I. NATURAL AND SUPERNATURAL REALITY
Both those who could choose a form of life and those who had to accept the ones which the system of prevailing social relations imposed on them contributed – actively or passively – to shaping an image of reality embedded in a sturdy and architectured conception: the world was seen as being framed within an order – the Christian-feudal order – that postulated its ecumenicity.
Several traditions contributed to this long intellectual development, which was partly spontaneous and partly – the far more important part – the deliberate work of privileged minorities, in particular the ones that concerned themselves with spiritual problems. And as the situation in the landed aristocracies stabilised and the power of the Church was consolidated, this vast system increasingly took on the character of a monolithic orthodoxy, all the more iron-clad the more apparent the signs of the social and cultural change heralding the rise of the bourgeoisie became.
Man perceived the unequivocal regularity of the natural reality within which his life was embedded, and he adapted to it in his daily actions. He sowed and reaped and trusted ‘in the order of the seasons and the laws of the elements’.[1] Yet, beyond his own experience, he had accumulated countless ideas and beliefs that led him also to trust in the reality of things he had no empirical knowledge of. Natural reality, in his eyes, became enriched with various elements whose existence he learnt not to doubt, and his environs became an indiscriminate conflation of real and unreal elements.
The memory of the existence of fabulous animals endured in the uncritical image of natural reality: the dragon, the phoenix, the unicorn, the mermaid, the faun.[2] The imagination was nourished by the certainty that giants such as those that had inhabited Albion before the Britons, or dwarves like the Alberich who had fought with Siegfried, or those whose existence was recalled by Chrétien de Troyes or Gerald of Wales, were still alive somewhere on the earth.[3] Undines foretelling the future, fairies with power over men, or Amazons and Sagittarians dwelling in the Pyrenees seemed certain to be just around a bend in the road.[4] All this was spoken of by old traditions which commanded respect because of their venerable antiquity and which provoked no criticism. The existence of demons who amused themselves with the torture of human beings, appearing to them to tempt them and lead them into evil and taking unexpected forms, was also admitted under the authority of the Christian religion.[5] Even incarnated sometimes in those wearing sacred vestments, their presence was counterbalanced by the angels and saints, who attended to worldly matters and also appeared to influence men’s fates.[6] Even the spirits of the dead inhabited the world and signalled their presence.[7]
Even as everyone was discovering the regularity of natural reality in their own environs, the idea that things happened differently in remote places remained deeply entrenched. Legends and traditions passed on orally and occasionally set down in writing told of wonders and marvels in faraway lands. Even close to home, a region might be awash with mysteries and possess enchanted castles or strange inhabitants or fantastic animals. Guigemar found the mysterious city where he could be cured of his ills very close by, and the boy who visited the strange country of the pygmies soon reached that wonderful region ‘full of delight and entertainment.’[8] Further afield, of course, other places whose existence was real held all kinds of wonders: dwarves, giants and blue men as in Scythia Major, according to Snorri Sturluson;[9] dragons, gryphons, horned pygmies who grow old at the age of seven as in India, according to the texts of L’Image du monde and all the stories revolving around the legend of Prester John;[10] and still other wonders echoed by Brunetto Latini, as extraordinary as those of Libya, where ‘the sea is considerably higher than the land’,[11] which made that country an unreal world.
