and
let
world of the
spirit; the
us not on that account
jump
to
the planets
conclusions as to Agostino Chigi's "paganism." Rather let us turn to Santa
Maria del Popolo
to the
other aspect of his thought
chapel where he rests for is
all eternity.
There an-
revealed. In the cupola, against the blue
and
gold mosaic background, the divine forms of the planets come again into view, ranged in a circle according to the order of the spheres this
(fig.
28). But
time they are not alone; an angel hovers over each, while surmounting
the whole, in the round central aperture, the Creator appears in imperious
pose, his
arm
raised in a gesture at once of benediction
and command.
THE PHYSICAL TRADITION The meaning of this earth
and the
the composition
lives of
men
is
81
clear: the planetary gods, to
whom
are subject, are themselves suhject in turn.
29. Horoscope of Agostino Chigi
They are dependent upon a supreme
will,
of which they are merely the in-
struments. If
we wish
to confirm this interpretation,
we need
only turn once
more to
THE Sl'RVIVAL Of THE PAGAX GODS
82
contemporary texts. In hi? "sacred hymns" the poet-astrologer Lorenzo Boninwhich make His pre-eminence
contri addresses the Eternal Father in terms
clear:
Te duce, effulgent Jovis astra coelo, et clarum Veneri nitorem,
Reddis
Atque Fortunam variare cogis Infima
Even more
explicitly, Bonincontri
creating the stars, to 9
cutricesque*
summis^
make them His
elsewhere explains God's intent, in
auxiliaries
and agents
"'ministras exe-
(
in the government of the sublunary world:
)
Principio Pater omnipotens, ut legibus orbem Flecteret.
.
.
.
Sublimes caelo
statuit stellasque
globosque
Errantum: quibus et numeros et nomina finxit, Naturamque illis praefecit, ut omnia certis Temporibus mundo starent His hominum ftnxit mores, et corpora, et omnem .
Fortunam,
Exfremum,
et
.
.
casus varies, vitamque, diemque
fati
seriem finemque laborum
129 .
.
,
Thus, the stars which determined Chigfs death, after having regulated the
whole course of
his life, did
no more than
to execute the decrees of Provi-
dence.
But
it is
in the Urania of
Pontano that the best commentary may be
found on the half-pagan, half-Christian composition of the Cappella Chigi. The celebrated episode of the Assembly of the Gods, in fact, furnishes an exact parallel.
The Eternal
Father,
ject to mortality, convokes in the
beings,
who are
to
when about
to create inferior beings sub-
empyrean a gathering of the most noble
be His collaborators. The motivating Intelligences of the Him the seven planetary numina, each bearing at-
seven spheres approach
tributes (as in the Cappella Chigi) suggestive of the zodiacal signs in which solemnium Ckristianae religionis laws, set high in the sky the stars and the libn iv (1491). I, I, 41-44. ("Under your globes of the planets: He gave them numbers and names, and assigned to them such a naguidance, Jupiter shines in the sky; you restore her brilliance to Venus, and by you is ture that everything would be determined at Fortune obliged to diversify earthly destinies definite times. Through them he shaped the of men and their bodies, and their morals through superior influence.") 129
Laur. Bonmcontri, Rer. nat. et dwm. sive de 12fL: "In the beginning, the Almighty Father, in order to rule the world by rcb. coel^ n,
whole fortune, accidental happenings, man's life and his ultimate day, sequence of his fate, end of his labors.**
THE PHYSICAL TRADITION it
has
houses,"
its
that
is
where
to say,
its
83
influence is greatest.
Ranged
about Him, they wait respectfully:
Ergo ubi convener e animisque opibusque parati Quotes jussi aderant, intend
.
.
.
3*
Exspectant signum atque alacres praecepta capessunt}
God then
addresses them solemnly:
Turn gentior Their role,
He
solio placidus sic coepit
tells
ab
alto
m .
,
.
them, will be to co-operate, each accorcjjng to his is entrusted the completion of
powers, in the great work of creation. To them
the work: they are to give shape to the terrestrial sphere and to habitants, as
He
Quare
agite, et celeres
quam primum ascendite omne animantum
Agressi mortale opus et genus
He
mortal
its
in-
himself has formed heaven :
ceases to speak, and with a nod sets
Olympus
currus 132 ,
.
.
in motion.
Each god
leaps into his chariot and speeds toward the allotted task.
The poem accords
so perfectly with the Chigi cupola that
be a direct description of
it.
And
spired by a recollection of Plato, 2 amoves
around the Demiurge.
133
it
might almost
without doubt Pontano himself was
who
in the
But his primary concern was
the principles of astrology with Christian
in-
Timaeus assembles a council of to integrate
dogma. This reconciliation of
science with theology, of Providence with necessity
this
balancing of two
universes, so anxiously striven for by Renaissance thought
sudden, for one brief moment, realized. But art alone
134
is
here on a
has achieved the
By some special magic the pagan and and the sacred, sensual grace metaphysical grandeur, are blended here in an exquisite and tranquil light. miracle
130
the art of Pontano and Raphael.
921-923. {."When they are gathminds and resources, as they had been ordered to appear, they await the signal, eager to execute the commands.") On Pontano's astrological ideas and their evolution, see the interesting analysis by Soldati, op. cit^ chap, iv, pp. 232-253. Urania,
I,
ered, with ready
m Urania,
I,
924.
ing had been so strictly scientific and pagan as to exclude all possibility of a theological concept of the universe, attempted toward the end of his life to introduce a religious corrective into his doctrine. It was then that he adopted the theory of the hea\enly bodies as instruments. He even admits the freedom of the will though with strong reservation , a
lz2
Ibid, 946-947.
factor
133
Timaeus, 40 D, 41 D. true that Pontano, whose early think-
with these tardy corrections, his philosophic system lacks harmony and unity.
134 It is
which he had previously neglected. But
Ill
The Moral Tradition
METHOD
E
J_
of interpolation which consists in endowing mythology
with edifying meaning goes back at least as far as the Stoics." Their great
desire to reconcile philosophy with popular religion led not only to their at-
we have already
tempt, which
noted, to regard the gods as symbols of the
physical world; they also undertook at times to discover spiritual significance in the figures
and even
in the
names of
the gods,
and moral lessons
in their
adventures.
At
glance, this undertaking
first
would seem
to
have had small chance
of success; the Olympians, by and large, were anything but models of virtue.
The
story of their orgies and cruelties, their incests and fornications,
oughly unedifying.
was both
It
was
is
thor-
for this very reason that the exegesis of the Stoics
legitimate and necessary.
It
went without saying that Homer, who
recounted all these disgraceful acts of the gods, was a great and noble poet.
Could he conceivably have
told such
impious tales without some hidden 2
tent? No, the thing
is
manifestly impossible;
we must
therefore
in-
make every
meaning when he speaks of the gods to disand the deeper meaning. The first may be frivo-
effort to understand his real
tinguish between the literal
lous but the second has weight, and
it is
the second
meaning which
is
the
true one. 1
See Decharme, Critique des
ligieuses
.
.
.
,
traditions
pp. 274-275, 288 ; Gilbert
terms,** says Heraclides, "he was guilty of the greatest impieties." It therefore follows that
re-
Mur-
Homer must have used allegory. See R. Hinks, Myth and Allegory in Ancient Art (London,
Greek Religion, chap, iv, pp. 165-169; G. Boissier, La Religion romaine, n, chap, vii * ulf Homer was not speaking in allegorical
ray, Five Stages of
1939)
84
,
Introduction: pp. 3-4.
THE MORAL TRADITION Thus the
3
method came
allegorical
85
We
into being.
find
it
systematically
applied, at the end of the pagan era, in two small treatises
the
Homeric
Allegories of Heraclitus, and Phornutus*
Commentary on the Nature of the
Gods* From them we
attributes of Mercurius
learn that the
manly
Quadratus
3
fullness and fecundity of reason, and
signify the
that the Harpies
who rob
Phineus of his food are courtesans devouring the patrimony of young men.
The Neoplatonists scale
and
revive the
in a different spirit.
same method, but they use
They apply
it
not only to
it
on a broader
Homer
but to all re-
ligious traditions, including foreign cults; the entire universe
is
for
them
nothing but a great myth, endowed with spiritual meaning. Their attitude
no longer one of rationalization, aimed ties; it is the attitude
at explaining
away
of meaning within a sacred
text.
One example
On
the
is Sallust,
Gods and
the
As proof he
In the that
is
Em-
7
fervently de-
apparent only to
deliberately selects fables of the grossest surface
the tale of Saturn devouring his children, or of Attis
latter, for
we
friend of the
World
fends mythology, the true meaning of which, he declares,
immorality
is
shocking absurdi-
of belie\ers and mystics, reverently seeking the depths
peror Julian, who in his treatise
the initiate.
and Cybele.
example, he proves by analysis of the myth and the ritual
are to see "the trials of the soul in
its
search for God."
Without
losing anything of their value as a source of religious emotion, these legends
which Cicero and Seneca scorned as ''absurdities" and "old wives' tales" are thus given pious and philosophical explanation,
The weakness of
this
system of interpretation
ideas in old images which are no longer understood 3
The
physical
interpretations
are
also
alle*
gories, but for the sake of clarity we have reserved the term for interpretations of a moral
character.
mythologica physica et ethiccL, Latine . . . (Cambridge, 1671), for Palaephatus, Herachtus, Phornutus, Sallustius, etc. On the interpretation of myths bj the
*0puscula Graece
et
Stoics, in general, see
Decharme, op.
serious thoughts playful
with
much truth with fiction.**) 2. Epigrammatum libn in, i, p.
ones,
Poemata, pL. 15. This formula recalls that used by Theodulph of Orleans in speaking of Ovid. Cf. supra, p. 92.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAX GODS
98
He
further taught them the necessity of concealing truth beneath the
mantle of myth, and how
do
to
it:
... Comment On
doit feindre et cocker les fables proprement,
Et a bien deguiser la verite des ckoses 9 fabuleux manteau dont elles sont
D un But in the
light of Neoplatonism, the
much
something other and
humanists discovered in mythology
greater than a concealed morality: they discovered
the Christian doctrine
religious teaching
encloses.**
itself.
by means of symbols, in fact, made it possible not only wisdom beneath fictions of the most diverse character and
Interpretation to discern a lofty
the most unedifying appearance:
immutable in
its
further led to a grasp of the fundamental
it
profane wisdom (variable teaching) and the wisdom of the
relationship between
05
and Socrates '^confirms"
cords with Moses, that of a prophet.
this
And
the
in
its
outward form, but
Bible. Just as Plato ac-
M
so Homer's voice
Christ,
Magi of Persia and Egypt, who
masked sacred maxims under a cloak of Fable, are linked 67
Israel.
this
Against
background,
declining paganism had evolved that all religions have the
&
was inevitable
that the
that
in seeming, is
under
namely,
their varied forms,
hidden a common
09
According
to others,'
its
the ancient peoples, even including the bar-
barians, shared from the beginning in the Christian revelation; either
came altered it
Mar-
truth.
Ficino leans toward a sort of universal theism, with Platonism as
gospel.
of
to the sages
same idea which
should occur to the humanists
same worth, and
however puerile and monstrous silio
it
is
in their turn
it
be-
in their hands, or the sages of each nation deliberately disguised
in order to protect
it
from vulgar profanation.
This will explain certain strange utterances, "Ronsard,
Hymne
Laumonier) ,
rv, p.
^Concordat Mosis
de
Uautomne
(ed.
P.
313.
best to tiamty,
Marsdi Ficini
among them Erasmus'
make Homer
sug-
into a prophet of Chris-
and to reconcile Plato and Jesus.
07 Cf. the parallel between Biblical "wise men" and those of the Gentiles, supra, pp. 16 2. 08 Byzantine writers had taken up the same
Furthermore, Gemistos (=Plethon) is known to have influenced Marsilio Ficino. ^Ficino's biography of Plato, placed at the head of his translation (Omnia divini Platonis opera tralatione M. F. [Lyons, 1584] ) , has the character of the life of a saint TO See Agostmo Steuco, De perenni philoso-
idea; in the eleventh century Psellos does his
phialibrix. (1540).
et Platonis.
opera ( Basel, 1561 ) , I. "Confirmatio Christianorum per Socratica,"
66
op. cit^ p. 868.
THE MORAL TRADITION gestion that
more
of Fable with
merely goria, this
its
literally:
profit is
perhaps to he derived from reading the literature
allegorical content in
"Immo
99
mind than from
the Scriptures taken
cum
fortasse plusculo fructu legetur poetica
quam narratio sacrorum librorum,
si
consistas in cortice."
n
alle-
Or, again,
somewhat disturbing admission of Mutianus Rufus to one of his friends: et una dea. Sed sunt multa uti numina ita et nomina: Jupiter,
"Est unus deus Sol, Apollo,
Moses, Christus, Luna, Ceres, Proserpina, Tellus, Maria. Sed
haec cave enmities. Sunt enim occulta silentio tamquam Eleusinarum dearum mysteria.
