General definitions

• Early Modern period--Renaissance and 18th century
• Preconceptions about the Medieval period/Renaissance

How Medieval and Renaissance Christians saw the world

• Chaos--cosmic anarchy before creation, which would take over if Providence did not hold it in check and allowed law of nature to stop functioning
• Providence--God's plan/will/oversight
• Law of Nature--Rules governing universe--based on reason, created by God's will and right, but beyond our understanding
• Chain (or chains) of Being--Golden chain, foot of throne of God to Earth (Plato's Timaeus, through Aristotle, through Neo-Platonists, and a commonplace from Middle Ages to 18th century)
• Ptolemaic vs Copernican universe
• Structure of the Ptolemaic Universe:  9-11 concentric spheres
• coelum empyraeum (empyrean) (God is here) (not a sphere)
• Spheres
• primum mobile (outside the fixed stars; regulates inner spheres; 4 elements mixed perfectly; eternal, immutable, aire is pure=ether [alternative theory made ether a fifth element])
• Fixed stars
• Saturn
• Jupiter
• Mars
• Sun
• Venus
• Mercury
• Moon
• sublunary region--beneath the moon, earth (4 elements mixed imperfectly, subject to decay, mutable, air is thick and dirty)
• Spheres create music in their movement ("music of the spheres"), but ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, people on earth can't hear the music.  Liturgical music (music in church services) represents an attempt to replicate this music; circle dances popular in this time represent an attempt to replicate movement of the spheres
• Each sphere is regulated by an order of angels (3x3, mirroring trinity)
• Contemplative angels
• Seraphs
• Cherubs
• Thrones
• Angels active in attitude rather than deed
• Dominations
• Virtues
• Powers
• Angels active in deed (these are the angels that interface between God and man)
• Principalities
• Archangels
• Angels
• Planets (stars) rule people's destinies within God's providence, but the Fall is responsible for the tyranny of fortune.  Consequently, neither the stars nor fortune can be blamed for what happens to people.  We have free will, and if we are strong and use reason, we can overcome fate.

• God
• Angels (9-12 orders)--These beings are purely rational/spiritual--they have understanding, but are freed from bodily feeling
• People--Have existence, life, feeling, and understanding--because they comprise both elements of the world and elements of the super-lunary world, they are thought to bridge matter and spirit; bind together creation; contain all characteristics of universe; possess all faculties, but at the same time are deficient in each. As a result, people are a microcosm of existence/universe.
• Animals (excel in strength)--Have existence, life, and feeling
• Higher animals--touch, hearing, memory, movement
• Example:  Horses (highest is lion)
• Animals w/touch, memory, and movement, but not hearing
• Example:  Ants
• Animals w/touch, but not hearing, memory, and movement
• Example:  Shellfish, parasites on trees
• Plants (excels in ability to process nourishment)--Have existence and life
• Highest tree is oak
• Inanimate (excels in durability)--Have mere existence
• Rocks
• Specks
• Elements--Though separate, the elements mix to form everything else in the universe. Elements must be kept in proper balance for a person to be healthy necessary; imbalance causes illness, character defects; constantly transmutating into one another, making alchemy possible
• Fire (highest element) (hot and dry, invisible, generates meteors)
• Air (hot & moist, nobler than water, devils take shape from air as angels do from ether)
• Water (cold & moist)
• Earth (heavy, cold & dry, place at center of universe, rises above water because God wills it)
• Correspondences
• Seasons, elements, qualities, humours

• Primacies
• Elements:  Fire over Air, over Water, over Earth
• Planets:  Sun over Moon and Planets
• Men:  Emperor over men
• Animals:
• Lion or elephant among animals
• Eagle among birds
• Dolphin or whale among fishes
• Emperor among men
• Physiology:
• Humours

• Links
• Humours 1
• Humours 2
• Humours 3
• Body divided between brain/body, each with 3 parts, ruled by organ
• Brain--rules the body
• Upper brain--reason (how man understands, painfully, through learning, whereas angels understand through intuition);
• Understanding (wit)-- man must seek to know himself, things outside himself.  Knowing oneself was gateway to virtue; not knowing oneself was to be like beasts.  Understanding examines what middle and lower brain produce, converts to knowledge, wisdom
• Will--decides the best course of action.  Man has free will, like God
• Middle brain
• common sense
• fancy
• memory
• Lower brain--5 senses
• Body
• Middle body--heart--seat of passions, sensitivity
• Lower body--liver--digestion
• Digestion
• Liver converts food into humours
• Humours generate "vital heat," mediated to the body by three kinds of spirit
• Natural spirits--vapor formed in the liver, carried with humours through veins
• Vital spirits--created when heart acts on natural spirits with heat and air of lungs and carries life and heat through arteries with nobler kind of blood

Animal spirits--Vital spirits carried to brain, partake of body and soul