The vague world of the wonderful was usually to be found in places whose locations could never be pinpointed precisely. Avalon was a remote island somewhere to the west. In the same direction, according to Celtic lore, lay the world of the dead, ‘the Land beneath the Waves’ or ‘the Land beyond the Mist’. These mysterious regions stood at an intermediate stage in the imagination, between reality and unreality. Countless stories of voyages to unsuspected realms filled the imagination with confused notions that blended facts drawn from experience and descriptions born of the imagination. The story of the strange pilgrimage of Saint Brendan reinforced the idea that there existed mysterious places both real and unreal lying within man’s reach. Similarly, hell, purgatory and paradise, described over and again in countless narratives and ever more precise detail, acquired signs of reality.[12]
The image of natural reality thus came to be saturated with supernatural elements, and a strenuous effort was made to introduce coherence between the two. But the supernatural elements not only enjoyed full spontaneous trust but were also reinforced by the image of the world provided by faith. It was a difficult task to establish boundaries between the unreality proposed by faith and the unreality stemming from the survival of various traditions. The result was man’s installation in a reality where the natural and supernatural were conflated and where sensible reality appeared to be explained by unreality. Not only the vulgar mind but the mind inclined to reflection accepted as normal the miracles and wonders that were told and that presumably altered the order of nature from day to day. They were recorded in chronicles and frequently linked to social events in a relationship of contiguity which in time became causal. A singular forma mentis constantly incited postponement of the sensible detail in favour of the mysterious, hidden meaning. Otto of Freising recounts a storm that caused flooding of the encampment but is quick to point out that it was considered ‘more a divine punishment than a natural flood’.[13] It was the repeated habit of interposing between the subject and object of knowledge an acquired interpretation whereby natural reality appeared to be nothing but a collection of signs expressing a non-sensible reality yet constituting true being. And the mind strove to perfect this reaction to sensible reality, dispelling all imaginable doubts about the essential reality of the unintelligible and the illusory constitution of the sensible. At the very limits of his conception of reality, Saint Peter Damian endeavoured to demonstrate that it was an inherent trait of divine omnipotence to make what has happened not to have happened.[14]
In knowing sensible reality, the details of experience were interwoven with those of the traditions that had accumulated upon it and acknowledged different origins: some Roman, others Celtic, Germanic, Hebrew-Christian or Muslim. It was a singular form of knowledge, which included the description of beings and phenomena, the enumeration of their properties – some of which were supernatural – and frequently the mysterious meanings attributed to them by a given tradition. This was the way via which one entered into the knowledge of unreality, whose mysteries, however, called for a subtle approach.
Neither experience nor reason were adequate instruments to know these ultimate secrets, which could only be revealed to man by the express design of divine power. By its grace, man was granted dreams and visions through which he believed he could understand the secret of things. Countless notions about the world were built upon the account of what someone claimed had been revealed to him in such trances, heedless of any conflicting opinions about the true value of such knowledge. Alfonso the Wise considered dreams and visions as ravings and sources of error in spite of their being avowed and spread by religious men like Saint Bernard. Yet even though some considered them suspect, if the accounts of their revelations gained currency, as they often did, the elements and interpretations they incorporated into common knowledge helped enrich the image of the supernatural environment in which sensible reality was embedded.[15] The general predisposition favoured imprecise integration of the details of the supernatural world preserved by pagan traditions with details contributed by the Christian vision of the supernatural, itself made up of the conjunction of notions of various origins. By the same token, some of the avenues of knowledge accepted by these traditions became conflated with avenues accepted by Christianity, for example, enlightenment of the spirit by divine grace, whereby God’s chosen one acquired a power similar to that which the Celtic tradition attributed to the inspired or the Germanic tradition to those who, after certain rites, could understand the language of birds.[16] In a similar vein, the value of prophecies became confused, with Merlin’s being ranked alongside the most sacred of the Christian tradition insofar as, behind them, could be identified the same divine power to grant the gift of prophecy to the man who was to spread the ultimate secret of things among men.[17] Even natural phenomena were interpreted as signs of the divine will, although such interpretations often revealed the old non-Christian traditions surviving in the popular image of reality.[18]
Everything was aimed at deterring man from the illusion of knowing reality directly. All that could be known by the senses was its appearance, and that knowledge was so contemptible that the way to perfection began only when one could, in all spontaneity, dispense with it. A token of Saint Bernard’s inner perfection was that ‘this servant of God had the eyes of his body so tightly closed to all outward things and those of his spirit directed inwards in such a way’ that, on a long journey, he had noticed nothing of what was happening around him.[19] Escaping sensible reality was precisely what Saint Bernard advised those seeking true knowledge.[20] To read in reality what was transcendent in it rather than what it appeared to say constituted supreme wisdom. Even Scripture itself called for this effort towards transcendence, which consisted in going beyond its literal or historical meaning to grasp its threefold spiritual meaning.[21]