Utendum
T2
est fahulis
Thus we may see how this path;
atque enigmatum integumentis in re sacra."
far certain humanists
were willing
to
go along
they did not stop e\en at heresy. Neoplatonic exegesis, which had
presented them with hitherto undreamed-of possibilities of reconciliation be-
tween the Bible and mythology, had now so obscured the distinction between the two that Christian
an allegorical
sense.
dogma no longer seemed
While
it
acceptable in anything but
was no doubt best for people as a whole
to con-
tinue to accept the traditional teachings with naive faith, learned men, with their
more enlightened minds, should be able
played in Christianity, as in
A
PARALLEL
pagan
belief,
to discern the inevitable part
the
by
weaving of fables.'
3
influence reinforced that of Neoplatonism. In 1419, Cristoforo
de'Buondelmonti, a Florentine priest traveling over the island of Andros,
bought there a Greek manuscript which he brought back with him to
Italy.
This was the Hieroglyphica of Horapollo Niliacus, an obscure Alexandrian of the second or fourth century A.D.,
who claimed
71
Enchtrid ion militis Chnstiam (Basel, 1518), 63. Erasmus gives as examples Circe, Tantalus, Sisyphus, and the Labors of Herp.
coles. 73
("There is but one god and one goddess, but many are their powers and names: Jupiter, Sol, Apollo," etc. "But have a care in speaking these things. They should be hidden in silence sacred as are the Eleusmian mysteries; things must needs be wrapped in fable and Der Briefwechsel des Mutianus enigma.**)
in this
work
to set forth the
Rufus (ed. Krause [Cassel, 18851), 28. Mutianus adds: "Tu, Jove, hoc est Optimo Maximo Deo propitio, contemne tacitus deos minutos. Quum Jovem nomino, Christum . ." ("You, since intelhge et verum Deum Jupiter, the best and greatest god, is propi.
tious
to
you,
When
may
despise
lesser
gods
in
say Jupiter, understand me to mean Christ and the true God**) 73 See the biography of M. Rufus in F. Halsilence.
I
bauer, Mutianus Rufus (Leipzig, 1929).
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAX GODS
100
hidden meaning of the sacred symbols used in ancient Egypt. lieved that a real discovery
was
to sanction the
had been made. In
Everyone he-
reality, all that
Horapollo did
mistaken view of hieroglyphics which had arisen by
of Apuleius, Plutarch, and Plotinus of rebuses designed to
make
religious precepts incomprehensible to the pro-
showed the greatest enthusiasm for
which so admirably confirmed their
they supposed that the great
minds of Greece had been
which, in their turn,
Egyptian ""mysteries"
way
namely, that they formed an ensemble
fane. Later, Marsilio Ficino and his circle this little treatise,
74
theories. Naturally, initiated into these
were of course one more pre-
figuration of the teachings of Christ.'"
The Hieroglyphica played a considerable role both in humanistic think7" in art. The work was printed for the first time by Aldus in 1505,
ing and
but well before that date
De
it
had inspired a chapter of Leon
Battista Alberti's
re aedificatoria," and had manifestly influenced the illustrations of a fa-
mous book,
the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, or
Dream
of Poliphilo,
by
Francesco Colonna.'* But Horapollo's example inspired the humanists, above all, to
look for some contemporary equivalent of the ancient cryptograms.
This equivalent was offered by the emblemata, the prototype of which was
provided by Alciati in his is
first
collection, published in
153 1.
70
The "emblem"
a picture which hides a moral lesson; an accompanying explanation
~*0ri Apollonis Xiliaci de sacris notts et sculp tuns hbn u title of the Kerver edition [ Paris, 1551] ). Furthermore, Horapollo knows the hieroglyphics of the Roman period much I
than his contemporaries do. See the critical edition by Fr. Sbordone, Hon Apolbetter
(Naples, 1940), and
lonis Hieroglyphica
The
translated
by George Boas (Bollingen Series xxm, New 1950 York, 75 Cf. the address to the reader in the Hleroglyphica of Pieno Valenano fed. of 1575): ". . ut sane non temere Pythagorara, Platonem, aliosque summos \iros ad Aegyptios of
Hieroglyphics
Horapollo,
) ,
nature of things, divide and human.") 70 "We shall naturally treat of the Hieroglyphica
to mythology. General be found in K. Giehlow, "Die des Humanismus in der Hieroglyphenkunde Allegone der Renaissance,** Jahrb. d. Kunst' samml. d. Allerhoch. Kaiserhauses, xxxii (1915), and in L. Volkmann, Bilderschnften der Renaissance, Hieroglyphik und Emblematik in thren Beziehungen und Fortimrkungen
divinarum apenre."
humanarumque (".
.
.
you
rerum
naturam
will understand that
it
not by mere chance that Pythagoras, Plato, and other great men went to the Egyptians to is
acquire learning, as speaking through hieroglyphs means nothing less than revealing the
only
studies
(
in
relation
will
Leipzig, 1923 ) . Bk. VIH, ch. iv.
7T
TS
.
doctrinae gratia profectos mtelligas: quippe cum hierogljphice loqui nihil aliud sit, quam
makes
Published in 1499, but written as early as
1467. T9
See the invaluable work of Mario Praz, Studies in Seventeenth Century Imagery* I, Studies of the Warburg Institute, HI (1939), a study of the origin and later history of the emblems and devices, seen by the author as products of the same spirit which produced the epigrams and concetti.
THE MORAL TRADITION
101
possible to recognize the meaning behind the image. Alciati, of course, borrowed from Horapollo, his model, but he used many other sources as well.
it
He
took his texts from the Latin fabulists and historians, especially from
Martial and the poets of the Anthology; the epigram, in brevity, lent itself ideally to his purpose.
As
its
for the pictures, aside
beings,
lastly, gods.
Mythological characters play a prominent part. Alciati's
from a few
human
bizarre figures these represent animals or plants, sometimes
and sometimes,
sententious
Emblematum
liber^
we
80
Leafing
through
find Pan, Bacchus, Juno, Thetis, Minerva,
Hercules, the Graces and Harpies, Scylla and Niobe, Tantalus and Pro-
metheus, Ganymede, Actaeon, Icarus, Narcissus, Proteus, dwells on these figures
\\ith delight;
many
must not forget that they have a further function vice or virtue or to
embody
The eye
either to symbolize
some
a moral truth. Faunus represents luxuria; Tanta-
Bellerophon, intelligence and courage overcoming obstacles;
lus, avarice;
Ganymede, the unsullied soul finding at
etc.
of them are charming. But \\e
its
joy in God. Pallas, with the dragon
her side, signifies the virgin's need for
tection against the snares of
Vera haec
strict
guardianship and for pro-
Love (Emblema xxii)
effigies
innuptae
:
est Palladis: ejus
Hie draco, qui dominae constitit ante pedes. Cur dirae comes hoc animal? Custodia rertim Huic data: sic lucos, sacraque templa colit. Innuptas opus
est
cura asservare puellas
Amor*
Pervigili: laqueos undique tendit
1
Venus placing her foot on a tortoise (fig. 59), an image borrowed from Pausanias, teaches that women should remain at home and be chary of
(Emblema cxcv)
speech
.
s
.
.
:
Manere domi,
81 *
et tacitas decet esse puellas.
Dinet, in his Cinq Lures des HieTOglvphes 1614), demotes an entire book the
(Paris,
the hieroglyphs which can be drawn from the ancient gods. 81 "This is the true portrait of Virgin Pallasthis is her dragon, at the feet of his mistress, Why is that animal a companion to the goddess? Because it has the custody of things: thus it protects the sacred woods and fifth
I
pp. 548
ff
)
to
the
temples.
guarded with his nets
Unmarried
girls
ever- watchful
care:
be Love la>s
should
'*
f snares]
M * Venus
with
everywhere foot on tortoise
occurs
in
ancient examples (Berlin Museum, 5th century B.C.) and in Hellenistic statues, especially
(The symbol at Dura-Europos, Gyrene, etr seems to have been preserved chiefly in the East.) Thus the source may have been not solely literary.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGA.\ GODS
102 For
Alciati's imitators, this figure took
riched with
on new
significance,
and was
en-
new details: La tortue dit que femme n'aille loing, Le doigt lere, qua parler ne s'aiance, La clef en main denote qu'avoir soing Doibt sur les biens du mary par prudence.**
Each
Bacchus exhibits one of the harmful
attribute of
effects of intem-
53
perance, and each of the various aspects of Mercury conceals some sage 6* maxim. But it is the likenesses of Cupid which offer the emblem-maker the richest material if not the
chariot
drawn by
irresistible
fcv)
;
lions
most varied. One image shows him riding in a
which he has tamed, proof that the power of Love
again, he holds a fish in one
hand and flowers in the
is
other,
showing that both land and sea are subject to the laws of Love (en). Else-
where (evil) we see lightning expending his wings
ments tells
he
is
critically
us
how he
but
made the stronger.
on the
itself in
vain against his weapons and
Finally, Alciati enumerates
attributes usually assigned to the
god by the poets, and
himself interprets them; he then offers his 85
Love, conforming to the god's true nature.
and com-
own
This theme and
description of its
variations,
derived from the Anthology (two of the emblems also portray
wounded
Love), were certainly thoroughly familiar to the Renaissance academies,
where Cupid's arrows, his wings, and his bound eyes were favorite topics of discussion.
At
this juncture,
one
may pause
of the emblems. "What!" one
may
in
some surprise
at the
banal character
well exclaim, "is there anything mysteri-
ous here? Are these subjects profound, these teachings sacred?" The disappointed reader, finding nothing but commonplaces clothed in transparent dress, begins with
wonder
presumption which placed under the patronage of the Sphinx. The truth is that the science 86 of emblems had two contradictory ends in view. On the one hand, it did insuch
good reason
to
futilities
82
La Pemere, Emblemes (ed. 1599). (**The tortoise means that a wife should not go far, the lifted finger, that she should refrain from talking; the key, that she should take good care of her husband's possessions.**) 83
at the
xxv : In stctuam BacchL
^vm, xcvra, CXVIIL Junius, another celebrated erablematist, analyzed Mercury's attribates one by one: Insignia Mcrcurii quid? ^cxin: In statuam Amoris.
w This op.
cit.
has been clearly seen by
M.
Praz,
THE MORAL TRADITION deed aim
an esoteric means of expression; on the other, how-
wished to be didactic, offering lessons which, through their visual
it
ever,
at establishing
103
presentation,
would be within reach of everyone.
Its
ambition was to be at one
and the same time an occult and a popular language. The humanists do not appear to have been disturbed by this contradiction, and unfailingly regarded
emblems as a sublime
the
human
creation of the
67
spirit.
It
should thus not
surprise us that this pseudo science led them, as their pseudo Platonism did, to carry their reconciliation of
the point
pagan mythology and Christian teaching
where the two were actually merged.
In the science of emblems, furthermore,
movement which culminated ffl
soul enraptured
by God; one of
the words of Christ, "Suffer all.
in "the
we
see the
first
outlines of a
embrace of profane and sacred philoso-
"We have already seen Ganymede incarnating the joys of the innocent
phy."
not
Alciati's glossators even recalls at this point
little
children to
come unto me/'
S9
But
Alciati offers us, in addition to a lascivious Cupid, a modest
step
is
them
THUS THE GREAT flows on in
in the
But a further
soon taken: Cupid yields his bow and arrows to the Infant Jesus, who
in his turn uses
still
'AvTepco? to "Epcoq (figs. 100, 101).
vir-
divine
Alexandrian eroticism had been spiritualized and moralized
same way by opposing
this is
and
tuous Cupid (Emblems cix, ex) who symbolizes love of virtue love.
to
in
to pierce
human hearts.
allegorical current of the
90
Middle Ages, far from shrinking,
an ever widening channel. And the gods of the Renaissance are
many
instruments for the edification of the
cases didactic figures
soul.
Certain later contributions in
its
may have
outward look; they brought to
it
rejuvenated mythological allegory
nothing essentially new. Neither Neo-
platonism nor the study of hieroglyphics, in spite of the high expectations 87
As
serious a scholar as Scaliger laid great upon them; they are such, he says, as
tianae philosophiae (1601).
cumquovis ingenio
^This commentator is Claude Mignault (= "Minos"), who issued numerous editions of
certare possint" {/. C. Scdigcn Judicium, at the head of the published editions of Alciati.)
Alciati, beginning in 1571. *>E g., in O. Vaenms, Amoris divini emble-
stress
to vie with
any mind:
Mutio,
De
**ut
osculo ethnicac et Chris-
mata.