For those wishing to act upon it, however, sensible reality called for precise knowledge of its strengths and possibilities. Experience and invention made some breakthroughs in this area.[22] But the traditional mentality persisted in the conviction that more effective than technical effort was the appeal to superior forces governing sensible reality. Countless legends spoke of supernatural powers residing in the organs or blood of animals, of plants whose juices decided the fate of those who drank them, of objects that hid their talismanic status beneath their vulgar appearance.[23] Those who knew such powers and knew how to harness them could act upon reality and subject it to their desires. Under the sign of Christianity, this belief was transferred to relics of the saints, through whose mediation the desired end of altering a natural process could be obtained. It applied to the barrenness of fields or the curing of a disease, particularly if the specific influence of demons was presumed to be causing the harm. Even a copy of the Gospel used as an amulet could serve this purpose.[24]
The mastery of supernatural forces seemed to be the preserve of a select few: one needed to ‘know’, to have gained the knowledge of how the processes were set in train, either through personal discovery or having received the secret of effective procedures from another, or having occasionally or permanently obtained a power that only supernatural forces could bestow. The sorcerer, the magician, the man who held the key to the mystery, produced a mixture of admiration and fear in the imagination that was shared by the Devil’s disciples and God’s anointed. It was the image of reality that justified the thaumaturgical power of both sets of followers. Roman, Germanic, Celtic, Jewish and Arab traditions, some of them conflated and enriched with foreign contributions, flowed into each other in Christian thaumaturgy to form a single beam of beliefs about unreality. Those who possessed the power to perform an enchantment were loath to reveal the source of their power, and each interpreted if theirs was a demonic or sacred force as they saw fit. Merlin the Magician and Pope Sylvester II became conflated in the uncritical imagination of those who only gauged the effectiveness of supernatural power and, ultimately, the nature of the ends it served. Nothing could be more difficult than to discern the roots of his thaumaturgical power in the figure of the magician cleric.[25]
Thus, prayer, rogations or the more solemn forms of invoking God’s will, such as religious processions, conflated them with enchantments, and there was occasion for debate as to whether the forces of demons or saints were more effective.[26] After the example of Christ’s miracles, it was accepted that ‘men of God’ could also perform them, and hagiography exalted those which the saint had performed in life and which his tomb or his relics performed after his death. Only men’s wickedness was said to stand in the way of more miracles, it being right that God should not grant power to perform them to men whose lives were given over to corruption and wickedness.[27] Yet still miracles both ancient and modern continued to haunt uncritical minds subscribing to the traditional conception of reality. Compared to the feebleness of human reason, God’s omnipotence and omniscience required man’s acceptance of mystery. By admitting the immutable, eternal order of creation, man acquiesced in his impotence to know the totality of what was real and contented himself with ‘contemplating things as in a mirror and in enigma.’[28]
II. HUMAN REALITY
Surrounded by such a complex and mysterious world, man discovered – through his senses and the call of his instincts – that he was part of natural reality. Yet, at the same time as he learnt to discover the presence of the supernatural seeping through the cracks in his immediate experience, he also learnt that he should despise what was natural in him. He persuaded himself that the flesh of his body was vile because it was mortal, whereas his soul was noble because it was eternal. Temporality was the attribute of sensible nature, whereas eternity was the attribute of things supernatural. And flesh seemed the enemy of the soul. ‘You have, oh soul, a domestic foe,’ said Saint Bonaventure, ‘a friendly foe, a familiar adversary who has repaid you for goodness with wickedness and, being so cruel a foe under the guise of friendship, has robbed you of all this and endless other goodness. This foe, with all respect, is your wretched, unhappy flesh, which yet you find most sweet and dear. When you feared it, you raised a terrible foe against you; when you honoured it, you armed against you an opponent most cruel; when you adorned it outwardly with sundry precious garments, you stripped yourself of all inner adornments and ignored what Saint Gregory said in the Homilia: “Where the flesh lives softly in time, there the spirit shall be tormented and shall for ever moan”; and conversely: “The more oppressed is the flesh, the more the spirit rejoices for the hope of heaven.”’[29] It was the senses that made the flesh vile, for it was through them that man felt drawn towards earthly things, which constituted the world of sin and the Devil.
The soul, on the other hand, immaterial and eternal, imperceptible to the senses, was what was divine in man and where the hopes of salvation and eternity were pinned. Man learnt that two possibilities in life were open to him: either to yield to the temptations of the flesh and assert the primacy of the earthly or, on the contrary, to rebel against them, grimly reign them in and strive to defend his spirituality from any corrupting contact. It was this last possibility that was advised by the predominant idea of the world, in spite of natural reality’s irrepressible daily insurrection against the efforts to ignore it. ‘Blush with shame, oh my soul, for having exchanged your likeness to the divine for likeness to a filthy animal,’ said Saint Bernard, ‘blush for wallowing in the mire, you who are of heaven.’[30] And the choice proposed to him by this dualistic image of man raised subtle moral problems that theological thought set out to resolve, sometimes urging contempt for the world, sometimes justifying participation in its perilous journey.
Individual and social ethics were thus increasingly differentiated. Individual ethics accepted the dualistic conception of man down to its last consequences; on that basis, it set its aims on the salvation of the soul and proposed the annihilation of the body. Social ethics, on the other hand, while admitting dualism, nevertheless deemed it necessary for man to accept the full responsibility imposed on him by his own condition and attributed to him the ability to govern his actions by his will. Accordingly, he was to master his earthly conduct and steer it as near to moral perfection as possible. The human condition necessarily entailed sin, but man possessed the potential to avoid it.
If he fell into sin, he still had the possibility of escaping damnation by resorting to the sacrament, through which man regained his purity. It was, however, necessary for the Church to intervene as the depository of charismatic power. Only in communion was it possible then for man to participate in the journey of the world without barring himself permanently from the chance to save his soul.[31]
The spiritual imperative to live within the Church’s communion had to be married to the reality of living within a political community. If, for his salvation, man had to participate in the community of the faithful, which was a universitas, a respublica generis humani conflated with the ecclesia universalis, he was in his everyday existence confined within a group that asserted its particularism. Man learnt that only his body lived in political society, while his soul belonged to the ecclesia universalis. This was the true instituted society, in which all lower forms of human co-existence were consequently to be included. Humanity formed a single organism in which the sacerdotium was the soul, whereas the regnum was only the body, and supreme wisdom was to consist of co-existing in the dual reality of the mystical unity of the world.[32] This organicist conception of humanity was transferred to political society and served to justify the function of each part of the organism in relation to the whole: some to pray, others to fight and the latter to work to ‘supply gold, food and clothing for all.’[33] This seemed to be both the natural and the divine order, according to the teachings of Saint Paul, and as such this order was to be observed and considered immutable, since it had also been claimed that ‘there is no power but comes from God, and the powers that be are of God ordained.’[34]
Amid constant, profound social and political change, man grew accustomed at the start of the feudal-bourgeois period to thinking that, in spite of the decisive significance they usually held for him, the transformations he was witnessing were inconsequential in relation to the divine plan. Man had been created to be damned or saved in the other life, and the vagaries of real situations were nothing but accidents. History was written and tended to be seen as nothing but the fulfilment of prophecy.[35] Long or short, the time remaining until the Day of Judgment was merely an occasion for each man to provide proof of his decision to be damned or saved for all eternity. Privileged and unprivileged embraced the choice in different ways. But the profound penetration of Christian symbolism into people’s spirits was effective in obtaining the consent of all for the idea. Only the irrepressible force of events shattered the illusion of order, dragging some of those who laboured ‘to supply gold, food and clothing for all’ out of the narrow subjection caused by the conjunction of the socio-economic order created by conquest and the theory of society established by the Church. The idea of natural reality, the ideas of man, society and history, would then change content and sign. But nothing was as gruelling for non-conformists as confronting the ghost of the Christian-feudal order’s universality created by the landed military aristocracy and the Church.
III. THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE ORDER
Behind the differences between natural reality and supernatural reality which experience was teaching him to discover, behind the diversity that was visible between these differences and human reality, man was beginning to discover a mysterious unity which encompassed the multiplicity of what he observed as discrete. Since the world was a creation of God, everything created retained within it the sign of its divine origin. And yet the diversity of things manifested the profound unity of creation through the order presiding over the world.[36] ‘Where there is unity, there is perfection,’ repeated Saint Bernard.[37] And unity was essentially order, hierarchy, a wise provision so that all the parts would converge on one and the same end, namely God.[38]
Dante Alighieri took up and elevated the idea of universal harmony which gave meaning to the movement of the stars, inanimate things and living beings. ‘All created things,’ he said, ‘keep an order amongst themselves, and this is the way of the universe to resemble God. In this principle, creatures endowed with reason discover the sign of eternal virtue, which is the purpose for which this order was established. Under this principle, all beings have their inclinations in accordance with the diversity of essence that places them closer to or further from their Creator. For this reason, each steers for a different port on the great sea of life according to the instinct it has received to guide it there.’[39] But man did not always prove capable of discovering this mystery, and the poet lamented his impotence: ‘O ineffable Wisdom that so ordained,’ he wrote in the Convivio after describing the movement of the sun, ‘how poor is our mind of man to comprehend you! And you, for whose profit and delight I write, what blindness you live in, lifting not your eyes to these things, but keeping them fixed on the mire of your foolishness!’[40]
It was, indeed, only by making a supreme mental effort that man could superimpose on the image created by the diversity of reality an intellectual image founded on the principle of unity and order. This effort could, however, be replaced with simple acceptance of the idea as imposed by the orthodoxy, an imposition that was vehement and resolute. The order of the created was not to be regarded as merely earthly. ‘Despise not this form because it is of the earth, for it has its model in the heavens,’ said Saint Bernard.[41] The order of the created was then sacred and was as such beyond human judgment. Man might not succeed in describing it due to the limitations of his intelligence, he might not comprehend its profound meaning, but he had no right to deny it, nor could he without committing an outrage against God himself. An image of the world was thus formed that succeeded in imposing itself through the force of catechesis and against the facts of experience; it lodged in spirits through symbolic forms that merely hinted at its mystery; and it was affirmed as belief because its sacred character was upheld by the unimpeachable authority of the revealed word and the Church. A reflection of divine omniscience, the sacred order was to be considered immutable, and if ignoring it was an outrage against God himself, rebelling against it was the sign of irremediable wickedness and diabolic pride.
The immutability of the sacred order enshrined the stability of the natural, supernatural and human realities. The human reality was characterised by the prevalence of certain relationships among men and women which could not, by virtue of this principle, be considered historical and reversible but perennial and established by God Himself. The attempt to learn the secret of the created through reason or the design to alter the system of prevailing social relations constituted a violation of the order, and the Church was in principle vigorously opposed to its consummation. The landed military aristocracy, the holders of privilege within the established social system, shared its adherence to this principle and found in the orthodox thesis the justification for their determined resistance to social and cultural change.
The Church regarded itself as the keeper of the secrets that justified this image of the world. As the interpreter of revealed truth, it elaborated the symbols through which this truth could be spread, as well as the speculative developments that encompassed its outline and established its scope. In the summas, the order of creation was neatly projected through a rigorous demonstrative order that turned theology into a precise, almost exact science. The orthodoxy was defining its terms precisely at a time when the habit of free discussion and direct observation of nature independent of the principle of authority were spreading.
Around that time, the attempt by bourgeois groups to free themselves from the traditional socio-political frameworks was also finding success. It was at this time that it came to be orthodoxy. The response of the sectors adhering to the traditional order was to demand an indissoluble unity between religious orthodoxy and the system of socio-economic and political relations. The order demanded was, therefore, both Christian and feudal and regarded as sacred in origin, immutable and eternal. The world created by the Germanic conquest of the Western Roman area thus strove to immobilise society and culture and confronted the changes in the whole with the support and threat of the afterworld.
PART II
THE EMERGENCE OF THE BOURGEOISIE AND THE CRISIS IN THE CHRISTIAN-FEUDAL ORDER
The long process by which the Christian-feudal order took shape between the fifth and thirteenth centuries was not homogeneous, nor did it always possess the same distinguishing marks. Up until the eleventh century – during the Romano-Germanic and feudal periods, that is – the various elements of the social structure converged with their respective cultural traditions to develop a single system of life. There may perhaps have been only one possibility, but there was nevertheless also a design amongst the privileged classes to provide reality with an ordering principle to enshrine a possibility for life that was both unique and universal. The result was a closed world with a tendency to stabilisation. From then on, however – during the feudal-bourgeois period, that is – were seen signs of a crisis in which a different attitude towards life and reality would begin to emerge. The foundations upon which the life of this society rested began to be shaken from the close of the tenth century through almost the entire Romano-Germanic area, hardly perceptibly at first, but growing in intensity. As a result, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, new situations took shape that challenged the traditional ones. Both the processes that had led to those new situations and the results themselves were profound, undeniable phenomena and soon began to influence general opinions, unleashing a torrent of vehement dissent against the traditional system of ideas and beliefs, opinions and values.