We
shall study the Christian
emblems
of the late sixteenth century in Bk. n, chap.
ii.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGA.\ GODS
104
and the bold ventures they provoked, brought about any de-
that they raised
son.
and
from the medieval tradition
cisive deviation
As a whole, they merely
between the mythological
sixteenth centuries sixth.
believed that he had recovered the secret of the lost
antiquity was
that the Fathers
moralities" of the fifteenth and
and those of the twelfth century, or even of the ninth or
The scholar who
wisdom of
w
s (Opere fed Milanesil, n. 312 1, another Venus, flower-strewn by the Graces; Venus and Mars, in the National Gallery, London; Pallas and the Centaur, in the Uffizi. Another Pallas has been lost. See Poggi, "La giostra medicea del 1475 e la Pallade di Botticelli," VArte 1902 1, pp. 71-77, and the complementary note on the subject of the raaro^ietry Venus in Urbino; also A. Warburg, "Die (
verschollene Pallas," in Gesammelte Schriften,
i,
pp. 23-25. that need be mentioned here are the
U5 A1I
penetrating analyses by Warburg, reproduced in the Gesammelte Schriftcn, pp. 1-61, with
important appendices, pp. 307-329, and the by E. H. Gombrich, A Study on the Neoplatonic Symbolism of his Circle," Journal of the Warburg and Courtaudd Institutes, vm (1945), pp. 6 ff. 11G See W. von Bode, Sandra Botticelli^ 2nd recent
remterpretation
"Botticelli's
edition
Mythologies,
(1922),
allegorische
iv:
"Mythologische und im Auftrage der
Darstellungen
Mediceer." 7 The Birth of Venus and Venus and Mars.
La
giostra di Giultano, by Politian, shows the close connection between these paintings and the tournament,
THE MORAL TRADITION
113
i:s
the conspiracy of the Pazzi.
They
also represent, in disguised form,
amo-
rous memorials and tributes dedicated by the two brothers to their "nymphs,"
Simonetta Vespucci and Lucrezia Donati.
119
Yet there
is
nothing anecdotal
about these figures, with their air of remoteness and the unreality of their
38.
ting.
They 120
Shades,
set-
Combat of Ratio and Libido
transport us to another world
to the Elysian fields
among
the
or to a universe of abstractions. The great enigmas of Nature, of
Death and Resurrection, seem
to hover about these dreamlike
forms of Youth,
Love, and Beauty, phantoms from an ideal Olympus. In this skein of symbol118
Pallas
and the Centaur (Wisdom taming
brute Force). 119
op.
Perhaps to others as well; see A. Warburg,
of, appendix,
p. 325.
120
The Primavera. "When the picture was painted, Giuliano and Simonetta were dead, Simonetta's death having occurred in the month
of April, as Lorenzo notes
(Commento
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
114
ism, profound speculation
and gallant gesture are
intertwined,
and
the chron121
small princely court blends with legends from the old cosmogonies.
icle of a
Modern commentators have undoubtedly
at times
been guilty of further
entangling the skein under pretext of identifying the strands that compose it
But
there
if
is
any domain
in
which ingenuity
is
called for,
and
in
the most daring hypotheses have a chance of arriving at the truth,
which even it is
that of
the circle of humanists, poets, and philosophers where this singular series of
mythological scenes was conceived.
The advisers,
whole entourage, his
painter's
formed
121 *
a coterie of litterateurs
and
clients
protectors, friends
and
and pedants, men who delighted in
the spinning of farfetched theory. Politian, the learned interpreter of myths,
who paraphrased
m
in his Giostra di GiuliaHomeric hymn to Aphrodite 12S and as well as for for numerous themes no, provided sculpture painting 12 * where mania in the for "emamorous rebuses, much demand at this court the
alcuni de t>uoi Sonetti, Opere fed Simiom], i, 27 > : **Mon questa ecceUentissima donna nel mese d'apnle, nel quale tempo la
sopra
terra sj suole vestire dj diversi
excellent lady died in the in which season the earth
("This April,
is accustomed to with a variety of flowers.") An Elysian Venus appears also in Tibullus, Jacobsen has earned this funereal 3, 57 fL
clothe
I,
herself
to
interpretation della Primavera," (
"
fieri-
month of
1897
>
,
u extremes. AUegona Architio stonco delVarte
its
pp. 321 fL, and ''Merkur als PsychoJahrb. d, komgl. preuss. Kunst1900) , pp. 141 ff.
pompos,"
samml 121 The
{
birth
of
Venus
(castration of Saturn),
by
Politian,
st.
Giostra,
is
and
a is
99;
it
cosmic myth so recounted takes place
"sotto diverse volger di pianeti"; similarly, it is the appearance of the planet Venus which
the retnrn of Spring (Pnmavera), with its dances and its lo\e-making. (Cf. the planetary series by Baccio BandinellL) A. "Warburg and his commentators fesp. heralds
have pp. 325-326) how, at this point,
tions relate directly to cal tradition. 1211
brought out two composithe medieval astrologi-
strikingly Botticelli's
E. Gombrich, op. crt, pp. 7-60. This (unfinished) work by Politian remains the capital source for explanation of the three Venuses. It contains two sections: 122
(1) a description, according to the principle of Ac^poffct , of the bas-reliefs which decorate the palace of Venus (six cosmogonic allegories,
one of which concerns the birth of the
goddess; twehe scenes of amorous seduction, demonstrating Venus' power over the other gods>; the appearance of the nymph
who
is to
convert
123
GiuHano
to love.
of Michelangelo's Centaurs and Lapiths. It was in the Giostra that Raphael found the theme of the Galatea. See E. Muntz, Les Precurseurs de la Renaissance, p. 206.
Including bas-rehef of
the
subject
the
124
Politian composed the impresa, or device, of Giuliano: branches of greenwood, in flames, with the motto: "In vindi teneras exitnt 9
flamma medullas' See Vasari nesi),
viii,
118.
fed. G. MilaIn the 1513 edition of the
an engraving represents Giuliano praying before an altar on which these branches burn at the feet of a statue of Pallas (see Warburg, "Die verschollene Pallas,** loc. cit.) Lorenzo had as his emblem the laurel Giostra,
tree (Lorenzo = Lauro), and for motto **Ie temps revient" (Luigi Pulci, La giostra fatta . . dal Magnifico Lorenzo, st. 64) ; he bore this in the tournament of 1469 We thus see .
that these paintings by Botticelli are closely allied to the impress amorose commonly painted on tondi and cassoni.
blems"
12B
was so
THE MORAL TRADITION
115
was
also Lorenzo the subtle,
strong. Lorenzo the Magnificent
and one might be tempted nothing more than a
Pico della Mirandola
he invites us
to
deeply into the
to see in the
Primavera, pensive among her flowers,
veiled echo of his songs. is
126
But here the learned voice of
heard;
look more
mystery of
Venus and the three Graces:
"Qui profunde
et intellectuali-
ter divisionem unitatis Vene-
reae in trinitatem Gratiarum .
.
.
dum
intellexerit,
debite
videbit
mo-
procedendi
in
12T
Orphica Theologia."
And from
the whole Flor-
entine circle, gorged as they
were
with
there
antiquity,
seems to arise a confused mur-
AbnAVaws
jtfi oat! late f&ic$3 emphasizes it in the edition of 1551. 14
See K. Giehlow, op. cit^ and L. Volkmann, have indicated the role of "emblemop. cit. atics" in the allegories of Botticelli,
We
M1 D. von Hadeln, "Some Little-Known Works by Titian," Burlington Magazine, pp. 179180, reprod.
pL
H, b.
XL.V (1924),
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGA.\ GODS
120
representing three male heads
one seen in fullface, the other two in profile
above three animal heads, dog, wolf, and lion
{fig.
40). The painting had
been believed to represent the three ages of life, although astonishment
had
been expressed at strange features in the composition. Admittedly, Titian's 142
allegories are not always clear,
but this six-headed monster
is
of an un-
wonted barbarity. In reality, as recent analysis has shown,
143
we have
here a curious com-
The human heads represent Prudence, in the terms moral theology. If we turn to Fulgentius metaforalis, in fact, we
bination of two symbols.
of scholastic
composed of three faculties Memoria, Intelligencia, and Praevidentia, whose respective functions are to conserve the past, to know find that Prudentia is
the present, and to foresee the future: "Tripartita perlustrat tempora vitae."
"*
Hence the frequent representation of Prudence with a triple head 1 pavement of the Siena Cathedral. Thus this first sym*
as, for example, in the
bol belongs to medieval philosophy and allegory. It
remains for us to interpret the second
we must go much
a statue of Serapis whose hand
rests
on a monstrous
wolf, and dog. Only the three heads are together, being
the three animal heads.
farther back in time. In his Saturnalia,
wrapped
What
the
is
creature, at once lion,
visible, the bodies, which are fused
in the coils of a serpent.
draco conectit volumine suo."
For this
Macrobius describes
meaning of
Macrobius himself gives the explanation. "The presses the present; the wolf, which drags
"Easque formas animalium this strange attribute?
lion, violent
away
its
and sudden,
victims, is the
the past, robbing us of memories; the dog, fawning on
its
ex-
image of
master, suggests to
us the future, which ceaselessly beguiles us with hope." The three symbolic
animals are thus the three aspects of Time. 146
spired Titian.
The
text
was familiar
142 To mention only the Sacred and Profane Love ot the Borghese Gallery. 143 E. Panofsky and F. Saxl, "A Late Antique Religious Symbol in Works by Holbein and
Titian," Burlington
Magazine, XLIX
(1926),
pp. 177-181. 114
See supra, p. 94. 145 See also the Prudentia in the Baptistry of
Bergamo; in the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, the
It is
manifestly this text which in-
to the Renaissance humanists.
With
Prudentia of Lorenzetti holds a torch with
on which is written: praeteritum praesens futurum. In the Stanza della Segnatura, Raphael has painted a Prudentia with two heads. triple flame
W6 A
direct deriration in the sixteenth cen-
tury
from the statues of Serapis
improbable.
is
most
THE MORAL TRADITION their taste for pseudo-Egyptian allegories, they
the enigmatic character of the monster tion. In fact, this
signum triceps
Poliphilo, and was
must have been attracted by
and by Macrobius' ingenious explana-
had already come
to be seen later
121
to light in the
Dream
of
by Pierio Valeriano as a perfect model of
14T
the "hieroglyph."
What seems Titian
is
to
us particularly interesting in the painting attributed to
the combination of the two symbols.
completely distinct ideas. The sents the three phases of
Time
first,
will
show
embody two
borrowed from medieval morality, repre-
as encompassed in Prudence; these are purely
intellectual concepts, personified in
human
form. The second, issuing from
the Oriental cults of the late Empire, depicts
up of
A moment's thought
blends two images which
the significance of this synthesis. It
Time
as a mythical force
three ravening beasts. But what does this contrast matter?
made
Humanism
is
a stream into which flow all the waters of the past, mingling the most diverse
forms and ideas, fusing Christian allegory with the ancient symbols of the barbarian religions. 147
is
A
1 *3
detailed history of the signum triceps . Panofsky, Herkules can by
given
Scheidewege (Leipzig, 1930), pp 12 f. 148 We have intentionally disregarded the Psyche myth (see supra, p. 86), which is of
late
and
deliberately charged with implications. In the humanism art of the Renaissance, it was to achieve
origin
spiritualistic
and
exceptional importance. See Gruyer, Raphael et Fonto-quite, n, p. 169.
IV
The Encyclopedic Tradition
To
Up
this point
we have been
torical, physical,
studying the three great traditions
his-
within which the gods survived. For the
and moral
sake of clarity we have distinguished between them, and kept them as separate
from one another as possible. In actual fact, from the very beginnings
were often intermingled.
If in antiquity, as
up
to the sixteenth century,
we have
they
seen, the different philo-
sophical schools proposed different interpretations "of the nature of the
gods," these interpretations were not mutually exclusive; they were accessible simultaneously to cultivated minds,
which did their best
to reconcile
them. Logic would doubtless have demanded the adoption of one to the exclusion of the rest, but
men
felt that
three keys were better than one.
times one key, sometimes another, seemed
more appropriate
Some-
to the character
of a given myth. Similarly, the scholars of the
We
Middle Ages made no
1
clear-cut choice.
frequently find them applying all three methods to a single personage or
episode, or employing one
method
after the other in connection with different 2
events or people. Thus Pierre d'Ailly, a remote disciple of Isidore, considers
Compendium cosmographiae, sometimes as heavenly bodies, and sometimes as rulers who gave their names to various parts of the world
the gods, in his
thus unhesitatingly advancing contradictory explanations.
On
the other hand, intersection of the three systems
early date.