The crisis situation flared, fanned – and sometimes provoked – by a variety of circumstances. Some of these were related to the changes taking place from the late tenth century in the Western Roman area’s politico-economic structure. These changes resulted in a shock-wave of expansion and a new ordering of peripheral areas of influence and in their subsequent integration with a vast continuous sphere where both ideas and economic currents circulated with renewed vigour. Other circumstances were specifically related to the broadening of the cultural horizon ensuing from this expansion due to the contacts established between different world-views. These contacts fostered not only a certain critical attitude but also an opening of the closed world and a tendency to accept ideas previously ignored or condemned. Still other circumstances were related to the new forms of socio-economic life kindled by the revitalisation of trade and the development of urban life, with their attendant conflicts between the old and new social groups. The result was a crisis situation in which the germs of a dissident, bourgeois, urban mentality were free to develop.
Notes
^ 1. Raoul Glaber, Histoires, IV, iv.
^ 2. The Poetic Edda, ‘The Lay of Fafnir’; Das Nibelungenlied, 100; Geoffrey of Monmouth, Histories of the Kings of Britain, X, ii; Wace, Le Roman de Brut, l. 11239 ff.; Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Liber de propietatibusrerum, XVIII, cf. C.-V. Langlois, La Connaissance de la nature et du monde au Moyen Âge; Brunetto Latini, Li livres dou Tresor, I, v; Jacques de Vitry, Historia Orientalis, I.
^ 3. The Poetic Edda, ‘The Lay of Regin’; Geoffrey of Monmouth, Histories of the Kings of Britain, I, xvi; cf. X, iii; Das Nibelungenlied, 96 ff., 482 ff.; Chrétien de Troyes, Érec et Énide, 1. 1915 ff.; GiraldusCambrensis, ItinerariumKambriae, I, viii.
^ 4. ‘La mort Aymeri’, cf. M. de Riquer, Los cantares de gestefranceses, 137; Das Nibelungenlied, 1533 ff.
^ 5. Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, I, xv; xxi–xxvi; Raoul Glaber,Histoires, IV, ii; GiraldusCambrensis,ItinerariumKambriae, I, xii; Gonzalo de Berceo,Milagros de Nuestra Señora, II, 78–85; VIII, 187 ff.; Rutebeuf, Le Miracle de Théophile.
^ 6. GiraldusCambrensis, ItinerariumKambriae, I, vi; Poema de Fernán González, 402 ff.; Gonzalo de Berceo, Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos, 644 ff.; see A. Graf, ‘Demonologia di Dante’, in Miti, leggende e supertizioni del Medio Evo, and the sources cited in note 16.
^ 7. Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, I, xviii.
^ 8. Marie de France, Lai de Guigemar; GiraldusCambrensis, ItinerariumKambriae, I, viii.
^ 9. SnorriSturluson, Heimskringla, ‘Ynglinga Saga’, I.
^ 10. ‘L’Image du Monde’, cf. Langlois, La Connaissance de la nature et du monde au Moyen Âge, 81; L. Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, II.
^ 11. Brunetto Latini, Li livres dou Tresor, I, v, cxxiii and cxxv.
^ 12. Numerous texts on the image of the other world are cited and analysed in Graf, ‘Il mito del paradisoterrestre’ and ‘Il riposodeidammati’, in Miti; M. Asín Palacios, La escatologíamusulmanaen la Divina comedia; H.R. Patch, The Other World, According to Descriptions in Medieval Literature.
^ 13. Otto von Freising, Gesta Friderici Imperatoris, I, xlv.
^ 14. Saint Peter Damian, De divinaomnipotentia in reparationecorruptae et factisinfectisreddendis opusculum, V ff.
^ 15. Das Nibelungenlied, 921 ff.; Geoffrey of Monmouth, Histories of the Kings of Britain,X, ii; Wace,Le Roman de Brut, l. 11245 ff.; Alfonso el Sabio, Setenario, XVI and XVII; Saint Bernard, De vita et rebus gestis Sancti Malachiae, XV; Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, I, xviii.
^ 16. Guillaume de Saint Thierry, Sancti Bernardi vita et res gestae, I, xiii; Geoffrey de Clairvaux, De vita Sancti Bernardi abbatis, IV, ii and iii; The Poetic Edda, ‘The Lay of Fafnir’, 31–32; Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ‘Ynglinga Saga’, XXI; GiraldusCambrensis, Descriptio, I, xvi; Guillaume de Nangis, Chronicon, yr. 1186; Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, I, 25 ff.
^ 17. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Histories of the Kings of Britain, VII and VIII; Wace, Le Roman de Brut, l. 7535 ff.; on the acceptance of Merlin’s prophecies in the Christian world, see Suger, Vita Ludovici Regis VI, XV; Ordericus Vitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, XII; Guillaume le Breton, Philippide, VIII; Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, I, 347, I.P. Bernini (Ed.); Brunetto Latini, Li livres dou Tresor I, II, xciv.
^ 18. Guillaume de Nangis, Chronicon, yr. 1175; Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, 239, Bernini (Ed.).
^ 19. Geoffroy de Clairvaux, De vita Sancti Bernardi abbatis, III, ii.
^ 20. Saint Bernard, De conversione, VI ff.
^ 21. Saint Augustine, De utilitatecredendi, 3; Saint Bonaventure, De triplici via, Prologue; Saint Thomas, Summa Theologiae, I, Prima pars, qu. I, 10.
^ 22. See B. Gille, Les développements technologiques en Europe de 1100 a 1400, in Cahiers d’Histoire Mondiale, III, i, 1956.
^ 23. Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ‘Ynglinga Saga’, XXXVIII; The Poetic Edda, ‘The Lay of Fafnir’, 39; Béroul, Le Roman de Tristan, l. 1412–15; Das Nibelungenlied, 97, 100, 1124 et al.; Les Enfances Guillaume, 179 ff.; Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival.
^ 24. Historia Compostelana, II, 50; Gonzalo de Berceo, Vida de Santo Domingo de Silos, 536 ff.; Vida de San Millán, 321 ff.; Guillaume de Saint-Pathus, Les miracles de Saint Louis,passim; Saint Bernard, De vita et rebus gestis Sancti Malachiae, XXXI; Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, I, 95, Bernini (Ed.); Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,yr. 1013; GiraldusCambrensis, ItinerariumKambriae, I, v.
^ 25. Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ‘Ynglinga Saga’, XXV, and ‘Harald the Fairhaired’, XXXIV and XXXVI; Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival; Geoffrey of Monmouth, Histories of the Kings of Britain, VII, VIII, IX, xii, XII, vxi; Ordericus Vitalis,Historia Ecclesiastica, I; Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, I, xii and xxvi; Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, I, 43, Bernini (Ed.); Fuero Juzgo, VI, ii, laws 1, 3 and 4. See A. Graf, La leggenda di un pontefice (Silvestro II), in Miti, leggende e superstizioni del Medio Evo.
^ 26. Les Enfances Guillaume, l. 1704 ff., 1884 ff.; J. de Joinville, Histoire de Saint Louis, XXXVIII and XLIII; Guibert de Nogent, De vita sua, I, xxvi.
^ 27. Gonzalo de Berceo, Milagros de NuestraSeñora, 502–3; OrdericusVitalis, Historia Ecclesiastica, XI, prologue.
^ 28. Saint Bernard, Epistolae, CXCII.
^ 29. Saint Bonaventura, Soliloquium de quatuormentalibusexercitiis, I, 3. See H.W. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
^ 30. Saint Bernard, Sermo XXIV in Cant., 6.
^ 31. See A. Dempf, Ética de la Edad Media, 106 ff.
^ 32. Saint Paul, I Corinthians, X, 16–17; XII, Colossians, I, 24; Romans XII, 4–5; John of Salisbury, Policraticus, VI, 20–25; Letters, III, Milor (Ed.); Saint Bernard, De consideratione, III, iv. See M. García Pelayo, El reino de Dios, arquetipo poítico.
^ 33. Adalberon, Carmen.
^ 34. Saint Paul, Romans, XIII, 1.
^ 35. Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, I, 1, 4, 33, 34 et al; Otto von Freising, Chronicon de duabuscivitatibus, passim.
^ 36. Saint Thomas, Summa Theologica, Prima pars, qu. 47.
^ 37. Saint Bernard, De consideratione, II, viii.
^ 38. Saint Thomas, Summa contra gentiles, III, 17.
^ 39. Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia, ‘Paradiso’, I, 103 ff.
^ 40. Dante Alighieri, Convivio, III, l.
^ 41. Saint Bernard, De consideratione, III, xv.