The
may be
noted at an
points of contact or of overlapping between the historical,
physical, and moral spheres are easy to find; at need, intermediate terms 1
See Alphandery, op. at.
2
Petrus de Aliaco,
Ymago
[Paris, 19301
miaidi (ed Buron
122
) 7
chaps, xxiii, xrv, xzviiL
THE ENCYCLOPEDIC TRADITION
We
bridge the gaps between them.
123
have already seen, for example, how the
physiological notion of "temperament" facilitates passage from the physical 3
moral world, from the planetary gods to the virtues. But morality can also offer a helping hand to history. Boccaccio, for example, in composing
to the
his
De
casibus virorum et jeminarum illustrium, goes to the heroes of Fable,
viewed as historical personages, in search of edifying anecdotes. Finally, and most important of all, these three domains of knowledge in which we have till
now attempted
to keep the gods confined
and partitioned were in the Middle
Ages not circumscribed nor distinguished from one another. On the contrary, the whole effort of scholasticism was rather to fuse them into one, and to en-
them
close
in a vaster sphere,
which should encompass the whole of human
knowledge.
The encyclopedic
character of medieval culture,
scientia universalis, are strikingly shown,
learned and popular compilations
the
obsession with a
its
from the time of
Summae,
tresors,
Isidore, in both
or miroirs, where
From
the "natural," the "moral," and the "historical" all have their place. the twelfth century on, they are apparent in the
A hierarchy
of the sciences does of course
exist,
domain of scholarship.
with Theology at their sum-
mit; but they form an organic whole, a bloc which resisted disintegration for centuries.
As
Soldati has justly observed,
manism were beginning trinal teaching,
What was
left
4
to ripen in art, the
which only gradually
"Even when the Middle Ages
felt the stirrings
of encyclopedic science had great being, that is to say, classical in
'encyclopedism'
Numbers, as
is
first fruits
still
lived
of 'renewal.
vitality, since its
of hu-
on in doc-
it
.
.
.
antedated
sources."
well known, play a capital role in this reduction of the
diversity of the universe to unity. In
tween the themes dear
to
many cases,
the relations established be-
medieval learning are purely numerical. Like the
twelve Prophets and the twelve Apostles, the seven celestial Spheres and the
seven
gifts
of the Holy Spirit, the four Elements, the four or the seven Ages,
the nine Worthies and the nine
Muses lend themselves
ment, to balanced combinations which seem, after the 3
See supra, pp. 46
ff.
*La
Poesia
p. 105.
to
symmetrical
fact, to
astrologica
treat-
bear testimony
nel
quattrocento,
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN CODS
124 to
profound inner
ics," a
relations,
and
a secret harmony between the
to manifest
and those of nature and history. This "sacred mathemat-
truths of the faith
renewal of Pythagoras, would of
itself
account for the integration of
mythology in the encyclopedic system of knowledge.
We
have already
seen, in Chapter II,
how, in the concept of the micro-
cosm, the seven planetary divinities brought about the reconciliation of as-
tronomy and anatomy, and how Dante established the concordance between 5
Ages, Spheres, -and Arts. This type of equivalence, moreover, has very dis-
same chapter we recalled the synoptic tables drawn up by Antiochus of Athens. It would be easy to go still further back by way of the tant origins; in the
Apocalypse, where the seven Seals, the seven Angels, the seven Spirits of recur constantly
God
where the seven tables of destiny are oddly rethe seven Heavens, the seven colors, and the seven
to Assyria,
lated to the seven Seals, 6
days of the week. The hieratic meaning of the number seven would thus be sufficient to assure to the
planetary deities an outstanding place in all the
world systems elaborated throughout the centuries.
A
7
strange document, recently published, shows the unbelievable com-
plexity which these numerical combinations had attained at the end of the
Middle Ages. This
is
a series of outline drawings in which a fourteenth-cen-
tury scholar, a native of Pa via in Italy
who
lived at the court of Avignon, has
attempted to translate his conception of the Universe into geometric terms.
What we have
here are no longer primitive designs like the rosette-shaped
8
which gave summary expression to the relationships between Man, the Elements, and the Seasons, but learned diagrams in which notions of evforms
ery sort
theological, geographical, mineralogical, medical
are combined
according to the laws of number and the divisions of physical space. consists of a
map
One
9
of Europe on which are superposed circles and ovals con-
taining medallions inscribed with the signs of the zodiac, the names of the
5
Convito, n, 14; rv, 24. See supra, p. 49.
a
E. Kenan, UAntecknst, pp. 472-473. Codex palaL laL 1993; facsimile reproduction, with commentary, by R. Salomon, Opicinus de Canutris, Weltbild und Bekenntnisse 7
eines
Avignonesiscken Klenkers des xrv. Jahrhimderts (The Warburg Institute, London,
1936) . Another work of Opicinus was found in the Vatican Library during the second world war, and is to be published by the Warburg Institute. 8
9
See supra, p. 63, Op. cit^ pi. vu.
fig.
13.
THE ENCYCLOPEDIC TRADITION
125
planets and months, of minerals, parts of the body, the gifts of the Spirit,
and the corresponding
the rest. In another,
of the Church crucifix
is
sins,
Holy
with the seven Ages of Life dominating all
10
the five patriarchates, seats of the princes
five points
determine the surface of the earth.
reared; from the
wound
On
the site of Jerusalem a
in Christ's side issues a straight line, rivus
sanguinis, which crosses the picture diagonally. Another line, intersecting
emerges from the lance of Sagittarius. At the center of the zodiac
this one,
immense
stands an
versal, "spiritualis et sacramentalis," with the lines thus created,
Church Uni-
figure of the Virgin; circles symbolize the
on the circumferences of the
Pope
in their midst.
circles,
Along the
are arranged the Patri-
archs and the lesser Prophets, the Planets, the symbols of the stars, the Ele-
ments, the parts of the body, and the names of the Months. In 11
drawing,
another
still
two crucifixes symmetrically opposed are surrounded by a rose-
form made up of Winds, medallions containing Virgin and Child, Sponsus and Sponsa, animals, Evangelists, Dogmas, and Virtues, the Sun and like
Moon,
the Planets and Metals, the Doctors of the Church, and the monastic
orders.
Saturn and Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Minerva are of course no longer
shown as masters of falls into
this
Universe, where the whole normally gravitates and
place around some Christian symbol. But they are always present in
the general scheme ; they go to
make up
versalism of the Middle Ages which
compact networks of curved and
is
the
Summa.
It is
above
set forth here in its full
all the uni-
range; these
straight lines express the relations
between
the cosmic, historical, and moral components of the universe. In a world truly '"catholic," a "total" world, II
ne cesse point
continuite,
non plus que de fame au corps.
12
* THIS CULTURAL unity finds tic
its
expression in monumental
art.
Certain plas-
themes, assembled according to the laws of a more or less rigorous sym-
metry, present the medieval harmony and solidarity in concrete form. In the
iconography of the French cathedrals, in the sculptures of the porches and 10
Ibid.,
pL xx.
" Ibid^
PL XXL
^PauldaudeL
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
126
the motifs of stained-glass windows, Emile cent visual encyclopedia, where illustrated book,
own
all
human
Male has recognized
learning
from the humhlest aspects of nature
destiny. Even
after scholasticism as a
sections of the great edifice
to the secret of
whole began
sixteenth centuries
the zodiac and the Labors of the Months, but
to
man's
crumble, whole
it
still
associate the signs of
continued to develop sym-
metrical series of the Virtues and the Liberal Arts
the
first
dating from the
ninth century, and the second going back to Martianus Capella. inspiration of the
a great
remained standing for centuries. Not only did
and
Italian art in the fifteenth
a magnifi-
is set forth, as in
Dominican monk, Filippo de' Barbieri,
it
Under the
even renewed, in
the confrontation of Sibyls and Prophets, the old parallels between sacred
and profane history."
The are, at
gods, then, whose various
modes of survival we have
distinguished,
a very early date, ordinarily integrated with one or another of these
series, or
with several of them at once. Captured in "the immense net of learn-
ing," they figured from the beginning in the miniatures illustrating the ency14
clopedias;
in the late
Middle Ages and
at the height of the Renaissance,
they continued to have their share in vast decorative ensembles which seem like
imposing ruins of the temple of universal knowledge.
* IT
is difficult to
study these ensembles methodically.
They are of unequal im-
portance, not only as works of art, but also from the point of view of the
thought which they embody. Sometimes current decorative themes are used
with no sign of any organic arrangement which might indicate a carefully thought-out program. Sometimes, on the other hand, everything reveals the artist's
subservience to the order imposed by the mind.
This reservation made, pictured encyclopedias. 15 See L Dorez, La Canzone delle scicnze, etc.
(Bergamo, 1904)
;
let
us attempt to define the role of the gods in the
virtu e delle
P. d'Ancona,
"Le rappresentazioni allegoriche delle arti liberali," VAnc, v (1902), pp. 137-155, 211228, 269-289, 37<W81. "We have found them described (supra,
p. 64, and n. 101) in the illustrated manuscripts of the Etymologiae of Isidore; they are met with again, for example, in the illustrated Monte Cassino manuscript of Rabanus Maurus
(1023).
THE ENCYCLOPEDIC TRADITION The planetary
127
gods, the hardiest of all, are also the most skillful in in-
sinuating themselves, but they win only tardy entrance into
They have no place
in the stone Bible of the
the zodiac is admitted.
15
The same holds
heir, also, to the encyclopedic tradition,
monumental
art.
French cathedrals, where only
true of thirteenth-century Italy
and
at so
many
points in her iconog-
raphy dependent upon France. The Planets are missing, for example, on the Fontana Maggiore in Perugia, the bas-reliefs of which sing another version of
poem of science and labor," represented by the Liberal Arts and the Labors of the Months. In the fourteenth century, however, the planetary gods
"the dual
invade the monuments, religious and
civil,
of Venice, Padua, Florence, and
16
Siena.
In the Cappella degli Spagnuoli and in the Eremitani, for example, they
are associated,
if
somewhat unobtrusively, with traditional elements
Sciences in the one case, in the other the Ages of Life;
become an 15
integral part of a vaster and
The gods sometimes appear
in the stained-
glass windows of the cathedrals, but in a different capacity: they are the idols to whom the blessed martyrs refuse to sacrifice. (It is
that Fra
role, again, Angelico will later depict them in the Chapel of Martin
in
this
V
For a special study of the u Circe figure at Vezelay, cf. Ch. Picard, Une scene d'inspiration antique inconnue. Le mythe in the Vatican.)
de Circe au tympan du grand Vezelay," Bulletin monumental, pp. 213-229.
The
portail
cm
de
(1945),
planets, on the other hand, are infrom the in profane decorations
twelfth
century
In
a
Latin
poem
of
around 1107, Abbot Baudry de Bourgueuil (see Phyllis Abrahams, Les oeuvres poetiques de Baudri de Bourgueuil [Paris, 1926]) describes in great detail the bedroom of the countess of Blois, daughter of William the Conqueror. decorate
The
the
the
but they have at last
more imposing whole, occupying the introduced inventions of his own; he
tempting
to
outrival
De
daudian's
is
at-
raptu
Proserpinae, r, 246. It is also possible that he has seen the famous coronation robe of
on which are embroidered the signs of the zodiac and the constellations (but only two planets: Sol and Luna), as well as
Bamberg,
the Virgin, the
R.
Eisler,
Agnus
Dei,
Weltenmantel
(Munich, 1910),
p. 13. Cf.
and und
John. See Himmelszelt
St.
Maas, "Inschriften
und Bilder des Mantels Heinnchs
11," Zeitsch.
Kunst (1899), p. 321. 16 We have explained this invasion (supra, pp. 52 and 67) as resulting from the vigorous fur christl.
cluded
on.
17
figures of the Liberal Arts stars and planets are
bed;
painted on the ceiling; on the wall (doubtless on a tapestry) appear the Golden Age (Saturnia Regna) and the metamorphoses of Jupiter. In his paramount desire to show off frig erudition, it may be *h*fr Baudry tn*s
recrudescence of astrology in the fourteenth century. 17
In the Guariento frescoes, the Ages of Life are also brought into relation with the zodiacal constellations: Youth, for example, is represented with Venus and the sign of the Scales, A. Venturi (VArtc, xvn [1914], pp. 49^57) has pointed out the correlation between these frescoes and the drawings of a Liber physiognomie (cod. MUL 694, foL 11) ; this correlation is probable, although the style etc.
is very different. See F. Saxl, "Rinascimento," Rep. fur Ktuistudss^ xun (1922), p. 245.
of the drawings
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
128
wall of a chapel and the choir of a church. tion lends ets
and
Sibyls, they are seated in the
Giotto's Campanile, their posi-
same rank
and the Sacraments, and dominate the the creation of spirit,
On
them veritable majesty; under the exalted patronage of the Proph-
man,
which recounts
his first struggles with matter, the first victories of the
and the great steps
But, as
as the Virtues, the Sciences,
entire cycle of figures,
in the history of civilization.
we have already noted,
they are also included
among
the gods appear twice on the Campanile:
the bas-reliefs of the lowest zone,
where they
are shown specifically as nothing less than precursors of civilization, as heroes
and inventors. There are other examples of the inclusion of mythical figures in an encyclopedic scheme of decoration ; in monumental Italian art, some of these oc-
cur at a quite early date.
On
the Fontana Maggiore in Perugia, allegories of
from Genesis, make
the
Months and the Sciences,
up
a history of the world. But local traditions also play their part in this his18
tory.
in combination with scenes
In one of the bas-reliefs,
Romulus and Remus are a reminder of
the
fabulous beginnings of Rome, mother of civilization. The statuettes of the
upper basin
recall the origins of
Augusta Perusia
herself,
and these origins
are, in their turn, mythological: the hero Aulestes, legendary king of Etruria,
progenitor of the race and founder of the city, stands near the saints Her-
culanus and Lawrence, who later awakened
19
it
to the Christian life.
These heroes and demigods, to some extent merged
at times
with the
Sages of antiquity or the nine Worthies so dear to the Middle Ages, reappear in the fifteenth century in other
Campanile
monumental decorations where, as on the
in Florence, the planetary deities reign at their side.
In the vestibule of the Chapel of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, where
we have
already encountered Jupiter, Minerva, Apollo, and Mars
several figures that had
become half-legendary, such
18
This has been emphasized by R. Schneider, Perouse, pp. 57-58. 19 Aulestes is a Trojan hero; we should recall that the Trojan legend, whose affinities with the "historical** tradition of the gods we have already pointed out (see chap i), is brilliantly illustrated, a century later, in the Steri of
as
(fig.
42) ,
Judas Maccabeus,
Palermo. Aulestes is painted in the Palazzo Braccio Baghone together with other famous
men
of Perugia; cf. the series of illustrious Florentines painted by Andrea del Castagno the Villa Pandolfini, and other similar
m
representations.
THE ENCYCLOPEDIC TRADITION Aristotle,
Curius Dentatus. and Caesar, are also represented.
129
A
evokes the origins of Rome, and lastly a procession of Virtues
42. Jupiter
Force, Magnanimity, Justice
know
that
Taddeo
medallion Prudence,
and Mars
completes the whole composition, in which
we
di Bartolo followed the scholarly instructions of Pietro
de'Pecci and Cristoforo di Andrea.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAX GODS
130
A
'
ceiling
by Girolamo Mocetto," now
in Paris, brings together similar elements:
sages, planetary gods, Sciences
in the
Musee Jacquemart- Andre or Biblical Heroes and
Roman
and Virtues, together with mythological
epi-
sodes and two motifs from the Trionfi of Petrarch appear in the panels in the
order shown in the accompanying plan.
This scheme, in
its
very strangeness, reveals a didactic intention.
On
exami-
summing-up of the and the great examples offered by hispagan gods serve as illustration and setting for the
nation, the figures of the ceiling are seen to constitute a
great lessons of science and morality tory; the fables
and the
whole edifying scheme. In the Palazzo Trinci, Foligno, in a series of frescoes
21
great encyclopedic themes are set forth
unfortunately
now much damaged
painted around 1420. Again, the gods have their part cosmic and historical traditions meet. 20
(Sec
to play,
which were
and again the
43-45). Attributed also to Giro-
the panels of the Pintoricchio ceiling repre-
lamo da Santacroce. See Lionello Ventun,
sent mythological scenes. See Bryson Burroughs, "'Ceiling Panels by Pintuncchio,** Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of (January, 1921) , Part n.
figs.
"Una
risorta casa del Rinascimento italiano," UArte, xvn, pp. 72 ft The order of the figures,
corrected discussion.
in
1913,
still
The Mocetto
remains ceiling
subject
lo
may be com-
pared with that painted by Pmtoncchio for the Palazzo del Magnifico, Siena, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Almost all
An
21
See M. Salmi, "Gli affreschi Trinci a Foligno," Boll. of a Greek original. *
See supra,
p.
3&
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGA\ GODS
132
123, cod. 188 of the Bilnotht-que de Boulogne-sur-Mer of the Stiftsbilliothek of Gultweig
(fig.
57 3, which
(fig.
56), and cod. 7
date from the tenth or *
eleventh century
have surprises
in store for the art historian,
and
sometimes occasion him real emocontrary to all expecta-
tion. For,
tion,
these copies succeed in re-
capturing the antique model with surprising
In
fidelity.
some of
them, the classical style is maintained with such purity that an
enlargement of certain small
fig-
ures irresistibly recalls the frescoes of Pompeii
(fig.
54).
On
the
other hand, the relative positions
and
sizes of the stars is
rangement
whose
ar-
supposed to be indi-
cated by the mythological figure,
are often incorrect; but in this re-
gard also the copies show respect for the model, even where precision
is
subordinated to aesthetic
considerations.
Had
not the stars
which formed the original basis of the figures
from
already
certain
We thus ing
Roman
disappeared G
prototypes?
have here a surpris-
and exceptional
case of the
conservation of antique types in 56. Virgo
and
the
Gemini
.
11
form as well as
*
*
in content.
Nevertheless, as time goes on, changes are introduced into the illustra5
The
last
manuscript named
of a Carolingian model.
is
the exact copy
See Panofsky and Saxl, op. cit. Cf. Uni\., Leydfn, cod. Voss. lat, oct 15.
Bibl.
THE METAMORPHOSES OF THE GODS tions of the Aratea,
used by
way
and since observation of the
of verification,
is
sky,
153
which might have been
not even resorted to for correcting the figures,
they are graduaDy altered, becoming more and
1
more
fanciful. In the process,
they lose their Greco-Roman outlines, taking on instead those of the demigods of
Romanesque or Gothic
art,
an
being the Hercules of
example
cod. Bodleianus 614,
who
looks
., t,B
Jt
%
fee
cuir
tnnfttni* Wtr
pML-w u
like a St. Michael. Isolated ex-
iw^xrt 4r jium fuMTc sc ctt t
il.isrnt
June war
cft-iac fijncm
amples of antique images do survive, in all purity, 8
fourteenth century;
-tf : t*Jttnn>
few
nort 4 fr nUfci* f .' '
to the
up
but gener-
ally speaking, this whole cycle
tends to disappear, from the thirteenth century on. Its degenerate
types
supplanted by new-
are
comers.
These newcomers, who are destined
to
effect
a
I
veritable
jr
revolution
in
the
As we have
said, they
*K4tea cl ainuv* fefc
J
of the gods, issue from the Orient.
u
Cc-' 'J fobstPurrf nefaeatlaeiftpn em** ffltr feJr< am wiiranicnu ^itifuid? jM^swrmflr ruTtarwqfcsJ w attUn Jtdw* CT Jb co m-.-M* firaof ur id Li >
iconography
nrtrrrcr fiasi.
ij^r
csmtK HUP J^oi -afore
form a tnrnr. bjkr jf
two distinct families. The
comprised in the Arabian
w*
oytw n^ntaffpcriLronctu'' w*.^-t a frtet ier-:fxd* V
tfaFi la %riun
first is
astro-
_
nomical manuscripts and their
5
~
The
Centaitr
Western copies.
With regard Orient, as
to the direct inheritance
we have
of antique learning, the medieval
9
seen, had been more favored than the Occident. Whereas
7
One of the most remarkable examples of such fantasy is offered by a manuscript of the twelfth century < Vindobonensis 12600); the completely indifferent to science, has taken the liberty of representing his figures in half- rather than full-length, omitting H?Tf illustrator,
The figures are none the less full of movement and vivacity, but for that reason also
the stars.
are far removed from the ancient types. 8 Thus* in two Provencal manuscripts of Er-
mengaut
of Beziers* Brevicurc
famour
(codices
Vindobon. 2363 and 2583x) and another in the
C
Museum
(cod. Royal 19, contain images of the constellations British
Venus Anadyomene
D, which and plan-
depicted nude, in the sea. This extraordinary conservatism may be the fact that the culperhaps explained by ture of the last pagan centuries remained alive longer in Provence than elsewhere ifig. 55). ets,
8
See supra,
p.
5L
is
THE Sl'RVlVAL OF THE PAGA\ GODS
154 the
West had
inherited only
meager
extracts of
Greek science, and based
clearest ideas of astronomy on the Latin Aratea, the
its
Arabian astronomers
received from Hellenistic sources the thoroughly scientific catalogue of
Ptolemy. Furthermore, while the European Middle Ages allowed the Western heritage to decline, the Arabs developed theirs fruitfully. stellar
With regard
to the
images handed down from antiquity, the two attitudes form a complete contrast.
The Occident,
observation and centrates chiefly
careless of
con-
reckoning,
upon
the pictorial
character of the images, and gives
thought to comparing them
little \\
ith the celestial
phenomena. The
Arabs, on the other hand, consider
them exclusively as symbols of a reality
which
they
to
attempt
grasp with constantly increasing accuracy.
Hence
it
arises, as a first re-
sult, that the locations, sizes,
and
groupings of the stars, often neglected
58. Venus
by Western
illustrators,
are
scrupulously reproduced, and
need be
rectified,
by the Arab
mine the exact forms of
copyists,
whose principal concern
real constellations.
But another and no
if
is to deter-
less logical
consequence then follows: aside from their scientific value, the Hellenistic
sky figures offer no interest to the Arabs. Of what significance to them, indeed, are Hercules, Andromeda, and the host of foreign deities? Indifferent to
mythology
and, for that matter, knowing nothing of
general outlines of each figure, type, costume, and attributes. Is
10
it
carefully locate the stars which 10 This
but
make no
it
they retain the
effort to preserve its
Greek
a Hercules that they must reproduce? They
make up
may even seem surprising; it is explained by the fact that the figures of the
the constellation, but then
wrap
Creek globe were traditional and at the same time convenient.
THE METAMORPHOSES OF THE GODS the hero's head in a turban, and give this
unexpected disguise that
Sufi ("Paris, cod. arab. 5036;
him a scimitar
instead of a club.
he appears, for example, fig.
in a
59)." Thus the Greek
59. Hercules
^Orientalized." At to
first
155 It is
celestial sphere is
60. Perseus
glance all these masquerading figures seem as farcical
us as do the twrqueries of Moliere, but in reality they hold more
scientific
information than do the fine Carolingian copies of the Latin Aratea. If
look at a sky figures
Ptolemy; they
them
map drawn by the Arabs, we
which people fit
it
in
manuscript of
are
marked with
we
shall see that the extravagant
signs referring to the catalogue of
into a geometric system which makes
it
possible to locate
12
exactly. It is
for this reason that the Western Middle Ages,
reviving passion for astronomy, turned collected
away from
when
seized
the Aratea
by the
and eagerly
and copied these Arabian manuscripts. But, strangely enough, the
"Sufi's catalogue became widely known in both East and West. See A Hauber, "Zur Verbreitung des Astronomen Siifi/* Islam, vin
(1918), pp. 48, 49-54. for instance, the copy of an Oriental map in cod. Vindobon. 5415 (foL 168 r.).
"See,
THE Si'RVirAL Of TEE PAGA* GODS
156
Western copy:?!- appear not
to
have noted that the manuscripts, while correct
so retained Hercules" scimastronomically, were mythological!}* absurd, and was now carrying instead \\hich Perseus head itar, and the bearded demon's-
of that of to
Medusa
fig.
60; cf the "classical" Perseus, .
fig.
55)
.
Was this due
ignorance on their Dart, or to senile submission to the models? The West
no longer recognized
its
own
gods, so greatly
had they been disfigured
in the
East.
As first
natural,
is
transcribed ;
it
was
in Sicily
and Spain that the Arab manuscripts were
the=e copies, reproduced in their turn, spread the Oriental
images of the gods throughout Europe. canus
lat.
8174
and
that cod.
ers,
from a
A
is
1036
the
We know,
for example, that cod. Vati-
copy of a manuscript executed for Alfonso the Wise,
of the Bibliolheque de TArsenal derives, with several oth-
Sicilian manuscript.
third family of figures
remains
the most curious of all
to
be con-
sidered. These are the illustrations for the astronomioo-astrological treatise
of Michael Scot,^ composed in Sicily between 1243 and
Frederick
II.
We
ha\e more than thirty manuscripts of
1250
for
Emperor 1*
this treatise,
which
an imagery without precedent lacking, it would seem, any possible connection ^vith classical antio^iity. Thus we discover new constellations: the offer us
Viol Player, and the Vexillum, or Standard, appear in Michael Scot side by side with the traditional Cassiopeia, Cygnus, Sagittarius. These innovations,
again, are of Islamic origin; most of them are explained, as Boll has shown,
by the fact that Scot borrows from the Arabic image of the sky stars which 1* had themselves come from the sphaera barbarica. But when we come to the images of the planets, we find novelties still more astonishing; not one of the great planetary divinities has retained his customary appearance. Jupiter is
represented as a scholar or jurist or noble personage, seated before a lavishly
spread table; Saturn has become a warrior; Mercury
book as
is
a bishop, carrying a
his attribute.
This phenomenon
is all
the
representation of the planets has 13
See supra,
14
Not
more remarkable
since up to this time visual shown almost no deviation from the classical
p. 52, n. 65, and figs. 61, 62. of the complete treatise, bat of its as-
tronomical section.
w See
supra, p. 39.
THE METAMORPHOSES OF THE GODS iconography.
As we have
1"
seen,
it
was only
at a
comparatnely
157 late date that
the Greeks learned to distinguish the planets from the fixed stars and, fol-
r/Tfopr
6J. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars,
and Venus
lowing the example of the Babylonians, hegan likenesses of gods. At that time they imented 10
Supra,
p. 39.
>*
to give
them the names and
no special
attributes for these
THE
15S planetary' gods,
ply identified
dud
SlRt'ir.tL OF
were ghen them by the Roman?/' They were sim-
i:one
the Olympians,
*\:tii
produce then: In the
THE PAGA,\ GODS
and the Middle Ages continued
same fashion, with a
they can ta recognized without too
much
certain
amount of
difficulty, not
to re-
rectification;
only in the astronomi-
cal manuscripts,"" but e\en in the popular series of calendar illustrations
and
this
~"
remains true until the fifteenth century.
From
that time on, however, the
speaking, a few details
Greco-Roman
reflections of the
gods hecome unrecognizable. Strictly
such as Saturn's sickle tradition.
could be interpreted as
But taken as a whole, one would
look in vain to Olympus for the origin of the gods of Michael Scot series of transformations,
What
however fundamental, could conceivably have con-
verted Mercury into an ecclesiastical dignitary?
The is
oiigin of these figures
must be sought elsewhere. Again, the source
an Oriental one, and again we must thank Saxl for having demonstrated
the fact.
In studying the representations of planets in Islamic manuscripts,
Saxl found
them
20
singular features which on the one hand seemed to relate
many
to figures illustrating the
pointed to an origin
much
Michael Scot manuscripts, and, on the other,
earlier than the thirteenth century. His efforts at
localizing this origin in space
and time led him
in
a direct line back
to an-
cient Babylon. It is, in fact,
relationship with
undeniable that while the Arab figures show almost no
Greco-Roman planetary
do
types, they
offer
remarkable
resemblances to types found in Babylonian sources. Thus Mercury, as a pious
and scholarly
figure, corresponds in character to
as judge, to Marduk,
ter,
who
in cod.
17
F,
See
who
Cumont, Textcs
et
monuments
For example,
in
(
fi-
Brussels,
the two manuscripts of
Ennengaut of Bcziers cited above. Nevertheless, a "modern" Jupiter is seen near planets of Greek type in cod. Vmdobon. 2563. 18 See supra, pp. 64, 70. 20
"Beitrage
The Sun
himself,
Monac. arab. 464 wears a crown and holds a sword on his knees,
gures relatifs aux mysteres de Mithrtt 1899 K i, p. 74. lfc
Nebo, the writer-god; Jupi-
signs the decrees of destiny.
zu
einer
Geschichte
der
Pla-
netendarstellungen im Onent und im Okzident," Der Islam, in 1912 , pp. 151-177 Among these Islamic manuscripts, let us note cod. Bodl. Or. 133; cod. Monac. arab. )
(
464, an illustrated copy of the Cosmography of Qazwini d. 12831 executed in Damascus
in
1280; Qazwini,
the codex Sarre, another copy of
made around 1420; Persian
tions of the
same work,
etc.
transla-
THE METAMORPHOSES OF THE GODS is
much
closer to
Shamash than
to
Phoebus Apollo. In spite of minor
159 di-
vergencies and difficulties of detail, the primary conclusion must therefore
be that the Arab figures of planets
reflect in reality the
Babylonian gods
Nebo (Mercury), Marduk (Jupiter), Ishtar (Venus),
Ninib (Mars), and Nergal (
Saturn) .
What remains discovered
is
how
be
to
the Baby-
lonian types could survive
and be transmitted across the centuries to the Arabs. In spite of the almost com-
of
absence
plete
figural
documents between the Sassanian
period
twelfth century,
and
the
is
pos-
it
sible to give a precise an-
62.
swer to this question. We do, in fact, possess cults
and with
of which
is
Mercury as a scribe
an uninterrupted textual tradition dealing with the planetary
images of the planets. These texts, the most important an eleventh-century book on magic, the Ghdya* make it clear that ritual
in certain isolated districts of
astrolatry, still
had
Mesopotamia the old autochthonous religion, temples and its devotees. The Haranite
at that date its
Sabeans, for example, continued to invoke the planetary gods and to venerate their images." Thus, in a
paganism survived in
its
"dead
angle,*'* to
21 The Ghdya, of which we have already spoken (supra, p. 53, n.67l t was translated in part by Dozy and de Goeje, Actes du vie Con-
gres International dcs Orientalistes
(1885).
Another important text
Masudi by Di-
(tenth century), followed
is
use Saxl's apt expression, local
primitive state, sheltered
that
much
of later
maski (Manual of Cosmography, translated by A. F. Mehrens [Copenhagen, 18741). 22 Under Roman role, Haran was called Carrhae. A Sabean of Haran, Tabit b. Kurra, is
from outside influences
the author of a Liber de lectiombus recitandis
ad singulas septem planetamm acconwdatis. 23 With the exception, that is, of certain borrowings from Hellenistic thought (Stoicism, Hermetism! with which the Haranite "philosophers" colored their teachings; and certain
Greco-Roman
elements introduced in late the iconography by way of strengthening its syncretistic character. On the last point, see M. A. Lanci, Trattato delle antiquity
into
s
THE SURnrAL OF THE PAGA\ GODS
160 those of the
The
Greco-Roman world as well as those of Islam and
through the centuries, the types of the astral
deities.
of the A rah manuscripts conform perfectly with those in the
Christianity.
which adorned the sanctuaries of Haran preserved unaltered,
effigies
Ghdya: and
Now
the illustrations
effigies,
as described
since there exists, on the other hand, a certain relationship
between the Michael Scot pictures and those of the Arab manuscripts,
we
are
justified in connecting them, in their turn, with the Babylonian tradition.
way did
In exactly what
the Occident fall heir to this tradition? Sax!
thought that in certain cases the illustrators actually
had Arab models before
their eyes, but that often they must also have been inspired by
the essential intermediaries here was the Picatrix, which, as
was widely known
seen,
24
in the
in fact a translation of the that are
Occident.
The
One of
we have already
Picatrix, as has
Ghdya and reproduces
texts.
been said, was
literally the descriptions
found there.
* IT
is all
the
ures* since
more important
it
to
have clarified the origin of this family of
fig-
played an extensive role in the Italian monumental art of the
fourteenth century.
provides the explanation of representations contained
It
in the great decorative cycles
whose content we have studied above,
25
but
which we are only now fully able to understand. In Florence, the planetary gods sculptured on the Campanile of Giotto
appear, as
we have
noted, in disconcerting guise.
king holding a scepter in his
we have here
is distinctly
left
hand and
The Sun, for example,
in his right a sort of
is
a
w heel. What r
not Apollo, the classical deity, but a descendant of
1
the Asiatic solar gods."' Similarly, in the Cappella degli Spagnuoli, Saturn
holds a spade in addition to the classical sickle;
a scribe
indicating that
we
"'*
Mercury appears there as
are looking at the scholarly Nebo. For the same
reason, in the choir of the Eremitani at Padua, and on a capital in the Doge's
Palace in Venice simboliche
(fig.
21
rappresentanze
),
Mercury has assumed the likeness of a
arabiche
(
Paris,
1845-6*. See supra, pp. 127 ff. See Part I, chaps, u and i>. find this figure again in the Eremitani and the Salone in Padua, in the first case 24
25
-We
teacher.
wearing the imperial diadem, in the second the papal crown. In the Cappella degli Spagnuoli in Florence, he merely holds a sphere. ** He is seen with this spade in the codex Sarre, for one example; elsewhere he appears holding a pick.
THE METAMORPHOSES OF THE GODS There
is
161
no doubt that we have definitely penetrated the secret of
this
strange iconography. Nevertheless, some difficulties remain. In spite of the
which reveal
attributes
Padua are represented
their origin, these gods in Florence, Venice,
as if they
were contemporary personages
and
in other
words, in Trecento costume. In this respect fan oddity
they share with the illustrations in differ
Michael Scot) they
profoundly from the
Arabian
we
figures,
find
the
in
which
Babylonian
types retaining their exotic character. still,
More remarkably
not only are they wear-
ing Occidental dress, but in
some cases they have even donned
ecclesiastical orna-
ments.
We
have
already
called attention to the case
of Nebo-Mercury as bishop.
A
related
choir
example
of the
Shamash-Apollo the tiara.
is
in the
Eremitani
wearing
But the climax
63. Jupiter as a
monk
is
by the Marduk-Jupiter of the Campanile in Florence, muffled in a monk's robe, holding a chalice in one hand, and in the other a cross (fig. 63) These difficulties are not insoluble. First of all, let us not forget that
offered
.
even when these Western figures of the planets represent the same gods as do the
Arab manuscripts, they are not copied from
those manuscripts.
impregnated with Oriental elements the treatise of Michael Scot artists
who
illustrated this
the indications of the text,
Even with
the
However
may be,
the
work allowed themselves, even while following to take their models from the life around them.
Arab drawings before
their eyes, they did not attempt to imi-
THE Sl'RVlVAL OF THE PAGA\ GODS
162 fate them.
We must remember,
moreover, that Michael Scot himself had been
no merely passive recipient of those elements from the East. He had elaborated them, combining them in each description with material from Western sources; and to this description he added, in the theology, an allegorical different data
and
manner dear
medieval
to
commentary in which he attempted to reconcile these 2S a method, be it noted, completely them unity
to give
in accord with the cultural character of southern Italy, the link
between
Orient and Occident, between Islam and Christianity.
This effort
at
adaptation and fusion makes Europeans and even Chris-
tians out of the astral divinities of Babylon. Mercury, for instance,
who
the Eastern representations carries a book and sometimes has a halo,
scholar,
harmony
We
a
way pagan cosmogony
meets, and
is
at the
same time brought
with the Christian concept of the world.
should, however, avoid generalizations.
Ionian figures
may
nile in Florence
have other causes, as
The Christianizing of Baby-
in the case
of Jupiter.
we found Jupiter represented as a monk;
the
On
the
Campasame thing oc-
curs in the Cappella degli Spagnuoli, and in certain manuscripts.
another case of assimilation, a Christian interpretation of
could be
is
a dervish, a holy man; why should his Western equivalent not be a
bishop? In this into
in
less certain; it is possible,
29
Is this
Marduk? Nothing
on the other hand, that
this
image
is di-
rectly derived from an Oriental text.
According
to the astrological system,
certain region of the earth. his
The
each planet holds sway over a
Indies, for example, as
Cosmography, are under the dominion of Saturn;
Qazwini
that is
tells
us in
why Saturn
is
represented in certain manuscripts in the guise of an aged Indian. Jupiter is the ruler of the Western countries,
pressly states, is the
and for
that reason, as the
Ghdya
ex-
patron of the Christians. In consequence, he looks like
a Christian himself; and furthermore, according to the principles of sympathetic
magic, those
ing to Jupiter, the 28
who claim
Ghdya says
his help ought to dress as explicitly,
RidewalTs method in the Fulgcntius metaforalis, of "converting" pagan images and texts. See supra, pp. 94 ff. Cf.
29
In particular in Urbin, laL 1398, of the fifteenth century (fg. 64 , where the illustrations 1
he does.
When pray-
"Be humble and modest, dressed
in
are often very close to the Campanile rebefs; also in an engraving of 1492, representing Fortune's wheel Elsewhere (for example, in
Vindobon. 2378, foL 12 miter.
v.)
Jupiter wears a
THE METAMORPHOSES OF the
manner of monks and
THE*
GODS
163
Christians, for he is their patron; act in every
way
as the Christians do, and wear their costume: a yellow mantle, a girdle, and
a cross.*'
Thus our Christian Jupiter transformation, but this
example may
is
is not,
as might he supposed, the result of a
the direct illustration of an astrological
serve to
show what care should be used
classification of these figures.
We shall
magic
text;
in the study
and
see later that innumerable errors and
misunderstandings in the transmission and reproduction of the images renders such a classification even
one conclusion ject: in the ilies
may
more hazardous and
be drawn from
domain of planetary and
this
summary
stellar
delicate.
For the moment
presentation of the sub-
iconography alone, several fam-
of gods outlive the ruin of the ancient world and continue to propagate
themselves, but
we
hesitate to call
them by
their
names
either because they
are of barbarian origin, or because the original types from which they arose
have become altered by means of successive misalliances or degradations. * IF
WE wish to pursue our study of the "pictorial" tradition beyond the illustra-
tions in astronomical manuscripts,
Byzantine
we
art.
In the Byzantine Empire, in fact its
abundance of Hellenistic models
minds and even the arts.
80
shall find abundant material only in
with
nearness to the sources and
its
mythology
left
an imprint in educated which is attested by
in popular sensibility, the living force of
Let us recall briefly the miniatures in profane manuscripts, such as
those in the Theocritus of the Bibliotheque Nationale where, in the fourteenth century, the god
and even the
Pan is
still
represented with goat's head and cloven hoofs,
31
illustrations of certain religious texts, like the magnificent Paris
where demigods and nymphs mingle in scenes from the story of David, within landscapes which still seem bathed in the air of classical po-
Psalter,
32
etry. 30
We
should think also of the charming ivory caskets whose motifs are
See L. Brehier, L'^rt iysonftn (Paris, 1924),
chap, hi: "Lc courant profane et mythologique," pp. 44-45. 81 Cod. grec. 2832, foL 48 b; the same manuscript contains a representation of Apollo.
^BibL Nat,
cod. grec 139 (tenth century), foL 16: See H. Bnchthal, The Miniatures of tke Paris Psalter, Studies of the Warburg In-
VoL n (1938). Cf. the Zeus, Artemis and Acteon, Chiron and Achilles, in manu-
stitute,
THE Sl'RVlYAL OF THE PAGA\ GODS
164 inspired
by Alexandrian works, even when not
literally copied
from them;
these motifs are for the most part Cupids, Centaurs, Bellerophon, Pegasus, 3
or the Labors of Hercules.' "It has generally been supposed that these ex-
works began to be made in Constantinople in the period when the iconoclastic emperors wished to replace religious art by themes belonging
quisite
to the
Alexandrian tradition; but most of the caskets are contemporary with
the brilliant literary renaissance of the eleventh and twelfth centuries." Lastly, several bas-reliefs,
of San Marco
in
some
of which, for example,
still
"*
adorn the facades
Venice and the Torcello Cathedral, treat again of these same
mythological themes.
Now
these reliefs, as is well
known, were brought
from Constantinople in 1204, with the famous bronze horses. In the West, outside the domain of astronomy and astrology, such cases of survival are rare. The manuscripts of the classical poets were not trated: of the
found, and
two Vatican
we have no
illustrated
manuscript of Ovid. Even though they do
not directly form part of our subject,
we might perhaps
representations of the Passion in which Sun, **
kept their classical forms; like
but these are related to the Aratea types, and
like the debris of classical culture, usually devote one or 6
we have seen/
find
note the Carolingian
Moon, Earth, and Ocean have
them degenerate or disappear during the following centuries. We must direct our search elsewhere. The first encyclopedias, which
seem as
illus-
Virgils, for example, no medieval copy has been
to
mythology
"de
diis
more chapters,
gentium." There we
may perhaps
some figure to interest us.
Of the
first
of the encyclopedias, the Etymologiae of Isidore, the library
of Laon owns two illustrated manuscripts, of the seventh and eighth (or ninth) centuries; but in these, again, the gods appear only in the guise of
C Diehl,
scripts of Gregory of Nazianzns: see fttft bysantin, 2nd edition
Manuel
(Paris,
1925-26*, II, pp. 628-629 and figs. 301-305. la the last two of the figures cited from Diehl (304 and 305), Zens, looks like a basHeas, and
x-xm
Elfenbeinskulpturen des < Berlin, 1930-34) .
Jahrhunderts
^Ci., in Byzantine compositions of a religions nature, the type of the bearded river god, who represents the Jordan in the Baptism mosaic of the Ravenna Baptistery; and the "Hades,"
**
the goddesses like patrician ladies. For example, Hercules and the Nemean lion, on the casket belonging to the cathedral of Lyons; the same subject on a casket in
Hell in chains, in the mosaic at Daphni representing the Descent into Limbo. See J. Ebersole, Melanges eThutoire et farcheologic by-
Cividale, etc.
zombies (Paris, 1917),
"Brehier, op. dL, p. 48L Cf. also A. Goldschuudt and K. Weitzmann, Die byzantinischen
"Book
i,
Part
1,
p. 10.
chaps,
i
and
iv.
64.
The planetary gods
THE Sl'RHVAL OF THE PAG.i\ GODS
166 constellations.
We
Maurus; of
original manuscript ofths- work, which has disappeared,
'
:3ie
shall fare better with the
De rerum
natxris of Raijanus
iarcou?
the
possess
executed in
we
copy
1023 and
pre^
served at Monte Cassino.
Here we ha\e some
ten di-
among whom
vinities,
Bacchus
are
and
Pan,
Juno,
1
Mercury. Their appearance is
crude and bizarre
65
1,
can
yet a classical
lie
more or
les
t*prtu p. 64, 3" See A. M. Amelii. Minuattirt sacrc e profane i/r/r&Ri:6 1023 ifi&stranti rEnciclopedut medictralf di Rsba^io Maurtj
i
Monte Cassino,
1896 , PL CXIL See F. Saxl, 4itike Gutter in der SpdtrentasiflRce, Studien der BibL Warburg Leipzig, 1927*. PL in; A. Gold&dumdi, ^Fruhmit3J
i
telalterliche
Jlustnerte
Ejnzyklopadien,
For-
41
turies.
It
immediately
fell
trage der Bibliothek Warburg 1 1923-24 > ; see al^o F. Saxl, **Iliustrated Mediaeval Encyclopaedias, i: The Classical Heritage/* of lectures to be published by the
m volume Warburg
hmitutf. *"
With the exception of the dog-headed Mercury rinf'inn ic cttTl '*/armt Ala-nl
"
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
188
such was to be the dream of the great-
as they did, mythology and geometry est spirits of the Renaissance.
The
great gods, like the heroes, were eager to resume their rightful vis-
age. Curiously enough,
ing attempts
it is
in
Germany again
them in doing
to aid
so.
that
we
witness other interest-
In the course of the fifteenth century,
certain Northern artists appear to have
hecome suddenly aware of
the incon-
gruity of representing Jupiter or Mercury under the extravagant aspect which he had taken on, either through Michael Scot or in the illustrated encyclo-
pedias; these artists turned to the pre-Gothic period for models closer to antiquity.
Thus, in the Palatinate, the illuminator of Palatinus
around 1430, the
De rerum
illustrations of the celebrated treatise of 7
naturis;
now among
of the Olympic gods
these figures, as
we have
lat.
291 copies,
Rabanus Maurus, seen,
were images
images crude and in many respects faulty, but as a
whole of indisputably classical descent. For more than four centuries they had fallen into complete oblivion, and were looked at by no one. A local miniaturist
now
and
discovers
has a contemporary flavor of great pictorial tradition,
sets out to
its
own, but
copy them. Admittedly, his copy it
establishes a
new
link with the
same time prepares the way for the classical form (fig. 66). their and
at the
re-
appearance of the gods We have seen how, in the manuscripts of Michael Scot, the figures of the in
planetary gods had, toward the end of the Middle Ages, assumed the most
unexpected forms.
We have explained the relevant influences, finding descend-
ants of the Babylonian gods clothed in Giottesque costumes. But now, in the first
half of the fifteenth century,
we
note in certain copies of these manu-
scripts the disappearance of the barbaric types,
figures
much
closer to the
Greco-Roman
and their replacement by How is this to be ex-
originals.
plained? Like the painter of the Rabanus Maurus illustrations, one of the illuminators of Michael Scot
8
has turned back to a relatively pure source: he has taken as model a Carolingian copy of the "Calendar of 354," and in so doing he also, despite his lack of skill, has placed himself in contact with the classical prototypes. 7
The
original manuscript of the ninth century but we possess a replica of it in the Monte Cassmo manuscript, executed in 1023: is lost,
see supra, pp. 166 f., and Cod. Darmstadt 266.
8
fig.
65.
THE REINTEGRATIOX OF THE GODS These are, of course, isolated examples.
189
We should nevertheless note the
symptomatic character of the German "p re-Renaissance," \\hich makes use
73. Perseus
of the most authentic documents available to
and
it,
until such time as the statues
bas-reliefs themselves shall again be ready to hand.
*
LET us now bered, this
see what has become of the literary tradition.
term designates the ensemble of figures
mythological treatises
the
common
As
will be
remem-
illustrating the allegorized
character of these figures (which begin
in the fourteenth century to supplant other types) being that they are based
exclusively on texts.
They are reconstructions.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
190
We
have sketched the history o
this tradition, in
graphus tertius," Albricus, occupied a leading place.
emerged from
his Liber
ymaginum deorum and
Conceived without the benefit contact with classical
art,
which the "Mytho-
A whole family of gods successive recastings.
its
of any real model, and without the
these artificial gods might
to
appear
slightest
have had but
small chance of survival; nevertheless, not only did they beget offspring of their own, but against all expectation
they gradually prepared the return of the rightful gods.
The
not a hard thing to ac-
quire, since they are distinct
others
hand.
will It
with
familiarity
slightest
these types
show them
would seem
its
from
all
us on every
that, outside the
astrological tradition,
eral adhered to
to
which in gen-
own types and
laws,
they constituted the chief repertory
which
artists
continued to draw upon
from the fourteenth
meet with them
to the
and even
fifteenth century,
77.
It
Mars
would be easy to
in a chariot
by a wolf.
tapestries,
and
in minia-
trace, for
example, the type of Mars in fury, mounted
horses, helmeted,
whip
in hand,
and accompanied
thus that Petrarch describes him, following Albricus,
has constructed his
own
in
enamels,
painting and sculpture.
drawn by two It is
We
later.
in France, England,
Flanders, Germany, Italy tures,
end of the
who
picture out of fragments of Servius and Statius: .
.
.
Mavortis imago
Curribus insistent aderat furibunda enteritis: nine lupus, hinc rauce stridentes tristia Dire; Cassis erat capiti fulgens manibusque flagellum* 9
Africa, in, 186-189. ("The furious image pi Mars stood on a bloody chariot: on this side
a wolf, on the other the hoarse Furies with their shrill and mournful cries. He had a
J
74.
/'
Mars
76.
75.
Mars
THE SVRVIVAL OF THE PAGA* GODS And
he appears
thus
12
11
in
French, 13
and
Flemish,
Italian
drawings and min-
iatures;
in Flemish,
1*
13
and German
ian.
ings; in the fresco di
Ital-
lfi
engrav Taddeo by
Bartolo in the Palazzo
Pubblico, Siena in a relief
(fig.
42)
;
by Agostino di
Duccio in the Tempio Mala testiano
78) the \v
;
at
Rimini
(fig.
on a chimney piece
Landshut Residenz
in
*'
to-
ard the middle of the six-
teenth
century
79)
(fig.
and on a Flemish tapestry the royal collection in
;
in
Ma-
drid."'
Although these Mars
78.
differ-
ent representations are un-
The pedigree
gleaming helmet on his head and a whip in his
13
hands.**
"Mars" is not certain, n is the beautiful miniature by Francesco Pesellmo, executed around 1450, and described by C. Bartoh to Va^an, who copied the description in the second edition of the Vite, in the note on Attavante (ed. Milanese n, p. 523). See reproduction in DedaJo (Feb., 1932). 14 In the Owde moralise of Colart Mansion (Bruges, 1484). See fig 77. 15 The Tarocchi of Mantegna.
Chaucer (The Knightes Tale, w. 2041-2, 2046-8, in Works, ed. W. W. Skeat > describes him in almost the same terms
The statue of Mars upon a carte stood, Armed, and loked grim as he were wood, This god of armes was arrayed thus: wolf ther stood biforn him at his feet JTith eyen rede. . . ."
A
Boyd Ashby Wise (The Influence of Statins upon Chaucer (Baltimore, 19113), Chaucer is here following Statius According
(Thebais, (Teseide, ll
vn, vir,
to
70)
by
37). See
Bibl. Nat., mss.
fr.
way
figs.
of
Boccaccio
74-77.
6986 and 143
(figs.
and 75) ; Vat. lot. 1480; Brit. Mas., Cott. F. vn ; Bibl. de 1'Univ. de Geneve, ms, fr. 13
Regm. 1290; Marcian.
4519.
of
this la&t
)
1(t
Copenhagen, ms. Thott. 399
(fig.
761.
74
Jul.
176.
lrt
The
illustrations
of
Herold's
Heydenwelt,
1554. 17
See A. Warburg, Gesammelte Schriften, n, p. 457 and fig- 105; also Mitterwieser, Die Residenz von Landshut (Augsburg, 1927). 1S One piece in the series of Vices and Virtues; see reprod. in Guiffrey, La Tapisserie, p. 124. Mars is on foot, but he carries a flail; other details in the
Albricus.
same tapestry (Amor,
etc.)
recall
79.
Mars and other gods
mistakably related, curious variations aie
to
be noted between them. At times,
these even affect the iconographical details. Thus, the war-god holds in his
hand in some
cases a whip, in others a sword, halberd, or
variations can be explained as Thott.
399 and
mere
errors. Thus,
flail.
Several of these
when the illuminator of ms.
the engraver of the Ovide moralise of the Colart
tion replace the
whip by a
flail, it is
Mansion
edi-
because the French text had translated
Albricus' Latin flagellum as flayeu (fleau)
Even more curious than
this
substitution of attributes is the appearance of quite different persons as escort
for the god. Thus, the
Mars of
the
Tempio Malatestiano
18
Cf. another amusing error in the image of Juno: the peacocks appear to be licking her feet "Pavones autera ante pedes ejus lambebant," (ie., "peacocks were pecking before her feet"), says the Libellus, and the Ovide
moralise
translates,
"ils
lui
leschoient
les
is
pieds." Again, in the Bibl.
preceded by an Nat
ms.
fr.
373
(end of fourteenth century), foL 207, Venus has hi her hand not a shell, but a duck, which
she holds by the neck. This is probably the result of a faulty reading: cuco marina for concha marina.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
194
advancing female in the other
hut this
who holds
figure,
an object that appears
combat beneath
On the bas-reliefs at Lands-
the chariot. It is apparent that here the sculptor has followed 20
fondatores, scilicet
Romulus Remum et
the reins of the horses in one hand, and
be a trumpet.
figure does not appear; instead, two men are seen engaged in mortal
"Et quia Romani
the version of the Libellus:
qui
to
fratrem
Duccio seems
Romulum
et
Remum,
fratres
Martis
filios
ideo sub ejus curru idem
interfecit,
Remum occidebat.'*
geminos urbis primes
esse finxerunt,
quorum Romulus depictus erat,
At Rimini, on the other hand, Agostino di
have been following the text of Petrarch which we have
to
quoted above:
....
hinc raucae stridentes tristia Dirae.
The divergencies between 21
this case
to
But the variants
upon the
the two representations
would thus correspond
in
different branches of the Albricus tradition. in
which we are now most interested are those bearing
style of the figures; in
one case, for example, Mars
is
seen driving
through a rural landscape in a heavy peasant's \\agon, much after the fashion ""
elsewhere he resembles a
of Lancelot, the knight, in his cait;
ary mounted on a the type
1
veritable battle chariot."
alia francese to the
At the same time,
Roman legion-
in passing
type aWantica* the formal character of the
from
image
undergoes marked changes. It is the stages in this
we now wish
formal evolution of our series of images which
to sketch in their
main
outlines. This story,
allels that of the geographical diffusion of the types ;
like a struggle or an
20
("And
since the
brothers
Romulus
founded the
the god they depicted killing Remus.**)
The
Romulus Libellus
and developing a Albncus: *'Romulum et over
brief
in the act of
here taking reference by
is
Remum
ejus fingi constat." ("It appears that Romulus and Remus were supposed to be his sons.") filios
21
Cf.
also
the
be said, par-
broadly seen,
it
appears
Italy,
which they are
to conquer.
Romans claimed that the and Remus, who were sons of Mars, and since city, Romulus lulled Remus., under the chariot of twin
may
exchange of influences between Northern and Western
Europe, the region from which the images come, and doing their best
it
representations
of
the
wolf,
which sometimes carries sheep in its jaws, or even on its back (Regin. 1290). This detail agrees with the text of the Libellus: "ante ilium vero lupus ovem portans pingebatur" ("before him they painted a wolf bearing a sheep"), but it is not found in Albricus, Petrarch, or Bersuire.
^ E.g. ^In
f ms. Copen. Thott 399. the Tempio Malatestiano;
the Tarocchi,
A 45.
cf.
the
Mars
of
THE REINTEGRATION OF THE GODS The
treatise of Albricus,
it
should be remembered,
Englishman; of the miniatures which derive from in French manuscripts of the Ovide moralise
(
it,
Paris
195 the
is
work of an
the earliest are
found
6986 and Vat. Reg.
lat.
1480), both dating from the end of the fourteenth century. The Gothic accent in these miniatures
strongly marked. Apollo wears an elegant doublet
is
and
long, pointed shoes; Mars, a helmet and gauntlets; Juno, an ermine cotte. But their
anachronism
images adhere
is
not the only distinguishing feature of these naive
they also tend to
;
become
distinctly
more sober and
faithfully to the text in all essential points, but they
restrained.
They
do not translate
every detail. Generally speaking, they reduce the overrich content of the
its
Albricus descriptions. Thus, the illustrator of the Vatican manuscript shows neither the his
Muses
Mercury. The
in his picture of
Apollo nor the merchants and thieves with
significance of these simplifications will easily be gathered :
they eliminate all that would overload the composition and disturb the lay-
out on the page or the framing. The images, thus disencumbered, are clearly
organized ; sometimes they are even quite symmetrical. This effort at stylization
not,
by
the way, equally advanced in all the manuscripts
larly striking
Auxerre
2*
if
we
is
recall the illustrations in the manuscript of
particu-
Remi
of
the tradition of which was followed by Albricus. There, the artist
spared us no detail, no accessory; in his concern tent of the text, he scattered
its
to
reproduce the whole con-
details diffusely over the page.
These qualities of the French miniatures, which they were to retain throughout the fifteenth century engraving;
we
find
them
(figs.
Bruges in 1484 by Colart Mansion
Are we to
75 and 80), later passed into Flemish Ovide moralise printed in
in the woodcuts of the 25
(fig.
77)
.
see here the traditional qualities of French art,
and
in particu-
lar that mastery of composition which gives such legibility to the little scenes
inscribed on the bas-reliefs of the cathedrals?
Or
shall
we
Saxl, look for a reflection of Giottesque style? At about this 2
*Monac.
lat.
14271, foL 11
25
r.
(fig.
67).
These woodcuts take over the miniatures of a manuscript of Bersuire (Copen. Thott. 399) ; cf. M. D. Henkel, De Houtsneden van Mansion's Ovide moralise , Bruges, 1484 (Amsterdam, 1922), and E. Schenk zu Schwemsburg, ;
rathei, with
same time,
"Bemerkungen zu M. D. Henkel, De Hout. sneden (1924), ,** etc., Der Cicerone, xvi pp. 321 ff. Their influence may still be felt in the sixteenth century, in certain woodcuts illustrating the Heydenwelt of Herold (1554). .
.
THE SURVIVAL OF THE PAGAN GODS
196
Taddeo **
ties 27
tion,
di Bartolo, in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, represented four divini-
who are but
serving a
not connected
who have
at least not directly
with the Albricus tradi-
also been reduced to the simplest lines, even though pre-
marked medieval flavor in
80, Pluto
attitude
and costume.
and Proserpina
Around 1420, we find the images of the gods entering upon a new phase. The pen drawings illustrating the Libellus text in ms. Vaticanus Reginensis 1290 contrast in several points with the sober Gothic
are gay, imaginative, free, and exuberant figures, this artist
(fig.
they
.
has invented them as he pleased. Thus, in the group around
Venus, he adds a woman as target of one of Cupid's arrows; 26
effigies:
68) Far from suppressing any
See supra, pp. 128 f. 27 The Mars type, however, is that of Albricus. See supra, pp. 189 ff., and fig. 42.
**
M
at Mercury's
a confusion with Apollo. The text says: "Cupido . . Apolhnem sagittaverat." In ms. Rawl. B. 214 (foL 198 v.), Possibly,
it is
true,
.
THE REINTEGKATION OF THE GODS
197
side he places a kneeling figure who, like the god himself, is playing a flute. Another striking novelty is the introduction of several nude figures. For the most part, to be sure, the figures are clothed and in the fashion of the time:
Orpheus might be a troubadour and the Corybantes mace-bearers. But Venus is
once more Anadyomene, and the three Graces sport with her
among
the
waves.
We
same freedom
shall find this
in composition, this mingling of
naked
bodies with contemporary costume, in other representations from the
first
half of the fifteenth century, such as the miniatures of an English manuscript at
Oxford (Rawlinson B. 214;
Print Cabinet.
29
fig.
70), or a series of drawings in the Dresden
Even outside the Albricus
circle, indeed, a parallel evolution
of mythological types is to be noted. This becomes clear series of pictures of the planets of
frescoes
we compare two 30
the
by Guariento in the choir of the Eremitani in Padua, and the minia-
tures of a
The two
if
which we have already spoken
Modena manuscript,
the Liber physiognomiae (figs.
been recognized;
series are connected, as has long
C1
85 and 87). but the four-
teenth-century Venus, with her solemn bearing and her drapery, recalls the allegorical type of the French cathedrals
holds a mirror;
w
around 1430, Venus
is
who has shed her
quasi-ecclesiastical
It
Luxuria, for instance,
in contrast, in the Liber
would seem,
also
a young woman, naked and smiling, her hair unbound,
therefore, that a
thology; but the transformation
group of representations Minerva, for instance form, the majority
who
physiognomiae, which dates from
still
is
is
dignity along with her garments.
new
spirit
On
not yet final.
characterized
by
its
has begun to animate mythe contrary, this
whole
ambiguity. If certain deities
are obviously striving to recover their classical
wear
their bourgeois disguises.
And
the
nude forms
themselves have not the slightest sculptural quality; they suggest rather the fragile Eves of the French manuscripts. In reality, these images offer us
a sort of compromise between Franco-Flemish naturalism and the idealistic of the artists who worked for the due de Berry, referred to below, it is really Apollo who is wounded by the arrow: in the Dresden drawa nude woman who holds a lyre. ^Reprod. in P. Lavallee, Le Dessin frangais
and of the Burgundian masters (pp. 16-17).
xnic au xvie siecle (Paris, 1930), fig. 27. Lavallee sees in these drawings the influence
57.
ing, it is du.
30
See supra, p. 127, n. 17. A. Venturi, L'Artc, xvii (1914), pp. 49-
^See
But Venturi, counter to all probability, sees in the manuscript the model for the frescoes. 82
See supra,
p. 107.
THE SIRVIVAL OF THE PAGAX GODS
198
whims of
Italy.
The phenomenon
is
particularly apparent in the illustra-
tions of the Libellus executed in northern Italy
that is, at the meeting point between Western and Southern influences. Moreover, as we know, the relations
between Flanders and the Florence of the Medici were
to bring
about an e\*en
greater penetration of the Western
We must not
style.
finding these
be surprised at
same
Chronicle
trated
and
contrasts
famous
contradictions in the
illus-
to
attributed
Finiguerra: demigods accoutered
as pages or knights, but posed like statues
(Paris,
Romulus) nin
;
headdress
forms already
(Helen)
drawn
recreated by
Deucalion and Pyrrha) alia francese
nude
;
skillfully
men and women
(the
Jason,
Troilus,
ladies wearing the hen-
;
a couple
under a frieze
al-
Vantica (Rape of Helen). At the
same
time,
these
disparate
ele-
ments do not clash; instead, we find
everywhere the same balance
between realism of character and 81. Hellenistic
idealism of attitude which
Hermes
give Florentine Quattrocento art
its
is
to
unique savor.
In these gropings, this timid showing of the nude
among
figures heavily
draped, this alternating rhythm of serene immobility and gay vivacity, we should perhaps not only see an effort to reconcile two different spirits, two distinct artistic climates, but also distinguish
between the two concepts of classical
antiquity which alternately attracted the precursors of the Renaissance. The ambiguity that we note in this period in the form and attitude of the
gods
is
doubtless due in part to their allegiance to both North and South, 33
See supra,
p. 28.
THE REI\TEGRATIO} OF THE GODS but also to the fact that the spirit which animates them in essence
199
sometimes Dionysian
is
and sometimes Apollonian.
LET us now
see what has
become of
We
of the fifteenth century.
the gods of Albricus in the second half
re-encounter them, around 1465, in the famous
Tarocchi of Mantegna, the
matter
subject
of
'
i ,/cfffa Gcflx t fatc uiiv uiwB
^ XV
-^V*. '
of planetary powers.
The
of
pedigree
these figures
is
